The Summer Island Festival

by Rachel Burton

  Luc’s mouth was full of croissant so he couldn’t reply. He just raised his eyebrows in question.

  ‘Roger bloody Beck,’ she said. ‘Do you remember him?’

  She watched him swallow. ‘That little…’ He stopped, taking a gulp of coffee. ‘He’s still making a nuisance of himself then.’

  ‘He’s a councillor now and taking out the full weight of his endless disapproval on the festival licences.’

  ‘Who voted for him?’

  ‘I asked the same question but Mum says everyone is denying it.’

  ‘Someone must have!’ Luc smiled, and it lit up the whole room. Willow watched Luc licking the crumbs of his croissant off his fingers and her stomach fizzed again. She looked away.

  ‘How long are you staying?’ he asked.

  ‘Not long,’ she replied. ‘I have to go back to work next week.’ But as soon as she said the words, she knew she wouldn’t be. The thought of going back to London made her feel uncomfortable in a way she didn’t want to think about too much and she turned to look out of the window towards the sea.

  ‘So you’re not staying for the festival?’

  ‘It’s strange being back,’ Willow said, ignoring his question. ‘You must feel that too.’

  ‘It is, but I did come here for a reason,’ he replied. ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘I didn’t have anywhere else to go,’ she admitted, meeting his eyes as she turned towards him.

  ‘Serendipity, like Skye said.’ Luc leaned over the shop counter towards her. He was so close she could smell his aftershave. The electricity between them was as strong as it ever had been and as Luc’s gaze dropped to her lips she felt her breath catch in her throat. When the shop bell jangled they both nearly jumped out of their skins.

  ‘Disturbing something?’ asked the new arrival.

  ‘Dad!’ Willow exclaimed, walking around the counter to greet him as he enveloped her in a huge bear hug. ‘What are you doing here? You’re not due back until next week!’

  ‘I came back early,’ Don replied. ‘I needed to see my little girl. How are you, Willow? I’ve been so worried.’

  ‘I’m OK, Dad,’ Willow said quietly, stepping away from her father. ‘You didn’t need to rush back; you didn’t need to cancel gigs for me.’ She paused. ‘But I’ll admit that it’s so good to see you.’ She hadn’t seen her father enough over the years and she was overwhelmed with regret.

  ‘I flew over on Rocco Beezon’s private jet,’ Don said with a grin.

  ‘Rocco’s here?’ Willow asked.

  Rocco Beezon was a friend of Willow’s dad. He was also the lead singer of a rather famous band from Seattle. He was one of those people who look like they haven’t had a wash in a while but was actually a multi-millionaire.

  ‘He’s headlining The Big Festival on Friday,’ Don replied.

  Don walked over to where Luc was standing and slapped him on the back.

  ‘Good to see you, mate,’ he said leaning against the shop counter. ‘How are you?’

  Luc shrugged and Willow saw a look pass between the two men that she couldn’t work out, as though Don knew something about Luc that nobody else did.

  ‘Must be nice for you two to catch up after all this time,’ Don said.

  ‘She’s the same but different,’ Luc responded, looking at Willow.

  ‘It’s weird,’ Willow said. ‘Everything’s weird.’ Luc smiled and she felt her breath catch again. She dipped her head and looked away. She hadn’t felt awkward with Luc this morning, not like she had the first time he was here, or in Skye’s shop. But now her father had arrived and she didn’t want him to get the wrong idea – it had only been a week since her disaster of a wedding.

  ‘Where are you staying, Dad?’ she asked. ‘At the house?’

  ‘No, I’m staying with Rocco. He’s renting a place in the same apartment block as you, Luc.’

  ‘It’ll be good to catch up with him,’ Luc said, without much enthusiasm. ‘I stayed with him earlier in the year,’ he explained to Willow. ‘When I was recording in LA.’

  Luc’s life must be so different these days but he still felt so familiar. She’d seen him three times now and he hadn’t really told her anything about his life; he hadn’t even mentioned American Stars. But why would he? They weren’t friends anymore, not really. Luc Harrison was in her past. The chemistry she was feeling was nothing but old memories.

  ‘Anyway,’ Don said. ‘I’m jet-lagged and need a sleep but your mum said I could pick up a ukulele that she’s made for Rocco.’

  ‘Did she say where it was?’ Willow asked.

  ‘Still in the workshop,’ Don replied. ‘It’s the only one there. I can get it—’

  ‘No,’ Willow interrupted. ‘I’ll go.’ She was glad of the excuse to step away into her mum’s workshop – the excuse to have a moment alone, away from Luc.

  The workshop was messy but Willow spotted the ukulele straight away. It needed stringing and she started to hunt around for an open packet so as not to break into one of the new packs in the shop. There were plenty of guitar strings scattered about, but the steel would break the delicate bridge of the ukulele. She started to open drawers, hunting for the nylon strings she needed.

  She knew she was using the ukulele strings as an avoidance tactic – she could easily take this ukulele out to her dad as it was and Rocco could find his own damn strings. Rocco Beezon had that same sense of entitlement that so many of her parents’ friends did – it was one of the reasons she’d wanted to get away from musicians in the first place. They always seemed to think that what they wanted should come first. But she kept looking for the ukulele strings anyway to avoid being near Luc. Not that being in a separate room stopped her from thinking about him.

  The nylon strings were in the last drawer she looked in, but as she pulled them out, something else fell out with them – a black plastic rectangular box – something Willow hadn’t seen in about twenty years. She put the strings to one side as she opened the box. Inside, as she’d suspected, was a DAT – a digital audio tape, something that a lot of recording artists had used during the Eighties and Nineties. Her parents’ band used to record to DAT and Willow remembered listening to early versions of their songs on tapes just like this.

  But what was it doing here? Willow knew that her mother kept all The Laurels’ old recordings meticulously archived in the attic back at her house. It was one of the few things she was truly organised about and she wouldn’t have left one of the tapes here amongst this jumble of ukulele strings.

  She examined the tape and found an inscription, written in pencil on the inlay card – NF/GG/Aug 1999. Willow knew that this had nothing to do with The Laurels – Cathy had never labelled their recordings like that. She felt goose bumps on her arms as she wondered what she’d found and why it had been hanging around for the last nineteen years.

  It could just be junk of course – but there was something about it that made her think otherwise.

  11

  Luc

  Despite her father being right next to him, Luc couldn’t take his eyes off Willow until she disappeared into her mum’s workshop. He had to stop thinking about her. He had to stop seeking her out. Willow was his past. He had to think about his future now.

  ‘How does she seem, do you think?’ Don asked when Willow was out of earshot.

  ‘It’s hard to tell,’ Luc replied. ‘Like I said on the phone I haven’t seen her for so long but…’ He paused.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘There’s something she’s not talking about,’ Luc went on. ‘I don’t think she’s telling anyone why she walked away from her wedding.’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t know,’ Don said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And how about you?’ Don asked. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ But he felt so far from fine right now.

  Don looked at him for a moment as though weighing something up. ‘You’re writing again?’ he asked.

&nb
sp; Luc nodded and turned away so that Willow’s dad couldn’t see the lie in his face.

  ‘Are you here all summer?’ Luc asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I’m here for as long as Willow needs me.’

  ‘She says she’s going back to London next week, back to work.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ Don replied. ‘It would be nice if she stayed a bit longer don’t you think?’

  ‘I guess,’ Luc replied, refusing to think about how much he wanted Willow to stay.

  He could see that Don knew he was lying about writing again. He and Luc had talked about the anxiety and the writer’s block when they had both been staying at Rocco’s place in LA earlier in the year, just before everything had got so bad that Luc had stopped working completely.

  By the time he had arrived in LA he had already known that he needed to come back to the Island, but he hadn’t imagined for a moment that Willow and Skye would be here too. He wanted to tell Willow everything but he didn’t know where to start. He didn’t know if he should tell her anything at all now that these old feelings were floating back to the surface.

  Before he had time to think too much about it, Willow came back with the ukulele.

  ‘Sorry it took so long,’ she said. ‘It needed stringing.’

  Don smiled, taking it from her. ‘I could have done that.’

  Willow shrugged. ‘It’s done now,’ she said.

  ‘Well I’ll see you two later,’ Don went on, stifling a yawn. ‘I need to go to bed.’

  ‘That’s not very rock ’n’ roll, Dad.’

  ‘I’m an old man now, my love,’ Don said as he left. ‘I need my beauty sleep.’

  Once her father had left the shop Willow put something down on the counter in front of her. ‘I took a long time because I found this,’ she said quietly sliding the object towards Luc. He picked up the DAT and turned it over in his hands. He hadn’t seen one of these for years – most musicians stopped recording to DAT over a decade ago.

  ‘The Laurels used to record on these didn’t they?’ he said looking at her. ‘I wonder what’s on it?’

  ‘How would we even play it to find out? Does anyone still have DAT players?’ She seemed odd, almost shifty as though she didn’t want anyone else to see the tape. ‘Even the studio uses Pro Tools these days.’

  ‘Tom Newell has bought Pro Tools?’ Luc asked, surprised that he’d stepped into the digital age. Tom Newell had arrived on the Island nearly twenty years ago and had taken over the small recording studio that was attached to The Music Shop. Don and Cathy had built it originally just to record for The Laurels but musicians visiting the Island over the summer often wanted to record while they were there so they had been happy to hand the day-to-day management over to Tom when he asked about it. Over the years many famous records had been made there, as Tom was happy to tell anyone who had the misfortune of getting into a long and boring conversation with him.

  ‘I guess Tom might still have a DAT player though,’ Luc said as he turned the tape over in his hands and noticed the pencil inscription on the inside of the case. This recording, whatever it was, had been hanging around for a long time, but what did NF/GG mean?

  A sensation that felt like a memory but not quite as strong washed over him as he looked at the tape. It felt as though he was trying to grab hold of something, but it slithered out of his fingers. He was suddenly very aware that this tape was significant somehow. He put it back on the counter and Willow immediately picked it up and put it in the back pocket of her jeans.

  ‘It’s probably just an old recording of Mum’s,’ she said. ‘And if it is then we shouldn’t listen without checking with her first.’

  Luc wanted to step closer to her, lean across the counter towards her, his eyes on her lips as they had been when Don walked in.

  He needed to get away from her, to do something, anything, to take his mind off her, off the past, off the fact he couldn’t seem to write music anymore. He looked at her again and their eyes locked. He couldn’t help himself as he kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘It is lovely to see you again, Willow,’ he said. ‘I hope you decide to stay for longer than just another week.’

  The bell jangled behind him as he left, and he could still feel the sensation of her skin on his lips.

  12

  June 1984

  Cathy spent the next few months practising her songs and writing new ones. By early summer she had nearly an hour’s worth of material that she was confident with and Storm asked her if she was ready to play in front of an audience.

  She had seen Storm once a week since the night she had spent at his apartment. He would take her out to dinner and then they would go back to his flat and get stoned and play music together before falling into bed in the early hours of the morning. Cathy had never felt more beautiful, more independent, more grown up in her life.

  Brian had stopped paying her half of the rent on the bedsit when Cathy dropped out of the Academy and, when she told Storm about this, a part of her had hoped that he would ask her to move in with him. But instead he had offered to pay the rent for her instead. There was something about this that made Cathy a little uncomfortable, the first time she had ever felt uncomfortable with Storm since the day she met him, but she was in no position to argue. When the first rent cheque arrived she found out once and for all that Storm’s real name was Neil as she’d suspected.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she told Storm when he asked her if she thought she’d like to play for an audience. She didn’t feel ready but she knew she couldn’t just keep playing the same songs over and over again in her bedsit or Storm’s apartment. She had to get out there and feel the fear.

  It was just a small pub on a street parallel to the one Storm lived on, but it was crowded with folk fans, most of whom were star-struck to find Storm Tyler there and disappointed to discover that he wasn’t playing. Despite that, Cathy’s set was well received and, afterwards, she felt a sense of accomplishment that she had never felt when she was at the Academy.

  Storm caught her arm as she came off stage, the crowd still cheering as she left.

  ‘Play with me,’ he said, his green eyes glinting.

  ‘On stage?’ Cathy asked stupidly. She couldn’t believe she was about to play on stage with Storm Tyler.

  ‘Of course on stage.’ Storm grinned. ‘Where else?’

  They played “Gamble Gold” as an encore, to an appreciative crowd. It was a song they’d played together many times late at night at Storm’s apartment and the song that Cathy felt had sealed her fate when she had first heard Storm perform it at the Astoria nearly a year before.

  Had it really been less than a year? Life could change on the turn of a coin.

  ‘You are ready, aren’t you?’ Storm had whispered to her as he trailed kisses down her collarbone, his fingers entwined in her long blonde hair, in the small room at the back of the pub as they packed their mandolins away. Cathy’s stomach fizzed, not just at his touch but at the thought of touring with him, opening for him in just a few weeks’ time.

  ‘Lucky bitch,’ Pip said the next day when Cathy told her about it. Cathy had been disappointed Pip hadn’t turned up at the pub to see her play the night before. She wondered if Pip were jealous and if this somehow marked an end to their friendship. The thought of it made her feel sad. She wondered how many other people she would end up leaving behind.

  A few days before the start of Storm’s solo tour Cathy met up with her mother in the café at Liberty’s.

  ‘It’s not too late you know,’ her mother said.

  ‘Too late for what?’ Cathy replied.

  ‘To stop all of this. To cancel this tour with Storm, to go back to university or to come home with me. It’s not too late.’

  ‘I’m not cancelling the tour,’ Cathy said stubbornly, sticking her chin out.

  ‘You know your father will never speak to you again if you go.’

  ‘That’s not my problem,’ Cathy said. ‘O
r my choice,’ she added quietly.

  ‘Oh we always have a choice,’ her mother replied.

  For a few moments they sat in silence, drinking their tea, listening to the murmur of conversations around them and the gentle clink of teaspoons against china.

  ‘Do you agree with Dad?’ Cathy asked eventually in a small voice.

  Her mother shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I think he’s being stubborn. I think we must let our children go out and make their own mistakes, so if you ever need me, Catherine, I will be there. All you have to do is call, OK?’

  Cathy nodded and shortly after made her excuses and left. As she stepped back out onto Regent Street, she blinked back the tears in her eyes.

  13

  Willow

  The first thing Willow thought about when she woke up the next morning was the tape. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since she’d found it, but at least it had stopped her thinking about Luc’s eyes, or his smile, or the sensation of his lips against her cheek. She should be thinking about Charlie, about her future and his place in it – if she even had the right to decide that anymore. She shouldn’t be thinking about tapes or Luc or that spark that still seemed to be there between them.

  Willow had seen the way Luc had examined the DAT the day before and she couldn’t work out if he knew something about it or not. But she did know she had to find a way of listening to it without telling her mother. It might just be an old recording of The Laurels, but she knew that if she told her mum that she’d found it, Cathy would dismiss the tape and it would disappear forever.

  The only answer was to talk to Tom Newell, to listen to his endless anecdotes and to find out if he had an old DAT player. But she didn’t have time for that today. First she had to see how far her mother had got with the planning permissions and then she had to have lunch with Skye.

  She wasn’t much looking forward to either.