Please Don't Stop The Music (34 page)

‘
Hope so.’ Jason gave a grin. ‘I really hope so.’

‘
Yeah. Secrets are no basis for a relationship.’ There was an
edge to the way Ben looked at me. ‘Let’s go home, Jem.’

‘
Oho, please excuse my presence,’ Jason exclaimed. ‘You two
want to do the nasty thing, you just carry on.’

I
was feeling a bit shaken. Saskia’s meltdown had reinforced my
opinion that love meant you left yourself open. ‘Yes. Let’s
go.’

Ben
gave me that look again, joggling the car keys from hand to hand.
‘Come on.’ He dipped his head to whisper in my ear. ‘Let’s get away
from the high drama.’

Jason winked at me and mouthed ‘ice cubes’, then helped
himself to another biscuit.

Chapter Twenty-Two

We
made love slowly, stretched out on the huge bed in the attic,
surrounded by printed sheets of music and lit by a single
streetlamp. Ben’s room was like him, rumpled and spare, full of
half-written tunes and as colour-co-ordinated as a litter of
kittens. His skin, barred with light from beyond the blinds, was
cool over mine, his eyes were black, then yellow as he moved over
me, into the beam and then back into shadow, staring into my face
as though he was waiting to see my soul rise.

‘
Jem,’ he was breathing my name. ‘Jem. You and me …’ I opened
my mouth to reply but he pressed his lips to mine to cover the
words, and then it was too late to speak. Too late for anything but
mounting heat and motion that built until I was catching at his
back with my nails and stammering meaningless syllables while he
raised himself above me and groaned my name. He held his weight on
his arms a moment longer, then let himself slide so that our faces
were level once more. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘
Mmmm?’ I could hardly bring myself to talk now. It was so
easy here to forget the doubts. My arms and legs were heavy and my
head was drowsily full of the sense of his closeness. I wanted to
lie here and just enjoy the feeling while it lasted. ‘What
about?’

Ben
propped himself up, his face animated. ‘How would you feel … I
can’t believe I’m about to say this … if, maybe, we could, you know
…’

‘
No.
No idea, I’m afraid. How many syllables?’

He grinned widely and stroked my shoulder.
‘How about if
we
bought a place out at Little Gillmoor?’

‘
What?
’
Claustrophobia snatched my breath. I sat up sharply, gathering
covers to my naked chest.

‘
Hey, don’t panic, Jem. It’s okay. Like I said, no pressure. I
just thought it might be good, one day, to have somewhere out of
town. I’m going to need a studio and you need a proper workshop
space, and – you know we’re good together. Couldn’t you stand more
of this?’ He waved a long-fingered hand. ‘Us. Properly.’ Ben sat up
beside me.

Blood thundered in my ears as he pressed a kiss to my hot
skin, his hair painting a pointillistic design across my
collarbone. ‘I’m … not sure …’

‘
I
want to be with you, Jem. Committed. No half-assed “seeing each
other”, but a real couple, living together. Security.’ Under the
covers musician’s fingers stroked my leg, my back.

‘
I
don’t know. Ben …’

Another firm kiss covered my mouth. ‘Don’t say anything yet.
Sleep on it.’ He was sliding next to me, slipping already into
sleep and curling his long legs and strong arms around my body.
Pulling me tight against him. ‘We’ll talk in the morning,
babe.’

I lay very still until he fell asleep,
carefully judging the moment when his restlessness settled into
heavy slumber. My heart was beating so hard that I felt sick and my
head buzzed. My mouth tasted like bleach, but I didn’t dare move.
At last Ben sighed and turned over and I slipped out of the bed.
One good thing, I thought, about sleeping with a deaf guy, you
didn’t have to worry about floorboards creaking and waking him up.
I dressed and sidled into the guest room where my rucksack squatted
in the middle of the bed, fully packed. Even now with all that had
passed between us, I’d kept it zipped and buckled. I’d sneaked
clothes from under its flap as though stealing from myself,
returning them furtively each night. The simple task of unpacking,
of taking up space in the cupboards Ben had cleared for me, had
felt fraudulent. Couldn’t do it. To empty the bag would be to
settle, to admit to feelings that I couldn’t understand, let alone
come to terms with. And now I knew why I’d never settled – because
I never would. It simply hurt too much. I swiped an arm through the
strap and hauled it to my shoulders. The weight felt familiar,
comforting, with all my belongings hanging down my back.
This
was how it should
be. Everything contained, clothes, possessions, books.
Feelings
. All wrapped up
and ready to move on.

Down
the stairs. I gave the place one last complete glance. Even in my
panic I recognised this would probably be the last time I found
myself in such luxury and I wanted to remember it. All of it, from
our last panting embrace in the untidy bedroom to the exact way the
moonlight gleamed on the top of the scrubbed pine table. There was
a new picture on the dresser, an old photo, five years old maybe,
from the length of Ben’s hair and the acute boniness of his hips.
It looked as though it had been taken during a live performance of
Willow Down; it had that kind of almost-blurredness of people who
have hardly stopped moving long enough for the shutter to freeze
them. Zafe and Ben stood with their arms locked around each other’s
shoulders, shirtless and sweaty and wearing two identical
expressions of total bliss. Ben was grinning out at the
photographer, eyes wide, and Zafe was half-turned towards him,
guitar slung over his back, total elation shining from every
sweat-soaked pore. Ben must have had this image in his mind every
day, locked away in a cupboard to stop it reminding him of
everything he’d lost; the band, Zafe, the music. And now he’d taken
it out. Somehow he’d found the courage to put the picture where he
could see it, where it would remind him of everything that had
gone.

Something deep in me broke like a china doll. I’d seen that
look on Ben’s face. Not just in a photograph but when he’d talked
about buying a place in the village, when he’d looked at me and
spoken aloud his hopes and dreams. He’d had that same shining look
of optimism and anticipation. How could I destroy that? How could I
walk away from a man who looked at me like that?

But
I had to. Had to go, or risk that terrible pain of loss once more.
And I couldn’t stand it, not again.

Saskia had showed me what it would be like.
You put all your trust in one person, left yourself open to them,
and that gave them the power to hurt you. I’d
so nearly
fallen for it, been so
close to loving Ben. So close to giving him everything. But doing
that only got me hurt. So now – time to go before things got
worse.

Ben had been wrong. Running
was
the only answer.
Sooner or later everyone went. And what I felt for him – my insides
squeezed as the enormity of my feelings made themselves known – it
was something I couldn’t bear.

I
looked at the photo again. Two men having the time of their lives.
No inhibitions, no holding back, but throwing everything into their
music. No worries about what would happen tomorrow, no
foreshadowing of the terrible disease that would strike the heart
from the band. Living for the day. For what was now, not what had
been or what was to come. Proof that, even while you had the world
at your feet, it could be breaking your toes, one at a time without
you even knowing.

Life
really was shit sometimes.

I
swung the rucksack onto my shoulders and tightened the straps.
Hefted the weight from side to side, and turned for the
door.

There he was in the moonlight in front of me. Completely
naked, bleached by the white light except for the dark shining
circle of the Celtic mark around his bicep. Softly he trod the
floor that separated us. He smelled of sleep, of clean bedsheets
and, smokily, of sex.

‘
So,’ he said carefully. ‘You lied again,
Jem. You said – and I think I quote here – that you’d stop and
think before you ran again. Is
this
stopping to think? Or is this a knee-jerk
reaction?’ He reached out and touched the
rucksack.

‘
I
can’t stay, Ben,’ I whispered. ‘I’m too afraid of getting
hurt.’

He
hardly looked real, his body pale and ghostly in the weird glimmer,
hair dark as blood. ‘Everyone’s afraid of getting hurt, Jem, me
included. But sometimes you have to gamble.’

‘
I’ve been left alone too many times to want to put myself
through it all again, not for anyone. I’m sorry Ben. I have to
protect myself.’

‘
Oh, Jesus.’ Ben leaned against the counter.
‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, naked in the middle
of the night. Is this all because you think I’m going to wake up
one day and realise you were a big mistake? That I felt
obligated
to you because
I told you about the deafness? Jem, my love, you have got
some
seriously
warped ideas, haven’t you?’

‘
I
only know what I can see. You,’ I waved a hand. ‘All this. You say
that you love me, that you want me. But how long does that last
Ben, really? And I’ve got nothing but myself. You’ll always have
Willow Down to save you. But there’s nothing to save
me.’

He
moved so quickly I hardly saw him coming, and then he had me by the
shoulders. ‘But you are saving yourself, don’t you see? Do you not
see what you’ve become? Jemima, you …’ He broke off, shaking his
head and dropping his hands from me. ‘Christ. You really don’t. You
don’t know. Okay. When I first met you, you were someone else,
someone defeated. What had happened to you, it had you running
scared. And over the time I’ve known you, look at what you’ve
achieved! Tonight, when you faced down Saskia because you were
afraid of what she was doing to Rosie … Would you have done that
before?’

‘
Ben
…’

‘
You ran to Glasgow, but you came back. You
faced up to what you’d done. You told me, you told Rosie, about
your past. You’ve confronted what you were, and you’ve become
someone stronger as a result. You
don’t
have to be with me. You could
be anywhere.’ His voice dropped. ‘But I want you here. And, believe
me, Jemima, you aren’t the only one who’s afraid of being hurt.’ A
slow hand raised and touched my cheek. ‘Please.’ His voice was a
broken whisper now. ‘Please, don’t leave me.’

My breathing snagged. Tears began to
dribble towards my chin. ‘I’m still so
scared
.’

‘
We
all are. We’re all scared, Jem. Everyone. But we have to trust
someone, sometime. I trusted you when I told you about what had
happened to me. In fact, I trusted you from the
beginning.’

I did a snorty laugh. ‘Yeah, right. You
didn’t even
notice
me until I asked you to dinner, and scared you half to
death!’

‘
Oh,
Jem.’ He sounded so regretful now, so sad. ‘Hold on, stay there a
minute.’

‘
What? Ben …’ But he was gone, vanishing upstairs with a pad
of bare feet against the polished wood of the staircase. I wiped my
face on my sleeve and managed to smear tears across my cheeks,
leaving them sticky and stiff. This had never been so
hard.

‘
Good, you’re still here.’
Will-o-the-wisp-like he was back, jeans covering his lower half
now, and a small bound notebook held out in front of him. ‘Here.
Read this. It’s a diary that Doctor Michaels wanted me to keep. To
help me manage my emotions, or something equally farty, but it did
help. Look.’ He flipped the pages. ‘It’s all about
you
, Jem. It’s what I
think, what I feel.’ He laid the book down on the pine table and
backed off, swinging a leg over a stool in the far corner of the
room and tipping it to lean with two legs against the wall. ‘Read
or not. Your choice. Everything is your choice, Jem. It always has
been.’

I
riffled the pages. The book was slim and not all pages were written
on. Some contained sketches, little thumbnails of portraits, a
guitar, even an unpleasantly lifelike gun. Others were makeshift
staves with bars of music scribbled down and much amended. ‘So. You
can draw, you can write music and lyrics, you can cook … is there
anything you can’t do, Ben?’ I kept my voice steady, despite the
continuous motion of the tears down my cheeks.

‘
Embroidery. Just read it.’

So I
read. And gradually the tears stopped and I gave a little laugh.
‘You self-centred bastard.’

‘
Did
you just call me a bastard?’

‘
What do you think?’

‘
I
don’t know. It’s hard reading your lips in this light.’

I
raised my head and moved my mouth exaggeratedly. ‘I called you a
self-centred bastard, actually.’