Don't Stop The Music

-four-

CHAPTER IV

- partnerships make for good sailing –

[Esther]

For her 16th birthday her sister Ivy had got Esther a really nice pair of headphones. She'd been previously using one of those £10 in-ear ones from her supermarket, but these ones were the real deal. Over the head, a gorgeous sleek and metallic red, with plush, soft over-ear cups that didn't overheat her ears and a full, rich sound that didn't grate the higher or louder notes and really brought out the bass.

"Best of all, they're soundproof," Ivy had said, when she'd given them to her. "Blocks out any unnecessary noise. I know how much you like writing your songs without distractions."

Not long after that, the arguments really started to pick up.

And, thinking about it, that was also around the time Esther noticed she wasn't writing as well as she used to.

Looking back on it, Esther started to wonder if Ivy had known all along this would happen and was simply preparing her for the worst. Back when she was working on music pretty much every day after school Esther would work through arguments blissfully unaware of the tensions brewing downstairs, and it was only when she came down for dinner and you could feel the anger simmering between her sister and her dad that she realised they'd been fighting again.

But then Ivy started to get sick, and stopped sleeping as much, and Esther started to get worried. Now, while she was working, she'd always be listening out, wary for the signs that they were at it again, and feeling sick to the stomach when she heard the now-familiar sound of rising voices, accusations being thrown forwards and backwards. It scared her, because she knew despite Ivy's anger all the fighting was taking its toll on her, and at the same time she couldn't bear the thought of losing her, too.

So since last year, Esther had been writing less and less, and the songs she had finished you could tell she hadn't been focusing. They were jumpy and erratic; the transitions were off and the overall feel was just wrong. She hadn't even thought about the festival over summer because she was more preoccupied with trying to defuse the worst of the arguments, which had started just after Ivy had got her A-level results back: 2 C's and a D.

Her dad was furious. He was a traditional man and wanted all his children to go to good Universities and do stable subjects like Law and Engineering. Ivy had been predicted ABB, and with a lot of badgering to her French teacher he'd managed to bump it up to AAB, so for her to fail so spectacularly was, from his perspective, nothing short of ingratitude. He chalked it up to all the time Ivy had been spending out with her friends during exam season, and a general poor attitude, which Ivy hadn't taken well, and from then on, things had only really gotten worse.

Esther had been working on a song she'd started a while back when the door was flung open with so much force it slammed hard into the wall, and Ivy stormed in and threw herself onto Esther's bed. Even when she was upset she was still, somehow, pretty. When she was younger, Esther had been jealous of her sister: she seemed to have everything. Good looks, hair that was smooth and strawberry-blonde and gracefully wavy instead of the untameable frizzy mass of ginger corkscrew curls she had to deal with, a friendly and open disposition that naturally attracted people to her and the kind of smile that people fell in love with.

"I hate him," she said, passionately, her voice cracking slightly at the edges.

"He always seems nice when I talk to him," Esther said, only half-paying attention.

"That's because he's nice to you. I didn't have a problem with him either, when Seth was around," Ivy said ruefully, rolling over onto her back. "You'll only start to hate him when I leave."