Read Chapter 5: First Flash, Last Word

The corridor smelled of stale cigarettes and floor wax. Abbey Road’s Studio Two was a cathedral of cables and dead air, the morning light cutting through high windows in blades that fell across the mixing desk like laid-out silver. Mara stood at the threshold with her freshly repaired Leica around her neck, the weight of it a comfort against her sternum, and watched the Unknowns scatter like startled birds.

Dex had pulled strings she didn’t want to imagine the cost of. A test session, he’d called it. A favour for a favour. Just a few hours to see if the room felt right before they booked real time for the album. She wasn’t supposed to be here, not officially, but Dex had said her camera was part of the band now, a sixth member, and the engineer had shrugged and waved her in.

Robbie was the last to enter. He carried his bass case like a shield and didn’t look at her. He set up in the far corner of the live room, turned away from the glass, and began tuning with his back to everyone. The drummer, a wiry man named Pete with a face like a friendly rat, grinned at her and gave a thumbs up through the window. The guitarist—Tommy, she remembered—was already noodling, lost in his own fretboard.

The engineer, a grey man named Gerald who smelled of menthol and patience, counted them in. They ran the first song twice. It was raw, hungry, the rhythm section locking in like teeth. Mara moved slow, circling the room, her shutter clicking in bursts. She didn’t use flash. This light was too good, too honest.

“Again,” Gerald said through the talkback. “And this time, no looking at your shoes, bass.”

Robbie’s hands stilled on his strings. He didn’t turn around.

“The track’s fine,” he said.

“It’s fine if you want to play for your mother’s curtains. But if you want the room to feel it, you’ve got to give me something. Eye contact with the rest of them. Make it a conversation.”

Robbie’s jaw tightened visibly from across the room. He set the bass down gently, almost tenderly, and walked to the edge of the live room, pressing his face close to the glass. “We can’t hear ourselves. The mix is dead. That’s the problem.”

“We’ve been through this,” Tommy said, stepping between them. “Rob, man, just play it how you played it at the Ballroom. That was—that was alive.”

“That was a different room. Different energy.”

Mara lifted her camera and framed him against the dark panelling. She didn’t shoot. She waited.

Gerald’s voice came through the talkback again, weary. “We’ve got two hours, boys. You want to spend it arguing or making something? Your call.”

Robbie turned and found her eyes through the glass. He held the look a second too long, then picked up his bass and walked back to his spot. He played the song again, better this time, but he played it facing the wall.

They ran three more songs. Mara circled, caught the sweat on Tommy’s brow, the way Pete’s foot tapped a second rhythm on the floor. She got drumstick blurred in motion, a cable snaking like a river. She got the empty chair where a keyboard used to be, the ghost of a session player who hadn’t shown.

She didn’t have Robbie. Every time she found an angle, he shifted. It was like he had eyes on the back of his skull, in his shoulder blades, in the tense line of his neck. She captured his left hand sliding up the frets once, but he cut her a look so sharp she lowered the camera.

“You’re not a prop,” she said, after the fourth take, when the others had drifted to the break table for tea. He was still in the live room, leaning against an amp, rolling a cigarette with deliberate care. “I’m not trying to use you.”

“You’re pointing that thing at me every three seconds. What would you call it?”

“Work.” She stepped closer. The room felt smaller with the music stopped. The hum of the amps was the only sound, a low voltage purr. “You think I want to be here?”

“I think you want something.” He licked the paper, sealed the roll. “Everyone does. It’s just a matter of what they’re willing to trade for it.”

“I traded my mother’s watch for this.” She lifted the Leica. “That’s what I paid to be here. What did you pay?”

His eyes flicked up at that, something hard and unreadable passing behind them. He lit the cigarette, took a drag, and exhaled smoke through his nostrils. “More than you can imagine.”

He rolled his left sleeve up to scratch his forearm, and she saw it. The scar ran from the inside of his wrist across the pale skin of his inner forearm, a thin white line that caught the light like a crack in something meant to be whole. It was old, healed, but deliberate. Straight. Clean.

It wasn’t an accident.

She didn’t mean to stare. She stared anyway. The silence stretched between them, full of everything that hadn’t been said. He saw where her eyes had gone. For a second, something raw flickered in his expression—not anger, not shame, but a kind of exhausted recognition, like a man who has been asked a question he’s answered so many times he’s tired of the sound of his own voice.

Then he tugged the sleeve down, slow, and the mask came back up.

“You want a pose?” he said, flat. “Here’s your pose.”

He turned to face her, full on, the cigarette hanging from his lips, his bass held at his side like a weapon he’d forgotten he was carrying. His eyes were wide open, unguarded, meeting her lens without flinching. He held it for five seconds. Ten. Long enough for her to shoot three frames before he dropped the act and walked past her, brush of his shoulder against her arm sending a shiver down her spine.

“You’ll want to print that one,” he said, not looking back. “It’s the only time I’ll give you anything real.”

She stood in the empty room, the smell of his cigarette and the heat of his proximity still hanging in the air. She lowered the camera, thumbed the advance lever, and felt the roll click forward, capturing the silence he’d left behind.

On the break, Dex appeared, all smiles, handshake-adjacent, buzzing with the energy of a man who smells a deal. “How’s it going in there? Great, great. Listen, I’ve got a man from Polydor coming to the showcase tomorrow night. He wants to see the band, not just hear them. Something visual. Something that says—you know—future.”

Mara didn’t answer. She was looking through her viewfinder at the empty corner where Robbie had stood, and she was thinking about the scar, the clean deliberate line of it, and the way he’d looked at her when he realised she’d seen it.

Like she’d found a door he’d spent years trying to brick over.

“Mara.” Dex’s hand waved in front of her face. “You with me?”

“Yeah,” she said, lowering the camera. “I’m with you. I just—I need darkroom time. Tonight. Before the showcase. You know the film I shot today will be part of the album package, right? The gatefold. The liner photos.”

Dex tilted his head. “I know you keep promising things you don’t have yet.”

“I’ll have them by tomorrow. I need a favour. There’s a retired photographer, Frank Rosen. He owed my father. He’ll let me use his darkroom if I ask in person.”

Dex sighed, checked his watch. “Fine. But you’re at the Ballroom by five thirty. Not five thirty-one. I’ve got a reputation to protect and so do you, if you still want that credit on the album.”

“I’ll be there.”

“And Mara.” He caught her elbow as she turned. “Whatever you think you’re chasing with that camera—make sure it’s worth the price of the film.”

She pulled her arm free, slung the Leica strap over her shoulder, and headed for the door. Outside, the London sky was the colour of old silver, and she had an address for Frank Rosen in her pocket and a roll of film in her bag that held the truth about Sophie’s face and the noise Lenny had made her erase.

And now, wound inside the same strip, a scar that told her more about Robbie Mercer than any conversation they’d ever had.

She walked faster.