by Maureen Lee
At half past five, Lachlan rang from Heathrow. He was just about to catch a taxi to London where he would pick up his new Ferrari and drive home. ‘See you around ten-ish, babe. I can’t wait.’ He’d been away six whole weeks.
‘Me neither.’ She asked him not to eat anything. ‘I’m making dinner. And drive carefully, please.’
‘You always say that, babe.’
She visualised him grinning at the other end of the line and grinned back. ‘It always needs saying, otherwise you’d drive like a maniac.’
Chloe was put to bed and Ace followed an hour later, after being allowed to stay up for Top of the Pops, on which he occasionally saw his daddy, something he took in his stride. Tonight, Daddy would be there for real, Jeannie promised. ‘He’ll come and kiss you goodnight, like he always does, once he’s home.’
‘Will I be awake?’
‘You might, you might not. Who knows?’
She set a little table in front of the window in the living room, rather than use the vast one in the dining room that could take twenty at a pinch, spreading a lace cloth over it and putting a red candle in the centre. She wasn’t a very adventurous cook and there was only chicken casserole in the oven and prawn cocktails in the fridge for starters. They’d have ice cream for a sweet. The wine was being chilled.
After a bath, she searched through her wardrobe for something special to wear. She hadn’t bought anything new in ages, spending most of her time nowadays in jeans and cotton tops. The few forays she made into town were too rushed to search for the latest fashions. Next time she went, she’d spend a whole day replenishing her wardrobe. Lachlan would be glad to look after Ace and Chloe once he was home. She could even go to London for the day, she thought idly.
And meet Sean McDowd?
No!
She paused in her search, furious with herself for allowing such a thought to even enter her head. How could she possibly consider such a thing when she and Lachlan were so blissfully happy? It didn’t help when she spied a glimpse of something scarlet at the back of the wardrobe and realised it was the dress she’d bought in London when she’d stayed at the Savoy. It hadn’t been worn for more than half an hour. She recalled sitting in the chair, wearing the dress, and waiting for Sean to come. He made her feel uniquely desirable and quite different to the woman other people knew, including her husband.
There was the crunch of wheels on the gravel drive. Lachlan! Earlier than expected. He must have driven like a maniac, after all. She ran to the door in her bathrobe. He was just getting out of the car; a tall, familiar figure, shabbily dressed as always. She felt a thrust of love that took her breath away.
‘I was just about to put on something incredibly glamorous,’ she cried. ‘I’m not even wearing lipstick.’
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. ‘Right now, babe, I don’t want you wearing anything.’
An hour later, they sat down to dinner. Jeannie had forgotten all about Sean McDowd until Lachlan poured the wine, raised his glass, and said, ‘To us!’
‘To us!’ It was the same toast Sean had made before the only meal they’d ever had together. Jeannie took a vow never to see him again, not even to think about him, to banish him from her mind for ever.
‘I thought about you all the time while I was away, Jeannie, you and our kids,’ Lachlan said huskily. He reached across the table for her hand. ‘I got to realising what a lucky guy I was, the luckiest guy on earth. Everything I want is in this house.’ He grinned. ‘Including the studio. You, Ace and Chloe, and rock ’n’ roll. They’re all I’ll ever want in this world.’
Thousands of miles away across the Atlantic, in New York, where it was only early evening, Sean McDowd was sitting on the balcony of his fifteenth-floor apartment overlooking Central Park, still smarting from the phone call he’d made to Jeannie earlier in the day. He’d had a date that night, but had cancelled it, not in the mood to conduct trivial conversation with a woman he hardly knew and had no wish to know better.
He would have sworn on his life there was something between him and Jeannie. The first time they’d made love, he’d taken her by surprise, though she hadn’t objected and gave the impression of having enjoyed it as much as he had. The second occasion, she’d actively encouraged him. Sensitive to every nuance where Jeannie Flowers was concerned, he recalled how she’d given his mother her room number, glancing at him to make sure he’d heard. For two nights, she had welcomed him into her bed, two nights that he would never forget.
It was a year before he was in England again – he would have flown there every week had he thought he could see Jeannie. She’d not long had a baby, Chloe, and Alex Connors had just died. It was the wrong time to suggest that they meet. He’d thought about going to Alex’s funeral. Alex was a decent guy and he’d liked him, but he cringed at the thought of seeing Jeannie and Lachlan together and being reminded that, however eagerly she’d seemed to want him, she belonged to someone else.
Another year passed. In two weeks’ time, he would be home again for a series of concerts and had expected Jeannie to jump at the chance of them meeting again. Instead, he’d been given the brush off. It hurt, badly. He didn’t believe that Chloe had fallen over. It was just an excuse for her mother to put down the phone. If only he could see her, touch her, get her alone. Sean was convinced it would take very little for him to seduce her again.
Below him, the traffic edged slowly and noisily around Central Park. The Americans had a habit of crazily honking their horns if they were unable to drive at full pelt, as if the car in front would get a move on if it was honked at enough by the car behind. At this time of day, at most times of day, the traffic was a solid, stationary mass. Perhaps the horn sounding was just a way of getting rid of their frustration.
The noise was getting on his nerves. Sean got up and went into his apartment, where the walls were covered with brown hessian and the furniture was a mixture of ebony and stainless steel, reflecting, although he didn’t know it, his dark, brooding personality. He turned on the television to CNN for the latest world news and learnt that Margaret Thatcher would almost certainly be Prime Minister of Great Britain by tomorrow morning. The polls had closed and initial predictions were looking good for the Tories. He turned the set off in disgust. He had no truck with politicians from whatever party. All they did was make a mess of the world.
The telephone rang, but he ignored it. It might be his date wanting him to change his mind about tonight. Picking up his guitar, he played a few notes of ‘Moon Under Water’.
‘I was just wondering,’ Jeannie had said, ‘if it was a scene like this that inspired your dad to write that song.’ That had been many years ago, at Marcia’s wedding. He’d followed her to the lake where the moon was reflected in the still, black water. He’d kissed her, but first of all, they’d talked. He was about to leave the Merseysiders. ‘I want to be in charge of my own destiny,’ he’d told her.
She’d said she didn’t think of show business as her destiny – she was in the Flower Girls then – she wanted children, at least two, ‘soon’.
It wasn’t long after that that the Flower Girls had broken up. Marcia was having a baby, and his mother had told him Jeannie was also hoping for a baby soon. Why had she waited so long, he wondered idly, another seven or eight years, when she was past thirty, before she’d had Ace?
Sean put down the guitar and went to pour himself a Jack Daniels on the rocks. The drink had barely touched his lips when he put down the glass with a crash and began to walk agitatedly up and down the room, working out dates, times, counting out months, coming to the inevitable conclusion that he, not Lachlan, was the father of Jeannie’s children. The first time had been an accident; the second time she’d used him, quite ruthlessly set him up.
‘Jaysus!’ His mind was a cauldron of simmering emotions; anger, amazement, incredulity. He couldn’t believe that the saintly Jeannie Flowers could stoop so low. He seized the whisky and tossed it into his mouth
. Now that he’d served his purpose, he thought cynically, he wasn’t needed any more. He refilled the glass, sank into a chair, and burst out laughing. Jaysus! He certainly admired her nerve!
The next few years went exceptionally well for the Survivors, who had reached cult status and were highly regarded by the critics. Their fan base continued to grow. They were genuine survivors, one of the few groups, like the Rolling Stones and The Who, still playing to packed venues since the heady days of the sixties. The Beatles had long ago disbanded and gone their separate ways. Other groups came, shone briefly, then disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again.
Lachlan wrote a couple of songs that were so successful they were taken up by other bands and solo artistes: ‘Cabbage Soup’, a thumping, rollicking rock ’n’ roll number that sent feet tapping with the first few bars, and ‘Wayward Woman’, angry, haunting, and sad.
Sadie McDowd got married again to another extrovert Irishman with the gift of the gab called Paddy Rafferty. She went to live in Limerick where Paddy ran his own import-export agency.
It was about this time that Fly Fleming divorced his second wife and remarried Stella, also divorced. The reception was a riotous affair that lasted three days.
When Ace was ready to start school, Jeannie and Lachlan decided to educate him privately, rather than in the state sector. He was enrolled in a small school in Southport. Jeannie expected shrieks of horror from her mother, who disapproved of people who educated their children privately, but Rose was too worried about Amy, who had got engaged at the age of seventeen to a most unsuitable boy. ‘If only Alex was still alive, he’d talk sense into her. She takes no notice of me.’
In March, 1982, Tom Flowers turned eighty. He refused a party, consenting only to a birthday tea with his grandchildren in the kitchen of Noah’s Ark. Jeannie invited Max, knowing he would refuse, but feeling it necessary to make the gesture. Max reminded her that he had vowed never to set foot in the house again while Lachlan was there. He sent Tom a card. As far as the bitterly unforgiving Max was concerned, his father was second only to Lachlan in his list of sworn enemies. Gerald sent a video of his children singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to their grandad, giving Jeannie the perfect excuse to get the video recorder she’d been meaning to buy for ages.
Watching it, Tom was enthralled. ‘And you can actually see films on it?’ he gasped in amazement.
‘Yes, Dad. You hire them from a shop. I’m sure there’ll soon be a video shop in Ailsham.’
‘There already is.’
She gave him the recorder for a birthday present. He drove away in the elderly Morris Minor, the man who’d once refused to have a television in his house, with the very latest in media equipment on the back seat. Rose thought it hilarious.
A few months later, in August, Lachlan turned forty. He also refused a party, preferring instead a short holiday in Paris with Jeannie, his wife of nineteen years. ‘Our mums can look after the children.’
It was an utterly perfect, headily romantic few days, the first time since their honeymoon that they’d been away, just the two of them, together. Hand in hand, they roamed the sweltering streets of Paris, sampling the tiny, exotic restaurants; climbed the Eiffel Tower until they could climb no further and caught the lift for the rest of the way; lit candles in Notre Dame where, to Lachlan’s embarrassment, he was recognised by a crowd of screaming schoolgirls who surrounded him, demanding his autograph. He’d long grown used to this sort of thing, but it hadn’t happened before in a church.
Each night, after a leisurely meal, they strolled along the Champs-Elysées to their hotel, exhausted after their busy day. On the final night, they were too tired to make love, but they weren’t as young as they used to be and it didn’t matter. They had the rest of their lives to make love whenever they pleased, and promised each other they would return to Paris to celebrate Jeannie’s fortieth birthday in three years’ time.
Back in Noah’s Ark, they were so glad to see the children, they wondered how they could have brought themselves to go away, despite it having been the most wonderful holiday. Presents were distributed; a remote-controlled Ferrari for Ace, and for Chloe a hand-embroidered frock as she always preferred clothes to toys. Lachlan had bought his mother a marcasite brooch in the shape of a four-leafed clover, and Jeannie had got Rose, who had recently decided she would no longer wear leather or eat meat, a tapestry handbag.
‘Oh, by the way, Lachlan,’ Mrs Bailey said. ‘Your manager, Donald Weston, rang last night, and again this morning. He said to get in touch the minute you get home. It’s urgent.’
‘I’ll have a cup of coffee first. It can’t be all that urgent.’ It was half an hour before Lachlan made the phone call that was to change all their lives.
Chapter 15
Lachlan went down to the studio to make the phone call. Ace and Chloe curled up in an armchair with their mother and demanded she tell them about Paris while the two older women made dinner. Half an hour later, the meal was ready, but Lachlan was still downstairs.
‘That’s some marathon phone call,’ Rose remarked. Jeannie sent the children to wash their hands and went to fetch him. She found him in the studio with the receiver still in his hand. His face was ashen. She had never seen him look so shattered. She could feel goosepimples rise on her arms. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Christ, Jeannie! It’s terrible. Some kid, a girl, she’s only fourteen, claims I’m the father of her baby.’ His voice was slow and quivery, like an old man’s.
‘But you can’t possibly be!’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe. I’m not sure the general public will be so easily convinced.’
She ran and sat on his knee, hugged him, and could feel his body trembling. ‘You can have tests, Lachlan, blood tests. They’ll prove you’re not the father.’ Even as she said it, Jeannie had the feeling that everything was about to fall apart.
‘That’s what I told Donald, but he said it’s not always a sure fire thing. Me and this girl could share the same blood type or something. Or it could be me and the baby, I’m not sure. A test mightn’t prove anything.’
‘It’s not the first time this sort of accusation has been made against someone like you, darling, a pop star or an actor. This girl’s just trying it on. Don’t let it worry you.’ She gave him a little comforting shake. ‘It happened to Max with Monica, remember?’
‘Yeah, but with one big difference. No, two. First, it didn’t get into the papers. Second, Max admitted he’d had sex with Monica. There’s another difference. Monica was an adult, this girl was only thirteen when it happened. She’s a minor. That’s what really gets to me, Jeannie, people thinking I’ve had it off with a kid young enough to be my daughter. It’s a crime in itself, even without the fucking baby. I could have stood it otherwise. I might even have laughed it off.’ He hardly ever swore in front of her and his face crumpled, as if he was about to cry.
‘Oh, Lachlan.’ She cradled his head in her arms. ‘What did you mean, Max and Monica didn’t get into the papers?’ she asked, suddenly scared herself.
‘One of the tabloids has got the story this time, babe, the Mirror. It’s not surprising, that’s where the girl went first. Now the other papers have got hold of it. Donald’s been inundated with calls.’ He rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘He’s sending a lawyer to help me deal with things.’
There was an awful lot going on in the world at the moment. The newspapers were still too concerned with the aftermath of the war in the Falklands, the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon, the conflict raging between Iran and Iraq, to make much of the suspected behaviour of a pop star. Apart from the Mirror, who made quite a feature of the affair, the news was buried in the inside pages. Even so, next morning, it didn’t stop half a dozen reporters from camping outside the house, demanding a statement from Lachlan. The stony-faced lawyer, who had arrived before it was light, went out to advise them that the charges were comprehensively denied. He also dealt with the sudden rush of phone calls from people w
ho had somehow managed to get hold of their unlisted number.
When Ace came home from school, he wanted to know what Daddy had done. ‘Some boys said he’d done something very bad. It said so in a newspaper.’
‘You tell these boys it’s not true,’ Jeannie said fiercely. ‘Daddy’s done nothing wrong.’
Fly and the Cobb were one hundred per cent supportive, as were the Survivors’ loyal fans. The group played two gigs and the subject wasn’t an issue. No one so much as mentioned it. Fly rang frequently to assure Jeannie it was all a big con. ‘The girl’s just after money,’ he said one day. ‘All it needs is a few thousand quid for her to say it was a mistake, she was confused, and the charges will be withdrawn. But Lachlan won’t hear of it. Not that I blame him. It would be an admission of guilt.’
‘What charges?’
‘The police are considering pressing charges, Jeannie. Sex with a minor. Didn’t he tell you?’
‘He refuses to talk about it any more,’ she said helplessly. ‘Fly, this girl’s awfully young, only fourteen, to come up with such a story on her own initiative. There must be someone behind her.’
‘I guess there must be. I’ll do a bit of digging, Jeannie,’ he promised. ‘See what I can find out.’
He rang again a few days later to say the girl came from Liverpool and it was her mother who’d gone to the Mirror.
‘Do you know her name?’ Jeannie asked eagerly. An idea was forming in her mind. Could she pay the girl off ? Was it possible Lachlan would find out if she did?
‘No. Y’know what, Jeannie, it don’t half stink,’ Fly said indignantly. ‘Because she’s underage, the girl’s got anonymity. It’s not right, the little bitch can throw accusations right, left, and centre, yet nobody knows who she is. By the way, the mother claims the incident happened in Manchester. We did a gig there about fifteen months ago, which would make the baby about six months old.’
