Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [28]
In his dream, Sin had gone. She had turned cold and hard, like a woman made out of a gravestone, and then she was gone.
And then she was dead.
He put a hand on her knee and she turned to him, smoking a joint, her unfathomable black eyes that could sometimes show 70
such passion now just empty holes. He gave her a smile to coax a response from her and she didn’t return it. Then part of his dream had come true already.
From the corner of his eye he saw Jo gazing out at the fog and the night. Exhibiting a patience normally alien to him, Jimmy was singing along to the music as they crawled after the rusting Bedford truck in front, doing barely twenty miles an hour.
‘So where do you think we’ll end up?’
Nick turned to face Jo, who had asked the question that was, of course, on all their minds but which, strangely, no one had voiced aloud until now.
He took his time answering, looking at her well-cut and obviously expensive clothes and wondering what she would look like with a punk haircut. She had the air of someone who had been away for a while, someone who was normally in tune with the times and liked to be as trendy as possible but had recently been whisked off somewhere that fashions didn’t or couldn’t reach. She was strange all right: a bit of an enigma with her eccentric uncle or whatever he was - and again, no one had even asked her about him, as if their curiosity had been switched off like a tap. There was something in her young, yet experienced eyes, in her innocent yet haunted expression, that hinted at a lifestyle that went far beyond ‘alternative’. He must talk to her properly, and find out more about her.
He took so long answering, that Sin got there first.
‘The edge,’ she said without even turning.
Jo frowned, and Nick felt a coldness that could have emanated from Sin.
‘The edge of what?’ Jo asked before he could.
‘The edge of everything.’
‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic!’ Nick snapped. He wanted to shake Sin. Hold her tight until he could feel her warmth again instead of this creeping cold.
She ignored him, merely blew smoke from her sensuous lips.
Forget her lips, you fool. She’s leaving you. You’ve lost her, and 71
now there’s nothing. Just a hole.A big, empty hole.Dead to you.Dead.
Jo cut through his misery: ‘I think we should all keep our eyes open.’
That made Sin swivel round to give the blonde girl a hostile stare. ‘I don’t need anyone to think for me.’
‘But doesn’t it strike you that this whole tour is a bit sinister?
Several deaths already and the band don’t seem bothered at all.
In fact who are the band? Does anyone even know their name?’
‘Do they need a name?’ Sin was definitely on the defensive and Nick wondered just why she should be taking this so personally.
Maybe it was to do with Jo. A mad hope darted through him that it might be jealousy. Could she be worried that Jo might be trying to take him away from her? But looking at Sin’s impassive features, the hope curdled. Her thoughts were far beyond him.
She was in a world he couldn’t reach, and she had been ever since the day of the Princetown gig. The day before that she had lain in his bed and told him how much she cared for him. The day of the gig - while the cattle truck was bouncing its way across the moor towards them even - she had changed. She had just...
switched off.
And it felt like there was nothing he could do.
‘The band with no name.’ This came from Rod, who had been listening to the conversation in his usual thoughtful way, sad and withdrawn, a loner even when amongst friends. He took a swig from his bottle of Jack Daniels, and fixed them with a calm stare.
‘They’re the band that doesn’t need a name,’ he continued,