Twinned (20 page)

Beth

I could hardly focus behind my sunglasses. I asked the driver to take me straight to the nearest hospital with an Accident & Emergency department. I took the last six sedatives in one hit as I walked into the A&E reception. I did not stop at the main desk. I just kept walking. I managed two circuits of the hospital’s ground floor before my legs gave way.
I hoped that someone would find me and I would be in the right place to get help.

Inside my head, I was back at the Canyon. Vast red rocks glistened in the disappearing orange light. My guide had gone. The sun was setting over Eagle Point.

Something was pulling me towards the edge. This time I didn't stop to think.

Bracing myself for my stomach to lurch, I jumped.

New Year’s Eve

It’s a strange kind of New Year’s Eve. I’m not in the mood for celebrating with my friends. I’m with Katie. We are playing Guitar Hero; she’s strumming to Katy Perry’s ‘The One That Got Away’. There is one thought in my head…
I
need
this year to be over.

It’s still only 9.15 pm. While Katie cues up the next song, I take another swig of Ribena. I have a strict ‘no alcohol’ rule to follow. It sucks tonight of all nights but it’s for the best, I can’t afford to slip up on my road to recovery.

It has been a dark, dark time. After my ‘suspected overdose’ – which only I still know was not a suicide attempt in the conventional sense, I was discharged to mum and dad’s care. I was kept on as an outpatient for counselling due to what the consultant felt sure was previously undiagnosed depression. When I met with the counsellor I told her a lot of what had actually happened. It was good to have someone to talk to and I suppose I felt I had nothing more to lose. My P45 had arrived the day before and Richard had put our house up for sale.

Everything I worked for had gone, apart from my family. I have put them through hell.

I was still feeling pretty awful, so my GP did some routine blood tests. It was then that I discovered I had a serious deficiency in my levels of some vitamins, namely B12 and iron. I would need injections of B12 for the foreseeable future.  I looked up the condition when I got home and found this:

*****

Vitamin B12 deficiency
This vitamin deficiency can cause severe symptoms of mental illness including:
Mania
Hallucinations
Psychosis
Contact your GP if you believe that a vitamin B12 deficiency could be the cause of symptoms of mental or physical illness.

*****

This was
in some ways the hardest part. Mania. Hallucinations. Psychosis.

Joel?

For months my conclusions on what had, or hadn’t happened with Joel, would seesaw wildly between
knowing
with a certainty that I would stake my life on that it was all real, and feeling like a prize idiot for
ever
believing for a second that I met and had a relationship with Joel Vine.

The thing was, I had
no proof
. The t-shirt he’d given me was gone. I’d worn it to the hospital the day I overdosed. Maybe it got cut off me and binned; I never got it back.

And I never found the letter he gave me in Vegas. Richard had thrown out quite a bit of my stuff; mum had gone through some of it too for me. When I went back to the house some weeks later, my search proved fruitless. I didn’t want to ask Richard about it, he’d been so bitter.

So I couldn’t help but look for signs everywhere and anywhere to try to understand. When the band’s Abbey Road music sessions were finally televised I pored over them, pausing the playback to see if there was a glimpse of me, even a reflection of my shadow in a mirror would have been
something
. But of course, I had been sat out of the way at the back of the room. I couldn’t even see Precious, or Troy, or Marti.

Had any of them been there, or was it all a hallucination? I needed to know.

I swallowed my pride to ask Marcus if he still had the emailed article I’d sent from the hotel. I’d sent it from my Hotmail account, so I knew it wouldn’t prove that I’d been at the hotel but I wanted to read it back and see how it sounded. He’d replied, saying that he never received my article and that he hoped I was better now but I wasn’t to call him or anyone at newspaper, again. There was nothing in my Hotmail’s ‘Sent’ items.

So, on a cold, wet October day, I took what might be my one and only opportunity to find out, for once and for all.

*****

Town Full of Heroes was due back in London for an exclusive gig for Radio Power. I staked my bet on the only hotel I could guess they might be staying at. After all, if I was crazy and it had all been a hallucination, the hotel might not even exist where I remembered it.

Considerate of my promise not to contact Joel again, I had my hair dyed and cut and then I got some glasses. It wouldn’t fool anyone up close as a disguise but it might prevent someone from recognising me at a distance. I told Katie and mum that this was part of my new look for a fresh start and they took it as a positive sign that I was moving on from whatever had happened before.

I told mum I had a counselling appointment. I felt really bad about lying but I saw this opportunity as essential for my rehabilitation. I had to confront the hallucinations, to make myself realise that they were never real.

I got the train into London and a cab to the hotel. The same hotel I’d stayed in with Joel.

It was there, just like before. Jesus. I was still feeling weak and ill, a side effect from the anaemia. I sat on a low wall next to the hotel’s main entrance, under the shelter of a concrete canopy over the frontage.

It began to rain. I tried to come to terms with what it all meant; that the hotel was there as it should be. I pinched myself. Yes, I was definitely awake. This was happening.

I waited, busying my mind with memories from the past year. I remembered how it had all begun. From the moment Joel first kissed me while I was driving home, to the craziness of Vegas and how we finally met in the hospital after my car crash. The first ‘real’ kiss in the taxi, the adjoining rooms, our first night together. Abbey Road. The band.

How could I have imagined something so rich, so detailed? How could I have memories that stirred such a depth of feeling, even now?

Hours passed.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the sun got lower and lower in the sky. People walked by the hotel more quickly as the rain got heavier. The temperature dropped. A stronger wind began to whip up the leaves, the dust and the rain. I pulled my coat more tightly around me.

I checked my watch. Six pm. I was cold and shivering, needing the loo and thinking I must have been mad to have sat there this long. And then something, something perhaps akin to a very small ‘flash’ in my mind, made me look up. Through the glass hotel lobby doors I caught a glimpse. A figure crossed from one side of the lobby to the other in no more than one or two seconds. And I knew. I just knew it was Joel.

My heart dropped like a stone in my chest. My eyes stayed locked on the lobby doors, as adrenaline flooded my body preparing my legs to flee.

I jumped out of my skin when a hand lightly touched my shoulder.  “Have you got a light?”

“Jesus! You made me jump!” I turned to see a tall, bearded bloke, holding up a cigarette and a shaking his lighter at me.

“Mine’s run out of gas.” He drawled.

“Oh. Err. No, sorry, I don’t smoke.”

“You waiting for the Heroes?”

I didn’t know what to say. I looked down at my hands.
He’s American.

“You might get lucky, sometimes they sign for fans if there aren’t too many hanging about. And right now there’s only you.”

I needed to understand who he was. “Are you with them?”

“Well yeah,” he seemed embarrassed to admit it. “I’m just a hanger-on, a friend of a friend. I’m along for the ride. Never been to England before. There’s nowhere to smoke in this hotel, so I’m taking the air outside before I grab a lift to the gig.”

“I’m just waiting for someone. Not the band. I mean, I’ve heard of them of course.”

“You’ve been out here a while.”

“Yes.”

“It’s OK to be a fan you know; I meet them all the time. You don’t have to be embarrassed. I’m Jack,” he added, holding out his hand.

“Katie, I’m Katie,” I lied and shook his.

“Pleased to meet you, Katie.” He shook my hand. “I’m gonna go get another lighter from the bar.

They will be out in a minute,
I can’t promise you’ll get an autograph now, ‘cos the cars are about to arrive, any second. But they’ll probably be back at about 11 o’ clock. If you’re staying around here you could come back then?”

“I think I’ll be gone by then but thank you,” I added. I was getting nervous that Joel would come out of the lobby and see me talking to Jack.

“See you in a minute,” he said with a smile and sauntered back inside.

I sat on the low wall, in a position that was out of the line of sight from the lobby doors, though I could still see them.

Just a minute passed before three silver people-carriers swept down the road, kicking up spray onto the pavement. They pulled up in front of the entrance. Two of the drivers got out. Immediately, six uniformed doormen emerged from the hotel. They lined the walkway from the lobby to the cars, masking any view that anyone passing might have.

It happened quicker than I could have believed. A well-practiced routine was played out in front of my eyes. The rear passenger side doors of two of the three cars were opened as the members of the band appeared at the lobby doors.

Out they came, Joel third in line in his white shirt and blue jeans. I claimed a brief glimpse of his face as he passed, before he disappeared from my view into one of the waiting vehicles. With the occupants safely inside, the doors were closed and the blacked out windows shielded my view. There was nothing more to see, it was over in seconds.

I looked away so Joel wouldn’t be able to see my face directly if he looked. A tear rolled down my cheek as the wind whipped up the leaves once more and the rain hammered sideways under the hotel canopy.

I felt angry, frustrated. What had I come here for, anyway? How stupid was I to stir all this up again? What exactly had I gained by seeing him, fleetingly? Nothing. I didn’t even think that the band being at this hotel, or this hotel even existing, vindicated me. It wasn’t
proof
. I could still be crazy. Some crazy stalker – that’s certainly what I looked like right now.

The cars drove away. The doormen slipped back into the hotel once more. I took a deep breath to calm myself.

Out came Jack with his cigarette and a new lighter. He sparked up quickly, noticing the car was already there. I wondered if that was the one he would take.

“They were a bit hurried,” he explained. “But they said they might sign later. As there’s only one of you out here there’s a very good chance.”

“That’s very kind,” I answered, I couldn’t be bothered to argue about why I was there any more.

I quickly wiped my tears away before he could realise I’d been crying. He was busy taking a series of deep drags on his cigarette. I watched the smoke drift away in the rain. The third cab was still waiting. Behind Jack, I saw the driver get out and open the rear passenger door. That was when I saw Marti and Nina, walking out of the lobby directly to the car, deep in conversation.

And even though I had cut and dyed my hair and had my new glasses on, Marti looked back as he opened the door for Nina to get into the cab and his eyes bored straight into mine. I felt sure I saw recognition in his sneer.

“This is no time for chatting up groupies,” he yelled at Jack, who dropped his cigarette, grinded it into the wet pavement and got into the car. The door was slammed shut, the car drove away.

The discarded cigarette butt was still glowing a little, despite the rain. And then it went out.

*****

I did not intend to stay. Staying would be stupid. Well just being there was already stupid. All I can say by way of explanation was that I was frozen to the spot where I’d seen him last, in two minds about what to do.

If I waited until 11 pm when he got back, I could see him one more time. However, if Jack was there and called the band over for an autograph, someone – worst of all Joel - would recognise me and I would have broken my promise to him from all those months before.