Limbo (32 page)

‘Hi,’ she said scooting up the aisle to meet them in between auditions. Katie gave her a hug and Eve gave her a warm smile.

‘Did you guys come to watch?’ she asked.

Eve nodded. ‘Also here to support Jasmine.’

Joy turned to the blonde. ‘Hi, you must be Jasmine. I’m Joy,’ she said, sticking out her hand to the woman who regarded it with open suspicion then ignored it.

Joy dropped her hand awkwardly. ‘Eve tells me you have the voice of an angel.’

Jasmine looked at her feet. ‘It’s okay I suppose.’

‘There’s soup and tea and coffee over there,’ Joy said. ‘Help yourself then come and find a seat somewhere near the front.’

A tiny little set to Jasmine’s jaw told Joy she resented the charity, but she had to be freezing her ass off in an outfit that was more fashion than warmth, and good sense won over as she huffed off towards the food, clicking on the black-and-white mosaic tiles in red patent stilettoes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Eve grimaced. ‘She was keen to come yesterday. I think she’d afraid of failing. She’s so used to feeling like a screw-up.’

Joy shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. It’s fine.’ She looked at Katie. ‘Where’s dad?’

She’d gone with Dash yesterday and played lookout while he’d searched Gerry’s place and he’d been in a mood the entire time. She hadn’t asked what it was about because she’d been pretty damn sure it involved the phone conversation from the previous night and their verbal tussle over what she’d been wearing.

Or, more accurately, hadn’t been wearing.

The mood had only worsened after he’d returned to the car empty handed and they’d barely spoken to each other as he’d dropped her straight home afterwards.

Joy was starting to feel desperate about the Isabella situation. What if she was never found? She’d been waiting to hear from Dash all day today. He was supposed to be ringing Jean if he hadn’t heard from her and then getting straight back to Joy.

‘He was on the computer,’ Katie said.

‘Some research or other I gathered,’ Eve added. ‘He was pretty engrossed in it. Thought I’d rescue Katie from it for a while. Hope that was alright?’

‘Of course.’ Joy looked down at Katie, although she wasn’t sure how much longer she was going to be able to do that for. Katie had her father’s height. ‘You want to sit down the front next to me?’

Katie, who had been looking around at the massive vaulted ceiling and towering columns of the church, nodded shyly. ‘If that’s okay?’

Joy smiled. ‘Absolutely. Follow me.’ She put an arm around the skinny shoulders and the three of them walked to the front pew where Lance was sitting. Jasmine was sitting a few pews back.

He looked up at them and smiled as he was introduced. ‘Ready for the next one?’

‘Sure.’

The next six people who auditioned could all sing. Some were quite good, others could hold a reasonable tune and Joy was happy they didn’t have to turn anyone away because they sounded like a strangled cat. But then she guessed it took a lot for people who were this down on their luck to put themselves out there. After all, they were pretty much society’s invisible people. They’d learned
not
to draw attention to themselves. It took courage for them to step forward and do this. These weren’t the kind of people who wasted anyone’s time.

They weren’t pampered, indulged kids who’d never had someone tell them they couldn’t sing a lick. They were here because they
could
and they knew it but somewhere along the way their voices has been lost amid the despair of their lives.

Jasmine was the last one, and Joy could feel Eve tense beside her as the angry young woman clicked her way up the aisle and stood defiantly in front of everyone. Her belligerent amber gaze dared anyone to say a word, to tell her she couldn’t be here. Her eyes look about a hundred years old, but in reality she couldn’t have been much older than twenty.

‘So, what are you going to sing, Jasmine?’ she asked.

Jasmine tossed her blonde hair and glared. ‘Skinny Love.’

Joy tensed a little herself. If she
could s
ing like an angel, that song would be something else soaring up to the ceiling. ‘Great,’ she smiled. ‘When you’re ready.’

Jasmine shook out her hands and wiggled her shoulders a little then took a couple of deep breaths before she opened her mouth and sang.

‘Holy fuck,’ Lance whispered.

The whole gathering stopped and stared as Jasmine’s defences dropped away and she got lost in the song. She became someone else, the real Jasmine, as she stood before them and bled the broken song all over the floor and walls, the high notes haemorrhaging all over the ceiling.

She did have a voice like an angel. It was sublime.

Joy already knew she wanted to blend Jasmine’s voice with Margery’s and Robert’s to kick choir ass.

As soon as she finished Katie sprang to her feet and clapped like crazy. Everyone else followed suit and it was a full minute before anyone eased up. Joy watched as Jasmine came out of the almost trancelike state she’d been in as she’d sung, blinking in slight confusion. A range of emotions flitted across her face from the raw and real to the hard and cynical as she slowly came back to the moment.

By the time everyone had resumed their seats, she looked defiant and annoyed again, a scowl firmly in place. Joy figured Jasmine was used to playing her cards close to her chest and this whole experience had exposed more of her than she ever allowed.

‘Thank you Jasmine,’ Joy said. ‘That was…awesome.’

Jasmine looked momentarily surprised by the compliment but the scowl was soon firmly back in place as she tottered to her pew.

Lance stood up, thanking everyone and letting them know they’d all succeeded before moving on to discuss a twice-weekly practice schedule. The auditions wrapped up after that and people started to leave.

‘Did you like that?’ Joy asked Katie.

‘It was
awesome.’

‘You’ll have to come and see —’

Joy was cut off by Jasmine, who had approached and didn’t wait for a gap in the conversation to announce to Eve, ‘I have to go now. Dougy wants me on again at seven.’

Eve nodded. ‘Okay. Be careful out there.’

The younger woman nodded stiffly and, barely acknowledging Joy or a fascinated Katie, she turned on her heel.

‘See you next week at practise?’ Joy called after her.

‘Whatever,’ she threw over her shoulder then practically bolted down the aisle.

‘She’ll be at practise,’ Eve murmured. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’

Joy shrugged. ‘We can’t force her.’

All three of them watched as Jasmine’s heels tapped their way out of the church and she disappeared from sight.

‘Well…guess we’d better be getting back,’ Eve said to Katie. ‘Gotta go to work in an hour.’

‘Oh, can you hang on a minute?’ Joy asked. ‘I’ll walk back with you.’

It was only a fifteen-minute walk but the company would be nice and she needed to talk to Dash. She also wasn’t above using Katie and Eve as a buffer when she did. She might not feel so much like putting her hands on him in front of his daughter and someone she was fairly certain was probably his lover. Or ex-lover. Or some sort of fuck buddy anyway.

‘Sure.’

Joy had a quick chat with Lance and they were walking out the door five minutes later into the bracing night. Katie pulled out her iPod and shoved her earbuds in, which left Eve and Joy making small talk about the choir and Jasmine.

‘A voice like that…’ Joy shook her head. ‘She should be signing on the dotted line with Sony, not hooking on street corners.’

‘Yes,’ Eve nodded. ‘But that needs the kind of confidence that usually only comes from a loving family and a supportive home. When you’re told all your life that you’re useless and worthless and won’t end up as anything, that’s what you tend to believe.’

Joy nodded. It was hard to think of tough, scowly, red-stiletto Jasmine as anything
but
confident. It was also hard to think of Eve that way, although from the conviction in her voice she
clearly
knew what she was talking about.

Eve’s phone rang, interrupting their conversation. She sighed as she fished it out of her Jag handbag and looked at it. ‘Sorry, do you mind? I have to get this.’

‘Nope.’ Joy shook her head, sinking her hands into the warmth of her pockets as she tried not to listen to the one-sided conversation.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tom.’

Tom? That was Eve’s ex, right?

‘You need to stop this.’

Joy looked around her as they walked, feigning interest in anything and everything; even the graffiti that usually annoyed the crap out of her was suddenly endlessly fascinating.

‘God…Tom…doesn’t all this
go away come back
make you dizzy?’

The defeat in Eve’s voice cut right through the music she was humming in her head. It sounded so tired. She knew how that felt. To be so tired of the fight.

‘Fine…I’m hanging up now.’

Eve smiled apologetically at Joy as she threw her phone into the bag. ‘Sorry,’ she grimaced. ‘That was my ex.’

Joy waved her hand, dismissing the apology. ‘It’s fine.’

‘God.’ Eve shoved a hand through her blonde tresses. ‘He can be such a…giant pain in the ass.’

‘Does he disapprove of what you…of Eve’s?’

‘No.’ Eve shook her head. ‘Well…not really. He knows all about my past and he knows I don’t…provide any personal services. He just can’t get past what happened…like it’s any easier for me,’ she muttered.

Joy guessed this was her cue to ask what
had
happened. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But she figured it was probably rude to ignore the blatant opening and sometimes it was easier to talk to someone who didn’t know you really well.

‘What
did
happen?’

Eve sighed. ‘My husband, my
ex
-husband…Tom,’ her voice softened on his name, ‘he…accidentally ran over our three-year-old son in our driveway and killed him.’

Joy couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped from her throat. She hadn’t been expecting that. She’d been expecting the usual suspects. Other women, money, jealousy, lack of sex, lack of trust, lack of time. Drugs…

But not this. ‘I’m so…sorry,’ Joy said. She didn’t realise she’d reached out and grabbed Eve’s arm until Eve’s warm hand patted and squeezed hers.

‘Thank you.’

Joy dropped her hand. ‘I had no idea.’

She shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago now.’

‘That must be very hard to live with.’

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, as she stared straight ahead. ‘Benny adored Tom. Followed him everywhere like a little puppy…’ She shook her head. ‘It was as much my fault as his. I thought Benny was watching the television but he followed his father out the house that day…’

Joy felt the air get chillier as she imagined just how it must have gone down.

‘He’s never forgiven himself. It just
eats
him up. It destroyed our marriage and it’s slowly destroying him and he won’t see somebody about it because he hates himself. He thinks that the nightmares and the unrelenting pain he feels are his punishment. He doesn’t want them to go away. He welcomes them because that way he’s never going to forget that he killed his own child. He loves me, he wants me back, but he refuses to let himself be happy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Joy said again because she didn’t know what else to say. How did anybody survive something so awful?

Eve shook her head and shoulders out and inhaled deeply a couple of times. ‘It’s fine. Ignore me getting all deep. We all have our wounds to bear, right?’ she said, and looked straight at Joy like she could see every mortal gash Chris had inflicted and understood all of them.

‘Yes,’ Joy murmured. Because there was nothing else to say to that either.

***

Eve left Katie in Joy’s hands as she headed into her apartment and Joy and Katie continued on a few meters to Dash’s. He looked up from the computer, coffee in hand when they opened the door. Joy felt his quick once-over right down to her toes before he turned his attention to Katie, who was pulling out her earbuds.

‘Hey, he said smiling at her, his dimples bling-blinging. ‘How was it?’

Katie filled him in on everything but mainly raved about Jasmine. He listened closely as Joy headed for the coffee pot. He was way too attractive when he played the attentive dad. There was just something about the way he looked at his daughter, like she was more precious than his own breath, that made her want to jump him on the spot.

Considering not that long ago she’d considered him ugly-handsome at best, it was a rather extreme reaction. In fact, the longer she hung around Dash Dent, the more she knew about him, the better he looked.

Maybe the sudden urge to do him right in front of his daughter was a consequence of hearing Eve’s tragic story just now. But probably not. Dads, she decided,
single dads like Dash,
were just plain old bone-able. Rocker dudes had their place in every girl’s rub reel but the lifestyle was not conducive to a real relationship.

Dads could be hot
and d
ependable even if they were completely off-limits.

Which was why she was definitely way better off with her back to him near the coffee pot.

Joy reached for it and poured herself a cup as Katie’s chatter continued, grateful for the heat warming her cold hands. She glanced down at the fish bowl, noticing it was covered again, and shook her head. Dash ought to think about entering them into the Guinness Book of Records.

The pervy version.

Katie eventually ran out of steam and then asked permission to have some ice cream.

‘Sure,’ Dash said. ‘But make sure you leave me some.’

Joy watched her go. How Katie could eat the cold confection in winter she had no idea. The only way Joy would contemplate it was if it was pooled in warm puddles on a hot male body.

She looked down at the back of Dash’s head and decided she was way too close for comfort, especially with the constant buzz of Katie no longer filling up the spaces. She moved back around to the front of his desk and sat in the chair.

They sipped their coffees for a moment, regarding each other steadily over the rims of their mugs. Noise in the background indicated that Katie had switched on the television.