Unplugged: A Blue Phoenix Book

by Swallow, Lisa

  “Well, you have a bloody funny way of showing it!”

  “I fucked up. I lost my shit. But I’m here now to fix this.”

  “Lost your shit? It took this long for you to recover from your childish tantrum and come and look for us?”

  “You could’ve come back!”

  “What? You took my keys, Craig! You told me to fuck off, that you were done.” I stand. “No, I won’t come back.”

  He leans back in his seat, legs outstretched. “Well, you can’t stay here forever, where are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll find somewhere.”

  “I’m not having my daughter living in some dodgy area with single mothers and drug dealers!”

  “You created this!”

  “No, you did the day you got pregnant and asked me to help! I gave up everything for you and Ella!”

  “And I didn’t? You are so fucking selfish!” I yell.

  The kitchen door opens and Louise hovers in the doorway. “Sorry guys, Ella’s listening and she’s getting upset. Can you keep it down?”

  I clench my teeth and close my eyes. “Sorry. I’ll come now. Craig’s leaving.”

  “I’m not leaving without Ella. You stay here if you want but she’s coming with me.”

  “She is not!” I shout. “We’re staying here!”

  Louise holds a palm out to me. “Cerys. Shush.”

  Then I see her, Ella in the doorway next to Louise clutching her rag of blanket. Her eyes break my heart, the expression I’ve seen every day since we got here. Almost every day, on the days Liam paid her attention the pale, lost look was replaced with a smiling child. The tears aren’t far, for me and her.

  She steps into the room and says in a small voice. “I want to go with Daddy.”

  I am a hairs breadth away from smacking Craig’s smug look across his face. Louise’s furious expression meets mine and she tips her head, indicating I should talk to her. “Wait there,” I say to Craig.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he replies and lifts Ella onto his lap.

  How? How can Ella forgive and forget so easily and snuggle up to him? Fighting frustrated tears, I walk into the hallway to Lou.

  “Why did you let him in?” I hiss.

  “You’re not seriously going to go with him?” she hisses back.

  The weight of the last two weeks falls on me, dragging me down. Craig is right. What choice do I have? Stay here and impose on the kindness of Linda and Jim, and stop Ella spending her Christmas with her Dad? Or go with him, give Ella her Christmas and take things from there?

  “For Christmas, Lou. Then I’ll decide what to do.”

  “Cerys! You’re a fucking idiot! Don’t do this! You can’t go back to a man who treated you like shit.”

  “You don’t understand; he’s done me a favour.”

  In the midst of all the crap, there’s been a glimmer of something else. I could cope if I needed to. Inadvertently, Craig’s put me in a position to see other possibilities. Another man showed me I was strong, told me I was amazing, and kissed me in a way that proved he truly believed his words. Liam showed me I’m worth more than a life with Craig. I’m not stupid, I know I could never have a relationship with Liam Oliver; but I do know I can find myself, and then find someone worth me.

  The problem is I want this man to be Liam because over the last few days he’s imprinted himself on my heart and soul.

  CHAPTER 13

  LIAM

  The house is eerily quiet when I let myself in; I expected the TV, or Ella, on high volume. I take a quick scout around the place and nobody’s here. It’s Christmas Eve, where is everyone?

  Louise is likely to be taking part in the Christmas Eve tradition of drinking from lunchtime until falling-over-time; and if previous Christmases are anything to go by, Dad will have been dragged out last minute shopping by Mum.

  Will I ever get a warm welcome walking through this door from anyone apart from the dog charging round the house in excitement? I head upstairs with my rucksack, back to the tiny room with the single bed. A world apart from Dylan’s. Yeah, I could’ve spent the few days back at my place in London, or come back earlier but the band sticking together until the press attention lessened made more sense.

  I spoke to Honey once a couple of days ago, when I answered my phone without checking who was calling. The call ended with tears and her apparent undying love for me. After several days around Dylan and Sky, seeing what a genuine connection between two people looks like, I had nothing for her. Yeah, I can’t run forever, me and Honey need to talk; but the fact Cerys has been on my mind and in my dreams since I left tells me until she’s out of there, there’s no room for Honey.

  I missed Cerys. Bloody weird, but I did. I asked Louise for her number the other day but got a lecture about how I should leave her alone. That pissed me off; but I figured I’d see Cerys again when I got back to Wales, and next time I leave I’ll take her number with me.

  My real bedroom door is open, and I pause on the top step. Last time I was in there, the floor was covered in toys, books, and clothes. The brown carpet is clear. I push open the door. The open curtains allow the winter sun to shine into the clean and tidy room. Even my guitars have been rearranged where they were when I left years ago. This is my bedroom again.

  I drop the rucksack on the floor and my heart drops with the bag. Looks like I should’ve tried harder to get Cerys’s number because I don’t think I’m going to see her again anytime soon.

  ****

  With a well-earned Christmas beer or two, I lounge in front of the TV waiting to see who comes home. My hassled Dad arrives with his hands full of shopping bags.

  “Back are you? Beer. I need one,” he says. “Help your Mum with the bags.”

  Getting Dad a beer and shaking my head at his gruff greeting, I do as he asks and go outside to Mum.

  “Liam! Why do you always sneak back?” she asks.

  I kiss her head. “I didn’t decide until this morning.”

  “How’s Jeremy?” I can’t believe she still calls him this. Jem hasn’t been Jeremy since he was in primary school, apart from if we want to annoy him. If Bryn really wants to piss Jem off, he sings him the Pearl Jam track of the same name. “Terrible business about him and that poor girl.”

  “Mmm.”

  She catches my look. Mum’s used to my refusal to discuss Blue Phoenix business with her. A few years ago, the press began to understand my family is told nothing, if I keep things that way; my parents and sister are left alone.

  How soon can I ask Mum the question about Cerys’s whereabouts without arousing her suspicion? Inside the house, we unpack the bags together and I remember Cerys’s words about my non-rock star behaviour. As if I’d behave like Liam the rock star at home, Mum won’t stand for bad language and manners so, like all kids returning to the home of their childhood, I’m back to my childhood self again.

  “I see I’ve got my bedroom back,” I say, shoving vegetables in the fridge.

  “Oh, yes. Cerys and Ella went home.”

  “Home?” I suspected but didn’t want to believe she’d go back to the guy who treated her like shit. “To her parents or Cardiff?”

  “Craig came for her yesterday,” says Mum matter-of-factly, as if she’s gone home after a holiday.

  “Oh.” I pick up the mince pies from the table and open the box, taking one out to eat. “They sorted things out then?”

  “Well, I think they’re going to. I hope so, for the sake of that little girl.” She slaps my hand as I pick up a second mince pie. “Liam! Don’t eat them all.”

  I chew on the sweet pastry that really doesn’t go with the beer I was drinking. Is that right? Should Cerys go back to someone who hurts her, for the sake of Ella? Cerys said Ella doesn’t get attention from her Dad. Maybe Louise has the full story.

  ****

  Louise and company sit in the same spot as the other night: the night I kissed Cerys. I pass the Christmas tree and wonder if Ella is
having her Christmas Eve in front of a different one. Shaking the thought away, I head for the pub.

  Cerys is right; I’m the sweet guy who fails at the badass rock star act. I don’t do much better at the dark and brooding like Dylan either, and I knocked drugs on the head the first time Jem ended up in rehab. I’d say I don’t fit the clichés until I think of Honey. Yeah, well, our relationship isn’t what the world wants to think it is. Honey hasn’t told the press and neither have I. Are we both unsure?

  Louise doesn’t spot me until I appear next to her with a vodka, which I slide toward her.

  “Liam!” She hurls herself at me and I steady the stool she’s about to fall off. Her swimming eyes meet mine. “Glad you came back for Christmas. Thought you were going to disappear back to Barbie in La-La Land again.”

  “I’m going back after the New Year,” I say. “Blue Phoenix isn’t exactly flavour of the month currently.”

  “Yeah. How’s Jem?”

  “Same. How are you?”

  She raises and eyebrow at my subject switch. “Cerys left.”

  “Yeah.” I fight the need to go twenty questions on her, if she’s drunk, she’ll tell me anyway.

  “Can’t believe she went back to him,” she continues. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Why did she?”

  “Ella wanted to go home. Me and Cerys had…words, I told her she was a fucking idiot; but Cerys insisted Ella should have Christmas with her Dad, and then she’d decide what to do after Christmas.” Louise takes a long drink from her vodka and tonic. “I said I’d help out if she changes her mind.”

  So not a definite reconciliation? As if, it matters to me.

  But it does. I don’t know why, but I got sucked into Ella and Cerys’s life. This is me, soft-hearted Liam who doesn’t like people hurting, that’s why. Okay, I know that’s a lie too. What happened in the time we spent together? We knew each other before and we were drawn together again by a shared past and a shared hurt but this is more. Connecting with Cerys was like plugging into a new energy, a resonance that opened my heart and called it home.

  “I can help her too.”

  “You can help by staying away, Liam. She’s confused enough without you hassling her.”

  “I meant financially!” I snap.

  “Sure you do!” She drains her glass. “I know you kissed her. Nice one, messing with her head like that.”

  “I didn’t exactly force myself on her!”

  “Yeah, if you’d screwed her I’d punch your face!”

  “Sure, Lou...” Shit, this girl is drunk. I’d better hang around to help her home because nobody else at the table looks capable. One girl with long brown hair is asleep against a man’s shoulder already and several people have their elbows on the table heads in hands. Two other girls with tinsel wrapped around their hair and shoulders sway from side to side and sing along with the cliché Christmas songs blaring from the pub.

  She sits back. “But you didn’t screw her, so I won’t.”

  Cerys is in Cardiff. I’m on my way back to the States. So is this over before we started? Would we have allowed the resonance to change our lives? The painful awareness that Honey is the person who suits my lifestyle edges in.

  “Did they take the presents from under Mum and Dad’s Christmas tree?” I ask.

  “What? Why?”

  “Some of the gifts under there were for Ella, weren’t they?”

  Louise shakes her fringe from her face. “You’re weird, worrying about a little girl’s Christmas.”

  I don’t tell her I’m worrying about Cerys’s Christmas if she opens my gift to her in front of the dickhead who’s Ella’s dad.

  ****

  CERYS

  3 a.m. Thanks, Ella. Craig’s pissed off with her coming into the bedroom and nagging every hour since midnight; I wanted to put her back to bed and scold her but Craig insists we get up. His plan is to let her open the gifts so he can crash back to bed again.

  At least her dad is here.

  Of course, Craig’s splurged stupid amounts of money on the huge pile of brightly wrapped presents that she rips through, opening them in ten minutes flat. Her spoils are piled beneath the wrapping; books, Lego, DVDs, and boxes of toys requiring batteries I doubt I have. Ella grabs the last gift.

  “I saved this one because the paper is pretty,” she says.

  The silver and gold wrapping stands out from the gaudy Santas and reindeers, and Ella’s right; the paper does look pretty. Not the kind of wrapping paper selected for kids, which arouses my suspicion about who this is from. Unable to read the label, she thrusts the present at her Dad who kneels on the floor next to her.

  “Who bought my present?” she asks.

  His brow furrows as he reads the label. “Liam.” He glances sharply at me. “Who’s Liam?”

  “You know who, Louise’s brother.” I fight the pink but fail. Shit, Liam. “He probably didn’t want Ella to feel left out when he bought everyone else a present. He’s home for Christmas.”

  The suspicion on his face grows at my rambled explanation. “You mean Liam Oliver? Since when does he come back to Wales? Thought LA was more his scene these days.” He pauses and I attempt to keep my face unreadable. “Must’ve been fun living with a rock star.”

  “Yeah, right, I had a great time living there,” I snap. Thankfully, Craig doesn’t want to go back to the topic of his behaviour so he drops it. The bastard hasn’t once apologised.

  “Uncle Liam bought me an Olaf!” shouts Ella and hugs the soft toy version of her favourite movie character to her chest. “I love it!”

  At the words ‘Uncle Liam’, a muscle in Craig’s cheek twitches.

  “Open your presents now!” Ella instructs us.

  We divided the presents from under the tree, and me and Craig have a small pile too. My eyes are drawn to the small gift in paper matching the gold and silver of Ella’s. I push it to one side, beneath the shaggy black rug. Why do I feel guilty? One kiss. Well, lots of kisses but nothing more.

  I’ve avoided sex with Craig since we got back here a couple of days ago, letting him think he has to re-earn my respect first. I doubt he’ll wait long so there’ll be another source of arguments.

  Craig has bought me lingerie.

  I inhale as I pull out the expensive black silk bra and panties and Craig’s eyes shine. “You can wear them for me later.”

  My desire to let this man touch me is zero. Without a word, I fold them back into the paper. I give permission for Ella to open the rest. Linda and Jim have bought me a basket of bath gels and soap; Ella’s face lights up at the chocolates and perfume from Louise.

  “Okay, let’s tidy all this up! Daddy wants to get back to bed. We can watch your new movie together!” I say.

  Ella dutifully scrunches all the discarded paper into a corner.

  “You forgot one,” says Craig in a cold voice. “It got pushed under the rug.”

  He’s looking at the present I know is from Liam. “Oh?” I have no choice and retrieve the package. Carefully, I undo the tape and push back the stiff paper. The black box inside is unmistakably a jewellery box and my palms sweat. I know what this is without opening.

  Inside rests a gold chain holding a heart-shaped pendant with a diamond set in one side of the heart. A replica of the one I lost. I fix my gaze on the pendant, scared to look at Craig.

  “What is it Mummy? Is it from Uncle Liam?”

  I don’t answer but Craig’s observant enough to see the paper is the same. He snatches the box from my hands and lifts the chain out of the box, dangling the heart. “Why did he buy you this?”

  “Because I lost the other one.”

  “‘The ‘other one’. You mean the one I bought you?”

  The day Ella was born Craig bought me the necklace I lost. It was the closest we ever got to a piece of jewellery showing any commitment. Marriage was discussed and every time we see his family the topic resurfaces, but Craig was never keen. Maybe in the early days I’d have agreed, bu
t recently I’m glad I didn’t.

  “Yes,” I say quietly.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. I was upset when I lost the necklace. He’s a nice guy; he probably thought I’d like a replacement.”

  “Oh, yeah, and how nice to you was he? Did he replace anything else?”

  Ella looks between us and I pray with all I have that she won’t say something incriminating. “He was nice to Ella.”

  “Guys don’t buy girls this stuff unless they mean something,” he snaps.

  “It’s nothing to him. He has money to burn.”

  “Not the cost, it’s a bloody necklace, Cerys. With a heart on it.”

  “Do you honestly think I had time to start a new relationship living in someone else’s house? And with a member of Blue Phoenix? Don’t be ridiculous! He’s a friend from years back.”

  “Yeah. I remember. You used to follow him around.” Craig stands. “I’m going back to bed.” He drops the necklace so it lands in my lap. “Send it back to him; I’ll get you a new one.”

  The lights on the tree twinkle in the room, the smell of Christmas paper reminding me of childhood. I have to focus on Ella. She scrabbles through her pile, looking for her DVD. When we put it on, she snuggles up to me, hugging her Olaf toy. Disney movies about princesses, and the prince arriving with his ‘true loves kiss’ are bad for little girls because they grow up and think one day a prince of their own will arrive with the long-awaited kiss. I hope one day that she’ll question that because reality is harsh.

  I pick up the necklace and hold the heart in the palm of my hand, wishing with all of mine that I was in St Davids with Louise. And with Liam.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 14

  APRIL 2014

  LIAM

  The problem with stepping back from Blue Phoenix for a few months is everything else in life sharpens into focus. Avoiding wedding plans is no longer an option. And Jesus, does Honey have plans.