Rooftop Bar, Copacabana, Rio De Janerio, January 10th 1985

"Should I write out a cheque or cash?" Mary Austin's voice was groggy.

"I don't care," Freddie muttered as he gripped the payphone reciever, "If I'm not there to sign it then cash would be best"

"Perhaps... but you could've just  answered my question" she answered, then paused.

"Is she on the blob, or what?!" he thought, looking behind him, past the people standing around with drinks in their hands and out the glass window.

Monica, with Johnny and Roshni on her lap, was sitting at the table on the limestone balcony under the outdoor lights with the rest of his crew and band mates.

"Somehow she can make that dreadful potato sack look good" he remarked the bright pastel fish print Lilly Pulitzer dress that she wore, a pop of sugar pink lipstick on her now sunkissed face and her shoulder-length hair dried into loose brown curls from the salty sea water from their visit to the beach earlier in the day. 

Thankfully, she looked far too distracted with the two to think about where he was, pen in hand as she appeared to be drawing or colouring something in with them. 

"Mary, are you still there?" he turned back to the payphone.

"Yes, Fred... now, you do know what you're doing?" she asked him firmly at what felt like the 15th time during the telephone call.

"Yes, yes! Just send the damn thing once my handwritten letter gets to you... and make sure it's first class!" he was getting insistent, anxious to get back to his family and have a pint or a cocktail.

"Alright! I have it noted.. I will visit the bank tomorrow. Is that everything?" 

"No thank you, darling. That's everything" He tapped his foot, growing impatient.

"...You know, the government over there may find this large sum of money very suspicious" she warned him again.

He sighed, awkwardly tucking his vest under the waist of his trousers, "Well, at least I tried to do something to help, Mary"

"As long as you're aware of the risks... I 'll talk to you tomorrow" she breathed on the other end.

"Alright, bye" He put the phone down without hesitation, and walked to Phoebe who was standing guard nearby, "I just don't see why that woman cannot bloody get a simple job done!"

He pointed out the window at Monica as they walked to the bar, "Because you're doing something nice for her"

Fortunately, Freddie saw the irony, "It's not even for her... what is she doing with them out there now anyway?"

"They're writing postcards to the grandparents, taking it in turns of course" Phoebe answered.

"Oh god, I better get out there before they draw or write something that they oughn't" he droned, quickly weaving his way through the bar.

"Oh, yee of little faith" his assistant quickly followed him out the door and into the open where it was much quieter.

The chatter amongst people was more hushed, and there was a small samba band on a small stage in the corner of the space, playing gentle Bossa Nova as the sun sunk behind the green caped hills in the west.

"Don't forget to sign your names so that granny and granddad know that they're from you" Monica instructed, and just then Freddie put his hand on her shoulder, leaning down to kiss her head as she smiled.

She got up off her seat as she felt his hand slip into hers, "Where did you two go? It felt like you were ages in there"

"I called my mum, you know how she is" he lied, then leaned over and looked at what their children had scribbled down on their post cards. 

Roshni had written a short but sweet letter of sympathy to Monica's parents on hers. Whereas Johnny had written something half the length above a fine pen and marker drawing which he had to squint to look at...

"You can't send that to my parents!" Freddie snatched it from him, realising that it depicted that morning's poolside antics with the suncream.

"Hey!" Johnny reached to grab it from him. 

Phoebe and Monica laughed, "Why not?! Your mum will love it!"

"My face isn't that red!" he argued, pointing at the pink scribble that his son had given him for a head.

"It was really red this morning" Roshni giggled.

"Yeah! He looked like he was ready to explode!" Johnny cackled.

"It looks like I already did!" Unimpressed, Freddie murmured loud enough so only the adults could hear, pointing on the blank white patch on his belly that was meant to represent suncream.

"Ooh, naughty!" Phoebe winked at the innuendo.

"Mummy, take it back from him... please!" Johnny tugged at the hem of her dress.

"Well, since you asked nicely, sweetheart" Monica snatched it out of Freddie's hand, mouth twitching as she suppressed a giggle.

"You're not posting that without something being done about that white patch!" he half-heartedly ordered.

"It already literates perfectly that it's suncream and not... well, something else" she put it in her brown leather shoulder bag.

Nontheless, Freddie took her word for it, relieved that she stuffed it away in time because Roger and Dominique were approaching, and he knew how the drummer liked a good dirty joke.

"Roger!!" Johnny ran over to the couple and held his hand up to him, "Pull my finger!"

"Don't do it, Rog. He will just burp in your face" Freddie warned him in a mutter.

But the drummer ignored Freddie's advice, gently tugging at the grinning boy's outstretched index finger, only for him to belch loudly in his direction.

"Wow, nice one!" Roger laughed and held his hand out, and Johnny stretched up to give him a high five.

"We've given him far too much coca cola," Monica whispered to Freddie, "I think we should send them to bed but I don't want to leave this party"

"Me neither... and I need a smoke" Freddie felt for the box of cigarettes in his pocket.

"I'll take them to the hotel if you are both okay getting into a seperate car later" Phoebe offered.

"But Phoebe, if they have nobody to chaperone them but you, then you'll miss the party" Freddie said.

As disappointing as it was, Monica was still yearning for a chance alone with Freddie to talk to him about what she wanted to since not only the morning, but in the past while. 

"It's alright. I ought to be prepared for tomorrow anyway" he insisted, much to her relief.

Freddie sighed, "I suppose that there's no use in changing your mind"

"Right," Phoebe bent down to Johnny and tugged his arm gently, then coaxing Roshni out of her chair, "Time for bed, you two"

They both groaned, "But the party has only started!"

"And it is not a party for small children who need their sleep" Monica folded her arms.

"Come on, do as Phoebe says" Freddie urged.

"But the others aren't going to bed yet, that's no fair!" Roshni pointed to the Deacon family and Brian and Chrissie's son and young daughter.

The sight of the amount of children that John and Veronica had gave Monica an aching envy, and just made her more compelled to talk to Freddie about the burning topic.

"I know when you're getting tired, young man. Your eyelids are growing heavy!" Freddie lifted Johnny up off his feet to plant a goodnight kiss on his head.

"Phoebe, will you please get their cardigans before you go?" Monica handed him their tickets to the cloak room.

"Please can I stay? Pleaaaaseee?" Roshni begged as she hugged her dad's waist.

"You'll be able to stay at these things one day when you're old enough, darling," he rubbed her head, "Now give mummy a hug goodbye and Phoebe will take you"

Monica bent down to her daughter and opened her arms as she ran into them, "Sweet dreams, my love"

"We can watch movies, play boardgames, have a midnight feast..." Phoebe lured them both.

"YES!!" they both ran after him and took a waiting hand each.

Monica and Freddie watched and waved as Phoebe lead them away into the crowd, and indoors  to the elevator.

"I hope they don't leave the suite in a mess, but thank god I can have nicotine now" he reached into his trousers for his cigarettes.

But Monica was ignoring him, looking across the balcony at John's family yet again. 

"You're awfully quiet tonight" He put his lighter back in his pocket.

She blinked, and looked back into his general direction, "Am I? Sorry"

"And distant! Keep up!" Freddie snapped his thumb inches away from her face.

"Alright!" She pushed his arm out of her way as she went back to their table.

Baffled, Freddie watched as she hastily gathered up the pens and pencils sprawled across in agitation, now wishing that she had gone back to the hotel with her children. People nearby stopped to stare, making the tension and embarassment grow.

Then he remembered the phonecall from home that she'd gotten that morning.

"I should've known, I'm sorry" he pleaded for forgiveness as he rushed to her side.

She worldessly zipped her bag shut, and picked her nearly full drink up off the table, "It's okay, you wouldn't know what it feels like to grow up in a war zone"

"I do actually," he snapped as he quickly followed her through the crowd, "How do you even think I ended up living in the UK in the first place?!" 

She stopped at the balcony rail, staring out to the ocean as darkness grew, hands gripping onto the balcony as she neglected to answer his question. 

He took a spot next to her cautiously, feeling the eyes of the party on both of them as he took a drag.

"Do you want to go back to the hotel?" he leaned closer and spoke quietly, not wanting to make anything escalate any further.

She played with the neon flamingo cocktail stirrer in her gin and tonic, "I don't think so... we haven't been to a party together in a while actually"

"That is true... but are you feeling alright or is it just getting used to the heat?" he tried to touch her face, but she dodged his hand.

"Tell him how you feel... now is perfect" she urged herself as she stared at a small slither of the moon appearing on the south atlantic horizon.

She took a gulp of her drink, and turned to find that the look on his face was of genuine concern. 

"I was going to save this for a moment when we were alone... but I just can't hold it in any longer" her fingers tensed around the glass in her hands.

"Is it about your parents?" He gushed, "Let me guess. You want to go home and make sure they're alright?"

"Not that-well, a little bit, sometimes... b-but that's not what I am holding in" she began to stammer.

"Then baby, what is it?" He lifted her chin.

"I'm too scared to tell you because I know that you're going to take it with difficulty" she looked away in shame.

Even the gin that was now settling into her blood stream wasn't enough to relax her.

"Oh, now you really have got me worried! Just put me out of my misery" he squeezed her hand reassuringly.

Her other hand gripped the glass of gin and tonic, and she tipped her head back and threw its contents down her throat, taking a sharp breath after swallowing.

"My god, it must be something really bad" he watched as she slammed the glass down on the concrete balcony wall, her comically terrified blue eyes meeting his.

Then, she let out a confession that he was least expecting:

"...I think... I think that I want another baby"

*****

Ballysillan, Belfast, a few days later...

"Get away Missy, we might have another visitor!" Mrs Brannigan shooed the elderly tabby cat from the doorway to the hall as she sat with her ears pricked up in alert.

"It's probably another journalist, Patsy" Mr Brannigan sat at his chair at the breakfast table as he read the Belfast Telegraph, growing weary of all the attention and condolence cards now piling up on the mantle piece in their living room, and of course the bad news about his business all over the place.

He hoped that one day he wouldn't become one of the unlucky ones, but now he knew what it felt like to be in the midst of it.

"If our daughter can put up with the press almost every day across the sea then so can you!" His wife called back as she bent down to lift a pile of envelopes off the doormat, "Never mind, it was just the postman!"

"Thank god for that" Her husband muttered, smoothing back his receeding dark hair as Missy hopped up onto his lap.

Mrs Brannigan came back into the kitchen, shuffling through each letter, "A lot of bills, just like yesterday... and a postcard from Brazil!"

"Ah, give them here. It's probably another letter from the insurance companies" he held his hand out as he stroked the purring cat's head.

His wife placed them in his hand, "I'll put any greetings cards on display, shall I?"

"Hand them over after, it'll be a relief from all this paperwork" distracted, he read the print on each envelope.

"Alright, I'll be in the other room then" she handed him the letter opener and walked out.

Once he heard the living room door shut with a click, Mr Brannigan took a glance at the postcard fronted with an arial photograph of Rio harbour. The kind, sweet message on the other side from his granddaughter Roshni was enough to set him a good mood before he began to delicately open each envelope, Missy the cat watching with growing curiosity on his lap. 

First one was the heating bill, nothing special. The second one was from another insurance company requesting his most recent calculation of a certain category of stock.  

He reached for the last, slightly bulkier looking envelope out of the three and the only to have a handwritten address on it.

"That handwriting is awfully familiar... do I know this person?" He looked at all the distinct letter i's with a circle for the dot, and slipped the sharp side of the opener under the seam... 

For a second he thought that he'd gotten next door's post, for a large sum of cash was folded inside the envelope.

"Patsy! Patsy, come in and look!" he called for his wife, absolutely baffled. 

Mrs Brannigan rushed in, "What is it?! Is it a bill we can't afford?"

He double-checked to see that the envelope was addressed to him and nobody else, pulling out a wad of cash for his wife to see.

She dropped the sympathy cards in her hand and slowly stepped forward, "Is it for us?"

"Yes! But I just don't understand who it could be from!" he handed her the envelope.

His wife shot him a perplexed look before peering inside, her aged fingers gently rummaging though the envelope until she found a white piece of paper with the pen ink sinking through the other side, folded into a square tucked behind more of the bank notes.

"There's a handwritten note in here" She lifted it out and handed it to him.

"Can you please turn the radio down, love?" he asked, and Mrs Brannigan went to the tranny sitting on the window sill.

She paused at the volume knob when she recognised the male voice and accompanying piano crackling through the speakers as her future son-in-law. 

"I will find you," he sang, "Anywhere you go, I'll be right behind you, Right until the ends of the Earth, I'll get no sleep till I find you to tell you..."

As she listened, mesmerized, she stared out the window and beyond the bottom of her garden at the Belfast skyline dominated by the large yellow Harland and Wolff Cranes in the far off ship yard, the odd patrol helicopter or two hovering in a figure of eight in the overcast sky.

"We can't live here... it wasn't always like this when they were all wee" she glanced back to her husband at the table, waiting for him.

Mr Brannigan slipped his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose to examine the A5 piece of paper, a gold sun-shaped stamp anchored on the top centre of the page with Hotel De Ipamema beneath it as he started to read aloud...

To the Brannigan family,

I am terribly sorry to hear about what has happened to your business and the difficult circumstances that it has flung you in. But as I am going to be busy in the next while, as always, there is not much that I can do to help good people like you except keep it brief and offer you this cash donation to help you fix the damage that has been done out of an act of mindless violence for a hopeless cause.

Most of all, I am doing this because I am so very grateful that your daughter Monica is in my life and I cannot stand seeing how distraught and powerless she is feeling over it, let alone how upsetting trying to understand the extent of fire damage is for our two small children. 

You can do whatever the hell you want with the money as long as you spend it wisely!! Thank you once again, and please do rememeber to take care of yourselves,

Frederick Mercury xx.