Free Love-40 by Anna Cheska Page A

am indeed,’ he said.
    *   *   *
    In the Bear and Bottle, Michael launched into the Beatles, ‘I saw her standing there.’ ‘She was just seventeen…’ He liked to use it as his first number – it was a bit of a rocker and set the tone. Sometimes he worried that he should bring his set into the new millennium, but what decent music had appeared in the last decade? It was mostly cover stuff in the charts anyway, so why bother?
    Instead of, ‘how could I dance with another’, he sang, ‘how could I dance with her mother … when I saw her standing there?’ It got a cheap laugh, which was the best you could hope for when your audience was an untested one.
    He had been slightly worried, he had to admit, when he’d seen the blackboard outside advertising tonight’s gig. ‘The Ashby Phenomenon’, they’d called him, and Michael had never seen himself as a phenomenon somehow. However, there were enough people in the pub when he got there to put him at ease (too many or too few and he might have walked out again). The atmosphere was friendly, someone had given him a pint of Best, people were smiling and Michael was warming up.
    As he sang – and bounced, because Michael liked to bounce – he tried to think of a way to fix the mic on to his body, so he could bounce right round the pub if necessary. And he kept one eye on the door in the far corner. She had said she was coming. She had said she wouldn’t be late. She had said she wouldn’t miss it for the world. So where the hell was she?
    He slowed right down for ‘Yesterday’, the second of his Beatles’ medley and as the notes died away, launched straight into ‘Twist and Shout’. On a really good night they’d get up and boogie for that, but there wasn’t much room in the Bear and Bottle, so Michael did a spot of twisting himself, being careful to avoid the lead to his electric guitar. A bit of fancy footwork earned him a wolf-whistle or two (Michael always took care to show he wasn’t taking himself too seriously) which allowed him to play to the crowd.
    At the end of the song he tried a couple of jokes. Not bad. A few were laughing, there were even more smiles and he’d gained lots of eye contact. Most important of all, more people had come in and no one had left. He wondered if he could bend a wire coathanger and stick it round his neck or something – that would be an original mic stand, for sure. Or would he just look like a pillock?
    There was, he sensed, an air of expectancy in the pub, but Michael was going for melody now, so he tried a bit of Simon and Garfunkel, speeded up for The Eagles (mellow or what?) and finished the set with a bit of 70s boppy stuff to get them moving in their chairs if not on the floor. That would be a bit dodgy for the amps and stuff anyway.
    Michael grinned and bounced and slung the guitar behind his back. He had a brief fantasy of some record company guy wandering into the pub. Hey, this guy is really cool. And is that a coathanger round his neck? What a fashion item. What a trend setter. What couldn’t we do with him…?
    Yeah, well. It was going OK. But where the hell was Suzi?

Chapter 6
    â€˜Item number ten,’ boomed Erica, shifting her bosom. ‘The question of subscriptions.’ There was a telling pause. ‘Of course we shall have to raise them.’
    Suzi groaned inwardly and tried to think subscriptions rather than the feat being performed by Erica’s brassière. She was already late, and this looked like another thorny time-consumer. Sure enough …
    â€˜Why do we?’ Liam demanded. He shook the papers he was holding. ‘The accounts look healthy enough to me.’
    â€˜We can’t rely on benefactors alone. We are a private members club. And we need to raise more money.’ Erica looked as if any second she might pat Liam on the head. If she did,