by James Eddy
closely enough to know a bit about his inner circle too. She just hoped it'd be enough.
She weaved her way through the rapidly clearing crowd and approached one of the security guards at the barrier.
“Could you let me through please,” she asked, “I have an interview with Mister Drake.”
The reply came in a distinctively cockney twang and with barely a glance in her direction.
“No press, love.”
“What?”
“There’s no press allowed through here. I've got my instructions.”
“Are those instructions from Mr Cale? Because he’s arranged a one to one thing between Scott and me. It’s all pretty short notice, so it might not have got round to everyone... If I were you I’d go and tell him Rebecca Blake is here waiting for his man.”
It was a pretty decent lie. Quite artful and polite but hiding a little truth too. The security guard weighed up his options, then nodded to her and walked off into the backstage area. Rebecca was right to assume he'd know Louis Cale, Scott’s manager, wasn't someone you messed with. She'd known about his reputation in the industry for some time and she was glad he was working for her friend rather than against him.
It was that hardnosed reputation which caused the first doubts to enter her mind though. This time her head was winning over her heart. There was an ache in the pit of her stomach and she wondered what chance she really had of meeting Scott that night.
She suddenly felt stupid. Of course, Cale would know there wasn't any interview. She decided she'd been wasting her time. That she was waiting at the barrier to the only place she wanted to be, for a security guard to come back and tell her Cale had never heard of her.
She felt down and wondered what her options were. It was either walking away or jumping the barrier. She didn't get the chance to do either. The security guard came over to her.
“Please follow me Miss Blake. Mr Cale is this way.”
She hid her shock as well as she could. Her heart thumped strongly from her chest up to her throat. Her head was spinning. It couldn’t have been an oversight. That wasn't how Cale worked. There had to be a reason for him to let her inside and she could only think of one possibility.
In the five years since she last saw Scott, she'd only done one thing that showed she cared about what he was doing. That had been three years earlier, after reading a particularly horrible review of one of his gigs. She'd leaped to his defence and let the writer know how pointless his review had been. At the time, part of her hoped Scott hadn’t read the letter when it got reprinted in a variety of music magazines. There was also a much larger part of her that desperately hoped he had and that her words showed she still cared about him.
It was only after several months passed without any response that she'd let herself get on with things. With her life and with writing her book. She'd met a nice man called David, who even her mum liked. He was lovely and things could've been great but he was only what she needed and not what she wanted. That ate away at what they had together and by the end, he wasn’t even what she needed anymore. Just a six month footnote. He deserved better but she wanted and needed to be amazed again.
She found it odd to think that Scott might've known after all. But there wasn't time to even try to work out how she felt about that. The security guard had come to an abrupt stop in front of a short, sharp featured man.
Louis Cale was flash, intelligent and as tough as he needed to be. A man of infinite bluster, he was sharp enough to avoid conversations where he wasn't prepared for all possibilities in advance. He always tried to be at least one step ahead.
“So you’re Rebecca Blake,” he said to her.
She felt defensive and couldn't hide it from her voice.
“Yes.”
He stared into her face, furrowing his brow a little as he did so.
“Yeah I can see that... But, I don’t think you’re here to interview Scotty.”
He smiled. A surprisingly warm, hearty smile for a man who probably wasn’t all that used to doing it. It softened his stern, dark eyes to reveal a little of what Rebecca assumed was the real man underneath. She shifted a little where she stood:
“I just wanted to see him.”
“Good... Well, my boy’s right over there,” he informed her with a gentle gesture towards the other end of the corridor.
He carried on talking about something else but Rebecca didn’t hear him. Her eyes were on Scott. Cale understood. He stopped talking and took a single step to the side to let her through.
The light in the corridor was much brighter than when he was on stage, so she got a more detailed view of him as she approached. Scott was busy talking to a tall, chubby cheeked and doe-eyed man in a shirt, tie and hat. He took a swig from a bottle of beer in his right hand and laughed at something the other man said to him. As he did so, Rebecca realised there was still hardly any difference in how he looked. In fact, he looked almost as lost as he did when they first met.
Somewhere below her looks and thoughts, Rebecca’s heart was in charge. Beating out a primal rhythm with a quickening tempo. The nerves in her belly seemed to jangle in noisy accompaniment. Then Scott looked directly at her, freezing her heart as the feeling in her stomach rose and fell in an instant. He removed himself from his friend without removing his gaze from her. Each of them stepped in the direction of the other, sharing the same silent thought that had repeatedly occurred to them in the five years that had led them to that moment:
‘I hope I haven’t changed too much.’
Bonfire Blues
As I stepped off the train and stumbled out onto the platform’s smoothed stone surface, I was searching for something. At least I think I was. It might just have been an excuse for not knowing where I was going. Dan had said staying somewhere different would be good for me, and, at the time, I hadn't argued. Daniel Liman always dealt in absolute certainties when it came to his friends and he'd told me I could stay with him for a while. Just to get my head together. Of course, things are rarely ever that simple.
I probably should've seen it as a sign when I couldn't find his bloody house. I ended up taking a guess on it being a red brick two-floor building that was in just about the right place. I tried looking through the windows. My view was blocked by blood red curtains. I didn’t know what to do other than to go to the front door and knock. I'd hoped it'd be Dan who opened it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn't.
But that's when I first saw Rebecca Blake. She was so tall and blonde and her brown eyes were so huge that even less made sense to me then. Looking back, I can kind of see how that was heightened by the angle of the light shining above her. And how it gave her a halo of hair and light that only disappeared when I shifted slightly where I stood.
The next thing I saw was confusion on her pretty face.
“Hi. I’m Scott Drake,” I told her.
I didn't understand the look she gave me then. She didn't seem unhappy but I hadn't seen anything quite like that look before in my life. There wasn't time to try to understand. It was already clear that one of us had to say something. And I was a bit flustered for some reason.
“Um… Dan?” I babbled.
In an instant, understanding passed across her eyes and I knew I was in the right place. She smiled at me for the first time and turned her head to look back into the house. As she moved, I glimpsed silver butterfly earrings, hidden within the straightened strands of her butterscotch hair. They were followed by the sound of the sweetest, gentlest voice I would ever know.
“DAN?” she shouted, in a tone that was friendly but intimate enough to tell me they were a couple.
“YEAH?” he called back from somewhere unseen inside.
“YOU'VE GOT A VISITOR… SCOTT?”
Each syllable of his response contained more genuine enthusiasm than most people manage in a month of words:
“YEAH! DAMN GIRL… SHOW THE BOY IN.”
He was never going to actually let her do that. I'd already seen the bl
ur of his limbs moving over the carpet's thinning ultramarine. And then he was there, encasing us, all together, in his arms. It was moments like that when he seemed much larger than life, especially for such a skinny guy. And I could see then that he hadn’t changed.
“Come in, come in.”
He took the bag from my hand and carried it inside.
“I can’t believe you’re finally here… That’s a bloody good way to end the day.”
It was only later he told me that the day I arrived he'd been panicking about his most recent work. He never let it show at all that night.
He and Rebecca were kind to me. With him it wasn't a surprise. We had history. But she didn't even know me and still understood how much I needed a cup of tea to deal with my latest emotional cul-de-sac.
I'm probably overplaying it. I'm sure it sounds like a pretty small thing but it felt amazing that night. Rebecca was super sympathetic. And Dan cracked jokes, with kindness in his eyes and a consoling arm around my shoulder. It wasn't long before we were all smiling and moving onto much stronger drinks than tea.
The gentle, pleasant smell of coffee and croissants woke me but still couldn't fully convince my eyes to open. Then I heard movement from somewhere in the room and, through my eyelashes, I saw Rebecca was tidying. It was definitely needed. The morning light, stained red by the curtains, revealed the blue carpet was covered by bottles and cans.
The obstacles couldn't obscure her grace. Rebecca had a way of walking that