The Four of Us

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘And where were you?’

  She didn’t want to hear him explain the accident away as if it were something that couldn’t have been helped. She didn’t want him to be emotionally together and controlled. She wanted him to be destroyed with grief, as she was destroyed. She wanted him to realize that what had happened was his fault – his fault for having left Destiny in the care of a nanny about whom he knew nothing whatsoever.

  ‘I was playing golf,’ he said, and then, at last, his voice gave way. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. So very sorry. We’ll adopt other children. You’ll be a mother again, I promise.’

  It had been more than she could bear hearing. How could he not understand that no amount of other children would ever replace the child they had lost? Dropping the phone, she covered her eyes with her free hand, crying as if she would never stop.

  Unbelievably, there was a moment of fresh agony. The moment when she realized that there was no way she was going to be able to attend Destiny’s funeral, not even if Destiny’s body were flown home to England.

  ‘And so as that is the case, Artemis, I really think it best that the funeral take place out here,’ Rupert had said, as rational as always. ‘Once it’s over I’ll come straight home and we can begin building our lives again.’

  He made it sound so easy – and it was, she knew, going to be so hard. Impossibly hard. He was also not taking into account that nothing was going to be over until the most hellish task of all was undertaken.

  Primmie still had to be told.

  And she was the one who would to have to tell her.

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty

  July 2003

  Kiki toiled up the stairs of the digs her agent had booked for her, a large, heavy shoulder bag bumping against a mock-snakeskintrousered thigh, a bulging sports bag in one hand. In high ill humour she kicked open the door at the top of the stairs. The room beyond was just as bad as she had expected it to be. There was a bumpy-looking bed covered in a red candlewick bedspread that had seen better days, a dressing table and wardrobe that looked as if they’d come from a car boot sale, and the lampshade on the bedside light was scorched.

  She dropped the sports bag to the floor and slung the shoulder bag on to the bed – which creaked beneath the weight. She winced. Once again, when it came to accommodation, no one had done her any favours. It was an easy bet that no one else on the Grantley Working Men’s Club Rock Star Fiesta was holing up in such a dump. Mervyn, the latest in a line of agents so long even she couldn’t remember half of them, had been adamant, both about the gig and her accommodation arrangements.

  ‘They’re grade-A showbiz digs and Grantley’s a new club on the outskirts of Leeds. It’s cost a million and they want to open with a bang. There’ll be some big names on the bill and to pad things out a little they want some faces from the past. Rock stars from the sixties and seventies. Dusty Springfield. Adam Faith. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Dusty Springfield and Adam Faith are dead,’ she’d said through gritted teeth.

  ‘So they are, doll.’ Mervyn had grinned at her across his cluttered desktop. ‘But you’re not. Are you?’

  She’d known then that the grandly named Grantley Rock Star Fiesta was going to be yet another humiliating debacle. She wasn’t going to be heading the bill; she wasn’t going to be put up in a decent hotel; she wasn’t going to get any rock star treatment. ‘So what’s new, Kiki?’ she’d said to herself as, furious at Mervyn’s last crack, she’d stormed out of his office. ‘What’s bloody, bloody new?’

  ‘Reinvent yourself, babe,’ her last lover, who had just ditched her, would say whenever he drummed up enough energy to be interested in her problems.

  Thinking about that remark now made her snort derisively. No one, in the history of show business, had ever reinvented herself with the frequency with which she had. With every decade someone, manager or agent, had announced that if only she’d adapt her style to the latest trend she’d make the leap from middling success to super-stardom. Punk, funk, rap, jazz, avant garde, new wave – all had gone into the blender at one time or another. And the result was always the same. The leap was never made. It was thirty years since she’d been the latest hot item, storming the charts with the two songs she had co-written with Geraldine. Even now, at Grantley, ‘White Dress, Silver Slippers’and ‘Twilight Love’were the nostalgia numbers that would be wanted from her.

  She frowned, wondering if it would have been any different if, way back in 1972, she hadn’t been so dismissive of the way Aled Carter had wanted to route her career. If she’d done the ghastly Arthur Haynes Variety Show, if she’d allowed Aled to mould her as a family entertainer in the style of Lulu, would she have become a lasting big name, as Lulu had?

  It was impossible to tell. From then on, though, she had been on a downward spiral. True, it hadn’t seemed like that during the years she’d been with Francis. In those days, she’d enjoyed all the trappings of stardom, confident that super-stardom was only a whisker away. Well, it hadn’t come. The new hotshot American agent she’d ditched Francis for had proved not to be so hotshot after all – at least, not where she’d been concerned.

  He’d been another very wrong turning. Thanks to him, she’d spent years in America when she should have been concentrating on the British pop scene. After endless incarnations, she’d finally returned to her roots – a British public and, for material, good old-fashioned rock.

  She’d kept herself in work – just. There’d been a Rock Revival Festival at St Austell in Cornwall earlier in the year, where she’d featured top of the bill alongside Eric Burden and Marty Wilde. Both of them were old buddies. Both of them had given her the respect she felt she deserved and now so rarely received.

  The St Austell gig had been an isolated high spot. Everything she’d done since then had been at a third-rate venue, with a third-rate audience. She was fifty-two and, where her career was concerned, hope was dead. The problem was, if her career was dead then so was she, because she didn’t have anything else. If she wasn’t Kiki Lane, a rock star, then she wasn’t anybody. She was a nobody. And she’d long ago made up her mind that she’d rather be dead than be a nobody.

  Not wanting to follow her thought process to its logical conclusion she moved sharply away from the window, forcing herself to think instead of the shit-awful band that was presently backing her, wondering when they were going to arrive. Of all the errors of judgement she’d made in her career, not being part of a decent band had been the most catastrophic.

  It had been an error various managers had, over the years, tried to put right. For three years, whilst in America, she’d been the lead singer of a group with the name Kiki and the Wild Boys. It hadn’t prospered. The drummer, lead guitarist and bassist had lived up to their names with such fervour that the drummer had had an alcohol-induced brain seizure, the lead guitarist had exposed himself on stage and the bassist had died from suffocation, having inhaled vomit as a result of barbiturate intoxication.

  Next, she’d been lead singer of the Shamans. The keyboardist was in a long gay relationship with the slide guitarist. She’d embarked on a hot sexual relationship with the keyboardist. The slide guitarist had attempted suicide. It hadn’t made for a brilliant working atmosphere on stage.

  Bands she’d formed for herself had sometimes been good, but had always broken up. She’d acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with, of being a mediocre rock singer who had a diva attitude. Now her reputation was fast becoming that of being a performer who was over the hill.

  She flopped on to the bed, shuddering at the mere thought of the words ‘over the hill’and of the unfairness of it. She looked – and sounded – just as good as Lulu. Lulu was her age, perhaps even a tad older, and she’d never heard anyone referring to Lulu as being over the hill. The difference was, of course, that Lulu had always had excellent management. Lulu hadn’t lost her way early on, flitting between being a solo artist and being the lead singer of a band; moving
from rock to soul to jazz to funk, so that in the end no one knew what type of music she stood for.

  Well aware that if her mood plummeted any further she’d never summon the motivation to rehearse at Grantley later that evening, she thrust a pillow between her back and the bed head, hauled her shoulder bag a little nearer and slid her lap top from out of it.

  For the last six months, she’d been writing a novel – or at least, she supposed it was a novel. It was such a bizarre assortment of fact, fiction and psychedelic experiences that it was hard to tell just what it was. All she knew was that the mental effort of putting words on to the screen was therapeutic to her.

  FRIENDS REUNITED – THE WEBSITE WITH THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF HITS SO FAR THIS YEAR read a flyer as, before opening her Word file, she went on the net to see if she had any emails from her agent.

  She knew all about Friends Reunited, of course. Who didn’t? She’d always thought it such a naff idea that checking it out had never entered her head. Now, for the first time, it did so. It would be interesting to see if anyone from Bickley had registered on it.

  As she logged on to the website, she tried to remember the names of some of the girls who’d accompanied her through her years at Bickley. Not Geraldine, Artemis and Primmie, of course. Geraldine, Artemis and Primmie had been part of her life in a way that was quite unforgettable. There’d been other girls, though. Girls she’d never made friends with. Samantha Wade-Bembridge and Lauren Colefax, who, with the benefit of hindsight, had been budding lesbians. Snobbish Mirabel Des Vaux, who’d infuriated her year after year by always pipping her to the post in the school marathon. Sophie Menzies, who’d been academically brilliant. Beatrice Strachan, who had always saved Artemis from being bottom of the class.

  Once on the website it took her mere minutes to find Bickley High and to enter the year she had left. Seconds later a whole host of long-forgotten names were staring her in the face.

  As was Primmie’s.

  She gasped, catapulted back into the past with such speed and unexpectedness that she felt as if she’d been hit in the chest. There was an envelope icon beside Primmie’s name, indicating that she’d like to be contacted, and a message icon. Never, in all her life, had Kiki wanted to access anything so much as that message icon.

  And she couldn’t, because she wasn’t registered as a Friends Reunited member.

  Feverishly she began registering: filling in boxes, waiting for her application to be validated, waiting to be able to access Primmie’s message. When it finally flashed on to the screen, it was tantalizingly brief.

  Hi, Primmie here. As I’m now widowed and my four children have long ago left home, I’ve said goodbye to Rotherhithe and taken up an opportunity I’ve been given of living on a smallholding on the outskirts of Calleloe, on the beautiful Lizard Peninsula. There’s plenty of room for guests and I’d love to hear from, and be visited by, any old friends from my Bickley High days. Love to everyone who knew me back in the sixties. Primmie.

  That was all. There was no photograph to access – just the envelope icon if she wanted to contact Primmie via the website.

  Making no move to do so, she dug into her shoulder bag for Rizlas and weed and began rolling herself a spliff. What on earth had taken Primmie to a smallholding in Cornwall?

  She lit her spliff, readjusting her thoughts, aware that it wasn’t, perhaps, quite so extraordinary after all. Primmie may have been born and bred in Rotherhithe, but she’d always been a country girl at heart. She remembered how much Primmie had loved the spacious garden at Petts Wood, with its views over the golf course to the North Downs.

  It was a garden that, if she, Kiki, hadn’t interfered and if her father had married Primmie, Primmie might be tending now.

  Her widowed status would still have been the same, though.

  She inhaled deeply, not wanting to think about her father’s death, not wanting to think about her complete lack of family life. True, her mother was still alive, but her mother had lived for the last twenty years in Vancouver with Jenny Reece – which didn’t make for frequent contact. And, apart from her mother, she had no one. No husband, not even an ex-husband. No brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. No children.

  And no friends, or at least, not real friends. Not friends as Artemis, Geraldine and Primmie had been her friends. Darkly she wondered if, since the days when it had been the four of them, she’d ever had any friends. During the days when her career had been on the up and up, the days when she was a somebody, she’d always been surrounded by hordes of people she had assumed were friends. People who were now nowhere to be seen.

  With a last look at Primmie’s message, she exited the site. She couldn’t afford to sink into a depression she couldn’t claw her way out of. She had a show to do tomorrow night and rehearsals to get to grips with tonight, and – who knew? – the Grantley Rock Fiesta could well be a blast, with her the high spot of the programme.

  Her brief surge of optimism was short lived. When the band backing her collected her in the their minibus they warned her to take a deep breath before reading any of the billboards for the concert.

  She soon saw why.

  Kiki Laine – ’ 70s rock star was fourth down on the hoarding outside the club.

  Rage roared through her veins. It was bad enough that she was fourth down and that her name was spelled wrongly, but why ’70s rock star? Why not just Kiki Lane? Did her future lie only in exploiting her earlier successes? Was she ever again going to be booked for anything other than nostalgia concerts?

  ‘Are you the lighting girl we’re expecting?’ a harassed-looking young woman asked her as she strode angrily into the club ahead of the band.

  Hardly able to contain herself, Kiki whipped off her dark glasses. ‘No, I’m bloody not! I’m Kiki Lane! Now which way are the bloody dressing rooms?’

  It hadn’t been an auspicious beginning. For the first time in her life, she felt exhausted. More than exhausted, she felt hammered. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to be a huge icon, a major player on the celebrity circus circuit. Instead, she was fast becoming a laughing-stock. There had definitely been sniggers from the band member hardest on her heels when the stupid bitch in the foyer had asked her if she was the lighting girl.

  ‘Hi, Kiki, I’m Shania Lee,’ an emaciated girl with blue hair and a metal stud in her lower lip said to her as she walked into a large communal dressing room. ‘How ya doin’?’

  Kiki didn’t answer her. She was too busy digesting the fact that she was going to be sharing a dressing room.

  ‘I’m the drummer with Dog Days,’ the girl said helpfully.

  Dog Days were a punk nostalgia band, well known enough for the girl not to have needed to explain who she was. That she’d done so, so unpretentiously, deserved a response.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, making an effort. ‘Nice to meet you. How many numbers are Dog Days pencilled in for?’

  ‘Four. We’re doing The Ramones’ “Don’t Come Close” and “Howling at the Moon”. I don’t know about the other two numbers. Probably The Sex Pistols “Pretty Vacant” with an Eddie Cochran number thrown in for good measure.’

  ‘Wicked.’

  The girl grinned. ‘It’s really great to be on the bill with you, Kiki. My mother’s a great fan of yours. She says I used to gurgle along to “White Dress, Silver Slippers” when I was in my pram.’

  Kiki didn’t even try to smile. When Shania Lee had been in her pram, ‘White Dress, Silver Slippers’ would have already been a nostalgia number.

  ‘I need a drink,’ she said abruptly, having seen all she wanted to see of the dressing room situation. ‘There must be a bar open somewhere in this million pound dump.’

  As she swung out of the dressing room to find it, Shania fell into step beside her. ‘It’s an eyesore, isn’t it?’ she said as they were assailed by the smell of fresh paint and new wood.

  Kiki grunted agreement, her mind still on the dressing room scenario. A newly built club this size w
ould have star dressing rooms – and she hadn’t been allocated one. It was a public humiliation and she didn’t see any way out of it, because if she made a scene, demanding a star-status dressing room, and was refused, the humiliation would simply escalate.

  ‘Nick says the days of clubs like this are so long over it simply isn’t true,’ Shania was saying.

  Kiki tried to rustle up some interest. ‘Who’s Nick?’

  ‘My partner, but he also manages my career. It’s a great arrangement, because it means he really does have my interests at heart.’

  For the second time within hours Kiki was plummeted into her past. Shania’s set-up with Nick was the same set-up she’d had with Francis. Francis, too, had had her interests at heart – or he had until he’d self-destructed on cocaine.

  As she walked into a bar area crowded with musicians and lighting men, she wondered where Francis was now. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that he could have died twenty or even thirty years ago. People with drug habits like Francis’s didn’t make old bones.

  The wall behind the bar was mirrored and she was staring at her reflection. In her mock snakeskin trousers and sequin-decorated black T-shirt, she was still as whippet-slender as Shania. Thanks to professional help, her spikily cut and gelled hair was still fox-red – and her cheekbones looked sharp enough to slice through metal. She still looked what she was – what she’d always been – a rock singer. But she was a rock singer on the skids. She was on a downhill curve that was never going to straighten out and climb to dizzy heights. Any dizzy heights there had been were all in her past. If she exited the scene now she would be remembered as a rock chick of the ’70s and ’80s who, in 2003, was a necessary adjunct to any rock nostalgia concert going.

  If she continued, she would begin to be perceived as a pathetic has-been – and it would then be as a has-been that she would be remembered.