BorntobeWild by Lynne Connolly Page A

stated
what everyone knew. They knew nothing else. “When you didn’t come to Paris I
asked and they told me you’d opted to leave the institute without graduating. I
thought you’d failed in some way.”
    “I just left.” She swallowed. Time to tell someone the
secret she’d hugged to herself for so long. “If I’d let them pass me you know
what that would have meant. I couldn’t have refused, they’d have made me.” She
stopped, waited for him to tell her.
    “Years of work. Hours of practice. World fame. More money
than you could count. Adoration.” He paused. “Ridicule, hatred and crazies.”
    “Stalkers?” He nodded in confirmation. She realized what he
was saying. “All that happened to you?” He nodded again. “What makes it
worthwhile? For you, I mean?”
    “The music.” He responded so quickly she knew he didn’t have
to think about his answer. “I get to create something I love with people I
admire and, yes, I love them too. I won’t say we’re like a family, because we
all have our relatives and we’re different. We relate to them in different
ways. Or we don’t.”
    So Riku still had problems at home. Not that he’d ever
admitted it to her but his parents’ absence at the institute on concert days
told her.
    “Anyhow, we are best friends, all of us. V joined at the
beginning of the tour and it’s as if we’ve known her forever. She slotted in,
found her place as if it was there waiting for her.” He released the lock of
hair only to select another to play with. “What the fuck made you turn your
back on everything you worked so hard for?”
    “Don’t you remember what I wanted to do?”
    He nodded. “To sing. You sang a lot of Mozart, some Bellini
and Puccini.”
    “I wanted to be a coloratura.” The kind of soprano who led
operas, who became true divas. The people for whom the modern meaning of the
word was coined. Callas, Sutherland, Melba. The soprano who could perform vocal
acrobatics. She’d heard a recording of Callas singing Vissi d’Arte and
she’d fallen in love.
    “You could do that. If you can sing Wagner you can do
anything.”
    “Not true.” She swallowed again. This was harder than she’d
imagined, explaining the choice that had made her leave it all behind. Her career,
her ambitions, everything, all in one day. Gone. Worse, she’d done it of her
own volition. This man understood exactly what she’d thrown away. Would he
think her selfish? “They told me I’d be a good, respectable coloratura. Their
words. If I took the path ordained for me—by God, one examiner said—I’d be sure
of the best. They tried to guilt me out, blind me with the glories I could have
on and offstage, the wealth, the pampering but I still said no.”
    “They were that certain? When you were twenty-one they could
tell?” He sounded scornful, skeptical even. “It takes years to create the best
soprano voices and many fall by the way. You might have been one of them. You
weren’t there yet. Your voice could’ve changed in training. Did you think of
that?” He stroked her waist, held her close.
    “They did. And I did, deep inside. I could sing loud and
pour emotion into my voice. I could sing dramatic parts. In time I’d be the
Brünnhilde of my generation. They wouldn’t have allowed me to do anything else.
At every turn they’d drag me back to the dramatic parts.”
    He snorted. “So you left.”
    “Yes. My mother was deeply disappointed but she thought I
deserved a gap year. The institute didn’t but they arranged for me to have
lessons after I left.”
    “Did you go?”
    She hesitated then jerked a nod. “It kept my mother happy.
My father had just died and she needed something to cling to.” She paused
again. She’d never told him much about her home life. “I never got on with my
dad, not really. He didn’t like to let people close. But I used his death as an
excuse. They said, take a year off, rest, think about things. They were sure
I’d come back.