Dream On (14 page)

"Mm."

"I was quite shocked."

"Yeah. It varies; the deterioration's not a gradual
slope, like I thought it would be. Sometimes she seems more switched on
than others."

"It must - well, it must be so upsetting when she doesn't
know who you are. I mean, it got to me a bit, and I'm not even her flesh and
blood."

Janice sighed. "It's okay for me. It's Mum who feels
it the most."

Dave took his left hand off the steering wheel and
stroked her thigh in a way that was comforting rather than sexual; it felt
wonderful, just the same.

"I'm sorry, Jan."

"What for?"

"Oh, everything. You know."

"Yeah." She looked back at Harley, who was sound
asleep in his seat in the back. "You and Ariel, then, is it the big romance?"

"Stop it, Janice."

"Well, is it?"

"No," he said, looking into the wing mirror as he changed
lanes. "It's just - oh I dunno. It's just a thing. I mean, she
isn't my girlfriend. Not really."

"Do you wish she was?"

Silence.

"I'll take that as a yes, then."

They turned into Greyfriars Estate. "I don't think
we should be talking about it, that's all," he said.

"Well, you've changed your tune. You wanted to, the
other week."

"Yeah, well - look, Jan, you did chuck me out, you know. It wasn't very easy for me, at the time. It was pretty shit, actually."

"Mm. Well, it was pretty shit for me before you went. When I was the one keeping everything together and you were doing your drunken
depressed self-indulgent bit."

"Yes, but we'd already got through that by the time you
told me to go."

"In
your
head, maybe."

They reached number twenty-seven, Woodstock Close. Dave stopped the car, and Janice burst into tears.

For a moment he just sat there and let her cry. Then he
took her hand.

"What's up, babe?" he asked her, quite gently.

"Oh, what do you think is
up
?" she hissed at
him, between sobs, as quietly as she could so that Harley didn't wake. "Gran's
turning into a vegetable, I miss her so much, it's like she's already gone - and
I'm all on my own, I never have any fun, and just when I think you're going to
start acting like a grown up man and give us a bit of support, you start all
this stupid band stuff up again, and get yourself a new girlfriend, and we
hardly ever see you."

"I'm sorry." He sounded helpless.

She hated how pathetic she sounded. Dependent. She
never wanted to seem pathetic and dependent.

"Oh, just ignore me," she said, and wiped her
eyes. "You're right, I chucked you out, and apart from you seeing Harley
there's absolutely no reason why you should come round at all. It's up to me
to make my life better, isn't it? We're not together anymore - I saw to that,
didn't I?" She knew how angry and bitter she sounded, now, but she couldn't
help herself. "Did you know Ariel came round to see me?"

He looked up. "Did she?" Ah, yes, that had
sparked his interest. "What happened?"

"Nothing much. We just talked. She's very nice. I liked her. I can see why you're in love with her. And she's so
fucking pretty I want to smash her perfect little face in!"

"Janice!" She could tell he was shocked. She
never, ever swore in front of Harley.

"He's asleep," she said, and opened the car door. "Bring
him in for me, will you? Then you can be getting off to do whatever you'd
rather be doing."

She stormed up the garden path and into the house, flinging
the door open, closely followed by Dave, with his sleeping son in his arms.

"Do you want me to stay a while?" Dave asked,
putting Harley down on the sofa with exaggerated care and following her out into
the kitchen, where she leant against the sink, tears rolling down her face. "I'll stay all evening, if you like. I'm not due anywhere."

"No," she said. "I want you to go. It makes it
worse when you're here." She was reminded of a song she'd liked when she
was young teenager.
Why do you come here, when you know it makes it hard for
me when you go?
It was funny; she'd known even then what that feeling would
be like, even though, of course, she'd never been in love, not then. And now
she was living that feeling, in all its glory.

Had her intuition told her that it was her destiny
to know heartache better than happiness?

After he'd gone she worked out some of her pain and
anger by sheer physical effort - getting the step ladder out to go up into the
attic and find the Christmas tree and its decorations. Harley wanted to help,
of course, and that made her want to cry all over again, because it was something
they should enjoy doing together, all three of them, but now, of course, they
were just two, and she felt so ratty and agitated that she had to make a real
effort not to keep snapping at her son.

They'd just put the star on the top of the tree
when a tell-tale cramp in her lower stomach told her that her period had just
started; of course, she had PMT. That was why everything had seemed so much
worse than usual these last few days. Knowing that was a very slight comfort. The trouble with bloody PMT, though, was that although you knew it would pass,
that knowledge didn't stop you wanting to break windows while it was happening.

She didn't feel calm again until Harley was in bed and
she'd languished in the bath for half an hour; then, wrapped up in her fluffy
white dressing gown, she poured herself a large glass of wine (this was getting
to be a habit!) and sat down at the laptop.

MySpace.

Ooh - another message from Tom!

'Hi there,'
he wrote,
'I hoped you'd be online earlier, but maybe you're out. Have
you had an okay weekend? Is it back to the grind tomorrow, or have you been
working in the café all weekend? I haven't done much Went to see a Whitesnake
tribute band last night with a couple of mates. Pretty good. They were called
Dale's Covers, should you ever come across them! Good name, isn't it?! Hope to hear from you soon. Best, Tom x'

Oh, a kiss! He hadn't put a kiss at the end of a
message before!

Janice took a sip of her wine and started to reply.

'Hi Tom, lovely to hear from you! No, I haven't
done much this weekend - you know I don't get out much, it's so hard. My mother
has a better social life than I do! I can get her to babysit sometimes but
she's often out and about with the new man in her life.

Yes, work tomorrow - not 'til noon, though, thank
goodness! I haven't started to think about Christmas properly, yet. That's
bad, isn't it? It's only two weeks away.
She was about to mention something about Christmas trees and getting
presents for Harley's stocking, but stopped - mustn't sound too domestic; that
was hardly alluring, was it? She didn't even know if Tom had children himself. Come to think of it, she didn't know much about him at all, only that he liked
Whitesnake and chatting to her.

She refilled her glass, and thought for a moment. What
did Tom do for a living? Oh, yes, that was it. He was an estate agent. Probably the sort of person Dave and Shane would consider too 'straight' for
words.

'... well, I hope your Monday morning isn't too Monday
morning-ish, and that you sell lots of houses! Love, Janice -

(Should she? Yes, why not?)

Love, Janice x '  

She went out to the kitchen to pack Harley's lunch
box for the morning - apple, yogurt, cereal bars, fruit juice carton, cheese
slices. When she returned to the laptop, Tom had replied.

'I was thinking; d'you fancy meeting up some time? I'm quite near you, after all - I like talking to you on here, and I wondered
if you'd do me the honour of letting me take you out some time? I'm free on
Thursday night, if that's okay with you. You mentioned babysitters - this is enough
notice, isn't it? You choose a restaurant you like and I'll drive over, book a
hotel room for the night so I don't have to do the first date sober, ha ha, and
we could have dinner together, how about that?'

Hell, yes! In a moment, the world seemed like a
much better place. An attractive man wanted to meet her, take her out - all on
the basis of one photograph on her MySpace page, and about ten short
messages.  There, Dave Bentley, what do you think of that, eh?

They made arrangements, Janice choosing Angelo's
Italian restaurant in the town centre - Dave had taken her there on her
birthday, a couple of years before, and she'd loved it; apart from the food,
the place had a delightfully relaxed, intimate atmosphere. She'd find a
babysitter if she had to pay them double, quadruple, even - this was one date
she most certainly was
not
going to miss!

After they'd said goodnight, Janice clicked onto
Thor's profile page.

Lots of new fans. Several people commenting how
great their last gig had been. The music was on there now, at last; it was
funny to hear Dave's voice singing those words about the Viking warrior leaving
his wife and child. She'd thought, at the time, that the song had been about
her, but maybe she'd just been flattering herself.

The music was now available to download, she read,
five original Thor songs, penned by Dave Bentley, and produced by KelvinSound,
whatever that was. Or you could buy a CD. Dave hadn't even told her they were
doing a CD. She didn't know when they'd done it, or where. She knew so little
about his life, these days.

She clicked onto Ariel Swan, next. Nothing much on
there - but, oh, look - she had her songs on her page, too, now. Perhaps
they'd been to record them together, Ariel and the boys. Cosy.

Janice browsed around, studying this page and that,
listening to another song by Thor, looking at photographs, trying not to scour
Ariel's profile for things that would upset her even more (loving comments from
Dave, perhaps?). She almost clicked on to listen to a song of hers called
'Grey', but decided against doing so, just in time.

No doubt Alison bloody Swan was a wonderful singer,
too, and could write fabulous songs.

She knew she couldn't bear that.

She looked at the photos of her, instead.

She couldn't help it; she tried really hard not to
because it was like torturing herself, but every time she looked at that
pretty-pretty face she found herself imagining those lush, pouty lips around
Dave's cock.

No doubt Dave did exactly the same.

They'd gathered in the back room of The Bandstand
public house; Melodie, Ariel and Thor.

"I've lost four pounds already!" Melodie shouted in
Ariel's ear, as Thor reached the crescendo of 'Flying High' which, Ariel had to
agree with Ritchie, did sound quite a lot like 'Freebird'.

"Well done," said Ariel. She knew she was supposed
to congratulate this feat, but Melodie had a pretty fantastic figure anyway -
she'd achieved the impossible: a sylph like body with enormous tits. Ariel
looked down, for a moment, at her own thirty-four As, and wondered if she ought
to have a boob job, as Melodie had done a few years back. Somehow, though, the
thought of having bags of
alien matter
actually inserted
inside her
body
terrified the hell out of her.

The song drew to an end and Dave leapt down from the stage.

"So, what do you think?" he asked Ariel and
Melodie. "Is that the one we do for the audition, then?"

Band practice was now geared towards preparation
for Raw Talent only; it wasn't necessary to do gigs all over Christmas and New
Year, Boz said, because everyone would be too busy sicking up turkey sandwiches
over the relatives they only saw once a year, to come and see them.

"It was fabulous!" said Melodie, and clapped her hands.

"Do you want my honest opinion, or do you want me
to tell you how great you are?" Ariel asked.

"The former," said Ritchie, walking over to join them.

"Okay." Ariel thought for a moment. "Try that
power ballad. You know, the one about the Viking leaving his wife and child. The words are good.
You sing it with emotion, too."
About Janice and Harley.
"I reckon for the first audition you'll do better singing something that
showcases Dave's voice and song writing skills -
and
it's got that great
guitar solo that Shane does, too."

"Yeah, she's right, your Mrs," said Ritchie.

"I am indeed, although I'd rather you didn't refer to me as
'Dave's Mrs'," said Ariel.
Oh, stop looking so offended, Dave.
"Yeah, I didn't realise Shane was such a good guitarist until I heard that."

Melodie beamed round at them all. "I think you're all just
brilliant!"

"Thanks," said Dave, and smiled at her. "You never know,
the judges might all be like Melodie!"

"You can forget that," Boz called from the stage,
scratching his ear with a drumstick. "They'll be looking for things
not
to like, like all A&R men."

Shane leant on the microphone stand. "So, d'you want us to
run through 'Cross The Sea' now, then? Or is someone else going to have a
go next? Ariel?"

"Yeah - yeah, okay," She reached for her guitar
case. "Unless you want to go first, Mel?"

"Oh, no, you go next!" Melodie said. "I haven't made up my
mind what to sing yet!"

"What are the choices?" said Dave. "Maybe we can help
-
it's good if we all give each other a bit of direction, isn't it?"

"Yeah, our Pete calls it 'bouncing some ideas
around'," Ritchie said. "Unless you're going to do a Whitney Houston or a
Mariah Carey, Mel, like every other female talent show contestant in the world,
ever, in which case you can get someone else to listen to you."

Melodie went pink underneath her fake tan. "Oh. I
was going to do 'I will always love you.'"

"I wouldn't," Ariel said. "Your voice isn't big enough. No, don't look at me like that, I'm not being bitchy; mine isn't either! I'd do - oh, maybe a Christine Aguilera, or Pink, something more contemporary."