The Dawn of time

It's Friday night again and I can't find my way to choir practice. I rummage around in my beaten up backpack for my dogeared notebook and flip through until I see 'Choir' written in large purple embellished letters. Copying the address from the page into the map in my phone I follow the directions and end up outside an imposing red brick building somewhere in the city. I remember now, it's the black door on the south side to get in. I look up the 4 digit access code in my notebook and punch it in to the box on the wall. Once inside though, I see no familiar routes, maybe some echo from a dream occurs to me, a staircase that I should go up, but maybe not?

"Alison, hey," a voice rings out loudly behind me. The woman hasn't even remotely shouted but the large hall has a magnifying effect and it startles me.

"Oh, hello..." I trail off.

"Dawn." the woman confirms nonchalantly without a hint of annoyance that I don't know who she is.

"Choir is this way," she instructs and moves to walk up the staircase. I follow. "How was seeing you mum last weekend? You were saying at last practice she was going to come and visit and you were going to go for dinner at that vegetarian place with the red shutters that does the great burgers down near the theatre where you saw Hamlet last winter."

I feel a rush of affection for Dawn, she clearly knows me fairly well and has learned exactly how to trigger my memory. Images of the last weekend's trip into town with mum flood my brain and I smile widely and tell Dawn all about my day out.

Choir happens in a room that looks more like a dance studio, and probably is used as such the majority of the time. Mirrors cover one whole wall and bags and coats from the already assembled choir are slung along another. I add mine to the pile, trying to note its colour, texture and shape so I can find it later without too much fuss.

A woman with blond dreadlocks, wearing all black, claps her hands briskly and the twenty or so women in the room turn their attention to her.

"Right gang, time for out final run-throughs of Defying Gravity before the town hall performance. You've all done amazingly, we just need to nail the timing on the second chorus and focus on breathing during the high parts but apart from that we are ready to impress."

A vague panic hits me as I try to recall the song but nothing comes. I know music, I know it deeply but in this moment there isn't a composition in the world I could hum.

My doubts evaporate though as I hear the first notes. The song is familiar, and not just recognisable, it's both calming and thrilling and utterly joyful. I feel certain and as light as air. Every lyric slips from my tongue easily, every melody beautifully dances through my chest, originating somewhere from within my core.

"Do you want to come for a drink Alison?" Dawn is collecting her things and pulling on her coat. "I can check your diary for you if you don't know what you have to do tonight."

My diary's empty and my tank is full after the energising singing so I accompany Dawn and two other choir ladies to a pub called The Swan just around the corner. The bartender welcomes us in a way that indicates we have definitely been here before and suggests a nice merlot for me that I appreciatively accept. Merlot is my go-to wine. Of course, rather than a lucky guess, he probably knows that.

Living in a world where everyone knows you better than you know yourself is always unsettling, but people who seem to know and accept you without annoyance or impatience make it better.

"Dawn, do we come here a lot?" I ask quietly as our companions excuse themselves to the ladies room.

"Not every week," Dawn smiles gently taking a sip of her pino. "Sometimes you have to be up early for Saturday plans like last week with your mum but whenever we can, this is our little post choir ritual."

I ponder this for a moment. Feeling unexpectedly and intensely lucky.

"Thank you." I smile hoping to convey even just a tiny amount of how much I appreciate being included. Dawn laughs.

"You always say that! You always thank us just for spending time with you. It's our pleasure, honestly." Dawn's eyes sort of start to sparkle with a bit of sadness and she quickly looks away, blinking. Now I feel bad, I've said something wrong and I can't bring myself to ask what it is.

Back at home I search 'Dawn' on my online diary. My diary has tens of thousands of entries, one for each day of my life. The earlier entries contain pictures, scanned in pages of a handwritten diary I kept when I was really young, typed out underneath to make them searchable. Nowadays however, I simply type out my whole day with everything I remember and names of all the people I talk to. The search term 'Dawn' comes up far more times than I was expecting. Jumping back chronologically through the entries I read about all our trips to the pub, drinking Merlot and Pino just as she said we did, but then the entries containing her name carry on, it seems I knew her before choir, we even went on holiday together just over 10 years ago. Monaco. I remember, she slipped on the wet deck of a yacht we had snuck onto and she ended up in the hospital, drunk giggling the whole way. We kept going strong for the rest of the trip with her badly sprained wrist in a sling, visiting the casinos and spotting the expensive cars.

And before that, University, we went together, we both studied music. I recall her pink hair phase, she was a bit of a punk rocker back then. She always told me I would be the one of the two of us to make it. She told me to remember her when I was a famous singer touring the world, living our dreams. All the while I was convinced she would be the one to get her big break and forget me, I was scared of it.

Back further. School, we grew up together. Her mother died when she was 11. She spent most of her time at my house, playing and trying to get through the sadness. I always let her play with my favourite toys. That sad sparkle in her eye that I tried so hard to rid her of, I saw it so many times back then, and I saw it tonight too.

I reach the last entry that features her name. To my surprise it's entry number 1. The first ever diary entry I wrote. The scanned in picture shows loopy, almost unintelligible child's scrawl. The transcript alongside it is the only way I can actually tell what it says. The short message makes my throat tighten and my eyes sting.

"At school I sung with Dawn in the playground.

Today was a good day."

Alison, age 5.