“He’s right,” agreed Oliver. “Sophie has always been pure evil and will always be pure evil.”
From across the way, Brian and Amanda were wandering back from the Royce-Royce Experience with supplies for the group. “Don’t tell James,” Brian called out from slightly too far away, “but these pasties are fucking brilliant.”
“Actually,” said James Royce-Royce, watching his son plundering sausage rolls from Amanda’s bag, “could we keep thefucksdown a bit in front of the kids? Baby J’s mirroring a lot.”
“Fuck,” said Amanda. “Sorry.”
“Fuck,” said Baby J.
“Ruff,” said Spud.
“Hey.” Priya put up her hands. “I’m an artist. I have to be allowed my free expression.”
“You’re a visual artist,” Oliver pointed out. “I don’t think swearing in front of children translates much into sculpture.”
She shrugged. “Art’s mysterious.”
Realising I hadn’t eaten all day, I pounced on one of the slow-roast pork sandwiches and stuffed it slightly embarrassingly into my face. “Is everybody having a good time?” I managed to ask between bites.
“The twins aren’t here,” said Sophie, “so yes.”
“Also,” chimed in Brian, “you got a fu—a blooming Bolt Thrower tribute band. I don’t know how you managed to dig them up.”
Honestly, neither did I. I’d mostly just taken anybody who looked available. “I’m mysterious too,” I explained. “Also I think they were cheap.”
“Undervalued,” Brian corrected me.
I looked at Jaz across the group. She’d tucked a carefully wrapped pork pie into one pocket but otherwise wasn’t eating anything. “So,” I said very gently, because this was going to some very her-mum-related places, and that was still a fine line to walk, “Odile”—still felt weird—“is going to be up really soon and, well, if you wanted to come watch from the wings, I think she’d like it and—”
Jaz gave a shudder I thought was exaggerated. “She won’t drag me onstage or make me sing with her or anything, will she?”
I could say, with absolute certainty, that she wouldn’t. “No, she’s way too kind and way too vain.”
Having made sure somebody was looking after Spud, Jaz wandered over to join me and Oliver.
“I’m sorry your mum couldn’t stick around for this,” I whispered to Jaz as we approached the stage and the closing strains of the Real Original Skenfrith Male Voice Choir’s rendition of “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” began to die away.
I’d been shooting for compassionate. I worried I’d hit crass. But Jaz seemed fairly chill. “For the best. She’d have loved the music, but the crowd’s too much.”
Jaz, Oliver, and I mounted the stage and lurked in the wings, out of sight of everybody but the techs and the backup singers. I could see Judy on the other side, her dogs lying at her feet, probably because they were exhausted after the walk from Pucklethroop-on-the-Wold. In front of us, my mum—my actual mum, looking younger, more alive, and, in ways I didn’t like to think too much about, moreherselfthan I could ever remember seeing her—strode out in front of the festival crowd, who cheered the way only ten thousand genuinely excited and moderately well-catered-for people can cheer.
“Hello, CRAPPstonbury!” she called out, with the effortless confidence of a legend of the rock ’n’ roll. “My name is Odile O’Donnell. I was going to say it’s good to be back, but really”—she put her hand over her heart—“I never went away. I am here. I am here foryou. And I am never leaving.”
In that moment I’d have bet good money that every single human being in that crowd felt like she was saying those words to just them, directly and personally. But to me they hit different. Because I’d lived them. And I knew they were true in every part of me. And I wanted more than anything else to pass them on to the people I cared for.
I laid one hand on Jaz’s shoulder, and Oliver slid his arm around my waist.
And the music started.
Epilogue
Jaz was sixteen when she left us.
She did…okay at her GCSEs. I think. Ever since they’d started being numbers instead of letters I’d kind of lost track of what they meant, but she got an 8 in music, which Mum was pretty made up about. Oliver had been more excited that she’d got a 6 in maths, because she’d been having trouble with that the whole time, and it had taken ages for her to let him help her with it.
The morning Jaz’s mother was due to collect her, I got up early. I’d been getting up early a lot lately. I was never going to become a morning person, but between a dog and a kid, I’d got weirdly used to having stuff to do before ten, and while I still didn’tlikeit, my brain was gradually accepting that it was the new normal.
“Coffee?” offered Oliver as I stared blearily into the toaster.
