Page 53 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

A head-shake, which spread snot along her dress.

‘You could take it to the papers.’

I jerked my head away from her. ‘Rosie!’

She smiled. ‘Yeah, thought so. For God’s sake, just tell him. Tell him you’re in love with him. Everything else will work itself out.’

‘Is that experience talking?’

Another smile, achingly sad this time. ‘Afraid so. It’s just that sometimes things take longer to work out.’

‘Anyway, who says I’m in love with him?’ I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand.

‘Jemima, you’re broke and you won’t sell the most valuable thing you’ve got. The information about Ben. There’s press and music papers and fans, they’d all pay really good money for the inside story on the Philadelphia débâcle. But you won’t even think of it.’ She shook her head and the section of her hair which wasn’t covered in porridge bounced around her face. ‘If that ain’t love, well.’

‘When I wasn’t here did you get visited by the Wisdom Fairy?’

‘Only Jason, and he’s not eligible on the first count. I think the second might be negotiable. Just do it, what have you got to lose?’

Only my freedom, I thought. My ability to run, to get out whenever things get awkward.

Nothing I could articulate. I looked at Harry jiggling his legs until his bouncy chair rocked on its thin metal suspension. ‘You still being hard work for your mum?’

She sighed. ‘He’s not so bad really. It’s just the sheer volume of work I’ve got. Saskia seems to be cornering the market in hand-made cards, but she pays well and I can’t turn her down. Besides, she’s got me working so hard I’ve had to drop all my other customers and my chances of getting them back if she dumps me are remote. I have to keep going.’ Another sigh. ‘I wanted to start taking Harry to the mother-and-baby group in the village, but there just isn’t time. I feel as though I can’t enjoy him properly, can’t enjoy being a mother.’

Half-heartedly I began collecting all my beads and crystals and wires together. ‘It won’t go on forever,’ I said, thinking about a bonfire behind a shop, all Rosie’s hard work going up in flames. Ben’s shop burning. Saskia, sitting in the middle of it all like a spider in a web. No, more like a bloated puppeteer, pulling strings and watching us dance. ‘Something has to give.’

* * *

22nd May

She looks at me now and I feel transparent, like my bones, my hair are all invisible and she can see right inside to the fear and the loneliness, almost like she touches me where the blackness hides and makes it all right.

Shut up. Not like that. You are fucking filthy, doctor, you know that? We’re not. Not that I don’t want it, Christ, waist down I’m like concrete, but she’s . . . she’s not ready. Doesn’t push me away but . . . it’s almost like she’s a virgin or something. Scared of what’ll happen if we get down to it.

I can wait. I’d wait forever if she asked me to. I just wish she’d feel she could talk to me, wish I knew what it was that frightens her so. Because not knowing means I can’t help. And I want to take away that expression she gets sometimes when she thinks I’m not looking. It’s part fear and part . . . I dunno, a kind of deep sorrow, like she thinks I’m about to chuck her onto the street or something. Like she wants to be with me, wants it to be more than just this kind of flat-share thing we’ve got going on. Like she’s memorising my face, my clothes, as if Crimewatch is reconstructing me next week and I don’t know about it yet. And yet . . . she makes me feel like nothing matters. I’m still me, still Baz Davies, still the best fucking lyricist of the twenty-first century (hey, that’s NME talking). She pulls me up beyond it all, like she’s pulling me out of the shit and the dark and up, back on top of the world, where I used to be. Okay, I don’t get what people say — so what? I do pretty well for a guy that’s stone deaf. Hey, look, I can say it! I am deaf. Can’t hear a note. And it doesn’t hurt like it did.

Jemima. I’d give you this whole messed-up planet if you asked.

Chapter Sixteen

‘Can you see anything?’ Ben wiggled underneath me, shifting my weight more evenly across his shoulders.

‘Can’t you stand still?’

No answer. Of course. No way even Ben could lip read when my head was four feet above him and hanging over three strands of barbed wire. I clung to the top of the wall which ran around the outside of the tiny yard belonging to Le Petit Lapin, desperately trying to steady myself against the brickwork. There was no sign of any burning, just a couple of plastic patio chairs where presumably Mairi and Saskia put their respective feet and hooves up during slack spells.

I slapped Ben’s shoulder and he lowered me to earth, sliding me down the wall and gasping in an unflattering way.

‘Woah! You’ve got thighs like steel, woman.’ He ruefully rubbed the back of his neck. ‘So? Anything doing?’

‘Not really. I need to get inside.’

‘Come on. It’s only in really bad films that the villain leaves incriminating evidence lying around.’ Ben looked at my face. ‘Oh, please! Tell me you aren’t going to break in?’

‘There’s a little window down in the back office. I reckon I can crack it. In and out and she won’t even know.’

‘Yeah, right. And how are you going to do that eh? Pop home for your Girls’ Book of Breaking and Entering?’

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