She was born with a tower view.
But she’ll tell you it was a quiet poet’s corner.
Surrounded by forgotten talents, in the back of a greasy café, harsh words and rich French wine pushed her out into the world.
She was too small, they cried, too small to live. Her father smiled without seeing her, his wretched bastard baby girl. Drunken singing smothering her cries, cold in her chequered table cloth, she lay still and pink. And in the smoke filled haze, a prayer was said, and a wish was granted to the heaving beast that made her.
Against all odds, Stacie grew.
She was taken home.
Alone in the apartment for days on end, she would fall asleep to the sounds of the street. Vibrant shouts grew into lullabies, and she’ll say that this is what shaped her. Her fresh lyrics drawn from the millions of common words that filled her dreams before she could block them out with music of her own.
The voice, that incredible voice, she claims came later. For the first five years of her life, she’ll say she was sure that no one could hear her.
Daddy was gone, a million miles away, flying through the air to the sound of drums. He never came back to them, and no one ever noticed. 
Mummy was there, but not. Passed out on the floor, empty bottles that held anything but milk, her unconscious words shaped Stacie too. So the little girl listened, and didn’t speak. And soon, she was big enough to escape before Mummy woke up.
The children outside would follow her, watching the silent child in the red coat feel her way through a world of black and white. She’d never been outside before. They remained her guardian angels until her mother came out and found her, her black hair streaming freely down her shoulders and her red lips painted to kill. They couldn’t save her then.
Locked in the cupboard, punished, Stacie sang to stop herself from crying.
Stacie grew more.
At thirteen, she painted her own lips, and left her drunken Mummy every night to join the angels outside in the moonlight. The locks on the bedroom door were easy enough to break, and no one ever looked for her then.
She followed her friends, and they lead her to dark and busy places where they told her to feel the beat. She didn’t really understand. They gave her hard white drops of freedom, that melted slowly on her tongue.
Back then…the little white pills were her one escape.
The weather froze, the heating failed, and Stacie, poor broken Stacie, prayed to the angles for the money that her mother wasn’t making. They told her to do what she did best. They told her to try not to cry.
So she sang, and she earned and bought what she wanted, but the money she made singing beneath the streets also paid the rent. The apartment became hers.
For five years, Paris’s cavernous Metro tunnels were filled with soft notes, unchained melodies, and a voice that managed to rise to the sky… though the little red coated woman that sang the songs of love was ten metres underground.
She will tell you that this is when people began to notice her.
Her lyrics were as black as the shadows she came from, her rhythm dictated by her burning heartbeat. Her music danced in front of the crowds, and they didn’t doubt her. They all watched her closely. They whispered rumours, judged her, but none could deny her. None could ever turn her away.
Her mother died. She grew up.
Stacie left Paris, her little apartment, when she turned eighteen. She took the train to London and tried to survive without angels, without her escape. The city wasn’t home… and yet she still wouldn’t cry. She felt safer there than she ever had before, and the warm air of summer finally warmed her as she wrote down the music that made her smile. She sat for sunsets worth of hours in one of the many parks that she couldn’t name. Her sounds were noticed, her talent marked.
The English decided they liked her.
From then on, it was up.  And I don’t understand how.

All I know is that tonight, every seat in the Royal Albert Hall will be filled for her. Every television will show her, her red lips, her fiery hair…. And her eyes that refuse to cry.
Her voice will fill the world, my little sister.
Her voice will fill them.