Page 57 of Love Me Till Wednesday

‘Let’s just say I’ve had less stressful days.’ Nick said, doing his best to ignore the phone buzzing in his pocket.

‘We can meet some other time if now’s difficult?’

He got his phone out again and turned it off. ‘No. Now’s fine. I need to know everything.’

‘Where do I start?’ Lisa asked.

‘I guess I’m struggling to understand why you didn’t tell me you were having my child,’ Nick said.

‘And how could I have done that? I didn’t know where you were. Mel told me you’d hooked up with someone new and we were over.’ Lisa closed her eyes to calm herself. Even after all this time it was still a painful memory.

Nick looked uncomfortable. She carried on.

‘When I arrived back in London, Mel said you’d come home early from Greece and you’d been round to collect your things. I thought you were a bastard for not telling me to my face. I felt you owed me an explanation so I went round to your flat. But no one answered the door. I couldn’t think what to do. I sat on the doorstep in the rain for an hour until what’s her face turned up.’

‘Jenny?’

‘Yes. Sorry, I’m rubbish with names these days. Anyway, she told me you’d given her the rest of your share of the month’s rent, and then you left to catch a flight to America. She said you were going to write with a forwarding address, so I went back a week later, but she hadn’t heard anything. She promised to send me your address when it arrived, but it never did.’

‘I didn’t get round to doing that,’ Nick said quietly. ‘Deliberately, I guess. I didn’t want you to find me. I was so cut up about you replacing me with someone else.’

‘I know how that feels,’ Lisa leaned back in her chair, wanting to put some more distance between them. ‘I contacted your agent, but she wouldn’t talk to me, and her assistant wouldn’t tell me anything. Then I tried looking your mum up in the phone book but I couldn’t remember her surname. So I thought, sod you. I was best rid of you. And then I found out I was pregnant.’

‘That must have been a shock.’

‘No shit, Sherlock.’Don’t get angry. You know this isn’t his fault now!‘Sorry. For years, I rehearsed in my head what I’d say to you if you ever got in touch, but that was on the basis that you’d run off with someone else. I’m struggling to get my head around what actually happened.’

He nodded. ‘I’m the same. I’ve been angry with you for so long.’ He held her gaze for a moment. ‘What a waste.’

‘Yeah.’ She resisted the urge to lean over and kiss him.No point doing that - you’re not his type now. And he’s engaged.

‘What are you going to do about Mel?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know yet. I’ve confided in her for years about everything. And all the time, she wasn’t honest with me. Good job that she’s going away for the weekend. Otherwise, I might have done something stupid. I’ll confront her when she comes round on Tuesday night. That way, I’ve got a few days to think about how to tackle it.’

Nick nodded. ‘Probably best to sleep on it at least.’

They sat in silence. Nick was the first to break it. ‘Tell me about Jim. How was it bringing him up?’

There was no point in sugarcoating it. ‘Exhausting. Mel helped out in the school holidays when she could, but she was working full time as a teacher so she couldn’t do much during term time. Dougie was furious because I didn’t feel up to going into the studio or anything music-related, to be honest. So the Stars all agreed to go our separate ways, which at least meant I wasn’t feeling guilty about being crap at writing new material. Mum wanted me to move back home so she could help more, but that would’ve been admitting failure. Then my money started to run out when he was two, so I got him a place in a nursery and got an office job. I used my legal name, not my stage name, and I stopped dying my hair red so no one recognised me.’

‘Why didn’t you get everyone back together or set up a new band?’

‘I’d lost my confidence. I tried writing again, but the words wouldn’t come. Meanwhile, you were living the life of Riley in Hollywood.’

‘It might have looked that way, but it wasn’t that great.’

‘Really? You seemed to be on every newspaper front page at that point. You and a different blonde model each week.’

‘That was the problem. My career was on the up, but my personal life was a mess. And I was drinking too much. I had no trouble attracting women, but keeping them was a different story. Apparently, I was deliberately pushing them away, according to my shrink.’

‘Shrink?’

‘Everyone has a therapist in Hollywood.’

‘Is that what’s happening with your current fiancée?’Why did you say that??

He looked like he was going to reply but changed his mind.

---