If I’d known starting a crummy music blog would have landed me in a rank prison cell, with nothing to look forward to but an adulthood behind bars, I’d have reconsidered my vocation in life and become something else. Oh, I don’t know, like a hotshot self-help guru – author of the runaway flop: How to disown yourself and become someone else.

You see, I had this callow idea that the blog would connect me to a group of like-minded folk. Help me find my tribe. Discover a whole universe of people like me who by the age of twenty-six I’d still not uncovered. I thought it might prove that I was not alone and unloved.

All I actually proved was that Imogen Ridgemount is one of a sick kind.

It all began the night I went to the Anarchitects’ gig. I had bought a ticket for one. I looked forward to an evening on my own in an anonymous crowd. The perfect night out.

I queued impatiently at the entrance to Denton college union. After half an hour, exposed to the elements of this northern town, in early January, the protruding parts of me tingled unpleasantly. I was well wrapped in my old junk shop army jacket, black skinny jeans and polo neck, fleece scarf, thermal gloves and the rest. But my skin and bone body was not wired to cope.

At last, I spilled into the mouth of the strip-lit venue, with the rest of the punters and made my way to the bar. I plick-placked over sticky vinyl floors in my Doc Martin boots and perched on a stool. I popped up my head from time to time in an attempt to get the attention of one of the languid bar people. They all did a capital job of looking right past me. I assumed I’d spent so long blending into the background I couldn’t arrest anyone’s attention anymore.

I sensed a girl close to my left side. She flung some tendrils of her mauve-streaked hair about which I thought a tad attention-seeking. She pursed her lavish lips and cast her blue-sky eyes around the venue like she was scanning for something or someone.

Soon a bevy of good-looking guys circled around us, or the girl next to me to be precise. I assumed they’d got wind of her on their phones before they’d seen her in the flesh. Her satellite coordinates had led them over here like cyber stags on a virtual rut.

To distract myself while I waited for the hard-of-sight bartender, I perused FizzFeed and came across the headline: “Deathhack: Top 10 tips for dialogue with the dead.” Probably not the right venue for it really but I followed the instructions and attempted to commune with my dead dad, following Tip 1: Tried to squeeze an image of his face out of my dull memory. The image wasn’t as detailed as I’d like, just blonde hair, sickly skin and a trancelike look in his round green eyes that looked straight through me like I didn’t really exist; as if I was the wraith and he was still alive.

“Did you know BarbLo and Buggi Lux are back on again?”

I looked up and realised that the mauve-haired girl was talking to me.

“And BarbLo is launching her own swimwear range? You can see pictures of her gorgeous arse if you like on Watcha?” The girl presented me with her phone. I observed a photo of a woman lying front-wise wearing nothing but a Swarovski crystal-encrusted thong. A gif of her 3D fake-tanned buttocks jiggled around the screen. I tried to hide a smile.

“Nice to meet you, Sugar.” She said in her high-class accent. Then held out her elegant electric-teal nailed hand.

“I’m in desperate need of a snootfull of something. A Laphroaig please sir.” She demanded as she caught the attention of the bearded barman with no problem at all.

“A la what?” Said the hangdog server.

“Do you have Laphroaig?”

I had no idea what it was either but I bet that a shabby student bar in Denton was not going to stock it.

The bar guy shook his head.

“Okay, just any old whisky then.”

He nodded and cast his bored heavy eyes in my direction.

“The same please.”

He nodded again and carefully placed two tumblers on the faux-wood counter and filled them with amber liquid.

“Cheers.” She wiped hers off in one long gulp.

I attempted the same feat and got it down me alright. Though it did come back up to haunt me later that night. It was not the kind of spirit I’d been looking to bring back from the dead when I’d started reading Deathhack that day.

She dropped her phone on the bar and pulled a vape from her bag and took a drag. Mint-scented steam seeped from her nostrils.

“What did you dream about last night?”

Who was this girl? This was a smart-arsed way of making conversation I thought. It had been a while since a stranger had bothered to do so, so I was intrigued and quite pleasantly surprised. This was a trick question. I was supposed to reply with a clever come back. But instead, I thought about the dream I’d actually had, the recurring one that I didn’t want to talk to anyone about.

“Can’t remember at all, never remember my dreams.” Like hell I did, they were hallucinogenic night terrors of epic proportion that pursued me around the daylight hours like Deadlock.

“Who’s your latest squeeze?”

I realised that this Q&A session was not going to cease anytime soon and this upscale girl felt totally okay, getting into the messy business of other people’s lives.

I was not in a relationship and never really had one of any consequence. I’d assumed from the evidence I was not the kind of girl for whom men fell head over heels. Ma said I was too skinny. My hair was a bit of an aberration – representing two halves of myself that were forever in conflict. The blonde roots were all mine. Pure me. The black ends were of my mother’s making. She had dyed my hair black since memory began and still got on at me to do so. I was monetarily challenged so to keep a roof over my head and that harpy off my back, it was a small price to pay. My large green eyes were not blue and piercing or brown and dreamy, just a bit like pond scum, Mother said. My pale skin was not outré, according to Mum who believed that her tanned hide was the only look in town.

There had been some brief and awkward flings, like the pug-faced graphic designer, Danny, I’d met smoking pot, years ago, in a back alley outside a club called Northern Lights.

However, I was not going to allude to my failure to allure anyone. Not to someone like this kitty cat who’d obviously have no problems in that department.

“Just come out of a relationship so taking some time off from men at the moment.” I said.

“Taking some time off men, eh?”

“Yep.”

The girl smiled in a knowing way which I couldn’t decode.

“How about you?”

She looked back at me confidently but I noticed her taught cheeks flinch.

“Similar situation with my ex, Charlie, well, all that’s history to me now.”

She seemed keen to change the topic of conversation which about turned back to me. She shook me down about everything, asked me about what I did for a living, “and all that David Copperfield crap” I said trying to be witty but she obviously hadn’t read Salinger. I really didn’t want to get into my whole life story. It was a bit hideous and not worth talking about.

However, soon we were on the third whisky at which point I’d discovered that her name was Lila, she was twenty-four and didn’t do much except flit about the social scene because she was biding time until her dad gave her a trust fund which would materialise when she hit twenty-five. And this is when she dropped the bomblet about being the famous MP, Denis Smythson-Green’s daughter.

She went on to recount the latest exploits of her highborn friends – master of the universe spawn. The out-of-touch rich kids it seemed had a penchant for being mode setters responsible for kicking off life-changing new trends like the knitting gymkhana movement or jelly wigwam tournaments.

Lila, who had been telling me about her Mensa friend, an absolute flower, who had just launched the e-guide hit, The Naked Launderer currently trending on FizzFeed, fell silent.

She looked over my shoulder and I could quite clearly see her eyes widen and her pupils shrink to sharp little pricks. She handed me her drink and whispered through her perfect teeth that she had to go to the loo. She backed away and slipped into the crowd.

I felt a tap on my elbow and leaped.

A cruelly handsome blonde kid eyeballed me.

“How do you do? The name’s Aiden.”

He jutted his chin and then hand out in my direction. I limply took it and proceeded to stand by submissively as he wrenched my fingers off. I wondered if I’d fallen into a wormhole where the whole universe was suddenly interested in me and that my shrinking violet routine had lost its clout. I was unprepared for these unannounced new acquaintances.

“You were talking to Lila Smythson-Green just now, right?”

I surmised from Lila’s disappearing act that she did not want to embark on tittle tattle with this specimen. I attempted to lie and said no but I don’t think I succeeded in pulling the wool over his keen eyes.

“Baffling, I could have sworn I saw her here and she’s gone, just like that. Here one minute, gone the next. But then again, I suppose it’s a trick of hers.” He said, then raised his white eyebrows and strutted off.

I stood still for a moment, then inexplicably picked up my gear and scooted off to find Lila. I had met her all of twenty minutes before but she was a fascinating character who had made an effort to make conversation and now seemed to be fleeing some guy. I felt a duty to investigate.

At the time, I thought this was proof that I was a good person after all. Even though the last thing I wanted to do was engage with Lila or anyone else. She seemed like she was in some kind of predicament. I would console her.

However, I realise now it was less to do with Lila’s wellbeing. She simply awakened a dormant instinct within me to poke around in dark corners where I wasn’t welcome. It’s become a habit I can’t quite shake. I guess that’s why I’m in such colossal trouble now.

Body after body moved into my path and blocked my way. I ricocheted towards the stairs and made my way down the dark stairwell towards the Water Closet. In it, I found a row of cubicles, one was closed and locked.

“Lila, is that you? Are you okay? What was all that about?”

“Nothing. Forget it. I just needed the bog desperately.”

“But the blonde guy…”

“Can’t a girl take a piss in peace?”

“Okay.” I said.

I caught sight of my face in the cloudy mirror shrouded by my fake black hair. My thin brows were furrowed, my pale skin creased, my eyes, algae green, not piercing enough to cut though the murk. Clearly there was something going on. I couldn’t puzzle it out and there was no way she was letting me breach that plastic cubicle she’d built around her.

The sound of outside magnified as the door heaved open and a tall stately girl with shimmering black skin walked in. We smiled at each other in acknowledgement and awkwardness. That was the end of the conversation with Lila. Lila did not want to talk about it. She did not want to spill the milk. So, I let it ride. Then I heard commotion on the stage.

“Testing. One. Two. Three.”

“I’ve left your drink on the sink. The gig’s about to begin. Shall I’ll see you out there later?”

My new-found friend grunted and I left her to it, believing that she’d just been toying with me to while away the time and she really had far better things to do than entertain the likes of me. So, I left thinking I was back on my own for the evening. And that suited me just fine.

Everyone gathered towards the front of the stage. The excitement and fervour crackled. Darkness fell. A rumbling riff buffeted the speakers. The crowd murmured. Then a lightning spotlight struck statuesque Luke, making a halo of his grubby shoulder-length hair. He sang a cappella…haunted and bluesy.

Somewhere above the rainbow, skies are blue,

But the dreams that you dare to dream,

Really don’t come ...

His gravelly voice thundered and the grungy base raged in.

TRUE.

I was mesmerised by the show. It was the Anarchitects after all and their music had been known to calm my scummy soul before. And there was Luke, ravishing old Luke, cayote-howling. I lamented with him and the rest of the crowd, we all knew the dirge.

Scott the drummer attacked his kit and Patrick shred his fingers on the bass guitar. Luke growled his song. 

Nowhere under anodyne

Skies are grey,

And the dreams you dared to dream

All start to leak away.

The dark mass sparkled with blue flickers. A swarm of smartphones ignited like glow worms. Virtual candles. A vigil to a living god.

Then a machine gun drum roll. A guitar yowled. The bass bellowed. Boom…a thunder crack, the chorus detonated.

We’re dumb, we’re numb

It ain’t much fuckin’ fun

But hey we’re breathin’ and we’re young.

Hitch a ride to nowhere

Roll up and take your seat,

Or just don’t bother

A generation beat.

The crowd exploded; Luke whimpered like a plaintive wolf. His dusty mane ruffled, his grey eyes smouldered. Girls and boys screamed maniacal and veered towards the stage, only to be hurled back by burly security guards. Over and over, everyone screeched and roared in unison:

Just don’t bother

A generation beat.

It was pandemonium. Electrifying. The energy surged like a sonic boom. Luke’s agonised face, like Munch’s Scream – startled, cathartic – purged and purified the room. Then the zephyr of sound flowed away, everyone was spent. Luke and the band took a moment to recalibrate and the crowd stood quiet, steadying themselves from the rampage and readying themselves for the next song.

I realised the whisky was wearing off and I needed something sticky to keep me going so I tore myself away from darling Luke and headed to the bar.

I found a little gap in between the sweat-drenched bodies and slotted myself in.

I waited once again for the barperson to lift his eyes in my direction. The screen above the bar glowed blue and I found myself staring at the sublime image of a sperm whale, in the depths, sailing across the screen.

“The magnificent whale – creative, intuitive, gentle, intelligent and social …”

At first, I thought I was listening to the narration of a young David Attenborough until I realised that there was no sound on the screen and the voice emanated from a guy with chestnut skin, dark shoulder-length hair and pretty features who stood next to me.

He sidled up beside me and waved his hand at the bartender who rolled his eyes and smiled.

“A ruby red, good viscosity, a bit of meat on it, de España, methinks Ribera.”

The bartender returned with a small glass of red. The dark guy observed me. He was smiling.

“Pathetic little thimble, isn’t it? But Andy knows me, I’m working tonight. He’ll keep me on the straight and narrow.”

I laughed way too much and too hard. I realised what I was doing and stopped abruptly. Then, I remembered the scratch on my cheek and pulled my hair over it as subtly as I could.

“What do you think of these chaps? These anarchists?”

I said that I thought “they were the hottest new band to come out of the US in a generation who had bludgeoned our brain-dead youth back to life with their supersonic CPR...”

My own quote – memorised for an occasion just like this. But when I said it out loud and heard my voice reverberate around my cortex, I realised that I sounded like a stupid, faux moron.

“I guess they are interesting, but I just don’t get why they’re so angry when things aren’t so bad. I think if we’re on the earth we must make it matter. Most people never used to have a choice and now we do, it’s a good thing. But these guys seem to go on about how difficult it is.”

“Erm” I managed, while wondering why everyone nowadays believed they had choices and I was the only person in Western civilisation that didn’t.

“Anyway, nice to meet you, my name’s Will and you are?” He held out his hand enthusiastically for me to shake.

“Imogen.” I said hesitantly.

Though, when our hands parted, I decided I liked him and wished straight away that he was touching my hand again. I got distracted once more by the screen over the bar that glimmered aquamarine under sea. Will asked me whether I’d like a drink. I wondered what he was after.

“What about some wine? Try this.”

He offered his drink to sip.

“It’s nice.” I said unimaginatively, feeling filthy for drinking from a stranger’s glass.

He sat next to me on the tall stool and ordered another. I was getting chatted up by some Oxford intellect. How novel.

“So, are you a big Anarchitects fan?” He asked.

“Well, ish.” An understatement, but I guess…Yes, a huge, prodigious fan. I’m obsessed, verging on online stalker, because I have no life of my own, so I live vicariously through the lazy worship of distant strangers… wouldn’t have sounded so cool at my age.

“And you, what brings you here?” I asked.

“I run the union. This summer I finished a PhD in biology. I pottered around wondering what to do next. Then this job came up to manage the union and I thought it would be great. I would get paid to hang out in this place which has been my home for the past two years. I’ve grown rather fond of it. I’m basically taking a break from academia while I work out what next.”

“A PhD in biology. That sounds amazing.” There I went again with my imaginative small talk.

“Not amazing at all really, I just love the world, love it.”

He loved the world. That is singular. You didn’t hear that too often. We all love to hate everything. I didn’t know how to respond. Oh yes, I love the world too. That would have been authentic. I wondered, what did he know? What had he seen? What had he discovered that I had missed?

I watched the whale diving into the deep and listed towards Will’s lovely jolly world. For a moment, the world really did seem love-worthy.

“You know what you said just then, you love the world. That is…cool. Erm, why?”

“I like the question.”

I wasn’t trying to be clever. I was genuinely interested.

“I don’t know why really. That’s a toughie. I guess, my mum was a biologist, my dad was an artist. I travelled my whole childhood and you see things that take your breath away and make you wonder how possibly a lump of rock plodding about in the universe could produce such unbelievable crazy beauty.”

“Didn’t you have to go to school?”

“My parents mostly home-schooled me. We never really stayed any place for longer than a year or so until I was fourteen.”

Will’s amber eyes dimmed a little and he paused. Then he picked himself up.

“Mum was on a mission, Dad was too, in a way.”

“What were they trying to find?”

Will’s golden eyes intensified like quartz and he looked up.

“Officially it was to discover and record undiscovered species but you know there is this great, magnificent, steaming, fizzing, angry and carnivorous world out there and I guess they just wanted to dive right in.”

This was very different.

“Where did you go? Where did you travel?”

“Oh, I think everywhere, I mean not everywhere, that’s impossible but every continent.”

Every continent. But he was about my age. I couldn’t even remember what the seven continents were. I always got that thing about Antarctica and the Arctic confused – one is just an ice ball, isn’t it?

“Which continent did you like best?”

Will laughed. “Well, I’ve never been asked that before. It’s hard to think like that when it comes to continents, I mean there is an awful lot going on in each one.”

“Well, what was your favourite place then?”

“I loved the Arctic.”

“The Arctic” I whispered scared to break it. It sounded fragile and mysterious like a myth.

“Tell me about it.”

“We were there for almost a year. I saw polar bears, the aurora borealis.”

“Polar bears?”

“Yes, I remember being on a ship, one was walking on some cracked up sea ice and our research vessel just gently floated towards it. The bear looked this huge mechanical monster in the bow without fear. It wandered around, jumping from lump of sea ice to the next. It was noble. At peace with itself. Alone in a vast wilderness. To it we were a floating food source. It was hungry.”

And it was then that I realised how hungry I was too. My world had only reached as far back as my own memory, down to the boggy wastelands of Malforth where I’d grown up, to the smoggy skies of Denton where I was now; and that little slither of perma-grey windswept shore in Shellborough where our family once went on holiday. The world was another country to people like Will. A place that opened itself up like an embrace. It had shown him its treasures and fed him on tropical rain, desert sun and ice-pure snow.

He’d travelled the world. I’d travelled a few miles within one little island. No wonder the world made no sense. I’d only ever seen one tiny rotten scrap of it.

The tempo changed. The venue throbbed, like a tornado approaching. There was a deafening clap…a huge crash. Will and I wheeled towards the stage where I could see Luke smashing his guitar against the stage boards. Patrick and Scott booted the drum kit. The audience roared.

“Oh God, the anarchists are trashing the stage. I’m going to have to deal with the situation. Sorry to skedaddle like this.” Will left. I felt very lonely. Then he turned back.

“Would you mind if I gave you a call sometime?”

I think I smiled and nodded rather too enthusiastically. I recited my number and he punched it in his phone. Then that was that. I waved goodbye. His figure became obscured in the dark heaving atmosphere.

He presumably wouldn’t ring but it was nice to experience human communication that does not involve an invective of insults from close family members. I grabbed my rucksack and planted my feet on the floor and was just about to go back and join the crowd when I heard Lila’s commanding voice.

“There you are Sugar; I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I’ve had an idea.”

I waited with absolutely no idea what this instafriend could possibly be about to say.

“You know what, I’ve got two backstage passes, I wasn’t going to do anything with them as my mate, Clarissa, couldn’t make it in the end but I wondered if you might like to join me?”

At this point I’d begun to realise that I really had entered a wormhole. Some uptown girl, new besty that I’d known less than an hour, was inviting me backstage to meet the Anarchitects.

This kind of thing did not happen to me. To put things in perspective my life ran as thus until this point.

At the age of eighteen I left school with no qualifications, flunked my A-Levels, due in no small part to the sudden death of my father months before the exams. I did not escape to university like most of my school friends. I continued to live with my suicidal mother and her toad toyboy Chris, who moved in soon after my father’s death. He was also a slum property landlord and local preacher at the Miracles chapel.

I worked for the aforesaid slob in his lousy property business and part-time at Old Tricks silver surfer tea rooms for the old, decrepit and digitally retarded. We lived in lovely Malforth – whose biggest claim to fame is that it’s the dogging capital of Britain. A slimy primordial pool of a place that offers little more than a twisted side glance and a kick in the teeth.

With this backdrop, I was astounded by how the evening was going over. I was a little excited but really more terrified. Lila dragged me into the crowd, assuming that my answer was yes which was not certain, given my social anxiety was rocketing and I had the sudden urge to find an air raid shelter and lock myself in it. However, I was a hunk of iron stuck between two magnetising forces – Lila and Luke. An irresistible force compelled me to see where this led. I can safely say it led me on a journey I could never have predicted.

“It’s interview time. Yay!” Lila grabbed my arm and gently guided me towards the backstage door.

“Interview?” I whispered.

“Yes, and here’s a camera. You can take the photos too.” She added insouciantly as she handed me a Leica SL 601.

“Photos?” I whispered.

A little squeak erupted from my excavated pectus but it was too late. She heard nothing, or at least pretended not to in the chaos.

The band continued to stagger across the stage clashing with everything in their path. I thought I’d make use of the camera in my hand and snapped at the carnage. The crowd chanted repeatedly: “Screw it. Why bother?” Somehow, it felt like history in the making.