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She never thought for a moment that the music might stop, yet here she is, paused between the eighth and ninth yeah of the second chorus of ‘She Loves You’, with quiet letting itself into the room and perching on the edge of the bed. It gives a look which says: Go on, it’s your turn now, after all those hours clutching a hairbrush like a microphone and emoting into your parents’ full-length mirror. The tunes run through you, stronger than blood, and you have all those words burnt just below the surface of your skin. There are near-as-dammit fourteen million listeners at very this moment who are spinning into the sharp and sudden silence of dead air: which is to say, the sea is rising and the sky is falling, and it’s become inadvisable to trust even the evidence of your own five-or-six senses. She looks at the subtle indentation in the duvet, feels the warmth behind her ear of whispered kiss from a sister leaving on a long, long journey, and lifts a needle and thread to her pursed lips. Up to that half-beat, she had never thought for a moment that the music might stop, or that she might be the one to stop it.