IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING

In the wee small hours of the morning
While the whole wide world is fast asleep
You lie awake and think about the girl
And never, ever think of counting sheep

He knew she was crazy, but he hoped she wasn't so crazy she'd forget about him so soon after he'd paid for her return bus fare home that rainy afternoon.

He'd read about women who were as wild as the wind in old pulp novels he'd enjoyed reading at his uncle's holiday cottage by the sea, but never before had he met someone in real life who embodied that cliche so perfectly as Elizabeth.

"Elizabeth," he whispered to himself as he stared at the slanted attic ceiling above his bed, unable to sleep because the very thought of her was keeping him wide, wide awake.

Instead of counting sheep, he liked to review the private dossier he kept locked inside his head on the girl he had fallen instantly in love with that fateful day at the college bus stop.

"You should smile more," she'd said randomly as he tapped on the bus driver's ticket machine with his bank card to pay for her ride home.

"Is this stressful for you?" she asked, concerned that he might have blown his travel budget so soon at the start of the week.

"No. I just don't tend to smile when I'm dealing with that particular driver."

"He does look pretty moody to be fair."

The truth was, Fred was stressed, but more because he'd found himself unexpectedly in the company of the most beautiful girl in the college.

Sitting next to each other on the bus back home that grey November afternoon, she seemed so spontaneous and alive with the sheer zest of life he wondered if she was actually real or just something he'd hallucinated. Everyone surrounding them had their heads lowered with their faces pressed against their tiny screens like NPCs (Non Player Characters), but she was looking all around and noticing things he'd never thought to observe. She speculated how in the future everyone would have robot eyes in the back of their heads so they could see if someone was talking about them behind their backs.

"Everything will be 360%, 24/7 I reckon."

By the time he had time to digest all the many bizarre and imaginative concepts she regaled him with, she left him with a kiss on his cheek before getting off at her stop close to her home.

He hadn't washed his face the rest of that week so as not to remove the imprint of her lips, but eventually an unexpected deluge of rain erased it for him, much to his great sadness.

Hoping to see her again, the days and weeks after their first encounter had proved to be far trickier than he'd imagined.

She was elusive, that was for sure. Everytime he now tried to pre-empt where she would be at college or in the nearby town close to the campus, she was never there and so Fred was beginning to feel like one of those stalking private eyes in a 1940's detective movie. Having recently watched Double Indemnity in his Film Studies class, he was well aware of the Femme Fatale trope that his tutor had told them to look out for, but he didn't imagine Elizabeth would prove to be trouble like Phyllis Dietrichson was for Walter Neff.

Her best friend, Emily, had told him that Elizabeth had absolutely no concept of time and that he would be the crazy one for imagining her to ever turn up when he expected. Fred wondered why the object of his desire would have no concept of time. Was she allergic to watches or something? But in an age where everyone was compulsively checking their phone for notifications, it intrigued him to find someone who was so completely out of sync with the modern age, and seemingly appearing as free as a bird.

In fact it only made her more attractive and desirable to him.

"Do you know her college timetable?" he asked Emily, hoping she would betray her friend for his personal gain.

"She ripped it up on the first day. She said she hates being prescribed what lessons to attend. She just kind of figures it out when she turns up and uses divination to make her way to where she's meant to be."

"Divination? You mean like dowsing?"

"Something like that. Sort of supernatural."

"How is she not expelled already?" Fred asked, amused and incredulous in equal measure.

"Oh, she's actually very bright academically. Everytime she's put on the spot she pulls a rabbit out of her hat and dazzles them all with some in-built genius she keeps hidden all the rest of the time. It pisses me off to be honest."

"I can imagine," Fred replied sympathetically. "Like hiding her light under a bushel."

"Huh?"

"Don't worry."

Fred didn't want to explain a bible reference to Emily in case it got back to Elizabeth that he was some sort of religous nut. The truth was he'd actually found out about the whole bushel business from his crime writer uncle who suspected Fred had some secret musical talent he was keeping to himself. The truth was he could bash out a few tunes by ear on the piano but he knew deep down he was just a musical bullshitter. If a real jazz musician were to walk in on him whilst he was pissing around with his musical doodles, they would tell him to move away from the instrument like a criminal rounded up by the cops.

"Well, I should get going. I'm already late for double science," Emily said as she turned away from the momentarily distracted Fred.

More out of desperation than anything else, he called after Emily with a final plea.

"If you see her, tell he she doesn't need to pay back the fare."

Emily waved her be-trinkled arm at Fred before dispersing into the crowd of students leaving the refectory.

Everytime Fred tried to gain greater understanding of the mystery girl by her friend, the less he understood about her.

Falling in love whilst trying to study for A-levels is a tricky feat to pull off, especially when you're already prone to day dreams and Fred was a day dreamer par excellence. He would often spend his lunch break photographing church spires and finding secret coffee shops down forgotten alleyways in the town close to where he studied whilst occasionally picking out second hand albums from the "Nice & Easy" record shop run by a friendly elderly father and son team who'd famously once supplied records to jazz musician and radio broadcaster Benny Green.

For Fred had also recently developed another obsession to run alongside the one with Elizabeth.

Frank Sinatra.

He couldn't explain this passion to anyone rationally, especially his peers obsessed with drill and grime, except he had heard the song "Young at Heart" at his grandmother's house one Christmas when he was half asleep by her fake tree and fake fire and it had captured his heart in some mysterious way he couldn't explain, like a voice from a past life you feel inexorably and karmically connected to.

"How many Frankie Capitols you got now Fred?" Harry, the elderly owner of the record shop would ask him.

"Let's see. Of the original concept albums, I reckon I've got 6 so far."

"Go on then. Name them so we know which ones to look out for you."

"Songs For Young Lovers, Come Fly With Me, Nice & Easy, Swing Easy, A Swingin Affair, Come Dance With Me."

"Wait. You mean to tell me you haven't got In The Wee Small Hours?"

"Not yet," Fred replied.

"Dearie me. Well I suppose you can just beam it up on your phone anytime you like these days. Along with all that dodgy porn."

Fred looked shocked and offended at the old man's suggestion.

"Nope. I'm taking a purist approach. I only listen once I've got an original copy in my possession. Until then, I refuse to play it."

Leaning back in his creaking chair and sucking on the end of a biro, Harry smiled.

"That's admirable, if a little autistic."

Fred and the old man laughed. They enjoyed a bit of friendly banter now and then.

"Well, take my word for it. That is one album you need if you're to weather the ups and downs of calf love."

Scrunching up his face, Fred replied, "Calf love? What the hell's that?"

Harry put down his half chewed biro down and leant forward, looking serious all of sudden.

"It's those mild crushes you get when you're young that aren't expected to come to much."

"Sounds pretty pointless then."

"Doesn't matter. It'll take a hold of you if it hasn't already and you'll need some music to get you through it. Like you would paracetemol for a mild fever."

Fred had an inkling as to what the old man was on about, and with curiosity piqued he did now desperately want to hear In The Wee Small Hours.

"Well just let me know when you next get a copy in and I'll buy it off you."

But the old man was too busy in a reverie of his own.

"Yes. That got me through many a heartbreak."

Fred didn't like the sound of heartbreak although he imagined he would somehow find a way to romanticise it like those down at heel characters he'd read in the cheap novels belonging to his uncle, who he also suspected had had his heart broken somewhere along the way.

Back at college, Fred couldn't get Harry's ominous words out of his head.

"That aren't expected to come to much."

What a depressing thought. If Fred could win Elizabeth's heart, he wouldn't allow for it not to blossom into something great, something magnificent. He couldn't bear the idea of a great dream petering out into mediocrity.

At the bus stop after college, Fred looked around for her again, hoping she might be in need of another financial bail out so he could incurr more favour with her.

But she was nowhere to be found. Did she even exist anymore he wondered to himself as he stepped up onto the college bus. Perhaps she was just a figment of his imagination and Emily had just been humouring his delusion.

The bus ride back home was cold and wet and Fred had lost his ear pods so couldn't listen to anything on his phone.

Closing his eyes in a impossible attempt to sleep against the rattling bus window, he felt a sudden slight tapping on his right shoulder.

"Here. Don't tell her I gave you it. It's a landline number for her dad's house."

Seizing upon the number scrawled on a tiny piece of graph paper, Fred felt his heart pounding like Gene Krupa on drums, his favourite jazz drummer.

"Thanks! I'll keep it under my bushel."

'Ewww."

Emily, somewhat disturbed by Fred's turn of phrase, left him to his nervous infatuation.

Later that night, he finally plucked up the courage to call the number Emily had kindly given him, but only after walking a considerable distance from his family home just so no-one might overhear him or interrupt him.

As he stood in the shadowy park alone, the rain now ceased, he waited for someone on the other end to pick up the phone.

He prayed it would be her and not the Dad.

Eventually, a gruff male voice answered.

"Yes, hello?"

Fred coughed nervously before finding his voice.

"Is Elizabeth in?'

"Elizabeth? She's in bed I'm afraid."

Fred checked his watch. It was only eight o clock.

"Okay. I guess I'll call tomorrow then."

"Who's calling? I can give her a message."

It was at this exact same moment, on the verge of providing a message for her father to give to her, that Fred spotted the girl of his dreams just beyond by the wonky goal posts in the park. He recognised her immediately with her blonde, frizzy curls and her hippy-looking sling bag.

"Hello? Are you still there?"  

But Fred was lost for words. The man's daughter was wrapped in an embrace with a greek god of a specimen to such an extent it was hard to tell where one began and the other one ended.

"Tell her that she doesn't need to pay back the fare."

"The fare? What fare?"

At which point, Fred ended the call and ran as fast as he could away from the park.

As he ran through fields of wet grass, his trousers increasingly soaked, the sobering reality of what he'd just witnessed was becoming ever more real and solidified in his mind, like hardened cement.

And as if to compound his misery, the rain returned to soak him to the bone.

Ending up with a bad cold that forced him to miss a week off college was the only consolation for Fred in that the illness gave him a legitimate excuse to hide away from the shame of his calf love initiation.

As he stared up at the ceiling, he still couldn't get the image of Elizabeth and the anonymous Adonis out of his mind. If only there was a way of deleting files from your mind like you can on a computer, he thought to himself. He no longer wanted to hold onto his Elizabeth dossier and was desperate to forget her somehow.

But it wasn't that easy.

He adored her way beyond his own deep regret and shame.

It was a week later and a concerned Harry was relieved to see Fred back in his shop.

"We were going to send out a search party. My boy and I were worried what had happened to you."

Fred didn't need to say anything. His hangdog expression spoke volumes.

"Ah. I've seen that look before."

Sliding a record into a brown paper bag, the arthritic Harry got up out of his chair and passed it solemnly to Fred.

"What is it?"

"You know what it is. Play it the entire way through at least once before bedtime. Twice on a Sunday. Frank'll have you right as rain in a month or so."

The sombre Fred left as wordlessly as he arrived; the shop bell jangling was the only sound to break the awkward silence.

Following his strict instructions from Harry, the musical pharmacist, Fred did as he was told, playing In The Wee Small Hours every night before bed.

As he sat in the gloom of his bedroom, with only the glowing orange light of his turntable deck to break the total darkness, he could just make out the record spinning round with Frank's familar voice offering sweet, melodious comfort for his young, tender heart.

When your lonely heart has learned its lesson
You'd be hers if only she would call
In the wee small hours of the morning
That's the time you miss her most of all

He may have lost the girl, but he would never lose Frank.