The ‘O’ formed by the open mouth, the body opening into joy, making music with the breath, the tongue, the palate, the reeds made of flesh in the throat. Anyone who can speak can sing, anyone with a tongue in their mouth and a heart in their chest. Singing my heart out in Claudette, the windows wound down, with Steph in the back seat playing her guitar. We sang duets, her soprano dipping in and around my contralto, seamless, unpractised, effortlessly beautiful. Singing with Steph on a summer’s day on the Pont Marie, the song and the bridge and the beauty of the day marrying above our heads, rising to the sky. The old man singing at the concert in the nursing home just before my mother died. Too frail to stand, sitting collapsed in a chair, balancing on his walking stick. In the history of the world, ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ never sounded lovelier. The church choir, soaring, in the sacred dome of the White Chapel in the Tower of London, where a queen went to pray before she lost her head.
