years ago, adjusting his mic and tuning his guitar.
‘I’m Lucas,’ the dark-haired man said, ‘and we’re No Education.’
His eyes scanned the crowd, smiling, and his gaze found hers. His eyes widened for the longest moment, standing in silence, looking as if someone had just taken a frying pan to his face. Then he launched into his set, and didn’t make eye contact again.
October 2003
‘I think I’m going to throw up.’ Megan sat on the stage at the Nag’s Head, breathing deeply. Lucas came up behind her, putting his arms around her.
‘You’re going to be fine. Better than fine, amazing.’ He gave her a squeeze. ‘Come on Angel, pretend it’s just you and me playing in my bedroom.’
She turned her head to look at him. ‘So I should play in my underwear.’
Lucas grinned. ‘If that’ll make you feel more comfortable, I have no complaints.’
She leaned back into his arms and closed her eyes. Life was perfect. She had the perfect guy, a great band, good grades, and was on track to get out of this stifling little village. Except she hadn’t realised she’d be this nervous.
‘Come on, up we get.’ Lucas grabbed her hand and pulled her up. ‘Me and the guys can deal with the set up, why don’t you see if Linda will make you a cuppa, and do some deep breathing in the corner?’
She swept his hair across his head, to stop it from constantly falling into his eyes. She knew it would end up in his face again the minute he started playing, throwing his head about and fixing the audience with a solid gaze from beneath dark lashes. She liked his hair better before he’d dyed it. Then again, he said the same thing about her. The sacrifices they made for rock and roll. She smudged the eyeliner he’d applied earlier, making him look more tired and mysterious, and less like an irritated panda with a musical agenda.
‘This is gonna be great, Meg, really.’ He pulled her in for a kiss, as always his arms warm around her, his kisses gentle but longing, a promise of what would happen after the show. She was so glad it had been with him, and not just some boy who would kiss her for five minutes before groping down her top. Lucas was…well, she hesitated to use the term soul mate because it made her want to vomit even more, but he was her something. Her magnet, her anchor. Something that kept her steady and made her fly all at once.
‘And if it’s not?’ she breathed against his lips.
‘Well, if it’s not, I’ll still love you.’ Lucas grinned at her, watching as her mouth dropped into an ‘o’ of surprise. ‘Yep, I love you. It’s a full-time job, but someone’s got to do it.’
He patted her bum. ‘Now warm up those vocals, rock star!’
They wowed the crowd that night, there were cheers and demands for encores. Tom had given them ten percent of the money made on the bar, and as they danced around on stage to their last encore, the crowd singing along to ‘Come on Eileen’, of all songs, she reached for Lucas’ hand and shouted across the stage: ‘I love you too.’
***
They were good. Really good. Too good to be teachers who did this for fun on Friday nights, Megan thought, heart thumping desperately. She’d downed most of the bottle of wine, and her hands were shaking throughout the set. Twangly guitar and his voice, still so recognisable, and yet with an extra edge it had never had at seventeen. Something that sounded like whisky and cigarettes and too many nights staring at the ceiling. But that couldn’t be true, if Lucas was a teacher, living in the same tiny village that she’d always wanted to escape. So had he failed, or had he settled?
‘You couldn’t have told me!’ she hissed at Estelle, eyes still watching Lucas on stage, though he was purposefully ignoring her.
‘That’s what I was going to do tonight! He wasn’t meant to be playing! I was going to tell you here!’ Estelle explained.
‘And what is there to tell?’
‘Lucas is a music teacher at the school. He came back about six or seven years ago. Went off to pursue the big time, and we heard it was going well, then suddenly he turns up with a teaching degree and a burning desire to destroy talented young people by over-analysing Pachelbel’s Canon and playing on xylophones. He’s a colleague, and a friend.’
Megan felt like her stomach was sitting in her chest. ‘You can’t tell me any more?’
‘I don’t know much more. He teaches, he plays in his band. He’s not married, doesn’t have kids. Lives in a little cottage at the edge of town. Kind of a recluse. Friendly and funny enough, but he keeps to himself.’
Megan took the time to truly look at him. It was impossible not to compare him to the old Lucas, the one with the painted fingernails and kohl-lined eyes. This Lucas looked like an upright young man. His hair was back to his natural dark brown, his blue eyes standing out against his pale skin. He still had a piercing in his ear, and where his shirt was rolled up there was a large tattoo on his forearm, though she couldn’t make out what it was. His clothes were simple now, a pale shirt and dark jeans, a couple of beaded bracelets around his wrist. He didn’t look like a rock star any more. He looked like someone’s dad. Which didn’t seem to be stopping the teenage girls at the front of the stage wiggling their hips and staring up at him in awe.
‘As always, you guys have been…a passable audience.’ He looked seriously into the crowd, surveying them over the mic, and then laughed. ‘I’m joking, we love that you support our little band. But those of you from my Year Ten class here tonight, this is not an excuse for not giving in your compositions. But feel free to write “Mr Bright’s band is awesome” five hundred times if you want extra credit.’
The crowd chuckled, the girls cooed, and the mood seemed lighter. Megan smiled softly; that was Lucas, there on stage. Making jokes and soaking up the spotlight, because he was Lucas Bright, and even his name knew he was meant to be something special.
‘This next song we’re going to play is a bit of an oldie, and we haven’t played it for quite a while, but somehow, tonight, it seems fitting. It’s called “The Girl Who Ran Away”.’
The guitar started, and Megan’s head began to spin. The song had been everywhere, years ago. She remembered hearing it on the radio in Anna’s house, a year or so after they’d moved in with her. Skye hadn’t stopped crying, she hadn’t eaten, slept or washed in days, and all she wanted to do was fall apart. The small red radio Anna kept in the kitchen was on in the background, and that song came on. ‘The Girl Who Ran Away.’ And Megan thought in that instant, ‘this song is about me. It’s for me.’ The girl who lies, the girl who pushes, the girl who runs away. It was her, and she took so much comfort in it, playing it each night before she went to sleep, playing it when she was upset her parents hadn’t called. Playing it those first few Christmases when she had missed her family fiercely. For Lucas to be playing that song…
‘Well, thanks,’ Lucas smiled at the audience, ‘that little ditty was something I wrote a few years ago, although
