Please Don't Stop The Music

by Jane Lovering

  ‘Just to leave? Not a note, no explanation? Jesus, Jem, what were you trying to do? Prove something? I thought … I thought you cared. I saw it in your eyes and don’t tell me you were lying because I’m a bit of an expert there and no-one can lie with their eyes. Not like that.’ He slid down to lie on the crisp-packet strewn grass as though fatigue would no longer let him stand.

  ‘Maybe I can.’ Under the bravado my tone wavered, just a bit.

  He shook his head. That was all.

  ‘So. How is everyone?’

  A shrug. ‘Do you really want to know? Rosie is missing you. She said you told her you were going and that you argued about it when she tried to make you stay. She told me that you – never mind. And Harry cries a lot. She blames you for that, too.’ Another shrug. ‘And who knows what Jason thinks, but his message for you is – now, hang on, let me get this straight – “get your head in gear, babe.” Oh, and something about ice cubes, but I’m not sure what that was about.’

  A hot blush lit my cheeks. The feeling setting itself like a crystal in my belly acquired a name. Guilt. I looked at him, digging his fingers into the soil and the feelings rushed over me like an incoming tide. I had to breathe slow and deep so as not to drown. ‘Ben. I –’

  ‘Yeah, I know. You’re not interested.’ Now he stood up, dragging himself upright as though his bones were reluctant. ‘Sorry. I thought, maybe, I could make a difference. That you might just be able to look inside yourself this once, and see what you’re doing to everyone who ever loved you. See that maybe you should stop being so fucking selfish all the time.’ He put both hands against the railings and looked into my eyes. There was a fire in his intense brown stare that I’d never seen before. ‘Yeah, it was shitty what happened to you. But you really think that Randall and Christian would want you to live like this? You think you’re doing their memories a favour by cutting and running all the time? Okay, yes, I applaud your decision not to get involved until you feel whole, feel like a real person, but don’t you ever stop to think that maybe being involved could make you feel that way? And you know what really makes me mad?’ Ben lowered his voice, speaking right into my eyes now. ‘You listened to me. You took it all on board, told me it didn’t matter my not being perfect, when all the time you were planning to run. You lied, Jemima. You fucking lied.’

  ‘My name isn’t Jemima. I told you.’

  ‘You’re Jemima to me. That girl you were, that Gemma, she doesn’t exist any more. Jemima is who you’ve made yourself into, that’s who I …’ He stopped. Coughed.

  ‘Ben, before … it wasn’t a lie. I just never knew it would be this hard.’

  ‘Yeah? Well it’s not exactly a picnic with the Queen from where I’m standing either. You aren’t the only one with problems you know, but you are the only one who runs away.’

  Now I stood up too, feeling the strain in my thighs and calves as wobbly muscles tried to take my weight. ‘How did you find me?’

  He smiled a rather humourless smile. ‘Zafe rang around and a guy at the station remembered you.’ The smile briefly became warmer. ‘Honestly, what were you thinking? Over seventy quid in one pound coins – the guy was in serious trauma.’ Then his expression became wary again, eyes watchful. ‘So we knew you’d come to Glasgow. And I waited for you, Jem. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, thought when you realised what you were doing, what you were making of your life that you’d … I thought you’d come back to me, you know that? I was that deluded. And then, when I knew you weren’t coming, that I wouldn’t ever see you again unless I did something, d’you know what? For five seconds I thought, “Why should I? Why should I care?” But there’s something, something that wouldn’t let me sleep, wouldn’t let me rest until I knew you were safe. With me or without me, I wanted you safe. So I drove up four days ago. Been looking for you ever since. And let me tell you, this accent is a bitch to lip read. Half the Glaswegian population thinks I’m Care in the Community now.’

  The warmth rose from my stomach to engulf my body and my face and I realised that what I was experiencing was the scalding blush of shame.

  This man – this man had driven several hundred miles with no guarantee of finding me. He’d left himself at the mercy of a strange city, unable to communicate properly, just for me.

  I looked at him standing there, looking sleep-deprived and even skankier than usual. But, and I had to admit it to myself, very sexy. Very cute. And here. Despite what I’d done, despite the awful way I’d betrayed him by running away, he was here. Giving me another chance. And the thoughts didn’t send the usual sting of fear through my bloodstream. He wasn’t here to possess me, to force me to go with him. He didn’t want me to belong to him, he just wanted me safe.

  I stared across the water. What did I do now? Back down, return with him? But what would that mean about all those other times when I’d run … that those hadn’t been real? That I just hadn’t tried hard enough?

  And there, clear and hard as good diamonds, were Chris and Randall. Shouldering their way forward to stare at me across the years. Loading me with the memories of the things we’d had to do back then to survive.

  We’d all made our decisions. Chris had turned to heroin, his decision. Ran had killed Gray, his decision and I’d lied for him. My decision. And now I was beginning to understand. The boys had loved me. They wouldn’t have wanted me to keep their memories safe at the expense of forming new ones of my own. Our parents had loved us. It hadn’t been their choice to die, after all. They would have wanted me to have a proper life, a settled life.

  And now Ben was giving me the chance to move on. Not forget it, I would never forget any of it. But I could get over it.

  ‘I didn’t lie, Ben.’ My lips hardly moved. ‘But running is what I do and I don’t know if I can break the habit.’

  Wary and huge, his eyes were on my face now. ‘You need to …’ A finger touched my mouth. ‘I can’t read if you don’t. Please.’ As though it hurt him to ask. I repeated myself, feeling a bit ashamed and he stroked my hair very gently. ‘Hey, Jem? Clean now for five years, six months and two weeks. If there’s one thing I know about it’s breaking habits. Break yours, now. Come back with me.’

  Could I? Could it really be that simple? Just … go back? And then I remembered Rosie’s words about the line in the sand. The way I’d felt sitting on the steps of Glasgow station, too old, too tired to keep going. Maybe it really was time to face those demons.

  ‘Ben.’ I stood up. ‘I’ll come back with you. But it has to be on my terms. I have to be able to sort myself out, I can’t – won’t – rely on you to do it for me.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘I have to find out what Saskia is doing buying all that stuff from Rosie and burning it. Why she’s got me blacklisted from here to … well, not from here, obviously, even the devil doesn’t deal in Glasgow, but why she’s got eBay to shut me down.’

  Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay. We do all that. And then what?’

  ‘Then when I’m back on an equal footing I’ll decide what to do. I can’t be tied, Ben, I have to feel that I’m free to do what I want. If I stayed …’ My voice tailed off.

  ‘If you stayed you’d want to know you were staying because you wanted to, not because you’d got nowhere else to go. Yeah?’ His fingers closed very gently over mine. ‘That’s what I want too, Jem. I want you with me because you can’t bear to be anywhere else, not because you owe me. You’ve made me realise so much about myself, about the way I’ve behaved, that I …’

  For a long, long time we just stared at each other. His huge eyes seemed to suck me in until they were all I was aware of. Eyes, and a wisp of hair which blew across to tickle at my cheek. ‘Ben …’ He smelled sweet. Indefinable. So much himself that I found it hard to breathe.

  ‘Jem. It’s okay.’ A small step and he was so close. The panic tried to rise in me but there was simply no room for it, not with the sudden flush of my skin and the racing of my heart. ‘It’s really okay.’
He leaned forward to brush his mouth against mine and suddenly I found myself winding hands in his hair, pulling him down, pulling him closer. Desperate, hungry for the contact, for his tongue searching my mouth and his body pressed tight against me.

  I did it in the sure knowledge that, wherever they were, my brothers were cheering and catcalling and probably making hand gestures that Jason would have been proud of.

  ‘I’m afraid, if things start to get difficult I’ll run again,’ I whispered. It was as if I had to say the words aloud, even though he had no hope of seeing them. But then he did that disconcerting thing of speaking without knowing what I’d said, yet continuing the conversation.

  ‘You know your past?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s just that. Past. Instinct might tell you to run but I hope – God how I hope – that you’ll stop and think. Rationalise. Talk to me. And if things ever get so bad that you can’t, well then maybe you’ll run somewhere I can find you.’

  ‘You’ve had a long time to work on that speech, haven’t you?’

  ‘Since the day you walked out.’

  ‘Smooth, Mr Davies, very smooth.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  Chapter Twenty

  We drove back in Ben’s car. It was hard, leaving my stuff in the shops in Glasgow, but they had my mobile number and the sum total of my other belongings didn’t even occupy half of the tiny boot. Ben was incredulous.

  ‘You’ve been in Glasgow for three weeks, with only this?’ he asked, when we stopped for coffee on the motorway, holding up my rucksack by one strap. ‘What did you do for clothes?’

  I wrinkled my nose at him. ‘This from a bloke who smells like he’s been wearing the same jeans for a fortnight.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re a woman.’

  ‘Thanks for noticing.’

  A long, dark look. ‘Oh, I noticed.’ He gave me a glance. ‘Saskia’s offered me a place in the Shambles. Says she feels sorry for me, with the shop burning down and all. She took the lease of the place but she doesn’t know what to do with it, apparently. Thought a music shop might go well over there.’

  ‘Really, the Shambles? That’s tourist central, you’d make a mint.’

  A pause. ‘I think she just wants to control what I stock. After all it’s her place, she has ultimate veto. She won’t want me bringing her shop into disrepute.’

  ‘You mean she won’t want you having my jewellery in there.’

  ‘Well. We’ll see about that.’

  A companionable silence fell, and we got back into the car. I watched Ben drive, neat sureness of movement, long legs inching the pedals, dramatic fingers wrapped around the wheel and I felt a sudden shudder through me. It rattled my teeth and sent a scalding blast down to my thighs like a damp rush of steam. I leaned back on the leather seat and tried to make sense of it. It felt like … yes, it felt like physical attraction with knobs on, so to speak. I blew a breath which condensed on the window and pretended to be involved with the scenery but I didn’t miss Ben’s sidelong glance at me nor his secret half-smile. The way he ran a fingertip over the tiny head of the gear lever might have been accidental but I didn’t think so.

  Two words for this situation. Uh and oh.

  It was dark when we parked outside Wilberforce Crescent. Ben stood aside to let me through the front door and I found I was relaxing ever so slightly as we went into the kitchen. As though this place was home.

  He’d left the empty money jar on the table.

  ‘I’ll pay it back.’

  ‘Cool.’ He opened the fridge and took out some yoghurt, some fruit and a bottle of something cold from the bottom rack. He put it all on the table. ‘Hungry? Help yourself.’ There was something about him, something I’d never seen before. A new kind of sureness in his movements, a different confidence. He wasn’t watching my face with the same desperation that he usually had, afraid he might miss something.

  ‘Ben?’

  No answer. He was groping in the back of the fridge and rattling drawers in and out, finally turning, juggling the makings of a salad, a loaf of bread and a knife. He began cutting slices with an easy motion.

  ‘Why did you come looking? Why couldn’t you just let it be?’ A sudden jolt of the memories I wouldn’t let myself have. I hadn’t seen anyone cut bread like that since I was a child.

  Ben stopped. Leaned on the knife handle. ‘I thought you might want to come back but that maybe you didn’t know how to give yourself permission.’

  ‘You and your drummer must have done a lot of talking.’

  ‘Yeah, over the years we talked a lot. On a tour bus there’s not a lot else to do when you’re in transit. It’s amazing what you can pick up.’ He put two thick slices of granary bread, a bowl of salad and dressing in front of me. ‘But you’re pretty good yourself, you know. All that stuff you told me about getting in touch with Zafe? Well, you were right, he did deserve to know. I was a coward, running off without telling him anything. He was my best mate. I should have handled it better.’

  I bit into the crusty bread. ‘And now? Are you and he …?’

  He shrugged. ‘He’s working on forgiving me. But hey, sometimes when you really care about someone you have to forgive. Do you understand that? And then we spent a lot of time talking about you.’

  I nearly choked. ‘Me? What is wrong with you two? You’ve got five years of history to catch up on and you talk about me?’

  ‘Just returning the favour. Apparently when you met him all you did was talk about me.’ Carefully Ben laid the knife down on the table. There was something in the way he was looking at me. Something in the air, as though it was thickening. ‘You were scared something had happened to me, Zafe said. You said I was broken.’

  I swallowed. The bread was proving difficult to get down and the way Ben was looking at me wasn’t helping at all. ‘I didn’t mean …’

  He cut me off. ‘You were right. It wasn’t just me that was broken, Jem, it was my soul. When my dad died it made me different. Forced me to be someone I wasn’t even sure I liked. And the deafness made me more human, but isolated me so much that I couldn’t make contact with anyone.’ I was still sitting at the table. Ben came round it and I had to swivel on the stool to keep watching him. The look on his face was so intense I didn’t know what he had in mind. ‘And then I met you.’

  I forced myself to laugh. ‘Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, eh?’

  He was leaning now to look down into my eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Things got very, very, very much better.’ And he was so close now that his hair flowed across my throat. ‘No pressure, Jem. No pressure.’

  His lips met mine and I was astonished at the force inside me which sprang me up off the stool to rest against him, hands pushing his hair back. He tasted of honey and mint from the salad dressing he’d licked off his fingers. He leaned further forward and before I knew it I was half-sitting on the edge of the table, Ben’s mouth travelling down to my throat, my hands dragging at his shirt, trying to yank it off over his head so I could touch skin.

  This was something total, something so unexplored in me that I didn’t know how to handle or channel it, all I could do was go with it and try to ride it out. It felt as if I was some kind of conduit for feelings from another, unknown universe as I met his mouth again, whispering into it. ‘Ben … please …’ without even knowing what I pleaded for.

  He freed my lips so he could look into my eyes. ‘Are you sure? Really, really sure?’

  How could I be sure? I’d never known anything like this. In lieu of an answer I slid a hand down to his belt, began working the buckle free whilst keeping my eyes on his face, slipping the keeper away from the tongue until I could pull it loose. Laid a finger on the top of his zipper, feeling how aroused he was.

  Suddenly his hand came onto mine, not to help but stopping my fingers from moving any further. ‘Jem.’ His voice was steady. ‘I want to know. I need you to say it. Do you want this?’ And I knew he didn’t jus
t mean this, sex. He meant everything else it would bring: him, a relationship, the complications and the ties.

  My breath caught in my throat. ‘I want …’ Desire tried to overrule and my hand moved on his fly again but his grip was firm. ‘I want to be safe.’ The words nearly choked me, but as I said them I realised they were true. I wanted safety. Security. Something that was mine after all these years of running and hiding.

  Ben moved back half a step. ‘And do you think I’m safe? You feel that, with me?’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘No. I want more than that.’ Ben took the other half-step away and straightened his T shirt, combed his hair with his fingers and took a shaky deep breath. ‘I know you think I’m in this for a fuck, Jemima, but it is so much more than that it’s almost funny. C’mere.’ Fingers closed around my wrist and I found I was being pulled out of the kitchen and along a hallway to a small door. Ben unlocked the door with a tiny key and drew me onto a narrow dark staircase. ‘This is the old servants’ quarters,’ he said conversationally, and not at all as though we’d just come within moments of ripping one another’s clothes off.

  Still with his fingers cuffing my wrist he led me down the shallow steps and into the room below. It was the one I’d seen from the street, the old basement. Dust had collected into every depression and the instruments were covered in a shallow layer of it. Ben stood in the middle of it all and let go of me.

  ‘I haven’t been in here for years,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t. This was our practice room. The guys never tried to get their stuff back, at least, I don’t think they did. I was too busy hiding to know.’ He turned, picked up a drumstick and experimentally tapped a cymbal. ‘Mark’s kit.’ The bass guitar was leaning against a silver keyboard. Ben picked it up and strummed the strings. ‘Zafe’s.’ A small puff of dust blew out and he laid it back down again to run a finger along the black and white keys. ‘This was Si’s.’

  Nothing was amped up so there were just dull, tinny notes, like ghosts of what should be. Finally Ben picked up the cherry-red guitar which had fallen face down onto the rush matting flooring. Like a man touching an old love, he reverentially stroked its back, leaving finger streaks in the dust, then turned it against his body and threw the strap over his neck. ‘This was me, Jem,’ he said softly. ‘It was fantastic.’ With the weight of the guitar pulling down his shoulder he turned to look at the collected instruments. ‘Willow Down. The most brilliant thing ever to happen to me.’