Page 36 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

* * *

19th May

I did it. Okay, here I’m going to claim all the credit and you can look at me over those shitty half-glasses all you want (they are really crappy, man, make you look like a grandad). Between her telling me I should get a life, and me feeling guilty about how I behaved at that party, and you telling me to come to terms with the life I’d made for myself . . . somewhere, between all that, I started to think, you know?

Seeing her with those big eyes looking so . . . fragile, so scared of what I might say or do . . . And I was feeling so sorry for myself, so dead inside, and all because of what fear had brought me to. Scared to talk, scared not to. So much to say, so much pain, all going round and round in my head, no way of letting it out.

Scored some coke last week off a backstreet hustler who couldn’t look me in the face, then I sat in the shop all day and just stared at it lying there. All innocent, pure-looking. And I knew, knew that it would make everything feel better, even if only for a while, but a while was all I wanted, to make this screaming confusion and the self-hate go away. Some peace, you know? And I was going to, I was really going to. After all, being clean, where has it got me?

Truth again? I wanted to be dead. In that second I wanted out. It’s never been as bad as that before, even in the early days.

Jemima walked in. I’d forgotten she was coming, forgotten I had an appointment, forgotten everything except the choice that I had. All she said was ‘you okay?’ or something banal like that, didn’t even sound like she cared, it was just something to say, something to banish that sick kind of quiet that was hanging round us. And in that second I knew I’d never do it. I flushed eighty quid’s worth of snow, and came to see you.

So yeah. A life. I can do it, I can make something out of this shitpile that I’ve found myself in, something that isn’t dependent on what I used to have, what I used to do. I can’t be what I was, but I can be something else, something true to who I am. So, I’m starting. Starting to rebuild what I can from the ruins, getting out there, being someone again.

I don’t know how far I can take it yet. I want to find out what it is that Jem is hiding from. Why sometimes she looks at me as if she wants me naked and other times she avoids looking at me at all. I’m still too scared to tell her anything, too afraid that she’ll get that look, the one that women get when they meet someone who’s disabled, or frail; the same one they use for puppies that have been beaten or kittens thrown in the river. That look that dehumanises you, that says you’re not a man any more but something soft, something lesser. But I know that, if I want her to talk to me, then I have to talk to her.

I want to pretend just a little longer. But I know it’s coming.

Chapter Twelve

Half way through my attempts to tame my hair into something sleek, the phone rang. ‘I’ve got it!’ Rosie shouted up the stairs.

‘Good! Because if I have to stop now I’m going to look like an explosion in a wig shop.’ I carried on straightening my hair. Thanks to an afternoon in the bathroom with a bottle of peroxide my roots were now back to their usual blonde and I was battling my ever-present, but hardly ever seen, curls. Harry was in bed, Rosie was glammed up to the eyeballs, and we were both starving. Ben had better be a whizz in the kitchen because if he produced three cheese omelettes we might just eat each other.

‘Who is it?’ I went onto the landing but Rosie had taken the phone to the extent of its cord into the living room. ‘It’s not Ben cancelling, is it?’

Ben’s new-found perkiness made me suspicious. Why had he suddenly taken it upon himself to start cooking meals for women? It all seemed to be some kind of backlash to his self-imposed exile and the one thing I know about backlashes is, sometimes they lash right back to the beginning again. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that Ben was hiding in his basement with a cushion over his head.

Rosie called back something I couldn’t hear and appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Can you apologise to Ben for me?’ She was pulling on a jacket. ‘Something’s come up. I’ll be back in a bit but . . . there’s something I have to do first.’

‘Rosie?’ I started down the stairs but she was already on her way out of the front door, calling over her shoulder, ‘Harry shouldn’t wake up, if he does there’s a bottle in the fridge all made up. Thanks, Jem!’

‘Like I have a choice,’ I muttered mutinously. The door slammed. ‘I presume the wicked Saskia is behind this,’ I said to the straighteners. ‘Probably wants to open a sweat-shop.’ There was an ominous smell of singeing. My hair got more and more resistant to being straightened every week. Added to the all-pervading lingering peroxide, I smelled like some kind of chemical reaction. I gave a couple of squirts of perfume to offset it and hoped that Ben wouldn’t think I smelled nice just for him.

God I was hungry. Could I get away with a cheese sandwich before he arrived? I’d got the loaf out and had a furtive gnaw at the crust when I heard a car pull up. ‘Hello?’

I went outside to be greeted by the sight of Ben loaded down with boxes of pots and pans and ingredients. ‘Blimey. Looks like Jamie Oliver’s tour bus,’ I said, peering into the car. ‘What the hell are you making, a seven-course banquet?’

‘I can do.’ Ben carried several crates through into the kitchen. ‘Are you going to help?’

‘I thought this was a relaxing evening where you did all the work and I sat around?’

‘Ha! Come on, you can whisk egg-whites. Where’s Rosie?’

‘She’s just popped out for a little while.’

‘Damn. I had her down for sauce-making duties. Never mind we can cover. Now, wash your hands.’ Ben bounced into the middle of our tiny kitchen and began to sort through his boxes. ‘Pans, butter, eggs, cream. I’ll get the rest from the car as I need it.’

I watched him as he began measuring by eye. There was something different about him, something sparky and energetic. ‘So. Bit of a turnaround for you, isn’t it?’

There was a momentary pause before he tipped butter into a pan. ‘Yeah. I’m sorry, Jem. Life got a bit out of perspective for a while. I need to get my head around the fact that just because I’ll never play guitar again doesn’t mean—’

‘Who says you’ll never play guitar again? You haven’t lost the use of your hands, have you?’

The pause was longer this time. ‘No. But I just can’t.’

I had my back to him as I began separating the eggs. ‘So, why not?’ I tried to sound casual. There was no answer. Ben had his head down, putting a pan on the stove and concentrating on its contents. ‘Is it something to do with what happened in Philadelphia?’

---