I tell Joe about it next day. Not about what Alec said, because I still can’t think about that. Instead I tell him about my plan for giving Banks the Christmas he deserves, which can’t happen without some help.
We meet in one of our favourite shops. It sells all this funny stuff that’s no use to anyone really, like rabbit-shaped bottle openers, magnetic dartboards and cartoon T-shirts. I find Joe by a display of grow-your-own-boyfriends and hope I won’t be getting one for Christmas.
His face is sad. He’s chewing his lip, and his pale skin and bleached hair make him look like an angel. I creep up close, blow on the back of his neck and make him jump.
‘Hey, Coo,’ he grins. ‘You startled me.’
‘Who’d you think it was?’
‘No one,’ he says.
We wander round the shops and I slowly relax. I buy Joe a T-shirt with a strip across the front that lights up, and he buys one for me that looks blank except under ultraviolet light.
‘You’ll have to come out with me one night,’ he says. ‘Just to see what’s on it.’
By the time we’re done, the darkness is coming down. The shops are open late, still full of people, and the air is high and cold, thick with the smell of doughnuts and winter candyfloss. There’ll be a mist over the sea before long.
As we wander out into a square, I hear music and there’s the little group of men and women again in their dark uniforms. People are walking past as if the musicians are ghosts that no one but I can see, although sometimes a lone shopper will drop a coin into their collecting tin.
The brass instruments have a lonely sound; a note in them that makes you think of things you’ve missed or no longer have, until they strike up a brighter tune and then it makes you smile. Joe has walked on, not realising I have stopped, and he’s come back to find me. ‘What are you doing with this lot?’ he asks. ‘Let’s go…’
‘I like it, Joe. It’s nice.’
‘I’ll meet you at the cash point then,’ he says, and strides away as if he can’t bear to be near them.
One of the women smiles at me. They’ve stopped playing and are packing away their instruments. I give the woman my last pound, and then ask her.
‘You take in homeless people, don’t you? You know – at Christmas.’
She puts her tambourine in a cloth bag and looks up at the sky a moment.
‘We do that all year round,’ she says. ‘But especially at Christmas, yes. Did you have something in mind?’
I stare at her. I remember one Christmas, one terrible year, when these people looked after Sam when he was so bad we couldn’t have him at home. That was the worst ever. We sat round the table with paper hats on, pretending everything was normal – that one of us wasn’t out in the cold somewhere, being looked after by strangers. I feel my cheeks burning as if I should still be ashamed, but I wasn’t then. I was just glad to sleep in peace.
She’s still looking at me, waiting, so I go on. ‘Do you ever play along the seafront?’ I ask. ‘Right along where the train stops – where no one goes? Up top I mean – along the road.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she says, smiling. ‘Should we?’
I think for a moment. Joe comes back and stops some way off, waiting for me. I lean in and whisper to the woman and she listens and nods, as if what I’m asking is the most normal thing in the world.