Imprisoned behind bars of bigotry
But still their spirits fly
Set them free
Set them free
We must
Set them free.
The older girls were shaking their heads, while hormones and concern for political injustice sprang real tears to their eyes.
‘Free Nelson Mandela,’ Darcey said to Petra with a very grave nod.
Petra closed her eyes in silent supplication.
‘Do you think the drummer would like to free me of my virginity?’ Amy asked and her classmates snorted and laughed and gave her a hug.
‘Do you think the one with the red-and-white guitar would like me in a big red bow and nothing else?’ Alice asked.
‘Shh!’ Darcey hissed, beginning to sway. ‘It’s a slowy.’
‘“Among the Flowers”,’ the singer announced, his eyes closed.
While gentle chords were softly strummed by Jonny, Arlo caressed the strings of his guitar. The sweetest melody wove its way through the crowd as “Among the Flowers” floated like petals through the hall. The harmonies seduced even Miss Golding who tipped her head and appraised the band with a timid smile. When Arlo began to sing, it was without the strident, Americanized preach of “Set Them Free” and “Nuclear No!”; instead it was deeper and pitch-perfect, wrought with emotion and, one felt, his true voice.
I see her walking by herself
In a dream among the flowers Won’t she wake
Won’t she wake
And see how I wait
See how I wait
For her
Is she walking all alone
Is she lonely in the flowers
Can I wake her and take her
Take her with me through the flowers
Out of her dream
And into mine
Out of her dream
And into mine.
He sang with his eyes shut, his mouth so close to the microphone that occasionally his lips brushed right over its surface. Arlo only opened his eyes when the piano solo twinkled its romantic bridge between the verses. All eyes were on the band but the focus was on Arlo who had eyes for one girl alone.
Is he looking at me?
No, he’s looking at me!
Fuck off, it’s me he’s looking at.
It’s me, thought Petra, he’s looking straight at me. Aren’t you. Hullo.
‘Out of her dream,’ Arlo sang to Petra, ‘and into mine.’
The morning after Petra sleepwalked towards Whetstone was the morning she would hear again “Among the Flowers” for the first time in seventeen years. But it wasn’t the song that woke her, it was the telephone.
‘Where are you? It’s bloody Wednesday – it’s your day to open up so I didn’t bother to bring my keys. Your mobile is off. Bloody hell, Petra.’
She clocked the voice: Eric. She noted the time. She had overslept and she still felt exhausted.
‘I can’t get hold of Gina or Kitty,’ Eric was wailing with a certain theatricality, ‘and I’ve been waiting bloody ages.’
‘I’ll be right in, I had a bad night. I’ll be there in an hour. Sorry.’
Petra flung back the duvet and stood up quickly which compounded the fuggy nausea of having been awoken with a jolt. Physically holding her head, and with her eyes half shut, she shuffled to the bathroom to take a shower. It stung. Glancing down, she saw that her right knee was badly grazed. Carefully, she flannelled off the small sticky buds of blackened blood and bravely ran the shower cold over the freshly revealed abrasion. Scrubbing dirt from her fingernails, she observed a blade of grass whirl its way down the plughole. She gave a little shudder. She hated these hazy half-memories of the night before. She dried herself, dabbing gingerly at her knee, smoothing on Savlon and sticking a plaster lightly over the wound. Jeans felt too harsh so she pulled on a pair of old jogging bottoms, hurried into a sweatshirt and odd socks and shoved on the bashed-up trainers she favoured for work. But she had to clench her teeth and screw her eyes shut at a sudden scorch of soreness from her feet. Easing the shoes off, peeling her socks away, she inspected large blisters at each heel; one had burst and was red raw, the other bulged with fluid. If I cry now, Petra told herself, I won’t make it into work at all. Bloody stupid sleepwalking – where was I going? What was I thinking?
She placed a pad of cotton wool on each heel, secured with Sellotape, slipped her feet into socks first stretched wide and then slid her feet into sandals. Sandals which she liked but which Rob referred to as ‘German lezzy abominations’.
‘If Rob could see me now,’ she muttered, giving her reflection a cursory glance before heading for the studio. ‘I hope he’s OK.’
Eric felt a little sorry for Petra when he spied her at a distance limping along Hatton Garden. He waved at her and she tried to pick up her pace. He gestured the universal sign-language for ‘Coffee?’ to which she nodded and clutched her heart so he nipped into the café outside which he’d been loitering and as Petra reached him, a comforting cappuccino was placed in her hands.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘and thanks.’
‘You OK?’ Eric asked, taking the studio keys from her as they walked in the direction of Leather Lane.
‘Yes, I overslept,’ Petra said.
‘You know, socks and sandals are generally unforgivable in all but children,’ Eric said with a superciliously raised eyebrow, ‘but mismatched white socks and spoddy sandals are a breach of the public peace. Gina will wince in pain and Kitty won’t let you hear the end of it.’
‘Spoddy sandals?’ It made Petra smile. ‘Rob calls them my German Lesbian Things,’ she confided, frowning guiltily at her Birkenstocks.
‘I know a German lesbian or two,’ Eric qualified, ‘and let me tell you, I have never seen them wear socks with those. They are spoddy sandals. They’re the summer equivalent of Nature Trek shoes. Without socks they are tolerable. But with socks they are indefensible.’
‘I have the most terrible blisters,’ Petra explained, as Eric unlocked the studio and they went about flicking on lights and hoicking up blinds.
‘Have you been hiking up mountains since yesterday evening then?’
‘You could say that,’ Petra said quietly. ‘I sleepwalked last night. Right out of the house. Almost a mile. In wellies.’
‘Dear God,’ Eric exclaimed. He took a long look at her. ‘What are we going to do with you?’
In the fifteen years he’d known her, since they were undergraduates in jewellery design at Central St Martins, he’d become familiar with her two very different morning faces. Her complexion soft and peachy after a good night’s sleep or, as today, sallow and slightly haunted from the disturbance of somnambulism. When they had shared student digs, Eric had been the only one amongst the housemates not to