'I can't be arsed with this.'

Della ignored him, pretending she hadn't heard. She turned her head away and looked down the queue of people. It stretched the length of the driveway, around the stone pillars on the corner and disappeared off up Hayman's Green. It was such an odd place to have something like this. The house was tall and slender with bay windows and an asymmetrical shape, walls and porches jutting out all around the square of the building. Unlike its neighbours, it was set back from the main road, with a large, overgrown garden at the front and more land at the back, crowded with leafy bushes and trees.

'I said, I can't be...'

'I heard what you said,' Della muttered. 'I can't make the queue go any quicker, can I?'

Jim huffed and shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, kicking at the pebbles on the stony driveway to scuff his shiny black brogues.

Della suspected that was what was wrong with him, although the extended wait didn't help. Jim wasn't the most patient of people and they'd already been queuing for forty-five minutes, but he was uncomfortable too. He was wearing a grey pinstripe suit. God knows where he'd got it from, Della had never seen him in it before. It must be borrowed as it was too big on him. The jacket was too boxy and it hung on him like a bedsheet on a washing line. The trousers were cinched to his waist with a belt but looked liable to fall down no less. He had smart leather shoes on his feet that he'd already complained pinched his toes. He was desperately overdressed. No one else was dressed like this. Around them all the other would-be club members were casual in shirts and jumpers and jeans. Della wore a fawn tartan skirt with a black short sleeve turtleneck. She'd questioned if that was over the top until she saw what Jim was wearing.

'If we don't get to the front in the next five minutes, I'm leaving,' Jim grumbled.

'It just took us an hour to get here and you want to leave before we've seen inside?'

'I didn't even want to come to this.'

They were only about half way down the drive. There was no chance they'd reach the front in five minutes. Della and Jim had caught a bus from Speke into town, changed at Paradise Street, and then gotten lost walking around West Derby. When they finally arrived, the queue was already the length of the driveway. They should have gotten here earlier, but Della had been surprised by how popular this club was proving to be. Opening time was seven o'clock and it was already past eight.

She had been expecting thirty, maybe forty people would come to the opening night of - yet another - coffee club in someone's basement, but there must be more than a hundred in the queue and that wasn't counting the people who'd already gotten inside.

Della lifted herself onto her tiptoes and peered over the heads of the teenagers in front of them. There was a small table at the top of the stairs leading down to the cellar. A dark haired lady in a floral dress was seated at it, furiously filling out membership cards. She wasn't going to say so to Jim, but at this rate they wouldn't get inside before the band started playing.

'You stay if you want to. I'm off,' Jim said and stepped back from Della to prove the point.

At the front, a familiar girl came up the basement steps and the woman at the table stood to exchange places with her.

Della sighed exaggeratedly. 'Right, okay. Fine. Wait here and I'll see if I can get us in.'

'I'm--'

'Jim, stay here and keep our place in the line.'

Without waiting for his response, she stepped out and strode down the driveway, feeling the hot glares of the other queue members with every step.

'Ruth,' she said, as she reached the front and the girl lifted her head from the cardboard form she was diligently filling in.

She gave her a thin smile. 'Oh, hi, Della.'

Ruth didn't like Della. She'd never said as much. She'd never given Della a solid reason to think it but still there was an air about her. She was standoffish and abrupt with her. A coldness that was more apparent when George wasn't around, but Della could feel just as present when he was. She could probably guess why.

'Have they started playing yet?'

'Not yet.' She folded the thin pink piece of cardboard in two and gave it to the young girl waiting beside the table. Casbah Coffee Club: Membership Card was printed on the front in thick black lettering.

'You, um, couldn't let us in, could you?' Della asked, stepping out of the way for the girl and her friend to pass.

'There's a queue.'

'I know but Jim's bored and wanting to leave.' She forced a smile. 'He's like a little kid, can't stand still for two minutes.'

Ruth sat up and scanned the line behind Della. 'Jim's with you?'

'Yeah, he's down there, unless he's already gone without me.'

Ruth considered it for a moment. 'It's for members only. You have to be a member to go inside and it's a half a crown to be a member, then a shilling to get in. Each.'

Della nodded and produced the coins from her purse, giving them to Ruth. As Ruth got out a couple of new membership cards - pink for Della and blue for Jim - Della caught Jim's eye and beckoned him over.

'Hey! We're waiting here!' someone further back in the queue shouted, realising what was going on. 'No cutting in! I've been in this queue an hour!'

'You have to fill in your membership card.'

'Can't you do that?'

'I don't know your personal details.'

'Of course you do. 7 Upton Green.'

'I don't know where Jim lives.'

Della raised her eyebrows at her as Jim arrived beside her.

Ruth pursed her lips and looked between them both. 'Alright, we can do it later. Go on.'

'Hey, how come they get to just go in?!' someone else shouted.

'We're with the band,' Della replied. Jim was already half way down the steps.

'No, you ain't!'

Della looked to Ruth for help. She waited a beat. 'Yeah, they're with the band,' Ruth said, begrudgingly.

Della smiled at her, turned around and skipped down the steps after Jim.

It was the wall of heat that met her first. The 'club' was blatantly a coal cellar and basement, not designed or built to accommodate what could easily be three hundred people. There was a skinny, shadowy corridor stretching from one end to the other with rooms leading off from it. No doors in the doorways, just gaps in the wood panels and boards that made up the walls. It was crowded as people weaved in and out of the different rooms or stood around chatting, blocking the path. Jim already had that contemptuous look in his eye so Della grabbed his hand and pulled him down the corridor and into the heart of the building before he could back out.

Johnny & The Hurricanes' Red River Rock spilled from a room about mid-way down, played on a Dansette record player with speakers not really loud enough to service the space. Della paused in the doorway. The room was more of a wood lined shoebox than a band room. It was already packed with people either side, squashed together on long, narrow wooden benches. In front of the Dansette were chairs and guitar cases left on a floor level stage. At the right side of the stage area was Cynthia, John's new girlfriend, talking to a friend sitting next to her. Della caught her eye and raised her hand in a wave. Cynthia smiled warmly and waved back, then turned back to her friend.

'Let's get a drink,' Della said and Jim mumbled some complaint she didn't hear as she pulled him with her towards the back of the house and the bar area.

This room was a bigger, square space with circular metal tables and chairs and a large fireplace and chimney at the far side. The lighting wasn't brilliant but it was brighter in here than the corridor, or else Della's eyes had adjusted to the darkness. A bar was serving drinks at one end, with a disorderly queue of people jostling each other to get to the front and one young lad, shirt sleeves rolled up, sweating and struggling to keep up with the demand.

'Do you want to try an espresso? Apparently they have a machine that makes it,' Della shouted, over the noise of what she supposed must be the espresso maker.

'What's that?' Jim said.

'It's coffee, but it in these tiny cups and--'

Jim pulled his face like she'd just offered him a bowlful of tripe. 'I don't like coffee.'

'Oh, well, um, I'm sure they have Coke and Fanta...' She looked for a menu. There was a chalkboard beside the bar but the writing had been smudged.

'Beer. I'll have a bottle of brown ale.'

'They don't have beer,' Della replied, gritting her teeth and straining to keep her patience with her belligerent boyfriend. 'It's a coffee club. The Casbah Coffee Club. The clue is in the name.' Jim scowled and Della regretted saying it. 'Shall we sit down?' she said, swiftly moving him to a recently vacated table before he could think of a reply.

Della sat down and Jim joined her, scraping the metal legs of his chair noisily across the floor so he could rest his elbows on the table, only to swear and scowl some more as he leant the sleeve of his suit jacket in spilled cold coffee.

'Why don't you take your jacket off?' Della suggested. 'You must be sweltering.'

With a few more mutterings that Della didn't hear and didn't care to ask to be repeated, Jim did, and hung it on the back of his chair.

'Where did you get that from anyway?' she asked.

'It's my brother's.'

'Oh. It's... nice.'

'Well, you said we were going to a club.' He sighed, scanning his eyes around the room and sat back in his chair. 'This isn't what I thought it would be.'

Evidently.

She watched him for a moment, his brow furrowed in distaste, his large shoulders hunched as he hugged his arms around himself.

Sometimes - actually, often - Della wondered why she stuck with Jim. He didn't like the same things she liked. He wasn't much into music. He had a couple of Lonnie Donegan singles but he didn't like rock and roll particularly. He never attempted to read any of the books Della loaned to him. He got bored and restless if they went to the cinema and he'd always make her leave before the end of the film. He didn't like her friends either. He couldn't keep up with their fast conversational banter, their constant ribbing and piss-taking. He suspected, and he was right, that they were laughing at him. That was another reason why he was behaving like a tosser tonight. There's only Della's friends here. None of Jim's friends would come to something like this. It didn't help that it was George's band they'd come to see. He disliked George most of all.

'Well, I'm going to get a coffee,' Della said. 'Sure you don't want anything?'

Jim sniffed rudely and shook his head. Della went and joined the push at the coffee bar. She looked back at him as she waited to be served. He wasn't watching her. He was staring at the ceiling with his mouth gaping. The ceiling was painted a glossy black in here - it still looked like it was wet - and dotted with angular white stars.

Della told herself that looks wasn't what attracted her to people, but if you squinted at Jim in a certain light, he looked a bit like a younger Rock Hudson. Dark eyes, dark hair in a slicked back mini-quiff despite his assertions he didn't care for Elvis or his music. A square jaw on his square face. Huge hulking chest and shoulders. He was tall but he was self conscious about it and it made him walk slightly stooped. George had nicknamed him Boris - as in Karloff - until Della told him to stop it.

Deep down, Della knew why she stayed with Jim, although she didn't like the answer. She didn't like what it said about her. It was partly to do with George. Okay, it was a lot to do with George. Everyone had paired off. Almost everyone she knew now had a boyfriend or girlfriend, and if Della jilted Jim as she was so frequently tempted to do, she'd be the only one alone.

She went on a couple of dates with Jim in February, after she'd turned sixteen, the acceptable age to date boys according to Alan. Della's mother hadn't been quite so adamant. They'd gone to the pictures - and didn't have to leave early for once - and the following week to the music hall in Halewood. There hadn't been a spark. There hadn't been much of anything. At the end of each date she'd kissed him, more because she was curious to see what it was like to kiss a guy than anything else. And that would have probably been the sum total of Della and Jim's relationship, if it weren't for George.

A week after Della's second date with Jim, out of the blue, George got his own girlfriend.

Her name was Ruth Morrison. She was tall and pretty with auburn hair and dark eyes. George had met her at Lowlands, the other music club on Haymans Green and the forerunner to the new Casbah. He'd never taken that much interest in girls before - well, only ones like Brigitte Bardot or Kim Novak. He'd never bothered with dating and girlfriends.

It'd been Ruth who had got The Quarrymen, one of the bands George played guitar for, the gig for the opening night of the Casbah Club. Della had never seen George play live. For one reason or another she'd never made it to any of his shows. She had never gone to Lowlands or anywhere else. Now, judging by the amount of people queuing up to get inside, she had to wonder what she'd been missing.

Eventually she got to the front of the coffee queue and ordered herself an espresso and Jim a Coke, despite what he said. The coffee was so small it was gone in a minute. It hadn't been worth the wait. They sat in silence for five minutes, Jim with his untouched bottle of coke in front of him, sulking.

'I'm going to look for George,' Della said and stood up. Jim started to get up to follow her but she waved him down. 'No, it's okay. You wait here and save the table. Watch my purse?'

She gave him a slightly forced smile and he gave her a scowl in return and she pushed her way back out of the coffee bar and back toward the little music room. Red River Rock was playing again for the fifth or sixth time. They must only have a small record collection.

Della hadn't told George she was coming to this. She'd got the details off his brother, Pete who should be here somewhere as well. He'd offered Della and Jim a lift over, which she'd declined and then regretted when she looked up the bus routes to West Derby. She hadn't even seen George since he'd come back from his last hitchhiking expedition with Paul a week ago. He'd been too busy getting ready for this night. He hadn't even called round to say he was home. In fact, she'd hardly seen him all summer.

She'd intended to ask Cynthia where she could find George, but as she squeezed her way back into the tiny room, there was no need. George stood with his back to her, feeding a thick electrical cable through his hands and winding it round in a large loop.

Della squeezed past the people stood blocking the doorway and then, inexplicably, she hesitated. What if he wasn't pleased to see her here? What if he doesn't want her here? She feels like she's stepped, uninvited, into a side of George's life that she didn't have any knowledge about before. A life where three hundred people queue for over an hour to watch him play. Now she looks at him, the time that has passed since she last saw him is noticeable. He's changed his hair. It's a little shorter and he's combing it differently. She didn't recognise the shirt he's wearing. It must be new.

She'd planned to let George notice her. She would appear in the front row when he was playing and pull faces at him to make him laugh. But that would be impossible. There was no way she was getting to the front once the band had started.

Shaking the thoughts off with a deep breath, Della moved to the left side of the stage, standing behind George. 'Hey, do the real musicians know you're messing with all this stuff?' she asked, loudly. 'These are expensive musical instruments!'

George turned around, a smile like a triangle on his face. 'Del, what are you doing here?! You come to watch us play?'

'No, I just stood in a bloody queue for an hour to get the world's smallest cup of coffee.' Too many lame jokes. She made herself cringe sometimes, but George laughed.

'I know, it's mad, isn't it? Look how bleedin' packed it is!' He dropped the coil of wire onto the seat of a wooden cafe chair next to him and stepped closer to her. For a moment she thought he was going to hug her, but he seemed to stop himself and folded his arms over his chest, his hands tucked under his armpits. 'Who'd you come with? Are you on your own?'

'No, I brought Jim. We managed to nab a table in the other room.'

'Oh, right. I wouldn't have thought this would be Boris's sort of thing.'

Della frowned at him and George grinned cheekily.

She sighed. 'Well, it's not. Not at all, really. He came here wearing a suit.'

George chuckled, a little meanly. 'What for?'

'I haven't a clue, but I'm telling you now, in advance, so you don't laugh at him when you see him.'

'Would I do that?' George asked, feigning incredulity.

'Yes, and more, and one day, George, he's going to smack you for it.'

'He'll have to catch me first, the fat lump.'

It was a joke, but still Della wished he'd let up a bit on Jim. It was no wonder he hated George, and it put her in a difficult position; piggy in the middle between her best friend and her boyfriend.

'I saw Ruth upstairs.'

'Yeah, Mona's roped her into doing the door. She's a bit pissed off about it, I think. She set all this up but she probably won't have finished letting people in before we start playing. It's taking forever because everyone has to become a member.'

Della smiled. 'I've a bone to pick with you. You never told me you were home. Your brother said you've been back a week.'

'Sorry,' he said, sweetly. 'I've been busy, getting this ready. It's been non-stop. We only had time for a proper rehearsal yesterday. We decorated it too. Painted the walls and that. What do you think?'

Della glanced around, even though there wasn't a lot to look at in this room; only the boldly striped, multi-coloured ceiling stood out. 'It looks great,' she said, feeling again like this is something she shouldn't be a part of. But that was absurd. George hadn't deliberately kept anything from her. It was Della's own fault that she hadn't gone to any of his previous gigs. 'You're getting places with your music then?'

'Well, I suppose,' George said modestly and picked up a guitar from where it leant against the wall. He put it on over his head and twisted one of the machine heads absently.

'Is that yours? That's not your guitar.'

He nodded. 'It's new. Do you like it? It looks a bit American, doesn't it? Closest Hessy's had to a Strat.'

'A Strat?'

'Stratocaster. A Fender. This is called a Resonet Futurama.'

Della smiled. George might as well have been speaking Latin for all she understood of what he just said. 'Was it... expensive?' she asked, feeling foolish.

George pinched his lips and looked down at his guitar, plucking the strings as if he was tuning it. 'Fifty-five guineas.'

'Bloody hell, George! Where did you get fifty-five guineas?!'

He lifted his head and shrugged. 'Me Mam. She signed the hire purchase.'

'Your mam is soft on you. I bet your dad doesn't know about that.'

George pressed his lips together. 'He knows, but now he's got all the more reason to keep asking me when I'm going to get a job.'

'When are you going to get a job?' Della asked, teasing. She'd finished school earlier in the year, a little after George, although his parents didn't know that. He'd skived almost all of the last five months of his schooling, even though he set off on the bus to the Inny every morning. He'd turned up at the girls school Della attended a few times, convincing her to bunk off with him without much resistance from Della.

Despite that, she'd still managed three GCEs to George's one, just scraping enough to carry on into higher education but she'd quit school as soon as she could instead. She found a job as a waitress almost right away, but terrible at it, only lasted a week there. Now she worked five afternoons and evenings a week at a chippie in Speke. Jim liked it. He could have all the free chips and peas he could eat.

'It's not so bad, you know. Working,' she said. 'And you'll have some money of your own then. You can't do this forever, can you?'

'Why not?' George said, flippantly and a little abruptly.

'Well, um, I just mean... You haven't mentioned the Quarrymen in ages. I thought you'd split up.'

George shook his head. 'I was playing with Les Stewart. That lad from the butcher's shop where I had my delivery round? But we... kinda fell out. Well, Ken did.' George nodded towards the back of another lad Della didn't know. He was leaning over, talking to some girls. 'Ken arranged for us to play the Casbah after Ruth suggested us to Mona, but Les didn't want to do it. We couldn't let Mona down, so I asked Paul and John if they'd play. We're promised a residency here every Saturday if it goes alright.'

'Oh no.'

'What?'

'Does that mean I have to schlep out here every week for your gigs then?'

George smiled thinly. 'No. You haven't bothered before, have you?'

'I've been to your shows.'

'Have you? Which exactly?'

'Well, there's this one, obviously, and... um... Alright, I'm sorry. I'll start coming to them. I promise.'

'I can actually play, you know. You might be surprised.'

'I know you can. I've heard you.'

He studied her for a moment. Was he angry with her? Is that why he'd been avoiding her recently? What had she done?

On the other side of the small stage, John Lennon arrived causing a ruckus and distracting George. John did something Della didn't see, but those around him laughed. He gave Cynthia his drink to hold and then kissed her on the mouth for a moment too long to be publically decent.

'I'd better get on. We're starting soon,' George said, head down, tuning the guitar again. Posing, Della thought. 'Are you gonna stick around and watch?'

'Of course I am,' Della said, firmly, then reconsidered. 'Though I'd better go and see if Jim's where I left him or if he's gone off in a sulk.' It was supposed to be a joke. It didn't sound like it.

'What's he sulking for?' George said, not looking up.

'He wants a beer and it's not licenced here. There's no booze. Just coffee.'

George lifted his dark eyes to her. Without speaking, he went over to John.

Della watched him. John was bending over, zipping up a soft guitar case. George had to bend over to speak to him, the guitar hanging from his shoulders awkwardly.

Why was he so pissed off with her? She hadn't seen him in an age and George usually forgot any quarrel pretty quickly. She couldn't remember fighting with him though. Nothing out of the ordinary. She searched her memory. There was the exam. George's dad had gotten fed up of George mooching around and made him sit the Liverpool Corporation exam. It would have got him a mechanics apprenticeship - his brother Pete had just finished one - but George had failed the exam. Dismally. Della had teased him about it because it was a well known fact that those not clever enough to go onto college and too dumb to find a job for themselves would usually sit the Corporation exam and pass it without much trouble.

Could it be that? She didn't think he'd been all that bothered about the Liverpool Corporation.

John straightened up and said something that George shrugged at. John stared at George a moment, seemingly annoyed, then turned to take a bottle of something from a crate hidden behind his guitar case. He gave it to George and George brought it back to Della, pressing it into her hand. A brown glass bottle of a pale ale.

'Give him that,' George said. 'That's all we've got.'

'Give it to Jim?' she said, looking at the beer bottle.

'Who'd you think? Then he'll stay, won't he? And... so can you.'

'I'd stay anyway, Georgie,' she told him but he'd already turned away. The others were gathering on the stage now, picking up their instruments. Paul passed Della and patted her on her shoulder, shouting a, 'Hi!' on his way to collect his guitar.

Someone pulled the needle off the record player abruptly. More people squeezed into the room to watch them, moving in front of Della even though there wasn't any floor space.

Della turned and left, clutching the precious bottle of beer to her chest, and paused in the doorway to look back. On the stage, George caught her eye. He gave her a smile, a proper one this time.

Della shoved her way back down the narrow corridor to the coffee bar. She'd give the beer to Jim and then make him come and watch the band with her - if they could get back into the room. There was a strange buzz in the air. Excitement and anticipation, like something big was about to happen. It got into Della too, a funny fluttery feeling in her stomach, like nervous butterflies.

Butterflies which were immediately swatted dead as soon as Della arrived at the doorway to the coffee bar.

Across the room, Jim was still seated at the table where she had left him. He had a girl with him. Blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail, a frilly tutu style skirt in a navy polka dot. She was sitting on his lap and Jim had his arm around her waist as he laughed with her. Laughed. More animated suddenly than he'd been all evening. More animated than he'd been the entire time Della had known him.

Della considered marching over there and emptying the beer bottle over his cheating, two-timing head, but she found herself stumbling backwards instead, back into the dark corridor and out of Jim's view, until she bumped into someone.

'Sorry, sorry,' she said, twisting her neck around to see who she'd walked into. Della was outside the doorway to the bandroom with the rainbow ceiling again. To her right she could see John Lennon's head as he stepped up to the microphone at the front of the stage.

Della turned away. People had cleared the corridor, pushing in to watch the band and giving Della a clear view of the girl on Jim's lap as she put a hand on either of his shoulders, leaned down to him and planted a kiss on his lips.

'Hi everyone,' John said, from the bandroom. 'Welcome to the Casbah. We're The Quarrymen and we're gonna play you some rock and roll...'