by Lisa Swallow
“Where’s Jem?” I repeat.
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell us, Mr Morgan.” The woman crosses her arms over her chest and fixes me with an accusatory look.
Fuck. I knew he’d do this.
“It’s in Mr Jones’s best interest to talk to us. Leaving the scene doesn’t do him any favours.”
“Yeah, I told him to wait.”
“Really?” The woman pulls out a notepad and poses her pen. “Were you with him or Olivia last night?”
“No. I was home with my girlfriend.” And what the fuck is Sky going to say about this?
“And what did Mr Jones say when he contacted you?”
I rub my lips together, years of teaching by Steve and our media team prevents me from replying. “You should talk to him.”
The woman flips the notebook shut and glares at me. “I would, if he revealed his whereabouts. Where would he go?”
I run a hand through my hair. He’s unlikely to go back to his Notting Hill place and I hope to hell he hasn’t gone back to mine. The apartment or the house. Shit. If he goes there and sees Sky…
“I don’t know. Have you contacted our manager?”
“We’ve tried, but maybe it’s too early and he’s still asleep? I expect as soon as he switches on the news he’ll have an idea.”
This is big. Fucking huge. What the hell happened? A young paramedic dressed in green emerges from the elevator and he approaches another detective, a man in a suit also talking to staff. All the way here, I’ve willed this girl to be alive, hoping Jem’s panic led him to believe she was dead.
“Is she…” I begin.
“Deceased. Yes. So we have a suspicious death, a missing lover, and we need answers.” She pauses. “We believe drugs were involved.”
I give her an ‘are you surprised’ look. The possibility of Jem killing himself with drugs has followed him for years, but someone else… The next move: call him. I whip my phone from my pocket and dial his number. It rings out and I swear under my breath. Typical Jem, running. But what the fuck does he hope to achieve? Can’t he see how this looks?
“I should go and look for him,” I tell the detective.
“No, I think you need to stay and talk to us.”
“What? Why? I didn’t do anything! I told you I wasn’t here.”
“Until we finish checking the security cameras, or get in touch with your alibi, it would be wise of you to remain with us.”
“Are you saying you think I had something to do with this?” I pull myself tall to disguise the rising panic.
“Did you?” she fires back.
“No! Shit.” I scroll for Steve’s number and call him. No response. I can’t leave; they’d probably arrest me. The police would use any excuse to arrest one of us. I heave in a breath. “I’ll stay but I have nothing to say until Steve or a lawyer appears.”
The woman’s pink painted mouth spreads into a thin smile and she beckons over a uniformed cop. “Mr Morgan has agreed to answer some questions, if you can drive him to the station.”
About to protest that wasn’t what I agreed to, my phone rings. Myf.
“Dylan? I saw the news. What’s happening?”
“I can’t talk now,” I mutter. “I’m talking to the police.”
“Is it true?” My lack of response answers her question. “Shit, Dylan. Is Jem with you?”
“No, the stupid fucker left.”
“Where are you?”
“At the Grosvenor but I’m about to go to the local fucking police station.”
“I’m coming back.”
“No, stay away Myf.”
“No way.”
“Try and find Jem.”
An exasperated noise comes down the line. “He doesn’t talk to me.”
“Just try.”
The detective is listening to every word. “I have to go.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sky
After Dylan leaves, I doze off, comfortable enough to allow myself to give in to the exhaustion of the night before and sleep in. Maybe Christmas won’t be as bad as I expected. Groaning that I’ve slept in until 11am, I pull on my discarded shirt and wander to the kitchen to make toast. Dylan hasn’t called; whatever has happened with Jem must be complicated.
The luxury of Dylan’s penthouse contrasts vividly with my flat and I’m pulled back there in my mind. I don’t want to think about my place, or my life there. Is it wrong to allow myself to be supported by Dylan, just for a while? Or am I setting myself up for heartache? Pushing the thoughts from my mind, and replacing them with much more satisfying images of last night, I plonk myself on the brown leather sofa with my toast and a cup of tea.
I don’t know why, but picking up the remote and switching on the TV automatically happens when I sit on the sofa with food, as if eating is impossible without flicking TV channels. Dylan has a lot more channels available than I do. As I absentmindedly click, an image arrests me, but I’ve clicked past, so I hastily go back again.
A breaking news programme scrolls details below about the heiress, Olivia De Steele, and Blue Phoenix’s involvement in her death.
Death.
My mouth dries around the toast as I stare at the words, recalling Dylan’s phone conversation this morning. The details are sketchy but she died in a hotel room and they think Jem was with her at the time. Jem has disappeared - did Dylan go to find him? Where’s Dylan? Footage of him accompanied to a waiting car carves fear along my spine. The smartly dressed woman with him holds her hand up to indicate the press should back off. This isn’t Tina. I swallow. The police.
Have they arrested Dylan?
How can her death be anything to do with him?
I search the flat for my mobile phone and call Dylan. The phone goes straight to voicemail. Several attempts later, I swear and throw the phone on the sofa. I’m lost. What do I do? I don’t have Steve’s number or have any clue who to contact.
The unpleasant feeling of being stuck in the apartment follows me to the shower as I debate what to do. If I can’t contact Dylan do I wait for him to contact me or leave? When I return to the TV, the news channel continues to loop the same images as earlier of Dylan and the police. In vain, I try his phone again. No answer.
Movement at the opposite end of the house alerts me. How old are the news stories; perhaps Dylan is home? The recent breakin at mine contradicts the possible relief Dylan could be back. No, the security to get into the building rivals Fort Knox. I head along the carpeted hallway toward the front of the apartment and come face to face with a wild-eyed Jem.
Shit. He regards me with equal surprise as he puts a hand on the wall, steadying himself. Dressed in tight black jeans and a loose black t-shirt, he appears the same as every other time I’ve met him, including the fog of alcohol surrounding him, but the cocky retort I expect doesn’t come.
“Why are you here?” I ask him.
He leans against the wall, pulls a packet of cigarettes from his pocket with trembling fingers, and he lights one.
“Dylan looked for you and now I think he’s been arrested,” I say coldly. “You do know about Liv?”
He straightens and exhales a cloud of smoke. “Yeah. And I didn’t ask him to.”
“Why did you leave? You make yourself look guilty.”
Jem’s mouth pulls straight. “I didn’t do anything; I wasn’t there when… it happened. Fuck.”
“They’ll find you,” I say as he pushes past me toward the kitchen area.
The clinking sound of glasses and bottles shouldn’t surprise me.
“Jem, phone the police. Talk to them.” I follow him into the kitchen and hover in the doorway, unsure of his mood.
“Life’s fucking weird, right?” he asks as he knocks back half a glass of brown liquid. “Look what can happen.”
“What happened?”
“Y’know what’s really fucking bad?” he ignores my questions and pours another glass. I fight the desire to say ‘a dead girl’ but because I don’t know wh
at happened, or if he was involved, I choose to stay quiet. “This one. Liv. You know what? I think I loved her and didn’t realise.” Jem snorts softly to himself and his distant eyes step further away. “When I found her I felt something and not fear or guilt. Like something good had died with her.”
I’m unsure what to say or do. Jem is only half in the room with me and his rambling disturbs me, speaking about a dead girl as if all she’s done is split up with him. “I think you need to tell the police what happened, Jem.”
“I think I need to leave the fucking country!”
“If she meant something, like you say, then you’re doing wrong by her. Show the world how you feel.”
Jem laughs, mouth curling. “How I fucking feel? I don’t feel, summer Sky.”
“You just said she made you feel… something.”
He waves a hand dismissively. “I felt my heart for a second, big deal. She’s gone now.”
I inhale sharply. “You really are one fucked up mess, aren’t you?”
“I don’t think I need you to point that out.” He pulls himself forward and approaches, pointing at me with the hand holding his glass. “Think you can fix me too?”
I stand my ground. “I doubt it. Only you can do that.”
“Yeah? I’m fine as I am.”
“Your girlfriend just died of a drug overdose! How is that fine as you are?”
“Shit happens.”
“I don’t believe that’s what you really think,” I snap, “You just said you thought you loved her!”
“This week, yeah.” He switches his gaze to a spot on the wall behind me.
Jem’s slip in defences has been mended already, the alcohol re-entering his system and building back up his wall.
“Well, unless you want arresting, I suggest you call your manager and ask for his help.”
Jem pulls his phone out and slings it on the kitchen bench. “He tried to call. I’ll call him when I’m ready.”
“When you’re drunk enough?”
“Heh.” He empties his fourth glass since we began the conversation and tops it up again. “Gotta have a drink or two, if I do talk to them I want to be my normal self, right?”
Deciding this conversation is going nowhere, I walk back into the room where the huge plasma TV still plays the news, the reports about Liv on loop. As I sit, a picture of a covered body wheeled to the ambulance flicks across the screen. The horror is added to as a glass careers across the room and smashes against the opposite wall. Brown liquid streaks down, I jump to my feet, spinning round.
Jem stares at the TV report, the reality of the world he ran from in Technicolor. A picture of him and Liv appears on screen and he storms over.
“Switch it off!” yells Jem. I scrabble around for the remote. “I said switch the fucking thing off!”
The room falls silent as I hit the off button and Jem slumps into the chair opposite, eyes vacant, and the sudden swing in mood gone. He remains motionless, staring into space and I realise Jem has gone too.
The slumped figure is at odds with the arrogant, cocky bastard I met a few months ago; different to the snide star who told stories about Dylan I didn’t want to hear. Knowing his lifestyle, and listening to Dylan, I was aware he was killing himself. Now by association, someone else has died and I don’t know his role in her death. How has this affected him? His outburst frightened me, but the Jem, who freaked me out at Dylan’s house isn’t the Jem in the room with me now. Whatever this situation wakes inside him is about to kick reality straight into his limbo world.
Chapter Eighteen
Dylan
Blue Phoenix is front and centre in the media again and we have to leave the UK. I wasn’t planning to return to the States so soon, but I’m being suffocated again after days of media invasions. I never thought I’d say I preferred the media in the States, but the girl who died is pretty fucking significant. The police investigations are dropped after a long and intense week. The autopsy reveals a drug overdose, and Jem’s story is backed up by the fact he can’t have been there at the time she died. CCTV showed him leaving the hotel and other footage of him at a nearby nightclub confirms he was away in the window of the time she died. Drugs were found at the scene but when they arrested him, he was clean. I don’t know what the fuck happened and so far he refuses to tell me which pisses me off because I was dragged straight into the middle of the mess.
Tina strongly advises we get Jem out before the funeral. This suits me, but I need to find somewhere to lie low. We’re besieged again and Sky hates being holed up here as much as I do, which leaves the question of Sky and me unresolved. I thought we’d have at least a month together without outside interference to work through stuff, take some new steps in the right direction.
Returning to the States and a different media scrutiny isn’t going to cut it; I want to take Sky somewhere special. Mind-blowingly, pretentious rock star special. Time alone forged us originally; if we can disappear for a while, this may help before she runs screaming from my fucked up life again.
Sky’s protective layer against my environment has reformed; the whole Jem situation has magnified her awareness of this shitty world we’re part of. I explained why she couldn’t get in touch with me, that my phone was switched off while I extricated myself from Jem’s mess, and I received a pointed comment about Myf being with me at the police station. She accepts I wasn’t thinking straight at the time, and told her Myf called me; otherwise, she wouldn’t be involved. I think she’s okay with the Myf situation; I hope so.
Sky interrupts my inner debate as she walks into the kitchen. Back in her skinny jeans and sloppy blue jumper to match her eyes, I’m back to imagining her naked in my bed from a couple of hours ago. When I look at Sky, for the first time in my life, I see a girl as more than what’s beneath her clothes. Sure, the way her skinny jeans cling to her gorgeous, squeezable ass and the way her breasts squash against my chest as she hugs me, fires the desire to yank her onto the kitchen bench and make her scream my name, but the burn for her is deeper than that. She’s seared her name into my heart and wrapped herself around my soul and as long as she remains there, she keeps my demons away and I soothe hers.
Approaching, she tiptoes and kisses me softly, her lips taste of mint. “How’s the crazy today?” she asks me.
“Do you mean the outside world or Jem?”
“Both. How is he?”
Jem’s back now, or as ‘back’ as he ever gets. His constant drugged state hasn’t changed and the events around Liv’s death have no effect on his use. He needs to get into rehab. Now. Liam and Bryn have attempted to back me up on this, but he refuses. Most of the day, he’s locked away in a room and whatever else he says, this guy hurts.
“He needs treatment. Where are his parents? Family? Aren’t they worried about him?” she asks.
“Not really. They never have been.”
Jem has no idea who his dad is and his mum spent her life in and out of bad relationships, a string of men who came in, destabilised her and Jem’s world, and then left again. He had a stepfather for a few years in his early teens. A new male moving into the house of an adolescent teen boy caused issues. Following frequent arguments, the guy kicked Jem out of the house, and he’d regularly sleep on our sofa. Mum was more of a mother to him than his own was, making Jem my surrogate brother. Mum’s death hit Jem hard too.
Sky doesn’t reply, and however much Sky dislikes Jem, I think she realises how fucked up he is too.
She pulls a chair out and sits down, propping her head on her hand. “Don’t hate me for this, Dylan, but I don’t think I can stay here right now.”
“Exactly what I was going to say to you.” A look of shock crosses Sky’s face. “No, I’m not asking you to go; I want out too and wondered if you felt like a Christmas holiday to somewhere un-Christmassy?”
“Where?”
“A surprise?”
“Oh, that look.” She bites back a smile.
“What look?”
“Big kid, Dylan look.”
I cross my arms. “Well, if you want to just stay here instead.”
Sky stands and walks over, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Get me out of this fucked up world for a few days, please.”
I pull her close and stroke her hair, closing my eyes against the fucked up world she’s talking about. “Think of it as a really long date?”
“That sounds good to me. But then what?” She slides her hands into the back pockets of my jeans.
“When we get there?” I grip her hips and pull her against me. “Lots of rock star sex and…”
“Umm. No, Dylan, I meant, what about when we get back?”
I screw my face up; there’s been a lot to cope with in the days since Liv’s death, and now she wants to think about the future. “Yeah, me, Steve and the guys, need to talk. I know I keep saying it but this time…”
One thing shocking, but not entirely surprising to me is Steve’s reaction. He agrees we need to get Jem into rehab, but after the tour finishes. The guy goes down in my estimation every day. The fact he’s more bothered about the Blue Phoenix brand over a person sickens me. He argues that this is the one thing keeping Jem going, his escape, but either he’s deluding himself or is more ruthless than I appreciated.
“I’m not talking about the band. I’m talking about you,” says Sky.
She doesn’t understand still. “I am the band.” I catch her look. “I mean, not just me but I don’t exist outside of Blue Phoenix.”
“Listen to yourself, Dylan. How weird does that sound?”
“Fucked up.”
“Exactly. And you keep avoiding this conversation. As long as you have those pills in your cupboard, you will be fucked up.”
I slide a hand around her waist and pull her closer. “I can leave them behind, but I can’t leave you behind. Come with me for the end of the tour? It’s only a few weeks?”
Sky’s arms around my waist are my anchor to reality, to love, and acceptance. Why did I let her go and leave in the summer? In her eyes, I’m reflected again, a piece of me now part of her. She touches my face with her soft fingers.
