‘I love it!’ The words fell out before he could stop them.
Josie blinks at him and quickly slips the photo into her jacket pocket, and the camera into her bag. ‘Shall we go in then?’
‘You want a drink?’ Shane asks in surprise.
She laughs. ‘It’s a bit early even for me. No, just for a look. I’m curious to see it, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ he says truthfully. So in they go, hesitantly. Shane looks around the surprisingly cavernous room, taking in the smell of stale beer and an undertone of damp. The walls are deeply yellowed and strewn with frayed fishing nets, and Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ is playing quietly. There’s not a soul in sight.
‘Look,’ Josie murmurs, indicating the ‘stage’ at the back of the pub. Barely any bigger than a dining table, it’s wedged between the dartboard and the ladies’ loo. Shane can see his younger self right there, hunched shyly behind his drum kit. A barrier between him and the audience that he was always grateful for. It felt as if he could truly be himself, behind his kit. No one could get at him there. It was a world that Pete, and his mum, knew nothing about, and whenever he played, his life at home faded away to nothing.
‘God, this place,’ he says softly.
Josie nods. ‘Feels like yesterday, doesn’t it?’
‘It really does.’ He looks at her, wishing he could take her hand and squeeze it. Wishing he could tell her how this feels, being here.
‘Remember the trouser row before this gig?’ she prompts him.
‘Trouser row?’
She smiles. ‘It was Grimsby, wasn’t it? When Ravi bought you those outrageous trousers from a charity shop?’
Now it flashes back to him. ‘Oh God, yeah! Made out of some kind of shiny black plastic?’
‘And you refused to wear them, like a child.’
‘Hey! Understandably, I think!’ he says in mock defensiveness.
‘So Ravi wore them,’ she says, and as their eyes meet briefly, something sparks in him.
‘To make a point, I think,’ he adds.
‘Yeah.’ Josie nods. ‘That was Ravi all over, wasn’t it?’ She pauses and he catches her glancing at the stage. ‘Oh, Shane. I still can’t believe she’s gone.’
‘Yes, I know.’ I’m thinking it too, he wants to tell her. You and me and Ravi with our lives ahead of us.
‘So,’ she says, ‘what d’you want to do now?’
Shane glances towards the pub’s open door. ‘I think we should go.’
She frowns, seeming momentarily confused. ‘Go back to London, you mean?’
‘Oh, no!’ he exclaims. ‘I meant, let’s get on the road, shall we? To the bright lights of Bridlington?’
‘Sounds good,’ she says as they step out into the sharp, salty air. ‘And you know what? I’d like to drive us there.’
‘Really?’ he asks in surprise. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she insists. ‘Don’t look so terrified.’
‘I’m not!’ he protests. ‘Honestly, I’m not?—’
She grins, thrusting her flattened palm at him. ‘C’mon, then. Hand over the keys.’
20
JOSIE
