A Summer Fling (34 page)

‘For goodness sake, Grace, the house is enormous. I am sure there are people living with us that I have never seen,’ smiled Christie. ‘Besides, I think Niki rather likes having someone to show off his cooking skills to. I’ve got rather blasé, alas. Chicken, mushroom and asparagus spears risotto is on the menu for tonight. It’s one of his thirty signature dishes.’

Anna thought back to Tony’s culinary skills with a fresh stab of pain. He was very flamboyant in the kitchen: Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen meets Jean-Christophe Novelli. She liked a man who enjoyed cooking and his was so good it was like foreplay. Which was just as well, because it was the only place she got any. What a waste, because she doubted Lynette Bottom’s palate could have appreciated anything fancier than chicken nuggets. She probably thought Asparagus Spears was Britney’s younger sister.

‘Must be nice!’ said Dawn with a little laugh. ‘Calum made me a chip butty once. Micro chips. That’s about as adventurous as he gets.’ Then she remembered that she was dissing the man she was going to marry in a month and tried to turn it round. ‘Mind you, he made quite a good job of it. He buttered the bread right up to the edges.’ Somewhere in her head she heard a pair of hands giving her a slow clap.
Wow!

‘Calum’s talents must lie elsewhere,’ smiled Christie kindly. She wasn’t the only one left wondering why Dawn was marrying someone whom she would have to spend her whole life kicking up the bum.

‘Oh
yes,’
said Dawn, laughing a little too raucously and not pulling off the intimation that Calum was a wild animal in bed. She just hoped they didn’t press her for details because she wouldn’t be able to supply any. Then she was distracted as, from the corner of her eye, she saw Samuel arrive on the stage and rush to set up, followed by the others and finally Al.

‘What’s up with you?’ said Anna. ‘You look like someone’s just switched on a light inside you.’

‘Me?’ said Dawn, trying to will her heartbeat to slow down.

‘It’s one of those guitarists, isn’t it?’ said Raychel with a teasing smile. ‘You fancy him.’

‘I don’t!’ she protested.

‘What are you blushing for then?’

‘I’m not,’ said Dawn, all flustered. ‘I just think they’re nice blokes, that’s all. I like their music.’

‘Sorry we’re late, folks,’ Samuel’s voice blasted down the microphone. ‘We got held up in your wonderful British traffic, but we’re here now and we’re starting with this one.’ And they slid effortlessly into their first number.

‘Have you booked them for your wedding then?’ asked Anna.

‘No, they’re leaving on that day.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame.’

‘Yeah,’ said Dawn. She didn’t want to think about that. ‘I’ll go up and get some crisps, shall I? I’m a bit peckish.’ She thought she would get out of the way of the others because she felt three questions away from her voice cracking.

The bar was more packed than usual. Dawn had only just managed to order a couple of bags of cheese and onion by the time the first song was completed.

‘This one is a special number,’ drawled Samuel. ‘It’s called
I Took My Chance With You
and we have a guest singer to perform it. I’d like you to give a warm Rising Sun welcome to Miss – Dawny – Sole.’

Absently, Dawn began to clap along with everyone else. It took three seconds for her brain to engage, then her head whisked around to the stage to see the band members beckoning to her.

No, no, no, no, no!
she thought. This couldn’t be happening.
What the hell
. . .
?
Her head was planning an escape route but she was surrounded by people moving aside to let her through. Her legs, totally disconnected to her panicking brain, were betraying her and moving forwards. She was mouthing at the band, ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ and they were totally ignoring her and pulling her onto the stage. It was like being in a nightmare. The only thing worse would have been if she was naked as well.

Al slipped his guitar around her neck and picked up another from behind him.

‘Go, girl,’ he whispered into her ear. His breath puffed on her neck and fanned flames in her heart.

The intro began. Dawn looked around at the sea of faces staring at the local woman, and her only option was to open her mouth and sing and get through it, and then leave the stage and die in a corner. In the background, she could see Christie, Raychel, Anna and Grace standing to watch her.

Dawn opened her mouth and heard the first shaky bars leave her. Then it hit her that she was singing in a band,
a real band,
and if she didn’t get a grip and belt out the sound she knew she was capable of, she was going to look a total clot in front of an awful lot of people. She thought of watching her mum and dad perform this, then she thought of her mum and dad watching her, now, at this moment, and a strength gathered in her voice. She saw people in the audience smiling, their heads absently nodding. Her voice floated out past them to the walls and she saw Anna sticking up a congratulatory thumb at her. And she was aware that her fingers were moving across the guitar strings in perfect harmony with the rest of the band and it all felt so
right
. And as Al played the final riff and the applause and cheers rose in the air, Dawn found herself grinning as she turned to Al and fought the surge of euphoria that made her want to fling her arms around him by saying that she was going to kill him. And he winked at her and said, ‘You’re wasting yourself, honey. Wait for me.’ And for a moment she didn’t know if he meant ‘wait for me’ when her friends had gone, or for ever.

‘Workin’ that voice or what? You
are
a dark horse,’ said Anna with true admiration, as Dawn came back to the table. ‘They sent another bottle over for us. On the house, so double well done. And you told us you weren’t that good!’

‘That was wonderful,’ said Grace. ‘You looked so at home on that stage. How can you hide that talent away so secretly?’

‘Oh, give over,’ said Dawn, blushing and beaming at the same time.

‘You have a true gift.’ Christie patted her on the arm. ‘You’re a total natural. It was fabulous, Dawn. Your voice is perfect for that kind of music.’

‘Honestly, you looked as if you were born to it,’ added Raychel. ‘You really enjoyed doing that, we could tell.’

‘You’re joking! I was shitting myself,’ said Dawn.

‘Oh, please no, don’t spoil your newly cultured image!’ laughed Anna.

Dawn decided she would stay for one drink only with Al Holly. She was in serious danger of getting involved with him and if he tried to take up where he had left off last Sunday, she didn’t know if she could resist. There wouldn’t be any little boy with a beach ball to get in the way of the kiss that nearly happened in here.

But Al surprised her. He talked about banal things like motorway hold-ups and transport cafés. He didn’t invite her to practise with them on Sunday and Dawn didn’t ask to. They parted that night as friends who would soon go their separate ways and had just shared two Cokes together. It was how it should be, said Dawn to herself, it was right that it should be that way. But, as Al returned to the stage and she went out to her car, disappointment weighed her footsteps down and her heart wasn’t feeling it was the right thing at all.

Anna found she was smiling all the way home. What a lovely evening that was; better still because Grace came too. And there was Anna thinking
her
relationship was crap! At least Tony didn’t have a violent bone in his body. Actually, thinking about it, he didn’t have any bones in his body, he was a walking jelly. She thought of a jelly-shaped Tony wobbling down the road and giggled. She slipped into a fond memory of him accidentally head-butting her during a love-making session and how gutted he was that he might have hurt her. She gloried temporarily in his inability to intentionally mash anyone – at least not physically. Then a sharp ache squeezed at her heart and a big sigh came from that place also.

She crossed the road from the railway station. Her lonely little house was in sight. But there was a film on that night she would enjoy and, bugger it, she’d ring and get a Tandoori Butter Chicken delivered and enjoy it with a glass or two of that Riesling presently chilling in her fridge. She got her key out of her handbag and almost stepped on another surprise-Tony-present – a single red rose lay on the doorstep.

Sarah rang Grace on the Saturday afternoon to ask how she was, but her opening tone was luke-warm. She always addressed Grace as Mother. It lent a distance between them that Grace had tried, but failed, over the years to close and it felt a particularly chilly word to use at the moment. Out of all her children, Sarah had been given the most – attention, toys, leeway. But she was the coldest of them all, with her father’s gift of being able to shove a stopper in his bottle of emotions.

Paul and Laura had told their sister most of what they knew. They hadn’t been that surprised at her cool response that ‘Dad was obviously ill and Mum must have antagonized him.’ Gordon’s genes held strong in her.

‘I’ve phoned the hospital but they don’t know when Dad will be coming home,’ Sarah said. ‘Have you been to see him?’

‘No, Sarah, I haven’t,’ said Grace. ‘Nor will I be going to see him. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to see him.’

‘Haven’t you rung?’

‘No.’

Sarah gave an incredulous laugh. ‘You can’t leave him in there!’ she said. ‘He’s sick – he needs help.’

Sick
, yes, that was an apt description, thought Grace, but she didn’t want to get into an argument with her daughter.

‘I can’t get involved, Sarah. It’s a police matter,’ said Grace in an even voice that masked the hurt that Sarah’s attitude was causing her.

‘What on earth happened? What did you say to make him flip like that?’ Sarah suddenly railed.

‘I don’t really understand why he did what he did,’ said Grace. She had tried not to think about it on a detailed, analytical level. She didn’t want to put herself back in that awful place.

‘Laura said he wouldn’t let you out of the house!’ said Sarah with a note of scoffing in her voice, as if all Gordon had done was say she couldn’t go out to the shops and had to suffer the indignity of a police raid because of it.

‘There was a little more to it than that,’ said Grace, bristling now. She knew that Laura wouldn’t have made light of it. If anything, Laura would have made sure Sarah knew exactly what her father had done. What part of the story Sarah chose to believe was another matter entirely.

‘Who’s going to look after him when he comes out?’ said Sarah. There was a touch of panic in her voice that intimated that she, as the only child still accepted by her father, would be in line for that particular duty.

‘He’s hardly in his dotage, love.’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t know how to do washing or ironing or anything like that, does he?’ Sarah snapped, unaware of how pathetic she was making her father out to be.

‘I don’t know,’ said Grace, suddenly tired. ‘I don’t know if the police will hold him or release him. I don’t know if he’ll go to trial or—’

‘Trial?’ screamed Sarah. ‘You can’t let him go to
trial
! He’s my
father
!’

‘It’s not for me to decide, Sarah, I have no control over what happens.’

The thought of a trial made Grace’s head ache. She could not be disloyal to
their father
whatever she thought about
her husband.
She, herself, could stand the heat of the spotlight if Gordon had to go to court and was vilified in the newspapers, but she didn’t want her children and grandchildren hurt any more than they had been. Lawyers, she knew, would rip the details of her marriage apart merely to prove technical points without any care of what that would do to her loved ones. And truth could be viewed from so many ugly angles.

‘You’ll have to both pull yourselves together,’ said Sarah with a long, impatient exhalation of breath. ‘You can’t split up at your age. I’ll see if I can source a good counsellor.’

‘We already have split up!’ A shot of anger added strength to Grace’s voice. ‘There isn’t a counsellor alive who could fix this one. And, Sarah, even if there were, I wouldn’t want to engage him.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Sarah. ‘You’ve been together for over twenty-three years. Twenty-three years! You can’t just leave him to rot!’

Grace took a fortifying breath.

‘Sarah, I
have
left him,’ she said definitively. ‘I won’t be going back to him. I have made an appointment to see a solicitor and I am divorcing him. It’s something I’m afraid you’ll have to accept, love. Your mum and dad have split up.’

‘Except you’re not my mum, are you?’ said Sarah spitefully before she slammed the phone down, leaving Grace so wounded that she wondered if she had been the eventual destruction of the Beamish family and not, as she had wanted to be all those years ago, its salvation.

‘Well, look-ee here!’ whistled Bruce as Anna walked into Vladimir Darq’s house at the tardy time of ten past seven.

‘What? What’s up?’ replied Anna quickly.

‘You, that’s what’s up!’ said Bruce. ‘You look different.’

‘You’re wearing a V-neck that isn’t black too, well done!’ said Jane, giving her the customary two-cheek kiss. ‘I think that shade of blue is definitely your colour. What do you think, Vladimir?’

Anna felt her cheeks flare up at the amount of attention she was receiving from the whole room. Especially when Vladimir strode over and started studying her intensely.

‘Yes, it’s good on you, Anna.’ Then he groaned. ‘The shoulders, Anna, they are dropping again.
La dracu!
You drive me crazy!’ And he flounced off as if in a very bad mood.

Bruce pulled a face and mouthed, ‘What’s up with him?’ at Jane, who shrugged her shoulders.

‘He’s been pacing about for ten minutes,’ she whispered to Anna.

‘It wasn’t our fault we were late. We had to take a detour because a lorry had broken down and blocked the road,’ Anna explained.

‘Maybe it’s his time of the month. Full Moon,’ giggled Bruce until Jane slapped him playfully.

‘You do look different though,’ Jane smiled. ‘Really straight-backed and sassy. And thinner. Have you lost weight?’