At three, Dee told Anna she could leave.
“Finish that glass. Not the rest of them. That one.”
Anna looked at the tray.
“I can do these.”
“You can also be here forever. Go.”
She dried her hands and took off the apron. It wasn't hers yet, though she'd begun hanging it in the same place.
“Tomorrow?”
“Tuesday evening,” Dee said. “I'll put you down if you want.”
Anna said yes and wrote it in the phone while Dee was looking, so she couldn't lose a day by mistaking a memory for an arrangement.
Outside, the street was full of people going somewhere after lunch. Anna had enough time to go back to the room, change, consider changing again and then leave too early. She chose the blouse she'd bought yesterday. It was washed and dry, smelling faintly of the powder Paula let her use.
The door in Tess's photograph was uglier in person. Somebody had added two eyes above the crooked mouth.
Anna knocked. Nothing happened.
She tried the handle. The door opened.
Inside, a narrow passage led past rooms in which people made separate kinds of noise. A guitar repeating three notes, something clattering, a voice too distant to distinguish from the rest. At the end Tess appeared with a cable over one shoulder.
“You found it.”
“Eventually. I came to the ugly one, like you said.”
“They're all ugly.”
“I thought this one had more personality.”
Tess laughed and moved aside.
The room was larger than Anna expected and more crowded. A rug lay under the drums. Metal stands, cases, two speakers on poles, a keyboard facing the wrong way if the door was meant to be the audience. A woman with short dark hair stood at the centre, tuning a guitar. Eli was sitting on a low case, hands resting on the neck of a bass. Anna recognized him from the photograph but liked him better without the red stage light.
“This is my mum,” Tess said.
The words struck Anna before she saw how casually Tess delivered them.
Ruby looked up.
“Hello. Come in. Avoid the cable pretending to be a tripwire.”
“I'll try.”
“That's Eli.”
“We met in the picture,” Anna said.
He smiled.
“I didn't do anything embarrassing in that picture, did I?”
“No. I couldn't hear you.”
“Oh, good.”
Tess looked at him.
“She thinks you should be paid more for the bass line.”
“I agree.”
“Don't encourage him,” Ruby said.
There was a chair against the wall, folded under a coat. Eli lifted the coat and opened the chair for Anna.
“Thanks.”
“It wobbles.”
“How much?”
“Enough to notice. Not enough to fall over. Yet.”
Anna sat carefully. Tess put the cable down and went to her drums.
“Where's Jo?” she asked Ruby.
“Coming.”
“She said four.”
“She also said her manager enjoys making four mean something else.”
Ruby played a few notes and turned a little metal peg. The sound shifted. Anna didn't know whether it was becoming right, only that Ruby was listening hard enough to hear a difference.
Tess sat behind the kit. Her body changed. She stopped occupying a chair as if it were a place somebody might ask her questions and began using it, feet set, knees apart, hands finding what they needed. Anna watched her adjust the height of one stand.
“Does it keep slipping?”
“Not now.”
Eli looked wounded.
“After all that effort.”
“What effort?” Anna asked.
“Practical heroism.”
“He read instructions,” Tess said.
“Radical stuff.”
The room was warm. Anna took off her cardigan and put it on her lap. There were earplugs in a little box on the table. Ruby pointed them out.
“If you want them. Don't feel you have to suffer.”
Anna took a pair. She didn't know how the soft foam was meant to go in. Eli showed her with his own, pressing one between his fingers until it was narrow.
“You let it expand.”
“Like men telling you a story.”
Tess laughed. Eli looked at her, pleased rather than insulted.
“I won't tell you any stories, then.”
“She didn't say that,” Tess said.
Anna lowered her eyes to the plugs. Tess was defending something ordinary she wanted.
Jo arrived at ten past, carrying a work bag and a half-eaten pastry.
“Sorry.”
“Have you got a note?” Ruby asked.
“It's from my manager. It says I'm much more useful after I've stopped being paid.”
Jo put the bag down and saw Anna.
“Hi.”
“Anna.”
“Tess's mum?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Somebody can agree with me about this next bit.”
Ruby groaned.
“You haven't even set up.”
“I can agree before she plays anything,” Anna said. “If it's easier.”
Jo laughed and moved behind the keyboard. She ate another bite while untangling a lead.
They began with no announcement. Ruby played something Anna recognized from the video, Eli entered beneath it, then Tess came in and the room seemed to settle onto its own feet.
The noise was enormous even with the plugs. Anna could feel it through the metal chair, against her chest, somewhere in the floor beneath her shoes. She'd thought she came to hear her daughter. At first she couldn't separate Tess from the other sounds.
Then she found her.
The little bright strike, the low drum, the steady thing making the rest move. Tess looked toward Ruby at the point where something was going to change. Her mouth opened slightly. A breath, perhaps a count. Then her hands moved and the song widened.
Anna held the cardigan against her knees.
Ruby sang. There were words about a town and a mouth, a line Anna missed because the guitar grew louder, then something which stayed long enough to be understood. Anna wanted it to continue.
Jo stopped playing.
Ruby turned sharply.
“What?”
“You're running.”
“I'm not.”
“Tess?”
Tess lowered the sticks.
“A bit.”
Ruby looked at Eli.
“I was trying to keep up,” he said.
“Oh, lovely. Everybody's in a union.”
Anna smiled. Tess saw and grinned at her.
“From the middle,” Ruby said.
Jo lifted her hands.
“From before the middle, so we hear it happening.”
They played again. Anna watched the impatience in Ruby's shoulder become a movement the others had to live with. Tess kept something steadier. After a little while Ruby's shoulder stopped moving quite so much.
That time they went to the end.
When they stopped, Anna had been tapping her heel without noticing.
Jo turned.
“There. Better.”
Ruby put down the pick.
“It was fine the first time.”
“It was faster the first time.”
“People like fast.”
“They also like knowing where the end of the line is,” Eli said.
Anna wanted to applaud, but nobody else was an audience and she couldn't tell whether applause would make them feel watched. Tess leaned back and drank water.
“Was that the one in the video?” Anna asked.
“Yes. 'Harbour Mouth'.”
“I liked hearing the end.”
Ruby smiled.
“Thank you.”
“She means literally,” Tess said. “I sent her the one where the recording stops.”
“Oh. Less flattering.”
“I liked it before it ended as well,” Anna said.
Ruby accepted that and wrote something in a notebook.
They tried another song. This one had less room for the voice and more for Tess's hands. Anna watched her strike one drum, then another, not the rhythm Anna expected but something which came back to meet it a moment later. Tess's hair stuck to her forehead. She pushed it away with a wrist between beats, not losing her place.
At fourteen Anna had wanted to learn guitar because a boy she liked had one. He said she could have a go, then spent the whole time showing her how he'd do it. She put it down before she knew whether she enjoyed anything beyond being asked to try.
Tess looked as if she belonged to what she did.
When the group stopped, Ruby said the second verse had too much in it. Tess argued. Eli played a little phrase, Jo said he was introducing a fourth opinion nobody needed, and everybody began talking at once.
Anna shifted in the chair. She had expected a daughter she might need to help through something. She couldn't even understand enough to take her side.
Tess turned.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“It's boring if you don't know what we're doing.”
“I don't think it is.”
“We're arguing about whether I stop.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“There you are, then.”
Tess laughed. Ruby looked at Anna.
“Now who's in a union?”
They reached some kind of agreement. Tess played the disputed bit twice. The second time she left a space which made Anna want to lean forward, waiting for the sound to return.
“That,” Ruby said.
Tess nodded reluctantly.
Anna saw Tess listen, accept something she didn't immediately like, then try it again because the whole song changed when she did. It was a part of her Anna might never have found by asking questions in a chair.
They took a break. Jo opened a window which looked onto another wall. Eli offered Anna water from a bottle.
She took it.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“The band?”
“Yes.”
“A couple of years. Tess joined later.”
“After someone left?”
“After we realized we needed a drummer who could tell Ruby no.”
Ruby called from the window, “I can hear you.”
“You're meant to.”
Tess sat on the floor by her kit and began adjusting something. Anna lowered herself into the empty space beside the chair rather than look down at her. Her knees protested. She regretted doing it immediately.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving this.”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if I keep hitting it when I don't mean to.”
Anna watched. Tess made a little change, tried it, changed it back halfway.
“How many things do you have?”
“Too many.”
“Your granddad said you were taking lessons. He didn't say—”
“I think he worries if he tells you something you won't like.”
“Would I dislike this?”
“I don't know.”
Anna looked at the equipment, Tess on the floor and the people who came here to hear what she could do.
“I don't dislike this.”
“Good.”
“It's noisy.”
“Yes.”
“That's a recommendation.”
Tess smiled and gave the stand a little shake. It held.
Ruby asked who'd checked the route revision. Tess had, Eli hadn't, Jo said if the route changed again she was going to ask for another month off work and lose the job altogether.
Anna looked at Tess.
“Where are you going?”
“Around the country.”
“For gigs?”
“Yes.”
“From when?”
“The twenty-fourth.”
Anna counted before she could stop herself.
“Of this month?”
“Yes.”
“That's two weeks.”
“A bit more.”
“How long?”
Tess's hand remained on the stand.
“Till October. Eighteenth.”
The room became smaller. Anna could feel the chair behind her, the wall beside her, a life full enough to take Tess away without leaving space for any of the meetings Anna had thought would come next.
“You didn't tell me.”
“I've only seen you twice.”
“Three times.”
Tess looked at her. Anna heard herself counting visits again.
“I mean—”
“I was going to tell you. I'm telling you.”
Jo had stopped rustling the pastry bag. Eli was looking down at his bass. Anna wanted the room to return to its noise.
“Eight weeks?”
“Just under.”
“Who's going?”
Tess waved a hand at the room.
“Us.”
“How?”
“Granddad's van. Ruby's driving.”
“He's agreed?”
“Yes.”
Anna thought of Leonard's kitchen, the glass by the sink, the photograph she wanted him to print. He'd made a plan for Tess to leave while Anna made plans to arrive.
“I've just got back.”
“I know.”
Tess said it quietly. It was worse than anger.
Anna wanted to ask why knowing didn't change the date. She could hear the ridiculousness of the question even before she asked it. They weren't playing for her in this room. The music had existed while she was away.
Ruby said, “Do you want a minute?”
Anna stood with difficulty, too quickly, and Eli reached for the chair to stop it falling as she leaned against it.
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
She looked at Tess.
“I want to hear the next one.”
“You don't have to.”
“I know.”
Anna sat. The plugs were warm in her hands. She pressed them back into her ears, looking at Tess so Tess could see she intended to remain.
The group waited another moment, then found where they were. Jo tapped something on the keyboard, Ruby picked up the guitar, Eli leaned toward Tess and said a thing which made her roll her eyes.
Anna wondered what he said. She didn't ask.
The song they played next began quietly. Tess kept time with little movements, enough to make Ruby's voice seem to walk on something solid. The words were easier to hear. Anna found herself listening to Ruby as well as watching her daughter.
At the change into the louder part, Tess looked across the room.
Anna smiled before deciding whether she could. Tess saw it and lifted her chin, a quick acknowledgment, then turned back to the others.
For the rest of the song Anna could hear where the drums left space, where Tess chose to enter it, how much pleasure could live in the thing which would take her away.