Page 63 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

‘Just returning the favour. Apparently when you met him all you did was talk about me.’ Carefully Ben laid the knife down on the table. There was something in the way he was looking at me. Something in the air, as though it was thickening. ‘You were scared something had happened to me, Zafe said. You said I was broken.’

I swallowed. The bread was proving difficult to get down and the way Ben was looking at me wasn’t helping at all. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

He cut me off. ‘You were right. It wasn’t just me that was broken, Jem, it was my soul. When my dad died it made me different. Forced me to be someone I wasn’t even sure I liked. And the deafness made me more human, but isolated me so much that I couldn’t make contact with anyone.’ I was still sitting at the table. Ben came round it and I had to swivel on the stool to keep watching him. The look on his face was so intense I didn’t know what he had in mind. ‘And then I met you.’

I forced myself to laugh. ‘Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, eh?’

He was leaning now to look down into my eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Things got very, very, very much better.’ And he was so close now that his hair flowed across my throat. ‘No pressure, Jem. No pressure.’

His lips met mine and I was astonished at the force inside me which sprang me up off the stool to rest against him, hands pushing his hair back. He tasted of honey and mint from the salad dressing he’d licked off his fingers. He leaned further forward and before I knew it I was half-sitting on the edge of the table, Ben’s mouth travelling down to my throat, my hands dragging at his shirt, trying to yank it off over his head so I could touch skin.

This was something total, something so unexplored in me that I didn’t know how to handle or channel it, all I could do was go with it and try to ride it out. It felt as if I was some kind of conduit for feelings from another, unknown universe as I met his mouth again, whispering into it. ‘Ben . . . please . . .’ without even knowing what I pleaded for.

He freed my lips so he could look into my eyes. ‘Are you sure? Really, really sure?’

How could I be sure? I’d never known anything like this. In lieu of an answer I slid a hand down to his belt, began working the buckle free whilst keeping my eyes on his face, slipping the keeper away from the tongue until I could pull it loose. Laid a finger on the top of his zipper, feeling how aroused he was.

Suddenly his hand came onto mine, not to help but stopping my fingers from moving any further. ‘Jem.’ His voice was steady. ‘I want to know. I need you to say it. Do you want this?’ And I knew he didn’t just mean this, sex. He meant everything else it would bring: him, a relationship, the complications and the ties.

My breath caught in my throat. ‘I want . . .’ Desire tried to overrule and my hand moved on his fly again but his grip was firm. ‘I want to be safe.’ The words nearly choked me, but as I said them I realised they were true. I wanted safety. Security. Something that was mine after all these years of running and hiding.

Ben moved back half a step. ‘And do you think I’m safe? You feel that, with me?’

‘I can try.’

‘No. I want more than that.’ Ben took the other half-step away and straightened his T shirt, combed his hair with his fingers and took a shaky deep breath. ‘I know you think I’m in this for a fuck, Jemima, but it is so much more than that it’s almost funny. C’mere.’ Fingers closed around my wrist and I found I was being pulled out of the kitchen and along a hallway to a small door. Ben unlocked the door with a tiny key and drew me onto a narrow dark staircase. ‘This is the old servants’ quarters,’ he said conversationally, and not at all as though we’d just come within moments of ripping one another’s clothes off.

Still with his fingers cuffing my wrist he led me down the shallow steps and into the room below. It was the one I’d seen from the street, the old basement. Dust had collected into every depression and the instruments were covered in a shallow layer of it. Ben stood in the middle of it all and let go of me.

‘I haven’t been in here for years,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t. This was our practice room. The guys never tried to get their stuff back, at least, I don’t think they did. I was too busy hiding to know.’ He turned, picked up a drumstick and experimentally tapped a cymbal. ‘Mark’s kit.’ The bass guitar was leaning against a silver keyboard. Ben picked it up and strummed the strings. ‘Zafe’s.’ A small puff of dust blew out and he laid it back down again to run a finger along the black and white keys. ‘This was Si’s.’

Nothing was amped up so there were just dull, tinny notes, like ghosts of what should be. Finally Ben picked up the cherry-red guitar which had fallen face down onto the rush matting flooring. Like a man touching an old love, he reverentially stroked its back, leaving finger streaks in the dust, then turned it against his body and threw the strap over his neck. ‘This was me, Jem,’ he said softly. ‘It was fantastic.’ With the weight of the guitar pulling down his shoulder he turned to look at the collected instruments. ‘Willow Down. The most brilliant thing ever to happen to me.’

There he stood for a second as he’d once been, head back and eyes glowing. I could almost hear him addressing the crowd, almost see him posturing his way across the invisible stage. Then his shoulders dropped, he unslung the guitar and placed it carefully back on the dusty floor. ‘And now there’s you.’ I stared at him. My heart was beating so fast that I had spots in front of my eyes. ‘This was before. My old life. None of it is coming back and I’ve come to terms with that now. The good stuff, the bad stuff — and believe me there was a lot of bad stuff, whole gigs I don’t remember, coke paranoia, the works — over. I’m leaving it behind.’ He was watching me carefully, standing angled in that odd dusty room. His hair was smooth over his shoulders, his face lit by the streetlights beyond the barred window, throwing curious shadows which rippled as he moved. ‘And I want you to do the same.’

‘I have!’ The soundproofing that lined the walls made my voice sound dead, toneless. Without real meaning.

‘No, really. What nearly happened just now . . .’ Ben drew a huge breath. ‘That was wrong. Was that how Gray told you to do it?’ He put both hands on my shoulders. ‘Because that was just sex. Disposable bump and grind.’ His fingers worked on my muscles and gradually I could feel myself relaxing a little. ‘What I want is to make love with you, Jemima. Not fucking. Loving.’

I must have stared because his hands were suddenly painful, digging in to muscles hard as rock. ‘I don’t . . . I can’t . . .’

‘I love you. It’s not easy, it’s not simple and God knows, it’s far from making the world go round at the moment but, hey.’ There he was again, right in my face. ‘Now. Shall we see how it’s really meant to go?’

All I could feel was the insistent pulse in the background as though the world was breathing. ‘Yes.’

Then Ben kissed me. Properly. And I realised that all the other times he’d kissed me had been mere preparation, he’d been holding back. This kiss was dynamic. It sent all the little hairs on the back of my neck shooting straight up, made my skin wrinkle into goosepimples against his fingers. It sent the breath from my lungs and took the strength from my legs until I nearly buckled against him.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now you know.’

‘Ben.’ It was all I could say; a plea, a warning, a promise. My body was limp with desire for him. And for once I was surrendering control and I didn’t care.

‘Yes.’ He answered me. ‘Oh, Jem, yes.’

He kissed my mouth and my neck. Looked deep into my eyes and slowly . . . too slowly, surely . . . began to unbutton my shirt. ‘Don’t rush it,’ he whispered as I tried to move, tried to pull at his T shirt and draw it over his head. ‘We’ve got all night.’

A button at a time, with his mouth following his fingers, dipping inside the fabric as it fell away. And then he let me touch him, tracing the line of him outside his clothes and then as I grew braver, underneath to feel the tension of his muscles and the leanness of his flesh.

Slowly, still slowly, we undressed each other, pausing every other moment to kiss and wonder at the miraculousness of one another’s flesh. I tugged his shirt, inching it over his head and then stepped back to appreciate the sight of his pale skin tinted an unearthly blue by the streetlamps. ‘There’s nothing to you.’ I ran a finger over his ribcage. ‘Skin and bone.’

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