The Summer Island Festival

by Rachel Burton

  Staying on the Island after the summer hadn’t been something that Willow had allowed herself to think about because everything had been so tied up with Luc, and Luc would be going back to America in September. It made sense that she left again then as well, to salvage what she could of her life in London.

  But as she sat on the beach in Ryde, Skye’s arm around her, sipping from her can of gin she realised that not every memory of the Island was about Luc and that this feeling of warmth and contentment came from being surrounded by love and happiness and music. All the things she’d shut her heart down to when she met Charlie.

  ‘You’ll be all right you know,’ Skye said. ‘Whatever you decide.’

  Willow rested her head on Skye’s shoulder, just as she used to when they were kids. Maybe she could live on the Island again.

  *

  They met at Seaview’s only decent restaurant. Luc had wanted to pick her up but Willow had told him she’d meet him there. She didn’t want this to seem like a date, despite the kiss, even though she had thought about Luc almost constantly since the kiss. Willow wasn’t ready for anything that might seem like a date.

  He was waiting for her when she got there. He stood up as she sat down and something inside her melted as though this was a first date with a handsome stranger and not dinner with the boy she’d known for most of her life. She watched his eyes drop from her face to her chest to her legs, and then back again and she smiled to herself, glad that she had taken Skye’s advice in the dress shop in Ryde, glad that she had bought the red dress instead of the black one.

  He ducked his head to kiss her cheek and he smelled amazing. Willow wanted to pull him towards her, bury her face in the soft part of his neck, breathe him in.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, sitting down again, his fingers finding hers across the table. ‘I missed you.’

  ‘I missed you too,’ she replied, thinking about how much she’d hoped he would take a break from writing and come through the door of The Music Shop with her morning coffee, or phone her in the evening as she lay on the single bed in her mother’s house alone. He never did. She knew how focused he could be when he was writing.

  ‘How’s the hunt for Storm going?’ he asked.

  She shook her head and felt his fingers squeeze hers. ‘It’s not,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in touch with his old agent and King Silver’s old management company but nobody knows what happened to him.’

  ‘Nobody knows anything?’

  ‘His agent says that King Silver’s bass player might know. I’m waiting to hear from him, refreshing my email every five minutes.’ She paused and sighed – the sense of frustration welling up inside her again. ‘He’s my last hope,’ she said.

  ‘Be patient, Willow,’ Luc replied. ‘It’s only been a few days.’

  ‘I know but rumours have been spreading like wildfire and the festival is selling out as we speak.’

  Luc sucked air in between his teeth. ‘I’d forgotten how quickly news spreads on the Island,’ he said. ‘But selling tickets is a good thing, right?’

  ‘Not if I can’t find Storm it’s not,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to talk to Mum again but…’

  ‘No joy?’

  ‘None. She’s refusing to speak about it.’

  Luc looked as if he was going to say something and Willow remembered that he had something to tell her. She suspected it was about Storm Tyler but she didn’t want to talk about him. She was sick to death of Storm bloody Tyler. Even Skye had opinions on what Willow should do to find him – none of them sensible or useful.

  Before Luc got a chance to say whatever it was, a waiter appeared with a bottle of wine that Luc must have ordered before Willow had arrived. Instinctively she put her hand over her wine glass as he poured.

  ‘Oh God I’m sorry,’ Luc said. ‘I didn’t even think to ask if you wanted wine. Let me get you something else.’

  Willow looked at her hand and realised what she’d done.

  ‘No it’s fine,’ she said, pulling her hand away. ‘Wine is fine.’ She let the waiter pour, watching the yellow liquid fill her glass and feeling Luc’s eyes on her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked when the waiter left.

  She felt her cheeks colour. ‘Charlie never liked me to drink too much,’ she said. She couldn’t look up to meet Luc’s eyes. How had she allowed her life to be so tightly controlled? How had she convinced herself that the perfect life that Charlie insisted on was possible?

  Luc didn’t say anything for a moment and Willow picked up her wine glass and took a sip.

  ‘You don’t have to drink it,’ he said gently.

  But she did. As it slipped down her throat it tasted of freedom and potential. It tasted of escape and new beginnings. It tasted of the Island and the possibility here.

  ‘Cheers,’ she replied as he caught her eye. She knew he didn’t expect an explanation and she had a feeling he understood, even without one.

  They chose their food, knees pressing against each other’s under the table just as they had been in the pub the week before – Luc’s legs too long to fit comfortably under any table. He had never been happy sitting still for long, always rushing on to the next thing, the next dream. The fire in his heart still shone from him even now but something had dampened it – something that he wasn’t telling her about.

  ‘When we were in the studio the other day,’ he said as the waiter left them again, ‘you said you hadn’t listened to “Chord of Plenty” in years. Do you listen to any of the music we used to love?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. Charlie doesn’t like it – but she didn’t say that out loud. ‘I just have a different life now – we go to the opera, the ballet. Charlie loves jazz…’ She trailed off realising she’d been talking in the present tense about a life that she was pretty sure was in the past.

  ‘That’s not like you, Willow.’

  ‘People change.’

  ‘No they don’t,’ Luc replied. ‘Not really, not deep down. Why did you let him change you?’

  The question was harsh and Willow found herself wanting to defend Charlie, wanting to stand up and tell Luc that he didn’t understand, that he had no idea what her life was like now. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t defend the man who, for the last eighteen months, had become increasingly irritated with her, increasingly controlling. She couldn’t defend the man who told her what to wear, or how much to drink, or who she could be friends with. She couldn’t defend the man she refused to marry.

  And she wondered if Skye was right when she’d said that she’d never really believed that Willow wanted that life.

  ‘I wanted to be changed,’ she said instead. ‘I wanted to forget and he offered me the opportunity to step into a whole new life.’

  ‘Because of me?’ Luc asked, his voice so quiet she could hardly hear him above the noise of the restaurant.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Never because of you.’ Willow knew that was true now. It wasn’t Luc she had been trying to forget. She hadn’t run away because Luc hadn’t turned up at the beach hut that morning. It had been so much more than that. ‘I wanted to forget how everything had fallen apart after my parents split up. I never understood what happened and I couldn’t cope with not understanding so I walked away from it all and Charlie was there to fill the hole in my life.’ She didn’t tell Luc that she had never told Charlie about him, that she had never spoken about him at all. ‘The more time I let myself get submerged in Charlie’s life the less I wanted to come back here, to the point where we’d pay for Mum to visit us,’ she admitted, leaving out how much Charlie had hated visiting the Isle of Wight.

  ‘Has being on the Island made you want to listen to music again?’ he asked. ‘To play again?’

  ‘I’ve been practising mandolin every day since Dad came home,’ she replied. ‘Does that answer your question?’

  He beamed at her, his smile lighting him up as though he was glowing from within. Talking about music had always done that to him, even the merest mention
. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I’d been thinking about music for a while though,’ she went on. ‘Since before I came back to the Island.’ She paused, looked at him. ‘Since I saw you on American Stars.’

  ‘You watched it?’ he asked, surprise in his eyes.

  ‘You were brilliant. You should have won.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I even bought your record. It was the first CD I’d bought in years.’

  ‘I didn’t think people bought CDs anymore,’ he said as his hand found hers across the table again as their food was put in front of them. Everyone in Seaview would know about this dinner by the next morning and Willow didn’t care. Let them gossip.

  ‘I’m old-fashioned,’ she replied.

  ‘Will you go back to London?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll have to and I should go soon. I need to sort my stuff out, work out what to do about the flat, but…’ She trailed off, shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  They changed the subject as they ate the fresh fish that the restaurant served and talked about the Island they grew up on, touring with The Laurels, the early days of the festival.

  Willow was so caught up in Luc, in the touch of his leg, the feel of his fingers, so caught up in reminiscing about the past that, for a moment, she forgot about the festival and Storm Tyler and the fact that her mother was still refusing to talk to her about the tape.

  ‘Have you seen Dad?’ she asked eventually, after they’d ordered coffee.

  Luc nodded.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since before the council meeting,’ Willow went on. ‘I’ve been kind of avoiding him. Is he mad?’

  ‘He’s not angry,’ Luc said. ‘But I do think we’ve raked up a past that your parents might not want to remember. Call him tomorrow, play mandolin with him. Everything will be all right, I promise.’ But Willow knew he couldn’t promise that and it didn’t shake the strange, ominous feeling she’d had since she’d made that promise she couldn’t keep in the council chamber on Monday night.

  ‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that there’s a rumour that Storm Tyler was on the Island in the summer of ’99 and that he was going to play the Folk Festival but never did?’

  Luc’s eyes widened. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Tom Newell.’

  ‘That must have been when he recorded the demo,’ Luc said. ‘Have you asked your mum about that?’

  ‘I’ve told you I’ve tried but she won’t talk about it. She just keeps telling me to leave the past where it is.’

  ‘I said I had something to tell you,’ Luc began. ‘Something my agent told me.’

  ‘Your male agent.’

  ‘Sam,’ Luc said with a smile. ‘My forty-eight-year-old male agent.’

  Willow sipped her coffee and waited for him to continue. She didn’t want to know who “sweetheart” was. Not tonight.

  ‘Back in the early Eighties Storm did a solo tour. It didn’t go very well – you know he went completely off the rails on that tour.’

  Willow nodded.

  ‘Well according to Sam,’ Luc went on, ‘Storm’s support act on that tour was The Laurels.’

  Willow gaped at him. She hadn’t come across any of that in her internet searching.

  ‘As in our parents?’ she asked.

  ‘As in our parents,’ Luc confirmed.

  ‘Why did nobody ever tell us?’ Willow wondered out loud. ‘Why does nobody seem to know? There’s nothing online about it – I’ve been looking.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Luc said. Willow looked at him. Was there something else that he wasn’t telling her?

  ‘Luc, what do you think the chances are of finding Storm?’

  ‘I got the impression that Sam thought we should let sleeping dogs lie, and before you ask, he didn’t tell me why.’

  ‘This was the stupidest idea I’ve ever had,’ Willow said. ‘Trying to find Storm Tyler is proving to be impossible. Nobody knows where he is. Maybe your agent and my mum are right, perhaps we should leave the past in the past.’

  ‘Maybe Storm doesn’t want to be found. I think the whole music industry destroyed him in the end. I think he just couldn’t handle the pressure and the publicity and the fame. He had a lot of obsessive fans and if you’ve been looking him up online, you’ll know that he was loathed as much as he was loved. People wrote a lot of crap about him.’

  ‘I guess,’ Willow replied.

  ‘This industry,’ Luc said quietly, fiddling with his teaspoon. ‘This industry is so cut-throat. It squeezes every last drop of blood out of you and there’s nothing you can do about it, nothing you can do to save yourself.’ He paused, took a breath. ‘I think that’s what happened to Storm.’

  But Willow didn’t think he was talking about Storm anymore.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. He looked suddenly pale and uncomfortable. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

  ‘Can we get out of here?’

  23

  Luc

  They walked down the beach together hand in hand, fingers entwined. For a while neither of them spoke, but Luc was very aware that they were walking towards his apartment, away from the side of Seaview where Willow’s mum lived. All he could think about was how good it had felt to kiss her on the clifftop the other day and whether she’d let him kiss her again. He was thinking about what her lips felt like on his and he didn’t notice, until it was too late, that they were walking along the stretch of beach where Skye’s dad’s old beach hut had been before they pulled it down to redevelop, the stretch of beach where he and Willow had swum together that last night. He’d been avoiding it since he got back, not wanting to remember how he’d let Willow down.

  He felt that familiar sense of panic in his chest, as though somebody was tightening a rope around his heart, and he started to walk more quickly, trying to get away. Willow’s grip on his hand tightened and she pulled him back.

  ‘You can’t avoid it forever,’ she said softly as she stepped away from him.

  She must have noticed that he always walked back up into the village at this point and walked to his apartment the long way around. She must have noticed his excuses and the way he avoided this stretch of beach.

  Despite his best intentions, Luc still hadn’t started writing the record he was contracted to write. Alone in his apartment all he had been able to think about was Willow. Tonight he’d been more determined than ever to tell her the truth and yet he still couldn’t do it. Not completely.

  He turned to face her, meeting her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘That night,’ he replied, his eyes briefly flicking towards the sea. ‘Well, no, not that night… the next morning. Not turning up I…’

  ‘Luc you’ve already apologised,’ Willow replied. ‘It’s OK, I understand now.’ She paused. ‘That summer was so awful and you were the one thing that kept me going. I didn’t see how much you were struggling too and I’m sorry for that.’

  He should have made more effort to keep in touch with her, to find out how she was, to help her live the life she should be living instead of hiding behind this person she thought she wanted to be in London. He could see that the more time Willow spent on the Island, the more her mask slipped. The hardness that he had seen in her face on that first day in The Music Shop and then later in Skye’s studio had all but disappeared and the Willow he used to know was looking back at him.

  ‘I loved you so much,’ she said. Luc tried not to focus on her use of the past tense, trying not to read too much into the implication that she loved him but didn’t anymore.

  She reached up and touched his face, gently rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone. ‘We were so young, and we were dealing with something we didn’t understand. I should have known there was more to it, but I was so wrapped up in my own stuff. When you didn’t turn up that morning, I should have tried harder to find you.’ She paused. ‘I’m so glad you’re here now, Luc. I’m so glad I’ve had this chance to se
e you again.’

  She spoke as though this was temporary, that after this summer they would both go back to their separate lives on opposite sides of the Atlantic and never see each other again. And even though Luc knew that was probably true, that having a relationship with Willow was impossible for so many complicated reasons, he didn’t want to let her go. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her towards him. Her arms snaked around his waist and they stood together, leaning into each other, the shadows of the past circling around them.

  After a while, as though following some unspoken agreement, they gently pulled apart and started walking again, hand in hand towards the apartment building that Luc was staying in at the other end of the stretch of sand. It was ridiculous that he hadn’t walked back this way before – it was much quicker than walking through Seaview.

  ‘You wanted to tell me something,’ she said quietly. ‘What was it?’

  He didn’t want to tell her anymore; he didn’t want to spoil this moment between them. But he knew he couldn’t leave it like this; he knew he had to tell somebody.

  ‘Shall we sit?’ he said, taking off his jacket and placing it on the sand for her to sit on. He sat next to her and she took his hand again.

  ‘You were saying that Storm might not want to be found,’ she said. ‘That the industry destroys some people. Why do I get the feeling that you weren’t just talking about Storm?’

  Luc knew he wasn’t hiding anything from her. She always could read him like a book.

  ‘You know how I told you I had the panic attacks under control?’ he began.

  Willow nodded.

  ‘Well that’s not strictly true. I did have them under control until American Stars but after that…’

  ‘They came back?’ she asked, her hand tightening in his.

  ‘Yup.’ Luc shifted around a little to look at her. ‘I was fine the whole way through the competition – I think I was fuelled entirely by adrenaline as I kept winning round after round. The first time I noticed anything was wrong was right before the live final. I was sick before I went on stage.’