In the summer of 1980, two teenagers—Robbie and Suzi—performed at a charity event at Beamish Castle. Initially background music, their set included covers and original songs.
Forty years later, Robbie finds a cassette recording in a drawer—her handwriting on the label. The dusty song remains, begins to play, and he hears her voice again.
A Lullaby at the End of the Universe
[This collection features fictional stories inspired by memories, emotions, and the beautiful mess of teenage longing. Names are changed, characters blended, and moments reimagined. The goal is to explore youthful desire and confusion, not to present historical fact. These stories invite the same curiosity you’d show your younger self.]
Robbie turned it over, reading the faded label: “Johnny Todd / Parsley / Suzi.” Her handwriting, unmistakable—looped and deliberate, the kind of script that suggested confidence.
He found a pencil, a rare find cut into a hexagon, the only way to snag a cassette reel to tightening the ribbon inside.
He found a Walkman, got some fresh batteries from the kitchen drawer, pressed eject and slotted the tape in with the care reserved for fragile things he once loved.
Play.
First, static. Then the room filled with the low hum of the guitar. His guitar. A fraction too fast, the rhythm clumsy in places. And then her flute—tentative at first, then sure, but haunting like a ghost crying over a fjord.
And then her voice.
Not singing yet. Just counting him in.
“One… two… three…”
Thirty-nine years vanished in an instant. He welled up. He reached out to the table to steady himself.
Suzi.
Of course, it would begin this way.
THE PERFORMANCE
Robbie and Suzi had a few days to prepare. The show consisted of forty-five minutes of music, stretched to an hour with encores. It included originals, some of Robbie’s gentler songs, and covers, such as “Annie’s Song,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “Candle in the Wind”.
The castle courtyard was adorned with flags and white cloth, featuring long tables set up for a charity event in the castle grounds. Guests meandered with wine glasses, the swimming pool glimmered. They’d had a swim earlier.
Robbie strummed the opening bars of “Johnny Todd.” Suzi stood beside him, flute at the ready, waiting for her cue. She looked at ease. She’d performed often enough. He hadn’t. He was all a quiver.
They began as background music—something soft to accompany the chatter and clinking glasses. By the second song, people had stopped talking. By the third, someone dragged a chair closer. When they reached the Cat Stevens hit “The First Cut is the Deepest,” silence had fallen completely. Even the peacock in the pine tree had nothing to add to ‘The Sound of Silence.
When they finished, there was a long pause, then applause. Not polite. Earnest.
Robbie’s dad asked them to play another. Then another.
At ten, Suzi packed up her flute. Her father was due any minute. The sky had turned velvet, and a few stars were beginning to appear above the 12th century Keep. Robbie walked her to the gate, where the headlights were already sweeping through the drive.
“You played beautifully,” he remarked.
She smiled, kissed him, and got into the car.
The Next Day: The Great Hall, Beamish Castle
Suzi instinctively went to the baby grand in the Great Hall, an antique C. Bechstein Concert Grand Piano. Like others, she felt a momentary fright at the sight of ‘Charlie’, the antiquated mannequin in the corner by the curtain. Robbie offered to introduce him. The armour was the Civil War, the mannequin from a charity shop.
It lightened the mood.
Suzi brushed the cover aside with a reverent hand.
“This thing’s ridiculous,” she said softly. “Pre-1900?”
Paul shrugged; he hadn’t a clue. “Wasted on me, I only got to Grade III.
Suzi smiled, her fingers already finding middle C. She struck a few notes—nothing in particular, just the room’s resonance: the key of memory.
Robbie watched. Guitar in his lap. Strings untouched.
She played a fragment. Minor. Curious. A question.
“That from something?” he asked.
“No,” she said, voice low. “It could be.”
She played it again. This time, it was resolving upward, gently.
He strummed a chord. Then another. Matching her shape.
“I’ll be there,” he said, not singing it, just speaking the phrase like he wasn’t sure it belonged to anyone yet.
Suzi looked at him.
“Say it again.”
“I’ll be there.”
She played three notes under it. Something shifted.
“That’s the song,” she said.
Suzi answered with a phrase—left hand holding a low E, right hand dropping fifths like footsteps into snow.
He caught the rhythm. Matched it with two soft strums and a third that didn’t land quite right.
“You’re rushing it,” she said, not unkindly.
“It’s not about arriving. It’s about staying.”
He adjusted. Slowed down. Waited for her to lead.
She spoke without looking up.
“What if we don’t rhyme the verses?”
“Then they’ll feel real.”
She nodded, lips parting slightly in thought.
“You write the words,” she said.
“I’ll hold the key.”
A lullaby at the end of the universe
“As the world is growing sadder,
As the earth is growing tired,
I shall sit by the fire and think of you,
While I watch the embers glow.”
Suzi stopped playing. They leant closely. Suzi had an idea.
“Will you give me the tour? Where does Robbie lock himself away of a night?”
Robbie took her hand. They were gone for several hours.
Later that day: Castle Drawing Room
The drawing room was one of the quieter corners of the castle—smallish, sunlit, with faded tapestries and furniture that felt used, not curated. There were two old wingbacks, a scuffed card table, and against one wall, the upright piano. Reliable. Plain. Forgotten by most.
Robbie leaned against the window frame, tea in hand, barefoot. His shirt hung loose. He looked like someone trying not to look too pleased with life and failing.
Suzi sat at the piano. Her hair was up, hastily twisted, and her fingers were idling across the keys—not entirely playing, just circling the melody they’d begun earlier. The sheet with their scribbles was propped unevenly on the music stand, lyrics smudged from her thumb.
“I think it comes back here,” she said, tapping the top of the page.
Robbie crossed the room slowly.
“You’re not sick of it?”
“I don’t get sick of truth,” she said. “Only repetition.”
He smiled and sat beside her, their hips just touching. She shifted to make space, and he joined in—just two fingers on guitar, no pick, the quietest accompaniment.
“Try the last verse again,” he said.
“Let it stretch.”
She nodded.
“You want it to echo.”
“I want it to last.”
She didn’t reply. Just played it—soft, rising, then falling back like breath as if the universe was singing.
And he whispered the words with her:
“As we hear, as we hear, for now the final time,
As we hear, as we hear, the very last song…”
They stopped at the exact moment. Neither moved. The air in the room felt still.
“That’s it,” she said.
“That’s the song.”
Robbie stared at the page.
“It’s ours.”
She turned to him, her face unreadable and luminous all at once.
“Only ever ours.”
A lullaby at the end of the universe
As the world is growing sadder,
As the earth is growing tired,
I shall sit by the fire and think of you,
While I watch the embers glow.
When the last ray of sunlight is dimming,
When the tide will never be high,
We could watch as the birds cease flying,
And the trees no longer sigh.
As we look for stars that are glowing,
We only see them die,
So our hands are holding tighter,
And we both begin to cry.
We shall catch our falling tears.
We should make our bodies cling.
I shall smile but remember my fears,
While we hear the universe sing.
As we hear, as we hear, for now the final time,
As we hear, as we hear, the very last song,
for the very last time,
the very last song.
Chord structure:
Verses
GM
C AM D7
GM F
C Am GM
Interlude
G Bb D / F# Bb D / F Bb D / E Bb D
Chorus/chant thing at the end:
Gm F(4) Bb G GM
It starts with warmth (G major), dipping into sadness and stillness (F, Am), venturing into mystery and instability in the interlude (those Bb/D progressions), and finally closes on that bittersweet chant, bridging G minor to G major like a last light rising.
The shift from Gm to G at the end is devastatingly hopeful. It says, “We’re not in darkness, not completely.”
That evening
The castle grounds had emptied for the day. The paying public had gone. Sandwich crusts, ice lolly sticks, and sweet wrappers left behind on benches and tucked into walls like offerings to some mild, indifferent god. The young couple are out for a walk.
Robbie, ever his father’s son, bent to pick up a crisp packet. Suzi waited, swatting at a fly, her bag slung over one shoulder.
From the side of the moat, the groundsman’s voice rang out.
“Alright, Squire?” he called, grinning, mock-saluting with a spade.
Robbie raised a hand. Ben liked to pull his leg. There were no formalities on the estate.
Robbie and Suzi walked the drive as it curved gently downhill between purple beeches, some planted over ninety years ago by some European minor royals. A cluster of Soay sheep wandered lazily, the smallest one nibbling Robbie’s shoelace before gamboling away. From somewhere to their left, a peacock screamed like it had been insulted.
“Very regal,” Suzi said.
“That one thinks he owns the place,” Robbie replied.
They both knew they were stalling.
Ahead, at the far end of the drive, Suzi’s father’s car pulled in. It crossed the cattle grid and stopped at the Kiosk. It wasn’t if they needed to check in. The grounds had closed several hours before.
Robbie frowned. Then saw it.
Both parents.
“Bugger,” Suzi said.
She let go of his hand, smoothed her hair, and brushed down her skirt in case it looked unduly crumpled.
“No kiss,” she said. “Mum’ll be watching.”
Robbie nodded, complicit.
“Say something,” she begged. “About why we’ve got plans. You have to give her a reason. Otherwise, this is it. I won’t see you for weeks.”
“Like what?”
“A classical music thing? Something she’d approve of. I told you—they met in an opera chorus.”
“An opera?”
“Anything. Glyndebourne. The Magic Flute. Rigoletto. Just don’t say Evita.”
Robbie inhaled. The car rolled closer, quiet on the tarmac. Shirley, who was window half-down, wore dark glasses. Her father, behind the wheel, offered a warm smile that almost looked relieved.
“Afternoon!” Robbie said brightly. “We were just talking—Suzi and I—thinking of trying for Glyndebourne next week.”
“Oh?” her dad said, genuinely curious. “What’s on?”
“Turandot,” Robbie said.
“The Magic Flute,” Suzi corrected, instantly.
A pause.
“Ah,” said Shirley, unmoved. “Quite different experiences.”
“We’ve got range,” Robbie offered with a helpless shrug.
Another pause. Longer this time.
“We’ll discuss it,” said her father gently, unlocking the passenger door.
Suzi slipped in quickly, face unreadable.
Robbie stepped back. Shirley’s gaze met his, unreadable behind her glasses. Then the window rose.
The car pulled away, gently across the cattle grid. Suzi did not look back.
Robbie stood under the beech trees, sheep at his heels, peacocks in the hedge, and a crisp packet still clutched in one hand.
He was still watching the car disappear.
No kiss. No grand gesture. Just a look, a half-truth, and the feeling they were already in it.
Whatever it was going to become.