​​

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’, Echo exploded. ‘We’ve put so much work in this tour! Are we really going to let it go down the drain?’ He sprang up from the battered sofa he’d been sitting on, hurled a handful of peanuts at nobody in particular and stared around the room, a wild look in his eyes.

‘Well, I’m not! I want this tour. I am not giving up on it!’

‘Maybe it’s not about what you want, Echo’, Julian said quietly. ‘What about what Nathan wants?’

Echo froze halfway through shelling another peanut. Oh, Jesus, Nathan thought. Nice one, Julian. He tried to hide behind the guitar he was holding, directing his gaze out through the single window, at the Grand Canal Dock. Echo walked up to Julian, squaring his shoulders. He was about a head shorter than the bass player, but much more strongly built.

‘If you think I’m a selfish bastard why don’t you just say so’, he spat.

Roger got up too, stretching out a hand towards Echo.

‘Let’s not go there, Echo.’

‘He’s calling me a selfish bastard.’

Julian’s face was serious now, but nothing in his features showed any form of agitation.

‘Let’s just calm down, shall we’, he suggested, only succeeding by his complacence in infuriating Echo even more.

‘You don’t tell me to calm down, you big fuck. Who made you the fucking Dalai Lama!’

Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In a minute there would be a fistfight. Was it always like this? Nice band he was a part of. Roger put a hand on Echo’s shoulder, saying something soothing, but Echo pushed him away and went on trying to intimidate Julian, so that even Bogman got involved. Joop had picked up one of Echo’s discarded peanuts and was eating it, watching the scene like it was a good thriller movie, while Seán still sat behind the drum kit, face giving away nothing. He didn’t try to step in or anything; it was like the whole thing had nothing to do with him. Nathan glanced at Seán, but he wasn’t paying any attention to him. Nor was anyone else for that matter. All eyes, as so often, were on Echo.

Very quietly, Nathan put the black guitar in the stand next to him. Equally quietly he made his way to the nearest door, in a wall panelled with sheets of metal, and slipped out of the recording room. It was a relief simply to be out of that room. He considered doing a runner but he felt sorry for Julian and decided that wouldn’t improve things at all, so he just went to the bathroom, where he splashed some water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. What an incredible mess. He wanted nothing more than to say to these people, hey, don’t worry about me. Find yourselves a really good guitarist who can learn everything in four months. Problem solved for all of us. But the more time he spent with these guys, the more he realised he couldn’t do that. Up to now he’d been gearing himself up to somehow tell them that he wanted out of all this. But seeing how involved they all were, how they genuinely wanted him there – even if some of them hadn’t quite latched on to the fact that he wasn’t ‘Shades’ anymore – it made him change his mind somewhat. He still didn’t feel like being Shades. But there was a sense of duty, telling him it would be downright rude and selfish to just drop out on them. He could see their predicament - he had to at least try to help these people out, any which way he could. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been knocked over the head, but it certainly wasn’t theirs either.