After all, it was not the lift to my room.
CHAPTER FORTY
Beth
I dream that we are together, this time alone by the river in the sunshine. He is still holding my shoes and this tiny detail makes me consider whether we are actually here. Perhaps it is a dream; perhaps not. I don't recall getting here though.
"If I’m dreaming this and you are not really here, then does that make you a part of me?" I ask, as I lean into his warm body.
"Well it might be my dream," he answers with a possessive kiss on my forehead.
"No," I say. "If it was your dream and I’m just a figment of your imagination, my heart couldn't possibly feel this much."
"And what does your heart feel?"
I don't say it out loud but he knows. Overwhelming love. Jealousy. Fear. But most of all, pain that we can't be together always.
"Don't be sad, Beth. When I'm with you, I feel like it's where I came from, in some way. Like going home."
Home.
He lays me back into his arms but I resist, I prop myself to look right into his eyes as he stares up at the open sky. I can't miss a moment.
I hear him wishing it was just his dream, so I wouldn't have to feel anything like I do. If I was merely a part of his imagination I think ruefully, I would have nicer hair and firmer breasts...
I run my finger across his face and he closes his eyes. I gently trace the outline of his features, claiming them as my own. He is the one who is perfect, not me. If anything he is my dream.
I kiss him then sit back and look at the river. He takes my hand.
I can feel that this is ending.
I don't want to ever wake up.
Joel
What can I say about those final hours? Perfection, almost. Perfection but for the hint of that 'Sunday' feeling - knowing that normal life must resume soon. Knowing that there could - no, would - be consequences. Well for Beth there already had been.
I wake up – so it was a dream – to find Beth has gone from my bed. There is no note, no evidence that she was ever there. My recollection is hazy between what happened here and what happened by the river. Shame washes over me. There is no time to think, I see the clock and I know I must hurry. I hope she is OK though.
Today is my last day in England. After we’ve finished recording, I will be driven to the airport for my flight home. I shower slowly, washing away any evidence that Georgia could find. Not that there would be any but I shower like any guilty man would. I am paranoid, I guess. I feel so changed by Beth that I am sure Georgia will just know. Especially if word gets back to her about the way I behaved last night.
I turn off the shower and step out of the stall and onto the mat, grabbing the towel from the warm rail and brushing away the water, invigorating my skin and waking me up properly. I feel a bit sick.
I wonder where Beth is as I brush my teeth. I dress and down half a liter of water from the minibar. It probably costs six or seven dollars, I think. Those things are such a rip-off.
I don't worry about shaving, I don't call Beth's room, I just grab my things and go. It's ten to ten. I am late.
I don't know why I decide to leave my bags with the porter and walk to the studios, maybe I'm feeling rebellious. Maybe because of yesterday's traffic taking so long, I'm not sure. I stick a baseball cap on my head and off I go.
Perhaps because it's so out of character for an international rock star to walk alone through this part of the City, I don't attract any glances at all. I just keep my head down and walk fast. The sun is out again, it's mighty hot and I enjoy the feeling of California-style warmth here on these London streets. There is a spring in my step that has no right to be there. The sky is powder blue and the light flicks off the leaves on the trees, casting patterns on my face as I pass beneath.
So this is how it would feel to be 'normal', I think. To just be able to walk down the street.
I cross over, past the shops I saw yesterday, past the restaurant called 'Poetry’.
I see from the chalk board that they have poetry readings and live music. I'd love to own a place like that. I daydream for a moment that Beth and I are together, working alongside each other day in, day out. Enjoying being together without the pressure of fame or a guilty conscience. That would be heaven to me.
But what about Georgia, what about Harry? I feel bad for them. I’m a scumbag. I feel sad that I could even think of them as getting in the way of what I want. They are what I want too, of course they are.
As I near the studio it hits me how much I miss them. I run the last few yards, aiming to pass the crowds quickly so as not to be recognized. I dash into the studio, apologizing to all I meet.
"About sodding time," snaps Marti. He walks straight outside to light the roll-up he's been working on while he panicked that I wasn't there.
"Sorry all," I say, scanning the audience for Beth.
When I realise that she isn't there, I’m torn up by internal conflict. What I start doing is warming up but what I feel I should be doing is trying to find her. She's probably just sleeping it off in her own room, I think. But it’s strange; I can’t ‘feel’ her at all.
The orchestra strikes up the first chords and I must confess I forget all about everything else for a while and there is peace in my head, with nothing on my mind but the songs to be sung and how best to sing them.
Beth
I am holed up in the hotel's media room with my memory stick firmly lodged in the PC, frantically typing the article for Marcus. I have to get this down. I feel an urgent need for this to be done. Finished.
I can hardly keep my eyes open. Sleep pulls at them, I’m drowning. My heart is pumping wildly. I can barely feel Joel at all but from the time on the clock, I know my last lot of sedatives will soon be wearing off.
I take two more. I took a strip of them from Joel’s drawer before I kissed his head and left early this morning. They work to block the connection between us but they are no long-term solution.
Typing when drugged is not the easiest thing to do. The keys are slowly rotating under my stumbling fingertips. I couldn't risk that Joel would find out what I've planned. After all, it is dangerous, I could accidentally overdose. For me, this is the only way I can let him leave today.
This article is not a work of genius. Frankly, I know it's a mess. But I need to finish it quickly. I type in Marcus’ email address and click ‘Send’.
I've thought about this all night. I think the messages I've been getting, the urge to jump in front of the train, the vision about jumping at Eagle Point, they are trying to tell me something. I can’t live with or without him. I don't want to die but I can't go on like this with Joel in my head and my heart, yet so far away and having made a life already with someone else.
I know that sedatives sever the connection. So I'm going to fall asleep, stay asleep until he’s gone and dream my way to the place where the eagles soar out over the canyon. When I get there, I am going to take a big breath and a running jump.
If it really is the soul's release like the guide said in my vision, then I think on some level I will become free of Joel. If not, then I figure that I will take my own life in that other world, which if nothing else might just sever the connection in this world.
Don't ask me why but I have faith that, one way or another, I will be free.
Joel
I am waiting all day, nervously looking out of the recording booth towards the door to the studio. People come and go. They make my heart sink, they are not Beth.
I start to feel a creeping sense of nothingness. I can't hear her thoughts, I can't legitimately leave the studio to try and get a better connection. I just have to trust that she's OK.
At half past four, just as I think I can't take the waiting for a second longer, something ‘pops’ in my head. I stop what I am doing, reel back and shakily sit down on the floor. Cool fluid floods the spaces of my mind, flowing into the gaps and pushing out thoughts, feelings and pictures. These things rush
across my brain and escape out of a hole that seems to have appeared in my head. I see everything all at once, more than I can understand, images, memories, laughter and above all, infinite understanding of something beyond me, beyond us.
Oh.
Now there is silence, an expanse of clarity like glass forms to shield my brain. Shielding it from Beth.
With my mind now my own and clearing second by second, I take a deep breath and push the air out of my mouth. I get up and start to move about, shrug my shoulders, flex my legs like I'm about to run.
Whatever I knew a few moments ago and however profound it was, it's gone.
"Everything alright mate?" A recording engineer opens the door to the booth, I smile in answer.
"Just needed a quick break," I answer, there is a shake to my voice which I try to mask. I am sweating profusely.
"I'll get you a drink.” He eyes the temperature gauge on the wall and disappears, leaving the door propped open.
A few minutes pass. He returns with ice cold water. You know, I’m starting to feel like 'me' again. Just me. It's like the pain you go through as the blood flows back into a deadened limb that you've slept on. I feel really uncomfortable for about five minutes then start to feel like, slowly, all is coming right with the world again. Like it's all going to be simpler now.
As I drink the water I recognise that, quite unbelievably, the feelings I have for Beth have begun to cool off a little, like remnants of a dream. Tantalizingly real and yet not.
It's time to call my wife and son. It's 10 am in San Diego and – volcano permitting - I’m coming home.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Joel
Marti confirms that the flight home is delayed until tomorrow. I call Georgia and tell her I miss her. She puts Harry on the phone and my heart feels like it is breaking, I miss them so much.
All the hotel rooms have been extended for another night, Beth’s included, according to Nina. She adds that the Met Office predicts the wind will change overnight and we might be OK to fly tomorrow.
Back in the hotel lobby - just one of the scenes of my recent crimes - I feel fear, laced with shame. Despite my spiritual ‘closing down’ I still remember quite clearly what we've been up to and how strongly Beth made me feel for her. I don’t know if she’s aware we’re staying an extra night. I'm scared of facing her. I go straight to my room without calling at hers. My bags are back just inside the door.
Now here I am, pacing the floor, wondering what to do and where the priorities of a good man should lie. I sit down on the carpet for a while. I think of all the things this room has hosted. Transgression. Betrayal. Love. Pain. Joy.
I flick the TV on for distraction, or perhaps as a grounding point. Sky News is on, showing 24/7 images of the volcano spew. It seems almost biblical. Fated that I should stay.
In truth, I am just a man who did a bad thing. I should not allow myself finer feelings, or excuses. I ponder on this for a while. It is getting dark. I stand up and switch on a lamp.
I go to the phone to call Beth’s room, and then reconsider. Outside I hear approaching sirens. I close the window and clamber onto the bed, which gives beneath my weight like I've landed on a cloud. I lay back, intending to close my eyes and 'find' Beth, to see where she is, what she's doing. Will she know I am looking, I wonder? I hope not.
As I relax into the soft mattress, lying upon a soothingly warm duvet, my eyes relax into their sockets and quite unintentionally I begin to dream my way into a deep sleep.
Hearing the sound of raised voices from the corridor, I awake some twelve hours later, rubbing my eyes and opening them to see I am still here in the hotel bedroom, fully clothed and stinking of dried sweat. I feel through the mists of sleep that I have woken from an arduous, epic nightmare.
I start to remember it. God, I was trapped again in the black void. For hours I swam through its terrifyingly dark emptiness. Like a moth dragging myself towards pinprick lights that I could never get nearer to or further from, I was in a space I did not understand, which made no sense to the programming inside my head.
An entire night struggling to breathe and feeling desperate. Within the nightmare I tried to imagine soft blue skies and open fields stretched out somewhere far beneath me. But there was only the black void. My imaginings would not materialize behind my wide eyes. There was no escape. And there was no Beth.
And I know, as a human being if I'm nothing else that this dream spells trouble and I should try again to find her. Because I am not sure anyone else would know where to look, or how to get there. I’m scared.
Scared of being trapped in the void again. Of being completely alone in a place that terrifies me.
Scared of being lost.
I will try and find her physically first. The blackness is a last resort. I try the phone. There is no answer to her room. I call reception.
"Hi, I'm staying in the hotel and trying to locate another guest, a friend of mine, room 319?"
"I'm sorry Sir, the hotel has a policy of not releasing guest information... have you tried calling your friend?"
"Yes, well, I called her room but she has been - well - missing I suppose since yesterday morning... I'm a little worried. Would you be able to check her room please?"
"Let me see, Sir. I am just checking our records."
"Her name is Beth." I hear typing and clicking.
"Yes, I see on our computer system that the guest in room 319 checked out yesterday morning. It seems that your friend is no longer staying at the hotel, Sir."
I thank her, hang up and hurriedly call Marti's mobile. "Hi, it's me, I - "
"Have you and your journalist friend finished your 'interview' yet? We have been waiting for you Mr Shagging Vine."
"I'm not with her, Marti, she's been missing since yesterday morning and the hotel receptionist tells me she checked out already. Do you know anything, Marti?"
"She's your special friend, not mine, what would I know?"
"Can you check with the rest of the team? Please Marti, I’m worried."
"She's your stray, Joel. If you've lost her then it's your business. The article was a bad idea anyway. She's better off gone. I’ve just had her boss on the phone trying to get an exclusive photo shoot – I told the cheeky bastard to sod off, we already did a deal with the Herald."
I take a minute to try and think of what I can do, what I can say...
I don't get a minute –
"Your wife's been on the phone. We put her off, said you were recording. I thought you might not want her interrupting anything. Your friend must be pretty hot in the sack to have you disrespecting us like this, not even showing up..." He laughs like a dirty old man.
"For God's sake Marti, grow up. Beth is a journalist, she has disappeared. I’m a married man."
"Yes, holier than thou. I get that. But you can cut the innocent act with me, Joel. We all saw you, all over each other you were. Hands everywhere, both going up to your room. I never saw her husband... if she even has one. We all know what you've been up to. Now, to be honest I don't give a crap what you get up to. Even if it gets out. All publicity is good publicity and all that... but the guys are losing respect for you. Stop fannying about with your girlfriend and pack your bags. Get your ass down to Reception. NOW. There’s a car waiting for you."
Bang. He's hung up.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Beth
I could hardly focus behind my sunglasses. I asked the driver to take me straight to the nearest hospital with an Accident & Emergency department. I took the last six sedatives in one hit as I walked into the A&E reception. I did not stop at the main desk. I just kept walking. I managed two circuits of the hospital’s ground floor before my legs gave way. I hoped that someone would find me and I would be in the right place to get help.
Inside my head, I was back at the Canyon. Vast red rocks glistened in the disappearing orange light. My guide had gone. The sun was setting over Eagle Point.
Something was pulling me toward
s the edge. This time I didn't stop to think.
Bracing myself for my stomach to lurch, I jumped.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
New Year’s Eve
It’s a strange kind of New Year’s Eve. I’m not in the mood for celebrating with my friends. I’m with Katie. We are playing Guitar Hero; she’s strumming to Katy Perry’s ‘The One That Got Away’. There is one thought in my head… I need this year to be over.
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