Changes by Narya

Chapter 1

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“So how did the two of you start doing this? Because, Freema, you didn't pick up music as a career straight away, did you?”

 

Claire glanced up at the television as the woman – Freema – laughed. Unlike the last few guests, she sounded utterly genuine, and delighted to be there. “No, I didn't.” A beaming smile; a south London accent; a hand reaching up and patting her Afro, slightly self-conscious. “No, I was in HR for a while after I left school.”

 

The camera panned back to the talk show host, who crossed his legs to reveal lime green socks. “And then...” He waved his right hand in a looping motion. “What? You ran away to America and met this guy?” He indicated Freema's companion on the orange studio couch – an attractive man in his late thirties, dressed entirely in black and sporting a blond ponytail. Freema, on the other hand, wore a white shoulderless dress slit up to her thigh. They didn't look like they belonged together at all – until they laughed together and met each other's eyes, and suddenly the warmth of their affection, the sense of shared history, poured out of the screen.

 

Claire found herself smiling.

 

“I didn't run away, Graham!” Freema protested, laughing again.

 

“I basically had to beg her to tour with me.” The man with the ponytail – an American, Claire noted, not another Londoner – took Freema's hand.

 

“You met in Florida, didn't you?” the host asked, and then put on a melodramatic voice. “In the dying days of the last millennium?” A half-hearted chuckle from the audience.

 

In the hall, the clunk of the lock and the creak of the door announced Mark's arrival.

 

“Hi,” Claire called.

 

“Good evening.”

 

The television prattled on. “A friend introduced us,” Freema smiled. “Actually Irving's old tour buddy.”

 

“Yeah.” A shadowed smile crossed Irving's good-natured faced. “He bailed on me. And then she took pity on me. So we threw a few numbers together, tried our luck on tour...”

 

“And it all went from there,” the host grinned.

 

“Yep.” Freema laughed again. “And do you know what, we have had the best time, it's been...” She shook her head. “Fifteen years. It's been absolutely incredible.”

 

Quietly, Mark stepped into the room.

 

“Well,” the host said, turning back to the camera and beaming. “I'm sure we'd all like to thank Irving's tour buddy for stepping gracefully aside all those years ago, and for giving the world...FREEMA AND IRVING!”

 

Applause, cheers and whistles soard from the studio audience.

 

“I'm getting old,” Claire sighed, stretching. “I've never heard of them. How was the Central.”

 

“Oh, fine. The usual departmental politics. How's your errant thesis chapter?”

 

“Getting less errant, thankfully.” He hadn't taken his eyes from the television, Claire realised. The camera was now panning over Freema and Irving, up on the small studio stage, getting ready to perform. “Do you know who they are?”

 

“Oh, yes.”

 

Claire put down her pen and narrow her eyes. “His former touring buddy, the one who bailed on him...”

 

A lifted eyebrow; an assumed expression of innocence – and then he laughed, though like Irving's smile, it was sadder than it ought to have been. “Guilty.”

 

He sank onto the couch. Claire took one more look at the papers piled by her laptop, then sighed and went to sit beside him. “What happened? Why did you leave?”

 

“For the same reason I always do, in the end.” He slid his fingers through hers. Claire leaned against him and breathed in his scent of wild storms, leather, and thyme. “It was becoming unsafe.”

 

She shivered. “You mean they were close to guessing who you are?”

 

“Irving would soon have noticed that I didn't appear to age.” Maglor ran his thumb over the back of her hand. “And I think he was beginning to feel that I owed him at least a little of my history. He was a boy when I met him – just out of college. Harrison and Theo's age.” He exhaled, looking at the man on the screen – still good-looking, still relatively young, but he could no longer fairly be described as a boy. Smile lines folded out from his eyes and around his mouth as he launched into a cover of David Bowie's 'Changes.'

 

Claire kissed the hand she still held. “It's quiet without them, isn't it? Harrison and Theo, and Rosie and Luc.”

 

Maglor raised his eyebrows. “Don't tell me now that you miss running around after them all, cooking for them, sending them to their lectures...”

 

“I didn't do that,” she objected, laughing. “Well, not much. Not by the end; they didn't need it.”

 

“No.”

 

His eyes returned to the screen. Claire watched him for a moment, and considered reaching for his mind – but something in his expression warned her off. Instead she settled against his side, and watched with him until the song ended and the audience cheered, and the credits rolled over Freema and Irving's radiant smiles.