I copied it for you to enjoy and comment possibly.
"178. Beehive
The lovely voice came through the speakers in the park café. Natalie Blake and her friend Leah Hanwell had long ago agreed that this voice sounded like London - especially its northern and north-western zones - as if its owner were patron saint of their neighbourhoods. Is a voice something you can own? Natalie's daughter and many other children were bouncing up and down and dancing to the song as their parents discreetly nodded their heads. The sun was out. Unfortunately Leah Hanwell was habitually late and soon the song had finished and Naomi was screaming about something and Spike had woken up and Leah had missed a perfectly staged demonstration of the joy of life - of family life in particular. 'She's really depressed,' said Natalie to Frank as they waited. 'She thinks I can't see it. I see it. Completely stuck. Stasis. She can't seem to dig herself out of this hole she's in.' But as soon as she'd said it the possiblility confronted her that this judgement had marely arisen from the song, was really only a final verse. Natalie herself had added on the spur of the moment, and that by saying it out loud she had made herself ridiculous. Frank looked up from his paper and caught her face arrested in its state of calamity. 'Leah and Michel are happy as Larry,' he said.
Some time later Natalie saw the singer interviewed on the television: 'When I was growing up, I didn't think I was anything special. I Thought everybody could sing.' Her voice was the same miracle Natalie had once heard, through a pub window, in Camden. But the woman who did or didn't own it had all but dissapeared. Natalie stared at the knock-kneed girl-child, hardly there, almost nothing."
Edited by ancre, 14 January 2014 - 02:31 PM.
