She looked at Eileen, but she was gone again, to wherever it was her mind drifted to. She pulled herself from Briony’s arms and looked out at the seascape before her.

She didn’t say another word the whole time Briony was there.

Kerry woke up alone. She stretched in the bed and put out her arm to a cold empty space. Opening her eyes, she remembered that Evander had not been there when she had got home the night before. She turned over on to her back and sighed. She had got used to having him beside her, having him there when she opened her eyes. Her neighbours were faceless people who kept office hours so she rarely saw them, and the fact that she was a singer, one who was becoming well known, gave her the perfect excuse to have a black musician with her. Now she wanted that black musician and he wasn’t here.

She looked at the clock by her bedside. It was nearly ten-thirty. She sat bolt upright in bed. She had slept later than she had for a long time. As she pulled a dressing gown around herself, she heard Bernie’s key in the door.

‘Hello, Bernie, where’ve you been all night.’ Kerry walked out into the hallway as she spoke, tying the sash of the dressing gown. The sight of Bernadette’s face made her stop in mid-sentence.

‘What’s wrong? Is it Eileen?’

Bernadette shrugged off her coat and dropped it unceremoniously on the floor of the hallway. Then, yanking off her cloche hat, she dropped that on to the untidy pile as well.

‘Come through to the kitchen, Kerry. Nothing’s wrong with Eileen but there’s something I have to tell you.’

‘What? What’s wrong, Bernie?’

Bernadette picked up the kettle and banged it down on the hob. She lit the gas then, satisfied it was fully alight, looked into her sister’s face and said: ‘He’s gone.’

Kerry screwed up her eyes in disbelief. ‘Who? Who’s gone?’

‘Evander. The whole band, in fact. Mother tumbled you, Kerry, she was told about you and him. Briony had him driven out last night.’

Kerry put a slim hand to her throat. Holding on to the table with the other hand, she whispered: ‘He ain’t dead?’

Bernadette, after a sleepless night with her mother who’d been cursing her errant daughter up hill and down dale, finally snapped.

‘Oh, don’t be so bloody dramatic! They got shot of him, that’s all.’

Kerry sat on a wooden kitchen chair, her face grey now. ‘Don’t be dramatic, you say! She made short bloody work of Ronnie Olds, to name one of many! Dear God, my poor Evander. They must have taken him last night. I waited for him, but he didn’t come.’ She jumped from the seat and ran through to the bedroom.