Out on a Limb (25 page)

‘Look,’ I say, trying to quell my ever-rising anxiety about the time. ‘I really do have to get down to town, Dee. If I don’t get there I know Jake will never forgive me. You’ll be quite safe at mine. Just bolt the front door. Spike will look after you.’

‘I think it will take more than Spike to do that, Abs, don’t you?’

But I can’t, can’t,
can’t
spend so much as a minute more worrying about it. It takes another precious ten minutes to relocate all Dee’s belongings from car boot to hallway – something I almost forget to, but have to get done, as I need the car empty to bring the drum kit back home.

Dee’s calmer, at least, once she’s safely inside. So I leave her with Mum, who’s still waiting for Wilfred to collect her, and rattle off back in the car, reflecting that acupuncture’s all very useful, but not half such a good way of dealing with pain as having a resident mother, an important gig with a deadline, and other people’s marital crises to deal with. Time to mope is a luxury I simply don’t have.

By the time I get to the club it’s teeming with rain, and because it’s right in the middle of the main drag, I have to park some distance away and sprint back.

I can hear before I see, but I’m much relieved to realise that I don’t recognise what’s being played.

When I actually get inside it’s difficult to make out what’s going on at all. Every inch of the floor space is one amorphous, pulsating mass of bodies. But my ears didn’t deceive me, because I manage to establish that the frenzied quartet currently occupying the left side of the stage are not Jake and his pals, but some other band. Though Jake’s kit is, I notice, already pretty much set up. Thank God for Tom’s dad. I can breathe out again.

The club consists of a large stage and a vast central dance floor, which forms a well between two opposing areas with bars, only one of which is open tonight. I thread my way behind the crush of people lining the railings, and pick out Charlie and Claire, with Oliver’s brother and stepsister, huddled with Tom’s parents beside the bar at the far end. Because it’s a teenagers’ night, there’s no alcohol available, and they are all of them swigging from bottles of juice.

I make my way down to them, waving as I do so, and have almost reached them when I think I hear my name called out from behind me.

‘Thought so! Hello, you!’ says a voice. I turn around to see Lucy Whittall.

Lucy Whittall Of All People. ‘Goodness!’ I say, shocked and completely appalled. Is
he
here, then? Oh please, no. I rearrange my expression by sheer force of will. ‘What a surprise!’ I say gaily. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

She looks surprised that I’m surprised. ‘Oh?’ she says. ‘Didn’t Jake mention?’

Mention? My brain fails to compute. ‘Well, he did tell me they mentioned the gig to you when you were at our house in the summer…but I never imagined…well, um…’ oh
gawd,
Abbie. ‘Well, how lovely that you found the time to come along. Does he know you’re here? I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to –’

She nods enthusiastically. ‘ Oh, God, yes. We just watched the last band together. Don’t worry,’ she adds. ‘Not a patch on your boys.’ She has a slight sheen of moisture across the tops of her cheekbones. Which on her manages to look like it was gently deposited from the wings of a tropical butterfly, en route to Paradise Island.

‘Well that’s really sweet of you,’ I reply. ‘I’m sure it’s really made his day that you came.’

She shakes her head. ‘I was in town anyway. Been to some God-awful ad premiere. And later on I have to go to some God-awful aftershow party as well. So I thought, I know! I’ll nip down and check out how your lovely boys are getting on. This is so much more my sort of thing than poncing around with my arse of a publicist and a bunch of self-satisfied gonks, I can tell you –’ she lifts her bottle of juice. ‘– lack of vino notwithstanding, of course!’ she tips her mane of glossy hair back and laughs.

So perhaps he’s not here, then. I feel the tension ebb slightly. ‘So,’ I say. ‘D’you want to come and join us?’

‘You’re all right,’ she says, winking, and gesturing back to the dance floor… ‘I’d rather be down there, if it’s all the same to you. Anyway –’ She leans towards me and brushes her fragrant cheek against my own. ‘Good to see you, Annie!’

And then she’s gone. Tripping down the steps, and then sucked once again into the welcoming throng.

I move further down the bar. Jake’s there now too, I see, his forehead shiny and his fingers rat-a-tat-tatting against the bar.

‘Yo, Mum! You made it!’ he shouts as I approach. ‘Just in time, too. We’re up next.’ He looks past me. ‘Yo, Hamish! Come on! Where you
been
?’

Charlie’s deep in conversation with Tom’s dad close by, having the sort of comedy exchange that you can’t help but do in these sort of decibel levels; making seeming close inspections of one another’s ear hair.

His wife, Claire, pushes past them to get to me.

‘Isn’t this exciting?’ she says. She looks animated. Happier. Entirely different to the way she did last time I met her. Out of role, I suppose. And not so very different from me, after all. She grins, revealing dimples. ‘I’ve never been to anything like this before. Have you?’ I shake my head. ‘I think it’s wonderful that they lay this sort of thing on for young people, don’t you?’ She bends her mouth closer to me and gestures to her drink. ‘Have to say, I wouldn’t mind a G and T, though!’

Just the G would do for me, I think, as I nod and smile and agree.

The boys play their set – their whole seven precious, much practised songs – with barely a pause to draw breath. While I (much like Charlie and Tom’s dad as well), have been charged with the business of capturing the action, on the video camera his father sweetly bought him for the purpose; an awesome responsibility for a woman who finds herself quite unable to breathe either. And I do. Because almost as soon as they’ve begun, I find myself locked in the grip of an appalling and completely unexpected anxiety. I have listened to them play these songs so many times now. I know every word, every beat, every bridge, every chord change, and my heart thumps in anticipation of every single next note. I know they’re note perfect.
Absolutely
note perfect. But it doesn’t seem to matter. This is live. This is real. This is (like, Mum, you know),
really
important. I barely respire from the first to the last.

By the time they’re done, therefore, and the crowd are clamouring for pictures and autographs, mobiles and programmes and beer mats held aloft, I’m so overcome with pride and relief and, yes, oxygen depletion, that I’m almost too tearful to speak. I want to march right on up there and shout from the rooftops. I’m not sure what it is that I want to shout, exactly, but something. Just some sort of primeval noise. But I’m also aware that the height of uncool would be a mother with the vapours in the picture right now. Time for that soon enough. So instead I slip away to get a handful of loo roll to mop my eyes with.

The toilets, as is so often the case in these types of venue, are located not on the premises, but in an underground, and possibly uncharted region at least five shop fronts down and on the other side of the road. It doesn’t seem in the least fanciful to assume that I might come upon a slumped female skeleton, clutching a Bacardi Breezer and a clutch bag, who had given up trying to find a way out of the labyrinth and simply expired where she sat. I pass a kitchen, a stock room full of Brobdingnagian bean cans, and several doors sternly marked ‘private’. Private, I assume to refer to privation. What species of troll would want to work in such a place? When I eventually light upon the door marked
Senhoritas!
, I have almost forgotten why I came. They do, however, have some loo roll, at least – in fact, several great spools of the stuff. Here be giants also, it seems.

I look a mess, but a proud one. So I don’t linger long. And on my way back up, I almost collide with Charlie, himself groping his way out through the gloom.

‘This sure takes me back,’ he says, jovially. We fall into step and head back up the sticky stairs. ‘Trouble is, it also reminds me how terrifically ancient I am. He glances at me. ‘How are you, anyway? Still working at the clinic?’

‘Still working at the clinic.’ Another bright shaft of sunshine in what’s been a mainly cloudy sort of day, is to find I can be here and have chats with Charlie and that everything – almost – is back how it was.

‘And still enjoying it?’

‘Yes,’ I nod, ‘ yes, I am. Very much.’

He frowns. ‘That’s a shame.’

‘Why?’

‘I was rather hoping you’d be bored by now.’

‘Bored?’

‘Well, it’s not quite the same, is it? You must find it lacking in challenge compared to the work you used to do at the hospital, surely?

‘Not really. It’s just different.‘

‘But you must miss the acute stuff.’

There’s all sorts of acute stuff I do miss, for sure. But lots that I absolutely don’t. I shake my head. ‘Well, obviously it’s not as–’

‘Not as challenging. Can’t be. ’

‘No, but –’ I turn to face him as we mount the final steps. ‘Charlie, what’s with the interrogation?’

He shoves a hand in his pocket. ‘Well, you know, I’ve been thinking.’

‘Oh, dear. That sounds worrying.’

‘No, seriously. You should never have left in the first place. We both know that. And, well, you could always come back. They’ve still not managed to find a replacement for you. And you must admit you’re wasted on that kind of –’

‘Charlie, I really don’t think that would be a terrifically good idea.’

‘No, I’m serious. I’m talking work here. No games.’

I shake my head. ‘No, I
know
that.’

He stops. ‘Do you?’

I stop too. And smile at him. ‘Yes, I do. And I’m glad.’ I gesture towards the bar. ‘Claire seems nice. I’m glad you and she…well…whatever…’

He smiles broadly and claps me on the back. ‘ So I guess I just keep on with the guilt trip, then, do I? Anyway, speaking of which,’ he says. ‘How’s your friend’s knee?’

He raises his brows as he say this. I stiffen. ‘Oh, improving I think. I haven’t actually seen him since then.’

‘Oh?’ His brows change direction and converge at the bridge of his nose now. ‘I got the impression you and he were, well…’

‘Then you got entirely the wrong one, Charlie. I told you, he’s just my mother’s dead fourth husband’s long-lost son.‘

He looks at me hard. ‘And that’s a lot of things to be. Quite enough to be going on with, I imagine.’ Then he grins. ‘For the moment, at least.’

‘Look, I need to get back and help dismantle Jake’s drum kit.’

‘And we need to be off.’ He pecks me on the cheek. ‘So it’s farewell, then, my lovely,’ he says.

By the time we return to the stage itself, the last gaggles of teenagers have said their farewells also, and the bar manager, much tattooed and with a back-to-front baseball cap, is already attacking the floor with a broom. Guitars are nestled back into cases and amp leads wound back into their liquorice roll coils. That done, and refusing further offers of help, we wave off Charlie and Claire and Oliver and Oliver’s brother and stepsister, and Ben and Ben’s auntie, and I have a sudden sense of just how very precious all this is. And how much I’m looking forward to getting Jake home, and the two of us sitting, over toast, in the kitchen, watching the video I’ve recorded of their set, and deconstructing every single moment before bed. And also a sudden rush of complete understanding about why I should never feel resentful of Rob about the boys. He doesn’t have this. I’m very lucky.

But it seems I’m wrong about everyone else having left. Jake and Tom – whose dad has gone to fetch his car from the multistorey – are just setting to work with the drum keys, when I hear a clatter of spiked heels coming towards us from across the now empty hall.

It’s Lucy Whittall, who’s obviously collected her coat now; she’s lusciously encased in a long shaggy sheepskin, which dips in places to the floor and which I fear for in the rain. Lucy Whittall who I thought had left some time ago. But no, it seems, for she’s come back to say goodbye.

‘Ah!’ she says as she approaches. She’s bright-eyed. Looks as if the night is still young. As it is for her, I guess. ‘The superstar lifestyle, eh, lads?’ she calls gaily. I think, from my depressingly sober perspective, that’s she’s more than a little well-oiled.

But then why shouldn’t she be? I shake my head. ‘I sincerely hope not. I’m hoping they’ll be superstars with sufficient cash to employ someone else to do all the donkey work for them. ’

‘Tsk! What am I like?’ she says in response. ‘Standing here watching you guys work.’ She shrugs off her coat and flings it down, without a backward glance, amongst the massed amps and leads and other muso paraphernalia, and then pushes up the sleeves of her slinky red top. And once again I’m struck by how much I like her. For everything I’ve read about her, everything I’ve heard, there is something so warm and engaging about her. She even, though I’m not sure why I should consider it a plus point exactly, reminds me of my mother at her age. Grabbing life by the lapels and giving it a good shaking, while people like me skirt cautiously around the hem.

I’m just thinking, in fact, that she
is
so like my mother must have been at her age, when I hear her name called from the back of the hall. She swings around to see. Then she waves. ‘Over here!

I hear the voice again. ‘Are you coming?’ It’s
his
voice. It’s Gabriel. I feel cold.

She shields her eyes from the glare of the still burning stage spots. ‘Won’t be a mo. I’m just lending a hand.’

She turns to me. ‘Like, what’s the big rush anyway? If I know Gabe, no sooner will we get there than he’ll be whining on about leaving again.’ She rolls her eyes at me, then turns round once again. ‘Gabe?’ she calls. ‘Come and help out here a minute will you, angel?’

Oh,
God.
‘There’s no need –’ I begin.

‘Nonsense,’ she says firmly. ‘Didn’t your mother always tell you? Many hands make light work.’

And too many cooks make the kitchen too hot. Or something like that. ‘Er,’ I hear him mutter as he emerges from the shadows. ‘Er. Okay, yes…sure.’