Well we rock'n rolled til our souls were cold sold and we'd travelled every goddamn road, and we fought the fear til we got back here/ (arpeggio+soaring guitar) this place where we both started/ (soaring guitar) this town place where we both parted this place we laid down/ every/ goddamn/ load

  Bella laughed and threw her pen up into the air.

  "See, I still got it," she said happily. "We can build a track around that!"

  Dusty looked at her, half-smiled, then palmed rainwater off the peeling window sill, leaving stains of age-old damp slipping down towards the floor.

  "We’d better get this window fixed, Bella, it's freezing here." He shivered involuntarily, but it made his point.

  A small, almost perfect right-angled triangle of glass was missing from the bottom corner of the window pane. That's where the rain came in, and the wind and the cold. From it, a crack curved artistically up into a top corner.

  Bella frowned.

  "I still got it, Dusty, haven't I?" She spoke more out of habit than anything else. She knew he was right about the window, and sighed because they both knew they had no money left.

  "If I get a handyman..." Dusty began. “Would you…?”

  Bella dug in her handbag for some Valium and came out with Xanax. She took two.

  “I didn’t want to work tonight, Dusty.” Her smile gone, her eyes dulled, her face had aged by ten years.

  Dusty bent to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Just for the window, Bella. It’d be warmer for when you’re writing, too.”

  She sighed.

  "Okay, okay, yeah, I'll work tonight. But only around here, okay. Only Soho."

    *

  There was rarely much trade on a Tuesday night. Most of the girls didn't even bother. But needs must, and Bella had fished her old crocheted mini-skirt out of the wash bag and donned her favourite psychedelic long-sleeved jumper. The outfit had never failed her yet: it was a sure-fire hit with the punters and it covered up her arms.

  "Working tonight, Bella?" Sheila asked. Under her red flowery headscarf, the fringe of her blonde beehive glistened in the weak drizzle.

  Bella gave a bored smile. "Yeah. I should be working on my comeback songs, but, hey... here I am again."

  Sheila snorted and strode away. Bella was always rabbiting on about making a comeback, like that would ever happen. "Be quick, girl. It's gonna cowin' piss down later," she shouted back over her shoulder.

  It wasn't a wasted night. Twenty quid in an alley with a suit in cheap after-shave and fifty in the back of a Cortina. Then thirty from a pretty-boy drunk who couldn't. Should have been forty, but he looked so sad that she gave him a tenner back and a peck on the cheek. By eleven she'd hustled two scores for the weekend and had enough to pay a handyman to fix the window.

    *

  Saturday afternoon's routine was to chill on the bed. Valium and dope would see them through, but if the needle still had a couple of uses left, they'd use that. Dusty tried to keep count of how many times... twice before this one, probably, so plenty of mileage left. Bella held out her hand, fingers splayed. She tried to keep her legs clean. For gigs. For the fans. And for her work.

  "Me next," said Dusty, as Bella tumbled back onto the once-white pillow.

  "Enjoy, babe," Bella replied in a fuzzy, warm voice. Then, off-key, she sang something Dusty thought he recognised.

  "Good song, that,” Bella mumbled.

  "Yeah." Dusty carefully tidied away his bits and pieces into a small wooden container. He considered himself to be meticulous, and enjoyed trying to live up to his own assessment of himself.

  "I still got it, y'know," Bella said.

  "Yeah."

  "Won't be long 'til they call for me."

  "Yeah. They’ll soon come running for your signature." There was the familiar weight, like two fingers pressing down into his eyeballs. He didn't want to talk until it had gone.

  "There'll be reunions. A recording contract. Gigs. They'll love me again, Dusty, won’t they?" Dusty closed his eyes tight and Bella's voice soothed him with hopes of a better future.

    *

  Saturday night's party would begin in Taboo, club of clubs, the place to be seen in and the scene to be placed in. There they'd discover where Open House would be later.

  Taboo was small, a sweaty place which hid behind a nondescript door and up some narrow torn-lino stairs. It was crushed as usual, the habitual throng of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Bella caught the last few bars of Pretty Things’ Loneliest Person before the record deck’s arm lifted off and a guy in black denim replaced the vinyl with something neither she nor Dusty recognised.

   "Daah-lings! Lovely to see such beautiful people!" A dark brown voice emerged from out of the crowd of people.

  "Claude, you bastard!" Bella hugged the unbelievably tall, ferociously thin, outrageously colourfully-dressed man. "Any news for Auntie Bella, Claude?"

  "None, dahling!"

  Bella's face dropped. Claude was once an A&R man for a recording company and kept his ear to the ground for Bella.

  He saw the disappointment.

  He didn't say "Stupid bitch". Instead, he said "Don’ worry ‘bout it, daah-ling, it’s open house at Jarry's tonight. Lock in, yeah? Jarry’s."

  Later, Dusty went back to their place with a migraine while a little later still, Bella went on to Jarry's with an American who'd once been in the same studio as Jim.

  "Did you ever speak to him?" Bella asked, wide-eyed. "Or any of The Doors?"

  He hadn't. Though they'd nodded in passing. And he'd once said "Hi" to John Cale who’d winked and said “Hi” back. That was as close as either of them had got to rock stardom, but what the hell, the contents of the saucers at Jarry's made up for it. Green triangles, blue pills, green-and-yellow and red-and-black capsules, dangerous sweeties that spoke to Bella like old friends.

  The American promised Bella an introduction to Carl Segrew. "Don't you know Carl? Haven't you heard of him? I'd have thought a beautiful girl like you would have heard of him."

  Bella felt pretty again, giggled and shook her head. This guy was in the know. Yes, he was old, but he knew Carl whatsisname, what name did he say? Anyway, he's not bad looking and Bella could tell he was interested. True, she was no spring chicken herself anymore, but her face was still cute and she still had a stunning figure, now what's he saying about that guy?

  "Oh man, he's such a babe, is Carl. Believe me, you'll be on the road by the end of the year," the American said.

  Bella's eyes lit up and something inside her soared: this was her chance. At last! This was her chance! She’d play it cool but she’d do what she had to.

  She wondered if he liked schoolgirls.

  "I can act. I’ll dress up for you."

  "What?" he looked confused.

  "No, no, nothing," she said quickly, desperately trying to remember what she'd just said to confuse him. Those green pills made your mind giggly and boisterous but, hell, they played havoc with your short-term memory.

  *

  Outside, gentle rain is fresh on their faces.

  "I can't take you home," she tells him when she realises he won’t pay for a room. "I just can’t. Dusty's there, he's ill."

  There's birdsong, uncommon in London, except in this rare and fleshless pre-dawn hour.

  "I love London in the early morning," she tells him.

  He demands she take him home. Or pay for a hotel.

  What a cheek, it’s the man who should be paying for the hotel, particularly with what she’s got to give him. But she’d do what she had to. Her hopes lit up while she checked her purse again for the third time.

  "I really can't," she insists. Then she giggles, feeling woozy and slightly sick, but finding the idea of her having enough cash for a hotel room incredibly hilarious.

  Bella stops laughing suddenly and watches him as he looks around at groups of people making their way, this way and that, all heading somewhere. Her legs and hands are vibrating and her head is throbbing now.

  He looks at Bella but won't make eye contact. They start to walk, slowly, tentatively, in no particular direction. Her hand seeks out his, but he pulls it away on the pretext of getting a cigarette. He doesn't offer one to Bella.

  They turn a corner. There's a club sign flashing further on. They pass a pair of market stalls, both empty, one shrouded in protective tarpaulin. Rainwater tinkles, softly musical, as it drips off one of them into a puddle.

  She trips, then falls. It happens oh so slowly. She feels cold wet tarmac slap her cheek before pain explodes into her head and stabs angrily down her neck, throbbing red around the periphery of her vision. He bends to help her up, hand reaching down, but then he changes his mind and strides purposefully away.

  Bella is enchanted by raindrops on the kerbstone, they're like baby diamonds. She doesn’t notice the pain any more. It’s not that it’s gone – it hasn’t – but it’s just not that important any longer. She calls for Dusty but knows he's too far away to answer. Such pretty baby diamonds. She shivers and tries to summon up some energy to move her head, but the kerbstone is soft and smells of a mixture of summer rain and dogshit, which is somehow comforting.

  And it’s suddenly become quite warm down here, and it doesn’t sway and make her feel sick and frightened like the upright streets do. It feels like all the buildings are dozing now, and the walls are asleep, and the pavement and the tarmac and the soft, soft rain are hushed and serene, blanketed beneath the watchful, mothering darkness.

  She shuts her eyes.

    *

  Soho in darkness is unforgiving in its love of the chase.

  From centuries ago, when Kings rode their hounds in pursuit of game with cries of "So ho!" to nowadays when the unwary and the weak are today's game, you can still hear the cry of "So ho!" on the cold, under-dawn breezes that skitter along littered streets. It's the cry of the area, echoing unceasingly down the centuries as it pursues unwary prey.

  Ignore the music, the ringing in your ears, and the calls of revellers' shouted Goodbyes: blot them out, listen carefully: you will hear it.

  And if, come first light, a corpse is found in an alley, and that corpse is a little too thin, and carries too many lines on its still beautiful face, and the puncture marks between cold fingers are still fresh as early morning dew, then assumptions are made.

  You'd hear all sorts of rumours until people actually agree who the corpse once was, and even when they tell you who it was, you can't believe them because it's probably just more hearsay and there’ll probably be no truth in it at all.

  And prior to the autopsy, there's gossip and debate and conjecture, and all they can say is that she lived somewhere around Soho and used to be a singer and maybe would have been again. One day.

    *

  At the funeral service Dusty said a few words to almost empty pews. He ended with "she never stopped hoping, never stopped dreaming. I guess she's still dreaming now," and Claude smiled.

  Claude stood up then, holding an old cassette player. As arranged with Dusty, he spoke:

  "I found this helping Dusty get rid of... um, sort out some of Bella's things. Um... it's Bella" he said, pressing Play before his voice choked.

  Dusty couldn't listen to it again. Neither could Claude.

  So they walked outside where the air somehow soothed them, with Bella singing behind them, her voice growing fainter as they walked quickly away.

We rock'n rolled Til our souls were sold... Then we laid down/ every/ goddamn/ load.

    END.