“Got a light?” she asks, holding up the rollie. Her voice isn’t what I expected either, it’s so deep, so sure, but when she sings, it’s delicate, like a teardrop that hangs but never falls.

When I shake my head she turns to the guy standing next to us, who already has his lighter out. She thanks him then turns her face away as she exhales.

“You OK?” she asks, leaning against the window. “You waiting for someone?”

When I nod, she nods back. “Good. I hate going into places like this on my own.”

“Mal,” I say then make sure to add, “Mal from Trafalgar Records,” because I’m hoping she’ll say, “Oh, I know Mal!” and we can have a conversation because I really want to have a conversation with her. But the skin between her eyebrows pinches.

“Babe, didn’t you hear?”

I frown back. “Hear what?”

“Mal died.”

*

I don’t say anything, just turn and walk back to the bus stop then get on the first one that comes. When I’m safely ensconced on the top deck, I google it. According to the Argus website, Mal had a heart attack at the shop yesterday. I hope he wasn’t alone. I can’t think about it, about him lying on the floor of the shop by himself. So I think about him standing behind the counter, sipping tea from his Snickers mug. I wonder what he was listening to when it happened.

I hope it was something cool like ‘Going Underground’ by The Jam.

*

I stay on the bus until I have to get off, then get another going back into town. I glance at the Hope and Ruin as the bus passes. I can’t see inside, but I imagine Reeba sitting on a stool, her hair falling forward as she plays her guitar, and it’s almost enough to make me go in.

Almost.

*

My parents are waiting up for me when I walk in at five past eleven.

“How was it?” Mum asks, pink with pride. She looks so happy that I swallow it back, Mal and Reeba and this thing in me that’s broken that I want her to fix but I know she can’t.

“Great, but I’m knackered,” I tell her with a practised smile, and when I’m at the bottom of the stairs I can’t help but ask myself how it’s possible to be so close to someone, to share their blood and eye colour and DNA, and them still not know you at all.

*

I check on my grandmother when I get upstairs, opening her door to find her snoring so contentedly that I almost smile as I head to my room. I don’t even take off my coat, just go straight to my turntable and play the Kamasi Washington album Mal made me listen to last week. I stand there for a while, my eyes closed as the warm music washes over me. And just like that I’m back in Trafalgar with Mal, bickering about jazz.