“Do you know if the hotel would call me a cab?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll ask the doorman how much if you like. Where are you going?” I told him the name of the town I lived in and he stubbed out his cigarette. “Do you want to come inside and speak to them with me?”
“I’m OK here,” I said.
He returned a few minutes later, shivering at the cold and rain. “I did you a deal,” he said. “A hundred quid, it would have been £115 but I haggled.” He smiled.
A hundred quid; it was a lot of money. At first I thought it was too much but then I considered what I would do if I left now for the train. If I left with this still unresolved, I knew I would be back at the next opportunity, waiting to see him and wondering every day if I was crazy or if it was real. Probably wasting another day, another train fare, just to miss the opportunity again. And what if the band changed hotels? How would I find the answers I was looking for then?
“Could you ask if the hundred still stands after midnight?” I asked. “I don’t want to miss the train then find the rate has doubled.”
“Sure.” Jack popped back into the lobby and reappeared a few minutes later. “It’s the hotel’s own taxi, so they are here all night for guests and they don’t increase their rate after midnight so you’ll be fine.”
“Thanks so much Jack. Yes I’ll take the cab, if you could tell him that please?”
“Will do. You sure you don’t want to come inside? Have a drink and get warm?”
“No thanks, I know this seems strange but I can’t.”
“You’re not banned or anything are you?” His eyebrow raised and he smiled.
“You’ve rumbled me!” I teased politely. “Seriously, I’m fine Jack. Go back inside.”
“OK Katie. Good to meet you – even if you are a bit odd!”
“Cheeky. Now go back inside and finish what you started with your girlfriend!” I ordered. Off he went, back through the beautiful glass doors, into the other world. The world of glamour, opulence, beautiful people and dreams come true. A world that ultimately was no longer real to me.
*****
Time passed. Midnight came and went. What possessed me to stay? I don’t know how to explain it. To go now, well it would have proven the whole day to have been a waste of time. Finally, a silver people carrier drew up. The doorman appeared, walked briskly to the cab. Out got Marti. He was alone. I stood up and walked straight towards him.
I wasn’t even on his radar, he started to walk with the doorman towards the lobby entrance – I was about to lose my opportunity. It was now or never.
“Marti!” I shouted.
My voice caused him to turn on his heel; the doorman too. Both looked at me quizzically.
“Do you remember me?” I asked, stepping towards the light and removing my glasses.
He looked at me and something like recognition may have crossed his face. I am not sure… it was so quick, so fleeting.
“So many countries,” he said slowly, “So many girls.” He smiled sarcastically; I knew his intention was to humiliate me. He stepped back towards the hotel doors and then turned away from me. “Sorry love, you won’t be getting your autograph tonight, they’re out for dinner, and they might not be tucked into bed for hours yet. ”
They reached the doors. The doorman stepped aside for Marti as he opened it.
At the last minute, Marti turned and looked directly at me.
“How far you have fallen,” he whispered. Then he was gone.
Tears ran down my face. I put my bag down on the wall. Why couldn’t he have spelled it out to me? Called me by my name and warned me off?
The rain was being driven under the canopy by the wind and the wall was now too wet to sit on. I crouched down near the floor with my head in my hands, feeling like I was about to be sick. I was sobbing uncontrollably.
The rain beating down on the pavement, the noise of the spray from the passing traffic and my own sobs, masked the sound of footsteps until they were almost at the hotel. There was a tiny ‘flash’ in my mind. I opened my fingers to look between them, hiding my tear-stained face.
I saw a shape approaching through the dark, a silhouette reflected in the lights that bounced off the puddles, that familiar sway to his walk as he splashed through the raindrops.
No coat. No minders. No car.
I looked up and there he was. Just a boy walking towards a girl in the rain.
Joel.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I instinctively stood to greet him despite my best intentions to stay hidden. I pushed my wet hair back from my face yet he passed within three feet of me, not seeming to be aware of my presence. It was very dark and he seemed totally absorbed in his thoughts.
I observed as the doorman appeared with the umbrella – how do they know? Must be CCTV, I thought – and I remember feeling both disappointed and relieved that he had not noticed me or recognised me, there in the dark.
In the seconds I had, I just drank him in. He had changed his clothes from earlier and he looked so tired. Probably jet lagged as well as worn out from the gig.
So, this would be my final opportunity but I daren’t speak. I couldn’t break my promise. He hadn’t seen me and that was perhaps for the best, after all.
I didn’t reckon on the doorman, as he lifted the umbrella to protect Joel from the rain, looking directly at me. “Are you the lady wanting a cab?” He asked.
A simple question.
Time stood still. Like the moment all those months ago in the forest by the river, Joel’s face turned towards me and, as if in slow motion, my brain absorbed the beauty of his features. Almost by freeze frame my mind took in the fact that Joel Vine was turning his head, curious to know who the doorman had addressed and, as the light from the lobby hit his profile, he looked directly at me just for an instant, before casting his eyes downward.
An instant in which I could see there was no recognition in his face whatsoever.
I was certain of it. Not a glimmer.
Well, if we had never met, then I had never promised him I would stay away, so what could possibly stop me from speaking to him directly now? To be brave? To get the answer I came here for?
“Yes, that’s me,” I spoke up, remembering the doorman’s question. “I’ve been waiting for an autograph from Mr Vine, if that’s OK?” I smiled towards Joel. It was my safe, friendly, hopeful smile. I’d used it before, in the mirror in the toilets at work, back at what I’d termed ‘first contact’.
Despite my question Joel remained passive and unreadable. He continued looking down at his shoes as if to say ‘I’m tired, it’s been a long day.’ He did not speak at all.
The lobby doors were suddenly thrust outwards, Marti raced out into the rain. The doorman looked worried that there was no umbrella over him, he tried to bridge the gap between Joel and Marti but realised they would both get wet. He chose to keep the umbrella over Joel.
Marti put one hand over his head to protect his hair from the side-swiping rain and the wind.
“Joel, what are you doing out here on your own mate? Why aren’t you at the restaurant with the others? Come inside!” He ushered Joel towards him, frustration oozing from his body language and his tone of voice.
“Do you have a pen,” Joel said, monotone.
“Sure,” I said, grabbing a pen and a pad from my bag and handing it to him.
He didn’t ask what my name was. I didn’t volunteer it. In that moment, it was weird enough for my brain to take in what was happening and what it all meant. Joel Vine quickly signed for me and then handed the pad back. For an instant, our hands both held the pad then he released it. Still no eye contact.
One final chance.
“Can I have a photo with you?” I asked.
No answer. He just stepped away towards Marti and the lobby doors. “Make sure there are no photos Marti,” I heard him say, softly.
Then he was gone, leaving me and the doorman standing in the rain. Marti followed him. E
ven he didn’t look back at me.
I asked the doorman to please call me the cab. It pulled out of a driveway at the side of the building, it must have been there all along. I got in and gave the driver my address.
I spent the entire journey crying into that signed piece of paper. There were no answers to be found that day and, if anything, the hurt I had felt before had been compounded by a thousand.
So yes, I am looking forward to the end of the year. In fact I can’t bear it a second longer.
Roll on midnight.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Losing my mind, my house, my husband, my job – and losing Joel whether he was real or not – was like a series of bereavements.
As each day passed, the pain and humiliation didn’t lessen but new things happened that helped take my mind of the strange events of the previous year. I still thought about Joel daily, replayed the moment I saw his face – that dead stare – and tried to remember exactly what Marti had said, to work out why he’d said it. Was there a particular inference in his tone? Did he look at me with recognition or with the loathing he had for pretty much everyone he met?
I could have gone mad with the questions if I’d have given them much credibility. As it was, I took my mum’s advice and tried to get on with things, taking one day at a time.
The following August I came off of the anti-depressants and the sleeping pills. I should have done this slowly in a controlled way but I ran out of pills and couldn’t be bothered to get any more. I hadn’t reckoned on the side effects of withdrawal. I was racked with what I discovered from online forums was known as ‘brain freeze’. Every turn of my head or quick eye movement made a kind of ‘Zap’ in my head. It was uncomfortable and frightening, though not painful. I didn’t feel up to driving though. The worst side effect was my uncontrollable anger. My family tried to understand but I think it freaked them out a bit. I flew off the handle and lost my temper countless times, with barely any provocation.
Withdrawal took about three weeks.
Without the drugs in my system I was far less tired. It was easier to get out of bed in the morning and to motivate myself. I started to feel more like the old me. I started to see Elisa again, she was newly single too and we had some really good nights out.
Without the Amitriptyline came the fear of what had happened before. The Amitriptyline was an old type of anti-depressant. It had been prescribed to me in tandem with the more modern SSRI anti-depressant, Citalopram. The Amitriptyline was prescribed in low doses purely as a muscle relaxant; it kept me calm and helped me to sleep at night. In that way, it had much in common – to my mind at least – with a sedative.
You can guess what I was thinking. With a sedative in my system I had not had a re-occurrence of the very clear flashes in which I used to see and hear Joel. It was quite likely that these had been delusions, hallucinations. However, whether they were real or not, without the sedatives in my system there must be a chance that they would return. That was my biggest fear.
I missed the flashes and I missed Joel like a junkie misses a fix. Just one little inconsequential flash and – like after the ill-fated trip to London – I would be thrown back at the mercy of my own powerful and disastrous emotions.
So why did I come off the pills? I just felt like I couldn’t move on until I was myself again; me before Joel. I wanted to get a job. I wanted to date again. To have to explain to someone when I got close to them that I took anti-depressants meant explaining why. I didn’t want to look backwards anymore.
It was time for Beth Britten to get back to her old self.
I decided I may as well make the best of what had happened to me, so I dug out the screenplay I’d begun the previous year, the one about me and Joel. I approached it cautiously, as a work of fiction – albeit delusional – that could represent a cathartic re-invention for me as a writer.
After all, they do say you should write about what you know. And it truly had been an amazing experience.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
It is almost December. I have been off the pills since August and I am fine. I am still getting my B12 injections. There have been no flashes, thank God. I have had dreams in which I have heard music but I think they’ve just been dreams.
I have nearly finished the screenplay. I am not sure how to end it though. Should I create a happy ending in place of what I actually have in real life where my own ‘story’ is still very much unresolved? Should I have Joel leave his wife in the screenplay and come back to me? At least there would be a happy ending somewhere I think, wryly.
I toy with a few possibilities until it hits me that I can’t finish the book until I’m honest with myself. What would a happy ending look like to me, for real?
In the story I am writing, the happy ending would be Joel coming back to Beth. In real life, that’s the last thing I should want to happen. He is still married with two kids as far as I know. It was probably all delusion on my part, so why would I wish to be deluded again?
The true happy ending would be a new beginning for Beth. A new love interest. Closure with Joel.
I spend hours attempting to write it, I replace my clunky old laptop with a new Ultrabook, thinking that might inspire me. Still I can’t complete the story to my own satisfaction.
I decide quite deliberately to get hideously drunk while typing, to see if inspiration strikes. I try listening to music whilst obliterating a full bottle of Pinot Grigio. Nothing. The story is as stuck as I am. I raid mum’s drinks cabinet (she and dad are out) and pour myself a Baileys.
Finally, I complete the ending. It won’t win any prizes, I think but it’s done; finished. I go to bed, pleased with the work I’ve achieved.
In the morning, I open what I typed the night before to give it one last read.
Something is wrong! The final five or six hours’ worth of writing I did last night to finish the screenplay – they haven’t saved! I panic. I search the temp files, look online about how to restore previous versions, follow the instructions. All to no avail. In desperation I search every document or file modified yesterday but the ending I wrote is not to be found, anywhere. Despite every save I remember doing between 5pm and 10pm – well – there’s nothing there.
Suddenly, I just want the bloody thing out of my sight.
I hit ‘print’ and go to get dressed and washed. I come back downstairs, to find that the printer paper has filled up the tray and is now flying straight out of the printer and onto the floor. I begin to gather up the gazillion pages, my fury causing my balance to waver as the world swims around me. I hit my head and my elbow on the desk and yell out in anger and pain.
I package it up with a swiftly penned note and some other ideas for the story which I wrote long-hand a few months ago. I want it all out of my sight.
I stick it all in an envelope and do a hurried internet search for the address of Rosa Publishing, the company Elisa works at. I don’t want to dump this mess of a story on her particularly but it’s the only place I can think of. There are two addresses listed, so I pick one which sounds less corporate, thinking it could even be Anne Rosa’s home address. Then I grab a pack of first class stamps. Not knowing how many it will require and having no desire to go to the Post Office to find out, I stick the whole lot of them onto the envelope, here, there and everywhere.
“That should be enough!” I mumble. Then I pick up the package and walk to the post box, which is just on the corner.
After the manuscript has gone, I feel relieved.
What will be, will be.
EPILOGUE
I never intended to go to a Town Full of Heroes concert. Not since what happened, happened – (or should that be what didn’t happen, didn’t happen?)
I have been dating Tim for about six weeks. We were in a café when he asked me to go with him to a gig the following weekend. I nodded, having a mouthful of Panini at the time I couldn’t speak. As I was still nodding, he mentioned it was Town Full of Heroes. Oh. What could I say? OK, I coul
d have said No. But I didn’t want to have my past define me. It was time to prove to myself that I really was over all that craziness.
We had standing tickets. It was an arena gig, so pretty hard to pick any one person out in the crowd. I felt pretty anonymous. Through some queuing and a bit of luck we managed to be just four rows from the front. I had a pretty clear view of the band. I tried not to let it unnerve me.
As the band came onto the stage the crowd went crazy, the lights dimmed and the music began. I must say I was pleased that I felt nothing out of the ordinary; just the usual feeling of being at a gig and seeing a really great band. Whatever had once been was now gone. I threw myself into the music and Tim and I danced and sang and cheered until we were hoarse. It was fantastic.
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