Iain was as ever more vocal. ‘Shit! You mean you’re not OK with this? I totally thought you were. That’s what she said. She’s been whispering a heap of sweet nothings while you’ve been gone. Said it was a favourite fantasy of hers to have two guys fucking her at once and that you and Xane going at it earlier had totally turned her on, but he wasn’t up for it because of Dani.’
‘She said that to you?’
He stared at Ginny, expecting an explanation, but she only managed to garble his name.
‘I thought we’d agreed we were exclusive, but I’m gone ten minutes and you’re coaxing my mate into bed with us without even bothering to consult me?’
‘Didn’t …’ she croaked.
‘You fucking bitch.’ His jaw locked unbearably tight, making not only his teeth but his whole skull ache.
‘Ash …’
‘Fuck you. Piss off.’
‘Better do as he says.’ Iain led her away until they hit a band of people coming to watch the live show on stage. Drunk Alien Fuck were finished and a new band had just struck a few warm-up chords.
‘I’m sorry, man,’ Iain said turning back, having released Ginny into the crowd. ‘I swear, if I’d had any idea, I wouldn’t have … you know I wouldn’t. I’m so sorry.’ He came over and tried to pass Ash a beer.
‘You can fuck off too,’ Ash yelled, taking the bottle and throwing it so that it smashed against some gravel. He bent and grabbed another from where the bottles were huddled by the base of the barricade, but instead of throwing it chugged it down instead. He should have known. He ought to have fucking known that trusting a woman was stupid. The only reliable one was his mum. Shit! He’d really thought he and Ginny had something special, but then he’d thought that about Connie too, and she’d let him down.
He really ought to have known. Ginny hadn’t exactly been picky the night they’d met, and then she kept banging on about Spook all the time, trying to get him involved in stuff. He guessed Iain had been more willing to act on her whispered lies, being far more easily led by his cock than Spook ever was.
Great! Just fucking great.
Chapter 21
An overloud voice dragged Ginny from her foggy stupor. Every muscle in her body screamed at once when she tried to move. Where the fuck was she? And what was with the shouting? She needed someone to get her a drink. Even the Sahara wasn’t this arid.
‘Gin – are you awake?’ She somehow managed to raise a hand enough to signal yes, and cover her ears, before the cacophony in her skull deafened her. What cesspit of hell had she landed in? It fucking stank of vomit and fermented barley.
Someone smoothed back her hair, and wiped her face with something moist. ‘Ash?’ she croaked. No, the dark hair was the wrong shade and much too long. Also, her vision might be fucked owing to an inability to make her eyelids open, but she was resting against boobs, not a slate of rock-hard abs. Dani, she concluded. ‘Where am I?’
‘Your tent.’
‘Smells like a sewer.’
‘You threw up.’
That explained it.
‘Do you mind if I hang with you for a bit?’ That made no sense at all. Who the hell asked to spend time with someone who was sick? Her head hurt too much to fathom it out. It buzzed across her temples and down into her ear canals.
By the time she had figured it out and mopped Dani’s tears, she’d gagged twice over a washing-up bowl commandeered from the Deanna Rädsla camper van, and screwed her head on well enough to wonder what the hell had happened to Ash and why he thought it was OK to leave without saying goodbye or discussing where they were meeting next. Hell, she hadn’t anticipated needing to meet him anywhere else. She figured that now all his friends knew about them, he’d be all right with her hitching a ride on the tour bus.
‘Where’ve they gone?’ she asked Dani for the third or fourth time. Not that her friend was making a whole lot of sense. She’d told a long sorry tale about Xane and Luthor and temptation and promises. The gist of which seemed to be that Xane had screwed up in some way that involved Luthor and not cooking breakfast, and so Dani had stormed off the tour bus in a fit of fury without telling anyone, and they’d driven off and left her behind.
Normally she could wrap her head round Dani’s screwy logic and massive biases, but there were too many holes in Ginny’s head this morning for her to be able to sympathise with her friend. She was sure she’d made some unintentionally crass remarks, but where was Ash, and why hadn’t he said anything about making an early start?
Or had he? Because she couldn’t recall a damn thing about last night after the point where he’d rolled off stage into her arms, all warm and sweaty.
‘Are you girls coming out? We’ve a gig tonight in Halmstad,’ August, Deanna Rädsla’s guitarist, called from outside the tent. ‘You’re welcome to come along.’
‘We’re coming.’ Ginny pitched forward onto all fours and began throwing her possessions out onto the grass. They’d be easier to pack in the open, and she needed a good lungful of fresh air. She hadn’t bargained on the sun full in her face. Thankfully, Dani had the presence of mind to toss her some sunglasses.
‘Were you dropping tabs or something last night?’
‘Course not. I’m not stupid.’
She staggered to her feet and collapsed into the only deckchair that hadn’t been packed up and stowed in the camper van. ‘This is down to your homebrew,’ she moaned at Lykke.
‘Totally isn’t.’ Hanne, the bassist, shoved a mug of triple-strength black coffee into her hand. ‘You didn’t drink the homebrew, you said it looked evil and that you were worried you’d find toenails in it.’
‘I did not.’
‘Did too.’
‘I’d remember saying something like that.’
‘Yeah? Do you remember what the band were like that you and Ash went to watch?’
‘What band?’
Hanne shrugged. ‘I think they were from Belgium. We all figured you and Ash were off to get busy somewhere quiet.’
‘Did we?’
‘You don’t remember if you got busy with Ash Gore?’
‘Next you’ll be telling us you don’t remember Spin the Bottle either,’ Lykke remarked, as she fastened a bobble into her black and white hair.
Ginny shook her head, which resulted in her coffee trying to force its way back up through her nose. ‘Did I do something bad?’
‘See, she doesn’t remember whooping like a maniac over Ash and Xane snogging.’
‘Shit! I missed that?’ She shot Dani an uneasy look over the rim of her camping mug.
‘You didn’t miss it, Ginny.’ Dani explained, between several loud sniffs. ‘You were there.’
‘I don’t remember it. Not a thing.’ Not even a blurred image.
‘That’s not good.’ Dani, empress of the understatement, gave her a big melty-eyed stare, full of affection and concern. ‘Do you think it possible you were spiked?’
‘That happened to my cousin once.’ Lykke took a break from pulling up tent pegs to scrutinise her appearance. ‘She ended up in a really bad way and couldn’t remember a thing. She had bruises in all sorts of strange places.’ Ginny didn’t even want to know how bad she looked. The fact that her jaw ached and her eyes would only open as slits was indication enough that she wasn’t about to win a beauty pageant, but those could easily be the results of vomiting. She didn’t feel any aches in unexplainable places.
‘Maybe we ought to get you checked out,’ Dani said.
‘Guys, get real. I’m fine. I was hanging with Ash all night. I hardly think he would slip me something.’ She pursed her lips in response to their ‘oh, really’ expressions. ‘Not that kind of something, anyway.’ The other, yes, absolutely. Once she’d sobered up a bit more, she’d call him and find out what had happened. There’d be a rational explanation for it all. Of course there would.
* * *
Ginny didn’t feel even remotely with it until she’d slept for a few hours. She woke as they
were crossing the Oresund Bridge on the way into Sweden. There was still a steel press clamped around her head, but at least her eyes had recalled how to deal with bright light, so she was no longer obliged to impersonate Nosferatu every time the sun peeped out from behind the clouds.
‘How are you doing?’ she asked Dani. Her friend was awfully quiet. ‘Do you want to talk to Xane? Maybe you should ask him to explain.’
‘No. I don’t know.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘He ought to be the one calling to apologise. What he did was wrong, Ginny. I trusted him, and then he did … he did that.’
Ginny sighed and gently patted her shoulder, struggling to remember what exactly ‘that’ was. ‘Listen, I’m going to call Ash anyway and see what’s what. I’ll see if he can help make sense of this. I’m sure he’ll put Xane on if you decide you do want to speak to him. It’s not as if you left Xane with the option of calling you, since you left your phone behind.’ Dani had actually left everything except her purse behind. It was a good job there weren’t any routine border checks between the two countries.
Ginny dialled Ash’s number but got no answer. Maybe he’d mislaid his phone again. He was forever doing that. Instead, she considered calling Spook, but settled on firing off a quick text instead. She didn’t particularly want to drag Spook into this too. Maybe if she still hadn’t had a response in a while.
Ash returned her text a few seconds later.
I don’t know how you fucking dare. Fuck off you two-timing bitch. We’re done. Don’t call me again.
Astonished, she gawped at the little screen, unable to summon even a mild verbal response. How? What?
Dani who’d read the text over her shoulder, dramatically paled. ‘What happened, Ginny? Is this because of me walking out on Xane?’
That didn’t even make sense, but nothing did at the moment. Something had obviously gone down last night. If only she had the faintest idea what it was. One thing she did know, she hadn’t willingly or knowingly two-timed him, which meant that somebody was clearly stirring trouble. Hadn’t Ash said as much yesterday afternoon, although he’d failed to go into any of the details? And that roadie too; he’d implied that stage light coming down and nearly hitting Xane hadn’t been an accident.
‘What’s been going on with the band while I was at home?’
‘Stuff.’ Her friend sighed drearily.
‘Other incidents like that light slicing up your boyfriend?’
‘Not exactly like. Spook’s guitar went missing and then two batty women turned up with it and made a big fuss, and someone keeps sending me stuff that’s obviously meant to drive a wedge between me and Xane.’
Ginny opened her eyes really wide, because as far as she could see there was a big gulf between Xane and Dani, which rather implied that the tactic had worked. ‘Stuff?’
‘Old photos, but that’s not what made things wrong this morning. No one engineered me seeing that.’
Actually, Ginny wasn’t so certain.
‘I’m pretty sure Elspeth’s responsible for the photographs. She’s trying to scare me off. She hates that we’re happy –’ she sniffled ‘– were happy, and she’s not.’
Ginny wasn’t certain that any of them were really happy, and in any case Dani’s explanation didn’t help her. It made no sense for Elspeth to be the culprit. She’d had virtually no involvement with the woman, and Ash, to her knowledge, had never been involved with Elspeth or Steve. No, someone else was behind whatever had happened last night. If she knew how to get her memory back, then maybe she could work it out, because no way was she going to allow someone to wreck everything she’d fought to have with Ash.
She guessed it proved how out of it she’d been most of the day that it took her until evening to realise that she had an alternative number she could try in order to get some answers. Ash had cut all communication after the first text, which meant she had no explanations, no memories and not even a hunch to go on, other than Tony the roadie implying that the accident on stage last night hadn’t been accidental – and was that even connected?
Spook would know what was going on. Spook knew everything about everybody.
‘Please don’t hang up,’ she begged when he answered.
‘Ginny? I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.’ That wasn’t quite the opening she’d been anticipating. Did it mean that she should give him her side of the story, or that he didn’t know anything either?
‘I’d love to,’ she replied, hedging her bets until she’d established a clearer picture. ‘But I don’t know a lot myself. All I have to go on is a killer headache, total mind fog and one measly text message I don’t understand. I thought you might be able to help fill in the details.’
‘Which particular details?’
‘Last night.’ She chewed her lip. ‘What happened, and why he broke up with me.’
She heard Spook’s sharp intake of breath. ‘I wasn’t aware he had. All right, hold on one moment, let me go somewhere we won’t be overheard.’ She held the line while he moved, and eventually heard a door click. ‘OK, start again, because all I know is that Ash has spent the day with the hangover from hell. He broke up with you when?’
‘Earlier, by text. Spook, I’ve no memory of what happened last night. It’s one big blank from the point where you all came off stage, but apparently I’m a two-timing bitch, so I’m guessing I’m supposed to have made out with someone.’
‘It wasn’t me, if that helps you narrow the list of possibles.’
‘I don’t have a list. I don’t have anything.’
He fell quiet, which she assumed meant he was thinking. ‘I don’t have the answers either, Ginny, but if you leave it with me I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll call you back when I’ve learned something, but it might take a while. We’ve a gig about to start.’
Chapter 22
Gothenburg, Sweden.
‘Come on, Ash. It’ll be fun,’ Iain cajoled, as he burned another hole in the ozone layer with a combo of hairspray and deodorant. For some reason Ash had yet to fathom, Iain felt the need to fumigate himself after a shower. He’d spent the day cuddling and playing find-the-spoon with two girls he’d picked up the previous night, while the rest of them stewed in their individual miseries and Xane rampaged up and down the bus knocking holes into walls and skulls. He’d screwed things up with Dani and he was making sure they all knew about it. No one had even asked Ash where Ginny had got to. Mind you, that was maybe because none of them had wanted to get too close; he’d spent much of the journey into Sweden spewing his guts up into an assortment of receptacles. He’d stopped now, and managed to force down a couple of dry crackers that Spook insisted were the best thing, but he still felt like crud.
Entertaining women was the last thing he wanted to contemplate. Going to pick up women for sex sat even further down his list of fun things to do. Hell, he wasn’t even sure why he was occupying the same space as Iain, other than out of some perverse need to make himself feel even worse than he already did. ‘I really don’t feel like it.’
‘That’s the best reason to do it. Wash the memories away. Start being you again.’
Ash didn’t ask what that was supposed to mean. He had a suspicion he knew, and didn’t like what Iain was implying: that he’d somehow not been in his right mind since the tour began, because he’d been so busy mooning over Ginny. That he was some sort of international playboy and ought to get back to that. Except why would anyone choose to go back to banging away for hours on end for zero reward other than for the express purpose of punishing themselves? And why should he punish himself, when all he’d done was fall for another woman who wasn’t prepared to give him her heart in exchange for his?
God, he’d tried to be so careful with Ginny. He’d known all along that having her round the band and his friends would result in disaster. He ought to have stuck with his guts.
Iain grabbed Ash by the wrists and hauled him onto his feet. The moment he let go, Ash sat again. His friend
sighed and went back to preening. ‘She’s not worth it, mate. I know you were hot for her, but you’re better off out of that one. You saw what she was like. She was fucking all over me.’
‘So you’ve said.’ And so he’d seen, though he still didn’t understand why Ginny hadn’t said anything. She’d not even put up a fight when he’d dismissed her.
‘Hit me if you want. I understand if you’re pissed at me.’ If Iain volunteered as a punchbag one more time, he might actually do it just to silence him.
‘I thought she was the one, Iain.’
‘You always do. Seriously, Ash, bedding a girl more than twice doesn’t automatically turn her into your ideal life partner. I’m not sure there’s even such a thing. Do you really want to tie yourself to the same woman for ever? If you’re going to give your heart and soul to something, you’re better off dedicating your efforts to a long-term affair with your guitar. It’ll bring more satisfaction.’
That was probably true. At least his guitar was reliable, and it didn’t make out with other blokes behind his back.
‘Have you thought any more about what I proposed last night?’
It took Ash a good minute to remember what Iain was talking about.
‘I can show you the lyrics I’ve got, if it’ll help sway you.’
‘I don’t know, Iain.’ He’d been dubious about the whole concept last night, but hadn’t wanted to get into a long-winded conversation about it. It’s why he’d followed Ginny’s cue and trotted off on the pretext of taking a pee. ‘I’m really not sure taking on a side project is what I need right now. Black Halo needs my full attention.’
Iain put the hairspray canister down with a thump. ‘So you can hold it together with rubber bands. Oh, don’t glare at me, I’ve been stuck on this bus long enough to see what’s what. You all barely get along thanks to Xane and his constant drama. The man’s a dick, with an ego the size of Brazil, and if it’s not constantly being stroked, he rages like a lunatic and picks on people.’
‘That’s not true.’
All Fired Up Page 15
