Summer Sky (21 page)

The gates swing open and the car crunches along the driveway towards the huge grey-bricked building and stops close to the entrance.

The Regency building could be the set for a Jane Austen novel, the golden brick cleaned and restored. Smooth lawn borders the front of the house, lined with flowerbeds blooming for the summer. The driveway is clear of other cars. Behind two pillars, the glossy double wooden doors are ajar. I jump as someone opens the car door, pulled out of my silent gawking.

"Grab your bag," Steve says gruffly.

I grab my handbag and stumble out of the car, into the English sunshine. My brain stayed in my flat in Bristol because my powers of speech and movement are minimal.

"This way."

I follow Steve towards the entrance doors, which open into an entrance hall the size of the entirety of my flat. The marbled floor is gleaming white – like those ads for floor cleaner – but in contrast, the walls are grey and black. Stairs sweep upwards from either side, supported on shining black marble columns, and meeting in the middle to form a balcony. Behind the balcony, a huge window floods the room with light.

My common sense catches up. "Where are we?"

Steve doesn’t answer, but leads me across the hall, our footsteps echoing through the quiet house.

A kitchen as big as the entrance greets me as we walk through a second set of white painted doors. Everywhere is so clean and sterile looking. The spotless kitchen could be a show home - granite benches span the expansive room and state of the art stainless steel appliances are set into the oak cupboards. A beautiful house, but void of life.

"Jan! We’ve got a guest – fix her a drink?"

A woman tidies plates into a dishwasher and she looks around. She's around the same age as my mum - late forties - and she looks a little like my mum with her blonde ponytail and kind face. Jan regards me for a moment then her eyes widen in recognition.

"Oh! You’re Sky?" She glances behind me to Steve.

"Sky – Jan. Jan – Sky. Jan’s the housekeeper officially, but don’t treat her like staff," he says brusquely as his phone rings.

Staff? Where in my world does anyone have staff? "Hi."

Jan smiles. "You look tired and hungry. Let me fix you something to eat?"

"Yeah, I’ll be back in a bit." Steve walks off, answering his ringing phone.

Floor to ceiling windows brighten the kitchen and to the right of the room, glass doors lead out of the house onto a terrace. On the spacious terrace, a modern wooden table and chairs fill the space, facing onto a view of the nearby hills.

"Where am I?" I repeat, hoping Jan won’t tell me I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.

"Dylan’s place.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Dylan

My favourite place to be when I’m in England is the old barn I had converted into a studio. Blue Phoenix never record here - this is my place – a time capsule of my journey. Posters decorate the exposed brickwork – small A4 print outs from early gigs to huge posters from festivals. Follow the posters around the room and you'll see Blue Phoenix go from being tiny print at the bottom, up to second support and finally to headlining. Glastonbury. Summerfest. Rock in Rio. We’ve done them all, worldwide, over and over.

Now this life is killing me.

In the photo on the middle shelf, four teenage boys pull moody faces for the camera. Jem has his hands extended into the devil horns salute, brown curls obscuring his eyes, arm across my shoulders. Liam’s face is barely visible under his long red hair and Bryn is the nervous looking one, clutching his drumsticks. The last boy in the picture is me - tall and skinny with curls like Jem’s. Jem’s belief in us was fierce, pushing us into every opportunity to play and sending demo tapes the world over. Like Jem, I believed we’d make it big and a year after this picture was taken, we did. I changed from the strange kid who sat at the back of the classroom, ignored, to someone everyone wanted a piece of. Suddenly I was the hot lead singer of a world-famous band and the guy the chicks wanted. Man, I fucking loved it.

The shot was taken shortly before our first ever real gig - supporting Chain Saw Babies, a new up-and-coming band. We were seventeen year old, long-haired boys with no clue what would hit them in a few months time. That night, the four friends from St David’s were noticed by Steve Bennett.

Blue Phoenix rose and the world turned upside down.

Everything happened so fucking fast - one album later we hit the festival circuit and then toured our backsides off for three years. I saw half the world but was never part of it. By the end of that time I wasn’t Dylan Morgan anymore, I was part of the Blue Phoenix brand and played my role. Would I rewind and do things differently? No. I’ve made some huge mistakes, some that haunt me still, but living for music, fame and money is what I wanted. The problem is, I don’t want this anymore.

The soundproofing helps hide where I am, and the distance from the house acts as a warning to others who know to find me here. If Dylan’s in his cave, keep the fuck away.

The song I’m writing is killing me as much as the girl the song is about. I’m unsure what bothers me more – the fact she’s making me feel like this, or the fact she doesn’t feel the same way. Strumming chords on my acoustic, I piece together the lyrics and sounds. The songwriting pulls me back to the beaches and away from the life, I dragged myself back to. I wish I could say writing this song is cathartic, but the emotions released are raw.

This afternoon I’m in hiding from Steve. Drunken tweets at 3am after fending off Honey’s slutty friends again did not make for a happy Steve. He tore a strip off me about the amount of damage control he’s had to do recently, from the day I cut my hair and fucked off, and now this. I shut down, told him to fuck off but Steve had a careful line of attack.

His words eat at me several hours later: 'You ruin her life; she’ll never want to be in yours.'

Those words hit harder than when my car and life collided with Sky's, the exact consequences of my actions crystal clear. I held Sky out to the world and said ‘here she is, come and get her’. I didn’t mean to. Now I've monumentally fucked up any chance with her.

Headphones on, drowning in the music, I turn back to the laptop. Something's missing; I can't make this track work. The caller name flashing on my mobile phone catches my eye.

Steve.

Fucking great.

I can ignore him, but the mood Steve's in today, he’ll likely come and haul my ass out of here.

"Yeah?" I snap as I answer, "I’m busy."

"So am I, sorting out your shit. She’s here." His words are staccato, fed up.

"Who?" Not his PA as well, I hope, anything but that stuck-up bitch.

"Sky, you dick."

Excitement and apprehension vie for space in my head. "Here? As in she’s at the house? You’re at the house?"

"Yes. Here. Now fucking sort this out. I don’t have time for your lovelorn bullshit, we’re already behind on the album deadline and the tour kicks off in two weeks. Sort it." He hangs up.

Why did she agree to see Steve, but not me?

*****

The sight of Sky standing and gazing out of the kitchen window kick starts my heart. Her back is to me, small figure rigid in her jeans and dark blue shirt. The denim hugs her gorgeous backside, and I blink away images of her naked and in my arms. The colour contrasts her dark blonde hair, the thick waves pulled into a ponytail. Sky. Here.

I fight my body's screaming need to stride over and hold her, the need to run my hands along the curves of Sky’s body, remember how her skin feels beneath my hands. I could bury my face in her strawberry scented hair and close my eyes to imagine we're in Cornwall again. But I don’t want to scare her so I hesitate before moving over. She senses me and turns before I reach her.

The Sky looking at me now is nothing like my Sky. Her eyes are stony, face hard and a mask of hurt. Arms crossed tightly over her chest, she challenges me to dare approach. Not the reunion I hoped for.

"Why?" she asks.

I know why Sky has her arms crossed; I can see her hands trembling. I don’t know what she's asking about - she could be referring to any one of my stupid, drunken acts. So I do what I guess is expected. "Sorry."

"Sorry?" Her voice is low. "You out me to the world then you say ‘sorry’? You bastard!"

The pink creeping across her pale cheeks reminds me of the colour I put in her face when we were in bed. Then my mind travels back there, joined by my gaze wandering along her body. Sky spots what I'm doing and makes a sound of disgust.

"I miss you." As I step towards her, she backs off.

"Why did you expose me? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?"

"Because I can’t let you go. I’m trying but I can’t. I don’t even want to be here. I don’t want anything but you right now."

"Have you listened to yourself?" She hisses. "This is stalking! But a thousand times worse."

What the fuck? "No!"

"Yes. You couldn’t get what you wanted from me, so you used the means you had to manipulate me! Trap me…"

Fuck. Shit
.
No
. I wipe my palms across my face, through my hair then stand with my elbows at right angles to my head. "No, fuck, no, that’s not what happened…"

"Then what? A woman says she doesn’t want you and you don’t back off? You get your fans to do the stalking instead? You came to my flat for fuck’s sake – you knew what you were doing. Then the bullshit on Twitter."

The booze. Again, the fucking booze turning my life to shit. "I was drunk when I did those things…"

Dropping my arms, I step towards her again, and she backs into the window. I stop short. The expression in her eyes isn’t fear but anger. This is the girl whose car I rear-ended, but a million times more pissed off.

"Well, now you’re sober, do something. Get them off me." She pauses and inhales. "Go back to your model girlfriend!"

"What model girlfriend?"

"The one all betrayed and weeping because Dylan Morgan cheated on her with some girl no one would look twice at." I hate it when she puts herself down and open my mouth to respond. "Her words, not mine. I have no issues with the way I look."

I can’t help myself. "Neither do I."

The angry colour reaches her ears. "Fuck you!"

Wow, Sky has a mouth on her when she wants. "She’s not my girlfriend. Not anymore, our so-called relationship ended six months ago."

"Then why did she say she was?"

"When we split, we kept up the pretence because I wanted her to. That way no one else made a play for me, I could tell other girls I came across who wanted to fuck me I was taken."

The arms around her chest loosen a little. "So you didn’t cheat on someone with me?"

"Ask anyone in the inner circle. They’ll tell you. I let her stay in a London flat I don’t use, threw her some money now and again and she joined in. It’s convenient for us both."

Dropping her steely blue eyes for the first time, Sky rubs her lips together, and her shoulders relax a tiny bit.

"Is this why you didn’t want me? Because you thought I was with someone else?" I ask.

"That’s one of many reasons. The major one just happened. The small issue I had with the world and his dog knowing who I am?"

"I could’ve kept you out of all this. We could carry on…"

Her head snaps back up. "You
are
delusional."

"Maybe, but I’ve never been great at coping with reality, have I?"

In her face, there’s a flicker of connection to the beach house us, and for a moment the gulf between us contracts. Until she spots someone behind me, then her eyes widen before she rewraps her arms around herself and turns away. Angry at being interrupted, I spin around.

Steve stands, arms crossed to match Sky’s. "Okay both of you. You’re going to have to help me with this."

Sky watches Steve warily.

"Damage control. I don’t give a shit about whatever the hell this is, I need you to make a joint decision on how we go from here."

*****

Sky

Steve crosses to Dylan, the older man is a good few inches shorter than his rock star charge, but Dylan’s body language surprises me. His shoulders slump a little, as if he’s being reprimanded. For the first time, I get a glimpse of Dylan’s lack of control over his world and a twinge of sympathy pulls at the edge of my heart.

"Kim is on her way over. We sit down, come up with a story and go from there."

"What do you mean? Who's Kim?" I ask.

Steve doesn’t look at me. "Kim deals with the media on behalf of Blue Phoenix and we need to give them a story that suits you both. She’ll have some suggestions – you might want to talk through your own ideas first. Then you can go."

Neither of us speaks. Then Steve knocks Dylan on the head. "Wake up."

The exchange confuses me. The power balance is off in their relationship, and in a weird way. Steve isn’t Dylan's dad, but he talks to him as if he is.