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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Cover illustration © Telegramme/Central Illustration Agency
Cover design by Richard Ogle/TW

Rachel Joyce has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

‘Time Has Told Me’ lyrics by Nick Drake, used by kind permission of Warlock Music/BMG Rights

Lyrics here from ‘Oh No Not My Baby’ by Aretha Franklin (written by Gerry Goffin and Carol King)

Lyrics here from ‘A Night To Remember’ by Shalamar (written by Leon Sylvers III, Dana Meyers and Nidra Beard)

Lyrics here from ‘Strange Fruit’ by Billie Holiday (written by Abel Meeropol)

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448170029
ISBNs 9780857521927 (hb) 9780857521934 (tpb)

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Time has told me

You’re a rare, rare find

A troubled cure

For a troubled mind.

Nick Drake, ‘Time Has Told Me’

It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found.

Donald Winnicott

From the outside it looked like any shop, in any backstreet. It had no name above the door. No record display in the window. There was just a homemade poster stuck to the glass. For the music you need!!! Everyone welcome!! We only sell VINYL! If closed, please telephone – though after that it was anyone’s guess because, along with more happy exclamation marks, the only legible numbers were an 8 that could well be a 3, and two other things that might be triangles.

Inside, the shop was cram-packed. Boxes everywhere, stocked with every kind of record in every speed, size and colour, and not one of them classified. An old counter stood to the right of the door and, at the back, two listening booths towered either side of a turntable; more like bedroom furniture than regular booths. Behind the turntable sat the owner, Frank, a gentle bear of a man, smoking and playing records. His shop was often open into the night – just as it was often closed into the morning – music playing, coloured lamps waltzing, all sorts of people searching for records.

Classical, rock, jazz, blues, heavy metal, punk … As long as it was on vinyl, there were no taboos. And if you told Frank the kind of thing you wanted, or simply how you felt that day, he had the right track in minutes. It was a knack he had. A gift. He knew what people needed even when they didn’t know it themselves.

‘Now why not give this a try?’ he’d say, shoving back his wild brown hair. ‘I’ve got a feeling. I just think it will work—’

SIDE A: JANUARY 1988

The Man Who Only Liked Chopin

FRANK SAT SMOKING behind his turntable, same as always, watching the window. Mid-afternoon, and it was almost dark out there. The day had hardly been a day at all. A drop in temperature had brought the beginnings of a frost and Unity Street glittered beneath the street lights. The air had a kind of blue feel.

The other four shops on the parade were already closed but he had put on the lava lamps and the electric fire. The music shop was warm and colourfully lit. At the counter, Maud the tattooist stood flicking through fanzines while Father Anthony made an origami flower. Saturday Kit had collected all the Emmylou Harris and was trying to arrange them in alphabetical order without Frank noticing.

‘I had no customers again,’ said Maud, very loud. Even though Frank was at the back of the shop and she was at the front, there was technically no need to shout. The shops on Unity Street were only the size of a front room. ‘Are you listening?’

Frank took off his headphones. Smiled. He felt laugh lines spring all over his face and his eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘See? I’m always listening.’

Maud made a noise like ‘Ham.’ Then she said, ‘One man called in, but it wasn’t for a tattoo. He just wanted directions to the new precinct.’

Father Anthony said he’d sold a paperweight in his gift shop. Also, a leather bookmark with the Lord’s Prayer stamped on it. He seemed more than happy about that.

‘You won’t, Maud. You’ll be fine.’ They had this conversation all the time. She said how awful things were, and Frank said they weren’t, Maud, they weren’t. You two are like a stuck record, Kit told them, which might have been funny except that he said it every night, and besides, they weren’t a couple. Frank was very much a single man.

‘Of course they’re dying. People don’t come here any more. All they want is that crap on the high street.’

Only last month the florist had gone. Her empty shop stood on one end of the parade like a bad tooth, and a few nights ago the baker’s window – he was at the other end – had been defaced with slogans. Frank had fetched a bucket of soapy water but it took all morning to wash them off.

‘There have always been shops on Unity Street,’ said Father Anthony. ‘We’re a community. We belong here.’

Saturday Kit passed with a box of new 12-inch singles, narrowly missing a lava lamp. He seemed to have abandoned Emmylou Harris. ‘We had another shoplifter today,’ he said, apropos of not very much at all. ‘First he flipped because we had no CDs. Then he asked to look at a record and made a run for it.’

Yes, Frank had done the sort of thing he always did. He’d grabbed his old suede jacket and loped after the young man until he caught him at the bus stop. (What kind of thief waited for the number 11?) He’d said, between deep breaths, that he would call the police unless the lad came back and tried something new in the listening booth. He could keep the Genesis record if he wanted the thing so much, though it broke Frank’s heart that he was nicking the wrong one – their early stuff was tons better. He could have the album for nothing, and even the sleeve; ‘so long as you try “Fingal’s Cave”. If you like Genesis, trust me. You’ll love Mendelssohn.’

Then the door opened and ding-dong; a new customer. Frank felt a ping of excitement.

A tidy, middle-aged man followed the Persian runner that led all the way to the turntable. Everything about this man seemed ordinary – his coat, his hair, even his ears – as if he had been deliberately assembled so that no one would look at him twice. Head bowed, he crept past the counter to his right, where Maud stood with Father Anthony and Kit, and behind them all the records stored in cardboard master bags. He passed the old wooden shelving to his left, the door that led up to Frank’s flat, the central table, and all the plastic crates piled with surplus stock. Not even a sideways glance at the patchwork of album sleeves and homemade posters thumbtacked by Kit all over the walls. At the turntable, he stopped and pulled out a handkerchief. His eyes were red dots.

‘Are you all right?’ Frank asked, in his boom of a voice. ‘How can I help you today?’

Frank remembered now. This man had come in a few months ago. He had been looking for something to calm his nerves before his wedding.

The man wriggled his mouth. He didn’t seem used to the idea that anyone would remember him. ‘I’ve got myself in another spot of difficulty. I wondered if you might – find something else for me?’ He had missed a patch on his chin when he was shaving. There was something lonesome about it, that scratchy patch of stubble, all on its own.

So Frank smiled because he always smiled when a customer asked for help. He asked the same questions he always asked. Did the man know what he was looking for? (Yes. Chopin.) Had he heard anything else that he liked? (Yes. Chopin.) Could he hum it? (No. He didn’t think he could.)

The man shot a look over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening but they weren’t. Over the years, they’d seen everything in the music shop. There were the regular customers, of course, who came to find new records, but often people wanted something more. Frank had helped them through illness, grief, loss of confidence and jobs, as well as the more everyday things like football results and the weather. Not that he knew about all those things but really it was a matter of listening, and he had endless patience. As a boy, he could stand for hours with a piece of bread in his hand, hoping for a bird.

‘You just want me to find you the right record? You don’t know what, but so long as it’s Chopin, you’ll be OK?’

So what did he need? Frank pushed away his fringe – it flopped straight back, but there it was, the thing had a life of its own – he cupped his chin in his hands and he listened as if he were trying to find a radio signal in the ether. Something beautiful? Something slow? He barely moved, he just listened.

But when it came, it was such a blast, it took Frank’s breath away. Of course. What this man needed wasn’t Chopin. It wasn’t even a nocturne. What he needed was—

He lumbered around the shop, tugging out album sleeves, skirting past Kit, and ducking his head to dodge a light fitting. He needed to find the right match for the music he had heard from the man who only liked Chopin. Piano, yes. He could hear piano. But the man needed something else as well. Something that was both tender and huge. Where would Frank find that? Beethoven? No, that would be too much. Beethoven might just floor a man like this one. What he needed was a good friend.

‘Can I help you, Frank?’ asked Kit. Actually he said ‘Ca’ I hel’?’ because his eighteen-year-old mouth was full of chocolate biscuit. Kit wasn’t simple or even backward, as people sometimes suggested, he was just gauche and wildly overenthusiastic, raised in a small suburban house by a mother with dementia and a father who mainly watched television. Frank had grown fond of Kit in the last few years, in the way that he had once cared for his broken van and his mother’s record player. He found that if you treated him like a young terrier, sending him out for regular walks and occupying him with easy tasks, he was less liable to cause serious damage.

Frank wanted a song that would arrive like a little raft and carry this man safely home.

Piano. Yes. Brass? That could work. A voice? Maybe. Something powerful and passionate that could sound both complicated and yet so simple it was obvious—

That was it. He got it. He knew what the man needed. He swung behind the counter and pulled out the right record. But when he rushed back to his turntable, mumbling, ‘Side two, track five. This is it. Yes, this is the one!’ the man gave a sigh that was almost a sob it was so desperate.

‘Spirit in the Dark? No, no. I don’t want this record. It’s not what I came for.’

Frank looked down from his great height, while the man twisted and twisted his handkerchief. ‘I know it’s not what you want, but trust me, today it’s what you need. What have you got to lose?’

The man sent one last look in the direction of the door. Father Anthony gave a sympathetic shrug, as if to say, Why not? We’ve all been there. ‘Go on, then,’ said the man who only liked Chopin.

Kit sprang forward and led him to a listening booth, not exactly holding his hand, but leading the way with outstretched arms as if parts of the man were in danger of dropping off at any moment. Light bloomed from the lava lamps in shifting patterns of pink and apple-green and gold. The booths were nothing like the ones in Woolworths – those were more like standing up in a hairdryer. Their headphones were so greasy, Maud said, you had to shower afterwards. No, these booths Frank had made himself from a pair of matching Victorian wardrobes of incredible magnitude he had spotted in a skip. He had sawn off the feet, removed the hanging rails and sets of drawers, and drilled small holes to connect each one with cable to his turntable. Frank had found two armchairs, small enough to fit inside, but comfortable. He had even polished the wood until it gleamed like black gloss paint, revealing a delicate inlay in the doors of mother-of-pearl birds and flowers. The booths were beautiful when you really looked.

The man stepped in and made a sideways shuffle – there was very little space; he was being asked to sit in a piece of bedroom furniture, after all – and took his place. Frank helped with the headphones and shut the door.

At his turntable, Frank eased the record from its sleeve and lifted the stylus. Tick, tick went the needle, riding the grooves. He flicked the speaker switch so that it would play through the whole shop. Tick, tick—

Oh No Not My Baby

TICK, TICK. IT was dark inside the booth, with a hushed feeling, like hiding in a cupboard. The silence fizzed.

Everyone had warned him. Be careful, they’d said. He just wouldn’t listen. So he asked her to marry him and he couldn’t believe his luck when she said yes – her so beautiful, him so ordinary. Then he took her a bottle of champagne after the wedding breakfast, and there she was, upside down in the honeymoon suite. At first he couldn’t work it out. He had to take a really good look. He saw a dress like a sticky meringue with four legs poking out, two with black socks, one with a garter. And then he realized. It was his new wife and his best man. He left the bottle on the floor, along with two glasses, and shut the door.

He couldn’t get that picture out of his head. He played Chopin, he took pills from the doctor, and none of it made a difference. He stopped going out; he cried at the drop of a hat. He felt so bad he called in sick at work.

The song started. A twang of guitar, a blast of horns, a chirruping ‘sweet-sweet-ba-by’ and then a bam-bam-bam-bam from percussion.

What was Frank thinking? This wasn’t the music he needed. He went to pull off the headphones—

‘When ma friends tol’ me you had someone noo,’ began the singer, this Aretha, her voice clear and steady, ‘I didn’ believe a single word was true.’

It was like meeting a stranger in the dark, saying to them, ‘You’ll never guess what?’ and the stranger saying, ‘Hey, but that’s exactly how it is for me.’

He stopped thinking about his wife and his sadness and he listened to Aretha as if she were a voice inside his head.

She told him her story – something like this. Everyone said her man was a cheat; even her own mother said it. But Aretha wouldn’t believe them. He was not like those other BOYS who lead you ON. Who tell you LIES. She started the song calmly enough but by the time she got to the chorus she was practically screaming the words. Her voice was a little boat and the music was a Japanese wave, but Aretha kept riding it, up and down. It was downright pig-headed, the way she kept believing in him. There were strings, the bobble of the guitar, a horn riff, percussion, all telling her she was wrong – ‘Wohhh!’ shrilled the backing vocals, like a Greek chorus of girlfriends – but no, she hung on tight. Her voice pulled the words this way and that, soaring up over the top and then scooping right down low. Aretha knew. She knew how desperate it felt, to love a cheat. How lonely.

It’s a Kind of Magic

FRANK SHOOK A cigarette from the packet and as he smoked, he watched the door of the booth. He hoped he wasn’t wrong about this song. Sometimes all that people needed was to know they were not alone. Other times it was more a question of keeping them in touch with their feelings until they wore them out – people clung to what was familiar, even when it was painful.

‘The thing about vinyl,’ his mother used to say, ‘is that you have to look after it.’ He could picture Peg now, in their white house by the sea, dressed in a turban and kimono as she played him Bach or Beethoven or whatever else she’d had delivered. Peg told stories about records, little things to help him listen, and she spoke about composers as if they were lovers. She wore massive sunglasses even when it was raining, actually even when it was pitch black, and her arms were looped with so many bangles she jingled when she laughed. She had no interest in normal mothery things. Jam sandwiches, for instance, cut into triangles. A nice casserole for his supper or cherry linctus when he had a cough. If he showed her a shell, or a ribbon of seaweed, she tended to lob it straight back at the sea, and whenever she drove the old Rover into town it was Frank who had to remind her about the handbrake. (She had an unfortunate habit of rolling forward.) Yes, being a regular mother was anathema to Peg but when it came to vinyl, she displayed a care that verged on sacred. And she could talk music for hours.

The song began to fade. The door of the booth gave a click and opened. Off went those mother-of-pearl birds, shaking their wings and taking flight.

The man who only liked Chopin didn’t come out. He stood at the door, looking candlewax-white and a bit sick.

‘Well?’ Over at the counter, Maud, Father Anthony and Saturday Kit were all waiting too. Kit jumped first on one leg and then on the other. Father Anthony had lifted his glasses on top of his head and wore them like a hairband. Maud frowned.

The man who only liked Chopin began to laugh. ‘Wow, that was something. How did you know I needed Aretha? How did you do that, Frank?’

Now it was Frank’s turn to laugh. ‘She did actually. You’re in luck. She made a lot. She really liked singing.’

He played the whole record, side one and then side two. As he listened, Frank smoked and danced in the cramped space behind his turntable, rolling his shoulders and swinging his hips – watching him, even Maud began to sway – while Kit did something that was possibly the funky chicken, but could equally be to do with his new shoes hurting his feet. It was Aretha at her best. Everyone should own a copy of Spirit in the Dark.

Afterwards Kit made cups of tea and Frank listened at his turntable while the man told him more about his wife. How he couldn’t so much as touch her after the wedding. How she’d moved out a month ago to live with his best man. It was a relief, he said, just to tell someone all this. Frank nodded as he listened and reassured the man, over and over, that he could come to the shop whenever he needed. ‘Just bang on the door if I’m not open. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’m always here. You don’t need to be on your own.’

They were small things really, and pretty obvious ones, but the man smiled as if Frank had given him a brand-new heart.

‘Have you ever been in a mess like this?’ he asked. ‘Have you ever been in love?’

The man shut himself back in the booth and Frank reset the needle on the vinyl. ‘When ma friends tol’ me you had someone noo …’ His gaze drifted to the window.

So empty and quiet out there. Nothing coming, nothing going, just the thin blue light, the cold. Frank could not play music, he could not read a score, he had no practical knowledge whatsoever, but when he sat in front of a customer and truly listened, he heard a kind of song. He wasn’t talking a full-blown symphony. It would be a few notes; at the most, a strain. And it didn’t happen all the time, only when he let go of being Frank and inhabited a space that was more in the middle. It had been this way ever since he could remember. ‘Intuition,’ Father Anthony called it. ‘Weird shit’: that was Maud.

So what did it matter if he had no one in particular in his life? He was happy alone. He lit up another smoke.

The Shop on Unity Street

THE FIRST TIME Frank saw his shop, he burst out laughing. Haw haw haw. Great joyous lungfuls. It was fourteen years ago. 1974: Britain was in its first recession since the war. The miners were on strike and a three-day week was in force.

He had been wandering the city for hours. He had no idea where he was heading. He passed the cathedral, the network of old alleys, passages and cobbled lanes that surrounded it, with their trinket shops and cafés. He walked the length of Castlegate, the main shopping precinct in the city, staring at the big windows, and he visited the clock tower. Further on he noticed gates to a park, a queue at the dole office, he tried an amusement arcade and afterwards browsed a line of market stalls; then he followed several residential roads in the direction of the old docks. He only stopped at Unity Street because it was a cul-de-sac with a pub and six shops on one side, and a row of Victorian brown-brick houses on the other. Short of climbing rooftops, he couldn’t physically go any further.

And so he paused and he really looked at it; this little run-down street. An Italian flag at the window of one house, the smell of spices bursting from its neighbour, a woman in a headdress shelling peas on her doorstep, a gang of kids pushing a trolley, a set of letters painted across another façade, advertising Rooms to Let. He stared at the parade of shops. An undertaker, a Polish bakery, a religious gift shop, the empty shell with a For Sale notice at the window, then a tattoo parlour, and finally a florist. He saw two old men in the undertaker’s window offering tissues to a woman who was crying. He saw a boy pointing to a cake in the bakery; another man in his fifties helping a girl choose a plastic Jesus in Articles of Faith. He saw a young woman with painted skin mopping her floor, a pair of curtains at her window and the word TATTOOISTA on the glass, while an old lady in a sari emerged from the florist with an armful of flowers, calling her thank you as she closed the door. It was the everyday ordinariness of it that moved him. That, and the usefulness, as if this diverse mix of people had always been there, like mothers and fathers, helping others to find what they needed. In his mind’s eye, the future appeared to him in the same way he had seen the distant horizon materializing out of a sea mist at the white house; blurred and remote, but beautiful and full of hope. That was when he began to laugh, and it was years since Frank had laughed like that. He went straight to the estate agent.

‘Of course the shop needs a little love, sir,’ said the agent, putting down his sandwich and searching for the keys. ‘You will have to use your imagination once we’re inside.’

A little love? The interior was a wreck. It was choked with rubbish and the stench was sickening – clearly people had been using it as a toilet. Someone had even ripped up the floorboards and lit a fire.

‘I like it,’ said Frank. And he touched the walls, just to reassure them. ‘Yes, I’ll pay the full asking price.’

Ask Frank to love a nice house with a garden, all mod cons, he would have turned on his heels. Ask him to fall in love with another human being, he’d have fled. But this. Broken as it was, and manky and misused – yes, this was on his level. He admitted to the estate agent he didn’t have any experience with DIY but guessed it couldn’t be so hard if you got a book from the library. He also admitted he didn’t have much of a clue about shops. Peg had only ever had things sent by special delivery. He mentioned Harrods, Fortnum’s and Deutsche Grammophon.

The estate agent – whose wife drove to the supermarket every Saturday – couldn’t believe his luck. The property had been empty for a year and the parade was on its last legs; lumps of masonry had a habit of dropping to the ground whenever someone slammed a door. Beyond it lay an expanse of rubble where a bomb had hit the street in ’41. Last time the agent looked, he’d seen scrappy children playing there, and also a tethered goat. The street was a complete mish-mash. One day a developer would have the sense to flatten the whole lot and build a car park.

But Frank didn’t seem to notice. Instead he suggested a beer in England’s Glory, the pub on the corner. There was something about this great big young man, with his wild hair and shabby clothes, his funny lollopy way of walking as if he still hadn’t got the measure of his feet, that baffled the estate agent. A kind of innocence you didn’t often see. His hands were soft as powder puffs; clearly he’d never done a day’s hard work. And he couldn’t stop talking about records.

When the agent asked what had brought him to this particular nook, Frank said his van had just stopped. (Nook was estate-agent speak. There was nothing nookish about this corner of England. It was an eyesore. Its main industry was processed food. Flavoured snacks, to be precise. When the wind blew in the wrong direction, the entire city smelt of cheese and onion.)

But the estate agent was not the only one who was being fanciful. Frank too could have been more specific. He could have said his van had not exactly been going for the last twenty miles. And he might also have mentioned that since the death of Peg, his life was a write-off; he didn’t even have the white house by the sea. Recently he’d been on the move, and sleeping rough, and waiting for a solution to jump out at him. And now here it was. If he could run a small shop in a dead-end street, without the complications of love or ties – if he could put everything into serving ordinary people and avoid receiving anything in return – he thought he might just about get by. He sold his van for scrap and signed the paperwork that afternoon. He didn’t even wait for a survey.

‘So you’re gonna open a music shop?’ Maud asked, the first time they met. She was a short, blocky young woman with a Mohican that she dyed different colours to suit her mood – generally very dark colours that were not to be found in nature. Her skin was an inky web of hearts and flowers.

Frank looked up from the kerb where he was sitting in the sun. He held a notepad and pencil. He was drawing smiley faces.

‘Oh,’ said Frank. ‘I wondered where I was going to get chart singles.’ He went back to the notepad.

‘I have all my old records in my van. But I won’t sell tapes. There’s no beauty in tapes. I’ll just sell vinyl.’

He smiled. To his confusion, she turned a scalded shade of red as if she’d just been attacked with a blowtorch. ‘They can go to Woolworths.’

‘The old woman who used to own your shop sold sewing stuff. No one came, you know. She lost her marbles. Ended up in a home.’

Frank made a mental note not to depend on Maud if he was ever in need of good cheer.

He began the refit straight away. In one morning alone, he dragged out a washing machine, a car battery, a mower and an iron cot. Ivy was uprooted, floors swept, window frames prised open. Now empty, the shop was suddenly full of potential. It seemed so much bigger from the inside than if you were just passing. A counter could go here to the side of the door, a turntable at the back. There was even room for two listening booths. He bought a bag of tools and set to work.

Frank might have cut a lonely figure but this did not make him unusual on Unity Street, where many people had once been alone. And barely a day went by without someone popping his head round the door – actually through the door, there was as yet no glass – to take over the work. Frank found them records by way of payment. The shopkeepers he had observed so carefully now took him under their wing. He learnt more about the ex-priest who had retired early for personal reasons and poured a drink around the same time he poured a bowl of cornflakes. He learnt more about the old twin brothers whose family had run the funeral business for four generations, and sometimes held hands like children. He heard the story of the Polish baker, and he began to realize that when the tattooist scowled, it might actually be a smile.

Inside the shop, broken floorboards were replaced. Walls were replastered. Pipes were repaired, roof tiles fitted, and so were windows. The staircase to the flat was made safe and the building was replumbed. When his cash ran out, Frank applied to the bank for a loan.

It turned out the bank manager’s wife had just had a baby. The poor woman had not slept in weeks. The bank manager confessed to Frank he had no idea how to help his wife; he’d tried everything. Frank sat forward – the chair was on the small side, in point of fact it was verging on miniature – and listened with his chin in his hands. He forgot all about the loan. He just listened. It was only at the very end of the interview that the bank manager read through Frank’s paperwork and said that since he had no experience in retail, the bank would never agree. ‘You seem a good man,’ he said. ‘But with inflation as high as it is, we can’t take any risks.’ As well as the recession, everyone was worrying about the Cold War. They fully expected to wake up one morning and find Soviet tanks parked outside the Co-op.

Frank returned to the bank the following day with two records – Waltz for Debby by Bill Evans, and the canticles of Hildegard von Bingen – along with a note, listing the tracks the manager’s wife should play. He also included a lullaby. (‘Your wife doesn’t have to listen to this,’ he had scribbled. ‘This is just for the baby.’) The lullaby was not an obvious choice and neither was it classical. It was ‘Wild Thing’ by The Troggs.

But it worked. The bank manager wrote to Frank. (Beautifully typed.) His wife had slept. And the moment the baby heard his lullaby, he too fell into a kind of trance, as if for the first time someone had recognized the animal inside him and made a safe place for it. The bank manager added that it would be a pleasure to provide the full loan. He enclosed the necessary paperwork – he had taken the liberty of filling in the form on Frank’s behalf. He finished the letter with best wishes for the future and his name: ‘Henry’. From that day on, they became good friends.

Simple wooden shelves were built. Frank bought a proper turntable and a pair of JBL speakers. In the early days the shop was stocked entirely with his own albums and singles. Because he loved them and knew everything about them, he arranged them carefully in boxes; not by genre, or letters of the alphabet, but more instinctively. He put Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, for instance, beside Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. (‘Same thing, different time,’ he said.) For Frank, music was like a garden – it sowed seeds in far-flung places. People would miss out on so many wonderful things if they only stuck with what they knew.

For a couple of years no reps would visit. It looked more like a shed than a shop, one of them said. There was the big Woolworths on Castlegate and a new Our Price Records had opened less than ten miles away. Then when Never Mind the Bollocks was released in ’77, Frank was the only record shop owner within a twenty-mile radius who would take it. He sold out in two days. He had to borrow Maud’s Cortina and drive to London to buy an entire new stock. He filled his shop with small independent labels he’d never even heard of until then. Cherry Red Records, Good Vibrations, Object Music, Factory, Postcard, Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet, 4AD. In the early eighties, a rep dropped by every day. They unpacked promotional T-shirts, posters, tickets. Even freebies; ten records for the price of one. No matter that he refused to stock cassette tapes; the music shop was on the map, and so was Unity Street. Frank was so busy on Saturdays he advertised for an assistant, though Kit was the only applicant who produced a homemade CV, listing every club he had joined – Cubs, Scouts (both the landed and the sea variety), as well as St John Ambulance cadets, the National Philatelic Society and the Diana Ross fan club. He was clearly desperate to escape.

Now that CDs were on the rise, a few customers and reps had stopped calling at the music shop. Out of date, they called Frank. Pigheaded. But it was kind of cool, everyone else agreed. When a man has the passion to stand up for something crazy, it makes other problems in people’s lives seem more straightforward. And anyway – as Frank was often pointing out – customers could go to Woolworths or Our Price if they wanted a cassette, or even a new CD. They had stacks of the things.

How could anyone get excited about a piece of shiny plastic? CDs wouldn’t last, they were a gimmick, and so were cassettes. ‘I don’t care what anyone tells me. The future’s vinyl,’ he said.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

SHE WAS STANDING outside. A woman in a green coat. Afterwards he could have sworn she was trying to tell him something, that there was a special glimmer in her eyes even then, but that was probably one of those details that come with hindsight. The simple fact was that one minute there she was, pale face pressed to the window, her hands cupped to her head like two small flaps, then – bang. The pavement seemed to swallow her. She was gone.

‘Did you see that?’ called Father Anthony. His mouth gave up and he stopped talking.

Frank loped to the door and threw it open, followed by Kit, Maud and the old priest. The woman was lying on her back on the pavement, caught in the river of light from the music shop. She was still and absolutely straight. Her hands were flat at her sides – she was wearing gloves – and her shoes poked upwards. He had never seen her before.

Frank was at her side and on his knees without noticing, though once he was down, he sort of wished he was back up. The woman’s eyes were closed and there was no trace of blood. Her face was small and definite – her mouth and nose almost too big – slim eyebrows, a delicate chin that appeared even smaller given the exaggerated width of her jawbone, a neck as long as a stem, and the skin around her nose so freckled it was as if someone had dipped a brush in paint and spattered her, just for the fun of it. There was something about her that was both fragile and incredibly strong.

Father Anthony unbuttoned his cardigan and draped it over her. Kit’s training as a St John Ambulance cadet now crashed to the fore and he too ran to help. The most important thing in an emergency, he said, was to assess the situation as quickly as possible, without panic, and then to offer the patient reassurance. If she required medical attention he would do his best, though the honest truth was that he hadn’t progressed beyond bandaging a table leg.

Frank slipped his fingertips beneath her collar. The skin was so soft, it was like touching something you shouldn’t.

At the age of forty, Frank had only seen one dead body and that was his mother’s. This stillness didn’t feel final; it was more as though the woman had put herself on hold. She might be in her late twenties. Thirty, at a push.

By now a few people had appeared from the houses opposite. Somebody said to fetch blankets, someone else said to get her into the warmth, another person said you shouldn’t move her in case her neck was broken. Then a man began to shout about ringing for an ambulance. The chaos was completely at odds with the stillness that seemed to wind like the finest thread around Frank and this woman, pulling them together and away from everything else. The rest of the world had receded, irrelevant, watery, distant.

A flicker of life crept into her face. Slowly her eyelids lifted. It came as a shock to meet her eyes. They were astonishingly large, and black as vinyl.

‘She’s alive!’ someone shouted. And someone else said, ‘She opened her eyes!’ They still sounded miles away.

She fixed Frank with those great big eyes. She didn’t smile. She just stared as if she were seeing right through to the heart of him. Then they closed again.

Keep talking? What could Frank say? He was used to people standing at his turntable, a little nervous, a little ordinary, but not stretched out on the pavement and swinging in and out of wakefulness. ‘You have to stay with me. You have to keep listening to me, OK?’

‘Stay with me,’ he said; ‘I’m here.’ He thought that sounded pretty much like someone who knew what he was talking about, so he said it again, in a slightly extended Long Player version. ‘You must stay with me because here I am.’ She didn’t respond.

Frank bent closer. He attempted to lift the woman without appearing to do anything so intimate as touch her. As he brought her to sitting, her head flopped against his mouth and he smelt the musk of her hair. So now here he was, on his knees, with a sleeping or possibly unconscious woman in his arms – but not, he was pretty sure now, a dying one – and a crowd of people, urging him to stand up, stay put, wait for an ambulance, get her inside.

‘Shall I help?’ asked Kit, now blowing on her in an effort to keep her warm. Woof, woof, woof.

To his relief, Father Anthony knelt opposite. He had clearly done this kind of thing before. He whispered, ‘Ready?’ and then he seemed to bear the weight of the woman as the two men rose to their feet.

Frank carried her towards the shop, feeling the way with his plimsolls. It seemed to take an unconscionably long time. Now that she was in his arms, there was more of her than he had imagined, and his legs were turned to mush. Years ago he had to help his mother up the stairs if she’d had one too many gin cocktails, but no one in their right mind would have attempted lifting Peg. She’d have flattened you.

Kit rushed ahead to swing open the door and inside the shop Father Anthony pulled crates out of the way to clear a space on the Persian runner, while Maud appeared with towels and an industrial-size bottle of Dettol. (What she intended to do with them, no one dared ask.) Frank lowered the woman to the ground.

Upstairs in his flat, Frank pushed past boxes of records. He couldn’t think straight. A feeling had welled up from somewhere deep inside him, he didn’t even know where, some place out in the shadows where things happened from a different time, or a part of his life that he had left behind. It was the way she had gazed up at him. Eyes closed and then bing. A look of such radiance and intensity he could not see how he would ever get away from it.

Frank lumbered from room to room, grabbing things as he saw them, a blanket, a glass of water, some plasters, and then just as he reached the stairs it occurred to him she might be hungry so he ran back for a box of Ritz crackers.

By the time he made it down, the shop was full. People were offering coats – a few had fetched blankets – but the woman was already on her feet. She looked even lovelier now that she was vertical. Despite the excitement around her, she remained with her spine very straight, her neck tall, and her long arms folded back like a pair of wings. She just seemed to be in a different space from everyone else. Her dark hair was half pinned up, half falling down.

She checked her coat and tie belt – not that either of them was remotely wonky – and then her gaze roamed the crowd until it settled on Frank. Once again, their eyes locked and everything else gave way and disappeared.

‘Was mache ich hier?’ she murmured. Her voice was hushed and broken, as if she had a cold. Then in English: ‘Excuse me.’

Contents

Also by Rachel Joyce