Rosie came through the gate. She and I caught sight of one another and both clutched at our hearts in mock fright.
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ she asked. Her voice was a little shaky, maybe I’d genuinely scared her, looming across the grass out of the night. ‘I thought you’d be cosy with Ben by now.’
‘I might almost suspect you of arranging to go out this evening simply to get that to happen.’ I might have sounded a bit shaky, too. ‘I keep telling you, Ben and I – it’s nothing.’
‘That why you’ve got stubble burn that I can even see out here in the DARK, is it?’
‘No, I’m blushing, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Then Rosie paused, cocking her head. ‘Is that Harry?’
‘He was fine when I left, fast asleep.’
‘He’s not fast asleep now.’ She increased her pace and thankfully stopped interrogating me. ‘He sounds really upset.’
‘I’m sure Ben will have gone to him,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’
But when we got into the cottage Ben was cooking madly, grilling fish with one hand and whisking meringue with the other. A tea towel was draped over his shoulder and his hair had come down over his face.
‘Ah, there you are. Food is just about ready. Good timing, Rosie.’ But Rosie pushed past him without even stopping to exchange pleasantries, heading for the stairs. I followed her, anxious not to be left in those close confines with Ben again.
‘Harry?’ Rosie rounded the corner into her bedroom. ‘What …’
I could hardly hear her above the sounds of Harry screaming. He’d somehow managed to flip the carry-cot over on top of himself, trapping his body under its weight. Rosie released him and picked him up. She was trembling all over.
‘Oh, my God,’ she kept saying. ‘Oh, my God.’ Harry’s little red face was streaked with tears and one arm looked slightly blue. ‘Oh, God. Should his arm be that colour? Oh, God, Jem, what am I going to do?’ She hugged the baby tightly against her chest, rocking him until his screams subsided into a more general grizzle. ‘Oh God.’ She carried Harry downstairs and sat on the sofa with a kind of numb expression.
‘Call the doctor. He’ll check Harry over for you but I’m sure he’s fine.’ I dragged the phone to her and left her dialling, whilst still trying to reassure a hiccupping Harry that he was all right.
Ben had stopped cooking and the steam had died from the kitchen. He was peering through into the living room, watching Rosie and the stricken Harry; he looked pale.
‘What kind of sicko leaves a baby to scream like that?’ I launched myself at him. ‘And don’t give me some pathetic story, because you were cooking away and obviously not taking a blind bit of notice. How long had he been crying?’
‘I can’t – ’
‘You bastard!’ And before I even knew I’d done it I’d pulled my arm back and smacked him right across his perfect cheekbones. It was a full-powered, open-handed strike that knocked his head to one side with its force.
Ben froze completely. His whole body seemed to fold in upon itself and his face was made up entirely of eyes. A tear trembled on his eyelashes but the immobility of his expression meant that it couldn’t fall. Something inside me tore apart. ‘Ben?’
A sudden movement as he swiped a hand across his eyes and then he was gone. Out of the door, fleeing through the garden and down to the road. A pause, surely not long enough for key to meet ignition system, and then the noise of a powerful car being driven at reckless speed down the lane.
Rosie was convinced she was such a bad mother that Social Services would be along any day to take Harry away.
‘I can’t believe I went out! What was I thinking, Jem? Anything could have happened!’ Rosie was so caught up in her own feelings of inadequacy that she hadn’t thought to blame me or Ben. ‘I mean, what if he’d got himself trapped under the wardrobe or got his face stuck in something – he’d have suffocated! And I wouldn’t have been there!’ Another fresh burst of tears. Harry picked up on her misery and began wailing again, despite the fact that the doctor had looked him over and pronounced him to be ‘one of the healthiest specimens I’ve seen in a while.’
‘You weren’t to know. And we’ll make sure it never happens again, so stop fretting.’ Half my mind was trying to follow Ben’s actions in all of this, wondering what had been going through his head. ‘Harry, there’s nothing wrong with you and that’s official.’
I could feel my own lip trembling in sympathy with the weeping pair. Why hadn’t Ben stayed and explained himself? Was all this tied up with his fear of – yes, exactly what was Ben so scared of? Physical contact? He hadn’t felt scared, not for those few moments holding me in the kitchen. Turned on, yes. Desperate, yes. But not afraid, not until afterwards. I tried to think back over those moments when I’d seen that look of panic appear in his eyes but it all seemed so unrelated. He’d been frightened of going to Saskia’s opening, when I’d found out about his being in Willow Down, when I’d asked him to come for dinner – perhaps he was just plain weird.
I picked at the melon Ben had left and put the rest away in the fridge. Neither of us had much appetite, although Harry gulped down his bottle and then fell asleep. ‘Honestly, Harry, you’re such a bloke,’ I said, watching him settle drunkenly in Rosie’s arms. ‘No sympathy with emotional turmoil at all.’
I left her cuddling her son and went up to my room. Most of my gear was bagged; shirts oozed over the lip of my rucksack and my toiletries scattered like a puzzle over the jutting window ledge. I stared at it all. I’d never hung anything up or made use of the tiny cupboard. Even though I’d thought I was settled, my subconscious had known and told me not to bother, not to unpack.
I started to sweep loose items back into my bag. Panic was floating somewhere in my chest, unhooked from its perpetual moorings by this turn of events. Time to go, time to run. My mind raked back over Ben’s behaviour, his desperation for contact and then his ultimate rejection of it, but I didn’t kid myself that it was because of the way he’d let his guard down that I was going. It was my lowering of the barrier that had frightened me the most. The sudden rise of a desire that I thought I’d killed, the desire to be held, to be loved. An emotion that I could not allow. One I couldn’t afford. To let myself desire was to risk falling in love, and to love was to trust. To trust was to hand over control and no man was ever going to control me again. Never. Especially not that bony freak with the messed-up hair and even more messed-up mind.
A sudden, unbidden vision of his expression when Rosie had come down the stairs carrying the screaming Harry. It had been a mixture of fear and an almost unbearable resignation, as though he was coming to terms with something that he’d never wanted in the first place. A hungry longing mixed with such pain that his eyes had blackened with it and his face had fallen into stark lines. My heart twitched like a kick.
* * *
20th May
I’m sorry. I can’t go on with this. I wanted her, wanted the life I thought I could have, and now I know I can’t. All that happens is that I can see what I’ve lost.
There’s nothing left.
I have to go.
Chapter Thirteen
The next day I left Rosie lying in, whistled a cheery ‘see ya’ through her door and hoisted my rucksack onto my shoulder. I’d written her a note of farewell and left it on the pillow of my bed, stripped the sheets and duvet and put them in the washing machine. Wiped all the surfaces clear of any trace of my occupation. She would forget me in no time as lots of people had done before her. Just because I’d felt more at home here, more settled than I ever had anywhere since I was fifteen, it gave me no rights to call the place home. I had no rights. No beliefs, nothing to pin myself to. I was a ghost, living on another plane of existence, one not even suspected by any of the people who called me their friend.
A pang of remorse shot through me so fast I had to stop and catch my breath. I was walking towards the bus stop, past the gateway to the opule
nce that was Saskia and Alex’s enormous converted farmhouse. Now I’d never get to show Saskia how wrong she’d been to turn me away from her shop, to carry on this stupid vendetta that she’d got going, for whatever pointless reasons. Never get to rub her nose in my future success. Another dart of loss pierced a hole in my gut, but this time I straightened up, faced forwards and ignored it. The bus was coming. The past didn’t matter – I had to keep telling myself that. Recent past, long past, it made no difference. It was all gone. I could forget.
The shop was closed. The main window was obscured by a huge metal cover locked in place and the door had bars down on the inside. It didn’t look as though Ben had been there all day.
I breathed hard, as though I’d run, and wiped my arm across my eyes. What was I doing? I never cried, not ever. I’d shed my last tears five years ago, that had been another promise. I was tired surely, that was all. And a little disappointed to find the place locked up and silent. I’d wanted – what had I wanted? To talk? To find out what his problem was? Or just to confront him, to ask him how he dared to unsettle my well-being with his sudden insights and his equally sudden turnaround, which had allowed me inside his head while he kissed me senseless? Stupid. Stupid.
My path to the station took me past Wilberforce Crescent. The extra half-mile of walking got my feelings under control and I was well able to convince myself that I needed to let him know I was leaving. Just – and this was important – just so he could have a chance to find someone else to work in the shop.
I rang the bell. There was no response so I tiptoed down the basement steps and squinted through the blinds covering those windows which lay below street level. Between the vertical slats I could just make out a set of musical instruments laid on the floor as though a band had broken off mid-practice. A guitar rested against a keyboard, casually angled, and a drum kit had the sticks crossed over it. A bright cherry-red guitar had been dropped and lay on its face looking oddly forlorn. And everything was covered in dust.
There was something naked about those unused instruments closed away in that basement rehearsal room, something bitter in the positioning. As though Ben had been there, trying to play, trying to recreate Willow Down. Or was I reading too much into it, was it just a room that had been closed off and forgotten?
I sat on the step and chewed my lip, a tiny fantasy about breaking in quickly running to the inevitable conclusion. I’d probably end up being hauled out by six armed-response units.
A car beeped from the road. I jumped to my feet, eyes scanning for the smooth lines of the silver Audi but alighting instead on the sassy lines of Jason’s sports runabout.
‘Hoi, Jem! You’ll get piles sitting on them steps! Wotcha doin’?’
‘I thought you were in London.’ I wandered over to where he was holding up the traffic.
‘Yeah. Consortium seen. Back now. Bin looking for ya.’ Jason tweaked open the door for me to get in, pulling aside a crate containing a huge quantity of cogs and wheels plus a large square metal box. It looked like he’d dismembered Robbie the Robot. I hesitated and he raised an eyebrow. ‘You running out on us, girl?’
‘I …’
‘Wanna tell me about it?’
‘Nothing to tell.’ I got in the car.
Jason looked up at the house. ‘This your man’s place then? Must be loaded, thass all I’ll say.’
‘He’s not my man. And why were you looking for me?’
‘Rosie’s havin’ a bit of a moment. I figured you could help, talk her down, you know that kind of girl stuff. So I bin driving around trying to head you off at the pass.’
‘What are you talking about, you loony?’
Jason gave me a straight look. ‘I beat Rosie to it. Read your note. Then I tore it up. Thought I could get to the station before you did and thought I’d come this way. You got it bad, girl.’
‘I do not! I just wanted to … after the way he left last night … I’m concerned, that’s all.’
Jason accelerated into the stream of traffic leaving the city. ‘Yeah. So you sit on his doorstep like some kinda lost dog waiting for him to come home, just ’cos you’re concerned? Pull the other one, darling, it goes ding-a-ling.’
‘What’s the matter with Rosie?’
‘Oho, touch a nerve, did I? Yeah, I reckon our little Jemima’s burning the hot stuff for Benny boy. An’ for the record, I seen his face, looking atcha like you’re gonna pull him from the wreckage.’
‘If you could possibly tear yourself away from your rambling imaginings about my love life, what’s the matter with Rosie?’
‘Social worker. Turned up at the cottage. I just got back from London, clapped out on the couch at the workshop and Rosie comes burstin’ in in tears ’cos some nosey old crone came round wanting to know if she’s feeding our Hazzer prop’ly. Looking in the cupboards and checking his pram an’ stuff.’
‘Bloody hell.’
It was Rosie’s greatest fear made real. That somehow, someone would begin to suspect what she suspected herself, that she couldn’t look after her baby. It was all ridiculous, of course, overwork and guilt making her feel useless; she adored Harry. A social worker on the doorstep was the last thing she needed to make her feel like a capable, coping mother.
‘You can talk her round, Jem, she’ll listen to you.’
‘But –’
Jason gave me a solemn look. ‘Luv. Whatever it is, whatever you’re running from or to, it’ll keep. Honest to God, it will still be there tomorrow. But today – today Rosie needs you. And, just maybe, your man needs you, too. Doncha want to get things sorted there before you takes off to lands unknown? Or is this how you always work, get yourself involved and then run out, so nothing can ever be your responsibility?’
‘You know nothing about it.’
He inclined his head. ‘Anyway, I reckons if I brings you back she might cook us a meal. I’m up to here wiv your fancy London restaurant mush, just give us one of Rosie’s Thai green curries an’ I’ll die a happy man.’
‘Jason!’ But I had to let out a small laugh. His heart was in the right place, even if it was firmly lodged just above a complaining stomach. ‘All right. I’ll come back, for now. But first I need some advice.’
‘Wot, from me? Wotcha want to know? Nothing I can tell you thatcha don’t already know, apart from maybe how to dance the horizontal tango.’ He circled his hips suggestively and ended up squeakily crushing himself against the steering wheel.
‘How do I go about finding him?’
‘Ah, wotcha want him for, when you can have me?’ he replied, slightly gasping, trying to rearrange his crotch.
‘Like you said, maybe I should talk to him. And don’t look at me like that, it’s not what you said. I only … I only want to make sure that he’s all right. He behaved like a bastard the last time I saw him and I want an explanation. Yes. To check he’s alive and to find out what the hell is wrong with him.’
Jason blew. ‘Phooooow. You reckon he’s done ’imself in?’
‘No! Why, do you?’
‘Rosie said ’e were off like a rat out a drainpipe once you got started. Bloke that sensitive, well … Could of done anything. Driven into a wall, hung himself.’
‘You are such a little ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Jason? Tell me then, how do I find out?’
Jason looked at me, long and hard. ‘Whatcha crying for?’
‘I’m not.’
A finger which smelled of embalming fluid brushed my cheek. ‘Then your skin’s leaking, kid.’
I gave a hiccup, a fighting attempt to keep the tears at bay. I never cried. Not ever. ‘I’m fine.’
Jason jerked the car into a bus-stop and turned off the ignition. ‘Bleeding women! Come ’ere,’ and a rough arm dragged me into the surprising comfort of his fleece jacket. ‘Any more ’ormones on this coat and it’s gonna grow breasts.’
Jason’s gruff good nature was almost more than I could bear. Silent tears burned down my face as he held me tight against h
im. ‘I’m just …’ The words came out in half-sobs, further muffled by the generous amount of Jason they were pressed into. ‘Ben. He’s so … so scared … all the time. I want to know … what he’s … running from.’
‘He prob’ly wants to know the same ’bout you, Jem,’ Jason said quietly, rubbing my back as far as I could tell without lecherous intent. ‘We all knows you’re running scared too, my girl.’
I struggled upright, tidying my face with the back of my hand. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Ah, come on. You comes outta no-where, you never talks about what you’ve left behind and you’re terrified of falling in love. That’s some serious back-story you’re carting around, darling. And I wouldn’t worry ’bout him topping ’imself. Guy wiv a face that well known, we’d have heard.’ Jason gave me a bone-squeezing hug. ‘He’s gone to ground somewhere, thass all. Hiding like.’
‘Then I’ve got no idea even where to start looking.’ Ideas were slipping through my mind like shadows. Yes. I’d find Ben, find out what he was hiding. Jason couldn’t accuse me of running out on anything unfinished. My behaviour would be unimpeachable. Then I’d run.
Jason grimaced and re-started the car. ‘Sounds like what we got here, my love, is a breakdown in communication. Basic psychological problem, only way round it is for you and your man to get it all out in the open.’
I stared. ‘There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there?’
Jason gave me a sleazy grin and cupped his groin. ‘Better believe it, darling.’
* * *
Rosie was scrubbing the kitchen when we arrived. A huge bucket of bleach stood in the middle of the floor and the place smelled like a swimming pool.
‘Oh, Jason, you found her!’ Rosie clambered to her feet and gave me a moist hug.
‘Steady. I can feel myself going blonder just standing here. What are you doing?’
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