Julia Gets a Life (37 page)

            ‘Then get on with it!’

            He covered one with his lips.

            ‘Thwex,’ he said.

            ‘Ahhh........What? I’m sorry?’

            His head lifted.

            ‘I said
sex
.’

            It moved over. Reconnected.

            ‘Okay......oh, my
God
......oh,
yes
!...Ok
ay
, one point!’

            When we got back to the hotel, the gaggle of girls had become more of a flock, so we fiddled our way round the dustbins and beercrates and entered via the fire exit just off the kitchens.

            ‘Packing up, I guess,’ Craig remarked. ‘Wagons at dawn.’

            Thoughts of tomorrow began to nibble at my consciousness. Tomorrow, the next day, the day after that. How many years had I been here already? It felt like forever.

             ‘When do you actually leave?’

            ‘Not sure, exactly. I have a date in Streatham at one o’clock sharp.’

            ‘Date?’

            ‘With my Mum, and roast lamb and mint sauce. Wanna come?’

            God,
yes
.

            ‘I can’t. I have to get back. Quite apart from anything else I have a deadline to meet. I have to get all my pictures uploaded and sorted. The printers will need them - the book’s due out in December.... and I have to meet with Colin to discuss the pictures and, oh......’

            ‘And then?’

            We had reached his room. He slid his keycard across the lock and turned the handle. The other hand, warm and strong, still held mine.

            ‘And then...and then, who knows? I have a day job. I suppose I’ll get on and do it. Click, click, smile, please. Like you do. Unless Colin comes up with any exciting new commissions....’

            ‘And your husband? Your marriage?’   

            He let go of my hand and strode across the room. ‘Coke, wine, beer, something?’

            I shook my head.

            ‘Ugh! I don’t want to talk about that. Don’t want to even
think
about that. That’s someone else altogether. I’m a rock-chick-groupie-babe-good time girl. Now gimme a beer.’

            He flipped off the top and passed it to me. Like the blanket of dusk that was darkening the sky and the room, a terrible melancholy seemed to have settled on me.

And no strings of coloured lightbulbs to cheer it.

            He kissed me and said,

            ‘No way. You’re not that.’

            Then he seemed to change gear, and picked his guitar up. He smiled.

            ‘Sit yourself down, Mrs Sexygorgeous Potter, and let me play you a bit of a tune.’

            Which is exactly what he did. He told me he’d been ‘fiddling around’ with it for a few weeks, and that he was really excited by it, and that he thought it had the makings of a really good single. And that he hadn’t run it by Jonathan yet, and that he was going to play it to his Mum tomorrow. And that his Mum (though not remotely musical) had a real ear for a tune and that when he was a teenager, and his mates were all out all the time on the pull, he’d spend hour upon hour in his bedroom, practising on his guitar and composing, and sometimes she’d put her head round the door and tell him, yes, or no, or to try changing a chord or two.

            And how much he wished he could persuade her to let him buy her a flat somewhere ‘a bit nicer’ than Streatham, and how he was looking forward to getting started on the new album. And how much he loved writing music (who wouldn’t?) and how much he loved touring and performing (a
real
day’s work), and how much he disliked all the promo work. And how, with the tour finished, and a single due out, it would be one long round now of interviews and photo shoots and TV and ‘crap generally’, and how he couldn’t wait to get on with the next tour, the next album. Some peace from the spotlight, some space in which to write.

            And as I watched his fingers move lovingly, fluidly, across his guitar, and his expression take on an intentness, a focus, that both took him away and yet brought him closer to me, I felt more privileged and special than I could ever recall feeling.

            When he finished playing he leaned over his guitar to kiss me again.

            Then smiled. ‘That’s yours now, okay?’

            And I didn’t know what was going to happen next in my life except that whatever it was it would not be able to compare with the exquisite beauty of this small taste of simple, perfect, uncluttered affection.

            I wanted to cry.

*

            I left the hotel before he was up.

            Just beating the sun to its pink strip of horizon, I packed, checked out and was rattling along the breezy and deserted prom before six. The car felt cold and unfamiliar after its weekend underground, and I had to put the heater on to warm myself up.

            What now?

            I tried to focus on Max and Emma; to think sensible, meaningful, maternal thoughts. To think about buying new uniforms, Max starting High School, whether Emma was pining for Damon or not . Whether she’d sent him an illicit postcard, whether I (we) should let her continue to see him. About what sort of stand I (we) should take about sex. I thought about Lily, and the new life inside her, and whether she’d yet plucked up the courage to tell Malcolm. I thought about Time Of Your Life; that at this time tomorrow my alarm would go off, and I’d get up for work. And Howard. Would he and Nick keep things together? Was his Mum okay? How would he cope with her death?

            And each thought that I thought would be brushed to one side by the nagging and horrible consciousness that every single mile that I drove took me one mile further away from him.

            As I waited at the traffic lights at Preston I spotted a familiar face. My constable; he of the cones and diversion, now striding the mean streets of Brighton at dawn. He was with a partner, engrossed in intense conversation, and I doubt they even noticed my car. Forty eight hours and a lifetime had gone by. My VIP pass now said
Access Real Life.

Chapter
25

            We hadn’t made any plans.

            The last conversation we had (before the last -
wonderful
,
poignant
- sex we had) involved him asking if I was really sure I didn’t want to go to Streatham with him on my way home (
Kite
were dispersing for a few days to see ‘rellies etc.’), and me confirming again (agonisingly) that I had to get back and get organised and suchlike. I gave him my number; he gave me his; His mum’s, his own, his mobile, his fax line, his email address. And ditto with Nigel’s, all of which I duly deposited in my bag. We talked about when I might be next up in London, and whether we could meet up and do ‘something’ (huh?) then. We discussed the next month and
Kite’s
busy itinerary, and whether he could drive down to Cardiff (come
on
) to see me. In the end I agreed that we’d fix something up just as soon as we knew how our schedules panned out. He would call me, he said, tomorrow.

            But for what? To what end? What was going to be happening here? Would we meet up and make love on convenient tour dates? Would we send each other faxes? Exchange postcards? What?

            What nothing. It was hopeless. We were going nowhere. Whatever we said, however we felt, there was simply no future for us. End of story. By the time I pulled off the M4 I had a such a hard, hot ball of unhappiness inside me that I thought I might die from the pain.

*

            So, thank heavens for mayhem.

            Sunday, late am. When I finally pull into our road, it is with the expectation of finding the house every bit as cold and empty as I am feeling. I am steeled for a whole day of Sunday-Evening-Work-Tomorrow melancholy. I am steeled, in fact, for a life of it. I am half writing a little speech in my head which begins ‘if only....’ (and ends, most probably, with a string of obscenities) when I turn into my drive and find that,

            outside, I have;

            A veldt

            A telephone directory and copy of the Yellow Pages

            A bouquet of flowers, propped on the doorstep

            An unfamiliar car, with a man in it

            As I have driven for three and a quarter hours without stopping for a wee, I digest the fact of these, but leave them all to their own devices and go on in. Whereupon I find that,

            inside, I have;

            A warm quiche

            A cold, message-less ansafone. (Why had I hoped?)

            And Lily. Who clatters down the stairs as soon as she hears me.

            ‘Thank God,’ she pants as I emerge from the cloakroom. ‘Perhaps now you can go out and talk sense into him.’

            Malcolm. I thought he looked strangely familiar.

            ‘What is he doing parked outside?’

            ‘He wants to talk to me.’

            ‘Obviously.’

            ‘But I don’t want to talk to him. Ach! You can’t imagine what it has been like...’

            Lily has a key, and has been watering my houseplants. She tells me she came here, to escape, a couple of days back, but that he soon tracked her down. He has, she says, been sitting outside for an hour.

            ‘So you told him, I take it?’

            ‘I had to. I am the size of a house and throwing up all the time. He confronted me. He is silly, but not stupid.’

            ‘So how did he react?’

            ‘He wants to marry me. Oh, Julia, what am I going to do?’

            I go into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

            ‘What do you want to do, Lily? Really?’

            She flops down on a chair and throws her hands into the air.

            ‘That’s just it! I can’t decide. One minute I think, how can I do this? How can I stay with this man that I don’t really love? And then I think, how can I not? He’s a
good
man. He is the father of this baby. He is
pleased
about this baby. What right do I have to be so selfish? And then I think....’

            But Lily clamps her mouth around her thought as the doorbell rings.