'It's a late birthday present. I had the idea when I was living with Ray, and it was such a good one that I was really annoyed that we weren't together anymore. Maybe that's why I came back. Are you pleased?' she says. She's been out with a couple of people for a drink after work, and she's a bit squiffy.

I hadn't thought about it before, but I am pleased. Nervous and daunted - all those records to dig out, all that equipment to get hold of - but pleased. Thrilled, really.

'You had no right,' I tell her. 'Supposing . . . ' What?

'Supposing I was doing something that couldn't be canceled?'

'What do you ever do that can't be canceled?'

'That's not the point.' I don't know why I have to be like this, all stern and sulky and what-business-is-it-of-yours. I should be bursting into tears of love and grat.i.tude, not sulking.

She sighs, slumps back on the sofa, and kicks her shoes off.

'Well, tough. You're doing it.'

'Maybe.'

One day, when something like this happens, I'm just going to go, thanks, that's great, how thoughtful, I'm really looking forward to it. Not yet, though.

'You know we're doing a set in the middle?' says Barry.

'Like f.u.c.k you are.'

'Laura said we could. If I helped out with the posters and all that.'

'Jesus. You're not going to take her up on it?'

' 'Course we are.'

'I'll give you ten percent of the door if you don't play.'

'We're getting that anyway.'

'What's she f.u.c.king playing at? OK, twenty percent.'

'No. We need the gig.'

'One hundred and ten percent. That's my final offer.'

He laughs.

'I'm not kidding. If we get one hundred people paying a fiver a throw, I'll give you five hundred and fifty pounds. That's how much it means to me not to hear you play.'

'We're not as bad as you think, Rob.'

'You couldn't be. Look, Barry. There's going to be people from Laura's work there, people who own dogs and babies and Tina Turner alb.u.ms. How are you going to cope with them?'

'How are they going to cope with us, more like. We're not called Barrytown anymore, by the way. They got sick of the Barry/Barrytown thing. We're called SDM. Sonic Death Monkey.'

' 'Sonic Death Monkey.' '

'What do you think? d.i.c.k likes it.'

'Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to yourself and to your friends and to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.'

'I owe it to myself to go out on the edge, Rob, and this group really does go out on the edge. Over it, in fact.'

'You'll be going f.u.c.king right over it if you come anywhere near me next Friday night.'

'That's what we want. Reaction. And if Laura's bourgeois lawyer friends can't take it, then f.u.c.k 'em. Let 'em riot, we can handle it. We'll be ready.' He gives what he fondly imagines to be a demonic, drug-crazed chuckle.

Some people would relish all this. They'd make an anecdote out of it, they'd be getting the phrasing right in their heads even as the pub was being torn apart, even as weeping lawyers with bleeding eardrums were heading for the exits. I am not one of those people. I just gather it all up into a hard ball of nervous anxiety and put it in my gut, somewhere between the belly b.u.t.ton and the a.r.s.ehole, for safe keeping. Even Laura doesn't seem to be that worried.

'It's only the first one. And I've told them they can't go on for longer than half an hour. And OK, you might lose a couple of my friends, but they won't be able to get baby-sitters every week, anyway.'

'I've got to pay a deposit, you know. As well as the rental on the room.'

'That's all taken care of.'

And just that one little sentence sets something off in me. I suddenly feel choked up. It's not the money, it's the way she's thought of everything: one morning I woke up to find her going through my singles, pulling out things that she remembered me playing and putting them into the little carrying cases that I used to use and put away in a cupboard somewhere years ago. She knew I needed a kick up the backside. She also knew how happy I was when I used to do this; and from whichever angle I examine it, it still looks as though she's done it because she loves me.

I cave in to something that has been eating away at me for a while, and put my arms around her.

'I'm sorry I've been a bit of a jerk. I do appreciate what you've done for me, and I know you've done it for the best possible reasons, and I do love you, even though I act as though I don't.'

'That's OK. You seem so cross all the time, though.'

'I know. I don't get myself.'

But if I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that I'm cross because I know I'm stuck, and I don't like it. It would be nicer, in some ways, if I wasn't so bound to her; it would be nicer if those sweet possibilities, that dreamy antic.i.p.ation you have when you're fifteen or twenty or twenty-five, even, and you know that the most perfect person in the world might walk into your shop or office or friend's party at any moment . . . it would be nicer if all that were still around somewhere, in a back pocket or a bottom drawer. But it's all gone, I think, and that's enough to make anyone cross. Laura is who I am now, and it's no good pretending otherwise.

Thirty-three

I meet Caroline when she comes to interview me for her newspaper, and I fall for her straightaway, no messing, while she's at the bar in the pub waiting to buy me a drink. It's a hot day - the first of the year - we go and sit at a trestle table outside and watch the traffic - and she's pink cheeked and wearing a sleeveless, shapeless summer dress with clumpy boots, and for some reason the outfit looks really good on her. But I think I would have gone for anyone today. The weather makes me feel as though I've lost all the dead nerve-ends that were stopping me from feeling and, anyway, how can you fail to fall in love with someone who wants to interview you for a newspaper?

She writes for the Tufnell Parker, Tufnell Parker, one of those free magazines full of advertis.e.m.e.nts that people shove through your door and you shove into the rubbish bin. Actually, she's a student, - she's doing a journalism course, and she's on work experience. And, actually, she says her editor isn't sure whether he'll want the piece, because he's never heard of the shop or the club, and Holloway is right on the borderline of his parish, or const.i.tuency, or catchment area, or whatever it is. But Caroline used to come to the club in the old days, and loved it, and wanted to give us a plug. one of those free magazines full of advertis.e.m.e.nts that people shove through your door and you shove into the rubbish bin. Actually, she's a student, - she's doing a journalism course, and she's on work experience. And, actually, she says her editor isn't sure whether he'll want the piece, because he's never heard of the shop or the club, and Holloway is right on the borderline of his parish, or const.i.tuency, or catchment area, or whatever it is. But Caroline used to come to the club in the old days, and loved it, and wanted to give us a plug.

'I shouldn't have let you in,' I say. 'You must only have been about sixteen.'

'Dear me,' she says, and I can't see why until I think about what I've just said. I didn't mean it as a pathetic chat-up line, or indeed any sort of a chat-up line; I just meant that if she's a student now, she must have been at school then, even though she looks as though she's in her late twenties or early thirties. When I find out that she's a mature student and she worked as a secretary for some left-wing publishing company, I try to correct the impression I must have given without whiting it out altogether, if you see what I mean, and I make a bit of a hash of it.

'When I said that thing about not letting you in, I didn't mean you look young. You don't.' Jesus. 'You don't look old, either. You just look as old as you are.' f.u.c.king h.e.l.l. What if she's forty-five? 'Well, you do. A bit younger, maybe, but not a lot. Not too much. Just right. I'd forgotten about mature students, you see.' I'd rather be a smoothy slimeball than a blundering, semi-coherent, gushing twit any day of the week.

Within minutes, however, I'm looking back fondly on those gushing twit days; they seem infinitely preferable to my next incarnation, Sleaze Man.

'You must have an enormous record collection,' Caroline says.

'Yeah,' I say. 'Do you want to come round and see it?'

I meant it! I meant it! I thought maybe they'd want a picture of me standing by it or something! But when Caroline looks at me over the top of her sungla.s.ses, I rewind and listen to what I said, and let out an audible groan of despair. At least that makes her laugh.

'I'm not usually like this, honest.'

'Don't worry. I don't think he'll let me do one of those Guardian Guardian-type profiles, anyway.' profiles, anyway.'

'That wasn't why I was worried.'

'It's OK, really.'

It's all forgotten, though, with her next question. All my life I have been waiting for this moment, and when it comes I can hardly believe it: I feel unprepared, caught short.

'What are your five favorite records of all time?' she says.

'Pardon?'

'What are your all-time top five records? Your desert island discs, minus - how many? Three?'

'Minus three what?'

'It's eight on Desert Island Discs, Desert Island Discs, isn't it? So eight minus five is three, right?' isn't it? So eight minus five is three, right?'

'Yeah. Plus three, though. Not minus three.'

'No, I just said . . . anyway. Your all-time top five records.'

'What, in the club, or at home?'

'Is there a difference?'

'OF COURSE . . . ' Too shrill. I pretend I've got something in my throat, clear it, and start again. 'Well, yeah, a bit. There's my top five dance records of all time, and then there's my top five records of all time. See, one of my favorite-ever records is 'Sin City' by the Flying Burrito Brothers, but I wouldn't play that at the club. It's a country-rock ballad. Everyone would go home.'

'Never mind. Any five. So four more.'

'What d'you mean, four more?'

'Well, if one of them is this 'Sin City' thing, that leaves four more.'

'NO!' This time I make no attempt to disguise the panic. 'I didn't say it was in my top five! I just said it was one of my favorites! It might turn out to be number six or seven!'

I'm making a bit of a fool of myself, but I can't help it: this is too important, and I've waited for it too long. But where have they gone, all these records I've had in my head for years, just in case Roy Plomley or Michael Parkinson or Sue Lawley or whoever used to do My Top Twelve My Top Twelve on Radio One contacted me and asked me in as a late and admittedly unknown replacement for someone famous? For some reason I can think of hardly any record at all apart from 'Respect,' and that's definitely not my favorite Aretha song. on Radio One contacted me and asked me in as a late and admittedly unknown replacement for someone famous? For some reason I can think of hardly any record at all apart from 'Respect,' and that's definitely not my favorite Aretha song.

'Can I go home and work it out and let you know? In a week or so?'

'Look, if you can't think of anything, it doesn't matter. I'll do one. My five favorites from the old Groucho Club or something.'

She'll do one! She'll rob me of my one and only chance to make a list for publication in a magazine! I don't think so!

'Oh, I'm sure I can manage something.'

'A Horse with No Name.' 'Beep Beep.' 'Ma Baker.' 'My Boomerang Won't Come Back.' My head is suddenly flooded with the t.i.tles of terrible records, and I'm almost hyperventilating.

'OK, put 'Sin City' down.' There must be one other good record in the entire history of pop.

' 'Baby Let's Play House'!'

'Who's that by?'

'Elvis Presley.'

'Oh. Of course.'

'And . . . ' Aretha. Think Aretha.

' 'Think' by Aretha. Franklin.'

Boring, but it'll do. Three down. Two left. Come on, on, Rob. Rob.

' 'Louie, Louie' by the Kingsmen. 'Little Red Corvette' by Prince.'

'Fine. That's great.'

'Is that it?'

'Well, I wouldn't mind a quick chat, if you've got time.'

'Sure. But is that it for the list?'

'That's five. Do you want to change anything?'

'Did I say 'Stir It Up'? Bob Marley?'