***
Loud banging jerked her into consciousness an indeterminate time later. At first, she thought it was the neighbours hanging a picture or something, until her door handle began levering up and down too. “Ginny, are you in there? Gin, can I come in?”
Was that…? “Dani,” she croaked.
Ginny cracked open one puffy eyelid, and for maybe two seconds, she floated the possibility that Dani was waking her after a wild night on the tiles so she’d get up and ready for work.
The glint of red upon her finger quickly disabused her of the fantasy that this was a common, boring hangover. Not a single drop of liquor had touched her lips. No, the source of her misery was entirely of her own making.
“I know you’re in there.” Dani beat her hand against the door again. “Right, I’m coming in.”
The door blasted inwards, ripping the simple bolt from the wood.
True to her word, Dani tumbled over the threshold, still in her coat and scarf, and with a pair of enormous sunglasses concealing half her face. She marched right over to the bed, before removing the shades in order to peer down at Ginny shivering under her duvet. “Hey. So you are in here.”
Ginny pulled the duvet tight around her like a shield. She’d deliberately not called anyone, so as not to alarm them, or spoil their Christmas, and she didn’t really want to speak to anyone, anyway. However, the set of Dani’s jaw rather suggested her friend intended some major dissection of the subject.
“I heard some weird rumours about you yesterday. I thought… Well, half hoped, I suppose, that there wasn’t any truth to them, but obviously since you’re here, they’re at least partially based on fact.” Dani paced over to the window and pulled back the curtain, sending a plume of dust into the air. It made little difference to the quality of light in the room. Rivulets peppered the glass, and the sky outside was pigeon grey.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m sure you’ve already heard it all.” Ginny’s voice cracked as she spoke, and threads of fire scored the inside of her throat, exactly as if someone had filled it with shards of glass. She needed water before she could say anything. Not that she wanted to say anything.
“I’ve heard one side of the story. It’s pretty incredible. In fact, I’m pretty sure it can’t all be true. How could it be? I know you. We’re friends. We live together. This is our home. We’ve sat at the table out in the kitchen, and shared a billion confidences with one another over hot chocolate and marshmallows. Therefore, if you were hitched to someone, I’d know that about you… I’d know. Of course I’d know.” As she spoke her voice rose, taking on a reedy, hysterical tone. “Right, Ginny?”
Right—she agreed they were friends. But they’d never been close confidants, not really. Ginny reached out and clasped the glass of water she’d left on the bedside table. Having eased some of the tightness in her throat, she sat up with the duvet gathered around her body. “Dani, we talked girl shit. We talked guys and sex so that you could get a kick out of being scandalised. When did we ever discuss anything serious?”
“We did—all the time.”
“No.” Ginny vehemently shook her head. “We never. I didn’t share my secrets with you, and you never said shit about all the vile stuff your mum and the hags of Saint Agatha did to you while you lived there. Do you imagine I never saw your scars? I saw them. I didn’t pry. Same as you didn’t, when it came to my family and where I’d come from.”
Dani paled down to her collar. Even with two boyfriends who were clearly appreciative of her appearance, she obviously still had major body hang-ups. Her eyes blazed with anger. “So what you’re saying to me is that our friendship was shallow, and all the stuff Spook relayed to Xane last night is true? You’ve broken Ash’s heart, as you’re hitched to someone else, and you’ve kept us all in the dark about who you really are.”
Who were any of them really?
Their friendship had been real, but she didn’t know what Spook had said to know if it was accurate. As for the last part, did Dani really think she needed that point spelling out? She was perfectly aware of how badly she’d hurt Ash, and in the process herself.
“Why would you do that? Why deceive everyone you know? You’ve crushed him. Absolutely crushed him. He thought he’d found his soulmate, but Ginny Walters doesn’t even exist. She’s a fake. You’re a fake.”
Ginny was not a fake. Geneva was the fake.
“Tell me. Explain it to me. Why aren’t you saying anything?”
A dark figure shot into the room, and bundled Dani up inside an embrace. Xane held her tight, while she snuffled against his shoulder. “You have to give her a chance to speak, Dani. Why don’t you wait in the kitchen with Luthor? He’s making some brews. Let me talk to Ginny.”
“Okay,” Dani snuffled. She left after another encouragement to do so from Xane.
Xane quietly closed the door behind her. “She’s angry. She thought she knew who you were, and the construction in her head of you as a person has had to undergo a rapid shift. It’ll take a while for her to adjust.”
Ginny watched him pace back and forth over the same three gaudy flowers on the carpet. “Why are you here, Xane?”
He crossed to the bed, and moved the pillow so that he could sit. “I want to hear your side. Tempers are frayed, much as you’d expect right now, but we shouldn’t let that get in the way of sound judgement. I don’t think you saved that bit of information about being married up so that you could take some sort of sadistic pleasure in revealing it at the worst moment. I think you kept it quiet for a reason. I want to know what it is.”
She stared at the pattern of black hearts and funky spiders on the duvet cover and refused to look at him.
“Ginny?”
“What does it matter, the damage is done. There’s no means of undoing it.”
“Maybe.” He reached out a hand and rested it against her covered knee. “The others are all focussed on what you hid from them. I’m more interested in why. I don’t believe for a minute it was spite, or to hurt anyone. If anything, I think you were trying to prevent that possibility. Did you think you could keep it quiet forever?”
“Of course not.”
She peeped upwards, and found him looking straight at her.
“I know who you are Ginny, and I mean that in both ways you might interpret me. I know you love Ash, and this outcome was the last thing you wanted. It’s hurting you as much as him. And I know who Geneva Winters is too.” He squeezed her knee again. “It’s a small world.”
“How could you know?”
“I might not be Mister Corporate, but I’m unfortunately related to him—Arthur Bletchley, of the Bletchley Group. There’ve been rumours ever since she disappeared that Miles Winters murdered his wife and hid the body.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
He gave a snort. “I’m glad to discover it isn’t true. That man’s a crook. And I know that because I’m related to a bigger one.”
It was easy to forget that while Xane Geist was a scion of the gothic rock scene, he was also Alexander Liddell, whose father had been a high-up diplomat, and whose siblings were big players on the corporate stage.
“I see you still have the ring on.”
Ginny curled her fingers and pulled her hand out of sight. “Is that why you’re here? Did Ash send you for it?”
Xane pitched back against the wall, so that he was sat alongside her. “Ash doesn’t know we’re here. I haven’t spoken to him, only to Spook. Both he and Paul are with him, and Ash is pretty rat arsed by the sound of it.”
Too bad there was no booze around here so she could sink into a similar stupor.
As if he’d read her mind, Xane opened his leather jacket and drew a half bottle of something amber and potent-looking from his inside pocket. He offered it to her, but pulled back from handing it over so that her fingers closed upon thin air. “In exchange for your side of the story.”
“What’s the point? It’s over.”
She’d blown her chance of genuine happiness.
Xane cupped his hand around his ear and strained as if listening carefully. “I can’t hear any fat ladies singing. So spill.” He handed her the bottle. “Start with Winters. I’m not seeing you as an obvious match.”
Ginny swallowed a draft of whisky before sagging deeper into the duvet coiled around her like a giant snake. She wished it were real, and that it would eat her. “There’s not a lot to tell. I married Miles at seventeen. My mother agreed, obviously, despite the age difference, in fact, she was not just ecstatic about the whole thing, she more or less arranged it.” Ginny bowed her head. Christ, did she really want to admit this stuff? It made her sound like an absolute noodle-brain. “I was an idiot, okay? I let myself believe presents and charm were the same as love. If he went to such trouble to impress me, that meant he must care deeply. What he in fact was doing, was buying me, and I was cheap. God, was I cheap!”
“Go on.”
“A few hot dinners, some nice clothes… Yep, cheap, but I wised up fast. Miles treated me like an ornament, something he dusted off occasionally and put on display when he wanted to manipulate a certain person. The rest of the time, I was someone he could stick his dick into without having to fork out a couple of hundred quid. I was a possession, not a person.”
Xane’s pale eyes narrowed behind his sooty lashes as he listened.
She scowled over the re-emergence of a vivid memory of him holding her splayed over the top of his sleek glass desk in their penthouse study. Three different laptops were open around her each displaying stock market information. He’d informed her that her tits were too small and that he’d booked her in for a boob job for her birthday. She’d pointed out her birthday wasn’t for another seven months, and he’d blithely told her there was a meeting coming up in a few weeks with some big investment group that he needed her and her new tits to attend. The guy in charge of the accounts liked skinny women with balloon like knockers. It made him salivate in the most disgusting fashion, but if he—Miles—could get him thinking with his dick, the negotiations would go much smoother.
Xane listened without blinking as she related the encounter, his expression growing increasingly sour.
“The next day, instead of taking myself off to the clinic as instructed, I packed a few bare essentials, what cash was in the house and left. I left anything that would identify me behind, having first sent my mum a text so she didn’t worry. Ha! I then went completely off grid, slept rough, took whatever menial jobs I could find. I told people I was a student. Eventually, I wound up in a flat share with Dani, and you know the rest.”
“Not entirely. You never tried to legally free yourself from him.”
“Initially, it was more important to put some distance between us than anything else. I needed to find out who the real me was. Afterwards, I figured the best course was the one that required the least interaction between us. I knew if I waited five years, then I could divorce him on the grounds that we’d been living apart, and it wouldn’t matter if he agreed or not. That way, I didn’t have to face him, and as I avoided relationships, there wasn’t a pressing need to dissolve the marriage quickly.”
“But then Ash came along…”
Ginny rubbed at her tingling nose. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.” She solemnly shook her head, before putting a brave face on it. “I freaked myself out in Belgium by how close we’d become, and how desperately I wanted it to work. It’s why I went home. I needed some perspective, but the moment I got here I knew I missed him too much to stay away. I did stay long enough to contact a solicitor, though. If I was going to commit to Ash, then I couldn’t in good conscience wait around another twenty months to be rid of Miles. I filled in the paperwork, but had them hold off on sending it. I wanted to explain to Ash first.”
“So what happened?”
“Iain. First at Roskilde, and then at Karlstad. By the time we all reached Spook’s place, I’d talked myself out of saying anything. I told myself he had enough on his plate with all his health issues, but really, I was just scared he’d want nothing more to do with me. I did have the solicitor’s file the paperwork, though. Given how everything is so screwed up, I’m not so sure that was a bright choice.”
“Okay, I’m confused.” Xane rubbed at the tension in his brow. “Spook said Paul found divorce papers in the car that took you to Ash’s parents. Papers that clearly show Miles is the one seeking to divorce you.”
A squeak of anguish funnelled up her throat. “Ash saw them?”
Xane nodded.
“I didn’t want Ash involved. This has nothing to do with him, but Miles had to be a jerk about it. He couldn’t just agree and be done with me, no he has to start his own proceedings on the grounds of adultery, just so that he could name Ash and create needless drama. I think I had my brain amputated the day I married him.”
“We all have our brainless moments.”
Ginny considered the remark while looking Xane in the eyes. It wasn’t a throwaway line. He was admitting to his own brainless mistakes too.
“Mine got Steve killed,” he elaborated. “And it nearly killed Elspeth too.”
“I don’t think you were the only one responsible. They played their parts too.”
He nodded, ever so infinitesimally, and then sat a while in silence.
“If Ash hadn’t proposed, what were you going to do? Did you have any intention of telling him?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Honestly, I don’t know. I kept telling myself once the divorce was final, it wouldn’t matter. It’d all be past tense, and… I guess, it could still have turned out ugly. I just wanted to leave that part of my life in the past, you know?”
“I get it, and Dani will too once she’s calmed down.”
“And Ash?”
He fixed his expression into one of neutrality. “Honestly, I don’t know. After what Connie did to him, and then he asked you in front of all those people, that’s a lot of hurt to wash under the bridge.”
Ginny bowed her head and gave into a sob.
“Hey.” Xane cupped his hand around the back of her head, and drew her to him so that she was blubbing into the warmth of his chest. “I’ve never known him as happy as the time he’s spent with you. You’ve dug yourself into a deep hole, Ginny, I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fix this. He’s only this hurt because he loves you.”
How though? How did she fix it?
Was it even worth trying to while she was still bound to Miles? As far as she could see, she was stuck in limbo until the divorce was agreed, and Miles was doing all he could to slow things down and be obstreperous.
-24-
11th January, Latvia.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Ash gave Spook’s reflection a hard stare. They were in the dressing room, backstage post-gig, sprucing themselves up before heading on to the party the tour manager had arranged.
“Why the hell wouldn’t I want to celebrate my birthday?”
Twenty-five—that seemed a significant enough milestone to warrant marking the occasion. It kind of felt as if making it to a quarter century ought to impart some wisdom or something too, but it didn’t feel any different, and he’d certainly not had any lightbulb moments today.
Spook kept his mouth shut and continued dragging a hairbrush through his blond locks. The strands were already tangle free and shone like spun gold, so grooming was entirely unnecessary, but he’d been bouncing on his toes in agitation, and the brushing motion seemed to have stopped that.
“Are you saying, I should curl myself into a ball and whimper like a kicked puppy? I had a life before she was around, and I still have a perfectly decent one now. I’m fine, Spook. And for the record, I’m done wasting my time brooding over someone who has so little regard for me.” He pulled on his jacket. “See, I’m getting on with my life. There’s no sense in being miserable over what’s already in the past.”
His friend
steadfastly continued to keep his lips locked.
Ash dragged his fingers through his own shaggy mop of hair and figured he’d do. He was a hot rock star, after all, and it was his party, so he could dress however the hell he wanted. If his eyes were dark around the sockets, then that was only due to the change in routine due to being back on tour after a six-month hiatus. Likewise, if he was a bit skinny, it was down to the new exercise routine and not because he’d been subsisting on fish fingers, booze and alphabet potato shapes. He just hadn’t been hungry, and his alcohol consumption always rocketed when they hit the road.
Always…
Same as his libido spiked.
Getting laid post-show was part of the ritual.
Spook wrinkled up his nose, as if someone had let off noxious wind. “So, your grand plan for turning twenty-five is to compensate for being lied to by lying to yourself. Great work, Ash. Real clever.” He slapped down the hairbrush and about turned towards the door.
“How am I lying?” Ash yelled at Spook’s retreating back. “What am I lying about, Spook? Please do enlighten me.”
His friend glared back at him over his shoulder. “This is what you were like post Connie too. You stuck your head in the sand and pretended the world was fine, instead of trying to work out what the fuck went wrong.”
“I know what went wrong. I chose the wrong bloody woman to have a relationship with. I always choose the wrong bloody women.”
Spook rolled his eyes and gazed heavenward. “By all means, if it makes you happy, you keep telling yourself that. But Ginny was the best thing that’s happened to you, like…like ever. Also, you’re not moving on. You’re hiding. What you should be doing is communicating with her.”
Ash clenched his fists, as the blood began roaring inside his ears. “I don’t have anything to say to her,” he snarled through his teeth.
“Really?” Spook said, voice thick with sarcasm. “You’re not the slightest bit curious why she hid things from you? Her history is of no interest to you?”
All Right Now Page 27
