Hearts and Diamonds

by Justine Elyot

  ‘Yeah. Mia. We were at that stage. Little notes to each other, drawn-on tattoos on each other’s arms. Kissing in the kiddie park while all our mates made sick noises.’

  ‘I can’t see you as a mushy lad,’ said Jenna, wishing – not for the first time – that she could have known Jason earlier, saved him from some of what he had had to go through.

  ‘Not so much mushy as rampantly horny,’ he said with a cheeky grin. ‘Couldn’t keep my hands off.’

  ‘Some things don’t change then.’

  ‘No, and they aren’t about to either.’

  He rolled over, pinning her down so suddenly that she squealed.

  ‘Got it?’ he said, coaxing her into a long, tongue-heavy kiss.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, emerging blearily. ‘Were you nervous? The first time?’

  ‘A cross between nervous and raring to go,’ he said. ‘I was worried about hurting her. She was all right though. She was more up for it than I was. She was no shrinking Fanny Harville. She knew what was what, that girl. What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Your first time?’

  Jenna wished she hadn’t brought up the subject. It all seemed such a long time ago now, and yet, when she shut her eyes, she could be there.

  She could be there in the tent, at that little illegal free festival in a field in Lincolnshire, smelling of wood-smoke, hearing the thud and wail of the different sound systems outside.

  A little blurred around the edges from cider and the fragrant smoke of the joints Deano’s friends were sharing outside, she lay down on the sleeping bag and let her mind whirl. They would think she was a lightweight. She had wanted to stay up with the others, to prove that she could rave around a campfire all night long, but the truth was, she couldn’t. She’d need to work on her stamina. All that marching through miles of fields with a huge rucksack, followed by dancing like a lunatic and blowing whistles, had broken her.

  Or so she thought, until a voice spoke at the flysheet.

  ‘You aren’t going to sleep already are you, Jen?’

  She opened her eyes and smiled. Deano’s hair gel had given up the ghost, and his blond spikes were flopping down. His eyeliner was smudged, but that seemed to suit him, making his unearthly, almost silver-blue eyes gleam more brightly than ever. He was the most gorgeous boy in town, and he wanted her. It was crazy.

  ‘You feeling OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Just dog tired. That hike earlier on killed me.’

  ‘Aw, no,’ he said, in a high, cartoon-character voice, crawling up beside her on the sleeping bag and pawing at her shoulder. ‘Please don’t die, Jenna Wren. What would I do for my smoochies?’

  He lay beside her and she let her tired eyes focus on his face, earnest now for a change. He had been manic enough all day.

  ‘You’d do all right,’ she whispered. ‘Plenty of girls after you.’

  ‘Not like you,’ he said. ‘You’re special.’

  ‘So are you.’

  He didn’t deny it. He knew it was true – enough people had told him so. But it was the first time Jenna had heard it, and she savoured the exquisite feeling.

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘I can show you.’

  And that was where it had started, though she had been hoping for this, and dreaming of it, and imagining how it would be, all the way up in the minibus and all the way across those endless fields. It had been the only thing that had kept her going. If she didn’t make it to the festival, she didn’t get to sleep with Deano.

  She had planned it in her mind so perfectly that any little deviation from her fantasies threw her. He didn’t take as long to get her in the mood as Imaginary-Deano had, and he was surprisingly less confident than she had thought. She still managed to get a free hand to her canvas rucksack, to scrabble about in there for the pack of condoms, before it was too late.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, when she pressed the foil square into his palm.

  ‘Er, take a wild guess.’

  ‘I thought you were on the Pill?’

  His slightly ungracious reaction to this didn’t stay with her, though, and neither did his unceremonious rush to bolt through her maidenhead. She put the bits that weren’t perfect out of her mind and pulled together the good bits over the gaps until her memory was sewn up in a pattern she liked.

  Only now, nearly twenty years later, did it occur to her with a minor shock that this was not the true pattern. She had deliberately chosen to forget certain aspects of it – aspects that might have acted as a warning.

  Afterwards, when she had felt at her most vulnerable, tender and shining from what had just passed between them, he had pulled up his jeans and grunted something about going outside for a smoke.

  Why had she forgotten that? It had made her cry at the time.

  But then, when he had come back in, two hours later, he had spooned her and kissed her and told her she knew how much he loved her, didn’t she?

  Yes.

  She had told herself, yes.

  And he had loved her. It had been love. There was no way hindsight was going to rewrite that precious time of her life; she wouldn’t allow it. That rush of young love – that first opening up to one person, in the hope that such happiness could last a whole life – had an almost sacred quality to her. She had enshrined it and preserved it like a holy relic.

  Did Deano feel the same? Or was it all just water under the bridge now, irrelevant? She felt such a sharp pang that she had to turn away from Jason in case he saw it in her face.

  ‘Bad memory?’ he asked sympathetically, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘No, not bad, exactly. Just . . .’ She tried a laugh. Not very convincing. ‘It was such a long time ago.’

  ‘What was it like in the Dark Ages?’ quipped Jason. ‘Did blokes know about the clitoris back then?’

  He seemed to realise that his levity of tone was a misjudgement.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, more gently, when she didn’t reply. ‘Jen. Talk to me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, then she cleared her throat and turned back to him with a determined effort to chase away the . . . regrets? Whatever the feelings were. ‘Just for a moment, it felt as if I was back there, back in the tent.’

  ‘The tent?’ Jason smiled at her. ‘I can’t see you doing the camping thing.’

  She smiled back.

  ‘No, not these days. Maybe glamping? That looks all right. But all that hammering pegs into the ground and communal shower blocks – ugh! Mind you, we didn’t even have those, where we were. It was a festival.’

  ‘What, Glastonbury, you mean?’

  ‘No, less official than that. An illegal one, in the middle of nowhere. The band were headlining – their first gig outside the local pub scene.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Yes.’ She let him stroke her hair. ‘I was pretty cool, in those days. I had attitude and passion, and a rock star boyfriend. Aspiring rock star boyfriend, I should say.’

  ‘He aspired right on up there,’ commented Jason. ‘Anyway, you’ve still got attitude and passion.’

  ‘You’ve got more.’

  ‘Aw, hey.’

  He kissed her.

  ‘Do you miss the rock star boyfriend, then?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly darkening.

  ‘Oh, Jase.’ She sighed, leaving the exhalation as a placeholder for the answer she couldn’t quite formulate.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I missed him while I was with him,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’ His screwed-up forehead made her smile.

  ‘I mean . . . even while we were still together, I started missing what we’d had. Because he changed. We had five glorious, gorgeous years, and then it all began to fall apart. Not the career – both our careers were rocketing to the stars by then. But little things – too subtle to notice at first.’

  ‘So your first time was good, then?’

  ‘It was OK.’ Jenna shook her head at Jason’s insistence on ke
eping the conversation on its original rails. ‘It wasn’t the divine rapture I expected, but it was probably better than a lot of first times. And the times after that were better. Better and better.’

  ‘I don’t really want to know about that,’ said Jason, a tad sourly.

  Jenna hummed a few bars of ‘Jealous Guy’, and he held her closer.

  ‘Yeah, I am a bit jealous, so what? It’s natural. He had you for years and years and he was an ungrateful bastard. I wish I’d been around then, that’s all.’

  ‘I wish you had. Although it might have been a bit complicated. But then, so was everything. I suppose what’s making me feel a bit blue is the idea that perhaps even those first five lovely years weren’t as good as I thought they were.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I was carried along on this amazing electric current of love and lust and success and stardom. It was so exciting, neither of us stopped to draw breath. We were so in love with the idea of us that we never really examined the reality. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘In love with love? Mia and I were a bit like that. Like she wanted everything to be romantic all the time. It was exhausting. But when I wanted some real love from her – some support, some understanding – she went all quiet on me.’

  ‘Yes, sort of like that, I guess. And with us, it was all magnified by the media coverage. So much “golden couple of rock” stuff. You really wanted to believe the hype. It became internalised. Deano and I were tied together by all sorts of things, but love was only one of them. Perhaps only a small one. We were playing a part, as well as having a relationship.’

  ‘Pressure,’ said Jason.

  ‘Yes, and I think Deano felt it more keenly than me, because he’s more naturally selfish. I’m not trying to be horrible, by the way. It’s just the way he is. I think it started to feel like a prison to him, and he wanted to break free. Even though he still cared for me, in his way.’

  ‘In his way?’

  ‘Yeah, well, like I just said, he was selfish. I got glandular fever when I was twenty-one and, instead of staying with me, he went off to holiday on some Hollywood actor’s private yacht for a month while I was in hospital trying not to succumb to liver failure.’

  ‘What a tosser.’

  ‘Yes, but I really didn’t see it that way at the time. I chose not to. I was upset, of course, but I told myself that he was doing it for his career. Networking. And that hanging around a hospital in London wasn’t going to achieve anything for us.’

  ‘Jen. Fucking hell. I’d have stayed with you.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Of course. What do you take me for?’

  She nestled her head deeper into the crook of his arm.

  ‘A keeper,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t you think you deserved better?’

  ‘I didn’t think of it like that. I’ve told you. I was so invested in keeping our perfect showbiz couple thing going that I lied to myself constantly. Even when pics came out in the News of the World of him rubbing sun lotion on this famous model, I refused to accept it. The girl was topless, for fuck’s sake! It was so obvious. I got about a hundred calls that day, asking for my reaction to the story. I made a statement in the end, from my hospital bed. “Deano’s entitled to have female friends, and to take holidays whenever and with whomever he likes. Neither of us owns the other.” And I really believed that.’

  ‘Bloody hell, he had it made, didn’t he? Jammy fucker.’

  ‘As long as it was true love in my head, and in the papers, I could ignore pretty much anything.’

  ‘Wow. I wonder how many other showbiz relationships are like that.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ she said with a hollow laugh. ‘He kept up the champagne lifestyle, and then it turned into a cocaine and girls lifestyle and then one day I just woke up and knew he didn’t love me any more.’

  ‘It must have been a shock.’

  ‘Yeah. It was seven years ago. We limped on for seven more years, more for PR than anything else. Seven stupid pointless lonely years.’

  ‘You didn’t want to leave him?’

  ‘I didn’t see the point. I didn’t think I’d ever want anyone else, and I was still his manager. I concentrated on building a profile for myself instead – hence Talent Team. It was all a big distraction from the gaping void in the centre of my life.’

  ‘Quite a good distraction,’ offered Jason. ‘International megastardom. Better than knitting, right?’

  She laughed and kissed his neck.

  ‘Thank God for you is all I can say. I really never expected . . .’ Her voice cracked and he cuddled her tight.

  ‘It’s all better now,’ he said. ‘You left in the end. You did the right thing.’

  ‘Yes, ironically it was my distraction technique that caused the final rift. He hated that I was getting as famous as him. It made him start behaving like an absolute wanker – trying to humiliate me by parading girlfriends in front of the media. In the end I had to file for divorce, or lose all the respect I’d built up in the industry.’

  ‘You did right.’

  ‘Funnily enough, as soon as the papers were served, he started behaving like the old Deano again. Funny, friendly, warm. I think it was just such a relief for us both, to be out from under that weird microscope. We get on quite well now – when we have to.’

  ‘You mean he’s been in touch with you since you came back to Bledburn?’ Jason sat up, eyeing Jenna with some alarm.

  She bit her lip. She should really have told him.

  ‘Only a couple of phone calls,’ she said. ‘When you were arrested and all that awful stuff was going on. He called to offer his support. He was very nice about it. A bit narky when he found out about you, though . . .’

  ‘Was he, by fucking Jove?’

  ‘Jason, calm down. It’s OK. We’re not about to get back together. The situation was extreme that’s all. Since then, all our communication has been through our lawyers. Come on. Hold me again. I was enjoying it.’

  Jason shuffled back down into his former cradling position, but Jenna could feel his restlessness and the uneven rhythm of his heart.

  ‘What if you get famous?’ she said softly. ‘Really famous, like Deano? Do you think it’ll change you?’

  ‘You’re already trying to change me,’ he pointed out. ‘You and that Georgina one.’

  ‘I’m not trying to change you,’ she said long-sufferingly. ‘As I’ve already explained. Polishing is not the same as refashioning.’

  ‘Polishing,’ he snorted. ‘Makes me sound like a bloody sideboard.’

  ‘Refining, then.’

  ‘Refining? Like oil. Don’t you prefer me crude, then?’ He winked and pinched her thigh.

  ‘What a wag you are, sir. But how do you think you’d react to fame, seriously?’

  He was quiet for a few moments.

  ‘Always thought I’d quite like to bling it up,’ he said. ‘You know. Get a massive place with a pool, loads of fast cars, women, dress up like a pimp. But I seem to have got the luxury lifestyle before the fame, somehow, so . . . I don’t know.’

  Jenna snuffled with amusement. ‘I’m trying to picture you in the white fur coat and all the jewellery. Really can’t. You just aren’t LA.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t I? Thanks for that. Guess I’ll stay in Bleddy then, shall I?’

  ‘No, I mean, you’re too down to earth for all that La-La stuff. They wouldn’t know what to make of you.’

  ‘I don’t care what anyone makes of me. If I’m famous, it’s for my paintings. They can stick to making something of them. I don’t want all the magazine lifestyle crap. I just want my painting and my Jen.’

  She sighed happily, wriggling against him.

  ‘Don’t ever change,’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t plan on it.’

  Chapter Eleven

  WHEN JENNA AND Jason returned to Harville Hall, they found Kayley in the kitchen. This wasn’t a great surprise to them, as she’d been cat-sitt
ing Bowyer in their absence and so had a key and licence to spend time in the house if she wanted.

  ‘Hey up, how’s our boy?’ asked Jason, slipping out through the French doors and calling the cat in.

  ‘He’s been fine,’ said Kayley. ‘Caught some mice out the back there. There must be nests and nests of ’em. That garden’s gone wild since . . .’

  She trailed off.

  Jenna recalled the tale Kayley had told of her history at the house – the wild parties with Lawrence Harville, ultimately resulting in his blackmailing her to lie about the false charges against Jason.

  The residual stirrings of her loathing of the previous homeowner dealt her a stab in the heart, accompanied by a little wave of resentment at Kayley. The latter was soon chased away by the much better memory of how she had come clean and saved the day in the end.

  ‘Jason’s made a start on it,’ said Jenna. ‘But it’ll take time.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll put the kettle on, eh? How was London?’

  ‘Good.’ Jenna put her handbag on the table and took the weight off her weary driving feet. She missed the days of having a driver. Having staff. Perhaps once this sabbatical was over she’d hire more, make an employment programme out of it for Bledburnians in need of a job. ‘I’ve got some news actually. I’m going to need your capable assistance.’

  ‘Well, you know I’m here for you. Since I got the push from the Youth Service, I’m free to help with whatever.’

  ‘I told you I’d retain you. I’m putting you on a salary from the end of this month.’

  ‘Really?’ Kayley turned around from the kitchen counter, her eyes shining. ‘I mean, it’s too good of you, considering . . .’

  ‘All’s well that ends well,’ said Jenna. ‘Let’s leave all that behind us and just get on with things.’

  ‘Fine by me. So what’s the big news?’

  ‘Jason’s going to have an exhibition. Here.’

  ‘What, like, in Bledburn?’

  ‘In the Hall. Right here. Before I finish the renovations.’

  Kayley clattered more than was necessary in the setting out of the teacups.

  ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing. When?’