Expiration Day (18 page)

And John really wasn't switched on at all. He was on total autopilot. It was like trying to strike sparks off a rice pudding. Oh, he was playing some quite reasonable guitar, but, like I said, no spark.

We just had time to run through our opening number, “Hanging on the Telephone,” of course, and a couple of other songs, including “Juliette in Roses,” which was John's new song. That finally got a bit of a reaction out of John, and I began to hope the gig might not be a total disaster.

The audience began to trickle in, so it was time to put down instruments and go get changed. John and Kieran had to get out of school uniform, at least. I'd seen pictures of AC/DC with the guitarist dressed as a schoolboy in shorts, but that wasn't the image we wanted. Siân was our focus, we'd realized, and whatever we wore had to be in keeping with her image—upmarket, high school queen. No reason why we couldn't dress up, too, but to support, not to upstage.

So I was going with my theme colors—black and silver-gray—because I couldn't afford the leather jacket I really wanted. Nor the five-string bass …

Never mind. Black and silver-gray. Dad had opened up the church office for us to use as a changing room, and moved the desk partitions around to give the boys and us girls some privacy.

“How's this?” Siân asked.

I almost didn't have to look. A cream silk blouse, loose and open-necked, and flame-on-black pantaloons. Her dress sense was stylish, impeccable, and very, very flattering. As always.

“Yeah. S-s-s-smaaart, Siân.”

That was Kieran, peering over the partition. And me still in my undies. Eek!

“Oi, Kieran. Butt out until we're both decent, will you. That wasn't meant for you!”

“S-s-s-sorry, Tania.”

But he could have been quicker to duck back down. A lot quicker.

Maybe he was growing up.

 

 

The plan was we'd let Dad run his party games and his disco, for about half an hour or so. Then we'd do a set. We had ten songs, as planned, but they would need a certain amount of luck to hold together. If they did, we had forty minutes, and then the disco and the games would be back, and we'd rush John and Kieran back to the station, 'cause it was school tomorrow.

If I hate sound checks, I decided waiting for the set to begin was worse. I could hear Dad organizing his games, and I was gritting my teeth, positive that my friends would just freak out and leave. Games? Games? This is a gig!

But John didn't seem bothered. The four of us were sitting in a circle in the office chairs, three of us twitchy, but John was just staring up at the wall. Siân was opposite him, hunched forward, and if the view down her blouse didn't spark his interest, I couldn't think of what would.

This was heading for a disaster.

I took a deep breath.

“John. I need some fresh air. Will you keep me company, please?”

I thought for a moment he was going to ignore me. Then he looked across to me, nodded faintly, and stood up.

Outside it was dark and cold. Well, it would be—this was Halloween. But I was in just my stage clothes, and my favorite black and silver blouse just let the chill right through.

Brrr!

This was no time to beat about the bush. And I was already way too cold to be subtle.

“John. This gig's heading for the rocks. Do you know that?”

“Huh?”

“You're not with us, John. We're pacing the floor, biting our nails, but you … you're showing less emotion than our domestic robot. How the blazes do you think you're going to go on stage and play rock and roll?”

“I can't. Tania, you're right. Since I found out, I don't think I can
feel
anymore.”

“Found out what?”

“You know. What I told you when you came over to Wood Green. It's affected me worse than I realized. I don't feel I belong, anymore.”

“What?” Now I was talking in monosyllables, like a boy.

“When I said we were different. Different kinds of people. I didn't want to blurt it out, but you seemed to understand.”

“Let me get this straight, John. You'd found out that I've been lying to you, pretending to be human. You said you didn't mind me being your bass player, but that was as far as you were prepared to be my friend. And now you feel you don't belong anymore. And to prove that makes sense, which it doesn't, you're behaving like a robot yourself.…”

At which point I stopped, because lights were going on in my head, and they were clearly going on in John's head, too, because his jaw was hanging wide open and he was stuck repeating the word “but.”

I should have guessed. If Kieran was human, as I was now practically certain he must be, that meant John had to be a robot. Miss James had said it—having two humans in a school was incredibly unusual—but I'd ignored the clue, because I'd already decided both John and Kieran were human. And I'd interpreted his words in my own way, not listening to what he'd actually said.

“How did you find out, John? That you were a robot.”

“A silly accident. I was helping my Dad with the electrics in the shop and I touched a live wire. I got a nasty shock, I suppose, but I didn't know it. I just woke up in hospital a week later. But it wasn't a hospital, in fact. It was Oxted. They explained I was very lucky to be alive. There are safeties to isolate the brain, but they often don't work, apparently. For me, fortunately, they did. Dad said I'd just keeled over. Stone dead, as far as anyone could tell. Isolated.”

“Scary. I found out when I fell in the Thames and didn't drown.”

“That must have felt pretty weird, Tania.”

“Yes.”

So there it was. When we separately found out we were robots, we never stopped to question that the other was human. We could have saved ourselves so much heartache, if only we'd trusted each other. If only …

Now, though, we had a different problem.

“Ah, John. We have a gig to play. How do you feel?”

He paused before answering.

“Siân and Kieran. They're human, do you think?”

“I know Siân is. And I'm pretty sure Kieran is.”

“Fair enough. You know, they need us, Tania, and that feels good. So let's go play some rock and roll, before we freeze out here.”

I had almost forgotten the cold. I shivered.

John is a gentle
man
. It was so much warmer with his arms about me.

 

 

Three things …

It was time to go on.

John was alive again.

We had a
band
.

Dad's voice came over the PA. “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the Siân Fuller Band.”

Oh, yes, a name change. Well, it made sense, and it sounded better than F.D.C.R.

But we didn't wait for any applause, because we'd decided we probably wouldn't get any. The plan was for John to give Siân her ghost note, and we'd rip into “Hanging on the Telephone.”

“I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall…”

It was so much better than the last time. Siân hit the note right, the band came in together. And John played a scorcher of a guitar line.

Next up was an old Who track, “Can't Explain.” John tore straight into it, without waiting, so we got two bars' warning. Max.

It didn't really suit Siân's voice, but she'd let herself be persuaded—by me, 'cause the guitar and bass parts are just fantastic.

We had to stop for breath at the end, because, of course, John had broken a string. A pro band would have had a second guitar ready. Or wouldn't have let the strings get corroded without changing them. We still had to learn. And save up for all those things that pro bands take for granted, like new strings and spare guitars.

We had no backup plan. No bass-and-vocals showpiece to cover the awkward gap while John pawed through a plastic carrier bag with his spare strings to find a .009 or similar gauge.

Siân did her best, but she ran dry before John had got the old string off, and we were lucky not to get slow hand claps or boos. As it was, having given us decent applause for our opening songs, the audience got bored, started to call out taunts, and Siân had no idea how to handle them.

Eventually John was ready, and the set list had us doing “Coils” next, but John called out “Message in a Bottle.” I guess it was the right thing to do, because I don't think the audience would have accepted a strange song then.

“Message” lurched through verse one and then settled down into a steady lope. I guess by the time it finished the audience was back with us, because they applauded. On a scale of one to ten, I guess they gave us six or seven.

That was good enough for John. He played a slow arpeggio to check his tuning, twisted a peg a whisker, and mouthed “Coils.” Siân nodded, and John gave her the G.

“You wrapped me in your coils…”

Sweet. I don't know why I ever thought Siân's voice was rubbish, because she sang that song with words that pulsed with a slow, deep ache. I softened my playing to respond, leaving her room to explore the dynamics. Kieran matched me, just pulling back on the power, still firm on the kick drum, but gentler on the snare.

First sixteen and then thirty-two bars passed, and I knew this was good. I couldn't see the faces of the audience, but I could feel their empathy. Wherever this song ended up, they were coming with us. Yet it didn't yet feel like we were surpassing the first performance, and I couldn't work out what I had to do to get us there.

John's entry on the solo was a shade ragged—he'd caught the mood, and choked back on the volume, but I thought his fingering was a whisker late on the first phrase. Disaster unfolding, despite everything John and I had said to each other?

Then he held the note, the last note of that first phrase, and held it and brought it out, into a new phrase he'd never used before, and it fit perfectly.

John! You angel! You genius!

We were there. On the mountain. Not me, nothing I'd done got us there, except maybe to be a platform on which Kieran had built something, on which John had built something, on which Siân now built …

And suddenly, two verses later, I saw the end coming, and I wanted to hold the moment forever, and yet … I wanted to see the song complete. Played out. Fulfilled.

There was a smattering of applause. In a sense, it didn't matter, because I knew what we'd accomplished. In another sense, it was the first applause we'd truly deserved that evening.

So we played “Last Train,” “Tell Me,” and “Juliette in Roses,” because we were on a roll and they were okay. And that was all the original material we had that we dared play, so it was back to the covers, to wrap up the set, finishing up with “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” “After Midnight,” and “Satisfaction.”

We went down well enough that we got some calls for an encore. We'd got nothing in reserve though, so we just bowed or waved or blew kisses to the audience, and abandoned the stage.

I looked around to see if Amanda had showed up, but no. It had always been a long shot, I suppose. So I wandered backstage with the others, to unwind, while the party continued.

Siân's dad was waiting for us, beaming.

“Great set, guys.”

“Thanks, Mr. Fuller.”

I felt utterly drained and dropped onto a chair, conveniently next to John, and let my head fall onto his shoulder. I am not getting up for
anything
, I thought, and you'd better work out your own way to put your arm around me, because I intend to bask in this moment.

But I didn't manage more than a couple of seconds basking, because Mr. Fuller coughed apologetically, and said, “I'm really sorry, guys, but there's a change of plan. Ted'll run the boys to the station in a few minutes, but I need to take the girls into the town, to meet Reverend Deeley, as soon as you can get your coats on.”

Ted? I wondered. Oh yes, Ted Hinchliffe, one of the churchwardens. And meet Dad? Dad was
here
. At least, he'd been here at the start of the gig, organizing those dreadful games.…

Saturday, November 9, 2052

I have to write this next bit more from memory, because I didn't keep much of a diary for the next day or so.

Mum's dead.

While we were playing the gig, Dad got a call to go to the hospital, urgently. Mr. Fuller told me Mum had reacted badly to the treatment and was in intensive care.

We drove through the night to the hospital, me and Siân together on the backseat of Mr. Fuller's car. I can remember nothing of what we said, but Siân was trying her best to comfort me, that I know.

There was some confusion at the hospital, because I wasn't thinking straight, and fortunately Mr. Fuller was there to argue with the nurse who wasn't going to let me in to see her because I wasn't …

… I wasn't her “natural daughter.”

Anyway Mr. Fuller got me through the barriers as far as Dad. Dad was in an anteroom, and he told me Mum was unconscious, and we couldn't see her, because they were busy trying to resuscitate her.

Resuscitate.

That word sent shivers through me when he said it. It's not a good word to have echoing round in your head, while waiting for news.

I couldn't tell you, Mister Zog, how long before the next words arrived in my head. It might have been seconds or hours—they seemed indistinguishable—before a blue-gowned figure appeared out of nowhere, uttering the words “I'm sorry…”

They let us in to see her, then, when it was too late for us to tell her the words we'd saved in our hearts. Dad and I went in together, my hand in his, father and daughter.

For a moment I saw past the drips and the machinery, seeing only my mother, lying still. For just that instant of time, I was convinced she was asleep, resting, and there'd been a mistake; I only had to nudge her, and she'd awaken. The moments passed, and I began to notice little details. There was the silence, and the stillness of her breast, neither rising nor falling. I've heard it said that the dead look peaceful, but if Mum looked peaceful, it was the peace of utter exhaustion. She'd known what was happening to her, had fought against it every second, with every ounce of strength she possessed, until it had completely failed her. So there was determination on her face, but also despair, knowing that she had become too weak to continue.