1.

It was a place with pale pink walls and a screen at the front of the room. Eyes half-open and he could feel the light streaming in, really bright, golden, light that said: it is the middle of summer, July, August, and you’re here, in the middle of the holidays, here with your head on the school desk while everybody else is in their own bed, sleeping.

He recognised it as being his old primary. One he’d joined mid-term, a few weeks before Easter. Standing at the playground’s edge watching while other boys chased, pulling one another to the ground. They already knew each other and he feared it might next be him, lying there in the dirt with grit in his face. Unfamiliar, rough games. He felt it all, laying there in this empty room with his face on the desk, and a slight breeze at his back from the open side door.

Miss Firth, his English teacher in Secondary School, was a woman of odd clothing and very fixed, black hair. The girls called her Panda because of the amount of eyeliner she wore. She was outside the open door, talking to a man who sounded very sure of himself. Samhain couldn’t turn his head, but he knew the man’s pockets were full of money, and the desk held him down and he was close to closing his eyes against this glinting, beautiful August light.

They both came in, the man bringing with him a smell like an old, tattered piece of cloth. The man trailed her slightly, hand hovering lecherously a couple of inches behind Miss Firth’s backside. But he hadn’t touched her yet, and Miss Firth seemed not to realise what he was doing.

Sam’s throat ached, a soreness that stopped him from saying a word, and they walked around him as though he wasn’t even there.

Miss Firth said, ‘What are you talking about, Die Hard 2? Look at the number of letters, you idiot!’

It took a moment for Samhain to pull it all together.

Stick was in the seat opposite, head newly shaven, beautiful blue eyes glistening with early tour madness. He was holding up a sheet of paper, slashed through with lines and curves in magic marker. A part-finished demarcation of a splitter van, crudely drawn, was underneath the gaps.

Newly on the road, almost two days into the driving, and they hadn’t yet got truly bored.

‘Guess again, fucktard,’ Stick said.

Samhain looked out onto the road, rubbing his eyes. A six-lane road, concrete and tarmac, neat white lines dividing almost black, completely equal, lanes. ‘Where are we?’

‘Eh up, sleeping beauty.’ Frankie turned his head. ‘Finished cleaning the windows, have you?’

‘What have I missed?’

Stick gestured at the van floor. Between their feet lay twenty or so finished games of Van Man, their touring version of the game Hang Man. They had first played this game two years ago, on the long drive from Salzburg to Munich, and Frankie liked to say that he had invented it. Though, because Frankie also said that he didn’t believe in copyright or bullshit protection of ownership of ideas, other touring bands were welcome to use it without making him any sort of royalty payment. He was generous that way.

‘You’ve missed me nearly reaching my maximum tolerance level for Frankie’s shocking level of illiteracy.’

Samhain followed the sheet as Stick moved it around. ‘Mean Girls 2,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Stick pointed the Sharpie at him, triumphantly, and filled in the rest of the letters. ‘Die Hard 2, my arse. It’s not even the same number of letters.’

‘You know I’m dyslexic,’ Frankie whined.

They had been up since before five, all of them, spending more than a day on the road already, and all that without yet playing a gig.

‘Dyslexic enough to only draw eight spaces for Terminator.’ Even with the early start, Stick’s skin was new as a petal. The boy was a genetic wonder. Twenty-six, but looking like a lad in his last day at sixth form.

‘Anybody want to make a stop?’ Lemmers, the driver, threw this over his shoulder. ‘I know a little village about half an hour away, with this mom-and-pop bakery that does these great pretzels. All vegan.’ Lemmers filled the seat solidly, all bulk and shoulders, in a CND t-shirt that he’d been wearing ever since the Cold War.

‘Lemmers,’ Frankie shouted. ‘The human guidebook! Knows every corner of Europe.’

‘I bloody love touring with Lemmers!’ Stick called.

‘Lemmers!’ they chanted. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’

Romey, the fourth person in the back, who was sitting behind Samhain and had been silent until this point, joined in with the voice of a damp chainsaw starting. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’

This last, was tour deadweight. Not in the band and unable to drive, Romey was along for the tour, not for any other useful reason. They had brought him along for the sake of their endless affection for him, and pity. Officially, they’d told him he was there to mind and sell the merchandise, because they knew Romey wouldn’t come if he’d known they all felt sorry for him. Poor Romey, who lived on his own, had nobody to go away with, and never went anywhere.

‘Is that a yes for the stop, then? Because if we don’t, it’s about another four hours to the squat.’

Their driver was a man who seemed to know every road in Europe without needing to look at a map. Fifteen years of hands on the wheel, driving DIY and punk bands all over the continent, had taught him every place to stop in front of hunger or thirst, each spot with a hidden vegan option, and each place with a clean toilet and sink. You were always safe with Lemmers, the human AA Roadmap.

‘Yes, stop,’ Samhain said. ‘I could do to get a bite.’

After the pretzels, silence.

Stick and Frankie leaned back in their seats, becoming propped-up scarecrows; Stick was further forward than he had been on the earlier leg. Every time they hit a bump in the road, his knees touched Samhain’s.

Lemmers had this music on with a girl and a harp. It sounded as though it had been recorded in a barn, and she’d just happened to be singing whilst milking a cow, and the cow was just out of reach of the microphone. You could almost hear it moving its cloven hoof in the straw.

He fell back to sleep, head resting against the window.

Out front of the squat, and four hours later, a rangy man in a falling-apart vest strung rope lights amongst the branches in a large and overgrown garden. He looked as though he might have been stretched on a rack.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You must be one of the bands, right? Go in.’ Night was starting to fall.

There were two dogs, whip-tailed and dark, with fur that looked like something from a shoe brush. In the kitchen, half a dozen people were occupied in something. A man stirring a steaming stew-pot. A woman stapling fanzines on the table. ‘Hello,’ they said.

The band passed through, carrying their guitars. Into the hall, past an open doorway with four mattresses on the floor, and they hadn’t even got to the gig room, which was down two steps at the end of the corridor, before Lemmers ran into somebody he knew.

‘Lemmers!’ A man in black jeans and a leather vest, with a bountiful maritime beard, threw ham-hock arms around their driver. ‘You old tour dog, you!’

They stood with their arms around each other, slapping backs as though trying to beat the air out of line-caught fish.

‘Tonight,’ the man said effortfully, with a thick accent, ‘tonight, we drink!’ He produced a bottle of Buckfast, smiling. ‘I want all of you to feel at home,’ he went on. ‘Because any friend of Lemmers, is a friend of mine. Glasses!’ he roared. ‘Welcome to my restaurant!’

Off he went, wobbling towards the kitchen.

Somewhere between locking the van and arriving at the bottom of the stairs, Lemmers’ bushy hair seemed to have sprung up like a lion’s. ‘Lukas,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘Old friend.’

‘Now, then.’ The friend reappeared. Shot glass, wine glass, highball, mug, mug, tumbler, shot. Lukas carried a tray of mismatched and still good-enough glasses, each brimming with maroon liquid. ‘Fine service, for fine people.’ He gave each willing hand a drink. ‘Cheers!’

Frankie was wearing a louche grin, like a man just freed from jail. ‘Well, Lemmers, all I’ll say is this. If we keep on bumping into your friends on this tour, we are all going to have a very, very, very, very...’ he paused, to knock the Buckie back from the shot glass, and winced: ‘A very good time.’

‘Friends of yours brought this.’ The friend leaned over, to refill the glasses. ‘You know the boys from Patrick Stewart The Band? Came through here, two days ago. No job too big, they said, if it is going to help our friend the legendary Lemmers.’

‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’ Romey began chanting. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’

This, Samhain said to himself as he raised his glass and then sank it, this is touring. He watched a grin spread, warm as marmalade on toast, over Romey’s worried, tense little face. Smiles equally spreading over Frankie and Stick’s faces, as though out here and among friends, their worries had all melted away, like sugar in tea. This, he told himself, this is what true happiness is. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’ he shouted.

The dogs yapped and barked, chasing their tails.

That night was the clearest sound they’d ever had.

He didn’t know how she’d done it, the girl. Kick drum thumping through the speakers; his and Frankie’s guitars separate, and distinguishable. He could hear his own voice coming back to him through a monitor by his feet.

Frankie’s too, more thick and raspy than ever, by the speaker just next to him, and Samhain started to think, funny that it should sound so close, when Frankie is all the way over there – by the windows.

The crowd were all right up in it, tattooed black sleeves and dancing. A woman with grey dreadlocks had a can in her hand and her arm in the air; face all mushed up, and smiling.

A man – fat, bald and shiny – stood aside from the throng, singing every single word. They were all doing it, the whole crowd. A young lad with a dog on a big of string danced with one foot almost touching Frankie’s, while his dog, a large blondish thing, quivered by the speaker stack. Voices so loud they might carry the whole song, if the band were to suddenly stop.

But Stick never would. Face slippery with sweat, wearing that joyful-sex look that he wore when he was drumming. Eyes closed, smiling, slowly shaking his head.

Stick, always there. Forever smiling, no matter how many days you spent on the road. And Frankie, over there with the bass touching his belt buckle. Frankie, good, solid, dependable Frankie, who you could rely on no matter what. These two best boys were the finest you could ever find anywhere. You could not find better bandmates. Samhain knew that for a fact. He took a step towards the mic.

‘Keep on moving faster...’

He’d sung these words so many times that if you wrote them out, they’d fill a phone book.

Silence. The old man stared, jaw hanging slack. A clatter of drum stick on the kit. Samhain’s voice shouted out into the nothing. The end of the song had caught him by surprise, somehow.

‘Oh Christ,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

Laughter: the crowd clapping, cheering. ‘Est-a-mos!’ they shouted. ‘Est-a-mos! Estamos! Estamos!’

All the way around the room, the chant went up. A clap on every syllable. ‘Estamos! Estamos! Estamos! Estamos!’

Samhain felt a hand on his shoulder. The grey-haired woman leaned forward, grabbing his upper arm with bony fingers. ‘You guys are the best,’ she said.