Twenty-Four
Now
Molly had only mentioned it in passing.
She had muttered that screens made her eyes skip lines and that she needed proper paper if she was going to get six pages into her head by Thursday. She had not expected Ashley to do anything about it.
But as soon as they got out onto the pavement, Ashley looked down at her watch.
‘We need a shop,’ Ashley said, slipping on some huge shades. She was already walking fast, her leather boots clicking loudly against the concrete near Deansgate. ‘Like an internet café. Or a post office. Somewhere with a machine.’
‘They don’t have internet cafés anymore,’ Molly said, hurrying to keep up. ‘Nobody prints things on paper anymore. It’s all QR codes.’
‘Someone prints things,’ Ashley muttered, squinting down an alleyway.
‘Don’t you have to get to the venue or whatever?’ Molly asked.
‘I’ve got some time,’ Ashley said.
They tried a tiny newsagent first, barely wide enough to squeeze between the racks. The man behind the counter didn’t even look up from his small portable television. When Ashley asked if he had a printer hooked up to his till, he looked at them like they’d lost their minds.
They left and found a hotel with a grand stone entrance that looked big enough to have something, but the girl at the reception desk just gave them a blank look.
‘This is stupid,’ Molly said, stopping on a corner near the town hall. ‘Just drop it, Ashley. Seriously. I’ll just read it off my phone and use my finger to keep my place. It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter,’ Ashley said. She looked genuinely stressed, her mouth a rigid line, her face red from the brisk walking. ‘You said you needed paper to do it properly. If you don’t do it properly, you’ll be thinking about the screen instead of the lines. We’ll find a printer. God as my witness.’
They found the library by accident. It was a massive grey building with round arches and heavy oak doors that looked like they belonged to a cathedral. The digital clock over the entrance said 16:52.
Inside, the grand circular room had that comforting library smell of mouldy pages. A woman with short purple hair and a plastic badge that said Jean was already pulling a heavy grey plastic cover over one of the large black photocopiers near the main desk.
‘We’re closing in eight minutes, girls,’ Jean said, her voice echoing in the high ceiling. ‘Computers are already shutting down for the night.’
‘Please,’ Ashley said. She stepped up to the counter, pulling down her shades. ‘My friend has a BBC audition. Six pages. We just need to get them off an email. It’ll take two minutes.’
Jean looked up, clearly annoyed, and then she stopped. Her pen hovered over the ledger. She looked at Ashley’s face for three long seconds. ‘Oh. You’re that Ashley person, aren’t you? My granddaughter loves you.’
‘Yeah,’ Ashley said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. ‘That’s me.’ She paused. ‘She got a ticket for tonight?’
‘My daughter couldn’t really afford it,’ Jean said, admonishingly.
‘I’ll put your granddaughter's name on the list for the gig tonight at the Academy. Two comped tickets for…’
The woman smiled. ‘Perry Crunt.’
Molly saw Ashley’s mouth wobble, and she had to look away.
‘So, it’s a deal?’ Ashley pressed.
‘Yes, okay. But you won’t forget that name, will you?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Ashley said.
Jean looked at the clock on the wall, then back at Ashley’s damp hair.
She let out a long sigh that sounded like a tyre deflating, reached under the desk, and pulled out a small plastic card attached to a piece of string.
‘PC number four. Don’t be long. The main server logs off automatically at five on the dot, and I’m not restarting it for the Pope himself. ’
The computer was ancient. It had a thick grey monitor that gave off a loud, high-pitched hum when Ashley clicked the mouse.
It took four minutes just to load the basic Windows login screen, the little blue circle spinning on the glass like it was stuck.
Molly stood right behind Ashley’s shoulder, watching the bottom right corner of the screen where the digital clock was ticking toward 16:57.
‘Hurry up,’ Molly whispered to the machine, her hand gripping the back of Ashley’s chair. Her knuckles brushed against the leather of Ashley’s jacket. ‘It’s going to turn off before it even opens the browser.’
‘I’m trying,’ Ashley said. Her fingers were clumsy on the dirty plastic keyboard, which had half the letters rubbed off. She kept hitting the caps lock by mistake because the keys were sticky. ‘What’s the password for your email?
‘MollyWollyDooDah,’ Molly admitted, embarrassed.
‘Well, it’s not guessable,’ Ashley said with a grin, tapping it in. ‘I’ll give it that.’
Molly shrugged. ‘Exactly. Too stupid to guess.’
The screen flickered, went black for a horrifying second, and then finally opened the inbox.
Ashley clicked the attachment from the agency and pushed the print icon.
The printer in the dark corner behind the desk let out a loud, grinding screech like it was chewing a handful of gravel.
It shuddered, clicked three times, and then a single piece of paper slid out very slowly into the plastic tray. Then another.
By the time the sixth page came out, Jean was already jingling a massive ring of keys by the heavy main exit doors, the lights in the far corridor clicking off one by one with loud thuds.
Ashley grabbed the stack, checking the hot pages quickly before handing them to Molly. ‘There. Six pages. Every line.’
‘Thanks,’ Molly said meaningfully.
She looked down at the top page. It had the BBC comedy logo printed slightly crooked in the left corner, the characters’ names bolded in ugly Courier font.
Her throat felt tight, but it wasn’t the bad, suffocating tight from the restaurant.
It was just a strange, heavy feeling because Ashley had spent her afternoon running around Manchester for some paper she didn’t even need herself.
Molly had forgotten this. The way Ashley pushed her to reach for the things she wanted, way past the point Molly would have given up. It was nice to have someone do that for her again.
Maybe better than nice.
***
They ran all the way to the Manchester Academy, Molly keeping the pages tucked inside her jumper so they wouldn’t get spotted by the fresh drizzle coming down on them.
When they reached the stage door, the tour manager was standing on the concrete step with a clipboard, looking furious.
Ashley was all apologies. ‘Sorry, sorry, I know I’m late. Hey, can you put down two comp tickets on the door for Perry Crunt?’
‘Perry Crunt?’ he repeated, horrified.
‘Yeah.’
He opened his phone, noting it down. ‘You know you missed soundcheck? Everyone’s livid,’ he said, tapping away.
‘What?!’ Molly demanded.
But Ashley waved a bye at her without eye contact and took off running, vanishing backstage.
Molly turned to leave, to go back to the bus. But then she stopped. She walked into the currently empty main hall and wandered up to the sound desk, right behind the guy with the iPad.
‘Do you mind?’ Molly asked. ‘I’m Molly, and I’m supposed to…’
He nodded. He’d been briefed.
Sometime later, the crowd filtered in and packed out the giant concrete hall. Then the stage lights came on, bright and purple and hot, and Ashley walked out with the rest of the band.
She didn’t look like the girl who had just been struggling with a sticky library keyboard.
She looked different up there, and it wasn’t just the hair and makeup.
She slung the heavy guitar over her shoulder, nodded once to Toby behind the drums, and hit the first chord of the opening track.
The bass drum was so loud Molly could feel the vibration travelling up through the floorboards and into the soles of her trainers.
Ashley started to sing.
Molly watched her from the dark safety of the sound desk.
She was fixed on Ashley. Transfixed, actually.
Totally hypnotised. It was the same thing that had happened five years ago in that crap pub, but worse now because she had spent the afternoon touching Ashley’s wrist over a plate of fish and watching her pound the pavement in search of a printer on Molly’s behalf.
And then Ashley looked back at her. She seemed shocked to see Molly next to the desk, but her shock quickly turned into a small smile.
Molly watched Ashley’s hands moving over the neck of the guitar, the quick, certain way her fingers pressed the strings. She knew exactly how those fingers felt against skin. She knew the exact weight of them.
Then came the shimmering synth intro of ‘Half Light’. Molly knew it well. It was the best song off the second album, the only song that sounded even slightly like the songs Ashley used to play.
But that wasn’t why she knew it so intimately.
Ashley stepped up to the microphone, swaying with the upbeat rhythm as her voice soared over the melody:
Glass tower view, room air humming low
Signed another contract just to watch it go
They tell me that I’m winning, tell me I’m a star
Standing in the quiet, wondering where you are
Got a packed-up bag and a midnight flight
Trading everything I have for the stage light
The crowd jumped and sang back every single word in a deafening, joyful swell, two thousand people dancing to a heartbreak song.
Molly had listened to that track on repeat, trying to pretend she wasn’t obsessing over every line.
She’d never been sure whether Ashley had written it about her or about someone else who came after her.
Whether there had been numerous girlfriends who’d fallen behind as Ashley’s star continued to rise.
Take me all the way, take me to the moon
Everything is moving just a little too soon
I got the gold ring, I got the fast track
So why am I begging for a ghost to come back?
I conquered the world just to lose your hand
Standing in the centre of an empty land.
Standing in the dark behind the sound desk, watching Ashley sing those sparkling, bittersweet words, Molly didn’t want it to be a mystery anymore. She found herself hoping with everything in her that it was about her. She wanted to be the ghost.
Molly let out a small, shaky breath. Her jeans felt too tight around her waist. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her skin feeling hot and itchy.
She wanted the gig to end so she could breathe properly, but she also wanted Ashley to stay up there under the lights forever, where she looked completely untouchable and entirely alluring at the same time.
It was an annoying, stupid contradiction, and it was making her stomach turn.
Five Years Ago
Molly stared at the blank screen of her phone, her thumb hovering over the glass for only a fraction of a second before she tapped through to Ashley’s contact and hit block. She did it with clinical precision, though her hands were shaking so violently she nearly dropped the phone.
When she finally set the phone face-down on the bed, the silence of her shithole bedroom seemed to collapse in on her.
It was freezing. The radiator in the corner gave its familiar, pathetic hiss, doing nothing to cut through the damp chill that had settled into the bricks and into Molly’s bones. She pulled her jumper tighter around herself, burying her chin in the collar, but there was no warmth left in it.
I’m trying not to fall apart because I love you.
Molly had held back those three words for months, guarding them, waiting for the right moment. And then she’d spilt them out in an ugly burst over a FaceTime screen.
Only for Ashley to freeze. To stand there, staring back at her with a blank face. She hadn’t even tried to fake it.
The shame of it was a physical weight pressing down on Molly’s chest. She had laid herself completely open, exposing a vulnerability she didn’t even know was there until Ashley.
A mistake that lasted five weeks.
That’s what Molly had said. Except it wasn’t true, was it?
Not for Molly. For Molly, those five weeks had been an entire lifetime.
They had been the axis around which her whole world spun.
She had poured every spare ounce of her hope into a girl who could trade her away for four more months of applause without a second thought.
More tears threatened, but she forced them down. She was done crying over a girl who was currently sitting in a hotel room on the other side of the world, probably already rationalising why this was for the best.
Ashley hadn’t even hesitated to take the tour extension.
Not really. There had been a performative flicker of guilt, sure, but beneath it, the choice had already been made the moment the label executive dangled an album in front of her.
Ashley loved the music, loved the lights, loved the trajectory.
And Molly? Molly was just baggage that couldn’t fit into a tour suitcase.
It was a humiliating, degrading clarity. To realise you were entirely disposable to the person who meant everything to you. And to know you’d begged them for love while they just looked at you.
Molly walked over to her small window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass and looked down at the grubby street.
Never again, she promised herself. Never fucking ever.