Page 1 of Second Song

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ROWAN

I didn’t come to Cornwall to give dating advice to a lost lamb, but here I am, trapped on a cliffside ledge with a frantic, woolly armful that only calms when I talk directly to it, and I’m running out of topics.

We’ve discussed politics and religion. That took all of a minute. Discussing music lasted for a little longer, but it’s always been my passion. Dating tips also seem to hold its fleeting interest, which is a shame as I don’t have many. Got to say, I never expected to share my limited knowledge with a baby sheep while the ocean roars below us, but here’s my number one rule: “Never trust a man who tells you that you’re prettier without your glasses. They only want to take photos of your privates to post online without you seeing.”

Trust me, it happens.

Happened.

Once was more than enough to keep me single and not ready to mingle. Now, years after the whole world got to see a close-up of my rear end, here I am, an almost-virgin who’s about to lose his life due to a lamb with a death wish.

“I know what you’re thinking.” I hug the lamb closer. “How can I be an almost-virgin, right?”

The lamb bleats, but at least it doesn’t try to hurl itself off this ledge again, so I keep talking.

“Because the aftermath of my bottom going viral meant going into hiding, and all for a night I can barely remember. Believe me, it wasn’t worth it. I only had to stand in my headmaster’s study once, explaining why I ran away to enter a TV singing contest but ended up ruining his school’s reputation over a tattoo somewhere cheeky, to learn that.”

The seventeen-year-old version of me had no clue what he was in for.

“If my stepdad hadn’t got that injunction stopping the kiss-and-tell story about the night that photo was taken, it would have been so much worse. It was bad enough he read it. Do you know how well that went down with him?”

The lamb bleats again, so I tell it.

“Like a cup of cold sick.” Frankly, remembering that moment still makes me queasy. I mentally skitter away from recalling that much disappointment. Stones also skitter down this cliff face, and my heart stutters. So does the voice that I thought would be my golden ticket when I was too young to know what I was doing. “Y-you’d do whatever you were told after a shit show like that, believe me. And you’d hide out in rural Ireland with a dating pool of zero if that’s where your stepdad sent you.”

I’m not a disgraced stepson or runaway boarding-school student these days. I’m a different person—a twenty-three-year-old trainee teacher who should be in front of another headmaster right now, interviewing for my dream job. Instead, I clutch a lamb, hoping against hope the ledge doesn’t keep disintegrating.

More stones slip as I hug this bleating baby tighter. So much for hope or for manifesting a last-minute rescue.

The lamb only cries because it’s panicked about losing its mummy. So am I. Panicking, I mean, not pointlessly bleating for my own mum, and not because of my almost certain death by cliff fall. My heart really pounds at losing my one and only opportunity to rise like an actual phoenix from the ashes of my public fuckups.

“All because of you,” I tell this lamb, who hasn’t quit struggling for what feels like forever. If I let it go, the hundred-foot drop will probably kill it. Missing this second-chance interview feels as devastating.

Help bruised kids find their inner music? I could do that. Me. Rowan Byrn. Member of a manufactured boy band the whole UK remembers for the worst of reasons.

Help silent children find their stolen voices? Who better than someone who not only showed his arse in public but also lost his voice in front of TV viewers worldwide?

That shame is old and yet still fresh. So is the memory of the aftermath—the one and only time I was glad Mum wasn’t still here to witness any of it.

Save another kid from feeling as isolated as I did? It’s why I’m here in Cornwall, but if I can’t get to Glynn Harber school on time, my fresh start will be over. And for what? For a lamb who wiggled through a gap in a fence, bounced in front of my car, and then took a clifftop tumble?

This lamb doesn’t care about tanking my second try at building a career before it’s even started, nor does it care about my number one dating tip. All it cares about is wriggling out of my hold.

“Perhaps I should let you.”

I don’t mean that.

I don’t sound like myself either. This rasp is different to the soaring voice that scored me a place in a lineup I thought would be an escape route from a school I hated. Today’s hoarseness is down to my chest constricting—I can’t even take a deep breath, let alone yell for the help we’ll both need to survive this. All I can do is wheeze, “Stay still, won’t you?”

The lamb won’t. If anything, it wriggles harder, so maybe it’s good that I won’t get to be a teacher anytime soon. Or ever. If I can’t control one youngster, how will I ever manage a class full of children?

“Stop,” I wheeze more sternly. The lamb responds with a headbutt, almost dislodging my glasses. To be fair, that headbutt was accidental, just like this little lamb’s headfirst plunge towards disaster. After all, I didn’t plan on hurling myself out of my car to catch it, did I? We both took a tumble we didn’t ask for, so I guess neither of us chose how this day is going.

Here’s what I originally manifested: I’d get to my interview over an hour early with my flute at the ready. I also manifested no one at the school recognising me from my first colossal failure. It’s been six years. The kids are likely all too young to remember, but that doesn’t mean old news can’t resurface. I crashed and burned in public, remember? Type the words BritPop! contest loser into any browser to see my last performance or that phoenix photo. And yes, I looked more wary than overtly sexual in it, but I’m also minus enough clothing for it to tell its own sorry story.

I won’t escape that loser label or image, especially now a contest reboot is rumoured. There’s plenty of proof of that in my email. The request after request to sing in a Where Are They Now? segment will have to wait for hell to freeze over before I ever answer. Besides, I’m too busy clinging to a lamb and to everything else I manifested last night while staring at a pub-hotel bedroom ceiling.

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