Read Chapter 16: A Gig in the Provinces

The van smelled of stale cigarettes and wet wool. Mara had wedged herself between a speaker cabinet and Robbie’s amplifier, her camera bag serving as a makeshift pillow, while the rest of The Unknowns passed a bottle of cheap cider up front. They were somewhere north of Luton, or possibly west of everywhere—the motorway signs had blurred into grey anonymity an hour ago.

“Two more gigs,” Dex called from the passenger seat, not turning around. “One in Birmingham, one in Leeds. Then we’re back for the Palladium.”

Robbie shot Mara a look from across the van. She knew what it meant: *the Palladium*—the showcase that could make or break them, and the deadline that loomed over Lenny’s debt like a guillotine. She hadn't decided whether she'd be there with her camera or hiding in her darkroom with a bottle of whisky.

“You coming to the Palladium, love?” asked Pete, the drummer, craning his neck to see her. “Be nice to have someone who actually knows what they’re doing behind a lens. Last bloke they hired for a show at the Marquee only shot the band’s crotches.”

“Depends on the fee,” Mara said, but she was already thumbing the film rolls in her jacket pocket. Lenny’s film, still undeveloped, sat in a tin in her bag—the promise she and Robbie had made still unfulfilled, delayed by the tour’s sudden call.

The first venue was a working men’s club in a Birmingham suburb, the kind of place that smelled of beer slops and boiled cabbage. A handful of men in flat caps paid them no mind from the bar, and the sound system crackled like a faulty radio. But Robbie plugged in his bass, rolled his shoulders, and played as if the room held ten thousand people. Mara moved through the empty spaces, shooting from every angle—the sweat on Robbie’s brow, the cords standing out on his neck, the way his fingers danced over the strings.

She got the shot she wanted midway through the set: the whole band mid-leap, caught in a frozen moment of airborne chaos, backlit by a cheap strobe that had no business looking so good. She knew it before she even developed it. That was the one.

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The hotel was a grim concrete block on the outskirts of Leeds, with a neon sign that flickered between O-TEL and MOTEL depending on the wind. The band had crammed into two rooms, and someone had given Mara a key to a single that smelled faintly of bleach and despair. She sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing her temples, when a knock came at the door.

Robbie stood in the hallway, holding two bottles of brown ale. “Pete’s snoring. Thought I’d save us both.”

They ended up on the roof of the fire escape, the city sprawled out below them in a grid of sodium lamps and sleeping houses. The ale was warm, but neither complained. For a while they just sat, the silence comfortable for once.

“You’re good,” Robbie said finally, nodding at the camera she still carried, slung around her neck even now. “The way you worked that room tonight. You see things before they happen.”

Mara took a long pull from her bottle. “I had good teachers. Mostly men who wanted to sleep with me, but they taught me how to read a flash before I told them where to stick their light meters.”

Robbie laughed, and it was the most unguarded sound she’d heard from him. He had walls like a fortress, but they were cracking—a crack here, a seam there. She wondered what he’d look like if they ever really fell.

“You said you taught yourself bass,” she prompted. “I never asked—where?”

The smile faded. He turned the bottle in his hands, watching the amber liquid slide against the glass. “St. Edmund’s. A boy’s home in Kent. Place run by Brothers who thought silence was a virtue and suffering was a sacrament.”

Mara stilled. In the dark, she could see the lines around his mouth tighten. “How long?”

“Fourteen to eighteen.” He let out a breath. “My father—after he went too far with my mother, I went too far with him. Laid him out with a guitar fret. Then I walked until I ran out of road, and the state picked me up and put me where they thought I belonged.”

The words hung in the air between them. Mara felt her own history shift in her chest—the debt, the name change, the years of running from herself. She’d thought those things made her an outsider. But here was Robbie, who’d been caged and left to rot, and somehow he’d found a bass guitar and made himself into something that moved people.

“There was a music room,” he said, quieter now. “Locked. But I knew how to pick a lock by then—learned that at home, watching my old man break into the liquor cabinet. First time I touched a bass, it felt like something clicked. Like I’d found the one thing that couldn’t be taken away.”

“What did it sound like?” she asked.

“Terrible. For months. The Brothers thought it was noise.” He smiled faintly. “They weren’t wrong. But I practised in the boiler room at night, when everyone was asleep. Taught myself by ear, from records I’d nick from the charity shop in town.”

He set down his bottle and picked up an imaginary bass, fingers moving through the scales he must have played a thousand times. “I figured out that nobody could take music from me. Not the Brothers, not my father, not the state. It was the only thing that was truly mine.”

Mara thought of her negatives, locked in her bag, still undeveloped. Her own thing that was truly hers—unless she sold it to Mercury, unless she signed it away to Polydor, unless she let Dex and Jack Mercer win.

“I don’t want to bury Lenny’s film,” she said. The words tumbled out before she could stop them. “I want to develop it. Tomorrow. No more excuses.”

Robbie turned to look at her, his face half in shadow. “Even if the Mercury contract’s the only way out of your debt?”

“That contract would take everything,” she said. “Every negative I’ve ever shot, every one I ever will. They’d own my eye, my shutter, my name.” She looked at him. “You said never sell what you love. But what if what I love is never going to pay Lenny back?”

Robbie was quiet for a long moment. Below them, a train rumbled through the night, its lights streaking along the tracks.

“My father sold my mother’s wedding ring to pay for his drinking,” he said. “She never forgave him. Not because of the money—because he’d given away something that meant everything to her to solve a problem that should’ve been his alone.”

Mara felt the weight of that. She’d been carrying Lenny’s debt alone because it was hers—she’d borrowed the money, she’d chosen to protect him. But maybe she didn’t have to carry it alone anymore.

“I’ll develop the film with you,” she said. “We’ll see what’s on it. Together.”

Robbie nodded slowly. “Together,” he repeated, as if testing the word in his mouth.

He reached over and pushed a strand of hair from her face, his fingers brushing her cheek. Mara’s breath caught. For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Robbie pulled back, clearing his throat. “You should get some rest. Leeds tomorrow, and then we head back to London. That film’s not going to develop itself.”

He rose and started down the fire escape, then paused at the top of the ladder. “Mara—when we get back, whatever’s on that film, whatever it means… I’ll be there. Whatever it costs.”

He disappeared into the dark, and Mara sat alone on the roof, the city humming below her like a held breath. She pressed her fingers to her cheek where his had touched, and for the first time in weeks, the weight on her shoulders felt a little lighter.

But in her bag, hidden beneath the film rolls, the Mercury contract’s shadow still loomed. She hadn’t said yes, but she hadn’t said no. And the deadline for Lenny’s debt was creeping closer with every passing night.