‘I’m fine if you are.’ We settle back into silence punctuated by the odd inconsequential remark. It’s as if we are work colleagues thrown together – tasked with driving to a retail park to collect some refurbished office chairs.
We stop at a service station for fuel, batteries for the lamp, plus coffee and cheese toasties, flattened to extreme thinness and oozing oil. The rain is heavier now, sheeting down the café window, and people are running to their cars with jackets pulled up over their heads. As I chew on my toastie I try to calculate how many of this particular kind of joyless snack or meal we’ll eat together over the next five days.
I sip my coffee and glance at Shane, wondering if he’s starting to regret this. ‘So, what d’you remember about Grimsby?’ I ask.
He gnaws away thoughtfully and then replies, ‘Our first gig away from home, wasn’t it? No friends to come and support us. We didn’t know a soul.’
‘Yeah, it was pretty scary.’ Until then we’d stuck to our home town’s familiar pub venues, where our loyal gang could be relied upon to show up and be disproportionately enthusiastic. But the tour had felt like something else entirely, and Ravi had insisted that we’d rise to the challenge. She was always in charge. She’d invented our ‘style’ (a mishmash of whatever we could fling together), wrote all our music and announced that, with six songs in our repertoire, of course we were a proper band now, ready to play at the world’s most iconic music venues.
The Laughing Haddock in Grimsby! The Mucky Duck in Huddersfield! She was unstoppable.
Nerves aside, as the tour loomed, the thought of being ‘on the road’ with my best friends – with Shane especially – wasn’t entirely terrible. We’d have a whole week away, the three of us together. How thrilling it would be to stay in ropey guest houses, Ravi’s uncle’s caravan, Shane’s great-auntie’s box room and on the living room floor of some distant family friend of mine. Ravi sprayed her hair neon pink from an aerosol can (we knew nothing about climate change) and Shane grudgingly let her hack at his floppy dark hair with kitchen scissors. My choppy crop – also home-cut – was bleached by Ravi in her impossibly glamorous bathroom (jacuzzi bath! Fluffy peach carpet that fitted around the loo!). She made our ‘stage outfits’ – spotty miniskirts worn with wide studded belts – that caused her mum to laugh and roll her eyes. We yearned for Chelsea Girl and Miss Selfridge, but these thrilling emporiums of style were a million light years away in Bradford. Meanwhile, Ravi forced Shane into a Breton top with a ripped neckline and persuaded him that a little make-up would look great.
What a ragbag we were, barely competent onstage, yet bubbling with the joy of all being together. Ravi made all of that happen, just as she is making this happen on this bleak, wet, Saturday afternoon. She was so ill, and I didn’t even know. My vision fuzzes and I clear my throat. ‘I don’t remember much about the actual town, though,’ I announce, checking Shane’s set expression. ‘Grimsby, I mean.’
‘Neither do I,’ he says.
I take another bite of my now cold toastie and swallow it down. ‘Well, it was a very long time ago.’ A lull settles. ‘That was when Ravi did your make-up,’ I remind him.
‘Only eyeliner,’ he says with a grin. ‘And I thought it looked pretty cool.’
‘It did! And she teased up your hair into a little quiff, remember?’
He chuckles. ‘I do remember that.’
‘“We’re doing something with that barnet, Shane!”’ I mimic her strident tones.
‘“You look like a bloody geography teacher!”’ he chimes in. ‘And I did. So square and boring, compared to you two…’
But you weren’t square and boring at all. You were adorable with your shy, off-centre smile and that choppy brown hair, constantly flicking into your dark eyes. I wanted to look at you so much that I had to keep telling myself: STOP LOOKING, YOU IDIOT! Or Ravi would realise, and the unspoken rule was that nothing would upset the dynamics of our little trio…
‘…in those outfits,’ he continues. ‘Those matching skirts you used to wear. What did Ravi make them out of?’
‘Pillowcases,’ I remind him.
‘Your mum was worried about you going out like that.’ He looks across the table at me with a smile.
‘Yes, but she was more worried about me electrocuting myself onstage. My parents were terrified of electricity, remember?’
‘Oh yeah! All the plugs pulled out of their sockets at night…’
‘They thought our appliances would catch fire. Even the kettle and toaster. They were worried about us being incinerated in our beds…’
Shane smiles fondly, and I catch a wistful look crossing his green eyes. As if, for a moment, he was right back there. I think of how we kissed, that day with the crow, and push the thought away again. We were just young and reckless, and everyone kissed everybody back then. I was only thanking him.
‘Your parents were always lovely,’ Shane adds.
I smile. ‘You know they were so fond of you,’ I tell him, and he flushes. Of course, everyone knew what Pete, his stepdad, was like, although Shane was always reluctant to go into any of that.
‘You said they’ve moved to Northumberland?’
‘Yeah. I was really surprised, actually. Maybe I was the one who’d held them back all that time.’
‘They didn’t want to uproot you?’
‘Possibly.’ To my shame, I’d always assumed that they weren’t brave enough to relocate and make a new life for themselves. That they’d remain in our little terraced council house until the end of their days.
I finish my coffee and push my cup aside, relieved that we’ve managed these first few hours together at least. But something is niggling and now, before we’re faced with The Mattress Situation, seems like the best time to address it. ‘Shane,’ I start, ‘I was thinking… maybe we should have a few rules on this trip?’
