The Singer (35 page)

The usual liggers were all present and correct, Donna noticed. That Aussie photographer from the
NME
, busy ingratiating himself to one and all, laughing too loudly at other people’s jokes. Donna had noticed the way he made friends and influenced people before and he was at it again tonight. He had a casual handshake that if you looked closely, seemed to be a way of slipping
something to whoever he was talking to. She noticed him doing it with Lynton, as he barrelled over to interrupt the bassist’s conversation with Sylvana.

Then again, maybe that was for the good tonight. For it wasn’t
to be a night of tantrums and tensions. Everyone was happy for once. It was true what Tone said, Donna reflected as she stood by the doorway, watching the carnival scene unfold in
front of her, she had made all this happen. She did have something to really be proud of.

For the first time in four months, she forgot about Vince Smith and started enjoying herself. By about one o’clock, the management were regretfully but firmly trying to show the band and the twenty or so souls left in their dressing room the way outside.

Tone put an arm round Donna’s shoulder as he made
his way to leave. ‘Come to the gig tomorrow, let me return the compliment,’ he said. ‘Or if you can’t make it, invite everyone to my house on New Year’s Eve. I’m gonna have a proper party this year. I’ve got a feeling 1981 is gonna be a good one.’

‘Thanks, Tone,’ Donna smiled up at him, fighting back the urge to suddenly confess to him exactly how she had been repaying his kindness in recent
months. ‘I don’t know if this lot will be fit tomorrow, but we’ll definitely come on New Year’s Eve,’ she said. She knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer on that one, and it would be a damn sight easier to avoid Vince in a house full of people than at one of his own gigs.

‘That’s my girl,’ Tone turned round and addressed his new friends. ‘You hear that guys? Come to my party on New Year’s Eve,
Donna knows where. You’re all very welcome.’ Then he turned to leave, his two charges and the Aussie guy loitering behind.

‘Cheers, Donna,’ big Steve squeezed her hand almost painfully and regarded her with what he took to be an alluring expression but was actually the epitome of a cartoon letch. ‘Thanks for yer hospitality, love. I’ll be sure to show you some of mine whenever you like.’

‘Come
on, you dirty bastard,’ Lynton pushed his friend out of her way. ‘I apologise for him,’ he said, taking Donna’s hand in a graceful handshake. ‘He’s from Hull. He knows no better.’

Steve belched loudly. ‘Gerrover, Lynt. She knows a real man when she sees one.’

‘A cave man more like it.’ Lynton raised his eyebrows in mock exasperation, then smiled. ‘Anyway, I hope to see you at Tone’s do. I’ll
protect you from his evil ways.’

If only, thought Donna, it was him I needed protecting from.

Sylvana felt a glimmer of hope for the first time in months.

Having Helen on the tour bus had made everything so different. It wasn’t like they had gone back to how they were in the early days, it couldn’t be – now they were driven around in a massive coach with bunk beds, a team of roadies and a tour
manager, so there were no routes to plan, no freezing 4am sleeps in lay-bys with a fine layer of dew on your sleeping bag, no laughing and singing along to the radio.
The Partridge Family
was no more. Now they were fairly cosseted.

But the chemistry had altered. With Helen there, Robin didn’t watch Sylvana’s every move like a hawk, flashing her that look if she so much as dared to answer one
of the roadies’ questions or spent five minutes talking to a fan after the show, she knew what would happen. Those looks and that promise had gradually sealed her reputation as a glacial, stuck-up bitch throughout the music industry over the past year. Most of the time, people knew better than to even bother approaching her.

But with Helen aboard, he would leave her alone to talk with her old
friend. At first this would only be for a matter of minutes, but gradually, as the tour went on and his guard was lowered, he ignored what they were up to for hours at a time. Ostensibly – and if anyone came within range of overhearing – they were talking about dress design, interiors and other permitted womanly subjects. But really, during those precious hours, Helen had gradually wheedled the truth
out of her.

Sylvana had been keeping it close so long, it felt like she had been tied up inside a Victorian corset, her denial forming the
rigid lines of whalebone that kept her together. When she began to loosen her ties, she thought she might suddenly collapse into a puddle of jelly and never get up again.

The hardest thing to admit was that she had fallen for the oldest trick in the book,
had become for want of a better cliché a ‘battered wife’. And the way that he did it was all so textbook too. The tears of remorse, the promises that it would never happen again, but at the same time, the gradual cutting her off from all her friends and family. Not that he had much to do on the family front. Her parents had all but disowned her for staying in London anyhow. It was only Ola that kept
her going, putting money in her account each month to ‘give you something to get by on’, and Uncle Manny who sorted out her visa and let her continue living at Queen’s Gate Gardens. Although if he had known the truth about Robin, who still slept in Helen’s old room whenever he was about, she was sure that arrangement would soon come to an abrupt end.

Sylvana told Helen how she wished she had
acted on her instincts and cut and run the first time it had happened but how, with a tour to do and an album to promote, she felt she couldn’t let everyone else down. And at first, Robin had stuck to his promise that he’d never hurt her again, being kindness itself for the rest of that tour. Then gradually, as the months went by and the band got bigger and bigger, his dark side had reasserted itself,
his rages triggered by the most stupid of things.

Things like fans throwing her black roses onstage, as they had taken to doing, in an act of gothic homage. Like the fan mail Donna passed on but she never got to read because he ripped it all to pieces in front of her, foaming at the mouth and calling her as many different variations on the word ‘whore’ as he could think of. Or like the guy from
the
Melody Maker
who had really understood her lyrics and whom she had spent hours talking to, rapt with enthusiasm that she’d found a kindred spirit. The guy who was thirty years old and married – not that that counted
for anything in Robin’s book. That was the last time she’d been allowed to talk to the press without him glowering by her side, and gradually, she had been phased out of the process
altogether. The last vestiges of any love she’d had for him had crumbled away at this point, and only the fear of not knowing what she could possibly do next had kept her there, under his thumb.

She didn’t – she couldn’t quite bring herself to – tell Helen exactly what it was that he had been doing to her, though. Robin was quite careful not to leave any marks where people would see them. His
artistry with cigarette butts and bits of broken bottle were hidden on her body, underneath those layers of diaphanous chiffon Helen designed. Sylvana’s shame at revealing them was too deep. It was her own fault she had ended up like this. Those scars, and the hideous pain that had caused them, was her reminder of her own folly.

All she could tell her best friend was that, in all truthfulness,
she would rather die than stay with Robin.

Helen, in return, had acted like a cross between an agony aunt and a secret agent. Because she had to go back to London between some of the dates, she had been able to take Sylvana’s door key, go back to Queen’s Gate Gardens and take all her friend’s most precious things to a place of safety. Her passport, her bankbook, her box of Ola’s jewellery and
other, sentimental artifacts had all gone into the bank vault where Helen kept her business stuff. She didn’t suppose her own home would be safe enough if and when Robin found out.

Sylvana also gave her money to buy a suitcase and pack it full of everything she would need to make a quick getaway. These things made Sylvana feel stronger and after they had been done, between them they figured out
a strategy of what to do next.

Her best plan, Helen reckoned, was to go to where Robin couldn’t follow her – New Jersey – and lay low for a while. It was obvious, Helen said, that Ola would be able to bring her
parents round and she and Allie would take care of getting Robin out of her uncle’s place when the time came. Sylvana knew that if she confessed all to Ola, Manny himself would probably
take care of that eventuality, but that was still something she was too afraid to do. Helen didn’t push it either. She just got her to concentrate on one thing and one thing only – getting safely away.

The final thing that Helen had done for her that morning was to go and buy her a plane ticket. The flight left Heathrow at 4pm on January 1. They intended to go somewhere the night before, as is
traditional on New Year’s Eve, and get Robin so arseholed they could safely leave him passed out somewhere. Then they’d spirit Sylvana away before he came round and could do anything about it. Drastic maybe, but Sylvana knew that if she didn’t do it now, with Helen’s help, she’d possibly never have the courage to do it ever again.

Helen hadn’t even told Allie. She had let Sylvana down once and
couldn’t afford to take any chances that their plot could get foiled. She intended that her husband would be as drunk as Robin. He would know nothing and therefore have nothing to answer for.

Up until that moment, they hadn’t been quite sure what they would actually do on New Year’s Eve. But now, Donna’s friend had just given them the perfect cover. As they made their way out of the Rainbow,
back to the tour bus for the final time, Robin was full of his new friend Tony Stevens and what a genius he appeared to be. He couldn’t wait to go to his house, he kept saying, and see his personal synth collection.

Sylvana hadn’t seen him so animated, so happy, for years.

At the back of the venue, in the cul-de-sac where the bus was parked, Sylvana stopped and looked up at the dirty London
sky. God please, she prayed silently, under the streetlights that blocked out the stars, let me escape from this man. Please God,
I’ll never ask you for anything ever again. But save me. Save me from Robin.

‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ Steve bellowed up the stairs. ‘We’re gonna be late for all that free booze!’

There was no vocal response from the master bedroom of the squat, just the squeaking of
floorboards and the sound of ‘American Trilogy’ being notched up another few thousand decibels.

‘I dunno,’ he turned to Lynton. ‘Shall we just leave him to it?’

Lynton raised his eyebrows. Like Steve, he was suited and booted and eager to get to Tony’s party. ‘Where’s Kevin got to?’ he asked.

‘Fuck knows.’ Steve shook his head. ‘Maybe she’s doin’ his laundry an’ all.’

He nodded his head towards
the kitchen door, through which the form of Rachel could be seen, dutifully ironing her boyfriend’s trousers for the eightieth time, her black-rimmed eyes staring blankly into space. She’d dolled herself up hours ago in anticipation of this rare night out, but her party frock and make-up showed definite signs of wilting now she had spent the best part of the evening running errands in the kitchen,
getting through half a bottle of vodka as she did so.

‘Kevin!’ Steve yelled. ‘We’re gonna hit the road, you coming or what?’

A figure appeared at the top of the stairs. Kevin was still in his underpants.

‘I’ll catch you up,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call and I’m not ready yet.’

‘So we see,’ Steve noted. ‘You saving your best pair for the ladies, Kev?’

‘Something like that. Look,
don’t worry about me, I can find my way well enough. You lot get off and I’ll see you later.’

‘All right,’ Steve shrugged. ‘Ta ra then, Rachel,’ he peered round the kitchen door.

Rachel looked up blankly. Steve was beginning to suspect it was more than booze that she was on these days. She looked as if she could barely focus on his face, let alone open her mouth to speak. All she could do was
move that iron back and forth, back and forth.

‘Careful, love,’ he said gently. ‘You won’t have much left if you carry on doing that.’ But she didn’t seem to hear him.

Steve shook his head and turned back into the hallway. ‘Right, let’s go,’ he said. The moon was high and the air was crisp with frost as they walked down Ladbroke Grove.

‘Oooh, heck,’ said Steve. ‘I hope that Donna one’s gonna
be there. I’d shag the arse off that, I would.’

‘You’d be fucking lucky, mate,’ Lynton said, ‘I reckon she sets her sights a little bit higher than you.’

‘Oh, you do, do you? You reckon she’d rather have the black Leslie Phillips then, am I right?’

‘I say!’ Lynton mimicked said charmer.

‘Well, you can’t fool me with yer fancy talk. It’s that Yank one you’re after, eh, Lynt?’ Steve goaded,
bursting into a ridiculous impression of Sylvana’s singing voice. ‘Ooohhh eeehhh ah’ve lost my braaaaaa, I doooon’t knooow where my knickers are…’

‘Shut up,’ Lynton said, trying to stifle his giggles. ‘Look, here comes the bus.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Steve. ‘And I notice you don’t deny it.’

They jumped on the 15, still laughing and bickering.

It was twenty past eleven.

‘Not long now,’ Helen whispered
down Sylvana’s ear as she passed her another glass of orange juice.

Sylvana smiled back at her friend, trying not to show the fear she felt inside. Trying not to betray the fact that now they were so close to completing their plan, she no longer knew if she could go
through with it. The thought of what Robin would do if he caught her halfway through trying to leave, the guilt at what would happen
to Allie and Donna if she didn’t come back, the trauma of having to explain it all to her parents…It spun around and around in her head, like the beeping, squealing music blasting out of Tony Stevens’s jukebox.

The house was packed to the rafters with revellers, and though they seemed to have managed to lose Robin and Allie for now, Sylvana’s eyes kept darting to the kitchen door every five seconds.
Maybe she could have relaxed into it a bit better if she’d had more than the one glass of champagne that Tony had handed her when they arrived. But Helen had made sure they stuck dutifully to the soft drinks ever since.