‘Dan now, evidently. What’s that?’ She pointed. ‘WTID? Is that some kind of code? Does it mean anything?’

‘Yes,’ Ali said. ‘It means Wednesday Till I Die.’

‘Wednesday? Why Wednesday, why not any other day of the week?’

‘Football team,’ Ali said. ‘Soccer.’

‘English guy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right on,’ Cass said, leaning over for a better look. ‘Oh yes, keep on stirring, baby, till it hits the spot.’

4

SHEFFIELD,
23 DECEMBER 1978

The music throbbed through the floor from the room below, and a muffled hubbub of raucous voices – singing, shouting, laughter – rolled about the house like a secondary soundtrack, pressing itself up the stairs and through the cracks around closed doors. Alison and Daniel were in a small bedroom at the back of Kev’s house: a box room really, a place where useless things were stored and immediately forgotten. There were ragged stacks of newspapers and magazines on the floor, an obsolete Bush television set, a hamster’s cage, a suitcase with a rusted, busted lock, a cardboard box filled with ruined paintbrushes, a roll of pebble-print lino and a roughly folded heap of thick orange curtains, although there were none at the window, so the room was lit sodium yellow by the street lamp on the pavement outside. She was lying on her back, in his arms, on a pile of coats, on a single bed. He held her gingerly, as if she could break, and actually, she was afraid that she might. She felt insubstantial, a tissue-thin girl. Back there, on the dance floor downstairs, she’d felt so complete, so sure of herself, and she’d known Daniel was watching her, and she’d known how good she looked; but now she had no idea what was expected of her: no idea what Daniel expected her to do. She felt foolish, and fragile, and at a loss.