With one last roll of the dice, Mr Ukes said: ‘Anything I can help with?’
Helen eyed his ukulele. ‘Yeah, can I borrow that?’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘You want me to go away but leave you my uke?’
‘Yes,’ she replied.
He blinked slowly, his reflexes visibly dulled by too many Jägermeisters. ‘No problem, dudette.’ He smiled, handed her his ukulele then sidled off.
‘Well played, Helen!’ exclaimed Annette.
A bell rang to indicate that the second part of the singing experience was about to start.
Mr Ukes wandered over a couple of times to sing with us, and to no doubt keep an eye on his £30 ukulele, but his voice was so bad it kept making us go off-key. Annette had no inhibitions telling him every time he hit a dud note, but we were too pissed to get annoyed and eventually his tone-deafness just made us laugh.
The lights blinked on and off to signal last orders. I checked my watch and was amazed it was already eleven.
‘Last song!’ shouted someone from the bar.
We all turned to the monitor to see what our swansong would be – ‘Bring Me Sunshine’, announced the screen. It was a surprisingly emotional song, and having teased Alice for getting teary during the Everly Brothers, I found my own eyes filling with tears.
We hugged like old friends as the dying notes rang out.
‘Damn, that’s a pretty song,’ said Alice, not trying to hide her sniffles. I had a lump in my throat so I couldn’t respond, and Annette was touching up her eye make-up, although we all knew what was really going on.
We swapped numbers and emails, and laughed on our way back to the tube. We were halfway down the stairs at Great Portland Street station before any of us noticed that Helen was still holding her borrowed ukulele.
