Anna followed the sound of Tess's voice.
At the corridor door a woman asked whether she needed the toilets.
“I'm with Tess.”
“The band?”
“Yes.”
The woman glanced through the door, saw Ruby and called to her. Ruby came over with a roll of tape round her wrist.
“You all right?”
“Can I see her?”
“Two minutes. We're nearly on.”
Anna went through.
Rachel was sitting in the foyer. Anna saw her without turning her head: hands in her lap, Mae nearby, no longer at the centre of what anyone was doing. The sight gave Anna satisfaction. She didn't try to make it a better feeling.
Beyond the door, the corridor was too narrow for the cases against the wall. Someone had drawn arrows on paper and taped them to the dressing-room doors. One pointed at Low Weather and had a little cloud beneath it.
Tess stood beside a case, adjusting the clip in her hair. She'd put a green towel over her shoulders to keep it from catching against the top.
“You heard?” Anna asked.
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Most.”
“She said it.”
Tess pulled the towel free.
“Yes.”
Anna wanted them to hold the fact together for a minute. Tess checked something on her phone, then put it face down on the case.
“The band before us is finishing. We need to get ready.”
“I won't be long.”
Jo came out wearing the repaired jacket, flexing one arm. Ruby said something about the sleeve. Jo told her it was a better repair than hers, and Ruby said it would have to be.
Their ease made Anna feel hurried and excluded at the same time.
“I need to know what you're doing after,” she said.
Tess looked at her.
“Packing.”
“After my speech.”
“Mum.”
“There'll be time.”
“I'm not doing it.”
The words were low. Anna looked toward the others. Eli had moved down the corridor with a cable over his shoulder. Ruby was watching without seeming to.
“I said you wouldn't have to speak.”
“I don't want to stand there.”
“I told Mae it would be just me. I thought after hearing her—”
“Why would hearing her change it?”
Anna's mouth had gone dry.
“Because it's true. Everything I've been telling you. You heard her say what she did.”
“I knew it was true.”
“Then why can't you—”
Tess put both hands on the case.
“Don't.”
Anna heard herself breathing. She had stood in the foyer and listened to Rachel confess, waited fourteen years for words which still hadn't changed the years. Now her daughter was treating five minutes beside her as if it were another terrible demand.
“You're not even leaving till Monday.”
Tess lifted her head.
“That isn't what this is.”
“You've got eight weeks. With them.”
Ruby looked away, deliberately.
Anna knew she'd said too much, and the knowledge didn't stop the next sentence.
“I've got a few minutes in front of people who thought I was a murderer.”
“Then take them.”
“I want you with me.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep asking.”
The sound from the hall grew louder, a final crash of instruments, then applause. Jo went through the stage door. Ruby glanced at her watch.
Anna wanted to tell them all to wait.
Instead she said, “It's only standing beside me.”
Tess's face changed in a way Anna hadn't seen before. Not crying now. Tess went still.
“I can't play if you're going to do this.”
Anna stared.
“What?”
“If you keep making it into that. I'll tell Ruby I can't.”
“You wouldn't.”
“I will.”
“After everything they've done?”
Tess looked at her, and Anna heard the unfairness arrive too late to take it back.
Tess moved toward Ruby.
Ruby straightened.
Anna reached for Tess's sleeve, then stopped before touching it.
“Wait.”
Tess turned.
They had perhaps two feet between them. From the foyer someone called a name, looking for a person who wasn't here. Rachel remained beyond the glass, sitting exactly where Mae had left her.
Anna remembered the age-eleven visit so vividly that the corridor seemed to tilt. Tess smaller, wanting to tell her about something, Anna saying she ought to be asking why no one believed her mother. The child changing her face to be acceptable.
Tess in front of her wasn't changing it now.
“I don't want them to look at me and see what you lost,” Tess said.
Anna felt something fierce and ugly rise.
But I did lose you.
It was true. She wanted to say it loudly enough that the other people would have to look.
Tess waited.
Anna looked at Tess's hands. There was a strip of tape on one finger. A little split by the nail. Hands prepared for work Anna didn't know how to do.
From the stage came the short, practical noises of instruments being unplugged.
“I wanted them to see you,” Anna said.
“I know.”
“Not just hear a number. Fourteen years. Eighteen now. People say those things and they don't look at what it means.”
Tess's lips parted, then closed.
Anna hated the room for letting her daughter have nothing left to say.
“All right,” she said.
Tess didn't move.
“You don't have to.”
Tess looked at Ruby. Ruby stayed where she was.
Anna said it again, because the first version sounded temporary even to her.
“I won't ask you to stand with me.”
Tess breathed out.
Anna had expected relief to follow the words. Instead she felt abandoned. Tess would play, then put away the drums, then get into a van two days from now. Anna would stand before strangers and say daughter without having one beside her.
“I'm still speaking,” she said.
“Of course.”
She couldn't bear the kindness in that.
“I wasn't asking if you allowed it.”
“I know.”
For a moment neither moved.
Ruby said, “We need the cases by the door.”
Tess looked down.
“Can you help with this?” she asked Anna.
Anna almost refused. The request seemed too small, too convenient, a way to give her hands a job so her mouth wouldn't make trouble.
“What?”
“The other end. It's awkward with the handle.”
She bent.
The case was longer than the drum inside and heavier than she expected. Tess took one handle, Anna the other. They lifted together. Her end dropped slightly.
“Sorry.”
“It's all right. Up a bit.”
They carried it along the corridor. A cable lay across the floor, and Anna stepped over too far, making Tess twist.
“Hold on.”
They stopped.
Tess shifted her grip.
“There.”
Anna adjusted.
At the stage door Tess smiled briefly at someone passing, then turned back to the case. She wasn't giving Anna the same smile. Anna could have asked for it, in one way or another. She kept lifting.
They set the case down. Tess unfastened it.
Inside was the smaller drum which was part of the changed kit. Anna could see the empty place around it, padding pushed in to keep it safe. She remembered the trolley on Sunday, the floor tom going out of the building with a stranger.
Tess lifted the drum herself.
“Thanks.”
Anna held the lid.
“Where do you want this?”
“Against the wall. Not by the fire door.”
She moved it.
Ruby called from the stage. Tess went to her, taking the drum in both hands. Eli followed with his bass, and Jo disappeared through the other side. Tess didn't look back.
Anna stood beside the stacked cases.
The green towel was still in the dressing room. She could fetch it and take it to Tess, find another thing which let her be needed. She stayed where she was until a volunteer asked whether she wanted to listen from the hall.
“Yes.”
At the corridor door she passed the glass pane. Rachel looked up.
Anna didn't give her a triumphant look. She didn't have one.
Mae was beside the programmes.
“Still after the set?” she asked.
Anna nodded.
“Without Tess.”
Mae looked at her for a moment.
“All right.”
“Just me.”
“That's enough.”
Anna didn't know whether it was. She went into the hall before she could argue.
The room was filling. A man moved his coat to let her pass, and she took a place near the side, where she could see Tess sit down behind the kit. Tess adjusted a stand, tested the pedal and leaned across to say something to Jo.
Anna took the folded statement from her bag.
She hadn't brought Tess's childhood photograph. For a moment she was glad of that, then wished she had it, then wished she could stop having to decide what sort of wanting was permitted.
Onstage, Tess raised one stick.
Anna put the paper away and looked up.