He gave her her coat, and when she put it on he slipped the cassette into one of the pockets and sent her away with a chaste kiss on the cheek. She left the house in a hail of goodbyes, caught the bus and rode back to Attercliffe in a hazy glow of good spirits, wondering how she could capture today in words and wishing her current idol Sylvia Plath had watched Sheffield Wednesday play at home and then written about it in her journal. This reverie took her all the way home, where she stepped into a house so devoid of light and life that she was for a few seconds derailed. She stood, forlorn and still, and listened for the sound of Catherine, or for Peter’s footsteps on the landing, or for Martin, blundering to the kitchen for another can from the fridge. But there was only a ticking, abandoned silence and a fried-egg smell, and a broken glass on the lino by the cooker. She shed her coat, picked up the fragments of glass and binned them, then tried to wash the plates and the frying pan in the sink, but there was no hot water so all she was doing was swilling grease across the surface of the crockery, and there was something so futile, so wholly depressing, about this that she gave up. There was no note from Peter, which was unusual; she hoped he was out doing something nice, something that he’d chosen to do. She dried her hands on a grubby tea towel in the cold kitchen; thought about Daniel’s house, his mum, the fire blazing orange and blue in the grate, a bottomless teapot, Clover the pigeon, Daniel’s kiss. And then she remembered the mix tape, fished it out of her coat pocket, and went upstairs to her room.

8

EDINBURGH,
15 NOVEMBER 2012

The girl doing Journalism Studies at Stirling University – Sky? Star? Something celestial – scribbled frantic notes as Dan spoke, as if his own haphazard career was some kind of blueprint for success. He always said yes to these young people when they asked to talk to him, because, after all, any one of them could be Alex, and they were only trying to make their way in the world. But this girl was taking it all down word-for-word, while totally missing the point. When Dan talked about his own break, the piece he wrote for NME after that gig in Minneapolis in 1983 where Prince showcased his new backing band and Dan chanced upon a ten-minute interview with the young Wendy Melvoin, Sky-or-Star only wrote steadily for a few moments, then looked up and said, ‘Could you spell Melvoin for me?’