Rockoholic (38 page)

Three Months Later

“Jody, can you nip down to Waitrose and get some more hot dogs?”

“Yeah, in a minute,” I call back. Me and Mac are sitting on the sofa, holding hands and watching TV. The latest boy band, FOS, are on
MTV Newbies
talking about their latest single and there’s like a million girls outside the TV studio screaming for them and holding up placards.

“We’re just so blessed to have such great fans,” says one of them and waves through the glass window behind at all the fans lined up outside the building screaming and tearing their faces off, but they can’t hear him. The others turn around and make stupid faces at them every so often and lift up their shirts to show their washboard stomachs. The girls are in meltdown but can get no closer.

“It’s such a big joke to them,” I say. “And before you say ‘don’t take it so personally,’ I can say that because I
have
been there. I
do
know what I’m talking about, as you well know. Can I look at the picture again, just once more, then you can delete it.”

He shifts over and removes his phone from his back pocket and rubs the screen to find the picture. Then he hands it to me. I stare at it, the picture of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named — that’s what we call him now — with Cree on his lap at the Italian Market. Cree’s beaming, as cute as a little apricot, but I can barely see his face under his baseball cap. I still like looking at it.

“You can delete it now.”

“Sure?”

“No. But you probably should.”

“I’ll keep it, it’s fine. It’s a nice one of Cree.”

Mac lies himself down with his head on my lap, his feet dangling over the edge of the sofa. “You’re my groupie now, aren’t you?”

I lean over and kiss him on the mouth. He’s so warm to kiss, warm and soft. I could spend whole days kissing him. The only thing I used to kiss before him was the cold moon rock, for luck, or a wall poster. Both were always freezing cold. I ended up giving the moon rock to Halley. I had to. I kept losing it. It brought me nothing but trouble, but it made her so happy. She keeps it on a little stand on her windowsill. Every time I walk past her bedroom and see it, I remember Grandad as I should, and I remember how much he loved both of us, me and Halley. And how much we both still miss him. Halley bailed me out over Dinkley in the end, too, when Dinkley came to our house the day after
Rocky Horror
. She brought the police with her.

She beat me! She beat me and tied me up with her feather boa and she locked me in the toilet. And she had him with her, Jackson Gatlin. I’m telling you, she did! Why does no one believe me?! She kidnapped him. She must have!

Halley said I was with her the night of the show. She thought Dinkley was an old school enemy bearing a grudge and that I was nursing an injured duck in the garage. Turns out, she went in the garage on the night of
Rocky Horror
to take the duck some bread, but it had gone. She thought a fox had killed it so she tidied up the feathers to spare my feelings. The moment Dinkley presented the empty drum room to the policemen was priceless. It’ll stay with me forever, if I can fit it in. There are so many priceless memories in my head, I’m not sure there’ll be enough room.

I trace my fingers up and down the sides of Mac’s nose. He loves it when I do that.

“You look nice today,” he mumbles. “Lemon suits you.”

“Don’t you start. You’re worse than Mum. ‘Nice to see you in something other than black for a change,’” I say in my best whiney Mum voice.

Mac chuckles. “You always look gorgeous to me, Presh. Lemon, lime, candy-striped.”

I smile. “You’ve changed your tune. A few months ago you’d have done anything to
Project Runway
me into something fashionable.”

“Yeah, well, tunes change,” he says, leaning his face up toward mine for another kiss. “You all right today?”

“Yeah,” I shrug, trying desperately to smile so he doesn’t think I’m having another depressive moment about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I had a bad day yesterday, angsting endlessly over why he hasn’t been in touch. It really gets to me, the not knowing. Three months solid I’ve felt like this, on and off. More on than off. It hits me out of nowhere. Sometimes I get this chilling feeling, like I know he’s definitely dead. Like I’ve had a premonition and the next time I switch on the news there’ll be an announcement that they’ve found his body somewhere between here and God-knows-where. Or worse. That Frank Grohman’s tracked him down and got his minders to beat him to death. I even went back to the BFD and begged him to get in touch with his contact and let me know where he dropped him off, just to have some information. But he wouldn’t say a word. More than his life’s worth, blah, blah, blah. I can’t sleep for thinking about it. Wake up early, racing heart thinking about it. On the plus side, though, I’ve never done so much art in my life. Endless paintings. Capturing landscapes in my memory. Capturing moods. Capturing him.

I don’t want to know everything, even what continent he’s on. Just that he’s still around, that something hasn’t hurt him between here and there. I did get this strange certificate through the mail some weeks back from the Prostate Cancer Charity, thanking me for my very generous donation, telling me about all the screening equipment it will buy. And my mind ran wild, thinking that could have been him, donating on my behalf. I told him I didn’t want my five grand back, so what if he’d gone ahead and given it to them instead? I just didn’t know. I didn’t know a single thing for certain. And it hurt like death.

The boy band debut their latest single. It’s the usual soft, warbly crap. I long to hear some skin-stripping rock to clean my ears out, and direct the remote control through all the music channels to find some. They had a Regulators day on MTV recently but I couldn’t watch it. It kind of hurt. I’ve been dying to know what’s happened to the other members of the band since Jackson’s “death.” They aren’t even mentioned anywhere anymore, except in articles about Jackson. I know they broke up soon after. Lenny’s side project band pops up on MTV every now and again but The Regulators, as I knew them, are gone forever. There was a memorial service for Jackson on the Severn Bridge last month, when the band thanked all the fans who’d created a shrine to him there. The shrine’s still there. Tealights in saucers and rain-spattered flowers and damp, torn posters and lipstick-stained CD cases mark the spot where everyone thinks he jumped in. I’ve never been to see it, though, and I never will.

“Jody, hot dogs, please!” calls Mum again.

I sigh. Mac and I have been trying to evade the party celebrations for most of the afternoon, having done a few rounds of “Ooh haven’t you grown” and “You two dating?” and “My boyfriend Mac and me are both going to college together in the fall — he’s studying drama, I’m studying art.” We just want a break.

“Can’t you send Hal?” I call back.

“Not on her birthday, no,” Mum shouts. I fling Mac upright and he follows me out to the kitchen. The breakfast bar is covered in bowls of chips, crudités, dips, mini sausages, and cakes, and in the very center is Halley’s cake with a massive “15” candle in the middle of it. I take a couple of macaroons, shoving one in my mouth and sneaking one behind my back for Mac. Mum comes back in the kitchen from outside.

“Jody, hot dogs, now, please? Teddy’s doing seven sorts out there because he thinks we’re going to run out.” She hands me a tenner.

The barbecue is on the patio outside. Mac’s dad is doing it (his first barbecue in ten years, hence the smoke) and has even shut the pub for the afternoon, the first time since, well, forever. The yard is filled with all sorts of different chairs and kitchen stools and Halley’s friends and Mum’s friends from the bank. Tish is there, too, with Cree, looking in the flower bed for snails. (Roly mysteriously disappeared from her animal carrier, so we told her he and Man had gone to live on a happy farm in Australia. It was the nicest thing we could think to say that wasn’t close enough that she’d want to go and visit.) Some pub regulars stand around the barbecue with pints, laughing and trying to sort out the smoke problem. A couple of them are the builders who are going to start on Mum’s addition next month. She’s using some of her money to have the kitchen extended and my bedroom’s going to be bigger, too. It’ll have its own bathroom and, get this, its own
staircase
that will lead straight down into the garage, which has now officially become my art studio. How cool is that?! Halley’s getting all new bedroom furniture and a puppy and private tennis lessons, so she’s happy, too.

“I want to go to the Trose!” says a little voice as Cree runs in from the garden in her new summer dress with the little dragonflies on the shoulders.

Mac scoops her up. “Oh you heard that, did you? No, you won’t like it at the Trose. It’s run by the nasty witch.”

“The nasty witch is at the Trose?” she asks, twizzling his ear stud. Mac nods. “Will the witch eat me up?”

Mac nods again and winks at me. We’ve lost our last bastion of privacy today what with Mum turning the garage — my art studio — into a walk-in gallery for people to view my canvases. She’s insisted I put them all out on the easels she bought me so people can go in and look at them. So embarrassing.

“I want to come to the Trose, Dody.” She puts her arms out to me.

I take her from Mac. “You can come to Waitrose, Cree. I’ll make sure the nasty witch doesn’t come anywhere near you.”

“OK, Dody.” She smiles at Mac who tickles her until she’s writhing like a little fish in my arms.

We go out to the hallway. There’s a stack of mail on the hall table. A menu advertising “Gluten Free Night” at the local fish bar, a Carnival Cruises holiday leaflet for Grandad, a phone offer for Halley, and, amazingly, two envelopes for me. I haven’t had
any
mail in weeks. I’ve given up on the whole rushing-downstairs-when-I-hear-the-letter-box thing. I put Cree down and hand one of my envelopes to Mac. “Could this be our tickets at last?” I ask him.

He smiles, tearing it open. “Yep, two tickets, two weeks.” He kisses my head. “Our first holiday. Just us and Italy for two whole weeks. It’s going to be amazing.”

He’s right, it will be amazing. I can’t wait. We’ve got tickets to see Van Morrison, live in Venice, while we’re there, too. Mac says I need to “exorcise” the concert demon. I’m happy about it, I am. But going away just reminds me about him. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. How he went away. How I don’t know how far he got or if he’s OK. If he’s happy now.

I hope the gondola ride is as romantic as Mac says, not all open sewers like I’ve heard.

I hope I don’t fall in. I hope I don’t make some scene in the Sistine Chapel when I’m attempting to scatter Grandad’s ashes.

I hope not. I really hope not.

I note the postmark on my other envelope. Weird symbols and a mountain. Definitely foreign. I stand looking at it for a long time. I almost can’t bear to open it.

“What’s that one?” Mac asks.

“I don’t know,” I lie. But I do know. I know exactly what it is and it’s what I’ve been waiting for. Praying for. I’m shaking as I rip open the envelope.

And a single pink cherry blossom falls out onto my hand.

Many thanks to Richard O’Brien for his permission to quote “Sweet Transvestite” and “Don’t Dream It” from
The Rocky Horror Show
(© Richard O’Brien/Rocky Horror Company, 1973).

“Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Noel Gallagher, from the album
(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
(© Noel Gallagher/Oasis, 1995), quoted with kind permission of Oasis.

“Black” by Eddie Vedder and Stone Gossard, from the album
Ten
(© Pearl Jam, 1991), quoted with kind permission.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Freddie Mercury, from the album
A Night at the Opera
(© Freddie Mercury/Queen, 1975), quoted with kind permission.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers would be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions brought to their notice, at the earliest opportunity.

Barry Cunningham, Imogen, Rachel, Esther, Laura, Elinor, Chrissie, and the wonderful Chicken House. Kirsten Stransfield and Nicki Marshall for their amazing editorial skills.