Dead in Time

Chapter Three

It rained on Friday. I woke to find a fine spray of droplets blowing in through my bedroom window—habitually left open for Mr. Tibbs—cursed, sat up, and groped for my dressing gown. The night could, in the face of all the grim and grey mundanity outside, have seemed like a dream, but it didn’t. I didn’t for a moment consider the possibility that it hadn’t been… well, real. I had to admit, however, that it’d been the first time a rock star had kept me up all night. I suspected that I’d been a disappointment; Damon Brent, chain smoking and pouring out floods of names and half-connected stories, caught up in the excitement of having someone listen to him, had slowly realised that I’d never heard of most of the people he was talking about.

Around four a.m., he’d looked apologetic, and said I should go to bed, grab some sleep. There’d be, he said, plenty of time. He smiled when he said it. Some kind of private joke, maybe.

I stumbled into the kitchen. Something familiar glinted on the worktop, next to the kettle. His brooch. Still sleep-mired and claggy, I stared at it for a long while before picking it up. It looked like something that might have lain hidden in an elderly aunt’s jewellery box, only to catch the light like a prism when, some empty afternoon, it got taken out and examined for the first time in years. I shook myself. The thing felt heavy in my hand, cold, but it soon warmed against my skin. A folded piece of paper lay under the brooch, the writing on it large and rounded. Just one word.

Boo !

At least he had a sense of humour. He had a plan too: he wanted me to pose as a biographer, gaining access to interview his former bandmates, friends, associates, and… other suspects, I supposed. He thought I’d be professional, believable. I hadn’t the heart to tell him I had no idea where to begin, how one went about finding people who, as far as I knew, hadn’t been heard from in almost three decades.

The best place I could think of to start was Mum’s scrapbook. It had been one of the few things of hers I couldn’t bear to keep in the flat after she died, perhaps because it had been so important to her, so intimate. I’d kidded myself that I’d given it back to Auntie Jan because she wanted it. It had been half hers, too, I’d said. But now I wanted to look at the cuttings, the adoration… the tiny sealed moment of history when it had all happened and she—they—had seen it.

I showered, dressed, and caught the bus out to Broadwater, spending the whole ride thinking about how I would frame my questions. I could hardly tell her the real reason I wanted to know, but ‘so, aproposof nothing, how about the Seventies?’ didn’t really seem the right way to kick things off. Still, I reflected, as I got off the bus and walked up from Sompting Road, thankful for the time to clear my head and prepare myself, I didn’t know anyone more entirely sane than my Auntie Jan. I wanted to see her and to believe that somehow that would make it all fine again. 

I got to the corner shop before I realised I’d be visiting empty-handed, so I stopped in and bought a packet of treacle tarts. They looked pathetic, even to me, and I felt like a heel.

Auntie Jan’s place stood among the neat, pleasant, three bedroom post-war semis on the way to the golf course. All uniform, all… nice. She and Uncle Duncan had bought it when they married and never felt the desire to move. Not even now.

She was the first of the family to leave Hertfordshire, at least for a generation or so, and she’d been so pleased when I came down to the university for my postgrad study… I’d barely been able to convince her not to move me into the spare bedroom. I couldn’t have faced that. Oh, I would have visited anyway, yes, but….

The door opened, and Auntie Jan beamed at me, her heavily powdered face lighting up like a sunrise.

“Hello, darling! Come in, it’s so nice to see you.”