eyes were stern as he ruffled Danny’s hair. ‘Have you been on the beers, Danny boy?’
Danny coughed a smoker’s cough. ‘Just sleeping. Power nap.’
‘Good lad,’ said Michael. ‘We don’t want you dozing at the wheel later on. We have a lot of good people on this bus.’
Danny pulled his mask back on his face.
Michael offered me a seat on a leather sofa and grabbed two Grolsch beers from a mini-bar fridge. ‘You’re over eighteen, right?’ He winked, popping open a beer and handing it to me.
I nodded quickly.
‘I know they don’t let you drink until you’re twenty-one in this country,’ said Michael. ‘But this bus is my home town of Dublin. International soil. And in Dublin, you can go to the pub when you’re eighteen.’
I nodded and nodded, a big, dumb grin on my face. He thought I was eighteen!
‘That is one totally cool jacket you have on there.’
I smiled, too shy to meet his gaze.
‘And with a jacket like that you can’t drink orange squash, can you?’ said Michael. ‘You’ve got to go the whole way. Sex and drugs and rock and roll.’
I kept nodding, swigging from the beer bottle.
‘Do you know what?’ said Michael. ‘You are a very beautiful girl. You’re like a little fairy. All tiny and delicate. I can’t stand women getting muscly like men. It looks wrong.’
As Michael was laying on the charm, Paul Graves and his wife climbed on the bus. Paul grabbed a magnum of champagne and moved to the back without saying a word.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ said Michael. ‘What brings you out to see a load of old men play music on a cold night?’
‘I love your music. I went crazy when I got tickets for tonight. Totally crazy. Everyone knew the gig would sell out.’
Michael watched me intently, his eyes twinkly and black. It didn’t feel like a forty-something man picking up a sixteen-year-old. It felt like the biggest rush of my life.
‘Hey, will you do something for me?’ said Michael.
‘Anything,’ I gushed, every bit the idiot fan.
‘Paul has got a huff on tonight because we cut one of his songs. Hop on down the bus and tell him you were glad we didn’t play “Come On Home”. Can you do that?’
‘You want me to … what?’
Michael’s eyes glittered. ‘Just tell him. Tell him you don’t like “Come On Home”.’ He patted my bottom. ‘Off you go. Go on, kiddo. I dare you.’
I swallowed and got up. In a daze I wandered down the bus and stood right in front of Paul Graves, who was sitting with his wife. The pair had their heads close together.
I cleared my throat and squeaked: ‘I-don’t-like-come-on-home. I’m-glad-you-didn’t-play-it.’
Paul looked up, eyes slitted and angry. ‘What?’
His beautiful blonde wife said, ‘Michael must have told her to say it, Paul. The little shit-stirrer.’
I scurried back to Michael, who was laughing. He folded me into his arms and said: ‘Well done. Well done. Oh Jesus, the look on his face.’
We talked and talked after that. Or rather, Michael asked questions and I talked. I got enthusiastic about Marvel and manga comics, showed him the Celtic cross tattoo I’d made on my wrist with a needle and black ink and told him about my cancer. Michael learned all about my treatment and my mother and what life had been like growing up.
I told Michael things I hadn’t even told my closest friends – stuff about my mom using the San Francisco free-love no-rules culture to justify being a lousy parent, and how unsuitable her life was for children. How if it hadn’t been for Dee, we would have been taken away from her.
‘My mom wasn’t even up-to-date,’ I said. ‘All that hippy stuff passed through years before Dee and I were born. She clung on to it for dear life.’
I went into huge detail about my cancer too. How embarrassing the treatment was for a teenager just getting to know her body. Having things stuck here and there, being wheeled around without underwear on. So bad. And then having all my hair falling out.
‘The tumour was so big they had to cut it in half to get it out,’ I told him. ‘Do you know what helped me heal?’
‘What?’ Michael asked, dark eyes big and beautiful and fascinated.
‘You, Crimson and Big Dreams.’ I looked at my hands, feeling awkward. ‘You got me through some really bad times. Without your music, I honestly don’t think I would have got through the treatment. You gave me a reason to live.’
‘We touched something pretty deep when we made that album,’ said Michael. ‘It was special, that one. And it takes a special person to feel it too.’
I grinned.
Michael encouraged me to talk so much about myself that night, while he sat and listened. As I talked, he touched and twisted the leather bracelets on my arm and the chunky silver chains around my neck.
‘You’re quite a girl,’ he said. ‘You’ve really been through it. We’ve had a hard life, the pair of us. Harder than most.’
My eyes widened. ‘Did you get sick too when you were younger?’
‘No. But I had a bad time growing up.’
‘Really?’ I was fascinated.
Michael nodded. ‘My dad was a vicious bastard. Talked with his fists.’ He pulled up his black jeans and showed me a long, red scar running over his knee and down his calf. ‘I saw the bone poking out of that, once upon a time. But he made me fearless, the old sod. When someone that big pushes you around, you’re not afraid of anyone.’
‘Your mother—’
‘Died, God rest her soul. When I was two. I don’t remember her. Probably better that way.’
I think Michael’s sadness might have been real. But it’s hard to know, looking back. He was so good at fooling people. Maybe he was sad, but sad about something else. Who knows?
‘But that’s life, isn’t it?’ Michael continued. ‘You should know. You’ve been through it too.’
As Michael and I talked, crew members and girls filtered onto the bus. Some of the girls I recognized from the stage doors – teenagers, shivering in short dresses and Wonderbras. It seemed kind of sleazy, those young girls with bare legs, sitting with old rock guys. But Michael and I were different. We had a soul connection.
Michael whispered in my ear, ‘It’s getting a bit noisy. Let’s go to the bedroom.’ He grabbed a whiskey bottle and a few beers, then led me by the hand into
