to Urvi’s mum and had another small boy bouncing on his shoulders too, with a little girl wrapped around his legs.
*****
Urvi
As the song came to an end I smiled at the guys. They might be a little stoned and yes, their personal hygiene was questionable, but they could play the crap out of their instruments. When I looked back into the crowd as we moved around for the next song (I was making their lead singer take centre stage for this one - he had a smooth, deep, gorgeous voice and he deserved to be heard) I saw my one of my nephews perched on Jack shoulders, his entire small body swaying with the effort of waving at me. I grinned and waved back as I settled over to the side of the stage with my guitar. I caught Jack’s eye and he smiled at me before that small frown line appeared between his eyebrows again and he started scanning the crowd. I loved them both, but between him and my brother the security obsession was getting out of hand.
The applause died down and I strummed the first chord of the next song, smiling down at my fingers on my guitar and thinking that I’d made the right decision, keeping my news to myself before the festival.
I’d tell him after.
I glanced down at the protection officers keeping the crowd back from the stage and rolled my eyes.
Way after.
As the vocals-only verse started and I let go of the strings of my guitar, one of my hands went to smooth down my shirt and then came to rest on my lower stomach. And I smiled.
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Kira’s story, Anything but Easy, is available now.
Read on for the first two chapters of Anything but Easy.
Anything but Easy
Susie Tate
Chapter 1
Are you even a bloody doctor?
Kira
“Kira, you maniac!” Mark grunted, finally dropping the remote after I elbowed him in the stomach. My face split into a wide grin as I scrambled away, remote in hand.
“Man up, Marky Mark,” I said, pressing some buttons to change over to BBC HD. “You know I gotta get my news on in high-def these days. And you were about to turn over to Say Yes to the Dress, you big queen.”
“I’m a queen and proud Ki-Ki. And since when don’t you like Yes to the Dress?”
“I think we could all do with a bit of current affairs, don’t you, Mark?” I used my best haughty tone as I flung my arm out to the rest of the genitourinary department coffee room. Apart from me and Mark, there was only a locum GU consultant who was trying his best to ignore us, and Sandra, a staff nurse so used to me that she barely even looked up from her tuna salad. “Some of us care about the world at large.”
I paused the telly and took a deep breath in. Mark held up both his hands and shook his head.
“Kira, don’t you dare si–”
I leapt off the sofa, got right in Mark’s face and went into my version of Fight the Power by Public Enemy, complete with my pop and lock rap moves.
I was cut off by him dragging me up from a slut drop and clamping his hand over my mouth. Just as I was getting into it, the fun sponge. Sandra’s shoulders were shaking with laughter.
“No. Rapping.” Mark looked at me sternly. “You are a small white English girl with hippy tendencies, not an African-American freedom fighter from the ghettos of New York.”
“We can all fight the powers that be, Mark.” I grabbed the remote and started up the News again. “But it starts with us being well informed.”
The headlines came to an end and I sat back with a dreamy sigh as He filled the screen. Mark rolled his eyes.
“Well informed, my arse. You’re obsessed . . . with a fucking Tory.”
I shushed him, my gaze intent on the glorious sight in front of me as I leaned forward over my knees to get a better look.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Yeah, you dirty little politician, you. Wear that suit, you naughty man. Own it. Work it.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking I was watching a Magic Mike routine rather than the current Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth walk out of Number 10 Downing street and get into a waiting car. He was