Chapter Five

‘He sounds a bit iffy to me.’ Jazz cradled a pint and looked up at me over his Guinness moustache.

‘Why? Because he wants to go out with Willow? Why does that make him “iffy”?’ Katie leaped to my defence.

‘Oh, I dunno. He just sounds a bit, full on, yeah?’

Now, before you start getting ideas, Jazz doesn’t think of me in that way, if you know what I mean. We did have one extremely embarrassing moment way back, when we briefly entertained the notion of going out together as more than mates. But that was in the days when we both wore advanced dental appliances, he was still called Jasper, and our combined puppy fat could have built a litter of Great Danes. Since then we have been happy to be friends and give one another the uncensored version of the truth about our chosen romantic partners. Katie actually thinks Jazz fancies my sister, but I like him too much to hope this is the case.

‘I mean, you only met him this time last week and you’ve been out with him just about every single night – ’s not natural. That’s not, like, dating, that’s obsession, that is.’ Jazz mouthed another swirl of beer. ‘I tried to ring you last night and there was no answer.’

I’d heard the phone ringing as Luke and I had fallen, giggly and entwined, through the front door, but I’d been a little bit otherwise engaged. ‘What did you want?’

‘Another pint, please, Will, if you’re offering.’

‘Sod.’ But I went to the bar anyway. It was nice to be drinking with the gang again. ‘Why did you ring, then?’ I asked as I got back.

‘Only wondering if you’d be free to sing on Sunday night. We’ve got a short-notice gig in the Basement Bar.’

‘But isn’t there anyone else?’

‘Nah. Big Rosie’s off down to Devon for the weekend, won’t be back.’

‘Go on, Will, you haven’t sung for ages.’ Katie leaned forward at me drunkenly. ‘And, I mean, Luke sounds lovely and everything but’ – a quick glance to Jazz for support – ‘you still need to do stuff on your own.’

There was a slow spreading warmth inside me that had nothing to do with the rapidly ingested beer. Luke had promised to come to lunch at Bree’s on Sunday. If I had a booking in the evening, he might stay on and watch the band (in my imagination I was shining in the spotlight already) and then, maybe, I might be able to persuade him to stay overnight.

Katie noticed my slight frown. ‘Wassup, Wills?’

‘No, nothing, really. Just wondering, when you and Dan got together, how long was it before you went to bed? Together, I mean, obviously.’

Jazz gave a smutty snigger. ‘About twenty minutes I should think.’

‘You know, Jazz, not everyone is as sex-obsessed as you.’ Katie drained her glass. ‘It was, let me see, we went out on the …’ Her lips moved and I felt better. I’d begun to wonder. Was it me? I fancied Luke so much that it was driving me crazy. We’d kissed, quite a lot, but he told me he wanted to take things very slowly and get to know me properly before we jumped into bed. Okay, gentlemanly behaviour and everything, but, good grief, I was going to spontaneously combust at this rate. ‘Seventeen hours.’

‘Does this mean that you and Wonder Boy haven’t done the thing yet?’ Jazz shuffled his feet in barely suppressed excitement. ‘Willow Cayton, you have definitely lost your mojo.’

‘Mojo? Those are little sweets, aren’t they?’

‘Your “thing”, you know. Your “it”.’

Katie and I looked at one another. ‘He’s so obnoxious when he’s pissed,’ she said. ‘And don’t ask me to take him home. He’s got his Frankenstein remedial boots on again. Couldn’t pick him up with a forklift.’

‘Nah, we could just leave him here.’

But Jazz unfolded himself to his full, not inconsiderable height and peered down at us. ‘I shall make my way home under my own sht … steam, thank you, ladies.’ He drained his glass. ‘Willow, I will meet you at four in the Basement Bar for a soundcheck on Saturday.’

‘That’s tomorrow, Jazz.’

‘Sho kind to remind me. Yes. Tomorrow.’ Gathering his dignity around him, which stretched it pretty tightly, he stalked from the bar.

‘He looks like a clothes peg from Castle Dracula,’ Katie remarked. ‘But, pissed as he might be, he has a point. Are you and the delicious Mr Fry not yet making the beast with two backs?’

‘We’re taking it slowly. After all, we’ve waited ten years, a few more days won’t kill us.’

‘All right, no need to be defensive.’ Katie emptied her glass. ‘Well, better go, I’m meeting Dan in half an hour and we’re off to the pictures. His mum is babysitting. First time in three years.’

‘Great. What are you going to see?’

‘The way I feel, the insides of my eyelids comes top of the list, followed by the contents of Dan’s trousers. Anyway. Take care, Will.’

Once Katie and Jazz had gone, I felt suddenly flat. Friday night. Seven o’clock to be precise, and the rest of the evening stretched ahead of me as empty as, oh, I don’t know. Name me something emptier than the prospect of a Friday night alone with the monotonous silence broken only by my beery pizza burps and early evening TV. Luke had apologised profusely, but said he had to work on Saturday – promised to be at my house in time to drive us out to Bree’s for lunch on Sunday, so what was my problem? I had, as Jazz so kindly pointed out, seen him every night this week.

I wandered home, couldn’t think of anything else to do. British Summertime had officially started last week, so it was raining and cold. Flint had flown back to Beijing so there would be no one to share a takeaway. God, I was miserable. The misery deepened when I turned into my street and saw Ash perched across his bike in full gear, with his helmet on his lap, swinging one foot in the running gutter and obviously waiting for me.

‘Hey.’

‘What?’ I fumbled sullenly in my bag for the key.

‘No, nothing. I thought … you doing anything tonight?’

Friday night and Ash didn’t have a date? I looked around in case the end of the world was nigh. ‘It’s not like you to be on your own on a Friday night. Hell, it’s not like you to be on your own full stop, unless you’re off on a job. What’s happened?’

‘Happened? Nothing.’ Ash pushed past me into the hallway and flung himself down full-length on the chesterfield. Leather met leather with a creaking like a boned corset under pressure. ‘I just wondered if … hell, I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet, all right?’

I paused on my way through to the kitchen, watching Ash pose. There was definitely something different about him today. ‘You’ve taken all your piercings out,’ I realised suddenly.

‘Well, not all of them.’ He grinned up at me. ‘Only the ones you can see.’

I grimaced. I’d been treated, along with Jazz and Katie, to a blow-by-blow account of the agonies of Ash’s Prince Albert. (Jazz still couldn’t look Ash in the face without tears of sympathy welling up.) ‘Thanks. I’ll have to go and lie down in a dark room to expunge that particular mental image. So, what’s happening with losing all the metal? Afraid you were going to fall through the earth’s crust?’

Ash shrugged a skinny shoulder. ‘I just fancied a change. You coming, or what?’

‘How far?’

‘Up onto the moors. Thirty miles, no more.’

‘All right then, if you promise to go slowly. You know I hate riding pillion. Oh and I’d better get my gear on, hadn’t I.’

I heard him snort as I went upstairs. ‘Yeah! You’d freeze your howdy-doody off in that skirt and I’ll be fucked if someone sees me with a girl on the back of the bike. They’ll think I’ve gone straight, and whoops goes my reputation up the PVC Emporium.’

Since Ash had been as gay as a neon jelly baby all his life, this was highly unlikely to be the case. I wrestled myself into a set of his old leathers, popped my helmet out of its box (which always, satisfyingly, reminded me of squeezing a blackhead) and galumphed down the stairs. Ash has skinnier legs than me, which means I can’t bend my knees in his trousers and have to walk like I’ve wet myself. Ash stared.

‘Fuck off, you’ve lost weight, bitch.’

‘You think?’ I did a smug twirl. Going out with Luke was obviously good for me. Good as it might be, I didn’t yet feel I could unveil him as a full boyfriend to Ash (who would only ask, with painful accuracy, why the hell he wasn’t taking me out on a Friday night if he was such a catch) or Bree (who had merely been told that I was bringing a friend to lunch tomorrow). Fate was, in my experience, not something to be tempted. Rather like Luke then, I thought sourly.

‘You’ll be prettier than me soon.’

‘Shut up, Ash. Honestly, if you weren’t my brother.’

‘You’d be happy, I know.’

Ash and I get on a whole lot better when no one else is there. It’s like we don’t have to compete for attention any more. We’re the classic case of the observer changing the thing observed.

‘Piss off and start the bike.’ I checked my phone to make sure Luke hadn’t had a change of heart and decided to call me after all. But he hadn’t, and so I mounted up behind Ash and wound my arms around his ribcage. So it wasn’t quite how I’d envisaged spending Friday night, but right now it beat the alternatives.