Page 73 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

‘What? Ben . . .’ But he was gone, vanishing upstairs with a pad of bare feet against the polished wood of the staircase. I wiped my face on my sleeve and managed to smear tears across my cheeks, leaving them sticky and stiff. This had never been so hard.

‘Good, you’re still here.’ Will-o-the-wisp-like he was back, jeans covering his lower half now, and a small bound notebook held out in front of him. ‘Here. Read this. It’s a diary that Doctor Michaels wanted me to keep. To help me manage my emotions, or something equally farty, but it did help. Look.’ He flipped the pages. ‘It’s all about you, Jem. It’s what I think, what I feel.’ He laid the book down on the pine table and backed off, swinging a leg over a stool in the far corner of the room and tipping it to lean with two legs against the wall. ‘Read or not. Your choice. Everything is your choice, Jem. It always has been.’

I riffled the pages. The book was slim and not all pages were written on. Some contained sketches, little thumbnails of portraits, a guitar, even an unpleasantly lifelike gun. Others were makeshift staves with bars of music scribbled down and much amended. ‘So. You can draw, you can write music and lyrics, you can cook . . . is there anything you can’t do, Ben?’ I kept my voice steady, despite the continuous motion of the tears down my cheeks.

‘Embroidery. Just read it.’

So I read. And gradually the tears stopped and I gave a little laugh. ‘You self-centred bastard.’

‘Did you just call me a bastard?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard reading your lips in this light.’

I raised my head and moved my mouth exaggeratedly. ‘I called you a self-centred bastard, actually.’

‘Yeah, that’s me. But a self-centred bastard who loves you. Do you see? Now, do you see?’

I let the book fall. It landed on the flagstones, splayed open, a loose page protruding to show scratched notes and words. Ben came across the room and picked it up, pulling the page free. ‘Here. It’s the first song I’ve written for the new band line-up, still needs a bit of work but . . .’ He held the page out to me. ‘Called “You Are All I Have”.’

I sniffed. ‘Isn’t that a Snow Patrol song?’

He ran both hands through his hair. ‘Bastards always beat me to it.’ Now his eyes were enormous, unblinking.

‘Is everything you wrote true?’

‘True as I’m here. True as I’m breathing. True as I would personally knock down and kill anyone who tried to hurt you.’ A single tear left the corner of his eye and rolled down to his top lip. He ignored it.

‘Did you really want to die?’

An embarrassed shrug. ‘Sometimes.’

‘And you honestly think I have fantastic legs?’

Now he smiled. A slow, deep smile. ‘Jemima, you have fantastic everything.’

‘And you need me?’

‘Oh, so much.’ Now he came close and the moonlight made his tattoo look deep and dark against that white skin. ‘Don’t do this to me, Jem. Don’t do it to yourself.’ Another step forward and he hooked a finger under the strap of the rucksack, slid the strap down over my shoulder, my elbow. The rucksack tilted under its own weight and fell to the floor.

I looked again at the book in his hand. If what he’d written was the truth then he’d loved me a long time. Loved me even when I ran, even when I treated him so badly that he had no right to love me. Needed me, when I was scared to death that it was I who needed him. My heart scudded against the walls of my chest and I put a hand on his tattoo, tracing the lines.

He looked down at my finger dancing along the pattern on his arm. ‘Do you love me, Jem?’ The strain in his voice told me how scared he was of the answer.

I kept my eyes on those intricate swirls. ‘Everyone I’ve ever loved has died.’

‘Not cause and effect. Do you love me?’

Now I looked up. Met those grave-deep eyes. Knew. ‘Yes,’ I said into them. ‘Yes.’

‘And do you believe me when I tell you that you are a strong, lovely woman, who can grab life by the bollocks when she chooses, and doesn’t need to take shit from anyone?’

‘I’m trying to be.’

‘Good.’ Ben smiled and wiped the last of my tears from under my eye with one finger. ‘Then let me be the one that you were running to, all this time. Let this be the end.’

I reached out. Switched on the kitchen light and stood directly underneath, fully illuminated, where he could see my lips move and have no doubt. ‘Yes.’

There was a surprising number of ice cubes in Ben’s fridge. We used them all.

THE END

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