by Suzy K Quinn
‘I didn’t want you taking your bike to school because—’
‘Because you heard about a girl getting snatched when she was cycling home from school. Guess what? People get killed in cars every day. Why not stop me riding the bus?’
‘We have space around the house to ride.’
‘Oh, come on. It’s ridiculous. Having a bike and not being able to ride it outside, aged sixteen. Darcy rides her bike to nursery and she’s four years old with learning difficulties.’
‘It’s different with you.’
Liberty rolls her eyes. ‘Because my father is such a monster?’
‘Exactly right.’
Liberty clears her throat. ‘Mum. I have something to tell you.’
‘What?’
There’s a long pause, during which Liberty looks anywhere but at me. Then she says, ‘I know who he is.’
My body goes rigid. ‘What?’
Liberty takes her phone from the bedside table. ‘This is you. Isn’t it?’ She passes me the phone.
My mouth turns dry.
I see a skinny, kohl-eyed teenager with chin-length, punky hair and bony body under a Michael Reyji Ray T-shirt. My teenage self is dragging suitcases behind a straggly, dark-haired man in a leather jacket.
The worst thing about the picture is my eyes. They’re glazed and lovesick. I’ve seen the same eyes since in fanatical cult members.
This girl was me, once. A long time ago. But I feel no connection to her. She’s like a stranger.
There are more pictures under teenage me: a young Michael Reyji Ray, tanned and handsome. In those days he was in good shape, running around stage all night, slashed-up T-shirts showing off his chest. There’s a picture of Michael on stage, and also driving his purple Jaguar F-Type, looking every bit the rock and roll rebel.
Michael is different these days too. I’ve seen pictures. His face is swollen and craggy under his bleached white hair, chin dusted with black and white stubble. We’re both bigger, but I’ve got fitter, he’s got fatter: a toad of a man in black jeans, bright T-shirts and suit jackets.
Liberty watches me closely. ‘Michael Reyji Ray is my father,’ she says. ‘Isn’t he? All the dates add up. And … we have the same face.’
I swallow. ‘How did you find this?’
‘Someone at school showed me.’
‘The girl who gave you the jacket?’
‘No. Someone else.’
My mouth is dry. ‘Did you read the article?’
Liberty nods.
‘What else have you seen?’
‘Not much, just … some old magazine articles. Saying you were sort of obsessed with him. My father.’
‘I’m taking this phone.’
‘What?’
‘Your phone,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you looking at this stuff. It won’t lead anywhere good.’
Liberty shakes her head like a disappointed parent. ‘That’s your solution to everything. Censorship. Control. And then you bring in Nick to back you up. Fine. Take my phone. Take it. And while you’re at it, lock my door and throw away the key.’
‘Listen, you have no idea how good our life is without your father in it. Haven’t I warned you enough about him? Haven’t I spent your whole life warning you?’
‘You know what I think? I think he treated you badly and you need a reason to hate him.’
‘That’s not true. I mean, yes. He did treat me badly. But I have plenty of genuine reasons for keeping him away.’
‘Parent alienation,’ says Liberty. ‘It’s a thing. You should let me make up my own mind.’
I’ve kept my daughter secure behind high gates. We’ve stayed hidden for sixteen years. But Michael’s still got into our home.
‘You can’t ever see him,’ I say. ‘Ever.’
‘You can go now.’ Liberty picks up her guitar. ‘You’ve made your point. Mother knows best.’
Once upon a time …
When Michael Reyji Ray took my hand on that cold autumn night and led me across the parking lot, it felt as if all my dreams had come true.
As we walked, I risked a glance at the god beside me.
Looking at Michael, even sideways on, was like looking at the sun. He was bright and blinding. Everything was clear as clear. Michael’s skin shone. His eyes were glittering stars. All around him was light.
When I was fifteen years old, the doctors found a life-threatening tumour. I’d nearly died. Now at sixteen, I’d gone to heaven. Or at least stumbled upon the meaning of life. His name was Michael Reyji Ray and he was my happily ever after. Our carriage awaited us: a giant black tour bus with wasp-eye wing mirrors and tube-light steps.
The world was brighter than it had ever been and time had slowed so I could take it all in.
‘So you like our band, do you?’ Michael asked me.
I nodded and nodded. ‘I’ve listened to Crimson’s Big Dreams album probably a thousand times. You have no idea what that album means to me. It literally saved my life.’
Michael chuckled. ‘Well, I am honoured.’
‘This is a fairy tale,’ I told Michael as he escorted me up the sharp metal tour-bus steps and into rock and roll fantasy land. ‘I can’t believe this is really happening.’
Everything on the bus was bright, like Michael’s presence had lit it up. The leather sofas gleamed, the chrome tables sparkled and spotlights twinkled like shy little stars.
Bottles of Guinness stood on the bar beside magnums of champagne. There were huge meat pies cut into slices, cocktail sausages and loaves of brown bread.
‘Who’s all the food for?’ I asked.
‘You. If you want it.’
The bus was empty when we boarded, except for a driver lounging in the front seat, feet on the dashboard. He wore a black-leather eye mask and snored loudly.
Michael flicked the driver’s nose playfully and shouted, ‘Danny!’
The driver fell about in his seat, sitting upright and ripping the mask from his eyes.
When he saw Michael, he looked momentarily terrified. ‘Shit. Shit.’
Michael’s eyes were stern as he ruffled Danny’s hair. ‘Have you been on the beers, Danny boy?’
Danny coughed a smoker’s cough. ‘Just sleeping. Power nap.’
‘Good lad,’ said Michael. ‘We don’t want you dozing at the wheel later on. We have a lot of good people on this bus.’
Danny pulled his mask back on his face.
Michael offered me a seat on a leather sofa and grabbed two Grolsch beers from a mini-bar fridge. ‘You’re over eighteen, right?’ He winked, popping open a beer and handing it to me.
I nodded quickly.
‘I know they don’t let you drink until you’re twenty-one in this country,’ said Michael. ‘But this bus is my home town of Dublin. International soil. And in Dublin, you can go to the pub when you’re eighteen.’
I nodded and nodded, a big, dumb grin on my face. He thought I was eighteen!
‘That is one totally cool jacket you have on there.’
I smiled, too shy to meet his gaze.
‘And with a jacket like that you can’t drink orange squash, can you?’ said Michael. ‘You’ve got to go the whole way. Sex and drugs and rock and roll.’
I kept nodding, swigging from the beer bottle.
‘Do you know what?’ said Michael. ‘You are a very beautiful girl. You’re like a little fairy. All tiny and delicate. I can’t stand women getting muscly like men. It looks wrong.’
As Michael was laying on the charm, Paul Graves and his wife climbed on the bus. Paul grabbed a magnum of champagne and moved to the back without saying a word.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ said Michael. ‘What brings you out to see a load of old men play music on a cold night?’
‘I love your music. I went crazy when I got tickets for tonight. Totally crazy. Everyone knew the gig would sell out.’
Michael watched me intently, his eyes twinkly and black. It didn’t feel like a forty-something man picking u
p a sixteen-year-old. It felt like the biggest rush of my life.
‘Hey, will you do something for me?’ said Michael.
‘Anything,’ I gushed, every bit the idiot fan.
‘Paul has got a huff on tonight because we cut one of his songs. Hop on down the bus and tell him you were glad we didn’t play “Come On Home”. Can you do that?’
‘You want me to … what?’
Michael’s eyes glittered. ‘Just tell him. Tell him you don’t like “Come On Home”.’ He patted my bottom. ‘Off you go. Go on, kiddo. I dare you.’
I swallowed and got up. In a daze I wandered down the bus and stood right in front of Paul Graves, who was sitting with his wife. The pair had their heads close together.
I cleared my throat and squeaked: ‘I-don’t-like-come-on-home. I’m-glad-you-didn’t-play-it.’
Paul looked up, eyes slitted and angry. ‘What?’
His beautiful blonde wife said, ‘Michael must have told her to say it, Paul. The little shit-stirrer.’
I scurried back to Michael, who was laughing. He folded me into his arms and said: ‘Well done. Well done. Oh Jesus, the look on his face.’
We talked and talked after that. Or rather, Michael asked questions and I talked. I got enthusiastic about Marvel and manga comics, showed him the Celtic cross tattoo I’d made on my wrist with a needle and black ink and told him about my cancer. Michael learned all about my treatment and my mother and what life had been like growing up.
I told Michael things I hadn’t even told my closest friends – stuff about my mom using the San Francisco free-love no-rules culture to justify being a lousy parent, and how unsuitable her life was for children. How if it hadn’t been for Dee, we would have been taken away from her.
‘My mom wasn’t even up-to-date,’ I said. ‘All that hippy stuff passed through years before Dee and I were born. She clung on to it for dear life.’
I went into huge detail about my cancer too. How embarrassing the treatment was for a teenager just getting to know her body. Having things stuck here and there, being wheeled around without underwear on. So bad. And then having all my hair falling out.
‘The tumour was so big they had to cut it in half to get it out,’ I told him. ‘Do you know what helped me heal?’
‘What?’ Michael asked, dark eyes big and beautiful and fascinated.
‘You, Crimson and Big Dreams.’ I looked at my hands, feeling awkward. ‘You got me through some really bad times. Without your music, I honestly don’t think I would have got through the treatment. You gave me a reason to live.’
‘We touched something pretty deep when we made that album,’ said Michael. ‘It was special, that one. And it takes a special person to feel it too.’
I grinned.
Michael encouraged me to talk so much about myself that night, while he sat and listened. As I talked, he touched and twisted the leather bracelets on my arm and the chunky silver chains around my neck.
‘You’re quite a girl,’ he said. ‘You’ve really been through it. We’ve had a hard life, the pair of us. Harder than most.’
My eyes widened. ‘Did you get sick too when you were younger?’
‘No. But I had a bad time growing up.’
‘Really?’ I was fascinated.
Michael nodded. ‘My dad was a vicious bastard. Talked with his fists.’ He pulled up his black jeans and showed me a long, red scar running over his knee and down his calf. ‘I saw the bone poking out of that, once upon a time. But he made me fearless, the old sod. When someone that big pushes you around, you’re not afraid of anyone.’
‘Your mother—’
‘Died, God rest her soul. When I was two. I don’t remember her. Probably better that way.’
I think Michael’s sadness might have been real. But it’s hard to know, looking back. He was so good at fooling people. Maybe he was sad, but sad about something else. Who knows?
‘But that’s life, isn’t it?’ Michael continued. ‘You should know. You’ve been through it too.’
As Michael and I talked, crew members and girls filtered onto the bus. Some of the girls I recognized from the stage doors – teenagers, shivering in short dresses and Wonderbras. It seemed kind of sleazy, those young girls with bare legs, sitting with old rock guys. But Michael and I were different. We had a soul connection.
Michael whispered in my ear, ‘It’s getting a bit noisy. Let’s go to the bedroom.’ He grabbed a whiskey bottle and a few beers, then led me by the hand into the master bedroom at the back of the bus.
I hesitated at the door, feeling suddenly very sober. The flecks of grey in Michael’s stubble and the lines in his face were stark under strip lighting. I suddenly felt my age. A young, naive teenager with a much older man.
‘What’s up?’ Michael asked. ‘You look scared stiff.’
I tried to laugh off my nerves and misgivings. ‘No. Of course not.’
‘What, you don’t like the bedroom or something?’
‘I love it,’ I insisted, nodding at the compact bedroom with cool cube-patterned sheets and plump cream pillows. ‘It’s nicer than my apartment.’
‘Come here then.’ Michael pulled me forward, and I stumbled inside.
Michael closed the door behind us, then led me to the bed. ‘Are you sure you’re not nervous? You seem a little terrified.’
I tried to laugh again as Michael put on music: his own.
‘Just a little cold.’
As Michael undressed me, my body grew stiffer. He really was so much older. And was it okay to have sex? The hospital said I was fully healed, but was I?
Michael must have noticed I looked frightened, because he said: ‘I thought you’d done this before, honey. You really do look scared stiff.’
I faked a smile then, embarrassed. The last thing I wanted was to look inexperienced or naive.
‘No,’ I said, words steely. ‘Not at all.’
‘Good,’ said Michael. ‘We don’t want any amateurs here. This isn’t amateur night.’
I helped Michael take my clothes off then and he kissed every part of my body from head to toe. At first, he stayed away from any sexual areas deliberately and completely. In short, he knew the moves and I was able to relax. A lot.
I did things that night that I’d never done before. Sex in three different positions. Oral sex, giving and receiving. Truthfully, I would have done anything to impress Michael and show him I definitely wasn’t nervous. Even though I was.
When the sex finished, Michael and I lay in each other’s arms. He stroked my hair and watched me for a long time, then fell asleep and snored. I looked at the walnut dash ceiling, thinking how crazy life was.
Not so long ago, I’d been in a hospital bed, looking at white Styrofoam tiles and thinking they might be the last thing I would ever see.
Now I was in the arms of Michael Reyji Ray. This was my rebirth. A new beginning.
I’d spent my life running with a heavy backpack. Now finally, I could take it off.
Michael and I would get married and live happily ever after, just like a fairy tale.
I was sure of it.
Lorna
Nick and I lay together in bed, my head on his chest.
‘Are you still awake?’ I ask the ceiling.
‘Yes,’ says Nick.
‘What’s the difference between protective and suffocating?’ I ask.
Nick snorts. ‘Probably only a few inches of padding.’
I laugh too. ‘I locked Liberty’s phone in the safe.’
‘Lorna.’ I feel Nick shake his head. ‘Why’d you do that?’
‘She was using it to find out about her father,’ I said.
‘And you think taking her phone is going to stop her? Come on. Let her get out there and make her own mistakes.’
We both listen for a moment, hearing Darcy’s gentle murmurs. But then they fall silent.
‘Phew,’ says Nick.
Darcy used to scream the place down at bedtime. But we’ve got a
routine going now, same thing every night. I take her around the house, showing her how I lock everything up, door locks, chains, deadbolts. Then we do a bath (exactly 37 degrees) and count her yellow soft toys, all thirty of them. Now she goes to bed like a dream and sleeps until morning.
Nick and I lie in silence for a moment. Then I blurt it out: ‘Liberty knows who her father is.’
‘How?’ Nick asks. ‘You won’t tell me or Liberty the first thing about the guy. Not even his name. How could she have found out?’
‘She found some stuff on the internet about him. And me.’ I shiver against Nick’s warm body.
Nick’s arms stiffen. ‘What stuff on the internet?’
‘Photos of me and her father. When we were younger. I don’t know if it’s enough, but … I’m so scared, Nick.’
‘Scared of what?’
‘She might try to find her father.’ I take a shaky breath. Breathe, breathe.
‘I think you have to get a bit real with this,’ says Nick. ‘How long are you going to be able to keep Liberty away from this guy? If she wants to see him, she will. No matter what you do.’
I ignore him. ‘I’ve just got to keep hammering it home. How dangerous he is. Until she gets the message.’
‘How dangerous are we talking, exactly?’
‘How dangerous do you want him to be? Dangerous. Isn’t that enough?’
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just …’
‘You think there are two sides to the story.’
‘I haven’t heard either side of the story,’ says Nick. ‘You’ve told me nothing. And whenever I ask, you close up. Does your sister know about him?’
‘Dee? Yes.’
‘You can tell her but not me?’
‘I didn’t tell her, Nick. She was there. She saw it all.’
‘Do you know what I think? I think you’re running scared and you should face up to all this. You should at least talk about what happened. You shouldn’t run away from it. Face your problems.’
‘You can’t face Liberty’s father. That’s not how it works. He twists everything around.’
‘So move on and let all the fear go.’
‘I can’t do that either. If I let my guard down, he’ll get in.’