“Matt, Izabel,” Nan said, boarding the tram. The spry seventy-six-year-old with a rapier wit and love of the f-bomb appeared, laden with several shopping bags.
Matt released Izabel, biting back the urge to run his thumb over her thick lower lip.
“Hey, Nan,” he said, kissing her cheek before taking her shopping bags out of her hands.
“Hey, Nan,” Izabel repeated, giving her a hug. Nan had always insisted all his friends call her Nan. Was easier, she’d said. Might as well look after them all as opposed to just Jase and Matt. Iz had been a frequent guest at Nan’s when they were younger.
Nan stretched her fingers. “My hands are killing me. Starting to think that an afternoon bingo session doesn’t agree with my arthritis. Either that or it was crocheting a christening blanket with lace edging for Bethan-at-church’s daughter.”
Izabel reached for his nan’s hand and rubbed her knuckles gently. “Well, we certainly appreciated all the hats and scarves you knitted for the shelter in winter. They were a godsend.”
Matt looked down the tram and let out a breath. His two favourite women. And Iz just being . . . kind. Like she always was. Caring. Nurturing.
“Just doing my bit,” Nan said modestly.
Matt reached for Nan’s arm as they eventually pulled into Chorlton and helped her off the tram. Without thinking, he reached for Izabel’s hand to help her off next.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice vibrating through him. She squeezed his hand before letting go.
Shit. It was a flat step to the platform. She hadn’t needed his help, but she took it anyway. Being around her was making him lose his mind. He glanced up at the sky. “You should go, Iz.”
“Aren’t we heading the same way?”
“I’ll walk a bit slower with Nan. It’s about to piss down. You’ll get soaked in that dress.” A fucking sundress that he’d love to flip up the skirt on to run his hands along her thighs.
He tipped his chin in the direction of the steps, urging her to go, and bit down on the need to address the confusion on her face.
“Okay. Well, I’ll send you the details.”
He nodded. “Bye, Iz.”
“Izabel’s grown into a lovely girl,” Nan said.
“That she has,” Matt muttered.
She was still on his mind fifteen minutes later as they stepped inside his nan’s terraced house. The heavens had indeed opened, and he was soaked. He ran his hand through damp black hair in desperate need of a cut. It would dry in messy waves and get in his eyes.
He placed her shopping bags on the floor and took Nan’s umbrella, closing it for her before popping it into the tall vase she kept by the door.
Once the door closed, he scratched Boddington, the ancient black-and-white cat who lazed on the sofa in between bouts of playing chicken with cars on the street outside.
The tiny Manchester home was her pride and joy. Neat as a pin, with a cosy open-plan living space and kitchen on the ground floor, and two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. It was beyond belief she’d managed to raise both him and Jase in it without one of them killing the other. Especially when they’d both passed six feet in height before their sixteenth birthdays.
It also made him hugely grateful for his apartment a ten minutes’ walk away. It was even smaller in square footage, but he was the only person in it, which made it his refuge. No one got upset if he wrote songs at three in the morning or arrived home late after a gig and slept in until lunch the day after.
“Let’s get the kettle on. Are you staying for your tea?” Nan said, taking off her coat.
“That’d be great, Nan. What are you making?”
“I already made it. Just need to bake it. It’s chicken and broccoli bake. I’m doing it early because Jase is coming for his tea too.”
Matt rolled his eyes, wishing he’d said no. The last thing he needed was seeing Jase when they had a rehearsal later. They could only stand so much time in each other’s company.
As he followed her into the kitchen, Matt glanced through the spindles on the stairs to the wall, which held faded framed pictures from Nan’s fifteen minutes of fame. The cute seventeen-year-old alongside Cliff Richard and the bright red double-decker bus from the Summer Holiday movie she’d appeared in as an extra. The night she’d had drinks with The Beatles and Cilla Black, known as Liverpool’s Cinderella. The photograph with Tom Jones, where Nan’s mouth was as wide open as her eyes, never failed to make him smile.
She’d been a looker once. Would tell anyone who’d listen about her brush with stardom, which had ended five years later with an unplanned pregnancy and a shotgun wedding to his grandad.
Now, she carried the hard edge of someone who’d rarely known a moment’s comfort.
It was a part of why he made music. The number of times they’d had shit days as kids and Nan would open the beat-up record player and play the crackling “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “Wishin’ and Hopin’”. Or later, anything by Freddie Mercury. They’d sung at the top of their lungs in the tiny house, driving their neighbours and his grandfather—God rest his soul—to drink.
“I’m worried about the two of you burning the candle at both ends. Have you thought about proper jobs, Matt? You’ll be thirty next year.” She pulled the casserole dish out of the fridge and popped it in the oven before emptying a bag of frozen vegetables into a pan.
Same old, same old. “Give it a rest, Nan. I only turned twenty-nine last month. We do okay.” Sure, it wasn’t the breakout success of other Manchester bands, but Manchester had been the epicentre of music for decades, spewing out band after band. It bugged him that his nan would suggest they quit. “We’ve got a decent gig lineup, we pay our way, we’ve been able to put out some of our music independently.”
“Yes, well. You’re not going to be wanting to do that when you’re in your fifties. Allan was saying he’d take you on as a full-time labourer and pay for training so—”
“In fairness, Nan, I’d rather eat dog shit than spend the rest of my days listening to Uncle Allan sing Queen songs like a neutered greyhound while papering rich people’s houses.”
“Matt, he’s not so bad.”
“Nan, he has halitosis worse than Auntie Pat’s German shepherd.”
“Oh, remind me to tell you how it got out and chased the postman. Pat thinks they might stop bringing her mail. And the postman is that lad from your class in school. The one as dense as Christmas cake. What was his name? Fancied the pants off Denise Thornberry’s eldest. She thought she’d have to get a restraining order.”
“Jermaine O’Sullivan.”
“That’s it. O’Sullivan. Anyway, he went running down Barlow Moore Road, and the dog went after him, and Auntie Pat went after the dog wearing her nightie and slippers. Didn’t even have time to put a bra on and her double-Ds were bouncing all over the place.”
Matt laughed at the thought of Ben and Alex’s mum running down the street, then caught sight of something shimmering on the floor. “Fucking slugs,” he muttered, looking at the silvery trails. “Where’s your salt?”
The back door to the small yard and rear ginnel behind the house had a gap big enough for slugs to slither beneath. Tempted by the heat and smell of cat food she left by the door, they came in plenty. She handed him the tall white container. Matt unlocked the back door, kicked the slug out, and placed a trail of salt just inside the doorstep.