Something that Esther—had she been feeling herself—would have contested. In all her years of supporting local bands and weird acts, standing on pub carpets saturated with sweat and stale beer, or in basements with questionable health and safety standards, Esther had never paid more than a tenner for entry.

Feeling guilty for dragging Ed Gemmell along, she marched right up to the bar that ran the full length of the room and waved furiously at the man behind it, who seemed preoccupied by poking the material of his T-shirt into his belly button.

She turned to Ed Gemmell. “What do you want? My treat.”

“Oh, er, thanks, but can I just have tap water? Maybe with a bit of ice and lemon? Treat myself and all that.”

The bar didn’t have any lemon. Or ice. But it did have a tap.

“Are you sure that’s all you want?” Esther said, handing him a not entirely cold glass.

“Yes, thanks.” Ed Gemmell took his drink and eyed the limescale still clouding the contents. “Water’s good for you. Plus I need to stay up and finish reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ahead of tomorrow’s seminar.”

“You work too hard.” Esther sipped her drink and pulled a face. She wasn’t even sure why she’d ordered it. Stout had never been her thing, but Vectra had gone on about how Northern breweries were suffering from the influx of London-based microbreweries. “The first year of university is about life experiences like these . . .”

She waved a hand at the sparsely populated room. The venue was a function room at the back of the pub, with peeling wallpaper and mirrored pictures mottled with age. A bit like the patrons. The people there looked less like enthusiastic music fans and more like people who’d arrived early for a town hall meeting about parking restrictions.

“Do you think there’s more people here to perform than to watch?” Ed Gemmell speculated, tugging his coat tighter as another couple of people swept in through the side door.

Neither of them was Vectra. If she was already there, then Esther couldn’t see her. Which meant that Vectra wouldn’t know she was there.

“What are you doing?” Ed squawked as Esther put an arm around his neck and yanked him so close, her nose ended up in his ear.

“Taking a picture.”

Ed Gemmell twisted as if trying to free himself. “Can’t I put my drink down?”

“What are you, an amateur? Incorporate it into your pose.” Esther clamped him tightly enough to prevent further wriggling. He let out a pained wheeze as Esther held her phone up to catch them at the perfect angle. She took a few, cycling through all the appropriate poses—excited, moody, ready to rock. Ed Gemmell stuck with terrified.