Eddie

SOLSTICE

IT'S NEARLY EIGHT O'CLOCK BUT it's still crazy hot, maybe even hotter than earlier. The guests can't get enough of the cider, there's a huge queue behind the bar. They're getting drunker. A lot drunker. Everyone seems to be shouting. Everything's got really loose. Like a house party, that moment where it feels like anything could happen... only with a load of sunburned rich millennials pissed on posh cider as opposed to teenagers wasted on White Ace and molly.

"Hey, look," Ruby says. "This must be the first act." She points. I look at the stage. Do a double take. What?

There he is: Nathan Tate, in his stupid I AUTOEROTIC ASPHYXIATE ON THE FIRST DATE T-shirt (doubt he's washed it since two nights ago), his guitar looped over one shoulder. One of his mates, Gareth Turner, sits behind the drums, grinning out at the crowd and looking bombed out of his mind. They must have gatecrashed as there's no way they're meant to be here.

It takes me a moment to work out who the other person is, the one who's just walked into the middle of the stage. Delilah looks incredible. She's wearing a long silver dress that seems to be made of some kind of really fine chainmail, which ripples like water when she moves. You can tell she's not wearing a bra or maybe anything at all underneath the fabric. Her face and her arms and even her hair are all silver-colored, too. She's actually glowing, like she's somehow giving off this electric energy... or maybe it's just that she's reflecting every bit of light in the place, the candles on the dining tables, the tealights in the pool, the flaming lanterns.

All the chatter around me has hushed. Everyone is looking at her. "Fuck me," I hear one guy whisper and I can't tell if he's swearing or begging her out loud.

She steps up to the mic. There's a scream of feedback and a few people in the crowd wince and giggle. In spite of everything, I think: come on Lila. You've got this. She glares out at everyone, her trademark look: like she's going to punch the next person who laughs. Then she opens her mouth and begins to sing.

The crowd falls silent. All I can think is: how did I not know this about her? She always sounded all right when she sang along to Lizzo in the car or whatever, but this is different. I've never heard her like this. I don't think I've heard anyone sing like this. It doesn't sound like a voice at all: more like an instrument. And it's a feeling as much as a sound, something you feel everywhere from your scalp to your fingertips.

"Jesus, she's like a new Kate Bush," a guy nearby says to his companion. "But a sexy Kate Bush, not, you know... a crazy little girl in a nightie."

"Yeah," his mate says. "Terrible band name and shame about that vagrant with the guitar but she's got it. The whole package. Wonder if she's signed with anyone. I should get Otto on the phone."

And then suddenly the microphone goes off with a pop and Delilah stops singing, looking around in confusion. The lights on the stage go down and the speakers crackle back into life, The Prodigy's "Firestarter" blasting out so loud I can feel the bass vibrating in my ribcage, at the back of my skull.

The guests around me start whooping and dancing about like they're at a rave. But I can just make out the silvery glow of Delilah on the dark stage. She's standing totally still, staring out at us. When the music ends and the lights finally come back on she looks both completely shocked and even angrier than when I broke up with her.

Then I notice something else. She's alone on the stage: Nathan Tate and the other guy have vanished.