‘Nothing!’ I don’t want to spark off anything that might spoil the last night of our tour.
‘Why are you lying?’ She looks incredulous. There’s no way she believes me.
‘Ravi,’ I say – and if I could take those words back, I would – ‘d’you honestly think I’d do it with Shane?’
She frowns at me, then breaks into a loud, booming laugh and hugs me. ‘That’s up to you. Honestly, I don’t care what you two get up to!’
It’s too late to backtrack now. ‘You are joking,’ I say. ‘Jesus, Rav.’ She grins and everything is normal again, until a small movement snags my attention. Shane is standing in our doorway. His hair is dishevelled, and rather than looking at me, he is staring blankly into the middle distance. ‘What are you doing?’ Ravi asks.
He doesn’t answer. His face is like stone.
‘Aren’t you getting ready?’ she prompts him.
‘No,’ he replies.
She looks at him, then at me, as if I might be able to shed some light on what’s going on. ‘Shane, you need to,’ she says. ‘What’s up? D’you feel ill, or?—’
‘I’m going home.’
Ravi stares at him. ‘What? You can’t do that! We have a gig tonight?—’
‘Yes, I can,’ he says defiantly.
No, she’s telling him; that can’t happen. Tickets have been sold and we’re finally getting somewhere, after all our years of hard work. Rob Jessop from the record company is coming to see us. This is our big chance. She’s right – it really matters that we not only play tonight, but play our best.
‘Please, Shane,’ I start. ‘We’ve just got this one last gig?—’
‘He’ll play,’ Ravi says, marching across our room and picking up her guitar, the beloved instrument her parents bought for her eighteenth birthday. Perhaps hoping to deflect things, she sits on the edge of the bed and begins to strum softly, working through one of our songs.
For a few moments Shane and I watch her in silence. Then he turns and leaves the room. Ravi leaps up, guitar still strung across her body. ‘Fucking hell, Shane, what are you doing?’ she blurts out. ‘You’re not walking out on us!’ She charges after him into the hallway and there’s shouting out there.
‘Ravi, stop it!’ he cries out. I rush out and see it happen: Ravi grappling with Shane, and him trying to break away. Angrily, she pulls off her guitar. Perhaps she drops it, or maybe she flings it down because this matters so much; for years it’s all she’s cared about. And now she’s yelling at Shane, and he’s stormed into his room and slammed the door and Ravi’s guitar is lying on the lino floor, its neck broken.
There’s no gig that night. We don’t stay at the guest house. We just pack up our stuff, and Ravi drives me and her home, and we barely speak the whole journey. She is furious.
I never find out how Shane gets back. Because that’s it; we never hang out together after that. There’s no band, no friendship. No gang of three any more, hanging out together in the Kapoors’ garage. It’s all over.
It seems crazy now that we couldn’t patch things up. But I was too ashamed to even try. In fact, before I left for London, I went out of my way to avoid Shane, which was challenging with him living in the same street. But then, understandably, he seemed to be steering clear of me too. As for Ravi, she had always been the strong one and I guess she didn’t want to back down.
Whatever the reasons, it was all so stupid and unnecessary, and surely we could have worked things out? We could have even clubbed together to buy her a new guitar! But I guess that’s how it is to be young. You think you’re right about everything; that you know it all. Or you realise you’re wrong – but don’t know how to fix it. My instinct was to run away.
I open my eyes, realising they’re crusty, perhaps from crying in my sleep. So I have slept a little. As my vision grows accustomed to the gloom, I notice several things. Daylight is struggling into the van now, and rain is pattering gently on Doris’s roof. I realise to my horror that I have snuggled close to Shane, that we are lying face-to-face – close enough to kiss. And my arm is slung over him, as if holding him close.
My heart thuds. What did we do last night? Nothing! I reassure myself. Absolutely nothing! We must have somehow drifted together like this in our dreams.
Thankfully, he seems to be sound asleep. Slowly, I lift my arm off him, and ease myself away until there’s a respectable distance between us. His eyes open, and he looks at me a little blearily and smiles. ‘Morning,’ he says.
‘Morning!’ Instantly, I am scrambling up and pulling on a sweater over my PJs, as if that will cover up my mortification.
Shane sits up and stretches out his long, lightly muscled arms. ‘Good sleep?’ he asks.
‘Erm, not really,’ I admit.
‘Rain keep you awake?’
‘Yes, something like that.’ I look at him, sitting there, gazing up at me, on a mattress that’s only a little thicker than a pancake. Perhaps he’s fully aware of how we were lying together when I woke up. I just have that feeling. But I also know that it’s okay between us; that everything is okay. And as he smiles his beautiful smile, I realise that, right now, there’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.
25
