“Don’t you think everyone deserves a chance? She’s probably had a tough life and has turned to drugs to deal with it. We need to know her story before we judge her. Anyway, you were the one stressing about impressing Eric’s mum.”
“Eric-Mama is a worthwhile person. The only way you are going to impress this woman is by giving her handouts.”
“Whoa, that’s pretty judgey, coming from you. You are always the one telling me not to be so harsh.”
“Yeah, well, this is different. When the drugs come in, everything else leaves.”
I picked up the menu, and then I put it down. I needed to explain. “Anyway, I need to find out the facts about Jack so we have to get her talking.”
Before Angie could answer, Shirley came back from the toilet.
“I’m starving. Do they have pancakes here? With maple syrup and whipped cream and bananas? I need the sugar.”
She ordered the food and we got coffees.
“So, Jack’s mum, ahhh… Shirley, what do you do with yourself?” Angie asked her. “Are you married?”
“No. No. Never married. It’s just me.”
“What about Jack’s father?”
Wow, Angie wasn’t going to subtly ease into this, was she? I’d have still been edging around the subject weeks later.
“He’s not got a father.”
“Well he’s not freakin’ Jesus!”
My mouth hung open but Shirley just laughed. “He sure isn’t. He’s always been a bit of hell raiser, but he’s a good boy. It’s been tough for him. We never had much when he was growing up, and I wasn’t the best of mums.”
Angie rolled her eyes at me, but I tried to ignore her. It was pretty obvious that she’d not been the best mother in the world.
“But he’s got to have a dad, right? An ex-boyfriend?”
“He sure as hell wouldn’t have told you, I bet. He’s embarrassed about me, and I don’t blame him. I’m glad he’s making something of himself. And he’s got you. You’re a pretty thing. A lot more classy than Jack. Not that that counts for anything.
“There was no boyfriend. Nothing like that. I was pretty myself when I was younger. Smart, too. I got a scholarship to university. Was going to make something of myself.”
Her eyes darted around, not focusing on anything in particular, but she didn’t stop talking. It was like her mouth operated separately from the rest of her.
“But they didn’t let that happen. Treated me like trash, he did, forced himself on me, and then threw me a few bucks to get rid of the baby. I couldn’t. Even after all that, I couldn’t. But I had to drop out. Now Jack goes crook if I try to get a bit of money out of the bastard.”
I tried to keep my face neutral to cover my shock. She’d been raped. The poor woman. Even Angie gasped. But Shirley didn’t seem upset. She just glanced around, looking for the waitress.
Before I could say anything, our coffees arrived. Shirley kept adding sugar to hers, until it was more sugar than coffee. She took a few big gulps of it. I couldn’t believe that she could drop something like that into the conversation so casually, as though it wasn’t anything. I’d be so crushed, even after all these years.
When the waitress sat her pancakes on the table, Shirley beamed with delight and covered them with syrup.
“So, who was the father?” Angie asked.
My mouth fell open. You don’t just blatantly ask a question like that. I waited for Shirley to react but she just shovelled the pancakes into her mouth, eating them as though worried someone would take them away from her. When she finished, she gave us a dismissive look.
“Isn’t it obvious? It was that lawyer guy. All full of his own self-importance now. Frank.”
y cup slipped out of my hand and shattered on the floor.
Chapter 11
I went back Angie’s place to try to deal with this. She cleared the laundry off the sofa so I could sit down. I curled up into a ball and she put a blanket over me.
“This is the man my father entrusted me to when he took off. He didn’t just dump me on my own, he dumped me with a rapist. How could he? Maybe he didn’t know. He couldn’t know.”
Even though I said that, I wondered. He had to know something. He’d signed Storm with his management company—as a favour to a friend. That friend was Frank. That freaked me out, and made me feel nauseous. Did Jack know about this? He’d said Frank was his father’s lawyer, a go-between, but then he’d been so weird about me working with Frank. Since the beginning, he’d mixed lies and the truth in a way that I didn’t know what to believe. I could only trust the things I’d learnt from other people.
I needed to piece all this together.
“You know, I always had a weird feeling about that man. He creeped me out.”
Angie got a packet of biscuits out of the cupboard and put them on the table. Chocolate Teddy Bears.
“Yeah, I remember you saying.”
“I wonder where Jack got his genes from. He really got lucky there. God, he’s not going to look like Frank when he gets older, is he?”
“I don’t know. What does Frank look like? I’ve never met the guy.”
“He’s not ugly for an older guy, he’s just a little bit of a creeper. Well a lot of a creeper after what we heard today.”
I sucked the chocolate off the Teddy Bear.
“You think we can totally believe her? She’s not exactly a reliable witness. Do you really just blurt out that kind of stuff to a couple of strangers in a cafe?”
“She’s not on trial here. And I think so. I mean, she just seemed so numb over the whole thing. It’s not like we could’ve asked for the gritty details. Maybe I should check university records or something. Anyway, it makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Why would Frank act as a go-between for someone else?”
“You could ring your dad?”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s under house arrest. It’s not like he’s going to want to talk to me about that. He never tells me anything anyway.”
“Yeah, true. God, it sucks to be you. I thought I had it bad with the Eric-Mama evil eye, but your life is turning into a major drama.”
I leaned forward and got another biscuit, although I’d hardly tasted the first one.
“They make you think about when you were a kid, don’t they? School lunch boxes and all that.”
I looked at it.
“Not really. I never had a lunch box and I never had packet biscuits.” It reminded me that we’d come from different worlds. No one brought their own lunch to my school.
“I betcha never had fairy bread either.”
“There are a lot of things I never had. None of the important things.” I flopped back on the couch. “I’m going to have to quit working for Frank. I can’t be around that man any more. The thought of seeing him again makes me want throw up. And I need to sort things out with Jack. Aren’t we supposed to be going through the honeymoon period now, where we just screw each other’s brains out? Instead it’s all stress and angst and him being impossible.” I wound my bag strap around my hand, picking at the stitching.
“Make a list and work out what you need to deal with first I mean, you can’t really do anything about the whole rape thing, since it happened years ago.”
“Well, I could. Maybe that poor woman just needs some help. She’s had to carry all this for years and raise a son and all that. It’s no wonder she’s so screwed up. And that’s why Jack is so screwed up. If we could fix the problem at the source, it would all unwind.”
Angie held her hand up. “Stop. Stop right there. You can’t fix this.”
“I feel responsible. This is all entangled with stuff that happened years ago and my dad is somehow involved, too. They were best friends. He had to know about it.”
“It’s not your fault, Hannah. You aren’t responsible for what your dad did. You aren’t responsible for what your father’s friends did either. It’s all stuff that happened a long time ago. We have to worry about what’s happening now.”
Angie was right. I couldn’t change the past but surely I could do something to help.
“I’ll just grab the laptop.”
“Hey, Angie, if Jack and I moved out of the apartment, would you move in with Eric? I mean, if he asked you?”
She disappeared into the bedroom then came back and set the laptop on the coffee table.
“Probably not. Not now. Maybe one day in the future. I know it’d be the best solution for you, but I’m not going to rush things just because of that.”
She had a fair point. It’d be unfair for me to interfere with things just to have them work out for me. I wondered if I’d rushed into things, moving in with Jack.
She played the video on the screen. It looked amazing.
“I don’t think the band would be nearly as successful without your videos,” I said. “They are fantastic live, but that’s not enough nowadays. The fans, they want everything online now.”
“Thanks, man.”
“God, Jack looks sexy on TV. I wish he could always be like that. Then I could just mute him when I needed to. And rewind the good bits. You could edit out him being a dick.”
Angie grinned at me. “Yeah, remember when I had a crush on him? So over that, now I know what he’s really like. But, man, does he ever look hot on stage.”
“We’re a great team, really.” I grinned. “You, me and the guys. I shouldn’t forget that.”
Angie nodded.
“We have to focus on the positives.”
“Do you think I can keep working for Frank?” I asked Angie. “Do you think I can act well enough to not let him suspect what we know? He’s got a locked filing cabinet in his office. I want to get into that cabinet.”
“You should totally take a cake in for morning tea and put sleeping tablets in it. Then, when everyone’s passed out, you can steal the key to the cabinet and get access to those files.”
It sounded good. In theory.
“What if I overdo it and kill them or make them really sick? Then the police come and analyse the cake? They’ll tie it back to my dad and it’ll look like I’m super guilty. Plus, some of the people in the office are really nice and I wouldn’t want to kill them.”
I had to get access to those files somehow, though. Anything Frank had hidden had to be of interest.
-o-
“What are you doing here?” I asked when Spud came in the door. “Are you planning to sex up your girlfriend on our couch again?”
“Obviously not, since she’s not with me. What’s with you, anyway? Jealous that you aren’t getting any Spud loving?”
I shuddered.
He grabbed a banana out of the fruit bowl.
“Hey, that’s our last banana. Put it back.”
He ignored me, peeling the banana and taking a bite without taking his eyes off me. I looked at Jack to say something, but Jack just shrugged. He never backed me up when it came to Spud. He just kept silent or laughed, and that made Spud even worse.
I sighed and went back to my work. I had an assignment due in two days.
“How are things going, Hannah?” Eric asked. “If you are under too much pressure, you can get me to take over some of the management stuff. You’ve got a lot on at the moment.”
“I’m fine, Eric, but thanks for offering. This is why you are my favourite member of the band.” I glared at the other two, but they just ignored me.
“Anyway, I can’t stick around. I’ve got a party to go to. Good times, hot chicks, drugs and booze. You coming, Jack? Tucker will be there.”
Jack looked at me. I hadn’t said anything about the party the other night, but he knew I was shitty about it. I hadn’t slept well and had slipped out of bed when Jack got home around dawn, stinking of booze, and slept on the couch. The other couch. At least, he hadn’t smelt of that girl’s perfume.
I pursed my lips. I wasn’t going to tell him not to go to the party, but I didn’t want him to go.
“I shouldn’t,” he said. But he said it in that voice that made it sound like it was me who was holding him back. A look passed between the two of them.
“Mate, you are so pussy whipped,” said Spud and he made whipping gestures. “I’m never going to be some woman’s bitch.”
God, he made me angry. I wanted him to just go. Jack wouldn’t be half as much a dick without Spud’s encouragement.
“There’s no pussy whipping here. There’s just being considerate, which is what human beings do. But you aren’t a human being, obviously, so you should just do the world a favour and die.”
Chapter 12
We were all at dinner when Jack got the call. His face turned ashen and he slumped over. Even before he said anything, the change in him scared me.
“What? You’re joking. That can’t be true. Fuuuuuck!” He didn’t sound angry though, just empty and weird.
He put his phone on the table and stared at it as though it might come to life and attack him.
“We have to get out of here.”
“But we haven’t eaten yet,” said Angie. Then she looked at his face. “Oh!”
We paid the bill and walked out without Jack explaining. We knew this was not something he wanted to discuss there. We headed for home, but Jack decided he wanted to go to a bar. “We need a drink.”
Angie raised her eyebrow at me, but I had no idea what this was about. Eric seemed just as puzzled.
Jack got a round of shots. We sat with the drinks in front of us, wondering when he’d talk. Jack stared at the jukebox in the corner with its flashing lights, not talking and not drinking.
He got up and put on a song.
“This was his favourite song,” he said as the music started playing.
“Spud?” said Eric.
What the hell was going on? I reached for Jack’s hand. It felt limp.
“That was his mum. He didn’t come home last night. She got worried.”
“But he’s okay?” I asked. Inside, I panicked. He’d done something stupid and the whole band would suffer. I’d have to spend my night getting Spud out of some trouble.
“He’s dead.”
The room turned silent and fuzzy. It was too big an idea to fit in my head. I’d seen him just yesterday. He’d been going to the party. He’d been fully alive.
And I’d told him to die.
I’d actually said that. But I hadn’t expected him to actually…
Oh, hell.
“How did it happen?” asked Eric.
“Car crash.”
I didn’t say anything because I felt like I didn’t have the right. I couldn’t pretend we’d ever been friends. I never liked the guy, but I definitely hadn’t wanted him dead. I wanted to comfort Jack, to say something to get that look off his face, but no words could do that.
“When’s the funeral?” asked Angie.
He said Spud’s mother had been crying too much on the phone, that he’d not understood much of what she’d said.
Then we drank and we sat, not talking, not making eye contact, just thinking about the space that was empty now.
“I’ll cancel the recording session and the gigs,” I said and I squeezed Jack’s hand.
This would be a mess for the band. They couldn’t record. They couldn’t play gigs. Everything would grind to a standstill. But I couldn’t mention that. Not with Eric and Jack. I shouldn’t have even been thinking about practical matters but I couldn’t help myself.
They both looked disastrous. Jack’s shoulders quaked, but he didn’t cry. I knew he wouldn’t, no matter what.
“Let’s go home,” I said. “It’s better to not be in public. We can grab a bottle to go.”
Jack nodded and threw back his drink. He gripped my hand tight as we walked home. A cold breeze blew around us but the chill couldn’t make me feel any
worse.
When we got home the four of us sat, still not talking. Even sitting on the sex spot on the couch didn’t seem so bad now. Jack got his phone out and kept staring at it, as though the phone itself had killed Spud.
“Remember that road trip we did with Spud?” asked Eric. “The one where we ran out of fuel and were stuck on the side of the road for hours. Then he found that car and siphoned the petrol out of it.”
“With his mouth. He sucked the petrol. Got a shitload in his mouth.” Jack grinned, a sad grin.
“He was a crazy guy,” Eric said.
“How did you meet him?” Angie asked.
I got up and got beers from the fridge, and handed them around.
“I met Jack when I was in uni. I lived in a share house near the campus with a couple of girls. One of them brought him home for a night of noisy sex, then he moved on to the other one.” Eric stopped and looked at me as if worried he’d said too much, but I nodded for him to continue. It wasn’t like I didn’t know about Jack’s past. “The two of us got talking the next day about music. So we started jamming together, and one thing led to another. We decided to get a band together and play some gigs.”
Jack laughed. “I’ll never forget those days. We knew two songs. Two completely different songs. I had a shithouse guitar that someone had left behind in the squat where I lived. When we started playing together, I realised it was something I was actually good at… but we were just mucking around. We never thought we’d do any more.
“Then we were at a bar one night and this guy was shitfaced and trying to pick a fight with us. He kept picking and picking, until I had no choice but to punch him just to shut him up. We got chatting and he told us we could play his cousin’s birthday party if we let him play drums. We thought it was all shit, just the beer talking. Except he rang a couple of days later to set up a rehearsal.”
“That party… we had to learn a bunch of songs within a few weeks. The three of us played those songs over and over again until we could get them half right. I think I still have scars on my fingers.”
Bad Boy Redemption (Bad Boy Rock Star #3) Page 6
