Dead Romantic (23 page)

While he waits patiently, I lock the house and hide the key in Dad’s usual place under the plant pot by the front door.

“And you told me off for my hiding place,” Rafe teases when he see this. “Fancy popping into the greenhouse and lobbing some stones about?”

“Believe me, if burglars try to rob Dad’s house they’ll think somebody got there first,” I promise him as we turn left at the end of the garden gate and head into the town. “I think he’s the only person I know who still has a cathode-ray telly and prefers the VCR to his DVD player.”

He laughs. “VCRs! My God, my brother and I used to drive our Nan wild taping bits of
Baywatch
over her
EastEnders
collection. In the end she hid her videotapes inside the piano cabinet. We only found them when my brother decided that he wanted to learn to play. The keys made the weirdest sound.”

“They played the
Baywatch
theme and then everybody started running down the street in slow motion?” I deadpan.

“Hmm, not quite Nan’s style, but Alex might have been tempted. He was always one for showing off.”

You have no idea quite how right you are, I think wryly as we cross the main road and join the path that follows the river towards the centre of town.

It’s a cold December afternoon and the sun has given up now, wrapping itself in layers of grey cloud; the river looks leaden. A group of ducks bobs hopefully by the bank just in case we have crusts, and a rowing four scoots past, the rowers’ breath rising upwards in clouds. Rafe slips his shades back down to cover his eyes, pulls a beanie hat out from his pocket and shoves it onto his head.

“I don’t want to be recognised,” he explains when he sees me looking. “I don’t go out much these days and when I do there’s normally some pap lurking to catch me at my worst. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been splashed all across some scummy red top, so if it’s all right with you I’ll go incognito. Unless you want to be my new mystery redhead in tomorrow’s
Sun
?”

I shake my head, thinking of the lurid headlines I’ve read about Rafe Thorne while trawling the Internet to catch up on ten years of Thorne history. I think I’ll give the tabloids a miss. I don’t think it would do my academic credibility any good to be featured in them.

“So that’s why you were so angry with me and thought I was from the press?” I ask. “You really thought I’d come to get a story I could sell? Seriously? Do people really do that?”

Rafe sighs. “You are young in the ways of the tabloids,” he says. Then the smile slides from his face and he looks bleak. “God, Cleo, you’d be amazed what people will do for a story or fifteen minutes of fame. Forget humiliating yourself on
Big Brother
; it’s far easier to sleep with a rock star and do a kiss and tell, or take a compromising picture on a mobile. I can’t trust anyone.”

“You can trust me,” I say. I glance up at him and when his eyes meet mine I get such a jolt it’s a miracle I don’t topple off the path and splash into the Thames. “You didn’t have to get so angry.”

“Cleo, I’ll be honest. I’d sunk the best part of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s the night before. I’ve felt better.” He gives me that crooked smile again. “Then again, I’ve felt worse. Much worse.”

“I’m sorry about your brother.” There. I’ve said it. I’ve mentioned the unmentionable. Maybe this is the part where I tell him Alex’s message, Alex whizzes off in a white glow and life goes back to normal? I can only hope.

“Hey, thanks, but it wasn’t because of Ally that I was drinking. Well, not directly anyway.” He pauses and fixes his attention on the water lapping at the riverbank, seeming suddenly fascinated by the river. “After Alex died I lost it, big time. It was my fault, you see.”

“No, that’s not true–” I interrupt, because hasn’t Alex told me enough times himself that it was just a silly row and an accident?

But Rafe doesn’t want to hear this.

“It was my fault. Please don’t insult me by pretending you know the facts. It was my fault my brother died and I have to live with that every day. That’s my punishment, Cleo, and that’s why I’m still here rather than at the bottom of that river. I deserve to be miserable after what I did to him.” His mouth sets in a tight line and his chiselled face is rigid. “I’m not excusing my behaviour yesterday but I am trying to explain it. I don’t suppose I was easy to live with either after the accident. My girlfriend soon had enough and I can’t really blame her. I was a bloody mess.”

I nod. I was the same when Mum died. If I’m honest it’s only been since last night that I’ve realised just how much of a mess.

“Natasha left,” Rafe says flatly. “Packed her bags and walked out without even saying goodbye. I lost it then and before long I was in rehab.”

I don’t say anything because I sense that there’s still more he wants to tell me. Instead, I watch the river flow by.

“I did OK. I managed to pull it back together. I poured the booze down the sink. I carried on. Then a couple of days ago I read that Tasha’s hooked up with some new boy-band lead singer. You know the ones: the latest talent-show wonders, who all look about twelve despite being in their twenties? Apparently it’s love, or so they’ve been busy telling
OK!
– in between giving interviews to all the newspapers, of course, and being papped non-stop. Natasha says she’s never felt like this before. It’s the best sex of her life too, apparently, which is a big dent in my fragile male pride. She’s also sold a big story on what life with me was really like. Shit, apparently.”

“Ouch.”

“Ouch indeed.”

As though by some unspoken mutual agreement we turn away from the river and into Taply. The town is well and truly prepared for the festive season. Brightly coloured lights are threaded like beads through the High Street, and the Christmas tree is up in the square. The shop windows have been sprayed with fake snow and rammed full of sparkly wares to draw shoppers in like mesmerised magpies. The coffee shop has a chalkboard outside boasting its seasonal menu, and Boots is crammed full of gift ideas and shimmering party make-up. The charity shops are in on the act too, with their Christmas cards and fair-trade gifts.

I have to admit defeat. I cannot escape Christmas. Oddly, though, I don’t feel quite as twitchy about all this as I usually do…

At the far end of the High Street stands the River Man Inn, Taply’s oldest pub and a magnet for tourists. With its late-sixteenth-century beams, tiny lead-paned windows and walls bulging as though they too have indulged on the ale and become paunchy over the centuries, this pub is ideal for smothering in Christmas decorations. Usually I find baubles and tinsel garish, but in here the decorations are tasteful and soothing. Greenery swathes the lintels and crowns the bar, white fairy lights flicker and a log fire crackles in the grate. Perhaps before I head back to London I could do something similar for Dad’s house.

While Rafe fetches the coffees I settle down in a snug window seat and watch the river as it flows towards London. I can hardly wait to go back there myself, but rather than wanting to flee as I have in the past I feel a lot more serene about being here. Maybe I’m even starting to make my peace with Christmas too.

“The coffee machine isn’t on, so I got you a mulled wine and a Coke for me.” Rafe deposits the spoils of his trip to the bar onto the table and lowers his lean frame into the sofa opposite me. “Diet Coke, that is, not the powdery rock-star variety, just in case you were wondering.”

I hadn’t been wondering, but then as an Egyptologist I struggle to afford the dark-brown bubbly type of Coke, never mind anything else.

“I also got us some crisps.” He rips open a packet of salt and vinegar and smiles across at me. “Food of the gods.”

“Wow,” I say, reaching for my drink. “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. A shadow flickers over Rafe’s face. “Apparently not.”

“Sorry,” I say hastily. “That was tactless.”

He shakes his head. “Hey, don’t apologise. It’s stupid; it’s not as though Tash and I were serious in any way, but when I read that interview it just felt like another kick to the guts. It wasn’t even about her, if I’m really honest.” He picks up his Coke and swirls it thoughtfully as though it’s a whiskey. “What can I say? All my good intentions were forgotten in an instant.”

“And so you drank.”

“And so I drank,” he agrees. “And when you broke in–”

“
Let
myself in,” I correct swiftly; I’m nipping this version of events in the bud. “I had a key.”

“Sorry, when you
let yourself in
, I wasn’t quite at my best.”

He pauses and as I sip my warm and citrusy mulled wine, I know we’re both seeing the same scene: the fusty drawing room, the empty bottles, and the figure slumped on the floor. Rafe runs a hand through his thick hair and shrugs.

“Look, I am grateful you cared enough to try and help, I really am, but what I actually want to know is what the hell you were doing there in the first place. I haven’t laid eyes on you in ten years, so why come back now? Why ignore all the interviews I gave and all the lyrics I wrote about you, only to reappear at that particular point? What’s going on?”

This is it, the moment when I could take a chance and tell him everything. I’d be keeping my promise to Alex and setting myself free. It would be a win-win situation. Rafe would probably think I was a lunatic and want nothing more to do with me, but at least I could then walk away from the Thorne brothers, catch a train to London and slip right back into my usual life. It’s very tempting.

I glance across the table at Rafe, who’s observing me with the kind of intensity I usually adopt when I’m focused on my research, and my heart does a somersault and then starts thudding like a Samba beat.

What’s happening here? Why can’t I just tell him? I want life to go back to normal, don’t I?

“It’s complicated,” I whisper.

Rafe pulls a rueful face. “Isn’t everything?”

I teeter on the brink of telling him – sway a little, almost topple over the edge – but something holds me back. I take another mouthful of mulled wine.
If in doubt, try Dutch courage
is Susie’s motto, so maybe I should try it?

“I heard the song,” I say eventually, because this is true. “And I realised who you are.”

“Who I
was
, you mean.” He downs the Coke and I can tell he wishes it were a shot. “God, I’m a mess, Cleo, a bloody liability. What you saw yesterday? That drunken prick? The guy who drowns his sorrows in whiskey and passes out on the floor? That’s me now. I’m not the man you met all those years ago. He was young and full of hopes and dreams. He had everything ahead of him.” He thumps the glass down as though trying to slam his thoughts away. “
He
didn’t kill his brother.”

“You didn’t kill Alex. It was an accident.”

Rafe laughs, but it’s a bleak sound. “Yeah, on a technicality, maybe, but it was my going on at him about the band that made Ally jump out without looking. He was keen to sign a new deal and I wanted to take some time out. The fame thing? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Ally couldn’t believe it. He said we were on the brink of breaking the USA. I told him that I didn’t care. I wanted to stop. Jesus, Cleo, I was so tired. We’d been on the road for six months with the tour. I was sick of living out of suitcases. I just wanted a rest. Ally was furious. He said that I was throwing everything away and if I didn’t sign, he’d never forgive me.” He pauses, passes a hand over his face, and then carries on. “I told him that if he did sign the deal then it was over between the two of us; we were no longer brothers. He died believing that I meant that. So, you can say what you like but I know the truth. I may as well have been driving the car that hit him.”

I open my mouth to tell him that Alex doesn’t see it like this, but then shut it swiftly. How will I explain how I know what his dead brother would think? I’ll sound like Lilac Delaney.

“I have to live with this every day,” Rafe says softly. “Every bloody day. Some days it hurts more than others, so I think to myself what harm does one little drink do? Except that it’s never one. It’s never, ever one because one drink doesn’t blot it out, and neither does another or even the whole bottle. I killed my brother, Cleo, and nothing that happens now will change that.”

What can I say to this? He’s wrong about the guilt but he’s spot on when he points out that nothing can change the past. Look at how I’ve spent ten years feeling so angry and so betrayed about never having the chance to say goodbye to Mum. Did that bring her back or make me feel any better? Of course it didn’t: it just cast a huge shadow over the time I’ve been lucky enough to have since. Our lives are so fleeting – my work has taught me that much – and we try everything we can to create a sense of permanence for ourselves, but at the end of the day it’s a vain task, isn’t it? All that’s left behind of us is the love we once had, and I’m starting to understand now that this never goes away.

I’m wrestling with how to express this without sounding like a cross between a gushing agony aunt and Lilac Delaney, when Rafe exhales and gives me a rueful smile.

“Aren’t I cheerful company? I invited you out to say sorry and to buy you a drink, and I end up dumping on you. Still, while I’m doing deep and meaningful, there is something else I wanted to ask you.”

I look up at him questioningly. I hope he doesn’t want me to explain again how I just so happened to be meandering past his house, because I’m struggling to think of a plausible excuse.

“Listen, I know it sounds crazy and more water has gone under our bridge than the one over there–” he nods in the direction of Taply Bridge, with its golden honeyed stone and intricate carved arches, underneath which the river flows and swans drift gently past, “but that Christmas Eve really meant something to me. I was devastated when I realised that I couldn’t find you. Why didn’t you get in touch? I’m not bragging – well, only a little bit – but the song I wrote for you was huge. Every interview I gave I talked about you.”

The river flows by. Light is already starting to seep from the sky; the naked trees, stark against grey clouds, look as bleak as I remember feeling that long ago Christmas Eve.