Highly Strung (21 page)

“You should have gone with them,” said Milan, slurring.

“You should get some sleep. You haven’t slept at all.”

“Neither have you. You should have gone with them.”

“I want to be with you. I can’t leave you here on your own.”

He took another swig, another puff and shrugged.

“I can be alone. I’m not a child.”

You don’t have a mother, though.
She swallowed back more tears. More tears wouldn’t help anyone.

“Listen, about Evgeny. I should tell you.”

“Oh, fucking Evgeny again. He is gone. Forget him.”

Lydia stared.

“So you know? Mary-Ann told you?”

Milan stubbed out the cigarette on a saucer on the floor and lay down, face in the pillow.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Evgeny’s dead, Milan.”

He sat back up, dropping the brandy bottle so that it spilled into the makeshift ashtray.

“This is a sick joke, right?”

“No.”

She went to sit on the bed beside him, holding his shaky hand.

“He was the one who knocked your mother into the road. He tried to run away from the scene, but I guess in his drunken state he landed up in the river. They tried to save him, but he drowned.”

“Fucking…fucking…what? What is this? Why is this happening?”

Milan fumbled in his pocket for another cigarette and lit it, hand wobbling so dangerously he almost dropped the lighter on to the bed.

“It’s a horrible, horrible accident,” whispered Lydia.

“No,” said Milan forcefully. “It’s not an accident. It’s us, Lydia. It’s because of us.”

“Please don’t think that way—”

“What way am I supposed to think? I have treated people the way I treated Evgeny for years and years. It’s just luck that this hasn’t happened before. I’m getting my bad karma now. What’s wrong with that? It’s fair, isn’t it?”

He blew out a stream of smoke, jabbing the cigarette in the air as he spoke with impassioned delirium.

“You know how many hearts I’ve broken, Lydia? I don’t know myself. I haven’t kept count. I’ve taken the best from people and used it, then thrown it away. I get bored, so easily bored, and my lovers start getting paranoid and needy and I get even more bored and then it all explodes. My mother didn’t want to do anything but love me, but I even got bored with
her
. I even broke
her
heart. What kind of man does that make me, hey?”

“Milan, you’re shocked and tired and you need to rest—”

“It makes me a devil. It makes me a killer.”

“Milan.” Lydia’s cheeks were wet with tears now.

“You can still make the plane, you know. You can go back to London. Do it. Go.”

“Stop it, Milan! I’m not going anywhere while you’re in this state!”

“I will call you a taxi.” He climbed over her, went to find his phone from his jacket pocket on the back of the door. “You still have time. You still have a chance at life.”

“So do you!”

“Me? Don’t worry about me. I’ll survive. I’ll get work here. But you can’t stay. You don’t speak the language. You have nothing to stay for.”

“You! I have you!”

“Then you really have nothing.”

He retrieved the phone and began punching in numbers.

Lydia launched herself off the bed before he could start speaking and tried to wrest the instrument from his hands, but he prised her off so that she landed in a heap on the pile of luggage and violin cases.

He’d begun giving instructions in Czech before she could struggle back to her feet. She tried to reach out, but he sidestepped her.

He took her travelling bag, took her violin case and left the flat, heading downstairs with them.

“You don’t want your violin stolen, you better go down,” he said on his return, holding the door open for her.

“I’m not leaving you. Sod the violin.”

He sighed, took her by the elbow and manhandled her out to the landing.

“I don’t want us to part like this,” he said, dragging her down the stairs. “You know I care about you. It’s why I’m sending you away.”

“Why can’t I care about you? Why won’t you let me?”

“Because I can’t. That’s all. Now be good. Good to yourself.”

They had reached the foot of the stairs and Milan came to stand with Lydia in the gloomy doorway of the dilapidated building.

“The taxi will be here soon. You have money?”

“I’m not going.”

“Here, I’ll pay.” He took some notes from his trouser pocket and stuffed them into Lydia’s hand.

 She let them fall to the floor.

“Okay,” he said, shrugging. “Up to you. I’m going.” He took hold of her, a final hold, and kissed her cheek so gently she barely felt it. “Be happy,” he said.

Then he turned and ran upstairs. She heard the door bang, then the smashing of broken glass.

When the taxi came, she was crouching against the door jamb, sobbing into the bundle of kroner notes.

At least she had missed the flight the orchestra were taking. Having to sit there, to explain herself, to talk, to just be around them, would have been too much.

Instead, she had to take the next flight. It didn’t help that the Czech airline played
Má Vlast
over the speaker system all the way back to London.

The events of the preceding forty-eight hours turned over and over in Lydia’s head without cease. The happiness, the emotion, the hope, followed by the despair and the collapse of everything. She searched her recollections for any sign that there might be a way out of this miserable ending to her great love, but she could find none.

Time to grow up, Lydia
.
Time to stop expecting life to be a big romance and accept it for what it is. Milan doesn’t want you. Evgeny is dead. You have only yourself to fall back on now.

She took some leave from the orchestra and flew out to the small town Evgeny came from, outside Minsk. She felt that she owed it to him and his family to attend his funeral.

She had been unprepared for the open coffin and had clutched at Mary-Ann’s arm when Evgeny’s pale, beautiful face confronted her in the church. Mary-Ann had spoken with his family, explaining how talented and popular a member of the orchestra he had been, but Lydia felt quite unable to say anything to them, her guilt over the manner of his death weighing her down. She spent the day looking furtively around for any sign of Milan, but he didn’t appear.

She had tried to contact him over the course of the days that had passed—by phone, by text, by email—but he seemed to have disappeared. He would be preoccupied with funeral organisation himself, she realised. She contemplated trying to get in touch with his father or his brother in the US, but supposed even Milan couldn’t hold a grudge so tightly that he wouldn’t inform his own family of a member’s death.

Once Mary-Ann had finished her attempts to console Evgeny’s family, she came to join Lydia for a drink and a dish of vegetables, rice and raisins.

“You thought he’d be here, didn’t you?” she said.

“I wondered. But he’s got his mother’s funeral to cope with. Too many funerals.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself, you know. For what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”

Lydia, who had spoken of it to nobody since the dreadful day, let her shoulders slump, swallowing back tears.

“I feel responsible,” she whispered.

“You aren’t. And neither is Milan, really. He didn’t force Evgeny to go and get so drunk he caused an accident.”

“He knew Evgeny wouldn’t take a breakup well.”

“Yes, but that’s no reason not to break up with somebody, is it? Because you’re scared of their reaction? That’s a recipe for a lifetime of misery. He loved you, Lyd, he must have done.”

“Really? Do you really think so?”

“You gave him new eyes. He saw his life differently after he met you. If it hadn’t been for what happened…I think you and he could have worked. Who knows, perhaps you still could.”

“Oh, no, it’s gone past that. You didn’t see him after he found out his mother had died. It was like a light went out in him. It was like his last chance to be something different had just been snatched away. I don’t think he’ll change now. I think it’s too late.”

“You don’t think that, Lyd, or you wouldn’t keep looking over your shoulder for him. You still have hope.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. That’s why I can’t stay with the WSO. I can’t have you, and I can’t just be friends with you. I’m going to work out my notice, then I’ve applied for something in Vienna. I made some good contacts there.”

“Oh, Mary-Ann, I feel like all my friends have left me.”

“They haven’t. I know this will sound like I’m lying, but I hope you and Milan work things out. I really do. I want you to be happy, and I’m not sure you can be, without him. Don’t give up, eh? Follow your dreams.”

“It’s following my dreams that landed me in this mess.” Lydia’s gloom fitted the mood of the room. All the same, she picked up her mobile phone and checked it for messages—there were none—before texting Milan again.

“Am at Evgeny’s funeral. Thinking of you. Wish you would let me know you’re OK. Love you, L x.”

She put the phone back in her pocket, not expecting any reply, and addressed herself to the vodka bottle.

She was lying on her back in the hotel room, watching the ceiling spin while Mary-Ann snored in the twin bed across from hers, when her phone rang.

“What time’s it?” she muttered to herself, struggling to find the phone in the pocket of a jacket she had flung to the floor.

The display said ‘Milan’. She almost screamed, but managed to put a hand over her mouth in time, looking over at the oblivious Mary-Ann.

She jabbed with hopeful clumsiness at the call button, missing it at first, but she hit it eventually.

“Milan,” she gasped into the phone. “Milan, is that you?”

There was a silence at first, then an accusatory, “Are you drunk?”

“Yes, but I don’t care, I’m so happy to hear your voice. Oh, my God, I’ve missed you. I’ve been so worried—”

He cut her off sharply. “Lydia, Lydia, stop. I just want to say I buried my mother today. Just wanted to let you know, that’s all.”

“It must have been an awful day for you.”

“Yes. Look, don’t worry about me. That’s all I want to say to you. I’m fine. You can forget me and move on now. I will be okay.”

“I don’t believe you. I want to come to Prague and be with you.”

“You can’t. Go back to London. Find someone better.”

“There’ll never be someone better, not for me.”

He sighed, the gust crackling through the receiver.

“You’ll get over me. I’m sorry about everything. Goodbye,
miláčku
.”

“
Miluji tĕ
.”

“Yes.
Miluji tĕ
.” His voice was barely audible.

Lydia drew breath to speak, but he had rung off.

“This isn’t over, Milan,” she slurred, holding her phone at arm’s length and addressing it as his substitute. “It’ll never be over.”

Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

Sempre

Justine Elyot

Excerpt

Chapter One

From the wings of the Teatro dell’Opera, Julia indulged the secret thrill that hearing the dramatic opening chords of
Tosca
always elicited. Even now, six months after the audition, she had to remind herself that hard work and dedication had got her here, not the fairies. And no, it was not a dream either. Starring opposite two of Italy’s most celebrated male singers was no longer an ambition. It was reality. Or, at least, it had been, until yesterday.

“Have you seen him yet?” Liddy, a chorus member and Julia’s closest friend here in Rome bustled through the safety curtain, eyes bright.

“Seen who?”

“Tempi’s replacement. The new Cavaradossi.”

“Oh, is he here? I didn’t think he’d get here so soon. Thought Rolando was going to understudy for the rest of the week. Who have they got?”

“Nobody knows him. Apparently he’s on loan from some company out in the boondocks, if they have boondocks in Italy.”

“What’s his na—”

A man barged through them and out onto the stage. He turned to face the auditorium, which was empty but for the orchestra and director, before opening his mouth and setting free the most perfect sound Julia had ever heard.

“Who…is that?” The words fell quietly from her stunned, slack jaw.

“See! I told you!” Liddy grasped Julia’s elbow, urgent fingers dimpling the skin.

“You didn’t tell me anything. Seriously, this is Tempi’s replacement? Who is he?”

“His name is Luca.”

“Does he live on the second floor?” Julia referred to the Suzanne Vega song.

“What?”

“Don’t worry. I’m raving. He’s…well, for one thing, he has a stupendous voice.”

“And for another,” Liddy said, “he could stunt-double for Adonis.”

“Yeah. He’s…nice.”

“You don’t go for handsome men, do you, though?” Liddy sighed. She had spent the last few months of rehearsal trying to fix Julia up with a selection of Rome’s most eligible bachelors.

“I…oh, I think I’m on in a minute.”

Liddy was flapped out of the way by a stage manager who looked close to the verge of dramatic nervous breakdown.

“Julia, so sorry.” He elongated the vowels in that Italianate way. “We not expect Luca this week. He arrive very early. You are okay?”

“I’m okay,” said Julia tensely. Hearing her cue, she took those first steps towards playing a love scene with a total stranger.

Feigning suspicion of her lover, she crept up behind him where he sat at his easel. Tempi had always looked towards her as she approached, smiling generously, but she was almost at Luca’s shoulder before he suddenly whirled around, as if surprised and overjoyed by her presence.

He held out his hands to her, drawing her into his tall, athletic body until she was held in his arms, having to look up and sing into a face that was just too handsome to regard without sunglasses. Julia, overwhelmed, found that her voice failed her.