Cocktails and Dreams

by A. L. Michael

  Cocktails and Dreams

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Savvy’s Ginger Berry Martini

  Book Club questions

  A. L. Michael's newsletter

  Copyright

  Cocktails and Dreams

  A. L. Michael

  I was 7 years old when I realized my mother was not a great person.

  I’d just had my birthday and I was still carrying around that deflated helium balloon everywhere I went. The roadies used to pat my hair and laugh, and say, ‘Hey Savvy, take care of that balloon babe, hey?’ and shake their heads.

  I’d been rehearsing what I wanted to say, pacing back and forth in our hotel room, explaining it all very clearly: Mama, I want to go to school. I want to play with other kids. I don’t want to do this any more.

  I had wished for it on every birthday cake, on every fallen star and penny on the ground. I had tried everything, tantrums and screaming fits, pretending I was sick, getting lost before a show.

  The problem was, I always felt bad.

  ‘Baby girl, don’t you want Mummy to be happy?’ she’d say, stroking back my hair, her fingertips at my temple, holding me just a little too close on her lap. ‘Don’t you want Mummy to live her dream and make all those people happy when she sings?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Nuh-uh, ladybug,’ she’d shake her head, grinning, ‘there’s no buts. Either you want Mummy to be happy, or you want her to be sad.’

  And I’d sigh, and mumble that of course I wanted her to be happy, and she’d kiss my head and tell me she loved me, but that she had to go to soundcheck now, and I should go and play.

  But not any more. I was 7 now, and I was tired of our pattern.

  So I dragged my sad silver balloon behind me, my toy cat Rumble under my arm, and I prepared to reason with my mother.

  She stood in the middle of the room, talking to the head sound guy, Frank. He’d given me a chocolate bar earlier that day, and I’d squirrelled it away in the lining of my Hello Kitty backpack. I’d been doing that for a while now, just in case.

  ‘Hey, you wanna test the mic?’ one of the sound guys smiled at me, kneeling down and holding the microphone to my mouth. ‘Say, “Testing, testing.”’

  I grasped it in my chubby little hand and whispered, ‘Testing, Mama, testing.’

  She looked up, briefly paused her conversation to wink at me, her blonde waves falling over her shoulders, her black eyeliner smudged artfully. She turned back to Frank.

  ‘TESTING,’ I said, more firmly, and the sound guy started, jerking back, trying to take the mic away.

  ‘TESTING!’ I yelled, holding on to the mic. ‘TESTING, I want to go to school! TESTING, I want to live in a house, with a garden, like normal people! I hate the bus and I want to live a normal life! I want to have a home, Mama! Please! TESTING, TESTING, TESTING!’

  I gripped the mic with both hands, watching as she blinked briefly and then smiled, shaking her head. ‘Don’t be silly baby, don’t you want Mummy to be hap–’

  ‘–NO!’

  She recoiled like I’d slapped her. Her face at that moment will stay with me forever. It wasn’t just disappointment. It was the look she had when she wrote a song, and she thought it was going to be a number one hit, but when they played it, the arrangement wasn’t quite right, or it just didn’t click. ‘Garbage,’ she’d say, ripping up the notes. ‘A waste of inspiration.’

  That was what I was in that moment. A waste of inspiration.

  ‘Just one year,’ I said into the mic, looking at her down there, finally having to listen to me, because I was on stage, and that was what happened when you were on stage, people had to listen. ‘One year off to be normal, and then we can come back. Please, I’ll do anything!’

  And my mother smiled, and walked across the room with determination, jumping up on the stage and gathering me in her arms, holding me close. She always smelled like nag champa incense. Incense and cigarettes. ‘Okay, baby girl, okay. An ordinary life for you.’

  The next morning the tour bus stopped outside my Auntie Jen’s. A beautiful little house, with vines growing up the side, and a dog that wanted my attention. My mother smiled, and said to play with Buster for a little while. I threw a ball, and the little spaniel fell over himself to chase, bumbling to the end of the garden. Then he simply turned and sat by the ball, proud of himself, but refusing to fetch.

  I rolled my eyes, and walked over to him to pick up the ball.

  ‘You’re not very good at being a dog, are you?’

  But he was. He heard the rumble of the engine before I did. He ran faster than I did.

  By the time I got back to the house, running round the side gate to stare at the quiet, normal street, the tour bus was gone. My aunt hovered in the background, the dog sat at my feet and wheezed, and Rumble was sitting on top of my suitcase at the front door.

  She was never any good at goodbyes.

  Chapter One

  Persephone Black is my mother. Which, up until that moment, was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

  ‘Babe, you’re not listening. Let me speak,’ Rob said.

  You know that moment when you look at someone, truly look at them for the first time in a long time? Like they’ve just become that piece of art on the wall that you stopped noticing because it’s been there for years? That thing that you’ve stopped seeing, but every time you notice it, you love it even more? Like the mug you drink your morning coffee out of, the armchair you collapse into at the end of a hard day. That was Rob. Pure comfort.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I said, focusing on the fridge magnet that had slipped down, because we got it years ago in Ayia Napa, when Rob first started DJ’ing, and it wasn’t very good at being a magnet any more. ‘You’re saying that after years of me struggling to get by, paying our bills and rent and food, because one day you were going to make it as a DJ… you’re saying, you’ve made it, and you’re leaving me?’

  ‘Hey, I always contributed when I could! And this residency has been steady money. Why is it all about the money? You told me to follow my dreams, babe, you told me I was talented – did you not mean that?’

  People never really got why Rob and I were together. He was a DJ, party animal, and all-round loud mouth. I was quiet and relaxed, and sometimes I genuinely looked forward to a Friday night watching Gilmore Girls reruns, doing my laundry and not speaking to anyone at all. We didn’t make sense.

  Except I loved him. I loved those moments he’d get in from the club at three a.m., and climb into bed all sweaty, kiss my forehead and say, ‘You missed a helluva party, babe.’ I loved the way he was so huge that he made me feel like a delicate doll, someone to be protected and kept safe. I loved that we’d go on holiday to party destinations, where he’d spend the nights DJ’ing and clubbing, and I’d spend all day on an empty beach that the holidaymakers were too hungover to enjoy.

  I liked that he marked his gigs on our shared calendar on the back of the kitchen door, and that he took my reading glasses off when I fell asleep reading, folding them neatly on the cheap bedside table we’d built together. And he always smelled like coffee. I liked that. I liked ‘always’.

  Rob was the fun one,
and I was the quiet, homely one. We needed each other, and that was the way it had always been. He could make the smallest thing into this wonderful adventure, like getting caught in the rain. We had been together a few months when I realized. I had been rustling around in my bag for my umbrella, in the alcove outside the restaurant we had just visited, and he had grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the street, swinging me around as we both got drenched, laughing. He had pulled back to take a photograph of me, and he had somehow made me look beautiful and vibrant, my hair slicked back with rain, droplets on my eyelashes as I laughed. It was still my profile picture.

  * * *

  I took a deep breath. It’s easy to tell when things are over. There’s a drop in your stomach, a stone falling to the bottom of the well, slow and heavy. Acceptance. Except there was a little voice inside me on repeat, saying, ‘This can’t be it, this can’t be it.’

  ‘There’s someone else, isn’t there?’ I shocked myself with how steady my voice was.

  It wasn’t a question.

  He paused, just for a second, a fraction of a second.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Rob–’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  His smile was sad and tentative, those light eyes flickering as he ran a hand through his hair. He was standing in his workout clothes, like he’d dressed to go out to the gym, and then realized halfway through that there was something he had to do.

  Like leave me.

  I looked at my watch. I had to go to work at the Martini Club in an hour, and he had sat there whilst I’d showered and dressed, and put on my make-up, blathering about some stupid movie I’d watched. All the while, he’d been rehearsing the words he would use to tell me he was leaving.

  ‘I just… we don’t fit any more, Sav,’ he shrugged. ‘We never did.’

  ‘We never did?’

  ‘I’m a DJ! You don’t ever go out! You don’t drink, you don’t even like music!’

  ‘I like music!’ I said, trying to think of one song I could bear to listen to, something I could remember the name of. Something that didn’t make me think of her.

  Rob tilted his head, that patronising smile on his face. It was a look I knew well. It was Oh, Sav, you don’t know what you’re on about, love.

  ‘I haven’t changed,’ I said. ‘What’s changed? You get your big break and suddenly you’re too good for me? I was just a stepping stone and someone to pay your rent and wash your clothes all these years until you made it?’

  ‘You know it’s not like that!’

  ‘Then what’s it like?’

  ‘I just don’t love you any more!’ He breathed, eyes glassy, refusing to blink, as if by staring me out he’d convince me it was real.

  I should have felt it like a blow to the stomach, like a sickness. I should have wanted to cry or vomit or scream or do anything. But I didn’t. All I did was stand there, and smell the scent of those stupid seats on the tour bus, the scent of hot leather and cigarette smoke.

  Love a musician and they’ll leave you. That should be the rule.

  ‘Okay, you keep the flat, I’ll move out,’ I said, walking past him into the bedroom, pulling out my suitcase from under the bed. Always nearby, always ready, just in case.

  ‘That’s it?’ He followed me, ‘Aren’t you upset?’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess I will be at some point. But I’m being practical now. So… I’ll transfer the bills into your name this week, and I’ll get my name taken off the lease…’

  ‘But I don’t have the mon–’

  ‘You’re a superstar now, babe, I’m sure you can figure it out.’ I gritted my teeth into something resembling a smile, making sure to meet his eyes. My mother’s voice was in my head: Never give them the satisfaction, baby, never let them know they’ve hurt you.

  I knew I wouldn’t get out without a fight, though. Rob loved drama. He loved to try and start an argument on a drunk night out, pretending some guy had insulted me, or tried it on with me. Loved to display his masculinity. Maybe that was it – I wasn’t dramatic enough for him.

  ‘But... didn’t you want to know if there was someone else? That’s what you asked,’ he said, walking around the bed to try to catch my eye. I pressed my lips together, determined.

  Oh, you bastard. You’re not going to wind me up. No way, no how. I’ve been broken by worse than you, buddy.

  In that moment, I felt like I was channelling some sort of warrior goddess, and I simply looked up, adopted a friendly, blank expression and shrugged.

  ‘Sweetheart, you don’t love me any more. What else is there to say?’

  I stuffed the last basics into my case, knowing I’d send Jen or Mia round for the rest when he was out. You never know what the basics are going to be in that situation, do you? I realized later I’d packed three pairs of lacy underwear, a selection of workout gear, and some Halloween make-up. But it didn’t matter.

  ‘I really hope you’ll be okay, Savvy,’ he said, taking up the door frame like a giant, blocking out the light. ‘I know you always take things so personally. What with your mum and everything.’

  Even at that moment, he had to be the light in the centre of my world. He had to be the sun that had stopped spinning.

  I heaved the suitcase off the bed, smiled and patted his shoulder.

  ‘Whatever is meant to be, will be. I hope your residency in Ibiza goes well. Send me a postcard, yeah?’

  I waited for him to ask where I’d go, what I’d do. But he said nothing. Maybe he assumed I’d just go back to Jen’s, my room still frozen in time, the same as it was when I left as a teenager. When I’d moved out to make my home with Rob. I looked around at the flat, the bright red electric guitar on the wall (he couldn’t play), the stacks of vinyl piled up next to my dog-eared paperbacks. My eyes skimmed our little open kitchen, with the professional chef knives Jen bought me for Christmas. I briefly considered brandishing one at him, demanding reasons, but I knew, with Rob, I’d never get them. He picked a direction and ran, regardless of reason or the movement of the wind. I would miss that kitchen – it was lovely kitchen.

  I picked up my coat, took a deep breath and shuffled down the stairs.

  ‘Her name’s Leah,’ he said from behind me, and the silence vibrated.

  I took a deep breath, clenched my teeth and didn’t look back, shutting the door behind me.

  I walked down the parade, past the Indian takeaway we always ordered from on Sundays, and the corner shop where the lady with the lovely nails always smiled at me, and the phone shop that I had never been to, and I adjusted my coat. I turned the corner and pulled out my phone, hearing it ring endlessly. I was just about to give up, when he answered.

  ‘Dad? Everything’s gone to shit,’ I said, and finally burst into tears.

  Chapter Two

  Dad had tried to insist I call in sick to work, but it was Thursday night, and I knew it would be crazy. Plus, I didn’t really want to think, and nothing was quite as good at distracting me as the drunken hedonists at a burlesque show demanding ridiculous cocktails.

  My dad has always been wonderful, ever since he turned up on Jen’s doorstep when I was 16 and explained that he was my dad. He’d had no idea until he bumped into my mum when she was on her tour. As she was turning a corner she poked her head back round, grinned and shouted out, ‘Hey, Jason, by the way, I had your baby!’ And so he’d found me, 16 years after the fact. We went through a lot of awkward conversations and failed father–daughter outings to get to where we were now. He’d been the complete opposite of my mother – he found me, quit his job as a roadie, and bought a house a few streets over from Jen’s. He was dedicated to being my dad.

  Which was why he turned up in his black cab like it was a flaming chariot pulled by Pegasus. Or rather, he saw me crying on Crouch End high street, did a dangerous U-turn, swerved across three lanes of traffic and gave every passing motorist the finger. He didn’t really know what to say, so he said nothing, which is one of the best things about my dad
. He drove me into town, handed me a box of tissues so I could sort my face out before exiting on Greek Street, and then said he would go back with Jen to get my things.

  ‘Do you want me to punch him? I’ve probably still got it in me,’ he had smiled, nudging my shoulder.

  ‘Don’t be nice to me, it’ll make me cry,’ I had hiccupped, shaking my head. ‘Ask him why he’s leaving me, and if the answer makes you want to punch him, then punch him.’

  I had been working non-stop that evening since I marched through Covent Garden and into the Martini Club. I didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone, didn’t want to have a chat with the other staff members or take my time freshening up my make-up, even though the boss, Arabella, insisted upon it. I just wanted to smile at customers and make them drinks, focusing on the alchemy of the Gold Dust Martini, the crown on the bar’s cocktail menu.

  But not everyone was intent on leaving me be.

  ‘Why so glum, sugarplum?’

  Jacques was possibly one of the most gorgeous men I had ever known, and had the irritating ability to wear eyeliner better than most women. It wasn’t necessarily his beauty that secured his job at the Martini Club: he was a good server. But it was usually that halfway point in the evening when the spotlight found him, and he did a back flip on stage and tore off his shirt, that brought in the repeat customers. Especially when he’d occasionally hook the odd wayward member of a hen do with his tie and give her a good smooch. There were often a lot of hands fanning when Jacques arrived at the table.

  Except I knew that he spent every morning with an Earl Grey tea, ruminating for way too long on a sudoku puzzle and moaning about his on-again-off-again boyfriend of five years. So he didn’t really do it for me.

  I shook my head and bit my lip. ‘Later.’

  ‘Okay,’ he shrugged, and pointed at me. ‘But it will be later. Two Martinis for the old perv and his mail-order bride.’

  I nodded and said nothing, gathering everything I needed for the drinks.

  ‘Um, excuse me? No rambling about love taking hold where it needs to be, and not being judgemental, and all that other horseshit that I’ll ignore, but really love you for?’