Free September Song by Colin Murray Page B

to tell you the truth, I was hoping not to run into him again.’
    â€˜Oh, you will,’ he said. ‘Believe you me, you will.’ And he patted me gently on the shoulder, jerked his head at the other man and the two of them left the same way they’d arrived.
    I listened to them clang up the iron staircase, heard the heavy door of the Acropolis’s kitchen bang shut, wondered which particular villain they worked for, and which of his ‘businesses’ they had been ‘looking out for’, and then I reached down to help haul Lee to his feet. He towered over me by perhaps six or seven inches, but he must have weighed a stone and a half less. He was painfully skinny. I gripped his upper arm. It felt like a pipe cleaner.
    He winced as he stood up, then he staggered slightly and doubled over, clutching his stomach. For a few seconds I thought he was going to vomit all over me, but I was worrying unnecessarily. He was responding to some heavy bruising rather than an urge to retch.
    He straightened up and leaned against the wall again. ‘Thanks,’ he said so quietly that I almost missed it as the door behind me squeaked open and then closed with a little tut of exasperation and Jeannie Summers slipped into the corridor.
    The band started an uncharacteristically subdued version of ‘Lover Man’. I couldn’t decide whether this counted as an ironic coincidence or not. The mellow sound of Peter Baxter’s trumpet echoed hauntingly in the drab, brown, damp and smelly corridor. I stood quietly and listened for a moment or two as Miss Summers reached up and stroked her husband’s clammy forehead, then I helped her manoeuvre him into their dressing room.
    He slumped into a battered but comfortable-looking old armchair, his long legs thrust out in front of him, taking up most of the available space. She knelt beside him and gently rubbed the back of his hand.
    The room was dark and cramped. It was painted the same drab brown as the corridor and Peter Baxter’s office, and its one small window was covered by a dusty-looking dark-red curtain. An old upright piano occupied all of one wall, and the stool was covered in music. There was a table with Miss Summers’ shiny black handbag sitting on it and some make-up – a lipstick, a compact – scattered about. An old, smudged mirror with an unhealthy, brown-spotted complexion leaned back from it, resting precariously against the wall. Miss Summers’ street clothes were neatly folded on the only other chair in the room, her sensible flat-heeled shoes tucked carefully underneath it.
    She looked up at me and forced a sad, little smile. ‘Tell Mr Baxter to give us twenty minutes,’ she said. ‘We’ll be ready to go on then. Or maybe half an hour.’
    I must have looked unsure. I certainly felt it.
    â€˜Really,’ she said, nodding her head decisively. ‘He’ll be fine.’
    â€˜That’s  . . . good,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and tell Peter.’ I paused at the door and turned back to face her, but she was busy wiping a handkerchief across his face, just as my mother had done to me when I’d been a nipper with a dirty mug. The difference was that Lee wasn’t complaining about it and trying to pull away. The harsh smell of cheap eau de cologne irritated the lining of my nostrils, and I sneezed noisily. She turned her head towards me, and I sneezed again. ‘I’d be interested to know what happened to him,’ I said, choking down a third sneeze and rubbing my hand across my nose. ‘When he’s up to talking about it. Who gave him the lumps and so on.’
    She nodded, doused the already grubby handkerchief with more perfume and scrubbed at Lee’s forehead. I quietly left her to it.
    I closed the door behind me and stood in that dimly lit corridor, trying to ignore the smell of old cabbage water, listening to the band storming towards the end of