‘You only saw me this morning.’ Self-consciously I raked my hands through my hair and smoothed my cheeks. ‘How different?’
‘I don’t know. Sort of glowy.’ She covered her mouth slowly. ‘Oh, God. Does this mean you and Ben …? Oh, Jem, is he absolutely fabulous?’
‘No, he’s a complete pain in the arse,’ I retorted, thinking of Ben’s irritating attractiveness.
‘Pain in the … oh.’ Rosie blew out a long breath. ‘You mean – anal sex?’
‘You spend far too long with Jason, do you know that? Ben and I, we’re just friends. He’s been –’ how to describe what had gone on between Ben and me? – ‘unburdening himself in my direction, that’s all. And,’ I added hastily. ‘Not in a wanky way, either. God, we both spend too much time with Jase.’
Rosie shrugged and turned back to Harry, loaded spoon back in hand. ‘All I’ll say is that something is making you pink-cheeked like you’ve been lit up from inside. I’m not going to pry into what’s been going on, apart from asking what the hell all that stuff about a fire was.’
I explained about Ben’s shop, watching Rosie look more and more distressed as I went on. ‘But there’s a good side,’ I put in quickly, seeing the tears start up in her eyes. ‘Ben’s asked me to stay at his place for a while. So you could put Harry into his cot in my room. It’d give you a bit more space and you won’t have to worry about him rolling himself out of the carry cot any more.’
Harry grabbed at the spoon, annoyed at the slow service. A kind of porridgey slush flicked over Rosie and me, and she began dipping the spoon back into the jar in jerky little movements. ‘You aren’t telling me everything, are you?’ A quick look at my guilty expression. ‘If you and Ben aren’t screwing fit to bust there must be something else going on. Blokes like him, they don’t just ask women to stay. Not without some kind of Special Services. Is it something to do with the fire?’
Without saying anything I reached into the pocket of my jeans. Drew out what I’d found lying in the rubble and discarded papers outside Ben’s shop. Uncurled my hand and showed it to her.
‘Yeah that’s one of the seed heads I use for my cards.’ Her attention went back to Harry again.
‘I found it. Underneath some of the stuff the fire brigade had piled up outside the shop.’
‘At Ben’s?’ Rosie’s eyes met mine and I saw understanding slowly dawn. ‘What? You think …?’ I dropped the pink-sprayed seed head onto the table. ‘But that’s stupid. Why on earth would Saskia set fire to Ben’s shop? That’s – yes, it’s more than stupid, it’s ridiculous.’ She lifted Harry from his seat.
‘I know.’ I chucked Harry stickily under the chin. ‘It’s just circumstantial. And maybe I’m seeing ghosts that don’t exist. But, and I hesitate to make this dreadful pun because I’m not Jason, there’s no smoke without fire. And now, I’m going to pop over to the workshop to collect some bits and pieces. Thought I might have a crack at making something specific for Saskia’s shop. Maybe a tiara?’
Rosie sniggered, falling into step alongside me, Harry winding sticky fingers into her hair. ‘Tiara! Mind you I reckon she already thinks she’s Victoria Beckham.’
‘You’ve seen the house, she probably does. But Alex is so far off being David Beckham it’s amusing.’
The sniggering stopped as we approached the barn. ‘You will still keep coming over here, won’t you?’
‘’Course.’ I unlocked the main door and went into the office. ‘I’ll need some sane company anyway and because I’m referring to you and Jason as sane company I hope you’ll infer that Ben is not exactly Mr Stability.’
‘Yeah, well, stability can be boring as hell.’ Rosie’s voice vanished into Jason’s workshop as she searched for Harry’s chair. ‘Conventional is over-rated. I reckon a fling with a rock star would set you up nicely.’
‘He’s not a rock star.’
‘He was. He’ll still be raking in the royalties. Might be again one day if you can persuade him to pick up a guitar once more. Never know your luck, Jem, you could be looking at a life on the road.’
My heart squeezed. ‘Not going to happen.’ I opened my e-mail.
‘The fling? Come on, wake up and hear the music, the guy is so hot for you that he’s going to spontaneously combust if you give him the push.’ She saw my expression, tinged blue by the light of the screen. ‘What’s up?’
My throat was burning and I had to whisper. ‘Look.’ I turned the screen around to face her. ‘Someone has reported me for fraud. Repeatedly not delivering goods that have been paid for. eBay are suspending my listing.’
I sobbed into Rosie’s ample shoulder. She patted my back as though I was Harry. ‘Oh, Jem.’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’ Couldn’t tell her that without eBay I had no way of selling anything when I moved on. That I’d been relying on sales from the internet to keep me going while I set up somewhere new. And then it wasn’t just that, it was everything. It was Ben and his awful secret, his fragility, and my knowledge that I wanted him so much all I could do was run away. ‘Now what am I going to do?’
‘If you need some cash I could lend you –’
‘It’s not just the money. It’s – oh, Rosie, I don’t know what I’m doing. Ben is …’ Ben is everything. Everything that I’m afraid of, everything I’ve ever wanted. All those secret desires that I’ve hidden for so long underneath so many layers that now even I don’t recognise them.
‘He’s told you why he quit the band?’
I could only nod against her shoulder.
‘And it’s not drugs?’
A head-shake, which spread snot along her dress.
‘You could take it to the papers.’
I jerked my head away from her. ‘Rosie!’
She smiled. ‘Yeah, thought so. For God’s sake, just tell him. Tell him you’re in love with him. Everything else will work itself out.’
‘Is that experience talking?’
Another smile, achingly sad this time. ‘Afraid so. It’s just that sometimes things take longer to work out.’
‘Anyway, who says I’m in love with him?’ I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand.
‘Jemima, you’re broke and you won’t sell the most valuable thing you’ve got. The information about Ben. There’s press and music papers and fans, they’d all pay really good money for the inside story on the Philadelphia débâcle. But you won’t even think of it.’ She shook her head and the section of her hair which wasn’t covered in porridge bounced around her face. ‘If that ain’t love, well.’
‘When I wasn’t here did you get visited by the Wisdom Fairy?’
‘Only Jason, and he’s not eligible on the first count. I think the second might be negotiable. Just do it, what have you got to lose?’
Only my freedom, I thought. My ability to run, to get out whenever things got awkward.
Nothing I could articulate. I looked at Harry jiggling his legs until his bouncy chair rocked on its thin metal suspension. ‘You still being hard work for your mum?’
She sighed. ‘He’s not so bad really. It’s just the sheer volume of work I’ve got. Saskia seems to be cornering the market in hand-made cards, but she pays well and I can’t turn her down. Besides, she’s got me working so hard I’ve had to drop all my other customers and my chances of getting them back if she dumps me are remote. I have to keep going.’ Another sigh. ‘I wanted to start taking Harry to the mother-and-baby group in the village, but there just isn’t time. I feel as though I can’t enjoy him properly, can’t enjoy being a mother.’
Half-heartedly I began collecting all my beads and crystals and wires together. ‘It won’t go on forever,’ I said, thinking about a bonfire behind a shop, all Rosie’s hard work going up in flames. Ben’s shop burning. Saskia, sitting in the middle of it all like a spider in a web. No, more like a bloated puppeteer, pulling strings and watching us dance. ‘Something has to give.’
* * *
22nd May
She looks at
me now and I feel transparent, like my bones, my hair are all invisible and she can see right inside to the fear and the loneliness, almost like she touches me where the blackness hides and makes it all right.
Shut up. Not like that. You are fucking filthy, doctor, you know that? We’re not. Not that I don’t want it, Christ, waist down I’m like concrete, but she’s … she’s not ready. Doesn’t push me away but … it’s almost like she’s a virgin or something. Scared of what’ll happen if we get down to it.
I can wait. I’d wait forever if she asked me to. I just wish she’d feel she could talk to me, wish I knew what it was that frightens her so. Because not knowing means I can’t help. And I want to take away that expression she gets sometimes when she thinks I’m not looking. It’s part fear and part … I dunno, a kind of deep sorrow, like she thinks I’m about to chuck her onto the street or something. Like she wants to be with me, wants it to be more than just this kind of flat-share thing we’ve got going on. Like she’s memorising my face, my clothes, as if Crimewatch is reconstructing me next week and I don’t know about it yet. And yet … she makes me feel like nothing matters. I’m still me, still Baz Davies, still the best fucking lyricist of the twenty-first century (hey, that’s NME talking). She pulls me up beyond it all, like she’s pulling me out of the shit and the dark and up, back on top of the world, where I used to be. Okay, I don’t get what people say – so what? I do pretty well for a guy that’s stone deaf. Hey, look, I can say it! I am deaf. Can’t hear a note. And it doesn’t hurt like it did.
Jemima. I’d give you this whole, messed up, planet if you asked.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Can you see anything?’ Ben wiggled underneath me, shifting my weight more evenly across his shoulders.
‘Can’t you stand still?’
No answer. Of course. No way even Ben could lip read when my head was four feet above him and hanging over three strands of barbed wire. I clung to the top of the wall which ran around the outside of the tiny yard belonging to Le Petit Lapin, desperately trying to steady myself against the brickwork. There was no sign of any burning, just a couple of plastic patio chairs where presumably Mairi and Saskia put their respective feet and hooves up during slack spells.
I slapped Ben’s shoulder and he lowered me to earth, sliding me down the wall and gasping in an unflattering way.
‘Woah! You’ve got thighs like steel, woman.’ He ruefully rubbed the back of his neck. ‘So? Anything doing?’
‘Not really. I need to get inside.’
‘Come on. It’s only in really bad films that the villain leaves incriminating evidence lying around.’ Ben looked at my face. ‘Oh, please! Tell me you aren’t going to break in?’
‘There’s a little window down in the back office. I reckon I can crack it. In and out and she won’t even know.’
‘Yeah, right. And how are you going to do that eh? Pop home for your Girls’ Book of Breaking and Entering?’
‘No, I’m going to thank God for historic cities building regulations not allowing shopowners to replace old latch windows. Bunk me up.’
‘Jem?’ He was staring at me now. ‘You serious?’
‘Bunk me up,’ I repeated.
‘Hang on. This is more than I signed up for. You said you were just going to have a look in the yard –’
‘– where there’s nothing to see. So now I’m going in.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘Are you with me?’
‘Sheesh. All right, Don Corleone. Don’t get your salami in a twist.’ Ben bent and formed his hands into a cup. ‘But I’m not sure I can bunk you right up there. I mean, Christ, woman, how much do you weigh?’
‘You’d better hope I get arrested,’ I said, putting one toe into his palm. ‘Because if I don’t, you are going to pay for that remark.’
I didn’t need him to put any effort in. The action came back to me as easily as if I’d done it yesterday. Toe in, spring off the back foot, balance against the wall and – up. Ben straightened, looking surprised.
‘Jem?’
I was already taking off my T shirt, wrapping it over the barbed wire. ‘Have you got a credit card on you?’
Ben was staring at my chest. At least I was wearing a half-decent bra, although the balconette style made my boobs look fuller and more barely-restrained than should have been the case. ‘What? You want me to pay to cop an eyeful?’
‘Just hand it over.’
He raked about in pockets, eventually finding a card. ‘American Express?’
‘That’ll do nicely.’ I grinned down at him as he stretched up with the card. This was feeling more and more like the old days. I straddled the barbed wire, carefully holding the padding. ‘Okay. In and out.’
‘What if someone comes?’
‘It’s three o’clock in the bloody morning. Who do you think is going to come?’
‘We’re here.’
‘Well, if any burglars arrive, tell them this place is spoken for. All right?’
I dropped down into the yard, my hands sweaty, my heart thumping and my chest attempting to escape. All the old feelings, all the old thrills. ‘Jem?’ I couldn’t see him, the wall was a good nine-feet high, so I didn’t bother responding. ‘Be careful,’ I heard him breathe.
I crossed the yard, pulled one of the plastic chairs up to the window and used the credit card to slip the latch. One hop and a wriggle and I was inside, although I left some of my skin on the frame. I nearly called back to Ben but realised it was futile.
I’d become an expert on sussing out a place without going any further than point of entry, I had better eyes than most for the tell-tale signs of advanced alarm systems. Saskia had nothing. The cheapskate. Although, I thought as I circled the shop floor, there was nothing here that even the most desperate of burglars could want. The till was empty with the tray pulled out to show there was no cash and as for the items on sale – well, I guess if you wanted to beat someone to death they might come in handy.
Ben was right. There was nothing here. To corroborate Jason’s story all the boxes of Rosie’s cards that I’d seen on the night of the party were gone. I went back into the office and noticed an appointments diary on the desk beside the telephone. Using the tip of one finger I flipped it open.
All right, so I’d hardly expected Saskia to have written ‘TODAY MY PLANS COME TO FRUITION’ across the pages in lipstick, but I was unprepared for the sheer dullness of the entries. For example under today’s date was ‘4pm, Oscar, Orthodontist’. The poor kid was only five and she was already having him fixed. He hadn’t even got all his teeth yet.
I flipped back further. Three days ago. The night of Ben’s aborted dinner party with Rosie and me. Nothing but a lightly pencilled ‘A’. And then a question mark. Further back, and all that seemed to concern Saskia was the coming and going of Alex and Oscar’s various appointments. All I managed to learn was that Alex was out a lot and poor little Oscar was undergoing major restructuring work. God, she was a boring woman. I was flicking through dates now, anything that sprung to mind. On my birthday apparently Oscar had a music exam, on Rosie’s a book test. On 20 February, the day Harry was born, she’d written ‘A out’. As in he was somewhere else, or he’d decided to confess to being gay?
I replaced the diary and went back out through the office window, removing any spare skin from my ribs on the way. I carefully levered it shut with Ben’s card; although I couldn’t relatch it from this side I could leave the arm lying along the frame so hopefully Saskia would think that it hadn’t been properly closed.
I moved the chair up to the wall and used it to get enough of a boost to climb back to the top. As I jumped I gave the chair an almighty kick which sent it right to the far side of the yard, where it tumbled onto its back as though a gust of wind had caught it. I paused by the wire to untangle my shirt then dropped lightly back into the alleyway where I landed beside Ben, who was leaning against the wall trying to look nonchalant.
He jumped. It was disconcerting to have him flinch
every time I arrived unexpectedly.
‘Hey. Anything?’
‘Apart from Saskia conducting a father-and-son time-and-motion study, nope.’ I flicked out my T shirt. There were only a couple of snags in it from the wire. God, I was good. I went to slip it on but Ben put a hand on my arm.
‘Wait.’
‘What?’ His hand was warm, his fingers soft. Adrenaline was still burning its way through my synapses and leaving a bitter, dry taste in my mouth. ‘Ben?’
Pressure on my forearm until I turned, reluctantly. ‘Yeah. I thought so.’ Then a finger ran down my spine. ‘You’ve got a gang mark.’
How the hell did he know? ‘It’s just a tattoo,’ I said lightly. My skin prickled around the blue stain on my shoulder blade as though it was bursting through my flesh.
‘What? I can’t see your face.’ Ben spun me so that my bare back was pressed against the roughness of the wall. ‘Now. Say it again.’
‘It’s nothing. Just a pattern.’
‘Bugger that. You’ve been in a street gang. Where? Why didn’t you say? And what the hell happened to you?’
Adrenaline drained. I was flat, empty. Goosebumps broke out across my chest and shoulders and my skinned ribcage ached. ‘I … I don’t know … I …’
Ben let me go and raised both hands to rumple through his hair. ‘Jemima.’
And suddenly I wanted him to know. All of it. All of me. ‘Take me home,’ I said. ‘And I’ll tell you.’
A half-smile. ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’
I met his eye steadily. ‘Only you, Ben. Only you.’
* * *
Ben’s house was silent and dark. As we went in he turned on lights, flipping switches like a man possessed, room by room until we reached a small study off the kitchen where he only turned on a lamp. There were bookcases against all the walls, a table and sofa, deep carpet on the floor. It was snug.
‘Okay.’ Ben slumped onto the sofa, reaching for a whisky bottle and glasses from the little side table. ‘Go on.’
Please Don't Stop The Music Page 17
