“Don’t look so worried, pet,” Mary said. “She’d love to see you, but not tonight, unfortunately. She has the kids in the bath just now, and then she and Robert are going out for dinner as soon as the babysitter arrives. It’s an early celebration for her birthday.” After a pause and a glance at Abi, she continued, “But she’d love to see you tomorrow morning. She said to drop in around eleven, and you can have coffee and a real catch-up.”
Abi’s shoulders sagged, and with a sigh she turned back into the kitchen again. “Okay, it was probably asking too much to expect to see her tonight.” She glanced up at Mary. “I’ll just go back to the hotel and get an early night.”
Mary tutted loudly. “Nonsense,” she said briskly. “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve had a nice cup of tea and a natter.” She indicated that Abi should sit at the table again, then turned away and flicked the kettle back on. A couple of minutes later she plonked two steaming cups on the table, along with a large box of assorted chocolate biscuits. Abi absently reached out and took one. She dunked it in her tea and glanced over at Mary.
“Thanks,” she said simply. “You’re being very nice to me.”
Mary gave her head an impatient shake. “And why shouldn’t I be?” she demanded, raising her eyebrows. “You’re my daughter’s oldest friend.”
Abi sniffed. “Not a very good friend, the last couple of years. I’m really surprised she wants to see me at all. Or that you would, either, after what happened ten years ago.” She stared down into her cup, where tiny particles of biscuit were floating in the tea.
Mary surveyed her cautiously. “That’s all in the past,” she said at last, “and anyway, it was you that was the victim then.”
Abi looked up at her. “That’s not what my parents thought.” She managed a wry grin. “To them I was the devil incarnate.”
Mary thought for a moment. “Your mother had a…a rather blinkered view of life,” she began. “She had her ideas, and she wouldn’t be moved from them. She couldn’t help how she felt. What she could help was her treatment of you. That was inexcusable.”
Abi managed a watery smile. “Thanks for that, Aunty Mary. I’m glad you didn’t all think of me so badly.”
Mary leaned forward and patted Abi’s hand. “Of course we didn’t, child. Now let’s put all that out of our minds for now. Tell me what you’ve been up to.” And she sat back in her chair and looked expectantly at her guest.
****
Gideon stepped out of the shower and rubbed his body vigorously with a huge white hotel towel. Then, with his hair still dripping down his back, he walked into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of clean jeans before going over to the window and opening the blinds. The surprisingly strong November sunshine flooded into the room, and he moved back with a muttered oath. His head was still pounding after last night’s battering with alcohol and cigarettes, and his eyes were overly sensitive to the light. He picked up the towel from the unmade bed and gave his hair a quick rub, removing the worst of the water, before going to the window again to peer outside. His room looked directly out onto Central Park, and as he watched he saw Simon emerge from the trees and pause on the pavement opposite the hotel. Gideon kept watching as his friend dodged across the road and disappeared from view beneath him. He took a deep breath and turned away from the window. In a couple of minutes Simon would be pounding on his door again, demanding answers. He slumped down on the edge of the bed. Well, he didn’t have any answers. None that made sense, anyway. At least not to anyone else.
He picked up the remote control and flicked on the television. A second later NY1 News blared out into the room, a picture of the band filling the screen. Gideon swore and muted the sound. God, couldn’t they let it go? Surely there must be more interesting news happening in New York than the breakup of a band. He flicked through the channels for a moment. Finding nothing that caught his attention, he flung the remote down on the bed and leapt to his feet, opened the closet, and pulled out his rather battered leather suitcase. He heaved it onto the bed, began to toss items into it with no thought of method or order, and was just emptying the drawers next to his bed when he was interrupted by a loud knock at the door, followed by, “Gid? Are you in there? Please let me in,” from a very aggrieved-sounding Simon. Despite his mood, Gideon grinned slightly and, with a sigh, moved across the room and flung open the door.
“At last!” Simon erupted into the room, round face red and sweaty, clothes crumpled. “Honestly, Gideon, what the hell are you playing at? We need to talk.” He crossed the room and stood in front of the window, his arms folded.
Gideon closed the door quietly and turned back to his packing. “Morning, Simon,” he said easily. “Nothing to talk about. Said it all yesterday.”
Simon snorted and leaned towards his friend. “Firstly, it’s afternoon, and secondly, there’s a helluva lot to talk about! You casually make this announcement, but had you thought to tell the rest of the band? Had you even intimated you might be thinking along those lines? Had you…” He paused, then threw his hands in the air and crossed the room to stand directly next to Gideon. “Had you given a single thought to your friends, not to mention the fans who are expecting a new album?” he yelled, his face suffused with rage.
Gideon stopped packing and sighed. He glanced at Simon, then slumped onto the bed, indicating for his friend to sit, as well. Simon shook his head and remained standing stiffly in the middle of the room.
“Okay, Si, I’ve been out of order,” conceded Gideon slowly. “I’ve been totally selfish and didn’t consider your feelings or Chas’s at all, or the knock-on effect on the band.” He looked up at Simon with the glimmer of a smile. “Will that do, or do you want more?”
Simon gritted his teeth. “More,” he muttered.
Gideon shrugged. “Okay. Well, it was kind of a sudden decision, actually; you may have noticed that I’ve been a bit down lately.” He raised an eyebrow at his friend, who gave a curt nod. “Well, I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but yesterday morning, as we were getting ready for the gig, I had a bit of a revelation.” He paused again and, shifting his position on the bed, reached for his cigarettes and lit up, without offering one to Simon. “I shall be thirty in a few months, and I’m not ready. So much has happened to me…to us…in the last ten years that I feel like I’ve lived a hundred lifetimes, but in reality I’m only twenty-nine. I need to do other things, and I need to do them now. There are things in my past that I want to revisit.” He paused as he heard Simon catch his breath. “I haven’t properly been home to England for years, apart from touring. I need a break from all this”—he swept his arm around the room—“from the hotels, the groupies, the parties…everything.” He took a drag on his cigarette and looked over at Simon. “D’you understand, Si? I’ve had enough of this life. I want a rest.” He paused again and leaned back against his pillows with a wry grin. “Chances are I’ll be bored stiff in a week and be back to join you, but I need to know, and since that was the last gig of this tour, it seemed like the best time. It’ll probably send album sales through the roof, too, so you’ll not be out of pocket.”
Simon sighed and pushed himself upright from where he’d been leaning against the door frame. After a long moment, he said, “Yeah, I get you. I feel like that sometimes, but to be honest, I don’t have the courage to do anything about it. Still, now we have an enforced holiday, thanks to you. Maybe I’ll go for a wander around America. Fucking hope the sales go up. We can hardly start the new album now.”
Gideon looked sadly at his friend. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really think this through. I kinda thought you and Chas would carry on without me, but I s’pose you can’t, really.” He made a face. “Maybe you could get a session guitarist for the album?”
Simon snorted. “No, I don’t think so, do you? The band is named after you, for fuck’s sake. How can we have NightHawk without a Hawk?” He sat down on the end of the bed, fished in his pocket for his tobacco pouch, expertly rolled himself a cigaret
te, and accepted the proffered light from Gideon. “The only thing that worries me,” he went on, glancing sideways at his friend, “is the ‘things from your past’ that you ‘want to revisit.’ If you mean what I think you mean, then don’t go there. Leave well alone.”
Gideon shifted on the bed and shook back his long hair. “Butt out, Simon. I know what I’m doing. That last time when I went back…all those years ago…something didn’t feel right. I think I was lied to. There’s more to the story than there seems, and I really need to find out. Then maybe I can move on.” He leaned forward and gently shook Simon’s chubby arm. “Let me go, Si, I need to do this.”
Simon ran a hand through his damp curls and sighed again. “Well, okay, then, but Gideon—please be careful. You have no idea what you might be doing.” With those words he leaned forward, gave his friend a quick hug, then left the room without a backward glance.
Gideon watched him go, his mind in a whirl. Talking about his feelings had left him curiously disturbed, and he realised just how much he’d been thinking about her recently. If he didn’t sort this soon, it was going to drive him mad.
****
By eight o’clock that night Abi was once more in her room at the hotel, a large paper bag from the nearby fast food place by the side of the bed and a bottle of Pinot Grigio chilling in the wash basin. She had a quick shower “to wash the bad faeries down the plug-hole” as Judy had always said, then changed into her nightwear, rescued the wine, and curled up on the bed. The box she’d taken from her parents’ loft sat on the floor just beside her, screaming to be explored. Abi poured herself a cup of wine, delved her hand into the bag, and flicked on the television. She skimmed quickly through the channels, pausing on a news programme showing pictures of NightHawk in concert in Central Park the previous day. She leaned back against the pillows and turned up the sound.
“And our New York correspondent, Maria Gillespie, finally managed to get a glimpse of the elusive Gideon Hawk as he left his hotel this afternoon. Maria, how did he seem?”
The voice of the newsreader seemed overloud and indifferent, but Abi watched the screen, transfixed, as they showed a shot of a very sombre-looking Gideon leaving the hotel via a side door, clutching a large battered suitcase, a guitar case slung over his shoulder. He was accompanied by an extremely harassed Simon, in a sweat-drenched shirt, carrying no luggage. Abi watched as Maria Gillespie almost threw herself in front of the two as they crossed the pavement towards a waiting limousine, thrusting her microphone at Gideon’s face.
“Are you leaving, Gideon? Have you anything to say to your fans?” she called loudly as he passed her. Gideon briefly turned his head, put his lips close to her microphone and said distinctly, “No comment.” Then, ducking his head, he tossed his luggage into the limo and clambered in after it. Simon slammed the door behind him, pausing to mutter a few words through the half-open car window before the limo moved off and got lost in the throng of Manhattan traffic.
Simon turned back towards the hotel and came face to face with the insistent reporter. “So, Simon, do you have anything to add? Where’s Gideon going?” she demanded. He scowled at her, then pushed past and hurried back into the hotel.
Abi muted the sound and watched as the rather annoyed reporter attempted to follow Simon into the hotel but was foiled by security. Shaking her head, she flicked through the channels again until she found a re-run of Frasier to keep her amused for half an hour while she finished her take-away.
When the food was all gone and the wine level had dropped considerably, Abi took a deep breath and lifted the large cardboard box onto the bed beside her. Cautiously she opened it and gazed again on the piles of mostly unopened letters that lay therein. On top of them all lay the photo of her fifteen-year-old self glowering moodily up at her. She picked up the photo and gently leant it up against her alarm clock. Then she lifted out the pile of correspondence and leafed through the letters, scanning for the earliest date. To her shock that proved to be June 19th, 1995, just one week after she had last seen Gideon. Predictably, this one had been opened. Abi’s eyes narrowed as she visualised her mother carefully slitting open the envelope with her mother-of-pearl letter opener, then holding the letter by finger and thumb while she read it, a look of distaste on her face.
Abi unfolded the single sheet of hotel notepaper and began to read.
My dearest darling Abi, I miss you so much already. We’ve played our first gig over here and it was terrifying! America is so big and so very different from Berkshire—thankfully! Please write back soon, you can contact me at the hotel above. We’ll be here for a couple of weeks, then I’ll write again and let you know the next address. There’s no point writing to the record company ’cos I know they probably won’t bother to pass anything on. Oh, I do miss you so much, I can’t wait to see you. Not sure I’ll be able to get any money to you just yet, so maybe you could get saving as well, then you can come and join me.
Abi stopped reading for a moment, her head spinning. He had sent her his address within a week of leaving England! All that time she had thought he’d abandoned her, and he had contacted her within a week of leaving. She glanced down at the letter again.
I was a bit worried about you when I saw you last, I felt there was something on your mind that you weren’t telling me. Please let me know if something’s worrying you. And please don’t let it be that you’ve gone off me. I couldn’t bear that. I want to spend my life with you, Abi. I love you. Keep safe, Gideon.
He had ended the letter with six kisses, and as Abi finished reading, a single tear dropped from her eye and fell onto the page, causing a smudge just above his signature.
With a long shuddering breath, she picked up the remote control again, unable to face any more of her past. She changed the channel to Sky News, just in time to see the same shot of Gideon leaving the hotel. Could this tall, dark, haggard-looking man be the same insecure, gentle, and caring boy who wrote that letter so long ago? As he bent to get into the limo, he turned momentarily and stared directly at the camera, and Abi couldn’t help a slight intake of breath at the sight of the obvious pain in his piercing eyes. That was not a happy man, and she wondered sadly who had made him that way. She had taken care not to follow the well-publicised accounts of his love life over the past few years, but she felt sure some woman was the cause of his present mood and the reason for his sudden momentous decision to leave the band.
Glancing at her watch, she noticed it had just gone ten o’clock, and she reached for her mobile. She speedily dialled a number and held the phone to her ear as she leaned back against her pillows.
“Hi, it’s me,” she said quickly when her call was answered. “Yeah, I’m okay, sort of. Listen, I’m going to have to stay up here for a couple more days. Are Lilt and Flora okay?” She paused, listening for a minute. “Oh, I know you have, but I really meant to come back today, and I know it’s a lot to ask, but…” Another pause to listen. “Thanks. You’re the best. I owe you. See you in a day or so.”
She ended the call and laid her phone back on the bedside table, then wriggled into a more comfortable position and realised how much she was missing her home. The quiet dark nights, the constant sound of the sea, catching the rays from the warming sun in her little garden, running down to the beach for a quick surf before dinner. She needed to get back soon. Once she’d seen Judy and had a really good heart-to-heart, everything would be easier. Judy would know what to do. She always did.
Chapter 5
Thursday, 17th November 2005
When Abi woke the next morning, she pulled back the curtains and peered out into the gloom of a heavy dark sky threatening rain. She had promised to drop back in to see her father, but then she was going to make her way to Judy’s house. After a quick shower and teeth cleaning she grabbed the box she had found in the attic and headed down to her car. She paused at the hotel desk to confirm she wanted to stay another night, then stepped out into the dismal November day. A biting wind whipped around the s
ide of the building, catching Abi’s long hair and blowing it in front of her eyes. She swore under her breath and pushed against the wind to reach her car.
As she sped along the dual carriageway towards her father’s house, she wondered how she was going to approach the subject of the hidden correspondence. She had to know for sure if her father had been a part of the deception or whether it had all been her mother’s evil plan. Her stomach turned over at the possibility that they had been in it together. That they had both lied to her all those months and watched her life disintegrate while knowing they could do something to stop it. She could believe that of her mother, but surely not her father, too? It was bad enough he had done nothing to stop her mother’s later actions, but this would be just too much to bear.
She pulled up in the drive behind the ancient Saab, not caring now if anyone saw her, and got out of the car, slamming the door behind her. With the box tucked securely under her arm, she marched up the drive and rang the doorbell. Her father had tried to give her a key the day before, but Abi hadn’t felt ready then to have that sort of connection to the house. After a few moments, Arthur opened the door and smiled at his daughter.
“Hello, love, the kettle’s on,” he said, ushering her in and closing the door behind her. “You’re earlier than I was expecting.”
He moved down the passageway to the kitchen and busied himself making a pot of very strong tea.
Abi followed him and sat down at the table, placing the box carefully on the chair next to her. She cleared her throat. “Dad,” she began, “I’ve got something to ask you.”
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