Kim smiled. “Nothing wrong with that. My old man wouldn’t know fun if it bit him on the arse.”
Even with the warmth of the late summer sun, the way his melodic Cornish brogue curled aroundarsemade me shiver, and I couldn’t help wondering why he’d sought me out. Couldn’t have been my dazzling knowledge of eco-friendly food production, or my jaded enthusiasm for the enigmatic seaside town I’d readopted as my home, and despite his easy grin, Kim seemed to have one of those faces that gave nothing away.
We ambled to the beer tent. Kim bought a pint from a local microbrewery for me, and a lemonade for himself.
“I’m glad you got me ale, not cider,” I said with a shudder. “I got pissed on that scrumpy shite last weekend. Never again. Still feel rough.”
Kim chuckled. “We’ve all made that mistake. My mate’s dad used to charge us a score for six pints and a pasty. Didn’t make it past three for years.”
“Did you get the pasty when you got to number six?”
“Something like that. So, you grew up in London?”
“For my sins, yeah.” I set my pint down and glanced around. The festival had picked up after lunch, and was buzzing now. “My dad slept with my mum at a swingers’ party. She had me here, then fucked off back to London, taking me with her. I spent most summers on the farm, but I’m a city boy, really.”
“Wouldn’t know it from your jam sales pitch.”
I chuckled. “My big brothers trained me well. Said I’d end up back here eventually, so I had to learn.”
“And they weren’t wrong, eh?”
I shook my head, waiting for Kim to ask what had happened to make my brothers’ shared prophecy come true, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked over my shoulder at the band getting ready for the afternoon performances. “Is that a bassoon?”
“A what?” I followed his gaze to the stage and saw what appeared to be a mini woodwind section setting up with a folk band I’d seen a hundred times at festivals just like this one. “Wouldn’t surprise me with that lot. Crusty bloody lunatics.”
Kim shrugged. “I like their vibe, but I’m more of a Chili Peppers bloke to be honest.”
That fit with the surfer hair and leather bracelets. “You’d probably like Moon-Hot Monkey Paste, then,” I said. “They’re playing in Bude tonight.”
“I know. A bunch of us blagged tickets at the last minute.”
“Really?” My heart skipped a beat. What were the chances? MHMP were the hottest band in the southwest and tickets to their shows were like gold dust. I’d been lucky to get a press pass. “I’ve wanted to shoot them live for ages.”
“Shootthem?” Kim frowned a second before his face cleared. “Ah . . . and you finally get to tonight, eh?”
“Yup.”
Kim stared at me for a long moment before his devilish grin split his face in half and his knee nudged mine. “Then I guess I’ll see you there.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you there . . .”
I scouted the concert venue with the words reverberating in my brain. Kim had cut and run soon after he’d uttered them, but they’d stayed with me every minute since, distracting me from the task at hand. Not that setting up at the small venue required much brainpower. I’d been shooting bands here since I was sixteen and knew every nook and cranny like the back of my hand.
Still, it had been a while. I hadn’t done much live work since I’d moved back to Porthkennack, preferring the solitude of online design contracts—websites, branding, social media—all the corporate bullshit I despised. I’d landed this job by accident after a beer-fuelled pow-wow down the boozer closest to my folk’s farm, and now I was here, the long-dormant buzz of a grungy band gig seeping into my soul.
That, and the promise of seeing Kim again, but I was trying not to think about that. The fact that we were both going to be in the same place tonight was nothing more than a coincidence—one that made my spine tingle but a coincidence nonetheless. And, though the venue was small, it was also dark, with plenty of places to hide. Chances were, we probably wouldn’t even bump into each other, and that would be just fine. It wasn’t like I was really interested in him, right?
I put the painful roil in my gut down to the copious amounts of scones and jam I’d consumed throughout my afternoon at the hippie-fest.
Lights out. Showtime. The band hit the stage, and I caught the lead singer’s opening vocal in what I hoped was the first of many epic shots.
Of course, hope was a four-letter word. Shooting bands was one of my favourite ways to earn a crust, but gigs like this, dark and smoky, were a bugger to photograph. The sensible side of me knew I’d be lucky to get ten decent shots out of every hundred, but that didn’t stop the thrill in my veins that came with embracing the job I loved.
I took a few snaps of the band head-on, then changed my lens and stepped to the side, focussing on the bass player, who had a presence I wanted to capture. With her lustrous hair and milky skin, this chick was entrancing. She owned the stage, and I got a little lost in her until a change in tempo roused me. The band slid seamlessly from a stomping anthem into something gentler in cadence, and I moved on.
The band played through their set as I shot the stage from every possible angle, and then headed upstairs to the balcony to get an aerial view. On my way, I took in the crowd and the electric atmosphere. I knew the band’s drummer from the summers I’d spent in Porthkennack, and dug the EPs he’d sent me over the past few years, but I’d never seen them live, which I regretted now that I saw how awesome they were. The grungy bass and funky guitars made me almost wish I’d left my camera at home, that I was rocking out in the mosh pit with the hard-core fans, then I caught the redheaded chick in a shot that made my night, and everything was as it should be.
The gig flew by. I filled one memory card and was halfway through a second when a hand on my shoulder blasted my tunnel vision. I jumped a mile, half stumbled out of my crouch, and collided face-first with a hard, wood-scented chest.