However, as I was leaving, I spotted him in the alleyway next to the bar. He was loading equipment into the back of a van. I went straight over and told him how much I’d loved the set.
‘And I liked your dancing? Are you pro?’
I was flattered. ‘Maybe some day. So you, where next?’
He grinned, eyes twinkling. ‘You’re very forward.’
‘I meant gig, your next gig?’
He laughed. ‘I know. Blackburn tomorrow night but where next this evening? Fancy a drink?’
I did, and that was the beginning. I took a few days off work from the health store I’d been working in. I’d been covering while someone was on leave so I didn’t care if they sacked me. Mum and Dad went mental but I didn’t care about that either. I couldn’t ever do anything right in Dad’s eyes, anyway. I was such a disappointment to him, and all my life he’d been overly critical. He was from a working-class background and had studied hard all his life to get a good job working in a tax office, his whole life focused on getting the best for Fi and me so that we could have the chances he never had. I was disappointed that I hadn’t gone to college too, but decided to make the most of it and take up my place the following year. In the meantime, there was Jack, so I went to Blackburn with him then Bolton, and back to London where he and the band had temporary digs in a squalid terrace in Dulwich. It didn’t matter. I was with the band. The bass player’s girlfriend. It was heady stuff. We talked into the early hours, made each other laugh, made love day and night, became inseparable. He was as infatuated as I was, and we both declared that we had found a soul mate in each other; we were in it for life.
I got pregnant after we’d been together just over three months. Not planned. It was August. We’d been using condoms. They were ninety-eight per cent effective if used properly, the statistics said. I was one of the two per cent. To my surprise, Jack was over the moon. Said it was meant to be. Asked me to marry him. I accepted, no hesitation. I knew he was The One. However, a producer wanted to promote the band and had arranged a trip to America, then an extended tour of Europe. It was happening for them. He wanted me to go with him, though he hadn’t broken it to the band yet. I knew they weren’t keen. Jack was the only one with a steady girlfriend and the other band members didn’t like it; in fact one of them, the lead guitarist Lou, had taken to calling me Yoko. Neither of us wanted to rock the boat while they were all so fired up about the upcoming tour, so we kept things quiet about our plans and how much time we spent together. Privately, we discussed a wedding in the States. Las Vegas maybe. We’d tell them then.
Jack planned to come up to Manchester and break it to my parents with me. I was still living at home when not with him – couldn’t afford not to – so Jack and I agreed that we’d tell Mum and Dad before anyone else, before friends, before the band. I was dying to tell Jo, Sara and Ally, talk wedding plans with them all as my bridesmaids, but Jack was adamant that we wait. He called before he set off from London and was coming up on his motorbike. I cooked supper for the four of us. I set the table. Cooked the meal, tuna pasta, lit candles. I hoped it would be a celebration once Mum and Dad got over the shock that they were to be grandparents.
We waited and waited. Six o’clock, seven, eight. No Jack.
‘I don’t think your boyfriend’s coming,’ said Dad as I blew out the candles at around nine.
I tried calling the number of his digs. No answer. No one home. I couldn’t understand it. No phone call from him since the one before he set out. No nothing. I was gutted. Had he had second thoughts? Had his band mates talked him out of it? Something must have happened, I thought, and gave him time to get in touch, explain, apologize, but a day went by, then another. I called the number of the digs in London again, only to be told by a grumpy landlord that the band had left for the States. I couldn’t believe it. My heart broke into pieces. He’d gone without me and I had no way of knowing where he would be staying. I hadn’t got as far as looking into all the details of the trip. Jack had done that. I’d trusted him completely and had been content just to know that I was going with him. I didn’t even have a contact for his mum, although she had been next on the list to tell our news to. His dad had passed away when Jack was twelve, I knew that, so there was only her, and all I knew was that she lived somewhere in Wales. I didn’t even know her first name, or if Saunders was her maiden or married name. Wales was a big place to look for someone with so little to go on.
My parents didn’t take it well that I was pregnant. Dad couldn’t look me in the eye. Mum just cried,
