Dream On (17 page)

He hoped Harley would, too, in time.

Janice wouldn't.

Ah, Janice. That was where everything became so
confusing. He still loved Janice with - no, he couldn't say 'with all his
heart', because he didn't, did he? Ariel was the one who consumed his thoughts,
his dreams, his lust. But his feelings for Janice ran so deep, deeper than he
could make her believe. He couldn't blame her, of course; how could you expect
a woman to believe you really loved her when you were screwing someone else
every possible chance you got?

He could see her point, where that was concerned.

"You know what happens, of course, don't you?" said
his mother, wiping cranberry sauce from her mouth with a paper napkin.

"What happens with what?"

"What happens to people who muck around. Men who keep
two women on the go, or women who do the same with two men. They end up
with no-one. You mark my words."

"Bit of a cliché, mum," said Dave.

"Clichés are born of truth," she said, and dusted
her hands together. "There, that's another one. Now, d'you want some
mince pies and cream? Only I've got to be at work in forty-five minutes."

"No, thanks, Ma, I'm stuffed," Dave said. "Are you getting
a cab?"

"Joe's coming to pick me up. What time are you going
round to Linda's?"

"Five-ish."

"Well, don't forget my presents for Janice and Harley.
They're on the coffee table."

"Right."

Dave felt flat. It didn't feel like Christmas Day;
his mum was off to work at the hospital (time and two thirds, she couldn't
afford not to), and Christmas dinner had been cooked by Marks and Spencer. Jingo
Joe was spending the day with his own family, thank God - Dave decided to be in
the loo when he arrived to take his mum to work. Soon, Mrs Bentley would be
gone, and he'd be all on his own in his childhood home, on Christmas Day.

Ah, maybe it wasn't so bad. He could hit the
whisky and watch a bit of telly. Text Ariel over in Chatteris (Clitoris) and
see if she was up for nipping into the bathroom with her phone so they could
have a bit of text sex. Yeah! The mere thought caused him to emit a mild
groan.

"Are you all right, dear?" Mrs Bentley asked. "Touch of
indigestion? Marks and Sparks were a bit over zealous with the brandy this
year, I thought; too much stuffing, that's what it'll be."

Janice knew Dave was quite drunk when he turned up
at her mother's, but, hey, it was Christmas Day, and he'd bought the bike that
Harley wanted so much; Harley was whizzing up and down the close on it right
now, in the dark, under the careful guidance of her mum's boyfriend, Graham.

"Another drink, Dave, love?" said Linda.

"Don't mind if I do," said Dave, reaching up to
accept the tumbler of whisky and dry ginger. Janice winced at the size of it;
people who didn't usually drink, like her mother, never had any idea how to
pour them. She remembered her grandmother, Evelyn, once giving them each a
glass of Bacardi and blackcurrant squash. That was before she had Alzheimer's,
too. Still, Dave hadn't complained then and he wasn't complaining now.

"Have you spent the day with Ariel?" she asked, aware
of the stupidly bright tone of her voice.

"No," said Dave, "the morning on my own, and then I had
lunch with Mum."

A wave of relief washed over her. Silly. "And
Jingo Joe?" she asked, grinning.

Dave laughed. "No, thank God; I was spared that!" He
looked at Janice. "You look really pretty today. Your hair's growing. Looks nice."

He'd noticed.

"Yeah. Thanks. I thought I'd grow it back, you
know, to how it used to be. In a bob."

"I loved it like that," Dave said. "Mind you, it doesn't
matter what I love, now, does it?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you'll be doing all that hair and make-up stuff
for some other bloke, soon, won't you?"

Janice thought of Psycho Tom, and didn't know
whether to laugh or cry. Her thoughts paused for a moment on Max, and then
drifted past him and back to Dave.

"Perhaps I'm just doing it for me."

Dave laughed. "Yeah. I reckon women do it all to
impress other women, really. Us blokes couldn't give a monkey's what you
wear. Little as possible, preferably."

Janice laughed, now. "Dave! Don't! You sound
like Shane!"

"Yes - that was a bit crass, wasn't it?"

She felt so happy, sitting there in the warm, cosy
room, snuggled up on the sofa with Dave; the ghost of Christmases past. Her
mum was in the kitchen getting the tea ready - not that anyone had any room for
mini sausage rolls and Tuc biscuits with hummus (Linda had only recently
discovered this delicacy, and pronounced it 'humus', to rhyme with 'human'). She
could hear Harley laughing outside with Grandpa Graham, as he called him; the
lights on the Christmas tree were twinkling, a Harry Potter film was on the
telly, and all was well with the world.

She wanted to freeze the moment and stay in it,
forever.

~~~ Christmas night ~~~

In South Tyneside, Chris 'Boz' Boswell sat in his
dad's flat in a high rise tower block and wondered how it was possible for
anyone to drink that much whisky without keeling over and
dying.
Fella
was still lucid, too.

In Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, Ritchie and Our
Pete were playing Monopoly for real money; Ritchie had just landed on Park Lane and lost the Christmas bonus from his last job.

Back home, Shane Cowley had escaped from his parents' house
after the tea time cold spread, and was now snoring gently in the arms of
Christmas Eve Kerry; she was wide awake and gazing at him in adoration.

No-one could make love to her like he just had if
he wasn't actually in love with her, could they? She gazed at the ceiling and
smiled; how wonderful it was going to be, to tell their children how they'd met,
how they'd bumped into each other in a pub on Christmas Eve, looked into each
others' eyes, and just
known.

Shane was the best looking bloke she'd ever been
out with - well, slept with - and he had a decent job in that plastics factory,
too. No, she wasn't letting this one slip through her fingers. No way.
Noooo
way!

In Marsham, a few miles outside Fennington St Mary,
Max Stark curled up with his dog, Sam, to watch 'The Godfather II' for the
seventh time, and wished he could have a drink.

Melodie Waters, soon to be Melodie Valentine, or
Melodie Joy, or just Melodie, was in her childhood bedroom at her mother's
house, applying a pore cleansing face mask, trying not to think about all the
chocolates and wine downstairs, and cursing local radio DJ Brendan Shanks for
giving her a love bite on her neck. She cursed herself, too.  She must have
imbibed about eight hundred calories worth of wine the night before, but it
seemed that the whole
bucket
of sauvignon blanc had gone not to her hips
but straight to her head, as she'd had virtually nothing to eat all day. She
had scant memories about the latter end of the evening; damn, what was the
point of going to bed with a hunk like Brendan Shanks if you couldn't remember
the effect of your performance? At the beginning of the evening her idea had
just been to chat him up a bit, get him to mention Raw Talent on his show. But
then the wine had started doing its work, and he was so super fit, after all,
that she'd decided to break her rule about not sleeping with a man unless he'd
taken her out and spent money on her first. Might as well not have bothered -
grrr!

In a way, the fact that she'd gone to bed with a
man in a drunken stupor was even more annoying than the wine calories. That
just wasn't her style, was it? Melodie Joy Valentine (yes,
that
was the
right name!) just didn't
do
that sort of thing, did she? And, worse
still, she'd
fallen asleep with her make-up on!
Dear oh dear, she could
almost
feel
her pores clogging, just thinking about it!

In a house in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, everyone
but Ariel was watching some blockbuster film on television. Her dad had been
fine about her bringing her guitar with her (Pam less so), and she was sitting
in a room upstairs, picking out the chords of a new song that had been taking
shape for the last couple of days; she'd been eager to spend time alone with it. The song was about the need to be free to go where she wanted, do what she
wanted, without feeling responsible for the emotions of other people - even if
that meant she was sometimes lonely, or might even end up alone. A thrill
rushed through her as she strummed her guitar and sang out loud the lyrics that
swirled around her head; this was even better than sex. Even better than sex
with Dave.

At Linda Brown's house in Fennington St Mary, Dave
Bentley was asleep on the sofa with Harley curled up on his lap. Janice was
wide awake, her legs across Dave's, just like they always used to sit together. When she looked at her son and his father a strange melancholy washed over
her. Might this be the last Christmas they would spend like this? What if
Thor won that talent contest, the one he'd been telling her about earlier? What if they became famous, a proper successful rock band, and ended up in London, New York, LA, international superstars?

Maybe Ariel would win it, instead, and she would be
the one to up sticks and leave, for a bright new world.

Janice felt as though she was clutching onto the
end of something, like the last day of a lovely holiday, or the sunset at the
close of a perfect day.

Drink, she shouldn't drink. It always made her
think such silly stuff.

The second Saturday morning of 2008 was freezing,
dark, dank and miserable; the cold was the sort, Janice thought, as she looked
out of the window of the Sunrise Café, that crept into your bones. The sort
that Evelyn used to moan about; said it played merry hell with her arthritis. It
was the sort of day when, rather than be at work, she would have been quite
happy curled up at home with Harley, having a pyjamas and DVD day - but, despite
this, her mood was oddly bright.

"D'you want to wait tables or do the till today?"
asked Lisa, the other waitress, flopping down in a chair. "Eight o-bloody-clock
in the morning; what time is that to start work on a Saturday, eh?"

Janice grinned at her; Lisa always had a hangover
on Saturday mornings. "Your choice," she said.

"I bagsy the till then," said Lisa. "At least if we're
quiet I'll be able to sit down and read the paper, preferably with an
intravenous coffee drip."

"Oh no, you won't," said Max, coming through the
front door with two carrier bags filled with loaves of bread from the Tesco
Local round the corner. "The big fridge needs cleaning out, and all the sauce
bottles want filling up. Come on, sweetie, chop chop." He turned the door
sign round to 'open'.

"Let me have coffee first," said Lisa. She winked
at Janice. "Any chance of a bacon and egg sandwich before the rush starts, Max? Pretty please?"

Max grinned. "I'll make you both one. Janice?"

"Yes please!" She hadn't even had time for a cup
of coffee that morning before she took Harley round to her mother's. Max
smiled at her, and she felt another, strange little warm flutter of something
very pleasant that she couldn't quite define. Although she'd been working for
Max for a year, now, she'd sensed a strange, new intimacy with him since she'd
poured out her problems with Dave, and since he'd arrived on his white charger to
rescue her from that awful date with Psycho Tom. Max had become a true friend,
now, and you could never have too many of them, could you?

Inside the Sunrise café the atmosphere was warm and
cheerful; three painter and decorators came in first, ordering the Belly Buster
breakfast to set them up for the day, then there were a couple of early morning
shoppers wanting tea and sausage sandwiches, a pensioner or two for a toasted
tea cake. Janice chatted away to them all, hoping her mood wouldn't plummet as
the day drew on and she faced another Saturday evening at home, alone, with
only the television and MySpace for company - though MySpace had lost its
appeal, somewhat, since the Tom incident.

It was the New Year, that was what it was. New
years signalled new beginnings and the possibilities of new friends, new
adventures - even new lovers, who could tell? Janice always felt glad when
Christmas was over and she could wipe clean the slate of the last year and
begin anew.  She and Harley both had their birthdays in late January - she
liked that they were both friendly, forward looking Aquarians; she was glad her
son was not a head in the clouds dreamer like his Piscean father.

Janice knew she would not see Dave that weekend. On Sunday he would go down to London with the rest of the band, Ariel, and that
ghastly airhead Melodie Waters who had, apparently, decided she was the missing
Pussycat Doll, or something. Dave would be busy preparing for the auditions
all Saturday; she felt relaxed, knowing she wouldn't see him, not on
tenterhooks as she usually was at the weekend, wondering if and hoping he was
going to turn up without warning. This feeling of relief made her consider
that she might, in fact, be becoming resigned to her and Dave being a thing of
the past.  

Janice had always prided herself on being
practical; now, as she cut and buttered the mound of bread to go with the Belly
Buster breakfasts, she wondered if that practicality was helping her to say,
okay, this hurts, but I need to get over it. It hurts now, but it won't
always, and every day that passes is a day nearer to it not hurting anymore. Okay,
I can't be with Dave, so what am I going to do next?