Page 12 of One Day Like This (Excess All Areas 1)

“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.

“There, taken care of it for you.”

Nan patted his cheek. “You’re a good boy. Can you go change the batteries in the upstairs smoke alarm? I swear it waits until I get in bed before it starts chirping at me. The batteries are in the window bottom.”

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