Page 58 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

I shook my head. ‘It’s not my secret to tell. And I don’t know if Ben’s ever going to be able to. But the fact is I’ve got nothing. Less than nothing, now that eBay has got me under investigation. Okay, I can take a stall at the market but that’s going to cost me and what I make is a bit expensive for the market shoppers. I can go down to using ordinary wire and plastic but then the techniques are different and besides, there will always be cheaper stuff from Korea. Basically, Rosie, I need to go. Set up somewhere else, somewhere the shops will stock my things. I was thinking about the South East, Canterbury way. I’ve heard it’s okay down there.’

‘Because you feel like a nobody.’ She was shaking her head. ‘It’s so, so silly. I mean look at Harry.’ She plucked him out of his chair and brandished him at me. ‘He loves you, he doesn’t care what you’ve got, what you do for a living, he’ll love you whatever. What makes you think that Ben won’t be like that?’

‘Because Ben isn’t three-and-a-half months old.’

Rosie gave me a friendly shove. ‘And aren’t you glad?’

‘Shut up. Yes, all right, I like him. There might even be more to it than that. But. Look at it this way. If Ben and I — started something, what happens to me when it’s over? Who am I then, Rosie? I need to be someone, to have something to hold on to that’s mine. The gang, Ran, Christian — even Gray, I defined myself through them, I was never a person. And I can’t let it happen again, not now.’

‘Have you told Ben you’re going?’

I shook my head. I’d got up mid-morning to find Ben and his keys gone. Ashamed of myself I’d hunted round the kitchen until I’d found a tea tin filled with pound coins and fivers and I’d taken some. Enough for the bus fare to get me to Rosie’s. But, in my defence, I had written an IOU and stuffed it into the tin in place of the missing money. I’d also left the tin on the dresser so that Ben would know what I’d done.

‘You mean you were going to take off? How do you think he’s going to feel when he finds out that the woman he’s told — whatever he’s told, has run away? Don’t you think he might be the tiniest bit pissed off?’

Harry squawked, Rosie’s grip on him must have tightened. She turned abruptly away from me to quieten him.

I stood up and touched her shoulder. ‘Rosie. I don’t want it to be like this, I just can’t see any other way. It’s not the easy option, honestly.’

She whirled around so fast that Harry was still facing the window when she started to speak. ‘Jem, life isn’t the easy option! You seem to think that you’re the only person suffering, that that makes it all right if you keep on running. Well, sometimes you can’t run.’ She kissed Harry’s forehead. ‘Stay. Stay and fight.’

‘Fight?’

‘For Ben, for your work. Maybe this is the line in the sand. Maybe this is where you say “no more”.’ She gave me a quick half-armed hug. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so bossy. It’s just that I can see you and Ben are so right for one another and I hate to think of you throwing away a chance of being happy because you’re worried about what might happen.’ The hug intensified. ‘Sometimes you have to seize the day.’

‘Look. I never said Ben and I can’t be friends, I only said that I don’t want to end up sleeping with him because I’m confusing like and lust.’

Rosie stepped back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘Okay. So you don’t want to sleep with Ben. What do you want? Apart from to run away.’

‘I didn’t say that, I — I don’t know. What do you mean?’

‘For the first time you’ve got control. You’ve got a great guy who wants you, you’ve got a business—’ a raised hand forestalled my immediate come back on that one. ‘Yes, at the moment it’s a bit stalled but that’s just for now. It’s still yours, you can still make your jewellery. Don’t you see? Everything is in your hands. You’re not dependent on the gang, or your brothers, or anyone, to make you happy. This fear of being with someone, it’s all in your head because of what happened to you in the past. All you have to do now is take that control.’ Her earnest green eyes looked deeply into mine. ‘So. I repeat. What do you want?’

‘Daytime TV is really getting to you, isn’t it?’

She cocked an eyebrow.

‘All right. What do I want? I want to find out what Saskia is up to. Who she thinks she is, to tell me that I can’t sell my things in York and that you — that you should be working like a slave. I want to know whether she had anything to do with Ben’s shop burning down.’

‘I’d quite like to know where she gets those little power suits she’s always wearing,’ Rosie chimed in. ‘Is there a shop somewhere that sells brimstone-proof clothing?’

‘Why is she so awful? She’s got everything: rich husband, lovely little boy, great house. So why does she come over like a pantomime villain in couture clothing?’

‘Mink the Merciless,’ Rosie giggled.

‘What does Alex see in her?’ I frowned.

‘She’s not bad looking, I suppose.’ Rosie looked down at her still-voluptuous figure. ‘Slim.’

‘Her face is entirely drawn-on. Have you looked at her? Lip liner, brow pencil, eye liner — I bet when she takes her make-up off she’s just completely blank skin.’

‘And two tiny little eyes. Like a couple of marbles on a sheet.’ Rosie grinned for a moment, then refocused on me. ‘Hey! Nice try, sister, with the badmouthing of Saskia. But we were talking about you.’

‘I have to go, Rosie. I have to.’

‘But I thought — all that stuff about finding out what Saskia is up to? I thought you’d changed your mind.’

I shook my head. Tears were threatening again. Every time the curtain shifted and I thought I could see a glimpse of how life could be on the other side, a memory or a thought would cut in and bring me back to reality. This was my life. This was me. Saskia was just a woman with no sensitivity. No evil agenda. The seed head I’d picked up outside Ben’s shop was a coincidence. Ben wanted to sleep with me because I’d listened to his problems. And I was still a street kid loser with a prison record and visible root regrowth.

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