‘No Debbie you’re right, you’re always right,’ he said stretching his athletic body back to standing. ‘I’m going to do something’
‘Hang on Guy, don’t rush into anything. Let’s talk about this. What are you going to do?’ his sister asked, her voice taking on a desperate tone.
‘I have no idea. Do what I should have done years ago - find Juliet. I don’t know,’ he replied, already striding out of the room. ‘Love you sis. Give Sam a kiss from me; see you next week for babysitting duties.’
‘Guy wait, don’t slam the…’
The loud bang of the front door drowned out the remainder of Debbie’s plea.
Two hours later, a freshly shaven and considerably cleaner Guy jumped into his black Jaguar XF and set off.
Five
Loughborough University, Freshers’ week, eight years earlier.
The sudden halt of Guy’s body almost threw him off balance as his tattered trainers scraped along the floor of the empty corridor. For a split second he had no idea what had pulled him from his trance-like walk. And then the scent caught him again.
The smell like the Woolworth’s pick and mix counter – sugar and sweet and just out of reach. He made a mental note to add the line to one of his new songs, instantly forgetting the tune he’d been humming.
He took a long breath in, filling his senses; his feet already moving towards the source as if his body had become disconnected from his mind. Finally, Guy lifted his gaze from their usual view of the concrete floor, finding instead a girl with the biggest green eyes he had ever seen.
Guy found himself unable to take another breath as he took in the bright blonde hair, cut short and messy, and a black loose knit jumper showing the lace of a bra and the milky colour of her skin.
He wanted to touch that skin.
As if hearing his thoughts, the girl flicked her eyes towards his, her pupils wide and clear like a wild animal startled by the headlights from a passing car.
‘Hey,’ Guy said, fighting the urge to grin like the village idiot.
‘Hey.’
‘You look lost.’
‘I am,’ she said with a smile that hit him like a wave of warm sunshine washing over him.
‘Need a hand?’
‘I don’t know. Can you tell me where lecture room four is? I’ve been walking around this building for the past twenty minutes. I’ve found one, two, three and five, but four seems to have been pulled into a parallel universe or something. All these corridors look exactly the same and I’m going to be so late,’ she finished, throwing a hand in desperation along the mottled blue walls.
‘Ah yes the mysterious lecture room four, I had a class in there yesterday.’
‘Great,’ she replied, the relief visible across her face.
Fuck she was amazing, Guy thought, as the green oceans of her eyes drew him closer. His mouth stretched into a lopsided smile that he was powerless to stop.
‘Can you tell me where it is then?’
‘Yeah sorry, it’s this way, I’ll walk with you,’ he replied, his cheeks reddening. Pull yourself together man before she thinks you’re a total moron.
‘Thanks.’ She smiled, falling into step beside him.
‘So you’re a musician?’
‘Yeah, how did you…?’
She nodded her head towards the long black bag on his back. What a moron, of course he had his guitar with him. The weight on his back so familiar it was like a second skin.
He took a deep breath and tried to slow down his racing heartbeat, pounding like a bass drum in his ears.
‘What’s the lecture?’ he asked, changing the subject before he could embarrass himself any further.
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
‘Oh come on, how weird can it be?’
‘The history of fashion buttons.’
‘Seriously? You’re right that is pretty unbelievable.’
‘I know, it sounds ridiculous, but in the past fifty years buttons have lost a lot of their functionality and are being used more and more as part of a design rather than a fastening device.’
‘Yeah I get it,’ Guy nodded, as if her explanation made total sense. ‘Like the chocolate kind.’
To Guy’s amazement, the girl threw her head back and laughed; the sound as enchanting as it was surprising.
‘I’ll have to remember that for my essay,’ she grinned, turning her face to meet his. ‘What about you? I’m going to guess you study something to do with music.’
‘Business studies,’ he replied with the nonchalant shrug he gave when mentioning anything in his life which stole him away from his dream. ‘It’s just a backup plan, if my singing doesn’t take off.’
‘Oh I’m sure it will. Hey, lecture room four, thanks.’ She grinned at him for a moment longer before darting into the theatre.
And just like that she was gone. Before he’d even had a chance to ask her name, let alone when he could see her again.
The realisation caused an emptiness to spread through him.
He looked first towards the door, swinging closed before him, and then down at the empty folder in his hands, waiting to be filled with his own lecture notes.
What if he never saw her again?
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust as he darted into the dark lecture theatre. Directly in front of him, down a steep row of steps, stood the lecturer, clicking through a slide show of cushions, all with various types of buttons.
Twenty or so students had spread themselves around the hall, all of them staring intently at the projector and scribbling notes. None of them were her.
Damn. What now? Stop the lecture? Sit and wait? What exactly was his plan here?
Suddenly, he felt a tug on his arm pulling him into the back row. In the dull glow of the projector light, Guy could just make out the deep wells of her eyes and the bright white of her huge smile.
Before he could even whisper a second ‘hello’ or try and explain why he’d followed her into a lecture about buttons, her lips touched his. Her tongue teasing open his mouth and causing an explosion of excitement and desire to run through him like an electrical current.
His whole body sprung to life as he began to kiss back.
Reaching out a shaking hand, he brushed his fingers against her cheek.
He had never felt so alive, Guy realised, knowing how crazy his thoughts sounded.
And then, just as suddenly as it had started, she pulled away.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I…I’ve never done anything like that before, you must think I’m nuts.’
Guy had no idea how to respond, or even if he was capable of speech. Instead, he lent forward and kissed her again.
It took one week. One week of non-stop talking, of opening up their lives for one another. One week of laughing and touching; of falling into bed together as if it was the most natural thing in the world. One week before Guy could no longer remember what his life had been like before Juliet.
He’d never bothered with girlfriends before. They’d always seemed too much work and a distraction from his music.
Juliet was different. She slotted into his life and his thoughts without pushing anything out. The passion she’d unleashed inside him drove him harder to write the best song, to play the best gig.
A dream that had always seemed so far away now felt almost in reach.
Six
Tuesday 18th February
Jules manoeuvred her car into her driveway and killed the engine. Instead of opening the door and climbing out, she sat in perfect silence and stared up at her house.
Her house. Her dream.
If she stayed in her car and simply stared at the grey stone walls bathed in the morning light, then the mess that lay beyond the front door didn’t seem so bad. She didn’t need to think about the hole in the ceiling, the mould in the walls, the aubergine bathroom suite, or the dank kitchen, which lacked even the basic kitchen necessities like a fridge and an oven.
She didn’t have to wonder what kind of garden was buried underneath the wall of brambles and weeds, or how quickly her bank balance would run down to zero, and beyond, trying making her dream a reality. She could sit in her car on her wide sweeping driveway and just stare at her dream in solitude.
The feeling of peace did not last long. Her eyes soon strayed to Terri’s old red van, parked next to the yellow skip that had appeared in her driveway on Sunday morning, and the debris that now filled it after she’d spent two days working alongside Terri, Dan and Jason to rip out what was left of her ceiling, and clear the piles of rubble from her living room floor.
A few minutes later Jules fastened the top button on her navy work overalls, opened her car door and slid out, scrunching her eyes shut for a moment as her muscles cried out in protest. The combination of hard running, hard labour and a hard mattress had taken its toll on her body.
‘Morning guys. I’ve got biscuits. Who wants a cuppa?’ she called as she stepped through the open doorway, almost tripping over Dan and Jason as they stood whispering at the bottom of the stairs.
It was the first time she’d seen them do anything other than work in two days.
‘Everything okay? Where’s Terri?’ she asked.
‘Err...,’ Dan began. ‘Mum’s in the kitchen. Someone is here to see you.’
‘Great, is it your uncle? When did he say he could start the plastering? I can’t wait to have my own space again,’ she said, stepping down the hallway without waiting for a response.
‘Hello,’ she said, stepping into the kitchen, smiling at Terri before moving her gaze to the man leaning on her kitchen counter.
Her stomach lurched as a force of emotions hit her. ‘Guy,’ she gasped.
‘Juliet.’
For the smallest of moments everything fell away as the noise of the sea roared between her ears. For that one single second, before her mind could catch up, it felt to Jules as if someone had turned on the lights when she hadn’t even realised it was dark.
And then reality hit her. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I came to make sure you were okay.’
‘But…’ Jules thought for a moment.
Guy had changed. The slim body she remembered was gone. Now a muscular physique filled out a jet black t-shirt and tight faded jeans. The tangled unkempt hair was also gone, but the dark pools of his eyes remained the same. They still possessed the ability to scorch into her; filling her with uncertainty.
‘How did you find me?’ What a ridiculous question to ask she realised too late, as if they’d been playing a very long game of hide and seek, and she’d finally been discovered.
‘I drove to Bath yesterday. Your parents gave me this address. They haven’t changed a bit,’ he answered, a smile touching his face.
Typical of her parents, Jules thought. They wouldn’t think twice about helping Guy. Even after everything that had happened they still seemed to idealise him.
‘Go back to why you are here…you’ve come to check if I’m alright, why wouldn’t I be?’ The anger from so many years of hating suddenly clear.
‘Well with the newspaper…’ Guy trailed off.
‘Yes I’ve seen that thanks very much,’ she replied, her tone dripping with spite.
‘Juliet, I…’
‘Stop calling me that. It’s Jules now.’
The space behind her eyes began to hammer in pace with her heartbeat. Why was he here? Now, after all this time?
’But you always hated Jules,’ Guy replied, his gaze moving around the kitchen as if searching for someone to step in and help him.
Jules had not noticed Terri inch silently out of the room. No doubt listening from the hallway at her conversation with the famous celebrity, she thought with a flush of embarrassment.
‘Guy,’ she began, focusing her gaze on a point just behind the man standing in front of her. She couldn’t trust herself to look into his eyes any longer. ‘I really don’t understand what you are doing here. You don’t know me anymore. Whatever publicity stunt you’re pulling, just leave me out of it.’
‘Wait Juliet, I mean Jules. It wasn’t a stunt, I thought I was speaking off the record the first time and then the ridiculous article yesterday, I had nothing to do with it, you have to know that?’
‘No. There was only one story, not two…’ Her voice trailed off as Guy’s words sunk in.
There was another article she had not seen, how could that happen again?
‘I thought you’d seen it. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Whatever. Look it doesn’t matter now, it’s done. As you can see, I’m fine. So you can go back to wherever it is you came from. Okay?’
‘Juli…Jules, it’s not done, it’s not finished. The paper have started a campaign. They are gathering information about us, and they won’t stop until they know everything.’
He pulled a scrap of newspaper from his back pocket.
‘About me you mean. They already know everything about you.’
Panic began to trickle through her as she snatched the outstretched paper and scanned the article. It didn’t make sense. She was a nobody. Why would anybody want to read about her life?
‘Look, I understand that you’re angry and I wanted to say that I’m sorry,’ Guy said.
Hot red spots spread across her cheeks.
‘Sorry?’ Jules looked up, scrunching the paper into a tight ball in her fist. ‘You think saying sorry for everything you’ve done is going to help now? It’s too late Guy, years too late.’
They both fell silent for a moment, before Guy spoke. ‘I meant…’
Jules cut him off. ‘Oh you meant you’re sorry about the newspaper didn’t you?’
A strained laugh escaped from her throat as she realised her mistake. ‘And I am not angry,’ she hissed.
‘Juliet please, I am trying to help you. Just listen for a minute,’ he pleaded, taking a step back and breaking the bubbling tension that seemed to be circling around them like a tornado.
‘I don’t have to…’ she stopped mid sentence as his eyes found hers, sending another wave of indecision through her. ‘Fine,’ she sighed. ‘Say what you’ve got to say.’
‘They are asking people to send in stories of us, of you,’ he corrected as she narrowed her eyes. ‘Like I said, they are going to dig around in the past until they have published every story they can find or the public get bored, which believe me, can take a while.’
‘But I’m not famous.’
‘To them you are. But look,’ he said, pulling a pink card from the back pocket of his jeans. ‘If you give this journalist a call and agree to go on the record with a few quotes on the condition that they stop the campaign, then there’s a good chance we can end this.’
‘We can end this?’ Hot rage coarsed through her. ‘You started this. You. I was here, minding my own business, getting on with my life and YOU dragged me into this. And now I’m supposed to give an interview? And what am I supposed to say exactly? Or have you got that written down to?’
Jules took a step forward, the grip on the biscuit packet in her hand tightening. ‘Oh hello is this The Daily?’ she mocked. ‘I just wanted to phone and say thank you for publishing all this crap about me, I’ve always wanted to be famous and now I am. Oh and please buy Guy’s music because it’s great.’
In the silence that followed, Jules could hear only her own heavy breathing and the fierce thundering of her heart.
‘You need to do this Jules, otherwise they’ll keep printing stuff, some of it will be lies but some of it won’t, you can’t tell me you want that?’
‘Don’t tell me what I need Guy, and don’t tell me what I want.’
‘Please Juliet; I am trying to help you. I know things didn’t end well between us.’
Another strained laugh escaped Jules’ throat.
He ignored it and continued: ‘But you have to believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Please, just phone them. For your sake not mine,’ he said
holding out the card for Jules to take.
‘Fine,’ she snapped, snatching the card from Guy’s hand, unable to avoid her fingers touching his. Her senses absorbed the familiar rough tips, causing a wave of nostalgia to throb through her.
She took an uneven step back.
‘Was there anything else then?’ she asked after a long pause.
‘I wanted to tell you…’ Guy paused. ‘I wanted to ask if you’ve listened to my album.’
‘God you haven’t changed a bit. NO I haven’t listened to your album, and I don’t plan to either, so sod off will you,’ she yelled, surprised at the venom in her own voice.
His eyes continied to boar into hers.
‘Okay,’ he replied, pulling out a slip of paper from his jacket and sliding it onto the counter. ‘Here’s my number if you need me.’
‘I won’t ever need you.’
With her words hanging in the air, Guy stepped past her, striding quickly towards the door and out of her life for the second time.
She tasted the blood before she felt the pain. Her teeth piercing into her tongue as she fought the urge to cry out after him.
Seeing him again had brought back more than just old memories. When his eyes met hers, the old weakness returned too. She couldn’t let that happen. Not again.
In the sudden silence a large cracking sound filled the air, followed by a thunderous crash as the pane of glass in the kitchen window shattered to the floor, covering Jules’ work boots in glass.
‘What the…’ Terri exclaimed as she rushed back into the room. ‘Are you okay?’
‘The window broke,’ Jules mumbled, nodding towards the shattered glass. It must have been all the banging we’ve been doing in the living room. Something else to add to the “to-do” list I guess,’ she said with a weak smile.
Terri glanced at her two sons, something exchanging between them.
‘What, what is it?’ she quizzed, her eyes darting between them.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Are you sure you’re okay Lovey? You’re not hurt are you?’ Terri answered, wrapping an arm around Jules’ shoulders.
‘No, I’m fine,’ she replied, as a red heat crept along cheeks. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear all that.’
The Reluctant Celebrity Page 4
