Page 40 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

I started to sweep loose items back into my bag. Panic was floating somewhere in my chest, unhooked from its perpetual moorings by this turn of events. Time to go, time to run. My mind raked back over Ben’s behaviour, his desperation for contact and then his ultimate rejection of it, but I didn’t kid myself that it was because of the way he’d let his guard down that I was going. It was my lowering of the barrier that had frightened me the most. The sudden rise of a desire that I thought I’d killed, the desire to be held, to be loved. An emotion that I could not allow. One I couldn’t afford. To let myself desire was to risk falling in love, and to love was to trust. To trust was to hand over control and no man was ever going to control me again. Never. Especially not that bony freak with the messed-up hair and even more messed-up mind.

A sudden, unbidden vision of his expression when Rosie had come down the stairs carrying the screaming Harry. It had been a mixture of fear and an almost unbearable resignation, as though he was coming to terms with something that he’d never wanted in the first place. A hungry longing mixed with such pain that his eyes had blackened with it and his face had fallen into stark lines. My heart twitched like a kick.

* * *

20th May

I’m sorry. I can’t go on with this. I wanted her, wanted the life I thought I could have, and now I know I can’t. All that happens is that I can see what I’ve lost.

There’s nothing left.

I have to go.

Chapter Thirteen

The next day I left Rosie lying in, whistled a cheery ‘see ya’ through her door and hoisted my rucksack onto my shoulder. I’d written her a note of farewell and left it on the pillow of my bed, stripped the sheets and duvet and put them in the washing machine. Wiped all the surfaces clear of any trace of my occupation. She would forget me in no time as lots of people had done before her. Just because I’d felt more at home here, more settled than I ever had anywhere since I was fifteen, it gave me no rights to call the place home. I had no rights. No beliefs, nothing to pin myself to. I was a ghost, living on another plane of existence, one not even suspected by any of the people who called me their friend.

A pang of remorse shot through me so fast I had to stop and catch my breath. I was walking towards the bus stop, past the gateway to the opulence that was Saskia and Alex’s enormous converted farmhouse. Now I’d never get to show Saskia how wrong she’d been to turn me away from her shop, to carry on this stupid vendetta that she’d got going, for whatever pointless reasons. Never get to rub her nose in my future success. Another dart of loss pierced a hole in my gut, but this time I straightened up, faced forwards and ignored it. The bus was coming. The past didn’t matter — I had to keep telling myself that. Recent past, long past, it made no difference. It was all gone. I could forget.

The shop was closed. The main window was obscured by a huge metal cover locked in place and the door had bars down on the inside. It didn’t look as though Ben had been there all day.

I breathed hard, as though I’d run, and wiped my arm across my eyes. What was I doing? I never cried, not ever. I’d shed my last tears five years ago, that had been another promise. I was tired surely, that was all. And a little disappointed to find the place locked up and silent. I’d wanted — what had I wanted? To talk? To find out what his problem was? Or just to confront him, to ask him how he dared to unsettle my well-being with his sudden insights and his equally sudden turnaround, which had allowed me inside his head while he kissed me senseless? Stupid. Stupid.

My path to the station took me past Wilberforce Crescent. The extra half-mile of walking got my feelings under control and I was well able to convince myself that I needed to let him know I was leaving. Just — and this was important — just so he could have a chance to find someone else to work in the shop.

I rang the bell. There was no response so I tiptoed down the basement steps and squinted through the blinds covering those windows which lay below street level. Between the vertical slats I could just make out a set of musical instruments laid on the floor as though a band had broken off mid-practice. A guitar rested against a keyboard, casually angled, and a drum kit had the sticks crossed over it. A bright cherry-red guitar had been dropped and lay on its face looking oddly forlorn. And everything was covered in dust.

There was something naked about those unused instruments closed away in that basement rehearsal room, something bitter in the positioning. As though Ben had been there, trying to play, trying to recreate Willow Down. Or was I reading too much into it, was it just a room that had been closed off and forgotten?

I sat on the step and chewed my lip, a tiny fantasy about breaking in quickly running to the inevitable conclusion. I’d probably end up being hauled out by six armed-response units.

A car beeped from the road. I jumped to my feet, eyes scanning for the smooth lines of the silver Audi but alighting instead on the sassy lines of Jason’s sports runabout.

‘Hoi, Jem! You’ll get piles sitting on them steps! Wotcha doin’?’

‘I thought you were in London.’ I wandered over to where he was holding up the traffic.

‘Yeah. Consortium seen. Back now. Bin looking for ya.’ Jason tweaked open the door for me to get in, pulling aside a crate containing a huge quantity of cogs and wheels plus a large square metal box. It looked like he’d dismembered Robbie the Robot. I hesitated and he raised an eyebrow. ‘You running out on us, girl?’

‘I . . .’

‘Wanna tell me about it?’

‘Nothing to tell.’ I got in the car.

Jason looked up at the house. ‘This your man’s place then? Must be loaded, thass all I’ll say.’

‘He’s not my man. And why were you looking for me?’

‘Rosie’s havin’ a bit of a moment. I figured you could help, talk her down, you know that kind of girl stuff. So I bin driving around trying to head you off at the pass.’

‘What are you talking about, you loony?’

Jason gave me a straight look. ‘I beat Rosie to it. Read your note. Then I tore it up. Thought I could get to the station before you did and thought I’d come this way. You got it bad, girl.’

‘I do not! I just wanted to . . . after the way he left last night . . . I’m concerned, that’s all.’

Jason accelerated into the stream of traffic leaving the city. ‘Yeah. So you sit on his doorstep like some kinda lost dog waiting for him to come home, just ’cos you’re concerned? Pull the other one, darling, it goes ding-a-ling.’

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