Siobhan flattened her back against the wall as Ruth’s inscrutable face sailed out to combat the bar queue. The crowd shifted into focus; she recognized people. It would be all right. She’d felt quite anxious, going somewhere without Paul, which was ridiculous. They’d been doing professional appearances separately since Daisy was born and had only ever gigged as the band three times in the past decade, so perhaps it was the social aspect of the evening that was worrying her. To be on show at an event like this, with the fierce, constant hug of elastic under her dress making her all too aware of the new flesh she’d never lose, without Paul to tag in and out of their well-rehearsed stories and rescue her from the inevitable parade of humourless former goths who’d loved her when they were teenagers – she had really had to push herself out of the door.

Camden, 1995

The bar that everyone went to was deliberately run-down, made a point of its scruffiness. It was December and Shiv was nineteen, out with two music journalists and one of the record-company guys, all of whom, she was pleasantly aware, were trying to sleep with her. She had been ushered through the bar crowd to a raised, ripped banquette by the broken-legged pool table where everyone could see her through the drifts of cigarette smoke. She’d been down a few times and was talking about moving there, but London still had Shiv enchanted then; the spells it had cast were newness, hugeness, difference from home. That grotty pub glowed and pulsed to her, a kingdom hers for the taking. The album had only just come out and, despite her face being on the cover of the current issue of Select magazine under the headline THIS YEAR’S GIRL (with the male parts of the band small and glowering in the very distant background behind her shoulder), she didn’t know anyone. The record-company guy kept passing her wraps of chaz with too knowing a wink and unnecessarily complicated hand gestures. Slipping through a mob of rich kids in stained thrifted T-shirts, everyone squinting out through unwashed fringes hoping for a Damon or a Justine, Shiv experienced for the first time the sensation of being famous, of hearing people whisper her name as she passed, and it felt fucking great. She was here. It was happening around her and to her and it wanted her. It’s maybe why she would always remember the night so clearly.

There was only one cubicle in the ladies’, and barely enough space by the tiny, grimy basin for one person to wait. Shiv squeezed in close to the other body in there, registered the smell of hairspray, the cluster of badges on the jacket, the mass of red hair and the sheer loveliness of that face.

‘Oh my fucking God! You’re Clio Campbell!’

Her voice rang off the tiles. Clio looked embarrassed.