by Cathy Kelly
Which was true. Cooking was therapy for her as well as an expression of love for her family and right now, she needed that spiritual nourishment.
James’s hand snaked out towards the mixing bowl.
Christie laughed and let him take one finger’s worth of dough, before slapping his hand away.
‘People who tease me don’t get fed,’ she said.
‘Are you making guacamole for me?’ he asked, eyeing the avocados. James loved food and would eat most things, but his love for guacamole was legend in the Devlin family annals.
‘Have I ever forgotten to make it for you?’ Christie patted his cheek with a floury hand and went on with her spooning.
‘No,’ said James and put his arms around his wife for a kiss.
Who’d have thought guacamole would be the secret to love, Christie thought, closing her eyes and leaning back into his arms: on such strange things were marriages made.
‘Mum, this is delicious,’ sighed Ethan, sitting back in a striped deckchair, the dogs at his feet and a plate piled high on his lap.
‘Yes,’ murmured Janet, who was paler than usual, but had a light in her eyes that Christie had never seen there before. ‘I like this eating for two thing.’
‘It really kicks in at dessert,’ Ethan’s wife, Shelly, informed her sister-in-law. ‘You don’t think you can eat two entire pieces of cheesecake or two wedges of chocolate cake, but you can.’
Ethan and Shane, well trained by their mother, helped her tidy up so she could bring the desserts out.
‘Thanks,’ Shane said, kissing her affectionately on the cheek. ‘This is a lovely party.’
It was getting so hot that the dogs came in to lie on the kitchen floor, panting in the heat.
James carried in the last of the buffet plates and stacked them in the dishwasher.
‘I don’t know if it’s the wine talking, but today has made me think. We’re very lucky, Christie, aren’t we?’ he said as he straightened up. ‘We’ve got everything, a healthy family, each other, a few quid in the bank.’
‘Hey, don’t you think I know it?’ replied Christie, smiling at her husband. She’d had a glass of wine too and finally felt the tension leave her. She must stop thinking about Carey Wolensky. After all, how could something from so long ago touch her now? ‘I thank God every day for what we’ve got.’
From outside in the garden came the sounds of their family enjoying themselves. Sasha was shrieking as she chased around after balloons that Christie really hoped wouldn’t get caught on the spiky thorns of her Madame Pompadour rose. Children always got so upset about balloons popping.
Christie didn’t have to look out to know that Shane would be beaming from ear to ear, the proud look of the daddy to be. He’d had that look on his face all day and Christie could remember when James looked exactly the same. The pride of the family man.
‘I say thanks every day too,’ said James. ‘But, you know,’ he paused, ‘do you ever worry that something will happen? That one of us will become ill, something random, something we can’t do anything about.’
Christie stared at him. James was never maudlin, not even after a glass of wine. Instantly, she wondered what he knew, how he’d found out. Yet he couldn’t know anything, could he?
‘What do you mean?’ she asked tightly.
‘No, no, it’s nothing,’ James said. ‘It’s just…I don’t know. It all seems so good. Sometimes I worry that it could all go horribly wrong and we could end up bitter and twisted.’
Christie’s anxious eyes looked for some sign that he knew, but there was none. Perhaps it was just that her feeling spooked had transmitted itself to him.
‘Is that all?’ she said with relief. ‘You’re the least bitter and twisted person I know. Just because we’re happy doesn’t mean something has to come along and ruin it all.’
‘Ah, it’s nothing.’ James brushed his melancholy thoughts away. ‘I’m just being stupid. It’s probably the male menopause.’
‘You’re too old for the male menopause,’ Christie teased. ‘That was supposed to happen ages ago, when I went through mine. I didn’t do too badly, I didn’t run off with some handsome young stud.’
‘If you had, I’d have bloody killed them,’ James said, suddenly serious.
‘Lucky no one fitted the job description at the time,’ she teased, but felt sick inside. Why had she said that? How stupid. ‘Seriously, you’re safe enough, my love. What would I want with a young stud, when I have you?’ Christie put her arms around James, and they kissed, sinking into an embrace that was familiar and reassuring, except that today Christie didn’t feel reassured.
‘OK, back to basics,’ she said, leaning against him. ‘What are we going to do, financially, for Shane and Janet? We’ve got to do something. They’re totally broke and they have no idea how expensive babies are.’
‘I was thinking about that too,’ James said. ‘We’ve got some savings. What are we keeping them for?’
Christie kissed him. ‘You’re a great father,’ she said, thinking of how hard it had been to save that money.
‘What are you two looking so thoughtful about?’ said a voice. It was Ana wandering in with another empty wine bottle. ‘This is a celebratory day,’ she added a touch too merrily. ‘We should be happy, celebrating.’
‘We’re just having a chat,’ Christie said lightly. ‘James, will you get another bottle out of the fridge and I’ll sort out the cake? Ana, you could take out these little fairy cakes I’ve made for the children.’ She’d spent ages doing them the night before: pretty-coloured iced cakes with little animal faces to tempt the toddlers’ appetites.
‘Delighted to help,’ said Ana, slurring her words slightly.
Over her head, James and Christie exchanged a glance. Ana had never been used to drinking and after two glasses really needed to lie down in a darkened corner.
‘Come on, Ana,’ James said, putting his arm around his sister-in-law affectionately. ‘I’ll take the plate.’
Christie was left alone in the kitchen to sort out the cake. Looking out the window, she could see Ethan cuddling little Sasha. Shelly and Janet were engrossed in baby talk, while Janet’s mother, Margery, threw a balloon up into the air for Fifi. James was smiling as he helped a giggling Ana to a comfy chair.
Christie watched her family and wished she could see the future when it mattered.
James was right, they had been lucky. But it was more than luck that had made their marriage so strong over the years. You didn’t spend thirty-five years with somebody without wanting to kill them occasionally. Or even leave them.
There had been that time when the children were very young and she and James had drifted far apart, when work had taken over his life and Christie had been low on his list of priorities, but they’d got over that. Eventually.
They’d worked hard to get over their differences. There hadn’t been many big rows in the Devlin family household. Having grown up with nervous tension as a constant backdrop, Christie hated rows. Her father’s rantings had been enough to put her off arguments for life. James was easy-going and affectionate and had brought their children up to be the same. So yes, there had been hard work involved. All the same, they were lucky. Why was James suddenly worried that their luck was about to turn? Christie shivered despite the heat.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was Sunday evening, one of the most important evenings ever for Karl and the band. Amber had escaped from Summer Street by telling her mother she was going to be studying late and not to bother her.
She’d left the radio on low in her room, closed the door, and hoped her mother had listened the night Amber had made her point about deserving a little privacy. That privacy meant keeping her mother away from her room so she could escape out to Karl. It also meant huge guilt over the deception.
Now, despite the two giant Southern Comforts Karl had bought her, Amber’s mouth was dry and her heart was thudding. She prickled with nerves. She’d found the perfect posi
tion at the right side of the SnakePit stage, behind a giant light where there was a small box she could sit on and see perfectly, yet remain out of sight.
Huge cables trailed around her feet. The stage and backstage were both hives of activity as muscle-bound guys with tattooed biceps shifted amps and equipment, shouting to each other as they worked. Two men with radio headsets directed the backstage dance, snapping out directions, ticking off on clipboard lists. Everyone backstage at the venue appeared to have a role, from the various promoters’ staff rushing round with laminates rattling off their chests to the bands themselves, cocooned in their dressing rooms to get ready.
‘Give us a moment, kid?’ Karl’s newly appointed manager, Stevie, had said to Amber in the band’s poky little room fifteen minutes previously. Before she’d been able to throw a questioning look at Karl to say how dare the man dismiss her like that, Stevie had hustled her out into the dimly lit corridor right behind the stage. Here, nobody seemed to know or care that she was Karl Evans’s girlfriend and muse. Here, she was a blonde in jeans in a place that had seen a lot of blondes in jeans who were with the band. Amber had felt she might cry. This Sunday evening event was so important for Karl and, therefore, for her. A big showcase gig that horrible Stevie had got for them. Producers, heads of record companies, everyone who was anyone was going to be there to see the hot new bands. It was huge, but Amber, who felt she was irrevocably tied up with Karl and his future, had been sidelined.
Anxiously, she fiddled with the tiger’s-eye pendant she’d found in her mother’s drawer and which she wore on many of her trips with Karl. It had always comforted her before, making her think of Mum and home, where she was safe, treasured, much more than a hanger-on.
But since the terrible row on Thursday evening, when Mum had given her that stupid present, nothing had given her much comfort.
They’d had rows before, but never like that. Never with such words of bitterness and anger. Amber could hardly bear to think of what she’d said, but she couldn’t back down and say sorry, because there was so much more to be said.
Mum, I’m leaving with Karl and I won’t be sitting my exams, won’t be going to college.
She’d done her best to avoid her mother all weekend, muttering about having to study and not meeting Faye’s eyes. She couldn’t face it. The tension was killing her.
She hadn’t told Karl about the row, either. He had been worrying so much about tonight he hadn’t noticed how upset she was. And now he’d let Stevie throw her out of the dressing room, hadn’t fought for her, hadn’t sneaked out to see whether she was all right.
She hugged her knees up close to her chest, and laid her cheek on one knee. Hidden away here, safe and unseen, she’d be fine.
There were three bands before Karl’s, and Amber listened, her eyes half closed in concentration, jealous of any sign of anyone better than him. And then they were on stage and her nerves returned in force.
Please let them be brilliant. Please let there be no bum notes. Don’t let Karl fall apart from stage fright.
There were four of them in the band, Ceres: three other guys who were good-looking and good musicians, too, but Karl had been right when he’d told her that first night that he was the band. It was the simple truth. The magnetism he had offstage was magnified tenfold on it. Brooding and Byronic, he held the mike to his mouth with two hands, like a man might hold his lover’s face cupped close to his own before kissing her lips.
Now I’ve found you, I can’t let you go
You’re in my blood
In my dreams
Like a sleepwalker, I’ll come back to you
My love
It was the song he’d written for her.
‘You inspired me,’ he said softly after he’d played it to her one afternoon in the quiet of her bedroom when she should have been at double history. Amber had listened with her heart singing along, because this was pure, true love: to be immortalised in song as the beloved of a man as gifted as Karl.
And it was all worth it, even putting up with nasty Stevie, who looked at her with appraising eyes as if she was a piece of meat he was bidding for at a market. He’d only known Karl for a week. Wait till he realised that Amber wasn’t some bit of fluff, that she was part of Karl, then Stevie would change his attitude.
The last note of their three-song set finished, and Karl raised his hands in triumph at the crowd, who cheered wild approval.
They’d loved him and his band.
A huge grin split Amber’s face as her lover turned to where she sat hidden and smiled that private, sexy smile he kept for her alone. He’d seen her! But just as quickly, he turned to his audience, still with her smile on his face, a smile of such languorous heat that people screamed. Then, applause ringing in his ears, he dragged himself away from the drug of the crowd’s approval and stalked offstage, long-limbed, panther-like, utterably fuckable. He passed feet away from Amber’s hiding place and never glanced her way. He hadn’t seen her at all, she realised with a jolt. That private smile had not been for her, but for the thousand-strong crowd he’d held in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t her smile any more: it was everybody’s.
Amber snatched at her tiger’s-eye pendant for comfort but there was none there.
An hour later in a small, late-night restaurant, Amber went to slide into the curved banquette seat beside Karl, but Stevie – stocky, slicked-back hair Stevie in his heavy leather jacket and chunky Tag Heuer watch – muscled in past her so subtly that only Amber felt the nastiness of the gesture.
‘How’s my best lead singer?’ he said, grabbing Karl’s shoulders in a matey manner.
‘Walking on air,’ replied Karl. ‘That was some buzz in the SnakePit, wasn’t it?’
‘In two words, in-credible,’ said Lew, the drummer, moving in to sit the other side of Karl, pulling his girlfriend, a shy girl called Katie, in after him.
‘Amazing,’ Kenny T, the keyboards man, pronounced, squashing up beside Katie.
‘Total blast,’ sighed Sydney, bass guitar. Sydney’s girlfriend was away, so had missed their night of triumph. Syd had spent ages on the phone trying to describe how wonderful it had all been, and was now drinking himself into oblivion to make up for her absence. Syd settled in beside Stevie and then looked up at Amber, still standing beside the table, waiting for Karl to notice her and make space for her beside him.
But Karl didn’t notice. He was wrapped up in Stevie and the flannel that spewed effortlessly from the manager’s mouth.
Everyone wanted to sign the band.
They were the hottest ticket there. Stevie was so shallow, so fake, Amber thought.
Could nobody see it except for her? They were all in thrall to Stevie, laughing at his hopeless jokes. What do you call a drummer with no girlfriend? Homeless.
Lew, the drummer, laughed himself sick at that one, seeming not to realise that it was totally true in his case because Katie’s teacher’s salary supported him.
It was a horrible evening and Amber had never been so glad as when it ended and she and Karl were alone in the taxi.
‘Will you stay the night? Please, this was so special. I want you here beside me when I wake up so I know it hasn’t all been a dream.’
Karl’s head was resting on her shoulder in the taxi, his breath still sweet with the orangey tang of the final glass of Cointreau. There had been endless drinks, champagne even. ‘You better get used to it because it’ll be premier cru all the way from now on,’ Stevie had said, summoning waiters with a rude click of his fingers.
At least the waiters could see what he was like, filling his glass more slowly than anyone else’s, glaring at him. She hoped they’d spat in his coffee.
‘Stay,’ repeated Karl sleepily.
Amber never stayed. Staying might mean her mother finding out that her bed wasn’t slept in, that she hadn’t been burning the midnight oil in her bedroom, studying diligently like the sensible schoolgirl she was supposed to be.
And then Karl’s han
ds unbuttoned her jacket and reached into the cavern of her cleavage, expertly finding the exact place where the lacy strap of her bra gave a finger’s-width access to the bare skin beneath.
She felt the liquid rush of desire hit her groin and moaned softly, moving closer. ‘I want to be with you tonight, Amber. Please.’ Suddenly, the words of the song he’d written for her came into her mind.
To hell with not wanting her mother to know. She’d have to know sometime. Karl was a part of Amber’s life now, for ever.
‘I’ll stay,’ she murmured back. ‘Just try and stop me.’
Faye woke early the next morning. It was Monday and she hoped that a new week would bring peace between her and Amber. Her daughter was definitely avoiding her and, yesterday evening, had gone upstairs to study at six, saying she’d see her mother in the morning.
Faye had stood at the door before she went to bed, but she could still hear the low sound of the radio Amber always listened to when she worked, and she decided that interrupting the study might result in another argument.
Faye normally liked waking early and would get a cup of coffee and sit up in bed reading and thinking. But today, she was too restless to sit. She brewed coffee and decided to take a cup in to Amber both to wake her up and as a peace offering. Not that Faye felt she was the one who had to say sorry because Amber had been the one to fight.
But being a parent had taught her that getting over an argument was what mattered: not how you did it or who felt they’d won. You could be victorious or be happy was the child/parent mantra.
She knocked on Amber’s door and then walked in, expecting to see the gloom of shut curtains and Amber, a sleepy lump, huddled in her bed.
But the curtains were open, so was the sash window and Amber’s bed was patently unslept in. The radio hummed low in the background, set to Amber’s favourite station. The room was cool from the window being open a long time and Faye realised that her daughter hadn’t slept at home the night before.
Faye dropped the cup of coffee, didn’t care that it spilled all over the floor.