Crystal (25 page)

Crystal stayed holed up in her flat, chain smoking and drinking, feeling like a prisoner, unable to face the world. There were still a few photographers lurking outside. Tahlia
called round every day, bringing her a home-cooked meal from Rosie. Crystal would thank her for it but only throw it in the bin the minute she left, her appetite gone. Jez and Danni made frequent calls leaving messages of support and love and asking to come round and see her, but Crystal could only bring herself to see Tahlia. Gavin left a couple of messages as well but she didn’t pick up the phone. She couldn’t bear to speak to anyone. She had lost everything she had ever wanted and she felt she had nothing left. Jake didn’t call her. She knew he wouldn’t.

‘Pack a suitcase, we’re getting you out of here,’ Tahlia said, walking into the flat on Saturday morning.

‘I don’t want to go anywhere,’ Crystal said stubbornly, lighting another cigarette. Her fifth of the day, and it wasn’t even eleven.

‘You need a break,’ Tahlia insisted, ‘a chance to get your head together.’

‘What for?’ Crystal said bitterly. ‘So that I can face the fact that Jake’s left me and that I’m probably finished as a singer?’

‘You’re not. I’m sure when you’ve taken some time out and Dallas has calmed down we can sort something out.’

Crystal shook her head. ‘I doubt it. I reckon he’ll drop me after we’ve recorded the final song. And if he doesn’t want me then no one else will.’

Tahlia sighed; she realised it was pointless trying to argue with Crystal. All she wanted to do now was get her friend out of London, out of the way of the press and give her a chance to regain her fighting spirit.

‘Luke wants you to go and stay with him in Brighton. I’m going to drive you into central London, and we’ll meet him and hopefully you can switch cars without the press seeing you. That way they won’t know where you’ve gone. What do you think?’

‘I haven’t had any better offers,’ Crystal replied, but she was touched all the same, that Luke and Tahlia wanted to look after her. ‘I’m sorry I’m being like this, Tahlia, it’s just I
really love Jake. I can’t believe I’ve lost him.’ Her voice trembled with emotion and she struggled to hold back the tears.

‘I know, babe,’ Tahlia, replied hugging her friend.

Two hours later, Crystal had successfully switched cars, and she and her brother were on their way to Brighton. Crystal felt completely light-headed, after a week of eating practically nothing other than a few slices of toast.

‘You look shit, Chrissy,’ was the first thing Luke said to her when he saw her. ‘But don’t worry, I’m going to look after you and you’re going to be okay.’

Not wanting to disappoint her little brother, Crystal simply nodded and looked out of the window at London flashing past her. She was leaving behind the man she loved, saying goodbye to her singing career. She felt as if she was leaping into the dark and there was nothing and no one there to save her.

Luke shared a seafront flat with his girlfriend Ruby. On Crystal’s first night, when the others had gone to bed, she put on her coat, wrapped herself up in a blanket and sat outside on the balcony, looking out at the black sea and the lights of the pier flashing on and off garishly in the distance. There, in the cold November air, she wept for all that she had lost.

‘Chrissy, I’ve made you a cup of tea. I think you should get up now.’ Crystal opened her eyes to see her brother. ‘What time is it?’ she mumbled, hungover and bleary-eyed.

‘Eleven.’

She groaned and pulled the duvet over her head. She’d been at Luke’s for three days now and had been spending most of her mornings lying in bed, getting up around lunchtime and watching mindless daytime TV curled up on the sofa. She’d start drinking wine around six and then stay up until two, drinking, smoking, listening to music and watching DVDs. Luke and Ruby kept trying to persuade her to come out with them, but she still couldn’t face seeing anyone.

‘Get your lazy arse out of there,’ Luke said, whipping the duvet off her head. ‘You’ve got songs to write. I’ve set up my computer so you’ve got your own log in.’

‘No, I can’t do it any more,’ Crystal groaned, trying to pull the duvet back over herself.

‘Yes, you bloody can! But before you get started, I’m making you breakfast. You’re making yourself ill with all this smoking and drinking. You’ve got to stop.’

It was a complete role reversal – in the past Crystal had always been the one looking out for Luke, getting him up in the morning, making sure he had breakfast before he went to school, being like a parent. Part of her wanted to protest that she’d always been the strong one and didn’t need him. But she knew she could do with being looked after. She felt emotionally battered after the events of the last few weeks.

And so she dragged herself out of bed, showered and for the first time since she’d arrived at the flat got dressed in something other than her black Juicy Couture tracksuit. She put on a denim mini skirt, which practically slid down her hips because she hadn’t been eating, and a black jumper, but she couldn’t be bothered putting on any make-up. She could barely bring herself to look at the pale girl in the mirror, with dark shadows under her eyes. She wandered into the kitchen where Luke was busy chopping up fruit.

‘Right, sit down, I’ve made you a fruit smoothie and you can have croissants, cereal and fruit salad.’

‘I’ll never be able to eat all that!’ Crystal protested.

‘Start with the smoothie and then see what you feel like. I’ve got to build you up,’ he said, hugging her. ‘You’ve lost too much weight.’

‘Thanks, Luke,’ Crystal whispered, willing herself not to cry. In the end she only managed the smoothie and a croissant but she did feel better for it. And then to please Luke she sat down at the computer for most of the afternoon. At first she put off writing, looking instead at Jake’s website which had several pictures of him and an audio download of him talking about his work.

Jake, where are you now?
she wondered,
Are you thinking about me?
And then she found herself writing the lyrics to a song about losing the love of your life. As she thought about Jake, the words poured out of her.

It had been one week and three days since she last saw him.
Had he already met someone else
, she hated the thought of him with another woman. She could just imagine how happy Stella would be at the news of their split. Oh my God, perhaps she’d made a move on him already? On top of the heartbreak she felt, Crystal suddenly experienced such a violent rush of jealousy that she thought she’d be physically sick. She got up from the desk and paced round the bedroom, ending up at the window, staring out at the slate-grey, forbidding sea. The weather was miserable, overcast skies, and a bitingly cold wind, as if in tune with Crystal’s mood. But staying in all the time and obsessing about Jake was doing her head in. She was fearful of going out in case she got spotted and she didn’t think she was strong enough to deal with the whole media circus again. She rummaged in her suitcase and found a baseball cap and, putting it on, she looked at herself in the mirror. No, that just looked ridiculous, like she was trying to hide her face, and she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself. She drew her long hair back into a ponytail and then had an idea.

She wandered into the living room where Luke’s girlfriend, Ruby, was drinking beer and chilling out after a long day at the hairdressing salon where she worked. Ruby was nineteen, pretty, feisty and changed the colour and style of her hair every other month. This month she’d taken to wearing her flaming red hair in plaits.

‘Ruby, will you cut my hair for me?’ Crystal asked, flopping down next to her on the sofa.

‘Sure, I’ll give it a trim; it doesn’t look as if it needs much taken off,’ Ruby replied.

‘No, I want you to cut it all off,’ Crystal said. ‘I want it really short.’

Ruby shook her head, ‘No way – you’d be gutted if I did
that. And what about that video you’ve got to film for the last single?’

‘I’ll wear a wig,’ Crystal answered.

‘It’s a really bad idea to do anything that drastic to your hair when you’re feeling down,’ Ruby said sympathetically. ’We’re always getting women in who want to do something radical with their hair after a break-up and nine times out of ten I guarantee they regret it, especially if they’ve got long hair like yours.’

Crystal sighed. ‘This isn’t about Jake, I just want to be able to go out and not get recognised.’

Ruby seemed to consider her request more seriously and she looked at Crystal as if weighing up the options. ‘What about a bob? I could cut it just below your jaw line, and give you a fringe. That would look different and at least if you hated it, it wouldn’t take too long to grow out.’

Crystal hesitated for just a moment. She’d always thought her long hair had been one of her best assets, then replied decisively, ‘Okay, let’s go for that.’

An hour later, after Ruby had finished cutting her hair, Crystal had a tough time pretending that she liked the new style, but as she’d begged Ruby to do it she didn’t want to hurt her feelings by letting on how she felt. She locked herself in the bathroom and studied her new hair. She thought she looked ugly and wanted to cry. She wanted to wallow in looking bad, reasoning that as everyone thought she was a bad person she may as well look crap. But however low she felt it wasn’t in her nature to keep being a victim so, instead of hiding away, she forced herself to put on some make-up, and to get changed into a short black skirt, a sexy, tight black cardigan, unbuttoned to show off some cleavage, and her black cowboy boots.

‘Come on,’ she called out to Ruby, ‘I’m taking you and Luke out for dinner. We’ll pick him up after football.’

She didn’t want to go anywhere flash, opting instead for an unpretentious Italian restaurant that had been open for years. She chose a table in the darkest part of the room and
made sure she had her back to the other diners. Luke and Ruby kept telling her how good she looked but Crystal shrugged off their compliments and drank just enough wine to stop her feeling paranoid about being recognised and to numb the pain she felt over Jake. The night was a success – she wasn’t spotted and that gave her confidence that she could go out. But her longing for Jake just grew more intense. Crystal felt that she was just going through the motions of living, but she had no purpose. She was drifting.

Luke’s gardening work had finished for the winter and to keep the money coming in he worked in a friend’s bar. Every morning he made Crystal come to the gym with him and in the afternoon he would go to the bar and Crystal would email her friends, write song lyrics – misery was apparently good inspiration, because the words really flowed – and try not to think about Jake. She knew from the emails she’d exchanged with Gavin that the two of them were working in Australia for the next month. There were so many times Crystal wanted to call Jake and beg him to listen to her explanation, beg him to come back to her. But she never did. Every night she slept with one of his T-shirts which still carried the faint scent of him and his aftershave. She felt lost without him, as if nothing in her life had meaning any more. Although they’d only been seeing each other for six months, Crystal knew in her heart that he was the one and that she’d never meet anyone like him again.

Dallas called her to let her know that he was adding an extra song to the album and that he needed her to record her part – separately, of course, from Belle and Tahlia. Crystal had sent Belle several text messages and a letter begging for her forgiveness, or at least asking her to understand that she was genuinely sorry for what had happened, but Belle hadn’t replied to any of them. Tahlia told her that Belle was still furious with her and couldn’t even bear to have Crystal’s name mentioned.

Belle had also sold a story to one of the celeb mags about how betrayed she had felt by Crystal and Max. Crystal came
out of it far worse than Max. Belle made out that they were best friends and had shared everything, when the truth was they had never really been close – not that that excused what Crystal had done. Belle’s story was another nail in the coffin for Crystal’s reputation. Then Dallas sent her the lyrics and music of the new song ‘Betrayal’, which was all about a girl who stole her best friend’s boyfriend. It didn’t take much to work out who had inspired that particular number.

‘So it’s not enough that every tabloid has printed stories about me being a bitch. Now I’ve got to sing about it as well!’ Crystal said to Tahlia during one of their daily phone calls. ‘I’m really tempted not to do it,’ she added.

‘You can’t, Crystal,’ Tahlia said quickly. ‘I already told Dallas that we shouldn’t sing it and he pulled out the contract – he has the final say on all the songs on our album.’

‘Fuck him,’ Crystal exclaimed. That was one piece of small print she hadn’t thought would matter when they signed up.

She spent the next few days rehearsing the song. In spite of the lyrics it felt good to be singing again but she missed being part of a group.

At the recording studio Phil, the producer who had worked with the Lost Angels from the beginning, was very sweet, telling her he thought all the press stuff about her had been a load of bollocks, but Crystal found it soul destroying having to sing on her own. She was gripped by the fear that this might be the last song she would ever record.

‘Don’t worry, Crystal,’ Phil reassured her, ‘you’ve got such a great voice, I’m sure if things don’t work out with Dallas someone else will want to sign you.’ Crystal wasn’t so sure – her phone hadn’t exactly been ringing off the hook with other record companies fighting to offer her a deal.

She’d been in Brighton for three weeks and had almost forgotten to be concerned about anyone spotting her. She made sure she always dressed down and swapped her designer shoes and clothes for Timberlands, jeans and a parka – the weather was too bad to wear anything else anyway – though
even on cloudy days she never went out without her sunglasses on. One morning she was wandering through the Lanes on her way to the gym when someone called out her name. Instantly she panicked; she spotted a photographer following her, his camera aimed directly at her. She didn’t know what possessed her but instead of ignoring him or slipping into a shop, she bolted. She ran as fast as she could but the photographer was still right behind. In her desperation to escape him, she rushed straight across a busy road without looking. She heard the screech of a car braking suddenly and felt a searing pain in her shoulder, then nothing.