She lugged the worn and battered case that protected her most valuable possession across the station, muttering a string of apologies as she went. This was the fourth time today she’d clobbered someone’s knees and sent them buckling to the ground. She knew she was late but a little bit of her just didn’t care, actually, that wasn’t true, none of her cared. Not one little bit. Depressingly, she knew having to run to catch the train would be the most interesting part of her day. After that it would be the concert in Havering, followed by some polite ‘just-smile-and-nod’ conversations, before she went back to the academy to teach that snotty nosed brat his scales. Of course he wouldn’t have practised and she would sit listening to his ear crunching intonation and split notes as he insisted he had ‘played it perfectly just last night.’ She headed towards the platform dejected, tired and in a world of her own. She didn’t notice the fifth person she bumped into. In one swift motion both she and her case were on the floor staring at an advert for Louis Armstrong’s greatest hits. When she was young, before the lessons, the concerts, the recordings and the ceaseless pushing from her mother, she played simply because she wanted to.
‘That’s why Louis did it so why can’t I?’ she muttered to herself as she opened her case, took out her French Horn looked up at Mr. Armstrong and played Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 for the unsuspecting mortals waiting for the 2:12 to Upminster.