One last backslapping huddle and then the four of us parted, each staking out his own corner of the stage. Jules went off to jump and pogo in place, shadowboxing in his usual pre-show ritual. Ewan staked out a place in the corner, out of the way of the scrambling techs to lie flat on his back, staring up into the rafters like it contained answers. Hudson was already off by himself, following his rigorous routine of not speaking a word for three hours pre-show so as to rest his voice.

I went to my corner and sat down to listen to music. Some nights it was old punk stuff, the Ramones, the Clash. But tonight, on the tour opener, I gravitated to the classical stuff. My old friends, the pieces I could play with my eyes closed.

With my headphones on, I let my fingers make the shapes of the chords, drawing an imaginary bow across the cello I no longer played. It had been my mother's dream to have me play for the London Philharmonic and I could have, was on the road towards it actually, when I was seduced off my intended route by the sound of gutter-punk rock and roll. I tripped, lost my footing, and took a wild stumble into friendship wth Jules Spencer and Ewan Boyd.

The press loved to play up the 'opposites attract' flavor of our chance meeting that night in a pub in Newcastle. I'd studied that first year at the university there, completely miserable to be away from my family, in that strange, gritty dark city with the barely coherent Geordie accent making me feel even more like a foreigner. That night I was half-drunk and feeling sorry for myself when I sat down to hear that band play.

I knew music, and I knew that the kind of racket that Ewan and Jules were making in that pub with their cheap guitar-and-drums duo could be incredible one day. But first they needed someone to ground their sound.

"You're bloody awful!" I'd slurred to them, my blunt, upfront honesty having even less finesse then than it does now. "You need a bassist."

Jules had looked like he wanted to fight me, but Ewan just cocked his head and shouted. "You know one?"

"Yeah!" I puffed up. "Me!"

And that was that.

The two of them grew up working class in the north of England, while I grew up comfortable in the greener and friendlier south. But now we were family, as near as blood would allow. And the music we played on stage was nothing like the stately thunder of the classical pieces I'd cut my teeth on, but I was still performing for a living so my mother was cautiously proud of me all the same.

I closed my eyes and let the music wash over, trying to push out all of the thoughts that scrambled to the forefront of my brain.

The lights came up. The crowd roared. I blinked my eyes open with a start and then relaxed to watch the silhouette of Jonah King jogging onto the stage. I took out my headphones and listened for a moment. His sound was grittier than ours. I could hear some country touches to his southern style rock, the swampy groove of a blues backed bassline lurking in the shadows. It was good shit. If he kept touring this relentlessly, he'd definitely have a breakout hit by the end of the year, and with his cache as a former child star and the brother of the more well known Silas King, he had the curiosity factor working in his favor.

And then it was over and the crowd was humming expectantly. The inward rush of twenty thousand people taking a breath at once, the shuffle of forty thousand different feet all squirming in anticipation.

The lights snapped on propelling me to my feet.

It was showtime.

With a buzz in my ears and a hum through my veins, I bounced past my kit, before jogging out on to the stage, and taking my place to the right of Hudson.

And then paused and looked back to my kit. Something had pinged my "wrong-meter" as Tally called it. That sense I get that something is out of place without even needing to look at it.

Something was out of place at my kit.

Or rather, someone.

"You?" I mouthed.

To my left, seated primly on the stool where my big, bearded tech should have been, was Reese Bailey. She was so small, I hadn't even registered her there at first, but now our gazes locked and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up as she looked up at me like she wanted to set me on fire.

I felt myself glance upward, wondering if she'd rigged up a light to fall on my head after all. "Me," she mouthed back with a business-like nod.

This was not right. She wasn't a tech. She didn't know my kit, she didn't know my tunings. I opened my mouth, ready to shout at Woody over my monitor, to demand to know what the fuck he was playing at.

But there was no time. Reese handed me the first bass guitar off my rack and I did a triple take to make sure it was the right one. And then the show began.

She was...smooth. Anticipated everything. All my guitars were tuned perfectly. At one point I broke a string and she had the replacement lined up even before I'd noticed it myself. I glanced at her again, mouthing my thanks, and this time I couldn't help but grin. She nodded and smiled back.

It was like Reese and I shared one brain, connected by the music. And when it was all over and the house lights came up, I turned to her, still feeling that exhilaration of connection. "That was bloody brilliant," I exhaled.

"Thanks," she said shortly, but her eyes were shining enough that I knew she was pretty happy too.

"So let's just be clear a sec," I said. "So far you've saved my life both musically and literally. What else can you do?"

She grinned a little wider. "I can do a lot of things," she said, and fuck me if that didn't make a whole host of ribald questions spring to my lips. But I tamped them down and asked the only question that made sense right now.

"Do you know how to play?"