I'm pretty sure I spent every available hour between then and Wednesday evening practising. Shawn even took pity on my longing looks at the Roland. It was Dave's day off on the Tuesday, just Shawn and I in the store, and he hooked my CD player up to a spare input on the keyboards amp, handed me a pair of headphones and left me to it, on the understanding that I had to stop if we got busy. Fortunately, we were pretty quiet.

Of the three tracks, 'Touch' has the simplest keyboards part, mostly strings with a bunch of brass stabs. I've always been blessed with a decent memory, and I probably didn't need the 3"x5" index cards I was taking notes on. Either way, I had the part nailed by Tuesday lunch time. 'Be Yourself' was a bit tougher, Matthew switching between swirling Hammond organ in the verses and a driving piano to push the chorus along. The Hammond sound on the Roland was superb, and I allowed myself a good ten or twenty minutes just messing with it, before knuckling down to work on the syncopations in the piano part. I'd just finished programming the big synthesiser to allow me to switch betwen the two with a touch of a button, when a realisation struck me. I took a deep breath, and asked, tentatively: "Shawn?"

He glanced over from where he'd been flicking through the latest guitar magazine, elbows propped on the counter. "Mmhmm?"

"Uh... Is there any way I could borrow this for tomorrow...? MIne just won't cut it..." Hard on its heels something else dawned. "And I don't have an amp."

He laughed. "I was wondering when you'd figure that out."

I stuck my tongue out at him. "You're teasing me. Stop it."

That earned me an unrepentant grin. "Shan't."

I sighed at him. "I'm serious. I can't audition for them on a home keyboard with built-in speakers. They'll laugh at me. And besides, it might have a decent piano voice, but the organ and stuff are really cheesy. And it doesn't do splits or layers, and..."

Shawn cut me off with a laugh and a wave of his hand. "Enough, already!" He made a pretence of considering for a moment. "OK. Tell you what. You can borrow it and the amp for tomorrow. As long as it doesn't get damaged. If you get the gig, we'll work out a deal. Employee discount or something."

I could have kissed him. I'd certainly have hugged him, if a customer hadn't walked in at that moment.

In between periods of working on the piano parts to 'Be Yourself' and 'Winter Rose' at home that evening, I took a look at the money I'd saved up for my gap year. Dave was dreadful with money: he never seemed to have enough, whereas I kept a note of every transaction in a program on my iMac. He used to tease me about it, but gave up when I pointed out which of the two of us wasn't getting snotty letters from the bank about their overdraft every couple of months.

It was tight, but I could just about squeeze the synth and a decent amp out of it. I sat on the bed for a moment or two, considering: if I did this, I wasn't going to get to visit the States, or Europe, or any place else. And Mum would have a fit. I glanced up at myself in the mirror, studied the face looking back at me. The girl in the mirror looked thoughtful, brownish-blonde hair framing her face, teeth worrying on her lower lip.

Was I actually good enough for them?

I took a deep breath, and leaned over to tap the spacebar on the iMac, starting 'Be Yourself' again from just before the chorus. Mellssa, Darren and Kev's voices, backed by Matt's pounding piano part and slashing power chords from Darren, spilled from the speakers in perfect three-part harmony. "Don't let the world bring you down / Don't let it pull you to the ground / Bare your soul / Take control / Be yourself..."

I didn't know if I was good enough. But, damnit, I was going to find out.

After work on Wednesday, we loaded the Roland (in a majorly over-engineered, borrowed flightcase), amp, stand and cables into the back of Dave's Cavalier. This proved a touch harder than we expected: in the end, the only way it would fit was diagonally across the back with both rear seats down. Dave managed to trap his fingers under the case as it finally dropped in, and swore. loudly, before glancing at me and muttering "sorry".

I giggled. "I have heard you swear before, you know."

"Erm..." Dave flexed the damaged fingers, not meeting my eyes. "Yeah. I guess." He opened the driver's door. "Hungry?"

My stomach chose that moment to start turning somersaults. "Uh... No."

He eyed me, shrewdly. "Pizza. Comfort food."

We stopped off at a pizza place on the way to the audition. Dave ordered, and nagged me until I ate, despite my protests. As usual, he was right. I did feel a lot better afterwards.

He grinned at me. "Thought you weren't hungry."

I pouted at him. "You don't have to be smug."

Dave chuckled, then sobered. "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

Here we go. "Yes. I'm sure. At least, I'm sure I want to try."

"Mum won't like it."

I sighed. "I know." We'd already agreed not to mention anything to her until after the audition, if I passed it, and I wasn't looking forward to that.

Dave watched me. "What about the degree?"

Fortunately, I had an answer for that one. "That's a year away."

"If things take off..."

Firmly, I cut him off mid-sentence. "I don't have to decide yet. A year's a long time." The waitress appeared with the bill, and I picked it up and started to hunt for my purse.

Dave reached over and swiped it neatly from between my fingers. "I'll get it."

Ok. That surprised me. "You? You never have any money."

He smiled at me. "I made sure I did. Wanted this to be my treat. It's kind of a big day for you."

Sometimes, I love my big brother.

Secret Muse rehearsed in a warehouse on the outskirts of town. Apparently Paul worked there, and was on good terms with the owner, so they got to use some unused space on weekday evenings. Everyone else was already there, and setting up, as Dave helped me in with my gear. Paul grinned at me, screwing the last of his cymbals onto its stand. "We left you space next to Kev."

I returned the grin. "Thanks."

I found a mains socket for the amp, and plugged it in, to the accompaniment of several thunderous rolls round the drum kit from Paul, after which he came over and helped me settle the synth on its stand. "Can you sing?"

"Huh?" I hadn't expected that question.

"Can you sing?"

I glanced over at Melissa, who was talking to Dave off in a corner, then back to Paul. "Yes." At least, I'd been in the choir at school, and no-one had complained.

He nodded. "Ok." While i was hooking up the keyboard, he brought over a mike stand and a microphone, and arranged them. "Can't hurt to give you a mike. Besides, Kev hates doing backing vocals."

Darren looked up from where he was knelt on the floor, hooking up his collection of effects pedals. "He doesn't hate them, so much as he just bounces around onstage like a complete lunatic and never gets back to his mike in time." Kev flicked him a cheerful V-sign, and winked at me.

I ran a mental and visual check of everything, turned the amp and keyboard on and played a two-handed scale exercise. Everything worked, at least. Kev laughed. "Gonna have to be a whole load louder than that."

"Ok." Darren walked over to where a small MiniDisc recorder was perched on a stack of packing cases, and made a couple of adjustments, before picking up his white Stratocaster off its stand and strapping it on. He strummed a couple of experimental chords, and I winced, inwardly, and made a mental note to buy a set of the fifteen quid musician's earplugs Shawn stocked. Kev was right about the volume. "Everyone ready?"

I leant down and turned the amp a fair way up. "Yeah."

Dave ruffled my hair on the way to the door. "Knock 'em dead, sis. Call me when you're finished."

We started with "Touch", to my relief. Paul glanced round, making eye-contact with each one of us in turn - I got a wink and an encouraging smile as well - and then tapped out a four-count on the rim of the snare. The world exploded into sound, the bass drum almost physically kicking me in the stomach, Kev's fingers flying over the intricate bass groove, Darren playing accented offbeats that locked tightly with the other two, and Melissa keeping time on a half-moon shaped black tambourine.

I was so enthralled by how it felt to be in the middle of this musical monster that I forget to come in.

Darren brought the whole thing to a halt with a chopping gesture with one hand, and looked over at me. "You sure you're ready?"

I wanted to curl up and die. "I... I am."

"Again." Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

This time, I fluffed the first three notes of my entrance, and again Darren's irritated slashing motion cut things short. Melissa shot me an unreadable glance, and I bit my lip.

He didn't ask this time, just glanced at Paul. "Again."

"Just a second." My own voice startled me, coming back loud from the monitor speaker between me and Kev, as I'd leant forward into the mike to talk to Darren. I played the little run that started my part a couple of times, just to remind my fingers that I did actually know how to play the damn thing, wishing I felt less like I was performing in boxing gloves, and nodded to Paul. "Again."

The third time's the charm. Getting those first notes right chased away my nerves, and the warm look Melissa turned on me as she stepped up to the microphone left me feeling I could walk on air, carried along by the rest of the band. She snapped off the opening lines, transformed suddenly into the spurned lover of the song, voice harsh and angry as the lyrics demanded - "Cold hands, cold heart / Torn down, torn apart... ". I nailed that keyboards part, right down to the offbeat brass stabs that synched up with everything else going on in the bridge. And God, it felt amazing. Even today, I can't describe what playing with a rock band in full flight really feels like. I just don't have the words. There aren't the words. You have to experience it to understand.

As the echo of the final pair of chords died away, Paul gave me a discreet thumbs up, as Darren spoke. "Kev - You were trying to speed up in the bridge." His eyes went from band member to band member. "Paul? Watch the fill into the chorus: it was a bit ragged the second time around." Melissa wasn't looking at him, making an adjustment to her mike stand. "'Liss, you weren't nasty enough." It was the first time I'd heard anyone shorten her name, and it wasn't the abbreviation I was expecting. "Ali."

Inwardly I cringed.

"Turn up some more."

I was on the verge of apologising for nothing when his words actually registered. "I..." My mouth closed again with a snap. I nodded, bent to the amp to do as he asked.

"Again."

We did "Touch" three more times, and every time Darren picked and pulled at the results afterwards. Once you got used to it, it wasn't so bad, and I watched how each band member reacted. Paul, as I might have predicted, took it with a nod and a smile. On one occasion he disagreed, quite mildly, and played a couple of bars of a drum pattern to prove his point. Darren, to my surprise, conceded it. Kev was usually playfully insolent, a shake of the head, a theatrical sigh, a lazy two-fingered gesture or a 'yeah, yeah', but I did notice that, even so, he paid attention to Darren's comments. The most interesting reaction was Melissa: outwardly, she gave almost no sign of having heard him, except sometimes to nod. Watching her closely, though, I could see her flinch every time he said her name.

"Ok." Darren changed disks in the recorder and then retuned a string on his guitar and made some changes to his effects pedals. "'Be Yourself'". I'd hardly had time to change to the voice I'd set up for it on the synth when he started up the scratchy, syncopated guitar rhythm that began it. This time, though, I was ready for my cue, a glissando down the keyboard as Paul brought the rest of the band in with a roll round the kit.

Darren stopped us halfway through the first chorus. "You singing or not, Kev?"

Kev sighed pointedly, with a jerk of his head at me. "Thought she was."

"Ali?"

"I can try." It's harder to play and sing, but by then I'd have done just about anything if it meant I got to experience playing with Secret Muse again.

Kev grinned. "Better teach you my part, then."

He actually had what Dave would have called a 'tight-trousered' rock voice, quite a decent one, but he was clearly pushing it to reach the top notes. After he'd run through it for me a couple of times, I sang along with him the third time, and Darren nodded, apparently satisfied. "Ok. Just the three of us and the guitar."

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The blend of our three voices, my mid-soprano, Melissa's husky alto and Darren's tenor, was absolutely, spine-tinglingly perfect. Melissa looked across at me when we'd stopped, and mouthed "Oh. My. God." We both turned to look at Darren, waiting for the inevitable criticism.

He was actually smiling. "Again."

I'd have done that all night. Paul and Kev had grins as broad as you like, and after we'd run through it a couple more times, Paul spoke up. "We oughta change the arrangement, make one of the repeat choruses at the end just voices and drums. That's just too good to waste."

Kev nodded emphatically, and Darren considered for a couple of seconds. "Yeah. Four choruses at the end, before the playout, second one just the drums, then." I nodded, fumbling for a pen to note it down on the index card for 'Be Yourself'.

This time, we made it all the way through, and I was relieved to find that I was able to play and sing the chorus at the same time. After the usual round of minor nitpicks, Darren made us run through the end choruses again. This time, I brought everyone back in after the vocals-only chorus with a big Jerry Lee Lewis-style glissando down the piano over Paul's tom-tom fill, and Darren glanced across, and nodded at me in mid-song.

Afterwards, he only had one comment. "Ali? That works. Leave it in." And then, inevitably, "Again."

Secret Muse, I realised, worked hard to sound as good as they did. As I'd noticed, Darren recorded every rehearsal on a portable MiniDisc machine: according to Paul he played therm through several times between practices, listening for faults in his own playing. Paul also observed to me, with a wry smile, that it wasn't about practising till you got it right, but about practising till you couldn't get it wrong. I realised that, for all it seemed as though Darren was in charge, it wasn't true: a lot of the dialogue between the band was unspoken, musical. One of us would try something different, and get a nod, a grin, or sometimes a sour face from the others. It was five wildly different people, working together to form a whole that was undeniably so much greater than the sum of its parts, and I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this was something I wanted to, needed to, had to, be a part of.

"That'll do," observed Darren after the ninth (I think) run through of the end of 'Be Yourself'. He glanced across at me."'Winter Rose'".

Taking a cue from Paul earlier, I made eye contact with each of the rest of the band, one after the other. Kev smirked at me, wiping the strings of his bass down. Paul gave me an encouraging smile, Darren a brief nod. I had to wait a couple of seconds for Melissa to meet my gaze, but eventually she looked up, and I was startled to see that she looked nervous. From somewhere, she found me a smile. I took a deep breath, and laid my hands on the keys.

I hope Matt was listening, wherever he was. We played that song for him, from the first, soft synthesiser chord, through the jarring, shuddering climax, back down to that final repeating piano phrase, and over all, Melissa's voice, raw, naked in its pain. It cracked, a couple of times, but never broke, right until the very last "waiting for the ice to thaw", a hoarse, grieving whisper, as the song faded into nothingness.

The silence was broken by a choked sob from Melissa as she knelt to place her tambourine on the floor by her microphone stand, almost like a funeral wreath. She buried her head in her arms, and wept.

Paul set his drumsticks down on his snare drum, and said quietly, "That's it for tonight."

No-one, not even Darren, argued. He unslung the Strat, walked over to Melissa, touched her shoulder. I'd never seen him look awkward before, but now he did. She didn't look up, didn't even react, and he silently shook his head, long strides taking him over to turn off the MiniDisc.

I didn't understand the nature of Melissa's relationship with Darren, or with Matt, but she and the band had, over the last couple of hours, introduced me to something for which I could maybe never repay her, and I slid out from behind the keyboard, crouched down beside her and put an arm across her shoulders. She leant against me for a moment or two, before taking a couple of shuddering breaths, and pulling away.

Her voice was ragged from crying, but forceful, still knelt on the floor. "She's in, right? Ali's in?" The question was asked of the room, but those dark eyes held Darren's, as if challenging him to contradict her.

In the end, he just nodded.