Page 155 - The Midnight Library

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Wild and Free

She reached the keyboard, sat down on the stool and brought the

microphone a little closer.
‘ ank you, São Paulo,’ she said. ‘We love you.’
And Brazil roared back.
is, it seemed, was power. e power of fame. Like those pop icons she
had seen on social media, who could say a single word and get a million

likes and shares. Total fame was when you reached the point where looking
like a hero, or genius, or god, required minimal effort. But the flipside was
that it was precarious. It could be equally easy to fall and look like a devil or

a villain, or just an arse.
Her heart raced, as if she were about to set foot on a tight-rope.
She could see some of the faces in the crowd now, thousands of them,
emerging from the dark. Tiny and strange, the clothed bodies almost
invisible. She was staring out at twenty thousand disembodied heads.

Her mouth was dr y. She could hardly speak, so wondered how she was
going to sing. She remembered Dan mock-wincing as she’d sung for him.
e noise of the crowd subsided.

It was time.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Here is a song you might have heard before.’
is was a stupid thing to say, she realised. ey had all paid tickets for
this concert presumably because they had heard a lot of these songs before.
‘It’s a song that means a lot to me and my brother.’

Already the place was erupting. ey screamed and roared and clapped
and chanted. e response was phenomenal. She felt, momentarily, like
Cleopatra. An utterly terrified Cleopatra.