Only Mike wasn’t smiling back. Instead he shook his head.
‘That’s not what I meant, Kara.’ He turned her around to face him and placed both hands on her hips.
‘I meant I’d give you another chance. Only you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kara said, feeling her head spin.
Mike’s hands slipped round her waist and pulled her closer. ‘Your band is falling apart,’ he said. ‘If we can’t trust these guys to show up and play well in a studio, what’ll happen when we start pulling big gigs? There’s no space for hangers-on.’
‘But – it’s our band,’ Kara said. ‘It’s ours.’
Mike trapped her hands in his. ‘It’s your band, Kara. No one doubts that you’re the engine running the machine. You’re the one everybody wants, you write the songs and you do the legwork. It’s you that keeps everything up and running.’
‘But I can’t do it on my own.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting it,’ Mike said. ‘But there are other options.’ He was rubbing each of her hands in turn, holding them tightly as though Kara might try to run if he let go.
‘I don’t want to hear them,’ Kara said, pressing her lips together tightly. She shook her head, struggled to pull away from Mike’s steady touch.
‘Calm down. Listen to what I have to say.’
‘You want to split us up.’
‘No. I want to make sure you get the chance you deserve, Kara. This band, these people. They’re not going to give you that.’
‘So I just ditch them.’
Mike shrugged. ‘You change the line-up. No big deal. Happens every fifteen minutes in this business.’
‘And fill in with what, session musicians?’ Kara’s tone was scathing.
‘Maybe,’ Mike agreed. ‘although if you want instant chemistry …’
He stroked her face with the back of his hand. His touch was so gentle, it surprised Kara. A lover’s touch, one that could turn any moment into something more intense. He fixed his eyes on hers, gazed at her with cool intent. Mike could turn her on with a glance, and he knew it.
‘… I’ll step in.’
15
KARA WALKED ALONG the gravel path through the park. In the moonless dark it was just a paler smudge among the pools of tree shadows. During the day, the green space that bordered the river was a wide-open sanctuary. At night, the place became something different – a place of malevolent lurkers and opportunist lovers. She walked fast, trying to make her shoulders look broader and her footsteps sound surer.
It was a stupid idea to take this short cut, but nerves had made Kara reckless and she wanted – needed – to get to Tam as soon as she could. Mike had given her a couple of hours to consider his offer. His final offer.
Trash the band, save herself. Lose the rest or sink entirely. Mike knew she couldn’t make that choice, any more than she could choose which limb she’d rather lose. And so he’d made it for her – either she let the band know their dream was over or he would. He’d stood with his phone in his hand, ready to dial their numbers and deal the final blow. Part of Kara had wanted to let him do it, just to close her eyes and leave the chaos behind her, let Mike drive her back to his place and take her to bed.
The next day they’d start all over, with him on piano and session musicians pulled at random from Lina’s little black book. Mike would produce something slick, a debut that could catapult her straight into the eye of the storm. Her music would reach out everywhere. All her dreams might come true.
Three old friends would hate her for ever, but that was the price she’d have to pay. Kara heard the river rushing along beside her, the water swollen and urgent as it ran towards the Clyde. The bridge was up ahead and Tam’s flat was ten minutes away. Her stride faltered suddenly. How was she going to break this to him? Kara pictured him opening the door, rumpled and sexy. Would Judy be in the room behind him, naked in his bed? As the path tilted uphill, she slowed her pace.
After that, there was Ruby. And Jon. Sorry for screwing up your lives, guys. She could turn round, Kara thought. Turn round right now and let Mike do the dirty work. After tonight it would be a whole new world – she’d be lifted into a different circle, taken out to meet other musicians, movers and shakers, media people, stars. She could throw herself into Mike’s world, get on the merry-go-round and forget all this.
They could play dirty games, pick up other lovers anytime they wanted some added ‘salt’. Fuck their way into the future.
Kara reached the gates on the other side of the park and stepped into the street to join the sparse flow of people on the pavement. Above her the university’s gothic towers jutted into the sky. The little bars and restaurants on Gibson Street had knots of people hanging outside them. Further up the hill, she guessed Tam would be in his flat with his ‘visitor’. And a couple of streets away, Ruby was no doubt nursing a broken heart. What a mess. A few days ago they’d had the world at their feet. Now all they had was bitterness and confusion.
As she neared the street where Tam lived, Kara found herself walking slower and slower. She came to a stop outside his door, her finger hovering over the buzzer. Would he hate her any less if she delivered the news in person? What did she owe him anyway?
Shaking her head, she pressed the button hard and stood back to wait. The intercom crackled.
‘Hello?’ He didn’t sound angry. There was that cocky swoop in his voice, the rough warmth that had first attracted her to him. ‘Who is it?’
Kara remembered how she’d rung this bell a hundred times before, horny or hopeful or pissed off, and how she’d run up the stairs to meet him and make music or screw or just play records and drink beer until the small hours.
‘Anyone there?’ His voice was growing irritable.
She couldn’t do it. She bit her lip as she turned away and walked slowly down the steps. Tam would be OK. He’d march off into the distance with a chip on his shoulder and fuck a hundred other beautiful women and forget about Kara soon enough.
She set her shoulders and walked away, not in the direction of her flat or Ruby, not towards home. She didn’t really know where she was going, or why there were tears running down her face in unstoppable rivers.
She’d got halfway down the street before she heard the footsteps behind her. She turned to see Tam walking fast towards her, hunched and shivering in a thin white T-shirt.
‘What’s the deal?’ he asked. ‘Ringing the doorbell and running away? I thought you’d grown out of that.’
Kara tore herself away and kept on walking. She tried to wipe her eyes on her sleeve, choking back a sob.
‘Kara,’ Tam called, chasing after her. ‘Will you stop a minute? What’s going on?’ He grabbed her by the elbow and spun her round, breathing hard. ‘Kara, oh God, you’re not …’
It seemed Tam could handle just about anything apart from seeing Kara cry. He looked even more stricken than she felt, reaching up to touch her and then changing his mind, letting his hands flail uselessly at his sides.
‘Ah, come on … Shh, it can’t be that bad.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is this because we screwed up today? We’ll just fix it. Re-record tomorrow.’
Kara shook her head. ‘There is no “tomorrow”, Tam,’ she said, clearing her throat. Under the dim glow of a street light and with tears in her eyes, he was a white blur, shifting from one foot to the other.
‘What do you mean?’ He was hugging himself against the cold and Kara looked down and realised his feet were bare. He hadn’t stopped to put his shoes on before running after her. Who else would chase her barefoot through the city? Was she just about to make the worst mistake of her life?
‘Mike doesn’t want you there any more,’ she almost whispered. As she told him, tonelessly, what Mike had told her, she kept her eyes fixed on the pavement. There was no way she could watch his face as the news sunk in.
‘He wants me to record with session musicians,’ she said flatly. She waited for Tam’s response, but there was nothing. At
last, she looked up. He stood very still in front of her. If he was cold he wasn’t showing it any more, and maybe the light was playing tricks with her eyes, but she could have sworn there was the ghost of a smile on his face. Though she’d been playing it out in her head for the past hour, nothing could have prepared her for how he reacted.
‘You’ve done it. You’re going to be a star,’ he said quietly.
There was a moment in which the night seemed to expand around them and then Kara thought she heard a very high thin sound, like glass shattering in the distance. It could have been her heart starting to break.
This was all wrong. How could she go places without him? She started to apologise, to take everything back, but before she could get the words out of her mouth, he kissed her.
His mouth was soft and warm, and his touch was decisive. It took her off guard, and before she knew what was happening he was pushing her back against the iron railings. His arms locked around her waist and he kept on kissing her, tilting her head back and thrusting his tongue inside her mouth, biting at her lips and attacking her again, almost angrily.
Under the thin cotton of his T-shirt, the familiar feel of his taut body moved under her hands. She clutched at him and tried to pull away for a moment to explain, but he wasn’t about to let go. He held her hips, rigid, bending her back until her shoulder blades dug into the fence. As his tongue plunged inside her mouth, hard and searching, running along her teeth, she realised what he was doing.
The kiss was a way to silence her. It was also his way of saying goodbye.
The tears started again, flowed silently down her face and ran into the kiss. She tasted the salt of them, mixed in with the sweet hot taste of Tam.
When he pulled away and started walking back along the street without her, Kara gave up trying to hold back and let the sobs shake right through her.
The bar was crowded with people, drunk or on their way there. Thrawn’s was a magnet for all the West-End media crowd, who shoe-horned themselves into the nooks and crannys and talked loudly around their glasses of Pinot Grigio. Kara knew Mike would be there, talking over his new ideas with Lina.
She pushed through to the staircase and up to the balcony, where Mike and Lina sat deep in conversation, a bottle of wine on the table between them. Over the noise and clatter of the bar, Kara heard Lina raising her voice in anger.
‘… chasing some wannabe diva. It’s crazy.’
‘Oh, I’m interrupting,’ Kara broke in, pulling a chair from another table and sitting down. ‘So sorry.’ She gave Lina a hard smile and brushed the back of Mike’s hand. ‘I take it you’ve told her,’ she said. ‘So, are we celebrating?’
Lina said nothing, just shook her head and drained her glass. Mike gave a twisted kind of smile and Kara saw a new gleam of excitement hidden in his expression. She wondered what it meant. Was it the wine, or his argument with Lina – or was it the fact he was thinking of stepping in to play keyboards with Kara?
‘Lina doesn’t think it’s such a good idea.’
‘That’s the understatement of the year,’ Lina said.
‘Are you jealous,’ Kara said, tilting her head to one side and turning to face the other woman, ‘of my talent, or the fact I’m fucking Mike?’
Kara had just given up everything she cared about. For some reason, it made her feel bitchy and invincible.
Lina let out a short, astonished laugh. ‘Oh, you are learning fast, aren’t you, precious?’ She leaned in close to Kara and laid a hand on her arm. ‘I just wouldn’t want you to get hurt.’
‘That’s sweet,’ Kara said. ‘But I’ll be fine.’
‘Even without your buddies?’ Lina said. ‘Must be heartbreaking leaving them behind.’ She gave Kara’s forearm a tight squeeze.
Kara jerked back, shaking herself free and knocking Lina’s wine into her lap.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Oops,’ Kara said, pulling a face.
‘Fuck. These are Alexander McQueen,’ Lina hissed, pushing her chair back and clutching at her trousers. She swore again as she stood up and stormed towards the Ladies’.
‘That was childish,’ Mike said, but Kara saw a smile twitch at the corner of his mouth. ‘So,’ he continued, turning to Kara. ‘You’re on board? We start recording again tomorrow?’
‘If Lina doesn’t kill me, yes.’ Kara nodded. ‘I’ll be there.’
‘Wonderful. And you told Tam?’
Kara’s eyes dropped to her lap. Her lips were still buzzing, slightly bruised from Tam’s kiss. Worse, the look on his face as he’d said goodbye was horribly vivid in her mind’s eye. She felt like a traitor. A heartbroken traitor. ‘Yes.’
‘So that only leaves one thing for you to fix,’ Mike said, pulling out his phone and dialling a number.
‘One thing?’ Kara asked.
‘Lina. You just soaked the lap of the best producer in the country. And not in a good way either.’
‘I’m not apologising.’
‘You’re not going to get very far without her help.’
Even with the phone clamped to his ear, he kept his gaze fixed on Kara. Under the table, his hand slid over her knee. As the call was connected and he started speaking, his fingers crept up her thigh and tickled the soft skin hidden under the hem of her skirt.
He liked to do this – get her turned on in public, tease her with the promise of how he’d touch her, how he’d torment her later. It was disturbing and reassuring at the same time, Kara thought. She listened, resentful but curious, as he spoke on the phone.
‘I think you’d enjoy working with her. Yes.’ He smiled as his hand brushed the crease of her thigh, the hot fold of her pussy. ‘Mm, you won’t regret it. Sure.’
He snapped the phone shut and pulled his hand from Kara, leaving her off balance on the edge of her chair, craving more of his touch.
‘We’re all set,’ he said. ‘The Polar, next week.’
‘Really?’
‘Radio presence, journalists, DJs. The whole sweaty media corps in fact. And you on stage, in front of them all.’
He reached up to tuck a strand of Kara’s hair behind her ear. Her heart was beating a hard erratic rhythm and she was reaching for words. The Polar was a premier venue, not some dingy basement filled with penniless students. In fact, Kara couldn’t afford the place. She only went when she really had to see a band – could stand drinking tap water all night and blowing a week’s wages on a ticket if the music was guaranteed to blow her away.
And the bands that played there were big. The new hip acts, the hot tickets, the must-see media darlings that nobody wanted to miss.
‘That’s … incredible,’ she said finally, picturing the place. A wide stage, a state-of-the-art sound system, shit-hot lighting rigs. Most of all, a thousand-capacity venue. Kara was used to playing gigs that were the size of a large house party. Halfway through a set, she could reach out and shake hands with the audience if she wanted to, recognise familiar faces among the crowd.
The Polar was a whole different ball game.
‘Now, this date could knock you into the stratosphere,’ Mike said, seeming to echo her thoughts. ‘Launch your album, blow everyone away. But …’
‘How do we fill the place?’ Kara said, her voice rising with panic. ‘I don’t –’
‘You,’ Mike said. ‘don’t have to do anything. This is where Lina comes into her own. If, and I do mean if, you get her onside.’
‘I have to win her over,’ Kara said weakly. ‘Even though she hates me.’
Mike seemed unconcerned. He sipped his drink, looked around the bar and waited.
‘What is her problem? I mean, what have I ever done to her?’ Kara knew there was a whine creeping into her voice.
Mike shrugged. ‘It’s not so much what you’ve done to her, Kara, as what you’ve done to me.’
‘She’s jealous?’
It sounded ridiculous as she said it, but the instant she did, Kara felt things start to fall into place. The way Lina was
so tactile with Mike, taking every chance to stroke his arm or lean in close. The day she’d walked in on them, and her spiteful warnings.
‘She’s in love with you,’ she said quietly.
‘It’s a little more complicated than that,’ Mike said, turning the stem of his glass between his fingers. ‘But yes, we have a history. A very long history.’
Kara realised she was digging her nails into the arms of her chair. She hated apologies more than just about anything on earth. But without Lina, her music-world debut would fall nastily flat. The woman might be twisted, but she had the connections, the golden tongue and the chutzpah that would make a success of the launch.
‘What do I do?’ Kara asked, gritting her teeth. ‘Grovel?’
Mike laughed. ‘That won’t work with Lina,’ he said. ‘She can’t stand emotional displays. You’ll have to be a bit more sophisticated than that to bring her round.’
‘OK,’ Kara said. ‘Seeing as you know her so intimately, what’s going to sway her?’
Mike paused. ‘I think you’ll have to ask her that yourself,’ he said.
The Ladies’ was at the back of the bar, a dim-lit room with orchids on the window sill. Lina was standing at the mirrors, leaning in close to apply her mascara.
‘Hi,’ said Kara, leaning against a basin and looking down at her feet.
‘Mike sent you in here,’ Lina stated, matter-of-factly. She screwed the lid back on her mascara and looked at Kara’s reflection. ‘You may be able to wrap him round your little finger, but the prick-tease act won’t work with me.’
Lina turned on a tap and washed her hands. Over the roar of the water, Kara tried to think of a strategy. Someone opened the door and entered one of the cubicles and Kara squirmed as she struggled to find the right words. As Lina dried her hands briskly and moved to leave, Kara felt the panic start to spiral again, prickling through her stomach and pressing down on her chest. It didn’t matter, she thought, if she made a fool of herself. She’d already sacrificed her band mates and her principles. Her pride was going to have to be next.
The New Rakes Page 14