by Jill Mansell
Jaz’s blond hair was looking disheveled, there was a wild, almost feverish glitter in his dark eyes, and beneath the Antiguan tan, his face was tense and drawn.
For an alarming moment Lucille wondered if he was on something. She knew next to nothing about drugs, but wasn’t this how people looked when they’d taken speed or coke?
“Hooray,” said Jaz, whisking her inside. “About time too.”
Or alcohol?
Her stomach lurching in panic, Lucille really hoped he hadn’t fallen off the wagon. His voice didn’t sound slurred, but maybe he was just brilliant at hiding it.
Oh, please no, prayed Lucille as he towed her across the hall. Don’t let it be that. Racing to keep up, she strained forward and attempted—surreptitiously—to sniff the back of his neck for telltale alcohol fumes in his slipstream.
The next moment Jaz came to an abrupt halt at the head of the staircase. Lucille promptly cannoned into him from behind, her nose making painful contact with his shoulder blade. “Ouch… God, sorry…”
“What are you doing?” Jaz swiveled around in surprise.
Oh well, get it over with.
“Your eyes are strange, and you seem a bit weird,” Lucille bravely announced. “I wondered if you’d been drinking.”
Initial disbelief gave way to amusement.
“No,” Jaz told her with a grin. “Nothing to drink.”
OK. Next.
“How about drugs?”
His smile broadened. “No drugs either, I promise.”
Wondering why he was taking her downstairs, Lucille said, “Where’s Celeste?”
“Shopping. I dropped her off after lunch and came straight home.”
“I thought you were out. When I called just now, there was no answer.”
“You can’t hear the phone down here,” Jaz explained, leading her past the swimming pool.
“But you heard the doorbell.” Lucille frowned.
“In here.”
Opening the door on their left, Jaz ushered her through it.
Lucille gasped. “Oh my God, this is your recording studio!”
“See that light?” He pointed to an unlit green bulb fixed to the wall above the console. “When someone rings the front doorbell, it flashes.”
“But what are you doing? Suzy said you hadn’t set foot inside this room since…since…”
“I know. I hadn’t. But I have now. You can sit down if you like.”
Helpfully, Jaz pulled out a swivel chair. “Make yourself at home.”
Lucille couldn’t sit down. In a flash she realized what this was about.
“Oh, no, no, no.” She groaned, mortified. “This was all Suzy’s idea. She made you do it, didn’t she? She forced you into this…Please, really, you don’t have to lend me your recording studio, and I will personally strangle that girl when I get my hands on her—” Lucille’s beaded braids were clattering with agitation as she swung her head from side to side.
“Shhh, stop it. Calm down.” Firmly, Jaz said, “This has nothing to do with Suzy, I promise you. Nobody forces me to do anything I don’t want to do—and this isn’t about me lending you the studio anyway. Now”—he gestured patiently to the revolving chair once more—“all I want is for you to sit down and listen and give me your honest opinion.” With a faint smile he added, “Your brutally honest opinion.”
Lost for words, Lucille sat. She couldn’t imagine what she was about to hear. Tucking her hands between her knees she waited for Jaz to fiddle with a tape and gazed around at the state-of-the-art equipment. Then again, what did she know about recording studios? If everything in here was at least three and a half years old, it wasn’t likely to be state of-the-art anymore.
Crikey, it was probably antique.
Still, there was an awesome array of buttons, sliding switches, knobs, and dials. Lucille, whose only previous experience with a recording studio had been a musty little closet under the stairs, was deeply impressed.
Then she stopped gazing idly around the room and gave the music her undivided attention, because this was why Jaz had invited her here.
He wants my opinion, thought Lucille, marveling at her own gullibility. It was like Eric Clapton asking Mr. Bean for advice.
* * *
“Well?” said Jaz three minutes later when the last notes had faded away.
The tiny hairs on the back of Lucille’s neck were standing on end. Glancing down at her knuckles, she saw they were white. Only a very few songs in the world had that genuinely spine-tingling effect on her.
Aloud she said, “Well, I think you’re completely mad.”
Jaz’s face was totally expressionless. “Why?”
“Because if you wrote that, I don’t understand for the life of me why you never released it. I mean, I know hard rock was your thing, but you could still have put it out as a single.” Wide-eyed with amazement, Lucille thrust out her hands. “Look, look at me…I’m still shaking! It’s that good, don’t you see? And I bet you never even considered it for one of your albums, just because it was so different…heavens, what a waste!”
“It’s for you,” said Jaz. “I want you to have it. I want you to record it. Oh Jesus, don’t cry.”
“You can’t do that.” Furious with herself, and seriously lacking in tissues, Lucille was forced to use the hem of her primrose-yellow top to wipe her eyes. “You can’t give me the best song you’ve ever written because you feel sorry for me.”
“No, no, that’s not it.” Shaking his head, Jaz pushed his spiky hair out of his eyes. “I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“You do. You pity me,” Lucille retaliated, “because I couldn’t write a decent song to save my life! So to clear your conscience, you’ve decided to dig out one of your old ones, some little number you once effortlessly knocked out in ten minutes when you were smashed out of your mind, and let me have it as some kind of…consolation prize—”
“But—”
“No, let me finish.” Lucille held up her trembling hands, the words spilling out faster and faster. “I mean, I’m sorry if I sound ungrateful, and you probably think you’re being really kind, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s just patronizing. I feel like a seal who can’t balance a ball on my nose, but you’ve decided to throw me a sardine anyway.”
She ran out of breath, pressed her lips together and gazed hard at a section of gray, foam-padded wall, unable to meet Jaz’s eyes.
“Finished?” he said at last.
Lucille nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s it? You’re sure?” He raised his eyebrows. “If I start to say something you promise you won’t interrupt?”
Oh Lord, I’ve really upset him now, thought Lucille. He thinks I’m a belligerent, ungrateful cow and he’s seriously offended.
A combination of pride and PMS had a lot to answer for. It really did.
Feeling hormonal and lectured to, she tossed back her braids and said, “Fire away.”
Oh dear, horribly reminiscent of a belligerent teenager.
“Thank you so much,” Jaz replied silkily. “OK, d’you see that filing cabinet over there? That’s where all my old tapes are kept, in the third drawer down. Songs I started and never finished, songs I decided not to use, ideas for songs that in the end never got written.”
“So?”
Good grief, just listen to me, thought Lucille, privately appalled.
“So,” Jaz drawled with heavy irony, “that filing cabinet isn’t where I got this tape from. It hasn’t been unlocked for over three years. What you just heard wasn’t one of my old songs. I wrote it this afternoon. And for your information I didn’t knock it out in ten minutes.” He added drily, “There was nothing effortless about it either, I can promise you that.”
Lucille’s mouth had dropped open as she realized what he was saying. “Oh my God…�
�
“No, please, don’t interrupt,” mimicked Jaz. “It’s my turn now, remember? And I didn’t do this because I felt sorry for you, OK? I did it because I felt like such a shit the other night. I could have kicked myself when I realized what I’d done, telling you your songs weren’t great—it was a terrible thing to say, and I was so ashamed of myself I knew I had to make up for it somehow.” His dark eyes were fixed on Lucille’s face, his expression intent. “But I didn’t just do it for you. You do see that, don’t you? If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have come back down here. You made me want to write another song.”
“And now you have,” whispered Lucille.
“Now I have. Sober,” Jaz added with a brief smile. “And you can’t begin to imagine how that makes me feel.”
It all fell into place now. Lucille, understanding exactly why he had done it, no longer felt patronized.
Instead, she clapped her hands together and said, “This is fantastic.”
“More than fantastic.” Jaz began to grin with relief. “It’s a bloody miracle.”
Longing to fling her arms around him, but not quite daring to, Lucille said instead, breathlessly, “Go on, play it again!”
Jaz did. And this time it sounded even better, like nothing he had ever written before, but slow and melodic, powerful and unbearably moving.
“Still needs a lot of work, of course,” he told Lucille when it had ended. “And the lyrics need sorting out. God, you can tell I’m out of practice—did you hear me miss that B flat in the middle eight?”
Lucille nodded. She was still tingling all over in the aftermath of hearing the track again. Jaz’s voice was rusty and he’d hit a couple of wrong notes, but in her eyes, the rawness of it only added to the song’s appeal.
“So,” Jaz said softly. “Will you sing it?”
“Why me? You could sing it yourself.” Lucille realized she was having to press her knees together to stop them from knocking like castanets.
“I don’t want to. Not interested. I’ll write songs, but I won’t sing again. And I still want you to have this one, because it’s the least I can do to make up for saying what I did the other night.”
Lucille willed herself not to start blubbering all over again. The least she could do was accept graciously.
“OK.” She smiled, still longing to hug him. “I don’t know what to say. Except thank you.”
Jaz breathed an audible sigh of relief. “I should be the one thanking you.”
Glancing through the glass into the recording area itself, Lucille saw a stool and a mike stand with a set of headphones dangling from it.
“Is that where you sing, in there?”
“Only when there’s someone else to press the buttons out here.” Jaz flashed her a broad grin. “How about it, then. Ready to give it a go?”
In a daze, Lucille said, “OK,” and he led her through to the sound booth. The next thing she knew, Jaz was moving the stool out of the way—“you’ll sound better if you stand”—placing the headphones over her ears and carefully angling the mike in front of her mouth.
He retrieved a sheet of hastily scrawled lyrics from his pocket and handed them to her.
“I can’t believe you did all this for me,” Lucille whispered to herself when Jaz had left the room and was sitting back at the mixing desk.
Immediately, through the headphones, she heard him say with some amusement, “Me neither.”
Eek, who thought black girls couldn’t blush?
“OK, deep breath now,” instructed Jaz, fingers poised above the console. “Are you ready?”
The mixture of excitement and nerves was too much for Lucille. “No. Stop.”
Shaking her head, she pulled an apologetic face at him through the glass. The beads in her hair rattled as she tried to disentangle herself from the headphones.
“What’s the problem?” Jaz was looking alarmed.
Damn, thought Lucille, mortified because things like this never happened in the movies.
“I’m really sorry,” she told him, “but first I have to pee.”
Chapter 34
An hour later, listening enraptured to the latest recording of her own voice superimposed on a computer-generated orchestral arrangement, Lucille murmured, “I feel as if I’m dreaming.”
“So do I,” said Celeste, from the doorway.
Until that moment Lucille hadn’t even realized her right knee, tucked up on the seat of the chair, had been resting against Jaz’s left forearm. As they sat hunched together side by side over the console, oblivious to everything but the music, she had been absently tapping a plastic Evian bottle on her denim-clad thigh. Now, as Lucille spun around in shock, the Evian flew out of her hand, drenching the front of Jaz’s black T-shirt.
“Jesus!” gasped Jaz, because swimming in a heated pool was one thing, but the Evian was straight from the fridge.
“Sorry,” Lucille squeaked.
“I think she thought you needed cooling down,” observed Celeste. Transferring her attention from Jaz to Lucille she said, “So what’s going on? Have you been pestering him to give you the guided tour of his studio? Is that why he came down here the other night?”
Feeling guilty and not even knowing why, Lucille shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I wouldn’t pester anyone—”
“She didn’t,” Jaz cut in. “I’ve written a song. I wanted to hear Lucille singing it.”
“You’re mad.” Celeste sounded resigned rather than jealous. “You’ll start drinking again.”
“I’m not going to,” said Jaz. “Here, come listen to what we’ve done so far.” He patted his knee. “For the first time in almost four years, I’ve actually achieved something. This is better than drinking.”
Celeste stayed where she was in the doorway.
“I must go,” said Lucille.
“No, you mustn’t.” Jaz stretched out a hand to keep her there.
“I’m not being polite. I mean I really do need to go.” Lucille, who had lost all track of time, showed him her watch. “See? Seven thirty. And I have to pick Baxter up from the restaurant at eight.”
“But we’re on a roll.” Jaz was still buzzing with ideas. “We can’t stop now.”
“There speaks the alcoholic,” Celeste murmured. “That’s Jaz’s trouble. Once he starts he never can stop.”
Lucille didn’t want to stop either, but what could she do? “Baxter needs his run.”
“I don’t want to lose this.” Jaz knew from experience that when inspiration struck, you needed to stick with it for as long as it took. Or, at the very least, until you finished your second bottle of Jack Daniel’s and passed out on the floor unconscious. But since that wasn’t likely to happen with Evian, he said, “We’ll get someone else to take Baxter out.”
Oh great, Leo was going to just love this.
“Like who?” said Lucille.
“Celeste could do it.”
“Celeste jolly well couldn’t,” Celeste retaliated at once. “You must be joking! I’ve been shopping all afternoon, my feet are killing me, and anyway, why should I?”
“Hundreds of pairs of shoes this girl’s got”—Jaz turned to Lucille—“and she’s yet to find a pair that don’t hurt her feet.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Lucille didn’t fancy being responsible for a full-scale argument. “I’ll be off.”
“What about Suzy?” Jaz said suddenly. “She might not mind.”
“She could certainly do with the exercise,” said Celeste. “A five-mile run would do her the world of good.”
Lucille looked worried. “What about Harry? He’s not going to be thrilled.”
“I’m not asking him to do it,” said Jaz.
* * *
Suzy and Harry were eating crumpets, playing Boggle, and arguing over which video to watch later whe
n the phone rang.
Clutching the receiver to her ear, Suzy realized she’d never been so delighted to hear from Jaz in her life.
Relief flooded her bloodstream, like biting into a longed for champagne truffle.
“Love to, no problem, I’m your man.” Vigorously, she nodded into the phone. “No, no, of course I don’t mind, I’d be glad to help out, really I would… No, don’t mention it. Tell Lucille not to worry… Oh yes, he’s fine about it too! Eight o’clock, no problem. OK, byeee!”
Yes, yesss, hooray!
“Who was that?” Harry looked suspicious. “And what am I fine about too?”
“Jaz. He and Lucille are busy working on something in the studio—isn’t that great?” Suzy beamed at him as she backed toward the bedroom. “So he wondered if I’d do Lucille a huge favor and take Baxter out for his run tonight. You know these artistic types; once they get started they can’t bear to break the momentum—”
“Oh, come on, I don’t believe I’m hearing this.” Harry’s forehead creased in protest. “That’s not fair. You only just got home, and now you’re going out again, leaving me here all on my own?”
“Think of Baxter,” said Suzy. “How can I let him down?”
“He’s not even your dog!”
“Maybe not, but Lucille’s my sister. Anyway, it solves one problem, doesn’t it?” Reaching for the videos in their rental shop cases, Suzy waggled them at him. “You wanted to watch James Bond; I wanted to see Notting Hill. Now we don’t have to fight anymore,” she went on brightly. “You can watch yours in peace!”
“I wanted us to spend some time together.” Harry wasn’t to be consoled. “Proper time together. How can we do that if you’re never here?”
“I am here. I’m just popping out to do Lucille a favor.”
“But I’ve been stuck here on my own all day!”
* * *
In the bedroom, Suzy picked up the extension and dialed Jaz’s number.
“Celeste? Hi, it’s me. Look, could I have a quick word with Maeve?”
“She’s gone out. It’s her night off.”
“Oh, is it? Damn. I was going to ask her to pop around and keep Harry company for a couple of hours.”
