Please Don't Stop The Music (29 page)

‘
Yeah, I know. You’re not interested.’ Now
he stood up, dragging himself upright as though his bones were
reluctant. ‘Sorry. I thought, maybe, I could make a difference.
That you might just be able to look inside yourself this once, and
see what you’re doing to everyone who ever loved you. See that
maybe you should stop being so fucking
selfish
all the time.’ He put both
hands against the railings and looked into my eyes. There was a
fire in his intense brown stare that I’d never seen before. ‘Yeah,
it was shitty what happened to you. But you really think that
Randall and Christian would want you to live like this? You think
you’re doing their memories a
favour
by cutting and running all
the time? Okay, yes, I applaud your decision not to get involved
until you feel whole, feel like a real person, but don’t you ever
stop to think that maybe
being involved
could make you feel that way
? And you know
what
really
makes
me mad?’ Ben lowered his voice, speaking right into my eyes now.
‘You listened to me. You took it all on board, told me it didn’t
matter my not being perfect, when all the time you were planning to
run. You
lied
,
Jemima. You fucking
lied
.’

‘
My
name isn’t Jemima. I told you.’

‘
You’re Jemima to me. That girl you were, that Gemma, she
doesn’t exist any more. Jemima is who you’ve made yourself into,
that’s who I …’ He stopped. Coughed.

‘
Ben, before … it wasn’t a lie. I just never knew it would be
this hard.’

‘
Yeah? Well it’s not exactly a picnic with the Queen from
where I’m standing either. You aren’t the only one with problems
you know, but you are the only one who runs away.’

Now
I stood up too, feeling the strain in my thighs and calves as
wobbly muscles tried to take my weight. ‘How did you find
me?’

He smiled a rather humourless smile. ‘Zafe
rang around and a guy at the station remembered you.’ The smile
briefly became warmer. ‘Honestly, what were you
thinking
? Over seventy quid in one
pound coins – the guy was in serious trauma.’ Then his expression
became wary again, eyes watchful. ‘So we knew you’d come to
Glasgow. And I waited for you, Jem. I gave you the benefit of the
doubt, thought when you realised what you were doing, what you were
making of your life that you’d … I thought you’d come back to me,
you know that? I was that deluded. And then, when I knew you
weren’t coming, that I wouldn’t ever see you again unless I did
something, d’you know what? For five seconds I thought, “Why should
I? Why should I care?” But there’s something, something that
wouldn’t let me sleep, wouldn’t let me rest until I knew you were
safe. With me or without me, I wanted you safe. So I drove up four
days ago. Been looking for you ever since. And let me tell you,
this accent is a bitch to lip read. Half the Glaswegian population
thinks I’m Care in the Community now.’

The
warmth rose from my stomach to engulf my body and my face and I
realised that what I was experiencing was the scalding blush of
shame.

This man –
this
man
had driven several hundred miles with
no guarantee of finding me. He’d left himself at the mercy of a
strange city, unable to communicate properly, just for
me.

I
looked at him standing there, looking sleep-deprived and even
skankier than usual. But, and I had to admit it to myself, very
sexy. Very cute. And here. Despite what I’d done, despite the awful
way I’d betrayed him by running away, he was here. Giving me
another chance. And the thoughts didn’t send the usual sting of
fear through my bloodstream. He wasn’t here to possess me, to force
me to go with him. He didn’t want me to belong to him, he just
wanted me safe.

I
stared across the water. What did I do now? Back down, return with
him? But what would that mean about all those other times when I’d
run … that those hadn’t been real? That I just hadn’t tried hard
enough?

And
there, clear and hard as good diamonds, were Chris and Randall.
Shouldering their way forward to stare at me across the years.
Loading me with the memories of the things we’d had to do back then
to survive.

We’d all made our decisions. Chris had
turned to heroin, his decision. Ran had killed Gray, his decision
and I’d lied for him. My decision. And now I was beginning to
understand. The boys had loved me. They wouldn’t have wanted me to
keep their memories safe at the expense of forming new ones of my
own. Our parents had loved us. It hadn’t been their
choice
to die, after
all. They would have wanted me to have a proper life, a settled
life.

And
now Ben was giving me the chance to move on. Not forget it, I would
never forget any of it. But I could get over it.

‘
I didn’t lie, Ben.’ My lips hardly moved.
‘But running is what I
do
and I don’t know if I can break the
habit.’

Wary
and huge, his eyes were on my face now. ‘You need to …’ A finger
touched my mouth. ‘I can’t read if you don’t. Please.’ As though it
hurt him to ask. I repeated myself, feeling a bit ashamed and he
stroked my hair very gently. ‘Hey, Jem? Clean now for five years,
six months and two weeks. If there’s one thing I know about it’s
breaking habits. Break yours, now. Come back with me.’

Could I? Could it really be that simple?
Just … go back?
And then I remembered
Rosie’s words about the line in the sand. The way I’d felt sitting
on the steps of Glasgow station, too old, too tired to keep going.
Maybe it really
was
time to face those demons.

‘
Ben.’ I stood up. ‘I’ll come back with you.
But it has to be on my terms. I have to be able to sort myself out,
I can’t –
won’t
–
rely on you to do it for me.’

‘
Understood.’

‘
I have to find out what Saskia is doing
buying all that stuff from Rosie and burning it. Why she’s got me
blacklisted from here to … well, not from
here
, obviously, even the devil
doesn’t deal in Glasgow, but why she’s got eBay to shut me
down.’

Ben
raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay. We do all that. And then
what?’

‘
Then when I’m back on an equal footing I’ll decide what to
do. I can’t be tied, Ben, I have to feel that I’m free to do what I
want. If I stayed …’ My voice tailed off.

‘
If
you stayed you’d want to know you were staying because you wanted
to, not because you’d got nowhere else to go. Yeah?’ His fingers
closed very gently over mine. ‘That’s what I want too, Jem. I want
you with me because you can’t bear to be anywhere else, not because
you owe me. You’ve made me realise so much about myself, about the
way I’ve behaved, that I …’

For
a long, long time we just stared at each other. His huge eyes
seemed to suck me in until they were all I was aware of. Eyes, and
a wisp of hair which blew across to tickle at my cheek. ‘Ben …’ He
smelled sweet. Indefinable. So much himself that I found it hard to
breathe.

‘
Jem. It’s okay.’ A small step and he was so close. The panic
tried to rise in me but there was simply no room for it, not with
the sudden flush of my skin and the racing of my heart. ‘It’s
really okay.’ He leaned forward to brush his mouth against mine and
suddenly I found myself winding hands in his hair, pulling him
down, pulling him closer. Desperate, hungry for the contact, for
his tongue searching my mouth and his body pressed tight against
me.

I
did it in the sure knowledge that, wherever they were, my brothers
were cheering and catcalling and probably making hand gestures that
Jason would have been proud of.

‘
I’m afraid, if things start to get
difficult I’ll run again,’ I whispered. It was as if I had to say
the words aloud, even though he had no hope of seeing
them
.
But then he
did that disconcerting thing of speaking without knowing what I’d
said, yet continuing the conversation.

‘
You
know your past?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
It’s just that. Past. Instinct might tell
you to run but I hope –
God how I
hope
– that you’ll stop and think.
Rationalise. Talk to me. And if things ever get so bad that you
can’t, well then maybe you’ll run somewhere I can find
you.’

‘
You’ve had a long time to work on that speech, haven’t
you?’

‘
Since the day you walked out.’

‘
Smooth, Mr Davies, very smooth.’

‘
You have
no
idea.’

Chapter Twenty

We
drove back in Ben’s car. It was hard, leaving my stuff in the shops
in Glasgow, but they had my mobile number and the sum total of my
other belongings didn’t even occupy half of the tiny boot. Ben was
incredulous.

‘
You’ve been in Glasgow for three weeks,
with only
this
?’
he asked, when we stopped for coffee on the motorway, holding up my
rucksack by one strap. ‘What did you do for
clothes?’

I
wrinkled my nose at him. ‘This from a bloke who smells like he’s
been wearing the same jeans for a fortnight.’

‘
Yeah, but you’re a woman.’

‘
Thanks for noticing.’

A
long, dark look. ‘Oh, I noticed.’ He gave me a glance. ‘Saskia’s
offered me a place in the Shambles. Says she feels sorry for me,
with the shop burning down and all. She took the lease of the place
but she doesn’t know what to do with it, apparently. Thought a
music shop might go well over there.’

‘
Really, the Shambles? That’s tourist central, you’d make a
mint.’

A
pause. ‘I think she just wants to control what I stock. After all
it’s her place, she has ultimate veto. She won’t want me bringing
her shop into disrepute.’

‘
You
mean she won’t want you having my jewellery in there.’

‘
Well. We’ll see about that.’

A companionable silence fell, and we got
back into the car. I watched Ben drive, neat sureness of movement,
long legs inching the pedals, dramatic fingers wrapped around the
wheel and I felt a sudden shudder through me. It rattled my teeth
and sent a scalding blast down to my thighs like a damp rush of
steam. I leaned back on the leather seat and tried to make sense of
it. It felt like … yes, it felt like physical attraction with knobs
on, so to speak. I blew a breath which condensed on the window and
pretended to be involved with the scenery but I didn’t miss Ben’s
sidelong glance at me nor his secret half-smile. The way he ran a
fingertip over the tiny head of the gear lever
might
have been accidental but I
didn’t think so.

Two
words for this situation. Uh and oh.

It
was dark when we parked outside Wilberforce Crescent. Ben stood
aside to let me through the front door and I found I was relaxing
ever so slightly as we went into the kitchen. As though this place
was home.

He’d
left the empty money jar on the table.

‘
I’ll pay it back.’

‘
Cool.’ He opened the fridge and took out some yoghurt, some
fruit and a bottle of something cold from the bottom rack. He put
it all on the table. ‘Hungry? Help yourself.’ There was something
about him, something I’d never seen before. A new kind of sureness
in his movements, a different confidence. He wasn’t watching my
face with the same desperation that he usually had, afraid he might
miss something.

‘
Ben?’

No
answer. He was groping in the back of the fridge and rattling
drawers in and out, finally turning, juggling the makings of a
salad, a loaf of bread and a knife. He began cutting slices with an
easy motion.

‘
Why
did you come looking? Why couldn’t you just let it be?’ A sudden
jolt of the memories I wouldn’t let myself have. I hadn’t seen
anyone cut bread like that since I was a child.

Ben
stopped. Leaned on the knife handle. ‘I thought you might want to
come back but that maybe you didn’t know how to give yourself
permission.’

‘
You
and your drummer must have done a lot of talking.’

‘
Yeah, over the years we talked a lot. On a tour bus there’s
not a lot else to do when you’re in transit. It’s amazing what you
can pick up.’ He put two thick slices of granary bread, a bowl of
salad and dressing in front of me. ‘But you’re pretty good
yourself, you know. All that stuff you told me about getting in
touch with Zafe? Well, you were right, he did deserve to know. I
was a coward, running off without telling him anything. He was my
best mate. I should have handled it better.’

I
bit into the crusty bread. ‘And now? Are you and
he …?’

He shrugged. ‘He’s working on forgiving me.
But hey, sometimes when you really care about someone you
have
to forgive. Do you
understand that? And then we spent a lot of time talking about
you.’