Rachel entered the hall after the first count.
She heard the sticks tap together while she was still beside Mae. Then the music began, and the door swung inward as someone moved out of the way.
There was a space near the back wall. Rachel took it.
Low Weather were playing the quick song she'd heard only in fragments from Tess's phone. Ruby's guitar cut across the keyboard sound, then dropped away. For a moment the drums were almost alone.
Rachel looked for the floor tom.
It wasn't there. The kit occupied less space, and a cymbal beside Tess caught the light unevenly, its surface duller than the one Rachel remembered. When she struck it, the note spread without the brightness Rachel expected.
Jo held something beneath it. A low sound from the keys which made Rachel feel the opening of a door.
The song went on.
She had thought, without putting it into words, that the equipment loss would show as a lack. Tess would be making the best of something, and Rachel would be able to see the place where her help should have been. Instead Tess leaned toward the smaller drum and played a quick run which lifted the next line into Ruby's voice.
The missing things were still missing. Rachel couldn't mistake what they'd cost because the song worked.
A woman beside her began to move one foot. Her coat hung over her arm. She'd come in late enough to miss at least part of the correction.
Rachel watched the foot.
It was possible to be here for music.
The song ended sharply. Tess stopped with one stick held high for half a second, then lowered it and smiled toward Jo.
People applauded.
Rachel brought her hands together.
Tess didn't look at her.
Ruby thanked the audience and introduced the next song. She said the song was about a flat they could no longer afford, and someone near the front laughed.
Eli played the opening alone. Rachel had met him in the shop and thought of him mainly as the person who made Tess smile. Here he looked toward Ruby for the cue, started too softly, adjusted and found the sound. Tess waited before entering.
Rachel enjoyed the wait more than she wanted to.
She knew what Tess's concentration looked like: lower lip caught briefly between her teeth, a slight turn of the head before a difficult bit. There had been school concerts when Rachel sat near the aisle with Leonard, both of them trying to look casual whenever Tess glanced out. Afterward she would tell Tess what she liked, and Tess would tell her where she'd gone wrong, and they would agree that nobody else had heard it.
Rachel could still see enough to know Tess's hands were relaxed.
She would not be the person Tess asked afterwards.
Mae came into the hall and stood a little apart. She held her cream jacket over one arm, the lining repaired and smooth. A volunteer leaned in to say something. Mae answered, then turned toward the stage.
Rachel didn't move closer.
The next song was 'Harbour Mouth'.
At first she recognized it from the room upstairs in the shop, Tess showing her a recording and saying Ruby wasn't happy with the middle. That version had sounded fuller in some way Rachel hadn't understood.
Now Jo's keys opened the song, a sparse pattern with room around it. Ruby waited. Tess played softly, then let the cymbal sound fall almost away before the verse.
Anna was near the side wall, leaning forward.
Rachel remembered Tess telling her about the trip, the shared jokes, Anna saying she could hear the space. Rachel had listened with a jealousy she called worry and later given Leonard a sentence which turned a good day into a threat.
The chorus arrived.
Tess looked toward Eli as he came in. He grinned, just briefly, and she answered with a quick accent on the snare. Rachel could hear that much. She didn't know whether it was planned.
Ruby missed part of a line because she was smiling.
The audience laughed with her. The song continued, better for the tiny disruption.
Rachel felt herself smile too.
Then Tess pushed damp hair back with the heel of her hand, and Rachel saw the clip beginning to slip.
It was an old, silly reflex: she wanted to fetch a better one. Tess hated hair in her eyes and could never find the spare when she needed it. Rachel knew where a little packet of clips sat in the drawer at home.
She shifted her weight.
There was nowhere to go which would make that useful now.
Tess freed the loose strand, tucked it behind her ear and played the next entrance correctly.
Rachel stayed by the wall.
Halfway through the last song, a child in front of Mae began to dance without moving away from his chair. His mother pulled him back once, then gave up. Mae watched him, smiled despite herself and looked at the stage again.
Rachel wondered if Celia would have liked Low Weather. Celia had liked singers who sounded as though they were keeping something back, but she had often surprised Rachel by choosing the cheerful song in the car. She might have talked through the quiet bit. She might have loved Tess.
The thought was Rachel's. She couldn't ask Mae to share it.
The final chorus built without getting much louder. Jo changed what she was holding underneath, Ruby stepped away from the microphone between lines, and Tess drove the ending with a rhythm that Rachel felt in her chest before she understood where the beat was.
Then they stopped.
For a moment Rachel could hear a faint buzz from an amplifier.
The applause came up around it.
Ruby introduced the band by name. Tess raised a stick when her name was called. She looked out across the room, not toward any one person. Rachel saw Anna lift a hand, then lower it.
The musicians began moving things almost immediately. Eli unplugged his lead. Jo bent toward her keys. Tess loosened a stand while still speaking to Ruby.
A woman beside Rachel said, “That drummer's good.”
Rachel turned.
The woman was looking at the stage. She hadn't asked a question.
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“Your girl?”
The answer was there, old and easy, given to strangers at school concerts, in queues, in the shop. Rachel felt how comfortable it would be to let it stand.
“No.”
The woman glanced at her.
“Someone I know.”
“Oh.”
She went toward the seats at the front.
Mae moved to the microphone to introduce Anna's statement. The room settled differently, people with coats pausing, others sitting again.
Rachel looked toward the dressing door. Tess had gone through it with the cymbal case in one hand.
She stayed by the wall to hear Anna.