Chapter 16
SHANE
Shane lied to Josie when he said he didn’t remember anything about Grimsby. He remembers everything about that first stop of their tour. Every tiny detail is inked on the inside of his brain.
They’d been nervous, yes – but Grimsby wasn’t that far away from home.
Just a two-hour drive in the lumbering estate car, which Ravi – the sole driver among them – had borrowed from her uncle in Leeds.
Devoid of style or class, by some miracle the tank-like vehicle contained all their gear (although the boot wouldn’t shut properly).
They thought it was fantastic. Shane especially as, mixed in with nervy anticipation, was sheer relief to be getting out of his cabbage-smelling house for a week.
In the lead-up to the tour, rehearsals had ramped up, and he’d been spending every available minute in the Kapoors’ garage, where his drum kit was set up permanently (he’d never have been allowed to play at home).
Pam was so good about that. ‘You’ll be great,’ she assured them.
And she’d given Shane that look – the look which said we know, and we care – when she’d noticed the bruising around his cheekbone and eye.
He was fine, he always insisted – even to Josie, who questioned him openly from time to time: You all right, Shane? Want to stay over at ours? You can sleep on the sofa. Mum says it’s okay.
‘Me and Pete had a bit of an argument,’ he’d tell her.
‘It was nothing, really. Looks a lot worse than it is.’ What Josie and Ravi did know was to never phone his house, but to yell for him from the street instead.
Because the wall-mounted phone in the hall was for emergencies only.
Pete was very strict about its usage. The girls didn’t know that after Pete had whacked Shane that last time, his mum had used the forbidden telephone to call the GP.
Which meant, Shane realised, that she was actually worried.
Doctor Draper? Our Shane fell over and was unconscious for a bit. Will he be all right? Should I bring him in? Then, after presumably being reassured by the perpetually inebriated GP: Right, okay. No, he’s awake now. I’ll keep an eye on him then.
There would be none of that in Grimsby. And as the wide, flat Humber Estuary came into view, Shane realised that something monumental had switched in him. Something so big, he couldn’t put it into words.
He felt happy and free – and more than that, he felt safe.
* * *
This time is different. Now he has nothing to run away from.
But still, a little respite from Elaine is welcome, and from the rattly ambulance he takes in the undulating countryside on what’s turned out to be a mild and pleasant afternoon.
Despite his love of London, being surrounded by fields lifts something in him.
He grew up roaming around in the scrubby woods and rolling farmland beyond the estate, and nature has left its traces on him.
They have turned off the main road, and Shane slows down as the narrow lane snakes back and forth, bordered on both sides by dense woodland. Josie has booked a night at a campsite called Paradise Vale, on the outskirts of town. He hopes it lives up to its name. ‘How much further?’ he asks.
‘About a mile,’ Josie replies, checking her phone.
As directions follow – ‘Next left, then the sign should be coming up’ – it strikes him that this could almost be a normal scenario.
Two friends after a lengthy drive, one consulting the map as they near their destination.
A shared sense of relief that finally they are here for the night.
‘D’you think it matters that we’re not actually staying in town?’ Josie asks.
‘You mean, we’re not strictly following Ravi’s schedule?’ He turns briefly and smiles.
‘Yeah.’ She nods. ‘It does say Grimsby, not a campsite out in the countryside.’
‘But this was the nearest one, wasn’t it?’ he reminds her. ‘I don’t think she’ll be splitting hairs.’ He catches a flash of her smile, and it warms something in him.
‘No, that’s true.’ This is going to be okay, he thinks as he turns into the lane leading to the campsite.
‘This looks all right, doesn’t it?’ Josie says as he pulls up beside the site office.
Shane takes in the rows of spotless motorhomes, a camping area dotted with a few tents and a lake gleaming in the distance.
‘Yeah, it does,’ he says. And it is, he thinks.
They have survived being snared up in traffic, and five hours on the road, without anything difficult having come up.
They are here for the night and, before that, they have many hours to fill – it’s not even six o’clock.
Following the rain shower, the air feels clean and fresh, and he breathes it in gratefully as they climb out of the van.
Shane can taste salt in the air. Gulls squawk loudly overhead, and he remembers the three of them making endless fish-processing plant jokes when they pulled up in town, all those years ago.
Someone in his family had worked in one of the fish factories here, Shane had told them.
It was his late father – this was the only fact Shane had ever been able to extract about him – but he didn’t want to go into all that.
‘What does that even mean?’ Ravi had asked with a shudder. ‘Process them into what?’
As he and Josie make their way into the little wooden office, he remembers the air smelling just like this, and how he’d filled his lungs with it.
He remembers the guest house in town, and how they’d giggled after the owner – in her pink velour tracksuit – had shown them their room and left them to it.
Bunk beds, as if they were kids, plus a double bed.
‘My family room,’ the woman had announced in her raspy smoker’s voice.
That felt right, Shane decided later as he lay there on the bottom bunk. Josie and Ravi were his family; the family he’d chosen. Or rather, they’d chosen him.
He’d felt the luckiest boy in the world that night. But now, as an amiable man in a flat cap tells them where to park the van, he tries to ready himself for a very different sort of night.
He is trying not to think about that.