Come Together

by Madelynne Ellis

The box was a very ordinary cardboard affair, unmarked in any way. ‘What’s inside?’ Dani insisted, before opening it. She and Ginny were in the camper van belonging to the members of Denna Rädsla, who Ginny appeared to be travelling with. She’d apparently met Lykke on the flight to Copenhagen, and, when they’d discovered they were both headed to the same festival, Lykke had offered to give Ginny a lift. The tenuous Black Halo connections on both sides seemed to have created a bond.

  ‘How did you get it here?’ Dani asked, frowning at the package.

  Rather than explain, Ginny pointed to the huge suitcase currently occupying a third of the camper van’s limited floor space. It appeared to contain a few pairs of knickers, a wash bag and not a whole lot else now the box had been removed. ‘You know me. I travel light, and this was important. I knew you’d want to see it. So stop dithering, woman, and open it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘All right, I’m opening it. Stop hassling me, what’s the excitement? It’s nothing gross, is it?’

  She didn’t think Ginny would bring anything revolting all the way from England, but sometimes her friend did things that didn’t make a lot of sense.

  Dani ripped the tape from the lid and opened up the box. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed on viewing the contents. She sat back with her hand covering her mouth as a wave of shock rolled through her, leaving her quaking. Her eyes immediately filled with tears. She didn’t need to open the envelopes or tear into the carefully wrapped gifts to know what they were or who’d sent them. In fact, for a moment she wasn’t sure if she even wanted to touch them. Years of her life that she couldn’t regain sat inside that box.

  ‘Hey.’ Ginny wrapped her arms tight around her and squeezed. ‘Are you all right? I’m guessing they’re from your dad?’

  Dani sniffed. ‘I guess.’ She wiped away enough of her tears to see properly again. Over ten years of birthday, Christmas and other gifts sat in that box.

  ‘Shall I find Xane? He’s probably better at giving you hugs than I am.’

  ‘In a minute.’ Fat tears continued to streak her face. ‘Actually, would you, now?’ It wasn’t so much that she needed Xane here; she wanted a moment or two alone to examine the contents and couldn’t think of a tactful way of persuading Ginny to leave without sounding rude.

  ‘Hang in there, Saint. Um, I might have to stop calling you that, seeing as you’re a naughty sinner now. OK, I’ll be back with him in a jiffy.’

  Dani ran her fingertips over the brightly coloured gift-wrapped presents in the box, but chose to open a card first. First she dug to the very bottom of the box and selected a lilac-coloured envelope with a postmark a decade old. It was addressed to her at her former family home, the one they’d all shared before her dad left and she and her mother had moved into St Agatha’s.

  To my precious daughter, Dani. So sorry I can’t be with you on your special day. I hope we can catch up soon, and you’ll come and visit me in my new house. ‘My’ had been crossed out and replaced by ‘our.’ Know that I’m thinking of you always, and that I miss our early morning swims together. Wishing you a very happy birthday, Dad.

  He hadn’t forgotten her. He hadn’t deserted her. There were gifts and letters, postcards he’d sent from various holiday destinations, but she’d never received any of them. She had no inkling. Had never even suspected that her mum had been keeping them from her, while at the same time attempting to poison Dani’s thoughts with rhetoric and constant condemnation. How many times had her mother said her father didn’t want her, and that he’d abandoned her? Hundreds? Thousands?

  All lies.

  He hadn’t deserted her. He’d been denied access to her. As she read his words, she realised how very much he had wanted her in his life. For over ten years he’d kept trying to remake the bond he believed he’d irrevocably severed. He thought her silence was because she was hurt, not because she’d never received his correspondence.

  I’m not sorry I married your mother, he wrote in one letter, because the product of that union was you. I am particularly sorry about how my fear and inability to admit what I truly was caused so much hurt, and ripped our family apart. I don’t blame you for not responding or wanting to know me. What a shock it must have been to you, to see me like that. You were so young. Too young maybe to really understand. But know that I will always be here for you if you need me. His address and phone number were written very neatly on every letter, with an email address on the more recent ones.

  The last letter was dated only five weeks ago.

  Is that really you grown into a woman? I think I ought to reprimand you for your behaviour, but my own has been pretty shabby in the past and you’re an adult now capable of making your own choices. He, along with the rest of the universe, had apparently happened upon that god-awful film of her and Xane making out. I hope this rock star of yours is treating you well and that he’s honest with you while he’s giving you … Actually, let’s not get into that. I’m sure your mother has bored you to tears with lectures about sex and what a sin it is. Let me only say that I disagree.

  Instead let me advise you to be honest with one another about who you are. Honesty is the key to maintaining any relationship, along with being fair, open-minded and respectful of the other person’s views. These are the things which have kept Drew and me together despite numerous barriers and prejudices we’ve had to face. I often wonder, if your mother and I could have been honest with one another, whether things would still have ended in such a frightful way. We ought never to have married, but as I’ve said in the past, I don’t regret that decision. If it weren’t for that mistake, you would never have been, and becoming a father was one of the proudest, most joyful moments of my life.

  Chapter 31

  Xane sat on the sofa in the interviewer’s caravan alongside Ash and Spook. Spook never said anything during interviews, but had turned up to lend moral support or something, or maybe Sally had ordered him to be present because the fans would like it. Hey, who didn’t like three pretty guys dressed in black leather all sitting in a row?

  Xane slotted in his cat’s-eye contact lenses the minute he realised it was a video interview destined to be splattered all over the internet. He needed to be calm and composed for this, and he was anything but. His mind was still ablaze with thoughts of Luthor, Dani and himself engaged in acts that would never happen. He suspected the rest of the night would be awkward at best, and possibly devastating if certain facts emerged.

  Damn, why did they have to do this interview now?

  ‘Set?’ the blonde bombshell waving the microphone about asked. She wriggled her minuscule butt into the space between him and Ash, so it looked like they were all best buddies. ‘This is Ava Leigh of Bang! magazine and I’m here at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark with Xane Geist, Ash Gore and Spook Mortensen of Black Halo. How’s it going, guys?’

  ‘Good. It’s lovely to be here with you, Ava.’ Ash leaned towards her, a huge smile upon his face. He loved this sort of flirtatious crap, making eyes at the lovely Ava and the women of their future audiences. Unfortunately, Ava seemed to think it her duty to get a response out of at least two of them, so Xane still ended up with the mic in his face.

  ‘Yeah, great. Totally rocking,’ he muttered.

  ‘I understand you’re headlining here tonight. How are you finding the festival so far?’

  ‘Wet,’ he and Ash agreed.

  ‘Does that make things more difficult for you when you’re performing?’

  ‘The vibe’s always different when you’re playing to a sea of umbrellas, but we’re ready to rock,’ Ash insisted. ‘And we’re sure the crowd here aren’t scared of a little rain, even though Xane is. It makes his eyeliner run.’

  Since it was debatable which of them had on more eyeliner, Xane refused to respond to Ash’s attempt to get a rise out of him. Instead, he let his thoughts wander as they crawled through several more vapid questions. He didn’t doubt the more probing stuff was still to come, despite Ash’s attempts to lead the conver
sation where he wanted to take it. They eventually reached the inevitable.

  ‘Obviously, you guys have had a pretty rocky time over the last few months. Famously, you split on stage and then the unexpected and untimely death of your drummer, Steve Matlock, occurred just two days later. How are you all coping? Are you all friends again now?’

  ‘We were never friends to begin with,’ Ash joked, momentarily wrong-footing the interviewer. He let her flail a moment, before stretching out his arms to encompass both Xane and Spook. ‘Nah, not really. We’ve known one another for ages. Of course we’re friends.’ Then, showing an unprecedented degree of sensitivity, Ash banished the humour from his face as he spoke about Steve. ‘I won’t pretend it’s been easy mounting a tour without him. We’re all still shocked by what happened and missing him dreadfully. However, we were in unanimous agreement that the best way to honour his memory and say goodbye was by doing this tour.’

  ‘Yet going on tour has necessitated you finding a new drummer. How’s that working out? Can you tell us a little about him and how you came by him?’

  ‘Iain and I were in a band together some years ago,’ Ash explained, continuing to hog the mic, much to Xane’s relief. ‘He’s been involved in a couple of fairly well-known acts over the last few years, but it just so happened that he was between projects when we were looking for someone to step into Steve’s boots.’

  ‘A fairly monumental task I imagine.’

  It certainly was. Steve had been a fantastic drummer.

  ‘And is your new guy –’

  ‘Iain Willows,’ Ash filled in.

  ‘– proving up to the task?’

  ‘It’s going well, thank you, yes.’

  ‘Actually, there have been some teething problems,’ Xane remarked, unable to let that one ride. Sally Kettering made a rude hand gesture at him from behind the camera and mouthed, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ which he chose to ignore. He wasn’t pretending Iain was magnificent. There were still several tracks he hadn’t mastered or rather insisted on interpreting in his own way. Xane didn’t want the audience thinking he was going to be a permanent fixture. As far as he was concerned, Black Halo still had a vacancy.

  ‘Would you like to expand on that?’ the interviewer asked.

  ‘It’s simply that Iain has a very different personality to Steve,’ Ash insisted, making sure Xane didn’t have his say. ‘Obviously we’re having to adapt to that. It’d be the same with anyone new.’

  ‘Alrighty. So, moving on, any clues as to when we’ll see a new album?’

  This one Xane supposed he was going to have to answer, since he was the main composer for the group. ‘Well, we’re on the road until October-November time, so I imagine we’ll head into the studio then, but we’re aiming to release a couple of individual tracks prior to that point.’

  ‘Those would be “Taken” and “Broken Pieces”, written specifically in memory of Steve Matlock, that you’ve been playing as part of the tour?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So, Xane.’ Ava flashed him her nicest grin, the one he guessed was supposed to make her seem friendly, but actually forewarned him that he wasn’t going to like the next question. ‘We’ve all seen the pictures and the video, what we want to know now is … is it serious?’

  ‘He brought her on tour, of course it’s serious,’ Ash remarked.

  Xane held his tongue. He refused to talk about his personal life. It was no one’s goddamn business.

  ‘Are the rumours true that it was your relationship with Dani that led to your falling out with Elspeth Shriik, which in turn resulted in the band’s temporary split?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like to comment on the rumours that your girlfriend was the cause of the falling out you and Steve had in Monte Carlo just hours prior to his death?’

  ‘No, I fucking wouldn’t!’ And yes, he had just said that to her face on camera. He catapulted himself off the sofa, and made a beeline for the exit. Sally Kettering looked as if she was about to side-swipe him with a cricket bat, but he didn’t care. She could fuck off too. He was not discussing this stuff, and he’d made that plain to her before the tour kicked off. Any interviewer who insisted on asking such questions wasn’t getting his time.

  ‘Xane.’ Sally trailed him towards the exit. ‘Come back here.’

  ‘Interview’s over.’

  ‘We promised them half an hour, you’ve only done ten minutes.’

  ‘Fuck ’em.’

  A familiar figure swaggered past him. ‘All done?’ she asked the man behind the camera. ‘Goody, then nobody will mind me doing this.’ She deposited herself on Ash’s lap. ‘Did you miss me?’ Ash didn’t have a chance to reply before she locked him in a passionate kiss.

  The interviewer gasped, and simultaneously all hell broke loose around them. Security dived in and tried to pry Ginny from Ash’s lap, while Ash in turn tried to ward them off.

  ‘She’s my girlfriend, you bunch of ignorant meatheads. Don’t you dare touch her. Let her go.’

  The mayhem temporarily diverted Sally’s attention, making it that much easier for Xane to slip away. He figured he probably owed Ginny one for that. She couldn’t have timed her entrance better. What surprised him was that both she and Ash came tearing after him and caught up with him halfway back to the tour bus.

  ‘God, wait up. Do you have to walk so bloody fast?’ Ginny fell into step beside him and hooked her arm around his.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Dani asked me to come and get you. She’s found out some stuff and … hell, I’ll let her tell you herself.’

  If they were talking bad shit, and that was the only logical thing to think, given the awkwardness he’d walked away from in the shower block, then maybe he did want a sneak preview. ‘I guess he told her,’ he mumbled under his breath.

  ‘Who told her what? I brought her some stuff that her mum sent over. She’s pretty emotional and I think she’d appreciate a hug.’

  ‘From her mum?’ What the hell had that witch sent her? Nothing pleasant, he’d warrant. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Straight ahead, orange and white camper van.’ She gave his bum a pat to send him on his way.

  ‘Hang on, where are you going?’

  ‘To shag Ash,’ she said, and frowned at his apparent surprise.

  Ash’s face lit with a huge grin.

  ‘You don’t need me hanging about, and I promise not to wear him out before the show. Afterwards, of course, I’m not making any such promises. The tent’s pitched. The bed’s inflated and I have some awesome lace-up fishnet stockings to show him.’

  Ash volubly gulped. ‘Baby,’ he murmured.

  ‘Sounds as if you have it all planned,’ Xane said, then went and found Dani.

  Chapter 32

  The gig went well, apart from a minor mishap with a light that came down mid-set and nearly killed him. Xane chose to ignore it – freaky stuff happened sometimes. Besides, Ash was in an astoundingly good mood, bouncing around all over the place with a massive shit-eating grin plastered across his face. Loath as he was to admit it, Ash’s joviality was infectious, and, after the emotional puddle he’d found Dani wallowing in, they all needed a lift. She’d cried a flood earlier as she devoured the contents of her father’s letters, but she was smiling now with several mugs of ale inside her.

  Post-show, Black Halo and crew had all somehow ended up crammed into Denna Rädsla’s camper van, playing cards and partaking of their now infamous homebrew. Xane didn’t think he’d ever seen Dani quite so relaxed or giggly. OK, she wasn’t quite up for strip poker – she’d always have issues about her scars – but she’d wolf-whistled when they ended up playing spin the bottle and Ash had to kiss him as a forfeit. Xane’s heart had been in his stomach over that, expecting her to freak out if he consented to it. The fact that Ash insisted on tongues didn’t help.

  He could only conclude that reading her father’s explanations had lifted a lot of baggage from her shoulders.


  ‘You’ve kissed him before, haven’t you?’ she said as they walked back to the tour bus, across the squelchy ground, long after midnight.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s a member of the band or crew I haven’t kissed,’ he confessed, rather liking the opportunity to be completely open and honest for a change. He didn’t want to destroy her happiness, but maybe this was a good time to reveal a few other things he’d been hesitant to share, like his history with Luthor. If she could handle the thought of him kissing his bandmates and other members of the crew, then why not Luthor too? ‘Except Iain, that is, and I’ve no desire to kiss him. Ever.’

  OK, so that was a kind of roundabout way of saying it, but she’d work it out.

  ‘Spook?’ she enquired, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘Yep. All of them. Even Cave Troll.’

  ‘Seriously?’ She stuck out her tongue and made gagging noises. ‘He’s a lovely bloke, but Xane … eeuuw!’

  He accepted her ribbing good-naturedly, pleased that she was able to laugh about it. Before tonight, he’d never imagined they’d be able to share this sort of conversation without her getting uptight and wondering if he was about to desert her for a guy. Discovering that her father hadn’t abandoned her seemed to have made an enormous difference to her outlook on life.

  They were on the steps of the tour bus when what he’d confessed finally sank in. The overhead light cast her in shadow as she turned to face him, all humour gone from her face. ‘Everyone except Iain,’ she reiterated. ‘Does that include Luthor? But he only joined the tour this time.’

  ‘I met him before, Dani,’ he explained, not wanting her to think it’d been a recent thing that he’d snuck away to do behind her back. The fact that he had kissed Luthor a couple of times recently was something he needed to keep to himself a little longer. One hurdle at a time, right? It wasn’t as if he’d sought those kisses.

  ‘Before when?’

  ‘Three years ago, in Sweden. It was at the height of my addiction. I was sleeping around a lot.’