Gideon stared after him, his mind in a whirl. She never got his letters? How could she not have got his letters? He sucked in his breath in sudden anger. The only possible answer must be that her parents had concealed them from her. Maybe she still didn’t know he’d written. She must have believed he’d abandoned her. But why did her father say he’d ruined her life? With his mind in torment, he turned and walked back down the road to where he’d left his mother’s Range Rover. As he reached the car, he suddenly realised he’d parked on the corner of the road Judy had lived in. Maybe her parents still lived there. Maybe they could shed more light on what had happened. He pulled his collar up a little further, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked towards the Cromwells’ house. He fully expected to find no one home, so when the door opened at the first ring, he stepped back in surprise. Mary Cromwell stared in amazement at the visitor on her doorstep.
For a moment neither of them spoke, then Gideon cleared his throat. “Hello, Mrs. Cromwell. I don’t know if you’ll remember me—”
Mary gave a short laugh. “Gideon, you’re famous, love! If I hadn’t recognised you from ten years ago anyway, I think I’d know who you are. Come in.” She stood aside to allow him to enter the house.
He followed her into the kitchen and took the seat she indicated at the table, where he remained silent while she filled the kettle and got some mugs from the dishwasher.
“Tea or coffee?” she inquired, raising her eyebrows.
Gideon licked his lips. Was he losing all control over his life?
“Ummm, coffee, please. Thank you,” he muttered, attempting a smile, which failed dismally and made him appear to be grimacing in pain. Mary smiled slightly and turned back to the job in hand.
“I saw all the hoo-ha about you on the telly last week,” she remarked calmly. “I did wonder if you might turn up here again.” She paused as she poured the hot water into the mugs and placed them on the table along with a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar. “Abi was here last week. Sat exactly where you are now. Her mother died, you know.” She added milk to her tea and watched his dark face intently, noting how his hand clutched the handle of his mug. “She was quite distressed,” Mary went on. “Not about her mother, I hasten to add, but something had really upset her. She went to talk to Judy.” She leant across the table and patted Gideon’s hand.
“D’you know what was wrong?” he asked, his mouth dry and his hands beginning to sweat.
Mary sat back in her chair and pursed her lips. “I really don’t think that’s for me to say,” she said eventually. “I suggest you go and see Judy. She can tell you what’s going on.” She paused, watching him. “Judy’s married now. She has two children.”
Gideon nodded his acknowledgment and took a sip of his coffee. After a moment or two of silence he looked at her guardedly.
“Is…is Abi married too?” he asked tightly.
Mary shook her head. “No. No, Abi isn’t married,” she replied gently.
Gideon found himself relaxing slightly, and took a longer drink from his mug. Mary reached behind her and produced a packet of chocolate digestives. She offered one to Gideon.
“You look like you’ve had a bit of a hard time lately,” she remarked, taking in the dark shadows under his eyes, and his excessive thinness. “I suspect you’ve been surviving on alcohol, cigarettes, and junk food,” she added, quoting his mother almost word for word.
He grinned slightly and nodded his head.
“Yeah. That’s right. The life of a rock star, eh? Not that good for you, really,” he said, looking up at her. “I’ve had enough, actually. I just had to get away before it drove me over the edge.” He paused again and ran a hand through his long hair. “And I had to know.”
He didn’t elaborate, but Mary knew exactly what he meant. She pulled a piece of paper towards her, scribbled an address, and pushed it across the table towards him.
“That’s my Judy’s address,” she said. “I’ll call and tell her you’re coming.”
Gideon took a deep breath and got to his feet. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for not condemning me.”
Mary smiled. “I don’t think you did anything that deserved condemnation,” she reassured him. “Go and talk to Judy before you do anything else.” She ushered him to the front door. “I’ll call her now; she’s bound to be in. It’ll take you about half an hour to get there. Give me your mobile number, just in case.” She quickly made a note of it, then waved him off down the drive.
Back in the car, Gideon sat motionless for a while, staring out at the familiar suburban street. He remembered back to the summer of ’95 when he had left to go on tour and Abi had been in the middle of her exams. They had had such plans. He had written to her within a week of arriving in the States and had heard nothing. He had written again, week after week, month after month, each time getting more and more despondent and confused. Looking back, he realised he probably should have done more to contact her, but he had been nineteen, on his first tour with his own band, and pretty much under the control of the tour manager. He had had no time to call his own.
With a deep sigh, he started the car and set off out of town in the direction of Judy’s cottage. He hadn’t bothered to programme it into the SatNav and decided to rely on his memory of the area.
This proved fairly reliable, and less than half an hour later he drew up outside the little cottage and parked exactly where Abi had parked just a few days earlier. He locked the car and approached the front door nervously. He had no idea of the reception he was going to get and steeled himself for the wrath of a best friend. He couldn’t help thinking that meeting Judy was even more scary than meeting Abi would be. He knocked at the door, stepped back a little, and waited. A few moments later he heard a key being turned, and the door slowly opened. He caught his breath. Judy stood there, slightly older but otherwise identical to the Judy of ten years ago, with a smiling baby balanced on her hip. She surveyed him solemnly for a moment, then grinned broadly and stepped back to let him in.
“My god, Gideon, you look dreadful!” she said bluntly, shutting the door behind him. “Come on in. I’ve got the kettle on.”
She led the way through the cluttered kitchen and into the conservatory. A small boy with blond hair was sitting on the floor doing a large jigsaw, and an empty playpen was in the centre of the room. Judy dumped the baby into the playpen, indicated to Gideon to take a seat, then disappeared into the kitchen to make some tea. Gideon shifted uncomfortably in his chair and looked around him, suddenly becoming aware that the small boy was watching him solemnly.
He smiled at him. “Hello, I’m Gideon. What’s your name?”
The child stared at him for a moment, then said, “Tommy,” and went back to his puzzle.
Judy appeared in the doorway, carrying a loaded tray she set down on the table.
“He’s a man of few words,” she said with a laugh, looking fondly at her son. She handed Gideon a cup and curled up in the chair next to him. They stared at each other for a moment in silence, then Judy shook her head. “Until last week, I never thought this moment would come,” she said with a grin. “I never expected to see you again—in person, that is.”
Gideon smiled back. “Why last week?”
Judy cocked her head on one side. “Well, first you left the band and disappeared,” she said. “Then Abi turned up and told me something rather shocking…” She paused and watched him closely. “Something that upset her a lot.”
Gideon shifted uncomfortably again. “I tried to talk to her father,” he said, “but he sent me away. Told me she didn’t live here any more.” He paused for a long moment. “Then, just as I was leaving, he said Abi hadn’t received my letters…and then he shut the door.”
Judy sighed. “She didn’t get them,” she said sadly. “She thought you’d abandoned her. She was completely distraught. I watched her turn from the slightly cocky, over-confident wild child you knew into a pale, insecure, and broken woman.” She paused agai
n. “Then last week, just after her mother’s funeral, she found a box full of letters from you, letters her mother had concealed from her. Dozens of them, and postcards too.”
Gideon turned towards her, his face anguished.
“She never got any of them?” he whispered. “So she never knew where to write to me. No wonder I got nothing from her.”
Judy sat forward abruptly. “She did write to you. When she didn’t hear from you she wrote to you care of the record company. She wrote about ten letters, right up to January ’96. Did they not pass them on?”
Gideon looked confused. “Actually, they did pass on mail to us. Fairly regularly. Why did I not get hers?” He frowned. “How could they all have gone astray, when I got other mail?” He stared at her, his pain-filled thoughts working overtime. “Does she hate me?” he asked at last.
Judy gave a slight laugh. “She never hated you, even when she thought you’d abandoned her.” She paused at Gideon’s wince. “And now she knows you wrote to her, she’s in a state of turmoil.” She paused again and looked him in the eye. “But she doesn’t know for sure that you didn’t get her letters—although that must be pretty obvious by now, if she’s read all yours to her—and there are things in her letters you really need to know about.” She fell silent, and Gideon gave her an intent look.
“What things?” he demanded.
Judy shook her head. “Nothing I can tell you,” she said firmly. “You must see Abi for that.” She chewed her bottom lip. “I’ll give you her address. I won’t tell her you’re coming—she’ll probably hate me for that, but so be it—because I think it would be better if she wasn’t expecting you.” She handed him a piece of paper that was in the pocket of her jeans, and he raised his eyebrows at her. “Yes, okay, I’d already decided to give it to you. Now, go—now. You need to see her. Maybe leave it till tomorrow, if you want. It’s a long way.” She stood up from her chair and gazed down at him. “And if I were you, I’d have a bit of a think about what could have happened to the letters she wrote to you.”
He got to his feet and gave her a quick hug. “Thanks, Judy. You always were the sensible one. You saved Abi from a lot of scrapes in the past. I’ll go and see her and try to make peace.” He made his way down the path towards his waiting car without a backward glance.
****
After Gideon left, Arthur went out to his shed and spent a couple of hours re-potting his geraniums. Then he went back into the dark, cold, empty house, boiled the kettle, and made a sandwich. As he sat at the kitchen table slowly sipping his tea, his sandwich lying untouched beside him, he reflected on his actions of earlier that day.
Why had he sent Gideon away without telling him where Abi was? Why at the last moment did he relent just that little bit and tell him about the hidden letters? He knew if Gideon really wanted to find Abi he would do so one way or another, so his actions had not prevented them from meeting, however much he really desired that. So why tell him about the letters?
Arthur concluded it must have been guilt. Although he had not known about the concealment of the letters, he had plenty of other worse things to feel guilty about from that time. He nodded to himself. It must be the guilt. He took another sip of tea and wondered sadly if Abi had opened the tin box yet.
****
Abi spent Monday morning in the garden shed she had recently converted into a studio. She was working hard to prepare a portfolio of landscapes to sell throughout the tourist season from the various outlets who agreed to stock her work. On dry days she worked out in the garden or on the cliffs, painting numerous views of the bay, but on dreary, wet winter days such as this, she worked in the studio copying from photographs she had taken. She was presently working on a view of Land’s End in a violent storm, and was beginning to be quite pleased with the progress she was making.
She kept working right through until her hunger finally drove her indoors and she discovered it was nearly three o’clock. Surprised she had painted for so long, she decided to call it a day and go for a nice long walk with the dogs, so she cleaned her brushes, tidied the studio, and locked it securely. Then she donned her boots and waterproof jacket and called to the dogs, who had spent the morning dozing in front of the fire.
The trek down to the beach proved to be very cold, wet, and windy, and Abi and the dogs didn’t hang about. Their proposed long walk took only twenty minutes. As Abi paddled in the swiftly moving water, Lilt and Flora splashing around her feet, she tried to make some sense of the last week. Her emotions, held in check now for so many years, had all suddenly been hauled unceremoniously to the surface from all directions. The death of her mother—she didn’t miss her, but it was an emotional upheaval, nonetheless. The news of Gideon leaving the band and then the incredible discovery in the attic of the stolen letters—those things had changed her life completely. Abi was in an emotional turmoil and badly needed someone to talk to. It had been wonderful spending time with Judy, but it hadn’t been enough. She really needed her best friend with her now, to help her sort her head out. The sight of Gideon getting into the limo in New York was haunting her, too. Since that day, he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. The press had been unable to track him down, and no one so far had given away his whereabouts. Not even Simon, who Abi had seen footage of on the news as he arrived at Heathrow, seemed to know where he was.
Abi wondered if Gideon ever thought of her. If he hadn’t received her letters either, then he must have thought she’d abandoned him. He would have known none of the things she wrote to him about. He would know nothing of what she went through after he left. He would never have known she was pregnant. As she stood ankle deep in the cold sea, Abi stared into the distance and felt overwhelmed, as all the buried memories of ten years ago came flooding to the surface. She shivered suddenly, thrust her hands deep into her pockets, and whistled for the dogs to follow her home. She needed the security of her safe, warm, little cottage, with all its familiarity. More practically, she needed a shower, a cup of hot chocolate, and a large piece of cake.
Half an hour later, tucked up on the sofa, hot chocolate in hand, Abi was plucking up the courage to rummage through the boxes again. She had the two cardboard ones on the floor at her feet, but the enigmatic tin one remained in its shadowy hiding place under the stairs. Abi glanced over at it. For some reason she couldn’t bring herself to prise it open yet. She felt sure her father had wanted her to have it for a reason, and she was convinced he knew what was in it. She gave her head a slight shake. That one was for another day. Maybe when Judy was with her.
She turned her attention to the boxes at her feet. The first one contained all the letters and cards from Gideon, and a large number of photographs, both loose and in albums. She had pretty much looked at all of them. The second box, however, seemed to contain a number of old newspapers, and newspaper cuttings bundled together with a large elastic band. She picked them up, and as she did so noticed a CD case glinting at the bottom of the box. Curiously, she fished it out and dusted it off. It was her copy of NightHawk’s first album, called simply NightHawk. The album they’d been recording in London in the spring of ’95. The album that contained the track “Storm Rising,” that Abi had first heard the night she and Gideon met. She smiled slightly, carefully removed the CD from the case, and inserted it into her CD player. She selected the track she wanted, then pressed play.
As the first notes of “Storm Rising” echoed around the room, Abi curled up on the sofa and removed the bundle of newspaper cuttings from the box. Carefully she slid the elastic band off and smoothed them out. Having braced herself to expect anything, Abi wasn’t shocked to see that the first one had a picture of NightHawk performing at their first concert in the States, just a week after her last meeting with Gideon. She remembered cutting the picture out of the paper herself. She had felt so proud to be able to say, “That’s my boyfriend. He’s famous,” to anyone who would listen. She remembered how she’d also been so nervous. She’d been waiting to hear f
rom Gideon before she wrote to him, so she hadn’t at that point written the letter telling him she was pregnant. The letter she had believed, for the last ten years, had been the thing that had led him to desert her.
Taking a deep breath, she picked up the next cutting, and bit her lip so hard it almost made her cry out. Dated in August ’95, it was again a picture of Gideon, but this time he was with a skinny blonde girl who hung possessively onto his arm and gazed adoringly up at him. Gideon himself was snarling at the camera, his hand outstretched in a attempt to prevent them from being photographed. Abi remembered how she had kept that picture to torture herself. She lay back against the cushions, the cutting clutched in her hand, and remembered the day she had first seen him on the news with another girl.
She thought that was the day her heart finally broke.
Chapter 15
Wednesday, 23rd August 1995
“Abi turn on the news!” yelled Judy down the phone. “Quickly! Channel 4! It’s Gideon!”
Abi squeaked, “I’ll call you back!” and flung the receiver back onto its cradle. She raced into the living room, where her father was watching a gardening programme, and snatched up the remote control. “Sorry, Dad, need to see something,” she gasped, pressing the button for Channel 4 and completely disregarding his mild remonstrations. The picture flashed up on the screen just in time for Abi to see Gideon and the rest of the band standing outside a large hotel in the middle of some American city. She thought it might be Seattle.
She perched on the edge of a chair and peered at the screen. The band were surrounded by reporters and photographers, and a number of security men were attempting to clear a path through the throng for the boys to get to their waiting limousine. Abi caught her breath. She could hardly believe these were the same boys who had left England two months earlier as total unknowns. She dropped to her knees in front of the television in an attempt to get a closer look at Gideon, just as he appeared out of the throng of fans and reporters and reached the waiting car. She stared in disbelief when she realised he was accompanied by a very thin, very glamorous blonde girl who was hanging on to his arm. She shook her head violently; it couldn’t be true. Gideon wouldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t go with another girl. He was hers. She was his. She stared at the screen as the picture faded and the news reader went on to the next subject.
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