At Waverley Station, Katelin clung uncharacteristically on to Dan when they hugged goodbye, and told him she suddenly felt shaky about being so long away from home, and he said a large gin and tonic on the train would soon steady her nerves, but she didn’t smile.
‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘I think I’m going to be homesick.’
He held her at arm’s length and looked into her eyes while she waited for reassurance. ‘You won’t, Katelin, I guarantee it,’ he said. ‘You’ll be with Rose-Ann for a start, and you’ll be seeing and doing way too much to pine for rainy old Stockbridge.’
‘Will you miss me?’ she asked, and he wished she hadn’t, because he could hardly say no, and he really disliked being manipulated. However, ‘You bet,’ he said, because it was easier, and kinder. ‘But,’ he added quickly, ‘you’re not going to miss me, you’re going to have a blast.’
Now she did smile, and drew back. A little way down the platform, Duncan and Rose-Ann were in close conversation. Katelin regarded them for a moment; then she said, ‘Keep an eye on him for her, won’t you?’ and Dan’s smile immediately faded and he said, ‘Ah, don’t ask that of me, Katelin.’
‘No, but he looks up to you,’ she said.
‘I’m not his keeper.’
‘No, I know, but he listens to you, you know he does.’
‘Rose-Ann has no cause for concern,’ Dan said. ‘Duncan hasn’t seen or spoken to Lindsay since before Christmas, she doesn’t want him, and he doesn’t need her.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ Katelin said.
‘Get on that train and don’t look back,’ he said. ‘Seize the next few weeks, and really make them count,’ and he meant it, he truly wanted only the best experience for her, he wanted this trip to be a high point in her life, but he also knew he was hiding his own profound unease, because he wasn’t immune to the crashing irony of being asked to keep Duncan on the straight and narrow.
God knows, he was not the man for that job. In the weeks and then days in the run-up to Katelin’s departure, he’d begun to feel perpetually disorientated, as feelings and events of another lifetime gained ground on him, while Katelin – blameless, entirely blameless – continued blithely on in their present. He longed, now, for her to leave. Yesterday the house had been mayhem, a vortex of paraphernalia and low-level panic, all the various stages of her packing, the details and documents relating to her imminent departure, the choosing of suitcase and cabin bag, the piles of clothes for sunshine, for cooler nights, for rain. He’d done his best, tried to help, dug out some adaptors for US sockets, then Alison had sent him an Arctic Monkeys track, ‘Do I Wanna Know?’, and off he went, spinning down the time tunnel, back to Nether Edge 1979 – although, actually, his first thought had been damn, because he obviously should have sent that song to her – he could hear his own thoughts coming back at him through Alex Turner’s lyrics, and in a Sheffield accent, too. After that he’d had to drag himself back to Stockbridge and the matter in hand, and Katelin had given him that look, the one that told him she knew he was somehow absent, until he’d shaken himself out of the past and given her 100 per cent of his attention, on this big day, the day before she left.
So he felt like a heel, but all he really understood was that he needed a resolution, he had it in his sights, and for his own sanity, and for all the unanswered, tormented questions of the past, he was going to use Katelin’s extended absence to find Alison Connor, and stand in front of her, and then see what happened next. He kissed Katelin goodbye, his dear partner, for whom he really did wish nothing but happiness. Then, as the train moved away from the station, his wayward, ungovernable thoughts went straight back to Alison, and the way her face had always nestled hotly against his neck when they embraced, and she’d breathed him in as though she needed him to stay alive. And the sense he had of Alison’s remembered physical presence was stronger, somehow, than the sense he had of Katelin, who only moments ago had been right here, beside him. Alison Connor was intangible yet concrete, unreal yet hyper-real at one and the same time. A head rush, a total fucking head rush; it was like nothing else he’d ever felt.
The train was gone, and the two men bounded up the steps to Waverley Bridge, and it crossed Dan’s mind to talk to his friend, as he knew he should, about his lost and found love in Adelaide. But in all honesty, he really didn’t want to, and anyway it was easy enough to postpone that conversation, since Duncan was talking nineteen to the dozen about the artists he had in mind for the industry-dominating music-promotion company he believed he and Dan were founding together. Dan was right off the idea – he was too busy, Duncan was too idealistic, and the market was already too tightly sewn up – but he hadn’t told Duncan yet, because his friend was so full of energy and verve that he hadn’t the heart. Duncan had a list of three contenders: the Anstruther fisherman Willie Dundas; a band called Truth Bites Back, a solid enough outfit comprising four guys from Leith who owed everything – the look, lyrics, riffs, rhythms – to Aztec Camera; and an interesting pair of twin sisters from Largs, Katriona and Jeanie McBride, who sang in eerie harmony about drugs, sex and urban decay, with a palpably disdainful attitude that made them oddly compelling. They were far and away the most bankable proposition on Duncan’s notional books, Dan had known that the night he first heard them, dragged along by his pal to a small, underpopulated room at the Paisley Union. They had a thin, wasted look, big eyes in pale faces, scruffy plaits, studs in their noses, eyebrows, lips – anywhere but the earlobes. Both wore their guitars slung low so they had to hunch their skinny shoulders to play. Katriona yawned into the mic at one point, but the yawn melted into the words of the song, so it might have been intentional. They were languid, laconic and clever and in the right hands the McBrides could be everywhere. They called themselves Jeanie and the Kat, another little stroke of genius.
Still, though, there were some mightily effective publishers and promoters out there already, with everything in place to propel a savvy, talented, edgy pair of musicians straight into global recognition, so it was a bit of a leap to imagine Duncan somehow emerging overnight as a contender, even if he could already lay claim to having discovered this pair. After all, this was dear, clueless Duncan Lomax, who spent his days playing music in a record shop, blowing dust off the stylus in the listening booth, drinking coffee with customers who might, or more often might not, buy a record. In all the years he’d owned this shop he’d never bothered to have a website built, never bothered to put his stock online, so that a person who was looking for, say, some early Status Quo, or a white vinyl special edition of Sound and Vision, had to get to Edinburgh, talk to Duncan, and wait in hope while he fished through all the likely boxes. So, it was evident to Dan that not only were they too late to this party, but also, they were ill-equipped to join it, and the very best advice they could give the McBride sisters was to sign up with an existing company, get a buzz going, build a digital presence, and hope it translated to the big time.
Duncan’s shop was at the top end of Jeffrey Street and although that’s where he should’ve been headed, and despite being way too early in the day for a drink, he’d argued a strong case in favour of stopping for a beer in a new craft-ale bar, all industrial chic, with bare brick and scaffolding on the inside and benches made from stacked railway sleepers. They’d bought a couple of German wheat beers from a serious, bearded young man in a long brewer’s apron, then Dan decided the time was now and said, ‘Look, I have to say, buddy, it’s a complete non-starter,’ and Duncan’s smile faded to dismay.
‘Wha’?’ he said, his glass of beer halted on its way to his mouth.
‘We don’t have the skills, man,’ Dan said. ‘Or the time. Well, I don’t.’
Duncan stared with hurt eyes, as if this was the biggest let-down of his life.
‘Have you looked online?’ Dan said. ‘Have you seen what’s out there already, for new artists? They don’t need a label to pick them up any more, there’s stacks of companies they can go to, get a publishing deal, royalties tracked, money for YouTube views, live performances administered, no strings or tie-ins, wham-bam, hello success.’
‘So?’ Duncan said. ‘We could do that, you and me.’
‘No, we couldn’t.’
‘Aw c’mon, dude, we’re the real deal, we live and breathe this world.’
‘It’s not enough to love music, Dunc, you got to do the admin too, and be clued up on tech skills.’
‘But my guys aren’t signed up with anybody.’
‘No, I know.’
‘So we create a company to represent ’em, and get cracking.’
Dan sighed. Katelin was right about Duncan looking up to him and, certainly, it was like talking to a kid sometimes; he should never have encouraged him in the first place. Well, he wasn’t sure he had encouraged him, it was rather that he hadn’t discouraged him, which amounted to the same thing with Duncan.
‘I’m just not able to commit to this right now,’ Dan said. ‘It’d need a hundred per cent effort.’
‘What you so flat out with?’
‘Usual stuff, plus a potential book contract – I’m seeing a publisher next week – and I said yes to this offer from Six Music, the new music panel – I told you about it? Jesus, Duncan. Don’t make me account for myself.’
‘Look,’ Duncan said. ‘Let’s just give it a year, see how we go? Those wee lassies, they’re awesome.’
Dan nodded. ‘They are, they really are. They need some representation, for sure.’
‘So?’
Dan shook his head. ‘You do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch.’
‘You might end up famous for being the man who said no to Jeanie and the Kat.’
‘A risk I’m going to have to take,’ Dan said. He knew what Duncan would be thinking though: that if he, Dan, didn’t want in, it probably wasn’t as good an idea as he’d thought. Duncan believed Dan knew what he was doing, never put a foot wrong, made only good decisions that didn’t land him in the soup.
He really should tell him all about Ali Connor, Dan thought. He almost did, drew in his breath ready to speak, got right to the very edge of it. But then he didn’t.
Back at home McCulloch staggered at him with demented happiness, as if he’d believed he was to be forever alone. He whined and threaded himself in a frantic figure of eight, in and out of Dan’s feet, and Dan stooped to briefly scratch the little dog’s ears, then he stood up again and said, ‘That’s your lot,’ and McCulloch, who fully understood the rules, immediately composed himself and settled for simply shadowing Dan’s every move.
‘Just you and me now,’ Dan said to the dog. He put the coffee pot on in the kitchen and switched on the radio, retuning it with some satisfaction to 6 Music from the wall-to-wall dialogue of Katelin’s preferred Radio 4. Huey Morgan immediately joined him in the room, his Lower East Side drawl taking Dan straight back in time to a basement club in St Mark’s Place, mid-nineties, tiny stage, banging music, sticky floor, dim red lights, a long night of revelry with the Fun Lovin’ Criminals. God, they’d tied one on that night. Every time he heard Huey on the radio he could smell fresh fried donuts, yet he couldn’t recall eating any at the time. The theory of Proust’s madeleines gone awry.
He poured himself a coffee and climbed the stairs to his office, McCulloch panting along valiantly behind him, in a house that was filled with a new and very welcome silence. Upstairs, the dog flung himself on to his blanket and Dan switched on the Mac and pulled Twitter on to his screen, to check out @AliConnorWriter, see what she’d been saying, which turned out to be nothing, as, to be honest, was often the case. He got the distinct impression she was part of this particular social media circus at the insistence of a publicist, or her publisher, because her heart clearly wasn’t in it. The last tweet from her had been a couple of weeks ago, raving about a young singer in Adelaide, and Dan had googled her – Tahnee Jackson, he loved that name, that name alone could earn her a record deal, but she was a songbird too, and beautiful, exotic, different.
He tapped the direct message icon, and scooted quickly through their thread of songs, fourteen so far, very few in the scheme of things, yet look where it had led him: right back to her, so that she was now his daily waking thought. Where she was, how she was, who she was – these were his obsessions. He’d lined up a track for her by Richard Hawley, a Sheffield bloke with a great line in nostalgic yearning, which seemed to fit the bill. He sent ‘Open Up Your Door’, and hoped she’d get the connection, because every album this guy made honoured their city, and his music was gorgeous, you could dissolve at the sound of his voice. Then he thought: Right, OK, flights to Adelaide, but still somehow dragged his feet, because, well, it was a mighty leap from brilliant concept to hard reality, and although he knew for sure he was going to go – and without telling her, so she didn’t have a chance to scarper – he just needed to think it through: the distance, the deceit, his chances of success, the vast, yawning, unknowable abyss of the future.
Then his phone rang, the screen filling with the name of the caller, Terri Nichols, an industry publicist, and by startling coincidence the very woman who once sent Dan to the East Village to get hammered with Huey.
‘Extraordinary,’ Dan said when he answered.
‘Why, thank you, darling,’ Terri said with a laugh in her voice.
‘I was just listening to the Huey show on the radio, remembering that trip.’
‘Hey, like they say, if you remember it, you probably weren’t there.’
‘Do you remember it?’
‘I remember random snatches of surreal happenings. But look, I didn’t ring you to reminisce. How’s your diary?’
‘Depends,’ Dan said.
‘Hmm, cagey.’
‘I’m just saying I’m pretty committed, but what you got?’
‘Well it’s a long shot, and it’s very last minute, and you’ll tell me it’s not your thing …’
‘If you think it’s not my thing, Terri, it won’t be.’
‘Dan! Hear me out at least!’
‘Go on then.’
‘So we’ve signed a few DJs, right, and they’re part of an all-night linked set at—’
‘No, I’m not covering a rave for you, all that bloody zoned-out trance stuff.’
‘No, Dan, this isn’t a nineties rave, it’s an electronic dance music festival, and these guys are album-selling career artists.’
Dan sighed, and idly opened his emails on the laptop. ‘No, Terri,’ he said. ‘C’mon, ask a twenty-one-year-old.’
But she was good, Terri Nichols. ‘See, that’s just what I don’t want,’ she said now. ‘I don’t want some kid with no memories of music before the Spice Girls. I want you, with everything you know about music, everything you’ve heard, to listen to them and explain their creative genius to everyone else.’
Dan groaned. ‘Oh, give over.’
‘Honestly, there’s a great piece in this, Dan. These artists work just as hard as an old-fashioned rock band. They tour, just the same, they put in the graft and the grind. Plus, the location’s knockout, in Kowloon’s cultural district.’
‘What? Where is it? I thought you meant here, in the UK?’
She laughed. ‘No, no, it’s in Hong Kong.’
‘Hong Kong?’
‘Yep, Hong Kong. Kowloon.’
He was quiet for a moment.
‘Dan, you still there?’
He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, go on, I’m listening,’ and while she talked, he let his mind race along another track entirely. Hong Kong to Adelaide, he thought: what would it be, eight hours, nine tops? A hop and a skip in global terms. So here was Terri Nichols offering a free long-haul flight in the right direction, for a nailed-on legitimate reason, thereby providing the salve for his conscience of an almost-perfect alibi. It was fate, he thought. An early birthday present from his own personal deity. In-fucking-credible.
‘Yes,’ he said, cutting right through her words. ‘Yes, I’m in.’
Terri’s voice skidded to a halt and she laughed. ‘Well, great,’ she said. ‘But you don’t know when it is yet.’
‘When is it?’
‘Next weekend. You’d fly Wednesday the thirtieth.’
His thoughts spun rapidly to the meeting with the publisher, to lunch with his agent, to the Thursday morning 6 Music gig with Lauren Laverne, to the writing commitments he had, yet none of these things held his full attention in the face of this barely believable turn of events. That this should happen, that Terri should call with this offer, on this very day, was insane. It was perfect. It was meant to be.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘No problem. Thanks, Terri, email me the details,’ and he hung up, and gave a great shout of laughter that woke the dog, who stared at Dan with reproachful eyes.
‘Sorry, buddy,’ he said to McCulloch. ‘You’re not going to like this.’
Of course, the dog was an issue. Dan would be gone for ten days, and old Bridie next door who opened the back door for McCulloch if he was stuck in the house all day couldn’t be asked to feed him, walk him and keep him company for this length of time. Or rather, she could be asked, but she would never agree, not with her four cats and a houseful of demanding orchids. His parents might once have taken him, but not now, not with Bill the way he was. He couldn’t ask Duncan, because McCulloch would certainly die from neglect. He almost asked Terri Nichols, because she was so grateful to him for accepting the gig, and she had no idea, none at all, that she’d articulated and facilitated his greatest desire before he’d even had the idea himself. It was so outrageous, so bold, and yet utterly legitimate. She didn’t bat an eyelid at extending the trip for him – shame to go all that way and not have a mooch around, she said – and this timescale gave Dan the freedom to fly from Hong Kong to Adelaide, before coming back to pick up his return flight. If Alison turned out not to be there, well … No, he thought; she had to be there. She would be there.
Anyway, he didn’t have to ask Terri to take the dog in the end, because he suddenly remembered dear old Jim on Veronica Ann: dear, lonely old Jim. He’d met McCulloch once before, must be ten years ago now, when Dan and Alex had had a weekend in London to watch Wednesday v. Crystal Palace, but Katelin had made them take the dog. They’d left him all day with Jim, and by the time they got back from Selhurst Park, McCulloch was sitting on the prow of the boat with a navy-blue bandana round his throat. ‘Ship’s mascot,’ Jim had said. ‘Splendid little chap. Bring him to me any time you like, Dan, any time you like.’
So, all this time later, Dan had taken him at his word, and had evidently made Jim’s week. ‘Smashing,’ he kept saying. ‘Smashing. A nice bit of company for me. We’ll get on splendidly.’ He stood with the dog on a lead the next day to wave Dan off, and McCulloch watched him go with a committed stare, which he kept up until the very last glimpse of his beloved owner was gone. Dan could feel the dog’s eyes on his back; he could sense them, all the way down the towpath to Warwick Avenue.
At Heathrow, he left a voicemail for Alex, to let him know he’d be away, although the chances of Alex caring were close to nil, given the pace of his life in Cambridge: the work, the girls, the gigs. Nice to hear his recorded voice though; it called him very much to mind, so that Dan could see his son’s intelligent brown eyes, his charming smile, his dark, unkempt hair. They were so alike: the boy’s colouring, height, sense of humour, hopeless passion for Wednesday – all his father’s. If there’d been another baby, it would’ve looked like Katelin, Dan was sure of this, a little Celt, pale skin and reddish hair. But she’d only wanted one child, and it had to be her call in the end, although as the years had passed Dan had sometimes found himself missing the other one, missing perhaps the other two, wondering who they might have been.
He had no bag to check in, he travelled light and always with the same canvas holdall; it’d been everywhere with him, seen it all. His business-class ticket gained him a seat in a chic, capacious lounge, free newspapers, food, wine, beer, but he found himself in a contemplative mood and so he just sat in a leather armchair looking out over the tarmac, where the ground crew loaded suitcases into the belly of the plane he’d soon be on. He reflected on this leap of faith he was about to take, and considered the limits of his own certainties. He had to see Alison Connor and his belief in the feelings she had stirred in him was rock solid, yet beyond this he could not say exactly what he wanted, or how this would end. He knew he was acting selfishly, chasing her down through the lost years to see her again and discover if such a person, so perfectly constructed in body and mind to suit his own, could possibly exist. But he had to see this through. Yes, it was an act of treachery, but of all the choices, large and small, that had helped construct his life so far, none felt more imperative than his decision to fly to Adelaide from Hong Kong, to find Alison.
He checked his phone. Details from Terri of the DJs he was seeing. A rescheduled meeting with the publisher. Confirmation from 6 Music that his gig with them would start after his return. And a song, from Ali Connor. He opened the link and stared at this gift, this frank and open-hearted gesture, and felt a pulse of pure love for her for sending the Pretenders, and of all their songs, this song. ‘I Go To Sleep’. Love and lust and plaintive regret.
He knew she’d be there when he got to Adelaide, knew it as he’d never known anything before, knew it in his gut. Knew she was there now, too: thinking about him, thinking about her.