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only round the corner at the café with some of the boys. I can swing round your way."
    "Really Luis. You don't have to."
    "Okay. Give me a call if you need me to do anything."
    Madie had a sudden thought. Maybe Luis knew one or two of these guys. "Actually Luis there is something."
    The names tripped off her tongue before she had time to decide that asking him was a bad idea. She had nothing to lose.
    Unbelievably, without even pausing Luis replied. “Danny Matthews? Well that’s DMs, you know — Doc Martins. Like the shoes. It’s his initials you see.”
    Madie wrote the initials next to the name. And she thought she saw the vague imprint of a face materialise in her mind. She was distracted because she heard someone interrupt Luis. “Heard he was dead man. He was found down by the canal I think — the one near the dump.” said the disembodied voice.
    Dead. Madie closed her eyes. “What about the other two?” She felt her throat swelling painfully.
    “The name Brockwell sounds familiar. Not so sure about that other one though. What did you say Brockwell's first name was again?”
    “Anthony.”
    She heard Luis humming as was his habit when he tried to access his long term memory banks.
    “Tone. That’s what the boys called Anthony. 2 Tone — ‘cos he couldn’t sing a note.” Luis was laughing heartily now. “But he had some serious moves on the dance floor. And he could draw anything. The girls were crazy about him. He was too damned good looking for a guy. Jeez, I wonder what happened to him?”
    Madie’s heart was pounding in her ears. I wanted to know. She was finding breathing difficult.
    “Damn Madie, these guys are ancient history. What you asking me for?"
    "I thought maybe they knew Cal." She put her hand to her throat, trying to ease the sense of constriction there.
    "It's hard to say Madz, maybe they did. I'll ask around okay."
    "Thanks." Madie ended the call.
    She finally opened her eyes again. Alongside Anthony Brockwell's name she wrote in his street name. The pen felt unsteady and she tightened her grip on it. Anthony Brockwell. So now you know. She was surprised Luis hadn’t remembered. 2 Tone. I never knew his name was Anthony. It was going back quite a few years but she remembered.
    The school gym was tackily decorated for the Year Ten disco. Bits of Blue-tack were still stuck to the walls where PE posters had been removed to disguise the fact this dance hall was actually the girls’ gym. They couldn’t use the boys’ gym because the smell of teenage boy body odour had seeped deep into the very walls.
    None of this mattered to Madie because a handsome sixth former called 2 Tone was all she was focused on. She had fancied him ever since she had seen him perform in the sixth form drama festival and his presence at the disco was the only reason she had bought a ticket. Frankie had let her borrow a denim mini skirt and Allie had given her some money to get new shoes from the market. She felt ready for a taste of the beginnings of womanhood. 2 Tone was watching her. He came over and asked her to dance. At the end of the evening they escaped the chaperones and headed out to the picnic tables in the courtyard. He smelt of Lynx and roll-ups and Luther Van Dross was closing off the disco. She had expected him to be all over her. He was the sixth former. But instead he had been gentle, stroking her cheek with a thumb, tucking her heavy braids delicately behind an ear and running his fingertips from the top of her spine to her tail bone. Her breath had been caged somewhere between her heart and her throat, a trapped humming bird.
    No, you never forgot your first kiss.
    But then he never called. Frankie said if a boy didn’t get what he wanted, he often didn’t call again, unless he was a nice boy. Allie and Luis took her with them to the seaside for a week. Seeing the sea for the first time in her life made forgetting 2 Tone just that little bit easier.
    Madie paced agitatedly from room to