Page 72 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

He grinned widely and stroked my shoulder. ‘How about if we bought a place out at Little Gillmoor?’

‘What?’ Claustrophobia snatched my breath. I sat up sharply, gathering covers to my naked chest.

‘Hey, don’t panic, Jem. It’s okay. Like I said, no pressure. I just thought it might be good, one day, to have somewhere out of town. I’m going to need a studio and you need a proper workshop space, and — you know we’re good together. Couldn’t you stand more of this?’ He waved a long-fingered hand. ‘Us. Properly.’ Ben sat up beside me.

Blood thundered in my ears as he pressed a kiss to my hot skin, his hair painting a pointillistic design across my collarbone. ‘I’m . . . not sure . . .’

‘I want to be with you, Jem. Committed. No half-assed “seeing each other”, but a real couple, living together. Security.’ Under the covers musician’s fingers stroked my leg, my back.

‘I don’t know. Ben . . .’

Another firm kiss covered my mouth. ‘Don’t say anything yet. Sleep on it.’ He was sliding next to me, slipping already into sleep and curling his long legs and strong arms around my body. Pulling me tight against him. ‘We’ll talk in the morning, babe.’

I lay very still until he fell asleep, carefully judging the moment when his restlessness settled into heavy slumber. My heart was beating so hard that I felt sick and my head buzzed. My mouth tasted like bleach, but I didn’t dare move. At last Ben sighed and turned over and I slipped out of the bed. One good thing, I thought, about sleeping with a deaf guy, you didn’t have to worry about floorboards creaking and waking him up. I dressed and sidled into the guest room where my rucksack squatted in the middle of the bed, fully packed. Even now with all that had passed between us, I’d kept it zipped and buckled. I’d sneaked clothes from under its flap as though stealing from myself, returning them furtively each night. The simple task of unpacking, of taking up space in the cupboards Ben had cleared for me, had felt fraudulent. Couldn’t do it. To empty the bag would be to settle, to admit to feelings that I couldn’t understand, let alone come to terms with. And now I knew why I’d never settled — because I never would. It simply hurt too much. I swiped an arm through the strap and hauled it to my shoulders. The weight felt familiar, comforting, with all my belongings hanging down my back. This was how it should be. Everything contained, clothes, possessions, books. Feelings. All wrapped up and ready to move on.

Down the stairs. I gave the place one last complete glance. Even in my panic I recognised this would probably be the last time I found myself in such luxury and I wanted to remember it. All of it, from our last panting embrace in the untidy bedroom to the exact way the moonlight gleamed on the top of the scrubbed pine table. There was a new picture on the dresser, an old photo, five years old maybe, from the length of Ben’s hair and the acute boniness of his hips. It looked as though it had been taken during a live performance of Willow Down; it had that kind of almost-blurredness of people who have hardly stopped moving long enough for the shutter to freeze them. Zafe and Ben stood with their arms locked around each other’s shoulders, shirtless and sweaty and wearing two identical expressions of total bliss. Ben was grinning out at the photographer, eyes wide, and Zafe was half-turned towards him, guitar slung over his back, total elation shining from every sweat-soaked pore. Ben must have had this image in his mind every day, locked away in a cupboard to stop it reminding him of everything he’d lost; the band, Zafe, the music. And now he’d taken it out. Somehow he’d found the courage to put the picture where he could see it, where it would remind him of everything that had gone.

Something deep in me broke like a china doll. I’d seen that look on Ben’s face. Not just in a photograph but when he’d talked about buying a place in the village, when he’d looked at me and spoken aloud his hopes and dreams. He’d had that same shining look of optimism and anticipation. How could I destroy that? How could I walk away from a man who looked at me like that?

But I had to. Had to go, or risk that terrible pain of loss once more. And I couldn’t stand it, not again.

Saskia had showed me what it would be like. You put all your trust in one person, left yourself open to them, and that gave them the power to hurt you. I’d so nearly fallen for it, been so close to loving Ben. So close to giving him everything. But doing that only got me hurt. So now — time to go before things got worse.

Ben had been wrong. Running was the only answer. Sooner or later everyone went. And what I felt for him — my insides squeezed as the enormity of my feelings made themselves known — it was something I couldn’t bear.

I looked at the photo again. Two men having the time of their lives. No inhibitions, no holding back, but throwing everything into their music. No worries about what would happen tomorrow, no foreshadowing of the terrible disease that would strike the heart from the band. Living for the day. For what was now, not what had been or what was to come. Proof that, even while you had the world at your feet, it could be breaking your toes, one at a time without you even knowing.

Life really was shit sometimes.

I swung the rucksack onto my shoulders and tightened the straps. Hefted the weight from side to side, and turned for the door.

There he was in the moonlight in front of me. Completely naked, bleached by the white light except for the dark shining circle of the Celtic mark around his bicep. Softly he trod the floor that separated us. He smelled of sleep, of clean bedsheets and, smokily, of sex.

‘So,’ he said carefully. ‘You lied again, Jem. You said — and I think I quote here — that you’d stop and think before you ran again. Is this stopping to think? Or is this a knee-jerk reaction?’ He reached out and touched the rucksack.

‘I can’t stay, Ben,’ I whispered. ‘I’m too afraid of getting hurt.’

He hardly looked real, his body pale and ghostly in the weird glimmer, hair dark as blood. ‘Everyone’s afraid of getting hurt, Jem, me included. But sometimes you have to gamble.’

‘I’ve been left alone too many times to want to put myself through it all again, not for anyone. I’m sorry Ben. I have to protect myself.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ Ben leaned against the counter. ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, naked in the middle of the night. Is this all because you think I’m going to wake up one day and realise you were a big mistake? That I felt obligated to you because I told you about the deafness? Jem, my love, you have got some seriously warped ideas, haven’t you?’

‘I only know what I can see. You,’ I waved a hand. ‘All this. You say that you love me, that you want me. But how long does that last Ben, really? And I’ve got nothing but myself. You’ll always have Willow Down to save you. But there’s nothing to save me.’

He moved so quickly I hardly saw him coming, and then he had me by the shoulders. ‘But you are saving yourself, don’t you see? Do you not see what you’ve become? Jemima, you . . .’ He broke off, shaking his head and dropping his hands from me. ‘Christ. You really don’t. You don’t know. Okay. When I first met you, you were someone else, someone defeated. What had happened to you, it had you running scared. And over the time I’ve known you, look at what you’ve achieved! Tonight, when you faced down Saskia because you were afraid of what she was doing to Rosie . . . Would you have done that before?’

‘Ben . . .’

‘You ran to Glasgow, but you came back. You faced up to what you’d done. You told me, you told Rosie, about your past. You’ve confronted what you were, and you’ve become someone stronger as a result. You don’t have to be with me. You could be anywhere.’ His voice dropped. ‘But I want you here. And, believe me, Jemima, you aren’t the only one who’s afraid of being hurt.’ A slow hand raised and touched my cheek. ‘Please.’ His voice was a broken whisper now. ‘Please, don’t leave me.’

My breathing snagged. Tears began to dribble towards my chin. ‘I’m still so scared.’

‘We all are. We’re all scared, Jem. Everyone. But we have to trust someone, sometime. I trusted you when I told you about what had happened to me. In fact, I trusted you from the beginning.’

I did a snorty laugh. ‘Yeah, right. You didn’t even notice me until I asked you to dinner, and scared you half to death!’

‘Oh, Jem.’ He sounded so regretful now, so sad. ‘Hold on, stay there a minute.’

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