Here's Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane

Author:Mhairi McFarlane
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780007488063
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2014-06-02T23:00:00+00:00

39

Daniel’s girlfriend Penny had few gifts, according to Michelle, but even she conceded that Penny could carry a tune.

Her band, The Unsaid Things, was fourth on the bill in a room at the back of a North London pub that specialised in live music and toilets that smelled like the devil’s back waft.

Anna sipped a full-fat Coke and tried to look politely interested in a junior rock group on before The Unsaids. It was made up of thirteen-year-olds wearing unbuttoned check shirts, worn over t-shirts advertising bands that had split up before they were born.

‘This next song is about a girl at school … I mean, sixth-form … who lies all the time and she thinks it makes her cool but it doesn’t, it makes her a liar,’ said the lead singer, through a face full of fringe. ‘It’s called “Sarah’s Lies”. We hope you enjoy it. Unless, uh. You’re Sarah.’

‘Guess someone’s burned that they had their impotence broadcast all round double geography. Is the next one going to be called “I Didn’t Ask to Be Born”?’ Michelle said. Anna laughed but gestured nervously towards a knot of proud parents nearby, who, frighteningly, weren’t much older than they were.

Luckily the lead singer was fond of the vocal technique called shouting, and Michelle’s quip didn’t carry against the squall of guitars and the thundering, tear-stained lyrics. Fuck you Sarah you’re such a bitch / You say you’re emo, you shop at Jack Wills / Your boyfriend isn’t twenty he’s nineteen / Fuck you Sarah I don’t care where you’ve been …

‘I think I like this Sarah,’ Michelle said. ‘Shall we go see if Dan needs company?’

They found him on a stool behind a trestle table full of cotton goods with smudgy transfers, reading Peter Cook’s memoirs. Among the acts whose wares he was touting were Head Office and The Pungency. There wasn’t a lot of consistency to the line-up – rock to thrash to whatever The Unsaids were. Michelle called them twee-folk but Anna guessed that wasn’t how they self-described.

‘Business slow?’ Michelle said.

‘You could say that, Michelle, or you could imagine the stampede will commence once the music has concluded.’

‘You’re a good boyfriend to do this on your night off, you know,’ she said.

‘Ah, well. She cooks for me on her nights off,’ Daniel said, doing his big eye blink thing.

‘Can we get you a beer?’ Michelle said, and Daniel pointed at a half of bitter at his feet.

‘Shout if you need more,’ she said, and then to Anna out of the corner of her mouth as they moved away, ‘Nights off from what?’

‘Mind you, “Sarah’s Lies” touched on a universal truth: everyone knows one person at school who IS a massive liar,’ Michelle said, once they’d taken up a position. ‘A boy at my school called Gary Penco said he had a Peregrine Falcon and a Ferrari Testarossa in a lock-up. And speaking of school, now the exhibition thing’s done, you need never see that James again, right? You must be breathing a sigh of relief.

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