‘Nothing,’ she said.

Back in Quorn, in the silence left behind when Dora and Sheila crashed out in bed to sleep off the booze and Stella went out with the camera again, to catch the golden early-evening light, Ali selected a song for Dan, taking him back in time to Carole King. ‘So Far Away’. Love, loss, longing, regret, and a compelling connection, crossing continents.

Yeah. His face, at her door. That would be fine. Really, very fine indeed. She lay down on the old sofa and listened to Tapestry, the whole album, beginning to end. They hadn’t ever listened to this together when they were kids, it wasn’t their thing then, but hey, she thought, if Dan Lawrence didn’t love it now, it was all off. Whatever ‘it’ was.

Stella came back as the day was losing its light.

‘Mum,’ she said, and Ali sat up, alert to the seriousness in her daughter’s voice.

‘What is it, sweetheart?’

‘I really, badly, don’t want to have a baby,’ Stella said, and then she started to cry.

13

SHEFFIELD,
27 JULY 1979

There was a local band Daniel sometimes roadied for, three lads from Sheffield and another from Rotherham. Steve Levitt, Mark Vernon, John Spencer and a guy they all called Dooley. They used to be called the National Union; now they were just the Union. A talented, moody, post-punk outfit, with a part-time manager and their eyes on a glimmer of light that might just be a rock-and-roll future. Steve, older than the others by a good eight years, was founder of the band, unchallenged boss, architect of their immediate future. Charismatic, confident, ambitious, a bit of a bad lot: petty larceny, minor assault – a few years ago now, but that was only to be expected round here, and anyway such a reputation didn’t hurt, to be honest, in a band like theirs. John Spencer did pot, or speed, he was never without one or the other, and their manager – a sponsor, really; a local businessman with a Malcolm McLaren delusion – had considered shopping him to the police, just for the publicity.