The Singer (39 page)

‘That’s all right,’ Vince followed her gaze, caught sight of Lynton ensnared in conversation with Paul King, and smiled. He’d heard enough of their publisher’s travellers tales to know the bassist wouldn’t be back here in a hurry. ‘I see enough of him as it
is. I’d rather find out why you don’t want to be here.’

Those words brought her back to earth with a bump. Robin, after all, was in this house somewhere, only metres away from where they stood. Helen would probably be back any minute as well, to keep her under house arrest until she could ship her back to bloody Glo who would probably ground her in New Jersey for the rest of her life. No, that
was so unfair to Helen, she was trying her best to help, but what use would going back
home really be? Whichever way it went, she would be trapped somewhere against her will.

Sylvana felt a wave of panic rising within her. What was she doing, talking to this guy as if there was a chance of her being able to date him, or leave with him, or do anything normal whatsoever with him? What was she doing
entertaining such thoughts when she was about to be forced into the most monumental decision of her life?

‘Oh God.’ She tried to say something more, but the tears welled up in her eyes, tears of exasperation, fear and rage, tears of the perennially put-upon who had buried her real feelings too deep too long.

‘Hey,’ Vince put a gentle finger on her cheek and caught the hot drop in the end of
it. ‘I thought you were supposed to be some kind of ice maiden. But you’re not, are you? Are things really that bad?’

His eyes were so concerned, his voice so soft, she wanted to break down right there and then. She nodded, not daring to say anything more.

‘Well, I know what you mean.’ His eyes did one more scan around the room. ‘I can’t see anything but a load of arseholes and hangers-on in
this room, stuffing themselves with Anthony’s free booze like pigs round a trough. No doubt the rest of the house is the same.’

He paused. ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’

Sylvana looked up at him sharply. There was no trace of mockery in his eyes; rather, he was inclining his head towards the door, one eyebrow raised in suggestion.

He couldn’t have said more magical words.

She could do
it, couldn’t she? She could just walk out of here right here and now while Robin and Helen were looking the other way, go someplace else, someplace they wouldn’t know about. Then she wouldn’t have to catch that plane tomorrow. She wouldn’t have to go home with Robin and suffer another night of
his insane rage. She could get away and work out what to do from a safe distance.

With the help of this
beautiful stranger.

‘Yeah,’ she whispered and at last her heart felt free. Yeah, that’s what she was gonna do.

‘Right,’ Vince enveloped her in his right arm. ‘Come with me.’

The journey from the kitchen to the front door felt like the most perilous voyage she’d ever been on. There were so many people to wade through she was sure that at any moment she’d feel a hand on her collar and get hauled
out of Vince’s arms. But he held onto her tight and pushed his way through, ignoring a couple of people who called out his name. Sylvana’s heart was hammering as he opened the front door. She had made it. She had actually made it.

It was as if he knew what was going on inside her mind. They stood on top of the front steps for a moment as Vince looked left and right up Blomfield Road, seeing if
the coast was clear. Then he whispered in her ear: ‘Let’s scarper!’ and they ran down the steps, out of the gate and up the road, not stopping until they had reached the end of it and stood panting on the bridge over the canal.

‘I think we did it,’ Vince said, looking back down the road to make sure no one had followed. Sylvana followed his gaze, then her eyes dropped to the scene below. Away
from the pressure and the noise and the hellish forced conviviality of that house, the night was a different world. On each side of the canal were moored a line of barges, painted up like gypsy caravans, a whole separate community living under the noses of the big mansions that lined the street. Some of them were having their own New Year’s celebrations and they had decked out their craft with fairy
lights to add to their magical presence, so that they looked like little floating grottoes that cast dancing reflections across the surface of the water. People stood on deck drinking and the blur of their laughter and conversation spilled out into the night air,
along with a decidedly different tune to what had been playing at Tony’s – the shiny pop of ABBA’s ‘Super Trouper’. Something about
the purity of those girls’ voices gave Sylvana hope.

Vince smiled at her. ‘Come on,’ he said, grabbing hold of her hand. ‘We’re not safe yet.’

He led her across the bridge and down the other side, past a pub on the corner where more revellers were singing along boisterously to ‘Start’ by The Jam, and down a little side road that came out to a sudden roar of traffic by the side of the Westway.

They stood on the corner by the traffic lights, blinking in the sudden shift from pretty Little Venice to the heart of the concrete basin. Above their heads, the vast arch of the flyover blocked off the view to Paddington beyond. It was the point where West London was cut in half.

‘It’s pretty easy to get a cab from here,’ said Vince. ‘We can go anywhere you like. So where do you fancy?’

Sylvana’s
heart danced. She was leaving her old life behind; she had a right to celebrate that as much as all these other people were celebrating the start of 1981. Not only the right, but also the means. Although both of them had agreed that Helen should keep hold of her passport for safety, Sylvana had decided to keep her chequebook and bank card on her, and still had them, in the black velvet bag
she carried, its bootlace straps wrapped around her wrist.

There was plenty of money in that bank account. It was time for a revolution.

‘Do you think they still have a room at the Ritz?’ she asked him.

His mouth dropped open. ‘The Ritz?’

‘Or Claridges. Or the Hilton. Anywhere with a bit of class, anywhere those music business scumbags don’t hang out. Don’t worry; I can pay for it. So long
as you’ve got some money for a cab, I can take care of the rest.’

A broad grin spread across Vince’s face.

‘You really weren’t joking about being disappointed with Anthony’s party, were you?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough of that whole scene. As from now,’ she felt a rush of liberation as strong as the feelings of despair she’d had at the party, ‘I quit my band. Mood Violet is over
and I’m hereby emancipated. You want to celebrate that with me?’

Vince looked both astonished and delighted. ‘Well,’ he said, catching sight of a yellow light gliding towards them and sticking his arm out as he did so, ‘like I said, I’m at your service.’

‘Good,’ Sylvana smiled as the cab pulled over. ‘Then let’s get lost.’

The cabbie decided their venue for them. The centre of London was closed
off to traffic; they’d have to get out and walk through the celebrating hordes if they wanted to try their luck at Claridges or the Ritz. But he could get them to the Hilton on the other side of Hyde Park.

The cabbie had his radio on and somewhere between Paddington and Park Lane, they heard the countdown to midnight begin. Sylvana and Vince stared at each other, smiling like naughty children
who’d given their parents the slip. Then, as the announcer yelled
‘Happy Noooooo Year!’
like some Butlin’s bingo caller and the banging of fireworks filled the air, suddenly they were kissing. The longest, tenderest kiss Sylvana had ever known. The diametric opposite to Robin with his urgent tongue-grinding and clumsy, needy caresses. Kissing Vince was like kissing an angel, tender and beautiful
and erotic, like swimming in a turquoise sea in a pink and golden sunset.

When she opened her eyes he was staring back at her with what looked like awe.

‘Park Lane Hilton,’ said the cabbie.

Wherever this new confidence that bloomed within her had come from, it completely energised Sylvana. Things she would never
have dreamed she could do before suddenly became the merest trifles – almost, she
realised, as if she had somehow tapped into her mother’s persuasive powers and knew how to get exactly what she wanted.

Like getting a room in the Hilton. The lies tripped off her tongue like honey as soon as the snooty concierge gave her a doubtful look and asked in a patronising tone: ‘Isn’t this an odd time to be checking in to a hotel room, madam?’

He probably did have a point. There was
a party going on in full swing around them, lines of the aged well-to-do finally letting their hair down and doing the conga round the hallowed Hilton halls.

‘My husband and I just got back from New York. Our flight was delayed and our luggage is following us on, so we’ve had more than enough hassle for one evening,’ she told him, laying her accent on thick and deliberately emulating Glo’s haughty
demeanour. ‘We were told that you had the most accommodating service in London. But if that’s not the case, then we can certainly take our business elsewhere.’

She had put her chequebook down on the desk where he could check out the fact it was with Coutts, the bank whose cheques were instantly honoured, the bank the Royal Family did their business with.

‘Safer than the Bank of England, my gel,’
as her grandma had told her.

The clerk looked her up and down and started to blush. She guessed that a woman dressed as she was, in a velvet imitation Paul Poirot cape and a bouffant of bright red hair, should not have been the sort of woman he’d expected to have an account at the Queen’s bank.

‘Certainly we can accommodate you, madam,’ he said. ‘I was merely pointing out that this is an unusual
hour and an unusual day. Now, let me see…’ As he consulted his bookings, Sylvana cast a backwards glance at Vince, who was trying to hide behind
a potted palm in the middle of the foyer until the reservation had been made. Neither of them had been sure if his thick-soled Robot creepers and black drape suit and pink shirt with bootlace tie were strictly what constituted the correct dress code.

Now he was surrounded by partying pensioners with party hats at skewed angles on their heads, blowing party trumpets in his face. One old dear even tried to goose him as she danced drunkenly past. He regarded them with an expression of total disbelief.

‘Ah, here we are, madam.’ The concierge was all politeness now. They had a room, on the 25th floor, so they could see out across the whole of London.
Sylvana decided to take it for a week. Even if Vince wasn’t staying, she needed to be somewhere safe; somewhere Robin would never think to look. Twenty-five storeys up over Park Lane ought to do the trick.

She tried not to laugh the whole way up the elevator with the stony-faced bellboy who obviously did not think them appropriately dressed. She delighted in palming him a quid from her purse
with a sarcastic smile and watching him go red as he pocketed it.

Then finally, with the whole of Hyde Park spread out before them, illuminated by strings of fairy lights glimmering for as far as the eye could see, they were alone.

‘Well,’ said Vince. ‘Now that we’re here, what were we running from?’

‘Everything,’ Sylvana said. ‘My whole life. It’s all been one great big goddamn mess and now
I’ve got to straighten it out. Thank you for getting me out of that place. You don’t know how much you’ve done.’

‘You’re a mystery, aren’t you?’ Vince raised his fingers and softly ran them down the side of her face. He stared deep into her eyes as if trying to divine her thoughts. ‘Here was I thinking you were some massively successful singer, happily married…’

She shuddered as he said those
words and cut his sentence off.

‘No, I’m not married, thank God. I was never quite as stupid as everyone thought. I was never a total pushover.’ Her words sounded harsh to her ears and she stopped, wondering what he was thinking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly, ‘you probably think I’m crazy, don’t you? Running off from that party and bringing you here when I’ve only just met you.’

‘No, I don’t
think you’re crazy at all,’ he shook his head. ‘I’ve been in this business long enough. I’ve found out for myself what you think it’s gonna be is not how it turns out. And as you could probably tell, I didn’t particularly relish seeing in the New Year with all those creatures either.’

Confidence revived, Sylvana looked up at him with a smile.

‘Well, let’s order some champagne from room service
and celebrate the fact that we didn’t.’

They lay side by side on the huge double bed, suspended above the glittering city, drinking the ice-cold champagne and telling each other all about their lives. Occasionally their fingers entwined, or he wound a strand of her hair around his finger. But Vince was supremely delicate with her, as if he were afraid he might break her if he came on too strong.

She told him about her childhood in the gilded prison in New Jersey and was surprised to hear that his own background had similar echoes. For a start, they were both beneficiaries of the rag trade. Vince said he came from Wensleydale, a huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ part of North Yorkshire and had grown up in a mansion built by his textile-magnate grandfather. A big, rambling stone house up on
the moors that was never properly heated and always overflowing with dogs, children and a succession of exasperated nannies. It sounded a lot happier than the childhood she had known, but Vince said that the good times had come to an abrupt halt when he was sent off to public school at the age of nine.

‘Bloody sadistic places they are,’ he told her. ‘You had to spend
your whole time fending off
advances on your arse. I’m not joking. And I was a little wimp when I first went there, a right little crybaby who got beaten soundly every night before bedtime and blubbed for his mummy on his pillow. Luckily I had a growth spurt when I was thirteen and grew about a foot overnight. Once my weight had caught up with that, people gave me less of a hard time.’

School holidays compounded his isolation
from his brothers and sisters. While they were off riding to hounds, he’d be up in his room, reading Beatnik literature and listening to the radio, getting more and more introverted and suspicious that he must have been a changeling baby. He’d been hooked on Elvis since he was a little boy and liked to imagine he would grow up to be a singer like The King – until he heard The Sex Pistols. That
was when he’d decided to go to art college, to try and meet some people to form a band with. He’d always been good at art, as well as music and English so he got into his nearest college easily. His dad hit the roof. Like Glo and Ruben, Smith senior already had a career mapped out for Vince, and when his son rebelled, he disowned him.