Chapter Text
It was an absolutely ordinary Wednesday wandering through the local market after work to pick up some bargain for dinner when the sound hit my ears and made me stop, stock-still, right in the middle of the walkway. This being London, of course, there was promptly an eruption of swearing and loud protests from the people behind me, fortunately breaking the spell long enough for me to scuttle towards the stall in question and listen intently.
‘…driving round on a sunny day, and out of nowhere comes the pouring rain…’
‘Excuse me.’ I managed to attract the attention of the stall owner, who was chain smoking while heavily engaged in reading the sports section from yesterday’s copy of The Sun. ‘That song, the one you’ve got playing-‘
‘You what, love?’
‘…find your way to another town, and someone tries to lay you down, and a feeling hits you right out of the blue…’
‘Who is that?’ I asked urgently. ‘Please, the singer!’
‘Eh?’
‘…that’s just me, thinking of you.’
‘The singer for the song that just finished!’ Frantic now, I wanted to reach across the stall and just shake the man until his stupid flat cap fell off his head. ‘Was it the radio, or-‘
‘Oh, the music?’
‘Yes!’
‘Dunno, love. Just some old mix tape I got at a boot fair.’
‘Really?’ I gaped at him for a moment, then rummaged desperately in my purse. ‘I’ll give you – um – twenty-seven pounds for it. And forty-nine pence.’
‘For some old mix tape?’
‘Please!’
Something about the pleading note in my voice must have finally clocked with him, and he broke into a lopsided sort of grin.
‘Won’t be the first lass to think she heard her voice on some famous chap, I bet. Two ticks.’
Relieved, I danced from foot to foot and tried not to hyperventilate as he rummaged under the stall for a bit. There was a grinding noise, a cuss, and then he straightened with an apologetic expression to hand me the cassette.
‘Sorry love, player’s an old’un, chewed it up a bit. Wound it back in for you, prob’ly still play all right.’
‘Thank you – oh, let me give you-‘
‘For some half-chewed old cassette? Pfft. Go on love, and good luck.’
Burbling thanks, I abandoned my discount grocery hunt and hopped the Tube back home, barging through into the living room so fast that my flatmate exclaimed in alarm.
‘What the-‘
‘Parvi, have you still got that old Walkman your brother gave you?’
‘Uh, yeah. I think so. Why?’
‘Can I borrow it? Please?’
‘Right now?’
‘Please!’
Rolling her eyes, she got up and dug around in her bedroom for a bit, finally emerging with the retro player and a rather tangled pair of headphones.
‘What d’you need a Walkman for?’
‘This tape, I heard it at the market and the singer…’ jamming the cassette in and holding the business end of the headphones to my right ear, I grimaced and hit rewind ‘…the singer was my voice, I’m sure it was.’
‘Oh my god!’ Parvi gaped at me for a moment and then, like the outstanding flatmate she was, flapped her hands and headed for the kitchen. ‘I’m putting the kettle on.’
Up close the quality of the sound was beyond appalling but even with the scratching and skipping my heart was in my mouth. It was him. The voice, my voice, that vocalised the inner monologue of my thoughts instead of the version that came through my vocal chords when I spoke aloud. My soulmate.
I’d always wondered at the American midwestern twang of course, considered moving to the States more than once in a vague attempt to get closer to whoever the man was, but couldn’t afford to uproot my entire life just on an off chance so I did what most people did; got on with things, waited, and hoped. Never in a million years would I have expected to hear that gravelly tenor on a random speaker in Spitalfields, but here we were.
I was crying like an absolute idiot when Parvi came back with the tea.
‘Oh, Mer, is it him? You’re sure?’
‘There’s no name, no band, nothing. The guy I got it from said it was some mixtape he got at a boot fair, probably just some random grab bag of bits, and the quality’s so terrible-‘
‘Well, stop panicking, you daft bint, and write the words down!’
Thank god for Parvi, always far more level-headed than I was in a crisis. It took a couple of tries, the audio was that terrible, but between us we got most of the lyrics on paper and then, with a typical no-nonsense attitude, she grabbed her laptop and started Googling.
‘Uh. I hate to be that person, but this is a girl’s name.’
‘What?’ I scrambled over to peer at the screen, frowning at the sight of the pretty young blonde thing in full country western gear from the midriff-exposing tied flannel to the skinny blue jeans and cowboy hat. ‘Kaye Lynn Gold?’
‘She’s some up-and-coming country singer in Nashville. Oh! Says here she has a brother she writes music with, maybe it was him? Some old recording from before they got famous?’
‘Maybe?’
‘She’s signed with All Star Records, try sending them an email or something. Here!’ Parvi added, literally shoving the computer onto my lap when I just dithered. ‘Go on!’
With trembling fingers I pecked out a message for the contact form and pressed send. She squealed and hugged me.
‘Oh my god, this is so amazing! We’re getting takeaway tonight. My treat. So mega, your soulmate’s the brother of a country music star!’
I wasn’t honestly sure what to make of that, still rather reeling from the entire thing, but Parvi seemed capable of enough crazed enthusiasm for the both of us for the time being, so settled for just nodding and gawking at the dusty old Walkman, half waiting for my alarm to go off to prompt me to wake up.
Of course it didn’t last. Parvi managed to get one of her cousins to get the track copied off the cassette and cleaned up and made into an MP3 for me – she had a cousin for everything – and I listened to the thing over and over until I had it memorised backwards, but the only reply I eventually got from All Star Records was some kind of generic response clearly designed to just shut up fan enquiries, with no evidence that the particulars of my message had been noticed.
I moped about this for a week until Parvi pointed out the phone number on the website, but the very bored-sounding switchboard operator clearly had no time for half-baked enquiries about a potential soulmate lurking in the family of the agency’s register.
‘…not in the business of giving out personal information for our talent, so I suggest you wait for Miss Gold to reply to you through the usual fan channels.’
‘Like she even looks at her messages, probably,’ Parvi said with a snort when I sheepishly relayed this. ‘There’s only one thing to do to find this guy – you’ve got to go to Nashville, march up to that bimbo and be like show me your brother bitch.’
‘Um-‘
‘Okay, maybe not in those exact words, but come on!’
‘There’s no guarantee it’s her brother,’ I hedged. ‘It could just be some bootleg cover version or something…’
‘Are you really willing to chance it? This is your soulmate, Mer!’