Page 8 of One True Love

We make it to the car park and climb into Kallie’s black Mini Cooper. Albie’s nostrils flare as he leans back in the passenger seat, exhausted and ready to get out of here.

“Keep the disguise on for a bit, if I were you.”

“Way ahead of you, love.”

I start the engine and reverse gingerly between all the other vehicles. Most people won’t leave until tomorrow at the earliest, so the car park is still jam-packed—and very tacky as it always is.

We escape just as it starts to rain again and I breathe a sigh of relief. “There’s someone looking after us.”

I gun the vehicle away and Albie removes his disguise, the wet weather making it just that bit more difficult to spot someone through a car window.

It’s not until we’re on the motorway back to London that I finally say, “What’s the story, then?”

He’s silent to begin with, then he sighs. “He wasn’t the best dad, wasn’t the worst. But there was a rift. He didn’t like who I’d become.”

I glance over and watch his head sink into his shoulders, his eyes focused on his lap.

It’s no stretch of the imagination to believe what he just said. Sometimes I’m not very proud of Albie either, yet I’ve come to consider him as a bit of friend. We’re probably the only two people in the music business who know what Sharon is really like. So I have some understanding of why Albie perpetuates this persona, why he feels trapped and decides to rebel at every opportunity.

“It’s that you didn’t sort things out,” I remark, and out of my peripheral vision, he nods. “Did you know I was raised by my dad?”

“You mentioned once or twice,” he mumbles. “What happened?”

“She just walked out.”

He sits higher in his seat and turns slightly to look at me. The thought of him watching me as I drive is rather unnerving. “She left you?” He sounds incredulous. “Or she left your dad?”

“That’s the thing,” I giggle nervously. “I don’t know. She’d become distant, it’d been noticeable for months. Then one day, she packed her things and left a note. All it said was that she’d got a job offer somewhere else, something she couldn’t pass up, and that she hoped we’d understand.”

“Stone cold,” he says.

“I was twelve, coming up to thirteen.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.” I nod my head several times. “Possibly the worst timing, to be left without a mother.” I swallow hard, overtake a few cars, then pull back into the middle lane. We’re chewing up the miles in Kallie’s sporty vehicle. “Mind you, she wasn’t present, not for a long while before she left. You could say I had school, friends, a future to look forward to. I got on with it as best I could. Confided in people when I felt strong enough to. Sort of got used to being motherless. It was my father who didn’t get over it.”

“He never met anyone else?”

“Oh, he met people, but it was never…” I shake my head, laughing. “He’s a cab driver. Always has been. Always will be. He’ll die in that thing and even then, they’ll have to prise him out. I expect the constant night work did nothing for their marriage, but he’d always preferred night work.”

Albie clears his throat loudly. “What about after she’d gone?”

“Yep.” I inhale shakily. “He left me all night in the house. Alone.”

“I see.”

“That’s how I got into self-defence, then martial arts and all sorts. We lived in a good neighbourhood, but I was scared. Kallie was the one who got me into going to classes, but when she eventually got bored like most people do, I still kept going.”

I hear Albie swallow loudly. I am praying he doesn’t show pity; because that from Albie would be just about the worst.

“Do you still see him?” he says, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“He sends me 500 quid a month still, but no, I don’t see him.”

“Pardon me?”

“Yeah!” I gasp, because it’s still just as much of a shock to me now, as it was then. “I left Luton and studied for my marketing degree in Bristol. Super cool place, by the way.” I can’t believe he and I have never talked about this before. “Anyway, when I finished uni and had to go back home for a bit, he started putting some money in my account every month. He never explained it.”

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