by Andy Conway
The boys relaxed, realizing they were being nice to them. “Hiya,” said the short, blonde one.
“Hullo,” said the taller John Foxx-looking one with jet black hair.
It was dark but Rachel could tell they were going red. “Look, guys,” she said. “You need to show a bit more confidence if you’re going to get in.”
“Yeah,” said Lorna. “You look too shy.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll make sure you get in, won’t we?”
“Definitely,” said Lorna, winking.
Rachel linked arms with the blonde boy and Lorna did the same with the black-haired one.
“That’s better. Now you look like you came with us.”
“But you’ve still got to look more confident,” said Lorna.
The boys were giggling now. This was a game they were playing.
“You’ve got to work it a bit more,” said Rachel. “Straighten your back. Chest out. Head up. Look everyone in the eye.”
The blonde boy did it. “Like this?”
“Perfect. Now pretend you own the club. It’s your place. You’re walking to the front of the queue. You’re the V.I.P.”
He nodded and smirked and shuffled a bit and started to look cooler. His friend did the same on Lorna’s arm. They inched forward and pushed through the open doors.
“Now, when we show our tickets, you’ve got to laugh at what we say. You walk into places like this every week. It’s so normal you can joke about while you do it.”
They stepped inside and Lorna snatched all their tickets and handed them to the blonde boy. He grew an inch taller as he handed them over.
It was the same old hippie guy sitting there collecting tickets.
“And I said to him I’ll be baaaack.”
She nudged the blonde boy. He laughed aloud. The others joined in. They were the laughing party crowd. The beautiful people.
The guy collecting the tickets smirked and nodded them through.
As they walked into the main room, a group of punkettes, an explosion of fishnet and peroxide, laughed as they pushed by, looking at the boys.
“Are they eleven?’’ one of them cackled.
Rachel rushed on past them. Both of the boys had red cheeks.
“Ultravox haven’t been a punk band for years!” Lorna called. “I bet they shout for Young Savage as well. Losers!”
“Even I know they’re not playing Young Savage,” said the black-haired boy.
“Well played, guys,” said Rachel. “You’re in now. Get down the front and enjoy it.”
The short one with the blonde hair — he really did look eleven — turned to her with a cheeky grin that belied his years. “Thanks. You’re great. When I leave school I’m gonna ask you out.”
Lorna squealed with laughter.
“Go on,” said Rachel. “Or I’ll tell them to chuck you out.”
The boys laughed and darted off, pushing through the moody crowd.
Rachel’s smile fell from her face. They were here. This was Ground Zero. She had to make it happen now.
She looked around the thick swarm of people, desperately hoping to see her father’s face.
— 29 —
IT WAS INSANELY HOT in there, condensation dripping from the low ceiling. The DJ played Sound and Vision. It pumped from the giant speaker stacks and Martyn had never heard it sound so good.
The anticipation was so thick in the air, you could take a bite out of it.
He massaged his fist again, knuckles still sore from the fight last night.
“You all right?” said Esther.
“Yeah,” he said. “Hand’s sore. Might have sprained it.”
Oh God, he had to play bass tonight as well. It would kill him.
She snatched his hand up and examined it. It was the first time they’d touched, apart from the kiss hello in Hawkins wine bar earlier.
“’I got into a fight last night,” he said.
“What? A fight? How?”
“Some guys jumped me in the street. Three of them.”
“Oh God! Did they hurt you?”
“Nah,” he said.
“Did you beat them up or something?”
“Yeah. Pretty much,” he said.
She would hate him for it. Think he was a yob.
“That’s brilliant!” she squealed. “Good for you!”
“Oh. Right.”
Should he put his arm around her? Was he supposed to do that? He’d been thinking it since the nightmare of Hawkins but still hadn’t plucked up the courage. Thankfully they’d only had one drink. And she’d paid for it. “Seems fair, after you bought the tickets,” she’d said.
He hadn’t complained.
“I’m a modern woman,” she said. “Are you a new man?”
“Er... yeah,” he’d shouted over the music.
He didn’t know what a new man was, but he suspected it was something she liked. He knew it was something the men at Smiths Forgings would call him a puff for.
But she liked the idea of him beating up a bunch of guys. That didn’t seem to fit with being a new man. It sounded pretty old man to him. None of it made sense. It was like walking through a minefield. He didn’t know if the next step would blow his leg off.
“Martyn!”
He turned. It was those girls again: that Rachel with the Mallen streak, and her friend Lorna.
“Oh, hiya,” he said.
This was the mine. This was what would blow his leg off. He waited for the blast.
“How you doing?” said Rachel, nodding.
Her eyes were flitting across to Esther. Should he introduce them? Would Esther fly into a rage, like she had in the street the other morning?
“We were just sneaking some schoolboys in, weren’t we, Lorna?”
Lorna stepped forward, shy, blushing a little. She was sort of sweet.
“Yeah.”
“Sneaking them in?” said Esther. There was a sneer in her voice.
“They had tickets,” said Rachel. “They were just a bit young.”
“It was funny,” said Lorna.
She didn’t look amused. She looked like she wanted to hide somewhere. What was happening?
No one said anything.
“Okay, that was fascinating. See you, then,” said Esther. She pulled Martyn with her. “Let’s get a drink.”
He glanced back and saw Lorna’s forlorn face. That was rude. She looked hurt. She was a nice girl.
Esther pulled him towards the bar and snapped, “Who were they?”
“Oh, just some girls, from the gig the other night.”
He sensed mentioning their afternoon of make-up and music talk would not go down well.
“Oh, they’re groupies,” she laughed. “Do you get lots of them hanging round you all the time?”
“Not really, no,” he said. He wasn’t sure the New Romantic scene had any groupies. He’d never seen any.
“Didn’t I see her at the gig? Yes, the girl who fainted. The one who brought us together. How funny. I should go and thank her,” she laughed.
Again it sounded like a sneer. He wasn’t sure he liked Esther. There was a nasty streak in her. She really did want to go and thank Rachel for bringing them together, but not in a nice way. There was something unpleasant about it. He remembered her shouting at him in the street and shuddered.
He gazed back through the crowd. He could just about see their heads. A part of him thought he’d made a huge mistake in taking Esther. Lorna was a much nicer girl. That afternoon at Mark’s place had been fun. He should have given the other ticket to Mark. They always went to gigs together. It felt wrong that he was going without him and taking this woman he didn’t really know. The two of them could have had a laugh with those two girls. It would have all seemed much more normal and not a bit like walking through a minefield.
He was considering if he should just walk away from Esther, just leave her there, dump her, and go be with Lorna.
And then he saw Wegs walk in.
— 30 —
“THAT WAS AWFUL,” SAID Lorna.
“What a stuck up cow.” Rachel’s heart sank. Already her plan was falling apart. It was all going wrong. “You like him, though, don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s not right for him. He belongs with you.”
“Oh leave it,” Lorna snapped, unable to hide the irritation in her voice. “Let’s just find a good spot and watch the band.”
Rachel watched Martyn and Esther wind their way to the bar. She was supposed to get Martyn and Lorna together and now they might as well have been on opposite sides of the city.
But something had brought her here. She was supposed to be here. This was supposed to happen. She hadn’t come this far to see it all spoiled by snotty-nosed Esther Parker.
She’d seen how Martyn had looked back at Lorna. There had been real pity for her. He’d wanted to reach out to her. Perhaps if Martyn felt he needed to rescue Lorna, that might be the thing that would bring them together. Perhaps if Esther insulted her some more, she’d only end up pushing them together.
Or, there was another way, she realized. She could just go right up to Esther and kill her.
Could she do that?
It made total sense. That’s what Danny and Kath had tried to do: take Lorna out of the picture. That’s what she had to do to Esther.
But Danny and Kath were crazy. Was she turning crazy like them? Was that what time travel did to your mind? She was pushing through the crowd before she realized it.
“Rachel?” Lorna called after her.
“Just a minute,” she said.
She could see Esther’s blonde head through the crowd. She made straight for it.
— 31 —
WEGS WAS WALKING IN with that I Could Buy This Place If I Wanted To walk. It made Martyn even angrier. He felt the blood boiling in his face, his fists tightening. It was talentless fly-by-nights like Wegs who fed off the people who did the work, took their money, ripped them off and moved onto the next set of suckers. Always leeching off people who just wanted to do something with their talent. Artists.
Was he an artist? That sounded a bit poncey. He played a musical instrument. He wore eye liner. He must be an artist.
Wegs didn’t see him coming, a torpedo skimming the crowd, heading straight for him. Then he turned and looked surprised.
But it wasn’t the kind of surprise Martyn expected to see in his face. It wasn’t Oh Hell, There’s That Guy Whose Money I Stole surprise. It looked a bit more like There’s Some Guy Walking Towards Me in a Slightly Aggressive Manner surprise.
This was puzzling, because Martyn was fully expecting the former to show on his face, rather than the latter.
“Hey, Wegs,” he said, as he reached him.
Wegs halted, unable to find a way past him. Martyn towered over him.
“Hiya, er...’ Wegs pointed at him, his face a question mark.
He didn’t know his name. He’d taken his money and he didn’t even know his name.
“Martyn. From Tango Decade.”
“Er...”
“Glen’s band.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.”
Again, this didn’t seem to mean much to him. Had he actually forgotten he’d taken his fifty quid?
“Glen’s band you owe money to. Well, me, actually. My money. Fifty quid of it.”
Wegs looked at the man behind him, and Martyn checked him out. He’d seen him around their Digbeth ‘creative hub’. He was called Goose or Moose or something. He quickly calculated the odds of them both beating him up and decided they wouldn’t go that far. They were not the kind of guys who would fight. But there was something snide about them. They might fight dirty and have a knife or something. There was always that.
God, the three guys last night. What if they’d been tooled up? He should have run. He should never have taken them on.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Wegs. “Do you know what he means, Moose?”
“That money you gave them back. For the rehearsal space.”
Wegs’ face lit up at a memory. “Oh. Yeah. That. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Glen called round for it. Last night,” said Martyn. But as the words left his lips he knew how stupid it sounded.
“Yeah,” said Wegs. “Came to ask for redundancy pay.”
Moose sniggered.
“I told him he didn’t really qualify for a redundancy package, seeing as he was only working with us for six months, part-time.”
“You were there,” said Martyn.
“He had that fifty quid rehearsal money weeks ago,” said Wegs. “I made him sign a receipt for it. You can come round to the office tomorrow and see it if you like.”
Martyn looked into his eyes and he could see naked honesty there. It was something he’d never seen in Glen’s eyes.
Glen had taken the money. He’d spent it.
Wegs pushed past him and Martyn stepped aside like a sliding door.
“Any time,” Moose called back.
Glen had ripped him off. And he’d gone through the whole charade of walking him to the office in the rain last night. You stay here. I don’t want you to see these people.
He felt nausea lurch inside him. It was so insanely hot in there. He was going to be sick.
He rushed for the toilets.
— 32 —
ESTHER PARKER’S BLONDE hair just there above a sea of bobbing heads, the crowd crammed up to the bar.
This was Rachel’s chance. She could kill Esther now. She knew she had the power. All she had to do was walk over to her, touch her shoulder and zap her to some other time. She’d seen Mitch do it to Jez at the dance hall. She’d done it to Kath herself.
She could do it now to Esther Parker.
It was the easiest thing in the world.
She remembered Esther’s mother as a little girl during the Blitz. Maddy. The girl with the doll. The little girl who clutched her hand. The truck hurtling towards them. She remembered that feeling then.
The truck almost upon them, the ground vibrating with its power.
“You were never meant to be here, Maddy.”
She let go of the little girl’s hand. Maddy broke away, running to her mother with glee.
She was so close, only a couple of people between her and Esther. The crowd packed tightly. No way through. It was so hot in there. The fake leopardskin coat was just about the worst thing she could have worn. If she pushed a little harder, she would be able to reach out and touch her and it would all be over.
A burly punk in a studded leather jacket elbowed her in the belly and laughed.
She caught her breath, anger swelling inside her. She could start a fire. What if she summoned a flame in her hand, set fire to his leather jacket and shouted Fire! Everyone would scream and run. The place would clear. She could kill Esther in the chaos.
The truck almost upon them. Rachel yelped and jumped forward and grabbed at the girl’s cardigan and yanked her back. The doll fell. The truck roared past. Her hair blew wild with the back-draught and snatched the breath from her mouth. Maddy fell back against her knee and she had her arms around her in an instant, holding her close, safe.
Rachel closed her palm and extinguished the flame that was burning there.
She hadn’t been able to do it to Esther’s mother. She couldn’t do it to Esther. She wasn’t a murderer. She couldn’t sink to the level Danny had sunk, and Kath. They’d lost everything that was human about themselves. She couldn’t be like that. She wouldn’t.
She pulled back and swam through the crowd that had formed behind her, desperate to break free. She couldn’t breathe.
The news story came to her mind. Just one of dozens she’d researched for this week, looking through archives and old newspapers. Tonight 37 people were going to die as a result of fires started by arson at adjacent London nightclubs. Ever since she’d read it she’d wondered if it could be her that started them. She had zapped Danny out of the K
ingsway in 1934 and started the fire that burned down the same building eighty years later. Couldn’t she also start a fire in a Birmingham club in 1980 that would somehow spark an inferno 200 miles away? Could it happen through space as well as time?
Those people were going to die tonight and she had done nothing to stop it. Just like she’d done nothing to stop the Yorkshire Ripper. John Lennon was going to be shot dead. She could stop that too if she wanted. She could change the world for the better instead of being here trying to force Martyn Hines into the hands of Lorna Foster.
She realized, as she thrashed her way through to the toilets, that the man in her dream had been right. She had chosen. If getting her old life back meant killing someone, she didn’t want it. She couldn’t use that power that was inside her, bursting to get out. She didn’t want to be a goddess. She wanted to be a normal village girl. Even if she could never find her way home again.
— 33 —
IN THE TOILET, A BUNCH of men were crowded at the tiny mirror, putting on eyeliner and black lipstick.
Martyn ducked in front of them and turned a tap on. A dribble of cold water filled his hand and he stopped himself splashing it on his face. His mascara would run and he’d look a mess. He placed his palm to the back of his neck and felt it cool, running down his back.
“Hot in there, ain’t it.”
A bouncer in a tuxedo, bow-tie, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. Fat, macho, normal. Didn’t seem bothered by the presence of so many men putting on their make-up.
He nodded at Martyn and smiled.
“I tell you what, guys,” the bouncer said. “I’d have you lot any day of the week over them rockers. I hate them.”
Martyn laughed, along with a few of the others. This was the kind of guy you’d think would be out queer-bashing. The world was changing. Even here in Birmingham it was changing.
He took a deep breath and walked back out into the furnace and bumped right into a girl.
She bounced back and yelped.