Please Don't Stop The Music (7 page)

‘
Things? Oh, they’re great. Just great,’ he repeated,
wrestling the amps, settling one on top of the other and showing
off a great set of biceps while he was at it. He had skinny arms
but with guitar-player’s musculature. I found myself staring for a
moment, then wincing and hating myself, although not really sure
why.

‘
Right. Only you asked me to come over.’

Ben
stopped. ‘Did I?’ A grimy hand wiped his forehead, smearing it with
grey. ‘Are you sure?’

Now
I did feel unwanted. Not that I wanted him to want me, of course,
but … well, he seemed to have forgotten that he’d asked me over and
that annoyed me. ‘You really know how to make a girl feel needed,
don’t you?’ I waltzed into the shop in my best affronted fashion.
‘You must be a real success in the dating world.’

‘
I
don’t date.’ His words were flat, emotionless. ‘All
right?’

‘
You
do surprise me.’ I’d meant it to be sarcastic, but it came out a
little softer, a little more rounded. Ben looked at me
blankly.

‘
So
why did I ask you over?’

‘
You
e-mailed me last night. To pick up the money from the first
buckle?’

‘
Okay, I did. But I didn’t mean – I didn’t think you’d come
straight away.’ He came out of the window display and squinted
around behind me. ‘Where’s the baby?’

‘
He’s my friend’s son, not my conjoined twin. Does this mean
you don’t have the money for me?’ I was relying on it to give Rosie
something towards this month’s bills.

‘
Are
you always this confrontational?’ Ben moved towards the back of the
shop but watched me over his shoulder. ‘I bet you’re a real success
in the dating world.’

Touché. ‘Ha ha. All right, I’ll engage in a little social
chit-chat if you want, but since I’m here for the money I thought
I’d save us both some time by coming to the point.’

Ben
rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead again. His pony-tail
was coming untied, wisps of hair curled onto his cheeks and made
him look like a scruffy teenager. But one with very old eyes. ‘Yes.
Yes, you’re right of course. I just thought maybe –’ He stopped and
went to the till. It was the old-fashioned kind with the push-keys
and the little front drawer that pings out. ‘We said a hundred and
fifty, yes?’ The till rang up a ‘no sale’ and opened. ‘I’ll give
you two hundred. The other fifty is on account until I sell one of
the other buckles.’

‘
You’ve got two hundred quid in there?’ I craned my neck over
the counter. ‘Wow, you must have some turnover.’

‘
Guitars are expensive.’ Ben pulled four fifties from a
compartment which contained many more.

I
slipped the money into a pocket and was turning for the door when I
remembered my promise to Rosie. I turned back. ‘Would you like to
come to dinner one night?’

‘
What?
’

‘
Dinner. At my place. Look, it’s complicated, but my friend –
that’s the one with the baby – she doesn’t get out much at the
moment and I’m a bit worried about her, but she wants to have more
visitors and meet more people and she suggested …’ I saw his
expression and stopped talking. He looked scared. Not just creeped
out as I would have been by an almost total stranger inviting me
round to their place, but downright scared.

‘
I
don’t really do –’

‘
Believe me this isn’t a date. I’m right with you on the not
dating thing. This is … look, forget it. I’ll tell Rosie I asked,
but you’re – I dunno, spending the next ten years being criminally
skinny or something.’

‘
Do
you really think I’m skinny?’

I
stared him up and down. ‘Honestly? Yes. And those tight trousers
don’t do you any favours, you know. What’s wrong with ordinary
jeans?’

‘
Is
this some kind of quiz?’

‘
Never mind. E-mail me if you sell anything else, and I’ll go
and make a few more bits to replace the ones you have sold so
far.’

I
had my hand on the door latch and was pushing the truculent door
open when he spoke again quietly. ‘I’ll come.’

Puzzled, I turned to face him. ‘Where?’

‘
To
dinner. Your short-term memory is really shot, isn’t
it?’

Something deep inside me was relishing this
banter. It was – now, what was the word again? Ah yes,
fun
. Something I had
forgotten about, until now. ‘It’s all this having to restrain my
intellect, use little
tiny
words that you’ll understand. My address is on
the card I gave you. Little Gillmoor. Near
Kirkbymoorside.’

‘
Those are real places?’ Ben came past me and pushed the door
shut again. ‘This dinner invitation. It is … I mean you obviously
don’t – you don’t want to get to me for any reason?’

‘
No,
Mr “I fancy myself more than a bit”. I do not want to get to you,
whatever you might mean by that. I’m only asking because Rosie
wanted me to. Personally I don’t care if you never eat
again.’

‘
Wow. I bet you’re fun to be friends with. Look.’ He’d clearly
come to a decision, and one that had cost him. But he’d stopped
rubbing muck all over his face. ‘I need someone to help out in the
shop. Only for a few hours a week that’s all, but I have these …
appointments and at the moment I have to close so that I can go. If
I had someone to just man the till – and with me selling your
things, I thought you might be interested. Proper rate of pay
obviously. And of course I am doing you a favour by coming to
dinner.’

Say
what you like about our man, he did have a lovely smile. For a
walking anatomy lesson, of course.

‘
Well …’ I balanced the time that I’d have to spend away from
making jewellery with the fact that I’d get paid regularly. ‘All
right. But you don’t even know if I can work the till or deal with
cash. I might sell everything while you’re away and run off with
the money.’

‘
You’re trusting me with your buckles. I’ll trust you with my
shop. Deal?’

He
held out a grubby hand. I hesitated, but shook it eventually. He
had a warm grasp, and fingers which were so long that they met
around my hand. ‘Deal.’

‘
I’ve got an appointment tomorrow. Can you come in around ten?
I’ll hand over to you and then leave you to find things for
yourself. It’s not too difficult.’ Ben looked around at the obvious
lack of customers. ‘We’re hardly Marks and Spencer. Do you know
anything about guitars?’

‘
Some. I had a friend who played.’

‘
I
thought it was your cousin?’

Damn. I was usually better than this.
Something about those deep eyes, his manner, made it hard to
remember. Or should that be
easier to
forget
. ‘Yes.’

‘
I’ll run you through what you need to know in the morning
then.’ A pause. ‘You were going,’ he said, at last.

‘
I
am.’

‘
And
dinner will be … when?’

I shook my head. I was feeling a little bit
shaky at my own inconsistency. Cousin. Yes I’d told him my
cousin
played … ‘I’ll
ask Rosie. Let you know tomorrow.’

A
nod. A dismissive turning away. I went out of the shop and stared
for a few minutes at my buckle in the window.

* *
*

23rd
April

It’s
funny, y’know, how life is. There you go, strumming along,
everything the same grey bassline, and then, wow, it’s like the
melody just kicks in and there you are, singing it all out again.
Like you’ve done it forever. Today was one of those
days.

I
felt human again. Went out this afternoon and bought some clothes,
just retro gear, nothing fancy, but … She thinks I’m skinny! Whoa
with the pot-kettle interface there, babe! But there’s something …
she’s hiding something. Her face when she talked about the guitars,
like she’s been told the apocalypse is coming on the back of a
Gibson. And her eyes went all kinda deep and dark and I could hear
this tune in the back of my head, up and down the scale like a
warning. She’s trouble. I can feel it, the music knows it, but it’s
like I can’t move out of the way in time, it’s gonna hit me and,
you know what? Part of me wants that. Something vast that hits and
breaks and blows me open … Sorry. That’s a lyric there. One of my
better ones, from the days when … yeah. I know. Don’t dwell, don’t
look back.

See,
the trouble is, when you don’t look back, you don’t see what’s
creeping up behind you.

Chapter Six

I lay in my tiny bed in my tiny room
listening to the regular breathing of Rosie next door. It was
comforting hearing her snuffles and the musical plucking of
bedsprings whenever she turned over. Being able to reach out and
touch all four walls at the same time. Womblike.
Safe
.

Rosie couldn’t understand how I could bear
to sleep in such a small space. ‘You’ll only have to put on half a
stone and we’ll need special equipment to get you in and out.’ I
hadn’t told her, compared to a cell, this cosy little room, with
its bulgy plastered walls and the ceiling with the suspicious dip
in one corner, was a palace. Everything in it, from the
daisy-embroidered duvet to the collection of shells on the wonky
window ledge, was
mine
. And I didn’t have to fight to keep it. Didn’t have to sleep
with a wary eye open in case my random cellmate took a fancy to
something and backed up her desires with some sharp edges collected
earlier from the prison workshop.

A
faint memory crept through. A room like this. A trail of perfume, a
soft hand under my chin, a whispered conversation about –
something. The anticipation-filled weight of a Christmas stocking
pushing a pony-patterned eiderdown onto my feet, and a pink
night-light showing me exciting shadows against a papered wall. A
memory that hurt, despite its benevolence. There was so much more
underneath than that one Christmas morning, but I was afraid to
look too far back, and the pain made sure I never did.

The
psychiatrists had a name for it, this deliberate blocking of all
memory. It had gone on so long, and become so effective that I’d
probably rate my own chapter in any given psychology text book. In
fact, one of the prison doctors had written some kind of thesis
based on me, a fact which made me quietly proud, in a horrible sort
of way, an acknowledgement that at least I could do something, even
if that something meant cutting dead any memory of anything that
had once been good.

But,
just sometimes, the urge to have some of it back forced me to let a
little remembrance seep through, with a blinding snatch of pain as
payment.

In
the shapes made by the bizarre arrangement of cracks in the
paintwork I could see faces. One reminded me of my brother Randall.
The way the crack curved as it met the plaster looked just like the
way his nose hooked round to the left, or had ever since he’d had
that run-in with a guy who’d turned out to be a better fighter. I
shook my head into a more comfortable position and forced my body
to relax. Remembering my family always made me tense. Made me
smaller, reduced the target.

And
as for Chris – I wouldn’t remember him. Not now.

Chapter Seven

‘
What do you think?’ I held up the finely twisted wire shape
for Jason’s approval.

‘
Yeah. What’s it meant to be again?’

‘
It’s a musical stave. With a treble clef.’

‘
Oh
yeah, right, getcha now. Lovely.’ Jason turned his attention back
to David Beckham, who was proving a little troublesome. The
material he was painted on kept tearing away from the bolts Jason
had used, and shreds of canvas hung from the footballer like an
epic disease.

‘
Right well. I’m off. If I get the nine o’clock bus I can be
there in good time.’ I pushed the beginnings of the new buckle to
the back of my workspace and rubbed my eyes. I’d spent hours
working on it yesterday evening and my eyes felt strained and
boiled. I’d started early after a night of disturbed sleep and bad
dreams, and didn’t want to get caught by Rosie before I left.
Didn’t want to admit to her that I couldn’t be a stand-in mum for
Harry whenever she had work to finish, which made me dislike myself
more than I usually did. Surely as a friend, blah blah blah, should
be only too happy to help out with crying baby, blah blah? But
something about Rosie just lately disturbed me. I had the feeling
that if I was available she’d palm Harry off onto me whether she
had work to do or not. A kind of blind hope had seized me that
she’d find she could cope perfectly well if I wasn’t always there
to step in; hence the getting up early and sloping off to the
workshop. At least Jason hadn’t put in another night shift, trying
to work whilst he alternately hummed and ran an arc-welder would
have made Harry look like the peaceful option.

‘
Ah.
You’re here.’ Ben was fussing around at the front of the shop when
I arrived. ‘Here’s the keys to the till, those are the front door
keys. If you have to pop out be sure to lock up. I’ll see you
later.’ He was pulling on a ramshackle jacket as he spoke,
something that looked as though it had been a horse-blanket when it
was new.