Cold Comfort

by Isobel Hart

  “I realise that now. Jesus, I wish I could change things. When I got back and you’d left… I… Jesus, I thought I would never be able to breathe again. I spent weeks looking for you.”

  “Weeks?”

  “I found you quite quickly. I was very determined.”

  “But you didn’t contact me until recently? Why?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I nearly stepped in when you struggled to find somewhere to live, but then you met Eddy and I could see you were okay… happy. I thought you deserved some time to heal. I would have left you alone for longer, but then I saw you with him, and I couldn’t let that happen.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Delilah, but he’s not good enough for you. He’s a serial womaniser and does drugs. You deserve so much more.”

  “Pot meet kettle. I hardly think you’re in a position to judge the quality of my relationship based on those criteria. I’d like you to take me home, please,” I said, draining my cup. He was right. It was good coffee.

  “Of course.” He stood and escorted me back to the car, holding the door until I was seated. I pulled out my phone. There were another seven missed calls that had come in during the time I’d had the coffee, plus a text. All from Cat. I opened the text. You’re with him at his house? Seriously? What the fuck? I closed the phone, feeling my heart thump in my chest.

  “Everything okay?” Hardy asked, looking over at me, concerned.

  “No, not really,” I said with a sigh.

  “If you need me, Delilah, you know I’m here, right? I mean I know we aren’t together right now, but I’ve never stopped loving you. I’ve loved you since I was ten. I can’t see that ever changing.”

  “I love you too,” I said, acknowledging the feelings my heart still held. “But I don’t trust you any more. You hurt me too much. The lies damaged whatever we had, and I can’t see a way past that.”

  “I know… I know,” he whispered. He looked devastated and stayed that way for the duration of the journey. We didn’t speak again. There was nothing much left to say.

  He pulled into the hotel and stopped in front of the doors, jumping out to run round and open my own door. “Who’s the guy, Delilah?” a photographer asked, getting right in our faces. Hardy moved in front of me and ploughed a path forward until we were inside the hotel.

  “Thank you,” I said, turning to face him.

  “Anytime, Delilah. Whatever you need. Just … anything.” He leant forward and kissed me gently on the forehead. I turned quickly and fled towards the lifts before my traitorous heart could make me do something I’d regret. I knew he’d stood and watched me until the doors on the elevator closed behind me. I couldn’t look at him again.

  Part of me wanted to run back to my room and hide like the proverbial ostrich, but I knew that would only delay the inevitable. It was time to bite the bullet and face Cat. I headed straight for his suite, knocking sharply on the door until someone opened it. It was Henry, looking smug. “Look who it is,” he said with a grin. “He’s in there,” he said, nodding towards the bedroom. I marched past him and opened the door.

  Cat was reclining on the bed naked. Tiff was between his legs giving him head, equally naked. He barely looked up as I walked in. I picked up the nearest thing to hand and threw it at them. It was one of his size-eleven boots, and it got their attention. “Delilah,” Cat said, jumping up, oblivious to his nakedness. “You’re here. They said you went to him, but you’re here… you came back to me.” He pushed Tiff away from him when she tried to grab hold of his arm. She was pissed at first, scowling up at me from where she reclined on the bed, before purring to Cat;

  “Baby, come back to bed and fuck me again. I need more of your loving.”

  I felt my heart splinter for the second time in my life. “Was it all bullshit, Cat? Everything you said?” I asked, hurt and disappointed with the speed at which he’d fallen back into this life. He stood in front of me, still naked, trying to pull me into his arms. “You have to be joking!” I screamed, upset turning to anger. “You think I’d want you after this?” I said, pointing at the state of him, and her. “I want no part of this. I might not have much, but I have enough pride to not allow anyone to treat me like this. I believed you when you said you wanted to make this work. I believed you really cared about me. And you do this to me? Enough. I’ve had enough.” I spun on my heel and careened into Henry.

  “Leaving already?” He laughed in my face.

  “You’re toxic,” I hissed at him. “You have lost the ability to care about anything but yourself. Someone once dared to hurt you, so now you can’t stand to see anyone else happy, and when you do see it you have to destroy it, just to make sure they feel as shit as you do. Well, congratulations. Job done. The trouble is you’re going to grow old alone, Henry. All of this…,” I said, pointing around me at the suite, “it doesn’t last. There’ll be another band that everyone loves more than you at some point soon, and you’ll fade into being just another has-been rock star. And then all you’ll have left is a world of people who only want to be with you for your money, or what they think you can do for them. Users. No one will actually care about you. Because no one would want to care about what you’ve become – the piece of shit you are now. And that’s bad enough, but do you know what’s worse?” He blinked at me as if to say something, but I carried on before he could answer. “Not happy just to destroy your own life, you have to bring him down with you,” I said, pointing at Cat over my shoulder. “Destroy him with your drugs, so you can reduce him to the same level of pond scum you aspire to be. Well, I hope you’re happy. You have to carry that on your conscience, and I hope it keeps you awake at night as he slowly destroys himself because of you. ” I slow-clapped him. “Good job,” I said. “I hope you both rot in this self-inflicted hell you’ve created.” Then I walked past his silent form and slammed the door behind me.

  I made it back to my room, somehow found my key, and walked inside. Eddy was there. Eddy had always been there for me ever since I’d met him. Loyal, supportive. My only friend. And as always I collapsed into his waiting arms. “I want to go home,” I cried.

  Epilogue

  3 months later

  The fallout from my hospital trip had been horrific. I’d been bombarded by press, in part because a YouTube video of me singing had been posted and had already been viewed nearly a million times. Then after that they hounded me because news had leaked about my fight with Cat at the hotel. Tiff had made the most of her fifteen minutes of fame, participating in a full newspaper spread, complete with pictures of her in her underwear, where she described at length how I had walked in on her and Cat in flagrante. She conveniently left out the part about the drugs.

  I hadn’t spoken to Cat in person since that day, although the papers had been filled since with stories about the stream of women he was connected to – and the drugs he was accused of habitually using now. He was painted as flaky and unreliable, a junkie. The most awkward point had been when I’d received a call a few days after things had unravelled, telling me we needed to make a video for the single. I’d flat-out refused to participate at first, but then was reminded that I was contractually obliged. In the end we’d got around any difficulties by filming Cat and me in different locations, on different balconies in different parts of the world, singing to one another while apart. It worked with the lyrics of the song, and the finished piece was heartbreakingly lovely.

  A few weeks ago the shit seemed to have hit the fan, and after a particularly vivid run of stories that I couldn’t seem to help myself reading about, describing a man who’d gone completely off the rails, rumours of overdose and hospital, I’d read that he’d admitted himself to a rehab unit. But it was hard to know what was fact and what was fiction.

  Eddy and I had returned almost immediately to Brighton. How I would have coped without him I had no idea in retrospect. I may have been physically present, but emotionally I was lost. When I walked into our apartment that day I felt safe for the first
time in what felt like an age. The feeling was so overwhelming I burst into tears. Eddy had, as ever, held me and comforted me. He had been my rock at a time when I was completely at sea emotionally. Even a visit from my Mama hadn’t mended my heart completely.

  In the meantime I hadn’t heard anything from Hardy, but I knew he was there, watching. I sensed him sometimes. I think Eddy thought I was going mad, or having a breakdown of some sort, but I knew Hardy was waiting for me to call him, looking out for me. There were days I came really close to calling, but something always stopped me.

  My return to college, much anticipated as a way to move on with my life, was a bit of a disaster in the end. When I turned up on the first day of term I was met with a bank of press. They followed me around the campus, taking photos, interviewing people who claimed to know me and trying to get into lectures. Photos of me appeared everywhere. If it wasn’t the paparazzi taking pictures, it was students who then sold them to the tabloids. I felt like a goldfish. It reached a real low when Robbie sold his story about the time we’d spent together. If it hadn’t been so embarrassing seeing it all splashed over the papers like a bad romance novel – the events certainly bore no resemblance to reality – it would have been funny.

  Eventually the college called me in and said that my presence was too disruptive and that they needed to consider the needs of all their students. They asked me to take a sabbatical. I think the dean and I both knew I wouldn’t be going back. So I watched my dreams crumble. On the very same day when I arrived back at the apartment my first royalty check for the single was waiting for me. The song had been number one in forty-two countries and was still in the top ten in the UK and the US. Judging by the number of zeros on the cheque I was going to be okay financially for a while.

  That was how I’d reached this point, in the apartment with Eddy, holding the business card from Bill Morrison. Since I’d left university I’d locked myself away and used my time to immerse myself in music – just like I had when I was little and teaching myself to play guitar. This time I was composing. Some good must have come out of everything I had experienced, because at my last count I figured I had at least an album’s worth of songs now. Possibly two. I just couldn’t seem to decide if I should make the call to Morrison or not.

  “What have you got to lose?” Eddy asked from his place beside me. He’d sacrificed a lot to be my friend. He barely saw or spoke to Matt now, still too angry at how complicit he had been in the events that had led up to the end. He described him as an enabler. I felt bad about that, promising myself that one day soon I’d mend that bridge for him. From where I was sitting Matt wasn’t the bad guy. He just got caught up in the crossfire.

  “Fuck it,” I said, pressing the numbers into my phone and then listening as it started to ring. A man’s voice answered after only a couple of seconds.

  “Bill Morrison.”

  “Mr Morrison, I’m not sure if you remember me. You gave me your card a while back.”

  “Delilah? Is that you?”

  “Yes, it is,” I said, surprised at the instant recognition. “Um, I wondered if you would be free to have a coffee sometime. I’ve written some tracks for an album I was thinking about putting together, and I wanted to get an opinion on them before I recorded anything. Um… You mentioned you might be interested in being my manager…” I trailed off, uncertain what to say next.

  “Yes to the coffee, and yes to being your manager. Yes, Delilah. I’m delighted. I was praying you’d call me when you were ready. I’m genuinely sorry for everything you’ve been put through. I think you’ve been amazingly dignified about it all.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, tears threatening.

  “I’m going to help you, Delilah. We’re going to do it your way, with authenticity, so you can feel proud of what you’ve achieved, but I have to warn you… I am going to make you a star, because you deserve it. I saw the YouTube video of that single you performed at the hospital. Amazing. If any of the rest are half as good as that, well…” He continued on for another ten minutes, insisting we meet as soon as it was physically possible so we could start putting plans into place.

  I put my thumb up to Eddy, my eyes full of tears as I listened to Bill tell me what he was going to do for my career and felt the bud of excitement grow within me. Eddy smiled and reached for my hand, squeezing it. With him by my side I could do it.

  I was going to be okay. For now.

  The End

  Author’s Note

  As ever my stories have only reached this stage because of the people that have helped and cheered me on from the sidelines. It is time to say thank you.

  It has been a tough year. My dad was diagnosed and subsequently died of cancer. It makes you appreciate how short life is, how brief a time we all get on this earth, and why we should spend it with the people we love, doing the things we enjoy. Writing is one such pleasure for me.

  So my first thank you is to my dad. For making me always feel loved, and supporting every choice I ever made – good and bad. I’ve always known he had my back. I miss him.

  Secondly my family, who similarly have supported all the life changes I have made and assured me we’d get by. Or at least be poor and happy.

  Sharon – always my first reader. You make me believe the books are worth sharing. It helps I know you’d tell me if you thought they weren’t.

  Katie – my editor and friend. On different continents, but always there with support and love and prayer. Thank you for your understanding when months would pass with no word from me. You take what I write and make it better. I really couldn’t do this without you – or not in a way that anyone would want to read.

  All the ladies on my Facebook page – the fact you are still interested in reading what I put out amazes me, and spurs me on to want to do more. Your words of support, comfort and encouragement are so greatly appreciated. Thank you.

  Finally, Nik at BookBeaver for my lovely cover. It was exactly what I wanted. As Arnie would say ‘I’ll be back.’

  Remember, life is short. Be happy x

  Read More from Isobel Hart

  What goes around comes around (Lily’s Story, Book 1)

  U.S. readers, click here

  Full Circle (Lily’s Story, Book 2)

  U.S. readers, click here

  Compromise Agreement

  U.S. readers, click here

  Connect with Isobel Hart

  Twitter: @bellahartloves

  Facebook: Isobel Hart

  Email: Bellahartlovesromance@gmail.com