Her shy youngest sister, Katelyn, 14 – known to the family as “Cakes” for reasons that quickly become apparent – appears with a raisin-stuffed bun. Raye sends her to get her one, but then says she probably shouldn’t eat it because of the photoshoot and opts for rice and peas from the fridge. Here, Raye is just Rachel, eldest of four (Abby, 21, lives in Los Angeles), clinging onto her mum’s legs and telling Lauren that she “loves peas”.
“That’s nice…” Lauren replies, with pure sisterly contempt. Raye changes her mind and eats the cake.
Dad Paul and mum Sarah have been managing her since the Polydor split and are here planning Raye’s second album campaign, though there’s barely a whisper between the two. When the tour wraps at the end of August, Raye will become a happy studio rat. Right now, she has some demos and an emotional compass. “My first album was very devastating in parts,” she says. “In the second album, I feel this need for hope for myself and wanting that to translate to others.” She’s also cagey about a “secret, unrequited” feeling.
Two new songs debuted at Glastonbury have become setlist fixtures. Her brassy comeback single, “Where Is My Husband?”, is a dead-serious demand for her would-be suitor to come claim the five-foot-five woman of his dreams.
“I’ve been single for so long,” Raye laments at the Ritz the next day. “My last devastating break-up was four, five years ago. I was like, ‘I’m gonna marry him.’ We was together for two years and it ended up not working out. I have never experienced a more crippling emotion. It took me three, four years to get over him. Like, I can’t allow myself to fall in love again until it’s safe.”
Dating had also been a no-go after sexual assault left Raye understandably scared of men. As a young girl, she says, she thought she wanted a “manly” man. “Then you go through some of the… you know,” she says softly. “What I look for in a man has significantly changed over the years – I need to know you could never hurt me like that.”
Her parents met at church in Tooting, Paul playing piano, Sarah in the choir, and set the bar high. “I said to my parents the other day, ‘Thank you for fighting for each other and allowing me to grow
up seeing how beautiful love can look,’” she says. “Through the tough times they fight, but then they pray it out. I have an incredible example of what I would love to one day find for myself.”
