by Stella Duffy
After a couple of hours off (to allow Siobhan to change costume and the photographers a chance to reload their cameras), the party started in earnest. A converted warehouse in Shoreditch became the inauspicious site for three hundred hand-picked members of London’s glitterati to dance the night away at Alex’s wake. Every now and then proceedings were interrupted to allow another primed and rehearsed friend or family member to give a speech about Alex, about his talent and his daring, sad, wasted life, though none of the speeches were allowed to dwell too long on the fact that he was actually dead, let alone the fact that he’d been brutally murdered by an unknown killer, just in case the press might pick up any hint of desperation from the band. The desired effect was that the press and music business people should walk away from the wake in no doubt whatsoever that Beneath The Blonde had lost a serious songwriter and a great musician. That his death had left behind a legacy of amazing songs and fantastic lyrical poetry but—and this point was rammed into Saz every time Cal ordered her to pick up the phone and invite another journalist—they must also be unequivocally convinced that, despite this great tragedy, despite this “appalling waste of creative lava juice”, Beneath The Blonde would go on. Beneath The Blonde would rise from the ashes in order to find themselves renewed, born again and invigorated by Alex’s spirit “which would always suffuse their work and guide them to even greater heights with inspiring vibes from the other side”. Cal also refused to allow anyone to acknowledge Alex’s atheism just in case his inspiration might be lost to the ether and, against Alex’s parents’ wishes, he insisted Alex was cremated. Though he himself quite fancied a grave which would at least allow them the possibility of a Jim Morrison headstone in years to come, he also knew for certain that a phoenix rises from fire and ashes, not from a lead-lined box at the bottom of a six-foot hole. He didn’t bother to tell the band, but he had already decided that the third album would continue the rebirth theme anyway, and it was important for him to get the embryo concept firmly lodged in the minds of potential reviewers and promoters.
The party was everything Cal had hoped for and Saz was utterly exhausted by the time Molly arrived. She’d spent five hours on the phone to the press since the police gave Cal the body release time, and then divided her time on the actual day of the funeral between shoring up Siobhan and vetting every phone call and bunch of flowers for any sign of the mystery caller. She would have willingly left the minute Molly pulled up had not a motorbike messenger arrived at the same moment. Saz’s glance was arrested by the blaze of yellow roses he carried in his left arm and, waving Molly to wait, she collared and interrogated him immediately. Within minutes, she had his own home number, his company’s number and was talking to a very pissed off radio controller on the messenger’s radio.
“Look, sweetheart, I don’t know what you do with your evenings, but I’m a bit too bloody busy to sit here and chat all night over a bleedin’ bike radio. Some homeless kid comes in and drops off the flowers, the address and the cash right? I don’t need a whole lot more than that. So if you want to come in to ask me about that, fine. Come into the office tomorrow. If not, bugger off back to your party and let my Stan get on with his work. All right?”
After a hasty apology and a request for a meeting, Saz took the roses and handed the radio back to the smirking Stan.
When Molly was ready to leave the party half an hour later, her more sober tastes quickly affronted by the excess in the warehouse, Saz took her outside and gave her a kiss and the bunch of flowers. Molly was decidedly unimpressed with Saz’s decision to remain with Siobhan and spend the night with the band. She left with a goodbye as frosty as the night that was starting to settle on the parked cars around them. Saz stayed completely sober until the dregs of the revellers left and then she bundled Cal, Siobhan and the boys into two taxis and back to the house. Cal took one cab on to his hotel with an injunction that everyone make a meeting at five the next afternoon to get on with plans for a replacement drummer and the LA trip. Saz then joined Siobhan and the boys in yet another bottle of lemon vodka and a few lines of Cal’s justifiably expensive coke. He’d given Siobhan three grams that afternoon as a bribe to get her to wear the flamboyant red velvet dress she’d spent the evening parading in. The bribe worked. The overwork of the previous couple of days and the unaccustomed use of illicit substances caught up with Saz very quickly and within an hour, Siobhan had taken her upstairs to the attic room and put her to bed on the gold chaise-longue. At Saz’s insistence, she set the alarm for eight in the morning and kissed Saz goodnight.
And it was that kiss which prompted Saz’s second worrying thought when she woke up the next morning. She was slowly and reluctantly becoming aware that, all previous indications to the contrary and against every grain of sense she possessed, if she wasn’t careful she might just start falling in lust with Siobhan Forrester. If, that is, she hadn’t already. With a groan resulting from the combination of her overindulgence four hours earlier, the seeming impossibility of ever finding the flower sender, the lack of any proof to link Kevin to the matter and her fear that she was stumbling into an emotional minefield, Saz dragged herself to her feet with an even further sinking heart when she remembered that this morning she had a date with a grumpy and no doubt suspicious radio bike controller.
She glared at her exhausted self in the mirror, muttering, “Jesus girl, don’t do this to Molly—don’t do this to yourself.”
Yet, even as she started down the stairs, she caught herself hoping against hope that Siobhan might have miraculously woken early and would be making coffee in the kitchen. But the house was silent night asleep and she let herself out into the grey morning, denied even a glimpse of Siobhan’s sleep-crumpled morning face.
TWENTY-ONE
The party was good. And in a way it was my party. After all, I was responsible. They wouldn’t have had it but for me, would they?
I watched them. Standing a little back. You can get in anywhere in black and white. London parties are full to bursting with blank and anonymous waiting staff. And as such, I had no need to revel quite so much as some of the revellers. Nor reveal quite so much as some of the revellers. We couldn’t all look like crossing the River Styx was a picnic. I noted the mourners and the dissemblers, each one trying to outdo the other in more and more inappropriate, unseemly costumes. Each effort to make themselves stand out, be more fascinating, creating a perpetual effect of amorphous glitter and shine. In the end, through the reflected glare of themselves, they all just looked the same. The women bare-skinned, the men pierced and shaved, the silver, the gold. Truly, it was a glittering occasion.
I wish I could have seen him one last time. Said goodbye nicely. But it was impossible. Closed casket.
My fault again.
She was very beautiful though. Really so beautiful. She’d certainly done a good job on herself. You could see she’d been crying, but even the slightly swollen eyes suited her. As if her flesh had puffed up just enough to greet the tears, but not too much, not enough to hide the lovely eyes. The red suited her too. Thin pieces of lush cloth, falling one from the other, an overall effect of joined up, disjointed seams. When she moved, I saw her flesh beneath. We all saw her flesh beneath. I suppose we were meant to. All that worked-out tone, the taut tanned skin stretched tight over bones just softened by the barest hint of rounding off flesh. She hasn’t always been so gorgeous, of course. Like other man-made girlstars, like Cher or Madonna, you could look up the old photos (if you knew where to find them, if she’d allow it), you could note the progress of the achievement of her self-created body, trace carefully along the pattern lines of that cut-out-and-keep dressed up doll. I suppose that’s why she wears those clothes, so we can all know how hard she’s worked, how much effort has gone into making her the woman she is today. It’s very impressive. Really.
They stood side by side all night. I couldn’t tell who was taking care of whom. They are so very together, the two of them. The way they look at each other, I wonder some
times what it is. Love? Lust? Or maybe it’s something more. Each wanting the other’s strength, the other’s power. Wanting to be each other. Or maybe that’s just me?
I don’t know if she got the funeral flowers. I sent them for Alex, to the wake. Out of respect. But I hoped she’d see the bouquet though. The pure yellow. That single hue splash. I spent so much money on flowers that day. One hundred perfect yellow roses. And, hidden deep inside, a third tiny red rosebud. No reason. I just like the spilt red on yellow. But it was worth it. It will all be worth it in the end. Every last bloody thorn. I must get on with the clearance.
And everyone was so frivolous, so glib and nonchalant. At a wake. A time of mourning for the lost man. Yet the loss was made to seem a farewell party, not a death. The American smoothed it all over, made it bright and shiny. I surprised myself by being shocked at the drinking and drug-taking. I don’t mind a little alcohol myself, a lot of alcohol myself, a joint or two, a line of speed or coke. But they took everything, all mixed in together. They have always taken everything. They have no discrimination. And she, with her constant vodka bottle. I know she used to try not to drink much, to be careful about drugs and alcohol, to be careful about her body commodity. She doesn’t try so very hard these days. Something must be winding her up. Or someone. She’s not quite as in control as she likes to think. She doesn’t know who is in control anymore. I do.
I watched her dancing. She moves like a constructed angel. Each limb in perfect accord with the others, teetering on the edge of balance only to flick herself upright at the last impossible moment. When she dances she throws herself around the room, ignoring the walls. I’ve seen it before. She can’t possibly know where she’s going, arms and head spinning. People move out of her body trajectory or run to catch her so that, no matter what she attempts, there’s never a single scratch on her. Never even the tiniest visible scar. She lives like she’s always just about to fall from a cliff. After all that work she’s done to make her life so perfect, all the time and effort it’s taken to build them all into what they are, you’d think she’d be more careful with herself.
I mean, you would think she’d be more careful, wouldn’t you?
TWENTY-TWO
Trawling through the West End of London just at the start of the morning rush hour was hardly Saz’s idea of fun at the best of times, with a raging hangover and in climatic conditions that could only make an ice sculptor happy, her mood was worsening by the minute. And it wasn’t exactly enhanced by her meeting with the bike messenger’s controller—who also happened to be his dad. The fat father sat in an over-heated room, the air drying fan heater turned to his ankles, puffing on Gauloises, and allowed her ten minutes before his morning calls started coming in. From the filthy state of his office Saz guessed business wasn’t exactly booming, the chair she sat on creaked dangerously and she’d nearly broken her ankle on the ripped carpet as she came in. The two windows were covered with a couple of years of grime and the walls had yellowed to a fine shade of dirty gold—to match the smoker’s fingers.
The controller began their interview by turning off his dated radio and berating Saz’s dress sense, “Wot d’you wanna come into the West End looking like that for, then?”
Saz looked down at her clothes. She thought she’d been eminently sensible when she went home to change into old jeans, Molly’s gardening sweater and a plastic anorak they kept in the back of the car for emergencies, “I’m sorry?”
“You look like a right scruff.”
Saz bit her tongue, hard. She reminded herself that this man was so far the closest she’d come to confirming the identity of the flower sender and she couldn’t afford to antagonize him. She nodded and tried her hardest to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, answering him brightly, “Yeah, I know, and I really hate coming into town looking a mess. It’s not like me at all. But, well, you know … if I went looking for this homeless kid, all dressed up like I normally am … well, I wouldn’t get very far, would I?”
Stan’s dad puffed more smoke in her direction and took in Saz’s body with a leery glance over the top of his greasy bifocals, “I bet you’d look a treat in a nice outfit. We deliver loads of stuff to those posh shops down Bond Street way, you should go down there. Or I could put you in touch with the wholesalers. Nice line in office suits, girls’ suits, I mean, good quality stuff too. No back of a lorry junk. Cost you, though, it would. Stan met a lovely girl in one of those shops once, least she looked nice, started out nice enough too—turned out to be a right little trollop, broke his bloody heart …”
Saz interrupted him before he could give her any more paternal musings, “Yeah, well, those posh girls, all the same I ‘spose. Anyway, I really do need to try and find this kid. The one you said brought in the flowers last night?”
“Look, luv, some pissed kid comes into the control office, stinking of alcohol and God knows what else, drops off this bunch of flowers and a fifty quid note. I check the money is real and I send Stan out with the flowers. Now, that’s what we call a cash job, darling. I can’t ask for bloody ID from every bastard that comes in, can I?”
Saz dropped her attempt at charm to point out that if he didn’t ask for ID, he might well find he was engaged in drug deliveries for all he knew and that perhaps the police would be interested in his work methods. At this his face turned an even brighter shade of red.
“They were flowers, doll. A bunch of bloody flowers—what’s more, I did check them. I checked them myself. I run a clean bloody shop here. I unwrapped the bloody flowers. I know there’s not a bloody ounce of nothing hiding in the friggin’ petals so don’t try that bloody mullarkey with me! Now, all I can do is tell you about the kid who brought them in last night. If you want to know?”
Saz nodded, her polite tone back in place, “Yes, please.”
“Yeah, well, it was a different one to the last time though …”
“There’s been more?”
“Three. I looked up the records last night. All delivered to the same girl. In Chalk Farm. That singer, right? Stan says she doesn’t look half as good at home as when he saw her on the telly. Top of the Pops, would that be?”
“Um, I think so, I’m not really sure.”
Saz looked around the room, vainly searching for anything that might resemble a computer or even a good old-fashioned filing cabinet.
“You keep records?”
“What kind of a Mickey Mouse outfit do you think we are? Course we keep bloody records. Look!”
With that, Stan’s dad heaved himself out of his torn leather chair and opened the door behind him. What Saz had assumed was another part of the office turned out to be a pungently filthy toilet. On eight or nine shelves above the cistern, reaching right up to the ceiling and hiding behind the semi-naked dollybird calendar, were piles of neatly ordered slips of yellow paper. Hundreds, probably thousands of them.
“There’s your filing cabinet, sweetheart. Every single day of business since I first started up six years ago. Those are the carbons of what we send the lads out with. They take the original, get it signed on receipt of delivery and then bring the signed original, that’s the white copy, back here at the end of the day. We keep the yellows in this office …”
“And the top sheets?”
“In the ladies, down the hall. Everything’s kept in bunches—each day, each week, each month. Then, at the end of the tax year, I tie ‘em all up together. All receipted, all documented, all honestly declared to the tax man. Can’t say fairer than that now, can you? Shame about the stink, mind—drains.” Then he wheezed out a laugh, “And Stan’s arse!”
Saz was a little dazed. The combination of the care and effort gone into his records and the stench emanating from the toilet propelled her back to her seat. “Well, I’m very impressed. So you actually have records of every time a delivery was made to Siobhan Forrester?”
“If it came through us, I certainly do.”
“And this information is going to cost me how much?”
/> Stan’s dad sat back in his chair and resting his cigarette-free hands on his belly, he smirked, “Not me, love, you can have what you want from me gratis. I’m always happy to help a fellow professional in their line of duty. I’m a good bloke, after all. Like to do my bit. Nah, it’s those scummy streetkids you wanna watch out for. With that lot, you don’t get nothing for nothing.”
She left the office with two descriptions, one for the flowers delivered a fortnight earlier, that of a young girl, maybe aged as much as eighteen, though more likely fifteen or sixteen, Geordie accent, cropped and dyed red hair. Having seen her around the streets on his way to and from work, Stan’s dad thought she lived—though he admitted to using the term loosely—somewhere between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn. As he said, “It’s easier for those street kids to get to Centrepoint that way. If they want to stay in for the night. It’s close. Closer to the tourist trade too, if she decides to do a bit of work of an evening—you know what these little tarts are like.”
The other description, for the person who’d brought the flowers both for the wake and those delivered a month earlier, was rather more specific: “Gentle Ben.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The lads call him Gentle Ben. You know, that kids’ programme about the bear? Stan used to like that one. He’s a great big bastard. Six three or four. Now, by ‘lads’ I mean my lads, you understand. I don’t know what they call him on the street. Maybe the same, maybe not. Half those bloody street kids don’t know what they call themselves, let alone anyone else. And off their heads most of the time, so I don’t suppose they’d recognize their own mothers calling them by name. But he’s always around, Ben is. Soho Square, Oxford Circus, stops around Berwick Street Market a lot. Likes bananas. You can’t miss him, the bugger’s vast.”
