Zafe Rafale, despite his slightly Greek name, turned out to be an ash-blond beauty. All finely chiselled bone structure and immensely long legs like a palomino stallion; his pictures showed him flinging himself around the stage, arms variously wielding a sunburst-yellow guitar or just a microphone. One shot showed the two men duetting. Ben had his eyes closed, one hand loosely around the neck of his guitar, the other holding the microphone stand. Zafe, hair plastered sweatily to his forehead, was pulling at the neck of his T shirt as though about to remove it. With Ben’s dark hair and Zafe’s resplendent goldenness, they looked like the rock world’s version of Yin and Yang.
‘Thought so.’ Jason loomed at my elbow. ‘Having a touch of the lusty are we, Jemima?’
‘It’s not like that,’ I replied, without turning round. ‘I’m interested, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, interested in pictures of young blokes getting their kit off and wagglin’ around a stage.’
‘This is Willow Down.’ I clicked to enlarge the picture. ‘Are you sure you’ve never heard of them? What with you being such a mover and shaker on the youth scene.’
‘Nah. Name rings a bit of a bell. Maybe I heard something when I was in the States. I’m not really an indie-music kinda guy, Jem.’ In the workshop, Harry raised his voice in a squawk of protest at being neglected. ‘You’re so interested, why doncha just ask?’
I sighed. ‘He’s not keen to talk about it.’ Plus, I wasn’t keen to push him. Not for all the reasons that Jason might assume, either. Keeping secrets myself made me hyper aware of how an enquiring conversation could turn. One moment you’re asking simple questions about someone’s family – the next they’ve spun it all round and they’re asking you about yours.
‘Man of mystery. Ah, go on, Jem, you love it really. Maybe I should try it, being all cool and inscrutable and stuff.’
‘Jason, people only have to ask you what time it is and you’ve given them your life story.’
‘I know. I’m easily scruted, I am.’
‘That’s not a word.’
‘Ha. Harry and I are gonna head up to the village for some more paint-mix stuff. You coming?’
‘No thanks, I’m going back to the cottage to make sure Rosie’s having a snooze. And I’ve got some work to do, some orders to parcel up and stuff.’
‘Have it ya own way. I notice you’re not losing the picture of your boy there.’
Exaggeratedly I pressed the buttons to wipe Ben’s face from the computer screen and hoped that Jason hadn’t noticed me bookmarking the page.
* * *
1st May
Weather – Night.
It’s like I’m feeling a chord I hit years ago. The music won’t let me go, it’s here in the back of my head all the time, playing itself out over and over, getting to the chorus, until I feel all I have to do is lean in and Zafe will be there with the refrain, grinning at me from across the stage.
Okay, yeah, before I go any further, I’m sorry I cut the appointment. I should have called you, let you know but … I was going to come. Was nearly at your office before I caught myself thinking about her, standing in the shop, wondering about me. And, for the record, I was right, she’d Googled the band. Was standing there with the DVD screenshot from ‘All the rain is broken glass’, staring at it like she’d never seen me before.
God, it hurts. Seeing the website, seeing the pics, seeing how we were. But what surprised me was that it hurt more seeing it through her eyes, comparing what I used to be and what I am now. Like … like when she’s not looking at me then I’m still Baz Davies, still the guitar-king, screwing all day, playing all night and then sitting up writing songs. Hanging off the roof of the tour bus with a groupie astride my cock and my head full of buzz. And then her eyes fall on me and I’m back to being Ben, back to the shop with no business and all the music locked inside my head.
But I think … I dunno, but maybe she likes me. The real me, the me that isn’t coked-up Baz or screwed up Ben, but the me that lies underneath it all. The one I think I can be. And, oh, I so nearly told her. I could feel the words, taste the shape of them, knew all I had to do was say them, put them into the air and then she’d know me. Know me right through to my bones. Fuck, I wanted that.
And then I couldn’t face up to making it all real. You were right, what you said, I do have to adjust, I’m sorry I blew you out and, no, I was not holding her hand, it was just contact. Right then I needed to touch something that wasn’t a part of the shit. You were facing me down and I knew, in my blood, that you were right but I couldn’t … I can’t make the step. I can’t stop pretending.
I’m so scared.
Chapter Eleven
‘Wow, Jem, you look great!’
Monday had arrived and I’d spent a lot of the day involved in trivial things. Painting my nails, shaping my eyebrows, stuff that I hardly ever bothered with these days, when there was only Jason to tell me that my legs were so woolly I was in danger of being shot as a runaway llama.
‘Thanks.’ I pulled at my skirt. It was a little tighter and a lot shorter than I usually wore. ‘Thank God for internet shopping.’
Rosie came closer and sniffed. ‘Ooh, Lacoste. Yum. But hang on a minute …’ She reached out and carefully undid the top two buttons of my pintucked shirt. ‘That’s better.’
‘Hey, I’m not going to a fancy dress as Little Miss Slutty you know.’
‘Yes, but that skirt is all daring and raunchy. Your top half was a bit shop assistant but it looks terrific now.’ She gave me a wink. ‘Ben’s going to love it.’
‘I’m not wearing it for Ben. I’m wearing it to show Saskia that I might be down but I’m not out.’
‘Hmmm.’ Rosie herself looked professional and cool. I looked, I thought, a bit like a walking blowjob in comparison.
‘Right. I’m off to Ben’s, I’ll see you at the – whatever it is we’re calling it. The Grand Opening of Saskia?’
Rosie snorted. ‘She’s been open for business for years, the ho. Can we pretend it’s a party? A real, proper party, where we get to drink drinks we’d normally sneer at and circulate with people we’ve never met before? After all, I’ve got a girl who advertised on the village noticeboard coming in to babysit Harry and I really don’t want to have gone to all the trouble of squinting at those postcards just to go to the opening of a shop!’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Some of those adverts are really strange.’
‘All right. I’ll see you at the party.’
I got the bus to York, which seemed ignominious. All got up like I was I should at least have been travelling in a white stretch limo and carrying a tiny dog in a bag. Ben’s house was impressive, a four-storey Georgian townhouse with black-painted railings outlining the steps up to the front door. I clopped up in my high heels and rang the bell. As I waited I stared down; there were windows below street level for what would have been basement kitchens in the house’s heyday. Now they were prime sites at which to sit and look up the skirts of passing girls. I hoped Ben wasn’t down there gazing up at my gusset.
I knew he wasn’t when I heard the sound of someone galloping down a staircase and hurtling to the front door. ‘Hey.’
‘Hello.’ I peered through the crack that he’d opened the door. He still had the chain on, even though he must have known it was me because the door had a spyhole. ‘Are you coming tonight then?’
‘Oh, God, is it tonight?’
My heart sank and I found that I was pulling down the hem of my skirt. Now I was going to have to walk into Le Petit Lapin alone and Saskia would surely notice. ‘Yes. But never mind. I’ll see you another time.’
I’d started to clop back down the steps to the pavement when I heard the chain come off and the door open. ‘So, you don’t want me to come?’
I turned. There was Ben looking absolutely gorgeous in a bow-tie and dress suit. ‘You are evil,’ I said.
‘Yep. Come in a sec and have a drink. If even half of what you’ve said about Saskia is true, I think we
might need to prime ourselves.’
I followed him inside. The front door gave onto a massive hallway, pale wooden floors and tiled walls, with a decorative black-and-white frieze pattern. ‘Wow.’
‘Did you say wow?’
‘This place. Mind you –’ I looked around. ‘It is a bit like being in a huge gents’ toilet.’
‘You should see my bedroom.’
There was a moment of silence while we digested that sentence, both realising it sounded as though he’d meant something he clearly didn’t mean, and then another moment of flustered consternation while Ben pretended he didn’t realise he could have been misconstrued and I tried to over-ride my brain.
‘Full of graffiti and smells of wee?’ I got there first.
‘No, that’s my car.’
‘You have a car?’ My voice went so squeaky that Alsatians in Milan could probably hear me.
‘Mmm-hmmm.’ Ben seemed to be enjoying my astonishment.
‘Are you sure?’
In answer he grasped me around the wrist and pulled me over to the huge window which let daylight into the hall. It was high and arched and almost as big as a door. ‘Does that look like something I might be a little uncertain about?’ He pointed with his free hand at the silver car parked on the roadside beyond the black railings. ‘Or does it look more like an Audi R8?’
‘That is one sexy car,’ I said, a concise, if not exactly Top Gear-level critique.
Ben opened his mouth then obviously thought better of it and began to lead the way down the sleek hallway. Another archway gave onto a huge, high-ceilinged room, still with wooden floors, which contained a few sofas clustered in a corner like furniture playing Sardines. ‘Sit down and I’ll get you a drink. White wine?’
He wandered over to a cabinet while I gingerly sat on one of the sofas. It was extremely comfortable, squashy and yet firm at the same time. From here I could see the enormous speakers along the walls. ‘Is this your music room then?’
He didn’t answer, rummaging around and opening doors, then emerging with two glasses of golden-yellow wine. ‘So, tell me about Saskia.’
‘Nothing to tell. She’s stopped selling my things, but she’s got Rosie working like a demon.’
‘Are she and Jason …?’
‘What is your obsession with Jason’s sex life? No, as far as I know, Saskia is not having any kind of thing with Jase. She may be an evil harpy with a hole where her heart should be, but she’s happily married to Alex. Well, she’s happily married to his wallet anyway. Mm, this wine’s nice.’
‘I’m still not clear why you and Rosie hang around with her. If she’s such a witch. Don’t you have other friends?’
There was a pause. ‘She was the first person who actually believed in my jewellery,’ I said, thinking fast. I couldn’t tell him that it was only supplying Saskia that had kept me from having to sleep in a box under a bridge after I’d arrived in York. ‘I met Jason in a bar, he introduced me to Saskia when he found out what I did, then I met Rosie and moved in.’
Ben looked at me levelly. ‘Okay, not asking for your life story, Jemima.’
And you’re not going to get it. I’ve seen enough people turn away in disgust and I couldn’t bear – I don’t want to see that look in your eyes, that look that says ‘I pity you.’ The look that tells me, what happened made me less than you. A no-one.
‘No.’
‘But she’s not stocking you now, so surely you don’t have to feel obliged to go to this do tonight?’
‘I keep hoping she’ll change her mind. And if she meets you and finds out that you are willing to sell my buckles – well, she might be so overwhelmed with competitive spirit that she’ll try to buy me back.’
Ben looked at me over his glass. ‘So, I’m coming to try to provoke her jealousy, am I? Oh, it’s okay, I don’t mind, just as long as I know.’
I drained my glass quickly. The dryness of the wine made my throat shrink. ‘We’d better go.’ I stood up and managed to get the heel of my ridiculous shoes caught in the wiring from the speakers. As I bent to sort myself out I could see that none of the speaker wires were plugged in. Either to the mains or to the back of the speakers. They were all rigged up right, just not connected. ‘Ben –’
‘Are you coming then?’ He’d collected a large bunch of keys, dropped what looked like his mobile on a table and was waiting in the doorway. Seeing him standing there looking really quite beautiful in his bow tie and loose jacket I completely forgot about the wiring.
‘I’m ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. Are we driving?’ All right I admit it, I’m a car slut. I could have sat in that Audi all night without even starting the engine, just for the experience.
‘It’s only down the road, isn’t it? Besides, now I’ve had a glass of wine.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Saskia’s face, seeing me turning up in an Audi R8 was going to have to remain a figment of my imagination.
In the event, when we reached Le Petit Lapin, Saskia was inside, deep in the throng; she wouldn’t have noticed if I’d arrived by donkey. The shop was packed. There were skinny women in chiffon frocks everywhere, like tissue-wrapped sticks, and a clash of perfume and aftershave strong enough to knock your nose off-kilter for a week. Ben hesitated.
‘Bloody hell.’ He began fidgeting with his hair. ‘There’s a lot of people.’
I looked up at the golden front of the shop. Even the first-floor windows had people in them, holding glasses and trying to look enthralled at being pressed against an unrelated armpit. ‘More than I expected,’ I replied. ‘Maybe it was “Buy One Get One Free” down at RentaCrowd.’
Ben gave me a ghost of a smile. ‘I’ve just lost the knack of circulating. Still, it’ll be nice and noisy in there, I guess.’
I grinned back at him. ‘Yep. You won’t have to talk to anyone and even if you do they won’t hear what you say.’ I grabbed his elbow and we forced our way through some of the more decorative members of the throng into the shop.
Inside the temperature was about a hundred bodies and rising. I found that I was clutching at Ben’s arm in order not to lose him in the currents and eddies of moving and shaking that was going on. Saskia had invited some of the owners of the larger (and therefore more socially and profitably acceptable) shops which surrounded Le Petit Lapin and everyone seemed to be discussing how well their businesses were going at full volume. A uniformed waiter carrying a superciliously high tray whirled past us and Ben managed to pluck two glasses from it, handing one down to me.
‘Aw Roah an Juhu nyer yeh?’
‘What?’ I yelled at him over the noise.
‘Aw Roah an Juhu nyer yeh?’ Ben said again.
‘I can’t hear!’
‘I said, are Rosie and Jason here yet?’ Ben bellowed into my ear, causing me to step sideways and bump into a large woman who was peering into the display cabinet in the corner.
‘Can’t see them. That’s Saskia over there.’ I pointed to the bottom of the spiral staircase where Saskia had set up court, leaning against the wrought iron. She was wearing pink chiffon (it must be some kind of uniform) with matching pink stilettos and her hair up under a fine pink net with jewels studded around it. ‘Looks like she got her head caught under a gay trawler,’ I muttered.
‘That’s no way to go about getting re-stocked,’ Ben said. He didn’t seem to have any problems hearing me above the babble. ‘Drink your wine.’ He was twisting his glass around in his hands and I noticed it was empty.
‘Are you all right?’
He stopped scanning the crowd and looked down at me. ‘I’m just a bit, you know, on edge. This is the first big do I’ve been to since – well, since.’
‘No-one seems to recognise you.’ I didn’t know whether to be happy about this for Ben’s sake, or cross for mine.
‘I look a bit different these days.’
‘Yes. You were quite something in Willow Down.’ I spoke without thinking. Ben looked at me steadily, as though we were the only two peop
le in the room.
‘You think?’
Oh, God. I started to blush round about my ankles which made my feet slippery inside the angular heels. The blush rose, peppered my spine and finally scalded its way up my face to my eyelids. Ben was still looking at me. ‘I mean – err – you, um, you were very hard. I mean – you looked hard. That’s hard as in unapproachable, sort of a bit of a nutcase, not hard as in … Excuse me a sec I think that’s Rosie and Jason. I’ll just let them know we’re over here.’ I fled to the safety of the doorway.
‘Jem? Woss up with you girl? Look like you swallowed somethin’ the wrong way,’ and Jason let out a filthy snigger that made people turn round to find the cause.
‘I’ve been coughing.’ I cleared my throat to add veracity.
‘Bin drinking more like. Where’s Sass then, better do the honours before I starts necking ’em.’ Jason took himself off to find Saskia and Rosie frowned at me.
‘Are you all right? You look horribly hot.’
I confessed my faux pas whilst trying to rebalance myself, leaning against a tree-trunk which, against all probability and artistic integrity, was being used as a doorstop. ‘I don’t think he noticed,’ I finished. ‘But I feel such an idiot.’
Rosie was offered a glass by the same waiter who had ignored me. I wondered how she did it. But then she did look – and this was the only word that applied – stunning. Her black curls were swept up into a style from which they cascaded down her neck in individual strands, her dress was vanilla-coloured silk which hid the post-baby bulge like a dream and she was made-up like a film star. ‘He is pretty sexy though, Jem, you have to admit it.’
Please Don't Stop The Music Page 9