Chapter 10

10

I’ve never been to East London before, and I do not like it. I don’t know my way around the unfamiliar streets, and every person I see looks like they’re on their way to audition for some wanky indie band with a name like Radiator Conspiracy or Breakfast with Carl. There is, however, a huge chance that Jonah is here tonight, so I battle through the discomfort.

As suspected, Cooper was a whizz on the computer. To my surprise he had access to some sort of private police database, though he annoyingly refused to tell me how or why. He used the database to quickly generate a list of Jonah Ts under the age of thirty in London, and while a social media search showed that most of them were not my Jonah, there was one man who was a definite maybe. Jonah Thompson. His social media profiles were mostly private or lapsed, but the display image showed a man of the right age, with the same Burnt Umber hair. His face was obscured by sunglasses, so I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. We saw on Instagram that Jonah Thompson had been recently tagged in a photo at a weekly musical theatre night in East London—which happens to be tonight. And so it seemed the next logical step to show up here in the hopes that it’s a regular hangout of his. I mean, my Jonah didn’t exactly seem like the kind of man to attend a musical theatre piano bar, but he did say he was anticipating a magical summer in London, and maybe this is what he considers magical? Either way, at the thought of seeing him again, my heart starts to beat a little faster, a warm flush spreading across my neck and chest.

I spot a neon sign declaring itself The Orchestra Pit and head down some rusty-looking stairs to a basement.

I open the door and am hit with a wall of noise, synthetic vape smells, disco-ball lights, and tinkly music coming from an upright piano standing right in the centre of the room.

“Eek,” I mutter to myself. “What hellscape is this, and why would someone as wonderful as Jonah come here?”

I shuffle to the bar, grimacing as a group of women wearing feather boas shove past me, saying something disparaging about Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The man behind the bar is dressed in a T-shirt made entirely of red sequins.

“Uh, hi there.” I give an awkward little wave.

“Your hair! Very Sound of Music!” The man presses a hand to his chest in delight.

I pat my braids self-consciously. “I’ve not seen that one,” I say. “I don’t like musicals.”

The man laughs out loud as if I’m joking. When I don’t laugh back, his smile falters. “Shit. You’re definitely gonna need a drink then.”

I nod. “Agreed. A glass of white wine would be lovely. Pinot Grigio, please.”

“We have cocktails for half the price on our happy hour menu—they’re delicious. I know because I make them. They’re a lot cheaper than the wine. And a ton more potent.”

He hands me a paper menu, on which there is a list of complicated-looking drinks: the Liza, the Patti, the Barbra, the Idina, and the Bernadette.

I’ve never had a cocktail before. But half the price is half the price.

“Cool.” I run my finger down the list. “I’ll have a Liza.”

“Nice choice.” The man selects a fancy-looking glass like something out of a James Bond movie and gathers ingredients to prepare my cocktail. “You’re new here,” he says as he pours an obscene amount of vodka into a metal shaker. “And you hate musicals. So…why?”

“I’m looking for a man,” I tell him distractedly, scanning the room for any sign of Jonah.

“Yeah, not sure this is the best place for that,” he laughs, sliding over my drink. It’s decorated with a curly silver straw, a sticky maraschino cherry, and a cocktail umbrella. I fight my way through all the accoutrements and take a tentative sip. I immediately take another.

“Holy shit.”

“Right? I put in a dash of apple sour to give it that extra zazz.” He wiggles his fingers when he says zazz.

I take another gulp of the drink and feel soothed by a mellow sensation loosening my limbs. At the piano, a woman starts to sing a song about someone not being able to pay their rent. She’s terrible but no-one seems to care; instead they just gather around the piano and join in. This is such a weird place. I order another drink and start to make my way around the basement bar, eyes on stalks for a sighting of Jonah. Every toffee-haired man catches my eye, but not one of them is him. I wander across the bar, trying unsuccessfully to tune out the wail of terrible singing. I peek my head into each seating booth as I pass by. Jonah isn’t in any of them.

My phone vibrates in my purse. I pull it out. A text from Merritt.

Bonjour, belle! I LOVE this place! I used to go all the time. You have to sing All That Jazz for me.

“No way,” I hiss. “I’m here to find Jonah.”

PLEASE. If I was there I would do it myself. But I can’t. Because I’m dead. So tragic. Taken away in my prime.

I turn to face the wall so that the surrounding revellers don’t think I’m talking to myself as I answer her.

“I don’t even know that song. And even if I did, there’s no way I would ever get up and sing in front of other people.”

I spot a tall man with Jonah-coloured hair on the other side of the piano. I speed walk in his direction, but he disappears into the men’s bathroom before I can reach him.

“Damn it!”

As I stand outside the men’s room and wait for him to finish his business, my phone continues to vibrate in a frenzied way.

All That Jazz! I demand it. If you don’t I will take off a day.

“What the fuck? You can’t do that!”

A man coming out of the loo gives me a cocky look. “I just did, honey,” he drawls.

“Not you!” I call after him, but he’s already disappeared into the crowd.

“I don’t need another day,” I say to Merritt. “I think I might have found him.”

At that moment, the tall Jonah-haired guy exits the bathroom. My heart sinks. While this man is roughly the same height as Jonah, with identical hair, his face is less sharp, his eyes much closer together and not at all cobalt blue.

“Is your name Jonah Thompson?” I ask.

“Nope, not me.”

“You looking for Australian Jonah?” a woman asks, sidling up to the man from the bathroom and swingling an arm around his waist. “He moved back to Sydney six months ago. Visa ran out. We miss him. He did a mean Jean Valjean.”

“Wait…Jonah Thompson is Australian? With an Australian accent?”

Bathroom Guy grins. “That’s how it tends to work.”

My Jonah had a British accent. And he currently lives in London. So my Jonah is not Jonah Thompson. Damn it. I thought I at least had a name.

As the man and woman wander off towards the group wearing feather boas, my phone buzzes again, and I hear the faint sounds of “Jump Around” beneath the jangling piano music.

Looks like losing a day would be terrible right about now!

“Why are you insisting on this? I thought you were trying to help me? Look, my Jonah isn’t here. Has probably never been here. Just let me go home so I can make a new plan.” I lift my phone to my ear so it looks like I’m talking into it, lest any passersby think I’m fully insane.

If I cannot live, let me live vicariously. All That Jazz or you lose a day.

“I don’t know ‘All That Jazz.’ ”

Everyone knows All That Jazz.

She’s right. Somehow everyone does know “All That Jazz.” Via osmosis or something.

Come on. Be brave, Delphie. Don’t you at least want to live a little, while you’ve got the chance?

“Aaaaargh.”

I slump back to the bar. “One shot of tequila and another Liza please.”

“Did you find your man?”

I nod, knocking back the tequila. “It was the wrong one.”

“Been there.” The barman expertly mixes the cocktail and nudges it over to me. “This one’s on the house.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” He shrugs. “You just look like you need it.”

I nod my thanks, leave a five-pound tip on the bar, and head over to the piano man, who is just finishing up a song that even I—with very little theatre experience—know is from Hamilton.

I nudge my way through the crowd surrounding the piano man and lean in close.

“Can I…can I put in a request for ‘All That Jazz,’ please?”

He rolls his eyes. “No Sondheim? A little Tesori? Or god, at least any other Kander and Ebb song would make a nice change.”

I have no clue what he’s talking about.

“Name?” he eventually says with a little huff.

“Delphie Denise Bookham.”

“Only need your first one, but fine!” He hands me the mic. I take it from him with a trembling hand, down the cocktail that’s in the other.

The piano man starts to play the opening vamp of the song. Shaking, I lift the microphone to my lips.

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

“You have to actually sing!” the piano man hisses, playing the same opening vamp once again.

The surrounding crowd looks at me, blank-faced, but then the sequin-vested bar guy walks over to stand next to me and quietly starts singing the song, his voice unreasonably beautiful. He gives me a nod of encouragement. But despite that and the tequila and the threat of Merritt taking a day away from me, I can’t do it. I think my ears are sweating. Just yesterday my life involved interacting with as few people as I could get away with. And now, somehow, I’m standing on a platform in front of a bunch of total strangers being forced to sing a song I only sort of know for a pushy Afterlife Therapist who wants to laugh at me before she kills me.

Just when I think things can’t get any worse, I spot a woman towards the back of the room. She’s with the group wearing the feather boas and is clearly the leader—her alpha energy creating a sort of aura around her.

My breath catches in my throat as it dawns on me that the woman is Gen. Best friend turned evil tormentor Gen. She’s pointing at me and saying something to her friends, smirking.

Bile jets into my throat. How is she here? Why is she here? My stomach swoops and I worry I’m going to be sick. I drop the microphone onto the piano, where it makes a discordant jangle on the keys.

“Hey!” Piano Man scolds. “That’s a premium Sennheiser 430!”

“S-sorry,” I call back as I dart away from the piano.

My jaw tightens as Gen starts to walk towards me. And it’s only then that I realise that the woman is not Gen at all. Just a skinny, confident-looking woman with blond hair but, actually, a completely different face. I wait for my heart to stop pounding, but it doesn’t. The very notion that it might have been Gen has set waves of cortisol off in my bloodstream. My heart drums.

“Are you alright?” I hear the sequinned barman ask, though his voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater.

“Sorry,” I mutter again.

Then I whirl around and race as fast as I can out of the basement bar and onto the crowded street.

I don’t stop running until I reach the bus stop.