Page 152 - The Midnight Library

www.urdukutabkhanapk.blogspot.com
www.urdukutabkhanapk.blogspot.com

the way he said it, Joe was still ver y much part of the team. Ella wasn’t there,

though. On bass was a large muscly man with a shaved head and tattoos. She
wanted to know more, but now was clearly not the time.
Ravi swept his hand through the air, gesturing towards what Nora could
now see was a ver y large stage.

She was over whelmed. She didn’t know what to feel.
‘Encore time,’ said Ravi.
Nora tried to think. It had been a long time since she had performed
anything. And even then it was only in front of a crowd of about twelve

uninterested people in a pub basement.
Ravi leaned in. ‘You okay, Nora?’
It seemed a bit brittle. e way he said her name seemed to contain the
same kind of resentment she’d heard when she’d bumped into him yesterday,

in that ver y different life.
‘Yes,’ she said, full shouting now. ‘Of course. It’s just . . . I have no idea
what we should do for the encore.’
Ravi shrugged. ‘Same as always.’

‘Hmm. Yeah. Right.’ Nora tried to think. She looked out at the stage. She
saw a giant video screen with the words THE LABYRINTHS flashing and
rotating out to the roaring crowd. Wow, she thought. We’re big. Proper,
stadium-level big. She saw a keyboard and the stool she had been sitting at.

Her bandmates whose names she didn’t know were about to walk back on
stage.
‘Where are we again?’ she asked, above the crowd noise. ‘I’ve gone blank.’
e big shaven-headed guy holding the bass told her : ‘São Paulo.’

‘We’re in Brazil?’
ey looked at her as if she was mad.
‘Where have you been the last four days?’
‘“Beautiful Sky”,’ said Nora, realising she could probably still remember

most of the words. ‘Let’s do that.’
‘Again?’ Ravi laughed, his face shining with sweat. ‘We did it ten minutes
ago.’
‘Okay. Listen,’ said Nora, her voice now a shout over the crowd

demanding an encore. ‘I was thinking we do somet hing different. Mix it up.
I wondered if we could do a different song to usual.’