‘Once. Once to let the carpet fitters in. You were supposed to put it back in the kitchen drawer.’ He kept his eyes shut.
‘I must’ve forgotten.’ She sounded defensive. ‘Then when I heard through Megan and Ivan about your accident I thought you’d want me to go and check that everything was all right –’
He opened his eyes. ‘Even though you might bump into my dad or my wife?’
She looked anxious. ‘Not your wife, Gary. Diane didn’t know about the cottage –’
‘So how come she was sitting there waiting for you? Didn’t you think that because I was in the accident with Valerie that secrets would come out? But she needn’t have found out about you. Until you strolled in and advertised the situation.’ Of all the things he hadn’t wanted to happen, it was for Diane to find out – about his family, his money or his lover. Especially the Diane who fairly crackled with fury.
That Diane, the angry, intransigent one, rarely appeared. Rage, for her, was like a comet: it came only every few years to sear across the cosmic landscape. But then it threatened everything in its path.
That Diane could alter orbits.
And while he hated her for defying him, at the same time he had a grudging admiration for what his mother would have called her piss and vinegar.
Stella’s eyes pinkened. ‘But at least she knows now and we can be together. We can be together!’
Oh … dangerous.
With his good hand he covered one of hers. Her soft little hand with cute dimples over the knuckles. He sighed and made his voice as kind as he could because Stella had been his mistress for a long time. ‘It’s not Diane that I have to part from, Stell.’
After Stella had stumbled out he stared out at a colourless, hazy sky. He was going to miss her. He’d enjoyed the affair from its slap-and-tickle beginnings to its surprising metamorphosis into an actual relationship. He’d even sort of enjoyed the break in the middle, the aggro, her stubborn refusal to realise that her role was to come back to him. She’d gone too far by going off with that younger guy but he’d ended both that and her marriage with one whisper in the ear of her husband.
Stella hadn’t been right for the husband; she was too wilful, too much fun. A lot of fun, was Stella. But the unpalatable truth was that he couldn’t – for the present – have both his wife and his girlfriend.
He picked up his mobile phone, selected Valerie. She picked up curtly. ‘Yes?’
She was missing the pop; it was bound to make her grumpy, going cold turkey on both cigarettes and alcohol. Economically, he told her about Stella.
‘Sorry to hear,’ she returned.
‘I’ll miss her.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘We had a lot of fun.’
‘That’s the idea.’
He hesitated. ‘What’s up?’
She sniffed. ‘I have the arse with you, dear brother. You’ve been lying to me about your wife. She’s not a reclusive agoraphobic or a sobbing mess scarcely able to look after herself. Why did you lie? To me?’
Concern creased his brow. Valerie actually sounded angry. In the last two years he’d intrigued, interested and amused her and she’d confided in him. She had not been annoyed with him.
He gave vent to a gusty sigh. ‘Why does anybody lie about a thing like that? Because they wish things were different. I’m trapped in my marriage and I tried to pretend that I wasn’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Trapped? But I respect her. She’s a valiant sort of woman. Scraping along financially while you laze around in your cottage with your bit on the side or shoot about in the chopper with me. I like her, too.’
Alarm blossomed in his chest. Gareth admired Valerie to the point of hero worship and never felt impatient with her as he did with Melvyn and Ivan who were, let’s face it, low-achieving but high-spending. He loved them, but it was a job – his job – to keep them out of the Small Claims Court and out of the hands of the cops. Ivan was bloody silly and would buy anything from some junkie down the pub, even when it was quite obviously so hot that it glowed. And Melvyn had to have every new gadget that hit the High Street, all of it on the never-never. BlackBerry, TV, camera, DVD, MP3.
He loved his brothers but they were exasperating, the way they needed pulling out of the shit all the time.
Yet he was proud to share blood with Valerie, who he’d never had to help with a damned thing. Her mind was fast, her opinions decided, her finances awesome.
‘It’s not like you to be snotty about something so trivial as my maritals,’ he said, abruptly. ‘What’s really the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on.’
‘Nothing unexpected.’
He waited.
Her voice filled with tears. ‘The CAA have taken my licence away. James brought the letter in today.’
Cautiously, ‘You must’ve expected that. They’d already suspended your medical certificate.’
‘But that was because I’ve suffered multiple fractures. Not because I was unfit to fly.’
He let his voice become censorious. ‘In what way were you unfit to fly?’
A pause. ‘Alcohol above the permitted limit.’
He sighed. Balls. Here he was again – listening to the troubles of a sibling. ‘I could’ve told them that. Having been the poor sod in the helicopter. You’ve told me the “eight hours from bottle to throttle” rule, and you do tuck it away, Sis. You should’ve stuck to your rule about not drinking before a flight.’
‘Like you should’ve stuck to your non-basket-case wife?’
Chapter Sixteen
George, as he’d promised but Tamzin had hardly dared hope, rang her mobile, making her feel all skippy inside. ‘On Friday, we’ve got sound check at six but we’re not on till half-ten. Jenneration’s headlining. So we’ll eat in between, yeah?’
‘Yes, OK,’ she answered breathlessly, hoping it didn’t sound as if it had been so long since a boy rang her that she’d forgotten how to talk to one.
‘Good day?’
‘All right. Visited my mother in hospital. That metalwork that goes into her hip is really gruesome though. How about you?’
His voice came back rich with the fun of living. ‘I’ve had an amazin’ day at uni. I got my exam essay in on time. And my car number plate was read out over the PA because I parked it on the end of a row. I was waiting to go into an exam and had to run off, with everyone laughing, and move it. The Director of Learning was standing by the car when I got there. I asked him if he was the car-park attendant.’
Tamzin giggled.
She went to bed feeling cautiously happy.
But woke in the morning with the familiar feeling of anxiety squeezing her head between its hands.
She curled up in bed, stomach churning. What should she wear to a live music gig? What were all the people like that George knew? She’d have to drive into the city and park. And drive home in the dark.
The desire to get out of bed drained away. Also the desire to eat, although her father knocked on her door and offered her a slice of toast and jam.
She closed her eyes on the snakes of fear in her belly and drifted back to sleep listening to the comforting and familiar sound of James working from home for the morning in his study, videoconferencing through his laptop, his dark voice rising and falling.
Her mobile woke her again – and it was George. Again! She tried not to sound as if she had just roused because he had been revising all morning and sounded full of life. ‘Shall I pick you up instead of meeting you in the centre?’
It wasn’t fair when her own car stood outside doing nothing, but, pathetically, she gasped, ‘Oh yes, please!’ And then, ‘Oh no, because I need to go shopping.’
But, after complicated negotiations and shouted conversation to her father downstairs, she managed to arrange for James to take her into the city en route to the office, and George to bring her home later. All parking and driving in the dark problems solved, she showered, ate a tomato sandwich that James made her, his smile
s giving away how much he liked to see her happy, and hopped into the leathery seat of the Merc.
James dropped her right up by the cathedral, although it would mean him fighting his way out of the city again to his office. Tamzin clutched her bag to her chest and prepared to get out. ‘Explain to Mum, tonight, won’t you? And I’ll see her tomorrow.’
‘She’ll understand.’ James winked. It was nice that he was pleased she was going out, but she wished he wouldn’t make his eagerness for the old Tamzin so obvious. The old Tamzin had been shed and left behind, like a spider’s exoskeleton that looked real but wasn’t.
It was tiring battling the Friday afternoon shoppers at the clothes racks. She found black jeans with silver stars embroidered on the hips but the tops all seemed either unbelievably plain or low-cut where she was not so ample as before and – worse – short-sleeved. After trudging the equivalent of a marathon, she found a lace-covered white top with wizard’s sleeves and a belt below the bust. She could’ve bought the top in black but that would’ve meant a new bra, too, and she was fast losing the will to shop.
She trudged to the Ladies in John Lewis’s to change, pulling and biting the price tags off. She glared into the mirrors above the basins. Not bad. But now she was stuck with a carrier bag of clothes she’d changed out of. She shoved it into the bin. She wasn’t going to turn up for a date with George carting a carrier bag of raggy old crap.
To make reparation for using John Lewis’s loos when she hadn’t bought the clothes there she went into their coffee shop for a latte, bought breath freshener from Boots afterwards, used it so thoroughly that she felt as if she’d been gargling neat disinfectant, then wandered along to Cathedral Square where she had arranged to meet George, window-shopping so that she wouldn’t be early.
But he was late.
She gazed across the square at the acres of paving and the neat row of shops. He was late. Ten minutes. He wasn’t coming, then, obviously. Something had come up – something better. Someone. The aroma from the nearby takeaway kiosk began to make her feel sick.
Standing alone near the Guildhall, its arches making it look like a building on stilts, while the late shoppers threaded past her on both sides, her heart slithered, by degrees, to her feet. He was late.
Fifteen.
He wasn’t coming. He’d found someone else to take, or decided to go with his mates. She looked at her watch. Twenty.
Exhaustion began to buckle her limbs. She’d been taut all day but now she was coming unstrung and she wanted to droop, collapse, close her eyes and …
‘Hiya! Sorry I’m late.’
Her eyes flew open.
‘Some arse has let his car break down right in the entrance to the car park. Amazin’ chaos. You look well cool!’ He took her hand. ‘Better run or I’ll miss our sound check.’
His hand was warm as he pulled her along. ‘Marty plays lead guitar, he’s got a Les Paul, and I play rhythm on my SG, and sing lead. Erica is bass and backing vocals, and then we’ve got Rob on drums. Course, my cousin, Bryony, she used to play drums before she went to Brazil.’ He paused. Laughed. ‘Your cousin too, right?’
Tamzin strained to keep up both with the conversation and with his enormous strides. ‘Half a cousin, because of Uncle Gareth.’
‘I guess the other half of her is my cousin. Crazy. Marty’s got my gear in his van. We’re on with other bands but we have to sound check first because we’re on last, have you been to Danny Boyes before?’ He glanced at his watch and speeded up.
She had to run a few steps. ‘Don’t think so.’ Her breath was beginning to burn her throat.
‘Nearly there. Sorry. But if I miss our sound check everyone’ll hate me.’ In fact it was several minutes of George’s seven-league strides before they reached their destination and by then Tamzin’s legs felt like boiled spaghetti. George showed no sign of distress but loped along like a particularly good-looking giraffe.
Danny Boyes was a scruffy-looking pub painted in midnight blue with a mixture of matt and gloss. The bar was open but held only three girls in the corner drinking WKD and five older men in cardigans with a grey whippet lying beside them. ‘You get all sorts in here because the beer’s cheap,’ George explained, hopping over the whippet.
As they ran into an echoing back room a crash of drums made Tamzin cry out in shock. An ironic cheer went up at the sight of George.
‘Sorry, sorry! Crappy traffic.’ He released Tamzin’s hand and ran up the room to where two lads and a girl hovered disconsolately on the small stage, shouting back to two men behind a console at the back of the room, ‘Sorry, sound engineers.’ The unsmiling sound engineers were clones of each other – middle-aged bald men with ponytails.
A boy who looked about twelve, but was probably Tamzin’s age, smiled at her. ‘Hi, I’m Simon, the promoter.’
‘Oh. Hi.’ Tamzin didn’t really know what a promoter did. She hauled her shaking legs up onto a bar stool while George took a flying leap onto the front of the stage, grabbed a guitar off a stand and threw the strap around his neck. He panted into his microphone, ‘Tuning,’ and played a few notes, twisting the machine heads, strumming, picking, frowning as he poked at pedals with his feet. Several minutes of absorbed twiddling later he’d got his breath back. ‘Ready to go.’
‘OK, let’s go, drums,’ sighed the sound engineer.
The sound men fiddled with levels as a thunder of drums made Tamzin wince. Feeling as out of place as a nun at a rock festival, she gazed around a room once painted orange but now showing hundreds of white slashes where posters and cables had been stuck up and pulled down. Small round tables and squat stools edged the wooden floor with no polish other than from years of feet, fag ends and beer.
‘OK. Erica on bass.’
The bass didn’t assault the ears like the drums but merely shuddered through Tamzin’s seat and up her spine, to clamour uncomfortably in her head. Would it be really rude to jam her fingers in her ears?
Erica, with her black pelmet skirt up around her chunky thighs, stick-straight hair and the eyeliner of an ancient Egyptian, looked like a sulky child until her smile transformed her into a cherry-lipped, chubby-cheeked doll. Her blue-black bass guitar was slung as low as her fingers could walk the strings.
Members of supporting bands began to wander in, propping their instruments against the wall, lifting their hands in greeting. Erica, playing on, smiled her dolly dimple smile.
‘OK. Rhythm.’
George’s electric guitar ripped across the tail of Erica’s bass line.
Forgetting noise oppression and spare-part anxieties, Tamzin watched his fingers flying over the frets as his feet and his head kept time. George was good. She felt a little wash of pride and reflected glory.
But when the mixer said, ‘OK. Marty, lead guitar,’ and the other guitar rang out like joy and pain, Tamzin realised what good was. No one from the other bands spoke or even moved, all faces were turned towards the stage.
A sound engineer broke the spell. ‘OK. George, voice.’
George folded his arms loosely on top of his guitar. ‘One two one two one two, three three three, four… four… four…’ His voice ran effortlessly up the scale.
Tamzin felt the hairs on the back of her neck stir. It was a voice like suede: smooth but with texture.
‘Words, please.’
George abandoned the scale and took up a tune.
‘Tamzin, you’re coming for a pizza,
I was late when I went to meet ya,
Now you think that I’m all scummy
And you’ve got a poorly mummy…’
Everyone – except the expressionless sound engineers – laughed and Tamzin felt her face burn with embarrassment. But also with pleasure. George was singing to her – only a silly ditty, but for her.
‘OK. That’s the headline band, Jenneration. Can we have Average Spoonful, please?’
A new band hopped up onto the stage as the members of Jenneration stowed their instruments in the b
and room and, with Tamzin, were soon stepping outside into a rapidly cooling evening.
Tamzin trailed the others past big houses made into flats and small houses made into shops to the steamy warmth of a pizza parlour beside a laundrette, wondering how she’d keep her end up in conversation that was all about music and performance.
She knew all about being excluded.
Memories of uni crowded in. The elite kids who had been known as the Coven, with their sly grins and sarcasm, their pointed silences. Their remorseless ability to make her feel stupid and rejected. Her breathing began to hurry.
But at a booth of slippery red seats and a scratched plastic table Tamzin found herself dragged from the back of the group and wedged between the wall and George. He grinned at her. ‘Gotcha!’
The Coven faded from her mind. She realised that she was grinning goofily back when Erica had to flap a laminated menu to get her attention. ‘Tamzin, are you up for sharing a pizza?’
Tamzin was relieved and disappointed to break the eye contact with George. ‘Um, yes; I can’t eat a whole one.’
Erica sighed. ‘I can. And it goes straight to my bum.’
Marty laughed. He’d put on silver-framed glasses as soon as he got off stage and they glinted in the strong overhead light. ‘Don’t let her eat a whole one, Tamzin, or there’s not going to be room on the stage for the rest of us.’
Erica snorted. ‘Oh, right, Mr Strange Hair! If you use any more hairspray –’
‘It’s not hairspray, it’s straightener, don’t tell Tamzin I wear hairspray. And what about your skirt, then, Erica? Man, it’s a parachute –’
Tamzin giggled, hardly daring to believe that the members of George’s band might be … friendly.
‘Hey.’
‘Yes?’ She glanced up at George. Immediately, he kissed her. His lips were like velvet. Gentle. When, tentatively, she kissed him back, he kissed her harder, giddily. Her heart began to patter.
‘Tamzin, do you like Hawaiian?’ Erica interrupted, as though nothing extraordinary was happening, as if the world was just the same as before George pressed his hot lips to hers.
Tamzin, who felt as if she’d just woken up after a hundred years, couldn’t even remember what a Hawaiian pizza was. ‘Whatever,’ she agreed, breathlessly.
Want to Know a Secret? (Choc Lit) Page 15