Tone had been right, they were the same. They were both actors who loved duplicity. They were both haunted and shaped by what their fathers had done. They were both very different from the people they lived and worked amongst. And now they were both in love with the same man.
When Vince left her bed, as he always did, never once staying till the morning, Donna would listen to him drive away and cry so hard she didn’t know how it could ever stop. She couldn’t see a way out of this entanglement, yet to end it was unthinkable. She was trapped in lust. Trapped by her own flesh. This was what being a junkie was like.
Mood Violet and Blood Truth had both ended their tours in December with final shows in London. Mood Violet’s was first. They’d sold out the Rainbow, the venue that had brought them all together in the first place, as if they had come full circle from wide-eyed spectators to owning the joint. Donna had been on the road with the band for most of their dates, diligently keeping an eye on Sylvana and Robin while her heart ached to be elsewhere. Things did seem to have calmed down between them. Perhaps it was the presence of Helen on the tour bus. That old camaraderie had reasserted itself to a certain extent and everyone seemed a lot more at ease. Everyone except Donna.
She’d known Blood Truth would be back in town the same night as the Rainbow. She’d had their dates imprinted on her mind; like a psycho stalker she kept track on every movement Vince made. But she hadn’t expected Tone to call and ask her for a guest list. That had been a shock to her system and straight off she had wondered if somehow he had found out, that he was coming for her that night and she’d end up in the foundations of some new road or bridge before morning. He hadn’t come to a Mood Violet gig for about two years.
But Tone was just being magnanimous. He’d had a good year, she’d had a good year, their bands were on one night after the other, let’s live it up a bit and celebrate, was his gist.
She’d asked him if he was bringing anyone with him. She wanted him to say yes almost as much as she wanted him to say no. She hadn’t seen Vince for three weeks by then. She was clawing the walls with pent-up desire.
‘Put me down plus two,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll see who else wants to come.’
It was so vague as to drive her wild. But in the end he’d turned up with Popeye Doyle and the scary-looking black man and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She’d ended up laughing mainly. Popeye – or Steve as he was really called – wasn’t the sort of person you could stay miserable around for long. He was loud, rowdy and outrageously funny and he clearly fancied Donna from the moment he clapped eyes on her, which was all to the good. She flirted back almost as much, revenge on Vince who was no doubt back home tending to his weed, seeing as he wasn’t with Tone. The black man, Lynton, was actually really sweet, shy and soft-spoken. They all watched the gig together from the side of the stage, the exact spot Donna had stood with Ray all those years ago. But Donna didn’t even give him a second thought.
It was incredible how popular Mood Violet had become. The gig was a sell-out, and the crowd was ecstatic; pressed together they formed a kind of human sea, rolling in waves of black, green and purple round the rim of the stage. Hands reached out towards Sylvana, hands with scarves tied around the wrists or heavy with rows of silver bangles. The diaphanous layered dresses Helen had created in sea greens and purples to accentuate her Pre-Raphaelite otherworldliness were imitated over and over by the girls in the crowd, with the hennaed, crimped locks and the fringe that came down over the eyes. But it was the black-clad boys who made their affections known the loudest, who rucked around the front of the stage in ritual circles, throwing their arms up in the air at dramatic moments in the songs, piling up on top of each other’s shoulders to get a better look.
The object of their affection sung with her eyes closed, swaying gently, reaching her own arms upwards at times, at others just holding on to the scarf-draped mic stand as if it were the prow of a ship, riding across this turbulent sea. At the siren’s side, Allie moved backwards and forwards as he danced, raising his eyes every now and again to wink and smile at the crowd, coiling himself up in his leads sometimes when he became too enthusiastic. Behind them, Robin stood immobile behind banks of synths and amps. He looked like a mad professor loose in his lab but was more like an infernal conductor, controlling the invisible orchestra trapped inside his black machines.
‘Would you give her one, Lynt?’ Donna heard Steve say behind her.
Lynton laughed hard but didn’t reply.
‘No, come on,’ Steve persisted. ‘I want to know. Would you? Looks like everyone else here would, but I just don’t gerrit.’
‘She is very beautiful,’ said Lynton diplomatically. ‘And Stevie, please. Ask not whom you would give one to, but instead ask yourself – who would actually let you?’
Certainly no one else shared Steve’s sentiments. The crowd didn’t want to let her go. As the band came back to play their third encore, a rapturously received ‘Splintered’, a beaming Tone pulled Donna into a bear hug.
‘You must be so pleased, Sis, look at ‘em go,’ he said. ‘Look what you’ve done, eh?’
She tried to smile back at him, but the warmth and pride in his voice made her want to choke. Tone had treated her better than anyone else ever had. And she was busy betraying him.
‘Oh, don’t get all emotional, girl, it ain’t like you.’ He misconstrued her wonky mouth and blurry eyes. ‘You’re allowed to enjoy these things, you know. You worked hard enough for it.’
‘If it wasn’t for you…’ she began but Tone waved his hands dismissively, reaching for the champagne bottle he had perched on an amp beside them.
‘Shut up and have another drink,’ he said.
After the gig, she took them into the dressing room, where there was a real atmosphere of euphoria. Even Robin had lost his surly expression and acted genuinely impressed when introduced to Tone, who was fervently complimentary about his musical ability. Tone had long been interested in pushing the boundaries with computers, so before long they were lost in a conversation about Rolands and Fairlights that would have been frankly incomprehensible to the rest of the room.
The two guitarists, Steve and Allie, bonded almost immediately. There always was an unspoken kinship between those that played the same instrument, and although they were both pushing their style in very different directions, these two were peas out of the same pod: big, amiable Celts, the respective older brothers of their bands.
Sylvana was staying close to Helen, but as Donna worked the room, she noticed Lynton drifting over to their corner. She wondered if she should offer a proper introduction – Robin looked happily involved in his conversation with Tone – but then decided to let nature take its own course. If he was going to throw one of his jealous strops she didn’t want to be accused of facilitating it.
The usual liggers were all present and correct, Donna noticed. That Aussie photographer from the NME, busy ingratiating himself to one and all, laughing too loudly at other people’s jokes. Donna had noticed the way he made friends and influenced people before and he was at it again tonight. He had a casual handshake that if you looked closely, seemed to be a way of slipping something to whoever he was talking to. She noticed him doing it with Lynton, as he barrelled over to interrupt the bassist’s conversation with Sylvana.
Then again, maybe that was for the good tonight. For it wasn’t to be a night of tantrums and tensions. Everyone was happy for once. It was true what Tone said, Donna reflected as she stood by the doorway, watching the carnival scene unfold in front of her, she had made all this happen. She did have something to really be proud of.
For the first time in four months, she forgot about Vince Smith and started enjoying herself. By about one o’clock, the management were regretfully but firmly trying to show the band and the twenty or so souls left in their dressing room the way outside.
Tone put an arm round Donna’s shoulder as he made his way to leave. ‘Come to the gig tomorrow, let me return the com
pliment,’ he said. ‘Or if you can’t make it, invite everyone to my house on New Year’s Eve. I’m gonna have a proper party this year. I’ve got a feeling 1981 is gonna be a good one.’
‘Thanks, Tone,’ Donna smiled up at him, fighting back the urge to suddenly confess to him exactly how she had been repaying his kindness in recent months. ‘I don’t know if this lot will be fit tomorrow, but we’ll definitely come on New Year’s Eve,’ she said. She knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer on that one, and it would be a damn sight easier to avoid Vince in a house full of people than at one of his own gigs.
‘That’s my girl,’ Tone turned round and addressed his new friends. ‘You hear that guys? Come to my party on New Year’s Eve, Donna knows where. You’re all very welcome.’ Then he turned to leave, his two charges and the Aussie guy loitering behind.
‘Cheers, Donna,’ big Steve squeezed her hand almost painfully and regarded her with what he took to be an alluring expression but was actually the epitome of a cartoon letch. ‘Thanks for yer hospitality, love. I’ll be sure to show you some of mine whenever you like.’
‘Come on, you dirty bastard,’ Lynton pushed his friend out of her way. ‘I apologise for him,’ he said, taking Donna’s hand in a graceful handshake. ‘He’s from Hull. He knows no better.’
Steve belched loudly. ‘Gerrover, Lynt. She knows a real man when she sees one.’
‘A cave man more like it.’ Lynton raised his eyebrows in mock exasperation, then smiled. ‘Anyway, I hope to see you at Tone’s do. I’ll protect you from his evil ways.’
If only, thought Donna, it was him I needed protecting from.
Sylvana felt a glimmer of hope for the first time in months.
Having Helen on the tour bus had made everything so different. It wasn’t like they had gone back to how they were in the early days, it couldn’t be – now they were driven around in a massive coach with bunk beds, a team of roadies and a tour manager, so there were no routes to plan, no freezing 4am sleeps in lay-bys with a fine layer of dew on your sleeping bag, no laughing and singing along to the radio. The Partridge Family was no more. Now they were fairly cosseted.
But the chemistry had altered. With Helen there, Robin didn’t watch Sylvana’s every move like a hawk, flashing her that look if she so much as dared to answer one of the roadies’ questions or spent five minutes talking to a fan after the show, she knew what would happen. Those looks and that promise had gradually sealed her reputation as a glacial, stuck-up bitch throughout the music industry over the past year. Most of the time, people knew better than to even bother approaching her.
But with Helen aboard, he would leave her alone to talk with her old friend. At first this would only be for a matter of minutes, but gradually, as the tour went on and his guard was lowered, he ignored what they were up to for hours at a time. Ostensibly – and if anyone came within range of overhearing – they were talking about dress design, interiors and other permitted womanly subjects. But really, during those precious hours, Helen had gradually wheedled the truth out of her.
Sylvana had been keeping it close so long, it felt like she had been tied up inside a Victorian corset, her denial forming the rigid lines of whalebone that kept her together. When she began to loosen her ties, she thought she might suddenly collapse into a puddle of jelly and never get up again.
The hardest thing to admit was that she had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, had become for want of a better cliché a ‘battered wife’. And the way that he did it was all so textbook too. The tears of remorse, the promises that it would never happen again, but at the same time, the gradual cutting her off from all her friends and family. Not that he had much to do on the family front. Her parents had all but disowned her for staying in London anyhow. It was only Ola that kept her going, putting money in her account each month to ‘give you something to get by on’, and Uncle Manny who sorted out her visa and let her continue living at Queen’s Gate Gardens. Although if he had known the truth about Robin, who still slept in Helen’s old room whenever he was about, she was sure that arrangement would soon come to an abrupt end.
Sylvana told Helen how she wished she had acted on her instincts and cut and run the first time it had happened but how, with a tour to do and an album to promote, she felt she couldn’t let everyone else down. And at first, Robin had stuck to his promise that he’d never hurt her again, being kindness itself for the rest of that tour. Then gradually, as the months went by and the band got bigger and bigger, his dark side had reasserted itself, his rages triggered by the most stupid of things.
Things like fans throwing her black roses onstage, as they had taken to doing, in an act of gothic homage. Like the fan mail Donna passed on but she never got to read because he ripped it all to pieces in front of her, foaming at the mouth and calling her as many different variations on the word ‘whore’ as he could think of. Or like the guy from the Melody Maker who had really understood her lyrics and whom she had spent hours talking to, rapt with enthusiasm that she’d found a kindred spirit. The guy who was thirty years old and married – not that that counted for anything in Robin’s book. That was the last time she’d been allowed to talk to the press without him glowering by her side, and gradually, she had been phased out of the process altogether. The last vestiges of any love she’d had for him had crumbled away at this point, and only the fear of not knowing what she could possibly do next had kept her there, under his thumb.
She didn’t – she couldn’t quite bring herself to – tell Helen exactly what it was that he had been doing to her, though. Robin was quite careful not to leave any marks where people would see them. His artistry with cigarette butts and bits of broken bottle were hidden on her body, underneath those layers of diaphanous chiffon Helen designed. Sylvana’s shame at revealing them was too deep. It was her own fault she had ended up like this. Those scars, and the hideous pain that had caused them, was her reminder of her own folly.
All she could tell her best friend was that, in all truthfulness, she would rather die than stay with Robin.
Helen, in return, had acted like a cross between an agony aunt and a secret agent. Because she had to go back to London between some of the dates, she had been able to take Sylvana’s door key, go back to Queen’s Gate Gardens and take all her friend’s most precious things to a place of safety. Her passport, her bankbook, her box of Ola’s jewellery and other, sentimental artifacts had all gone into the bank vault where Helen kept her business stuff. She didn’t suppose her own home would be safe enough if and when Robin found out.
Sylvana also gave her money to buy a suitcase and pack it full of everything she would need to make a quick getaway. These things made Sylvana feel stronger and after they had been done, between them they figured out a strategy of what to do next.
Her best plan, Helen reckoned, was to go to where Robin couldn’t follow her – New Jersey – and lay low for a while. It was obvious, Helen said, that Ola would be able to bring her parents round and she and Allie would take care of getting Robin out of her uncle’s place when the time came. Sylvana knew that if she confessed all to Ola, Manny himself would probably take care of that eventuality, but that was still something she was too afraid to do. Helen didn’t push it either. She just got her to concentrate on one thing and one thing only – getting safely away.
The final thing that Helen had done for her that morning was to go and buy her a plane ticket. The flight left Heathrow at 4pm on January 1. They intended to go somewhere the night before, as is traditional on New Year’s Eve, and get Robin so arseholed they could safely leave him passed out somewhere. Then they’d spirit Sylvana away before he came round and could do anything about it. Drastic maybe, but Sylvana knew that if she didn’t do it now, with Helen’s help, she’d possibly never have the courage to do it ever again.
Helen hadn’t even told Allie. She had let Sylvana down once and couldn’t afford to take any chances that their plot could get foiled. She intended that her husband would be as drun
k as Robin. He would know nothing and therefore have nothing to answer for.
Up until that moment, they hadn’t been quite sure what they would actually do on New Year’s Eve. But now, Donna’s friend had just given them the perfect cover. As they made their way out of the Rainbow, back to the tour bus for the final time, Robin was full of his new friend Tony Stevens and what a genius he appeared to be. He couldn’t wait to go to his house, he kept saying, and see his personal synth collection.
Sylvana hadn’t seen him so animated, so happy, for years.
At the back of the venue, in the cul-de-sac where the bus was parked, Sylvana stopped and looked up at the dirty London sky. God please, she prayed silently, under the streetlights that blocked out the stars, let me escape from this man. Please God, I’ll never ask you for anything ever again. But save me. Save me from Robin.
‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ Steve bellowed up the stairs. ‘We’re gonna be late for all that free booze!’
There was no vocal response from the master bedroom of the squat, just the squeaking of floorboards and the sound of ‘American Trilogy’ being notched up another few thousand decibels.
‘I dunno,’ he turned to Lynton. ‘Shall we just leave him to it?’
Lynton raised his eyebrows. Like Steve, he was suited and booted and eager to get to Tony’s party. ‘Where’s Kevin got to?’ he asked.
‘Fuck knows.’ Steve shook his head. ‘Maybe she’s doin’ his laundry an’ all.’
He nodded his head towards the kitchen door, through which the form of Rachel could be seen, dutifully ironing her boyfriend’s trousers for the eightieth time, her black-rimmed eyes staring blankly into space. She’d dolled herself up hours ago in anticipation of this rare night out, but her party frock and make-up showed definite signs of wilting now she had spent the best part of the evening running errands in the kitchen, getting through half a bottle of vodka as she did so.
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