Love Song

by Sophia Bennett

  Shaking, I opened the door properly and walked out in front of them. Their mouths opened as incredulity and confusion flashed across their faces. Nobody said anything.

  For the first time, I was grateful for Windy’s little anti-pep talk in the car: at least he hadn’t expected me to wow them with my feminine charisma. I stood on the worn carpet and felt the whole room deflate around me, like a tired balloon.

  Angus peered at me.

  ‘Blanket Girl?’ He turned to Windy. ‘Your secret weapon is Blanket Girl? Don’t say Sigrid’s coming. If she is, I’ll walk home until my feet bleed.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Jamie said faintly. ‘Sisi’s in Vancouver. I just spoke to her ...’

  They hadn’t even said hello.

  ‘Sigrid certainly is in Canada,’ Windy answered calmly. ‘We said no girlfriends for the next few weeks. Nina’s here to take care of some practical details. And to be perfectly honest, she’s the only one of you I trust.’

  ‘Hi Nina,’ Declan said, waving to me from the window with a smile.

  ‘Hi.’ I waved back. I couldn’t muster a smile, though, even for Greek God Boy.

  The others just stared. I looked down at the carpet underneath my feet. Surely a house like this would have a basement that could swallow me now?

  ‘Nice seeing you, Leena,’ Angus muttered, moving towards the door. ‘But I’m outta here. Get the chopper ready, Windy. Call me when you’ve got Mustique sorted, will you? And make sure Digger V’s there. He’ll come if he knows I’m asking.’

  Windy’s voice roared like a hurricane. ‘JUST TRY IT!’

  Angus stopped dead in his tracks, and Windy strode towards him.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ he said, moving swiftly on and heading for the door. ‘If anyone leaves, that’s it – you’re on your own. You can forget keeping me as your manager. I’m done. You explain it to them, Nina. You live in the real world.’

  With that, he stepped into the hall. The door slammed behind him with an impressive judder.

  The boys continued to stare at me, glassy-eyed. As if wondering how a pasty-faced girl in an oversize jacket was going to fix this unholy mess.

  I wondered that myself. The pièce de résistance. Blanket Girl.

  So this was what it was like to be on my own with the hottest band in the world.

  Really really uncomfortable.

  Nobody said anything, but nobody walked out to the helicopter. Windy had scared the boys off that idea, for now at least. Instead, Orli came in and said hello. They tramped unwillingly up the stairs behind her as she showed them to their bedrooms. They clearly didn’t want to stay, but for the moment they didn’t dare go.

  Windy disappeared for several hours to make phone calls from a nearby village where he could get a signal – apparently unaware of the supreme irony of what he was doing. Meanwhile, we ate an awkward lunch together in the dining room, hardly speaking, followed by an awkward supper. In between, Sam the security man handed the boys back their disabled phones, including the spares he’d found in their hand luggage. Connor offered him a thousand pounds to give him one of his SIM cards back. Sam laughed.

  ‘Nice try.’

  ‘Ten thousand.’

  ‘You keep your money,’ Sam grinned. ‘Like the boss says, try writing a letter. It’s a dying art. You’re good at writing, aren’t you?’

  ‘They are,’ Connor grunted, flicking a look at Angus and Jamie. ‘I just do the dirty work.’

  ‘Well, do that, then,’ Sam suggested. ‘Play your guitar. Take your mind off things.’

  Connor glowered at him. He was used to staff like Oliver, obeying his every whim.

  ‘It’s a bass,’ he muttered. ‘There’s a difference.’

  Sam merely smiled in a ‘whatever’ kind of way. This didn’t help Connor’s mood.

  Without Windy to be angry at, they drifted from room to room like unmoored boats on choppy seas, uncertain what to do. At least I had a job to focus on. It made sharing the house with them easier, after the drawing-room disaster. After the helicopter left, a Transit van had arrived, piled high with their belongings. I spent my time helping Sam carry flight cases and suitcases upstairs for them.

  The full contents of my luggage would have fitted into one of Connor’s carry-on bags. It was turning into a day for irony.

  After supper, the boys disappeared to their bedrooms. Free at last of their glowering, angry looks, I went exploring through a maze of interconnecting rooms at the back of the house. First there was a library, packed with ancient copies of the classics, with gilt lettering on faded linen covers. Behind it, a smaller room was set with deep leather armchairs and a tall carved cabinet filled with crystal decanters. The smell of stale cigars still hung in the heavy velvet curtains. This was the place where George would have made himself at home, I thought.

  Other rooms seemed half-decided. One was a mixture of filing cabinets topped with a collection of porcelain dogs. Another held an upright piano missing several keys, an old pram full of naked china dolls with bright blue, staring eyes, and a perfect wooden rocking horse. Its ceiling was marked with more patches of damp, and there was a hole where something had leaked and part of it had fallen in. Three of its walls were hung with pale yellow silk wallpaper, painted with flowers. Or at least, they had been once. Now the silk was peeling off the walls, revealing damp plaster underneath. The fourth wall was completely empty, apart from a collection of mottled stains. The room was in a slow process of decay, and it was weird, and sad, and beautiful.

  That night, the weather closed in again. Dark clouds blotted out the moon. The wind howled in the trees. Raindrops spattered the windows.

  I was in the middle of writing a letter to Tammy, but it was proving difficult to capture the sheer bizarreness of being here without giving too much away. There was a loud knock at my bedroom door. Sweeping the moth-eaten dressing gown around my shoulders, I tentatively opened the door to see who it was. All the boys except Declan were standing there.

  ‘Can we come in?’ Jamie asked.

  I stared at them for a moment. Three of Seventeen magazine’s ‘Ten Hottest Humans’ were asking to enter my bedroom. I stood aside to let them in. This was Planet Rock, after all – weird things happened every day. It was also Planet Me – nothing was going to happen at all.

  Jamie marched across the room and draped himself on the chair under the window. Connor sat at my desk. Angus lay on the floor nearby, propping himself up on one elbow. They looked like they were posing for a magazine shoot, but their faces were tense and angry. With nowhere else to sit, I perched on the edge of my bed, facing them.

  ‘You’ve to go to Windy,’ Jamie commanded me. ‘First thing tomorrow. Tell him this is absurd. We can’t stay here.’

  ‘He’ll listen to you,’ Angus chipped in. ‘He said so.’

  ‘He thinks we’re being unreasonable. He thinks we’re divas,’ Connor pouted. ‘But this is impossible. No George. No tech. No internet. How’re we supposed to work?’

  ‘He just wants to send us back in time,’ Jamie grumbled. ‘To when we were schoolboys. Well, I’ve moved on. I’m not that person any more.’

  ‘No,’ Angus sneered. ‘You’re not. You’re the King of Hollywood. You used to be a musician. Now you’re a Kardashian.’

  This was too much for Jamie, who leapt up, spoiling for a fight.

  ‘Take that back!’

  ‘Take what back?’ Angus sneered. ‘Didn’t you spend the whole Easter break going on fake antique-spotting trips for Backstab with Sigrid?’

  ‘Backstage. Backstage, you moron. And that was two days, that’s all. She was just wrapping up the last series, then she’s giving up the show. Give her a break, Angus. God!’

  Angus glared at him.

  ‘Yeah. Because Sisi’s just a sweet little hometown girl who wants world peace and bunnies … in the body of a RAGING LUNATIC. And you’re Casanova. And the music … the music’s nothing to you any more.’

  Angus whispered the last
few words. His voice dripped with disdain.

  ‘The music’s everything to me,’ Jamie growled back at him. ‘And if you don’t know that, then you don’t get me and you never did.’

  He flicked Angus a deadly look and stalked over to the window. Angus leered at his departing back and mimed stabbing actions at an imaginary body beside him. Whether it was Sigrid or Jamie he was impaling, it was hard to tell.

  ‘So it’s true,’ I sighed, hunching my arms around my knees. I think they’d forgotten I was even there, but it was my room, and about time I said something.

  Angus and Jamie weren’t listening, but Connor looked up. ‘What’s true?’

  ‘That you’re breaking up.’

  They were disintegrating in front of my eyes. It hurt me to think how Ariel would take it. Even though I’d spoilt the band for her, after so many years of loving them the news would still tear her apart.

  ‘Who said we were?’ Connor asked.

  ‘Well, aren’t you? Everyone on the tour was talking about it. Even Windy, on the way up here ...’

  ‘What did he say?’ Jamie asked, turning round.

  ‘He was worried about you. He said bands like you don’t know what they’ve got till it’s too late.’

  Jamie frowned and Angus grunted, ‘We’re not breaking up. Just …’ He trailed off.

  ‘Every band has its moments,’ Connor shrugged. ‘You know, we’re just …’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘Just …’

  They looked from one to the other, each hoping someone else would explain. And I saw how, under the rock-god surface, they were just three boys who weren’t sure what they were doing any more. They were scared and miserable, and they had been for some time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I sighed, thinking of New York, and my sister.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘I’ve seen you play together. It was the one time you seemed really happy. Couldn’t you try and stay? Just for a while, anyway. Have you seen this place yet? Is it really so terrible?’ I started to feel offended on behalf of the Hall, its lake and wisteria and faded grandeur. ‘If you leave now, there isn’t a plan B, by the way. This is already, like, plan Q. What are you going back to anyway?’

  Angus and Jamie said nothing, but Connor piped up with a leer. ‘I’m going back to Verushka, that’s what I’m going back to.’

  ‘Shut up, Connor,’ Angus scowled, looking thoughtful.

  The room descended into silence. I could see the danger they were in dawning on all three of them. Were they breaking up? If not, what was happening here?

  Jamie looked back out of the window as the moon briefly appeared through the scudding clouds, silhouetting his profile against the glass. He turned to Angus.

  ‘I suppose we could try it for a while,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I write some songs, you write some ... It wouldn’t kill us.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A few weeks?’

  ‘A few weeks?’ Angus retorted. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Maybe Windy’s got a point. Maybe we need a change of scene. That last session in Miami was a waste of time.’

  ‘That last session was in Miami. Beaches. Girls. Cutting-edge mixing boards. Remember?’

  ‘I remember you spent most of the time with Digger V.’

  ‘Oh, you noticed him there, did you? Amazing, as you were in your room with Sigrid the whole time.’

  I winced at this. I tried not to. It was no business of mine what Jamie did or didn’t do with his fiancée in hotel rooms in Miami, or anywhere.

  ‘I was composing.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s what you call it. Composing.’

  They stared at each other, breathing hard, already squaring up for another fight.

  I gave up. I’d tried. What did Windy expect of me, anyway?

  ‘Listen!’ Connor held his hand up. ‘What’s that?’

  We all sat in silence, straining our ears. The rain had died down, but the wind outside was still howling.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That! There it is again!’

  I heard it this time. A strange, unearthly, rustling, flapping sound. The others heard it too. In fact, I’d heard it a couple of times while I was writing my letter to Tammy, and I’d assumed it was the wisteria tree rustling in the wind, or a nest of birds in the eaves. Now we all realized the noise was coming from inside. We looked towards the darkened corridor.

  ‘It sounds like bats,’ Jamie said.

  ‘Oh, great. That’s exactly what we need,’ Connor groaned.

  Angus smiled wickedly. ‘They could be bloodsuckers. Coming for your beautiful white neck ...’

  ‘Shut it, Angus!’

  ‘You’re such a wuss. You like to think you’re so hard, but you don’t even like bits in your orange juice.’

  I sighed and got up, pulling the dressing gown tighter around me. While they sat and bickered, I headed into the corridor to see what the noise sound really was. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I kept picturing an army of bats nearby, assuming the fallen idols ever left me alone long enough to try.

  The rustling was coming from somewhere down a corridor that ran towards the back of the house, opposite my room. I walked tentatively towards the sound, pausing in front of each closed door, listening. At the third door down, the noise was so intense it made me jump. This was the one. The fluttering came in rapid bursts and made me think not of bats, but of a thousand oversized butterflies trapped inside.

  Was somebody breeding insects here? My head pounded and it was hard to breathe.

  There were footsteps behind me, and an embarrassed cough. Angus and Jamie stood there, watching me.

  ‘We’re right behind you,’ Angus said.

  Gee, thanks. My hero.

  I put my hand on the handle, and the boys walked closer.

  ‘Go on,’ Angus whispered. ‘Open it.’

  Sure. Because he was only a poor little well-muscled rock star. And I was … staff. I threw him a look. But after a deep breath, I opened the door all the same.

  At first I thought I was hallucinating. The room seemed empty, but alive. We stood there watching as the walls seemed to ripple and cold air whipped our faces. Then it stopped.

  The only light came from the bulb in the corridor behind us, and it was hard to see what was happening. All I could make out was a plain iron bedstead and some old, dark furniture arranged neatly around the walls. Everything looked normal. Then the wind blew again and I saw what the rippling was.

  Paper.

  Hundreds of sheets of yellowing paper were stuck to the walls like tiles. Each time the wind gusted through a hole in the window it caused them to flap furiously.

  I looked around and saw that Jamie disappeared. I assumed he’d run away. Angus and I stayed close to each other, laughing nervously. If he’d put his arms around me to comfort me, I wouldn’t have minded. Instead, he wrapped them around himself. For a bad boy obsessed with skulls and assassination, he was a remarkable scaredy-cat when you got to know him.

  A minute later Jamie was back, armed with a smartphone. I stared at it and he laughed.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to use it to reveal our co-ordinates. I just need this.’

  He switched on the in-built torch and put its beam of light up against some pages near the window. We watched as he stood there, examining them.

  ‘What?’ Angus asked.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Jamie murmured, grinning. ‘This is so messed up.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Look.’

  We moved in closer. The fine print was verses.

  ‘I know some of these,’ I said reaching out a hand to touch the words. ‘Wordsworth. Eliot. Yeats. Oh wow. Lots of Yeats.’

  Each page had been carefully cut from an anthology. The Fluttering Room was lined with poetry.

  Jamie grinned at Angus. ‘Admit it. Windy’s outdone himself this time.’

  Angus nodded slowly. ‘OK. This i
s weird. He always promised us weird.’

  ‘He’s never done anything by the book. It’s why we liked him, remember?’

  ‘We liked him because he found us gigs. He kept us out of YOIs.’

  ‘What are those?’ I asked.

  ‘Young Offender Institutions,’ Angus said, with mock formality. ‘We were always doing stuff that nearly got us nicked. He promised us cheap motel rooms and years on the road if we worked hard, and that sounded better than being banged up.’

  ‘He promised us girls,’ Jamie said, with a wicked, nostalgic grin.

  ‘Yeah. Shame none of that ever happened.’

  ‘He said he’d look after us,’ Jamie mused. He looked at me, then turned to Angus. ‘He’s trying, mate. In his own inimitable style. Give him a chance? Just for a little while? Look, if she can handle it, you can.’

  He indicated me, shivering in my dressing gown, staring at the walls around me.

  Angus nodded, reluctantly. ‘I would’ve preferred bats.’

  Yeah, right. I thought. I was getting the measure of Angus McLean now, and if he met an actual bat he’d run a mile.

  But it was his way of agreeing. They weren’t going anywhere yet.

  Windy left early the next morning, without saying goodbye. Through my open window, I heard the roar of the MGA as he headed down the drive.

  ‘He said he won’t be back for a while,’ Orli told me, as she made me pancakes for breakfast. ‘But he can arrange for you to leave any time you need to. I think he’s feeling a bit guilty about leaving you here with this lot in one of their moods.’

  ‘I’ll be OK.’

  ‘But if you’re not … well, don’t forget about that landline. Just tell me and I’ll call him.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Promise me, Nina.’

  ‘I promise. But … I kind of like it here.’

  Besides, she didn’t know that I had lasted precisely a week the last time I worked for the band. I was determined to do better this time.

  Though a thin drizzle was falling, I took Twiggy outside for a proper walk. I felt I owed it to her after abandoning her yesterday. Shrugging on the old tweed jacket, I followed her through a side entrance in the cobbled yard, to an empty stable building with space for six horses. Vintage leather tack, mouldy with damp and age, hung from high hooks on the walls. I pictured the horses, their breath steaming in the cold morning air. In Croydon, you don’t see many horses – unless they’re police horses and there’s some kind of demo going on. Out here, though I’d never even sat on a pony, I had a sudden urge to ride.