She looked up at him looking down at her. ‘You know, you’re everything to me, Daniel,’ she said. ‘Everything.’

‘Good,’ he said, and grinned at her grave expression. ‘Good, because you’re everything to me, too.’

No one should turn their back on happiness such as this, she thought. ‘This is our time, Alison,’ Dan said. ‘We’ll just roll with it, right?’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘But look, you might have to keep telling me it’s all going to work out, because, for a while, I might have to keep asking.’

The pub was busy, the tables all around them occupied, and although people stared when he pulled her up from her seat into his arms, Daniel and Alison were oblivious, alone together in the crowd. ‘Hey,’ he said, tilting her face up to his so she could see he meant it. ‘Listen to me, Alison Connor. Every little thing … gonna be all right.’

She laughed. ‘I know what you did there.’

‘I know you know. I’ll never fox you with a lyric, you’re weird like that.’

Then she sat down again, he did too, next to her this time, and close enough that she felt the solid warmth of his body through the sleeve of her shirt. She finished her drink and then scanned the room for a while, taking a snapshot in her mind of this ordinary, over-lit, backstreet pub; all the men and women it contained, the motley collection of drinkers and talkers and thinkers. And some of them stared back into her frank and open gaze, one or two of them even smiled; but all of them, she thought, whether they knew it or not, were witness to her happiness. When she turned at last to Dan, she found he was already looking at her.

‘You OK?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘Never better.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You know what? That’s music to my ears.’

If you enjoyed Mix Tape, you will love Jane’s forthcoming novel, Waiting for Sunshine, a powerful and emotional novel about hope, love and family.

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‘Who would name a child Sunshine, then give her away?’

Chrissie has always wanted to be a mother. After months of trying to adopt, she and her husband Stuart finally get the news that a little girl named Sunshine is waiting for them.

Abandoned at a young age, the child comes to them without a family history, and it feels like a fresh start for all of them. But when fragments from Sunshine‘s previous life start to intrude on her new one, the little girl’s mysterious past quickly becomes Chrissie’s greatest fear …

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Song Credits

Lyrics on p.32 from ‘It’s Only Rock ’n Roll (But I Like It)’ written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.