Chapter Thirty-Three
Taking a train from Scotland to London took a long time. Long enough that Maeve had plenty of time to think about all the things that could go wrong. Not to mention all the things that had already gone wrong.
Mo had fallen asleep somewhere around Perth, her head lolling against the window in a way that was going to give her a crick in her neck. Maeve had thought about waking her, but the kid deserved the rest. Running away from home was exhausting. Maeve remembered.
They'd talked most of the way through Scotland, once Mo had stopped pretending she wasn't nervous about going home. The conversation had been lighter than the night before, less about boys and hiding and more about music, about the old days, about what it had been like.
"Did you hate each other?" Mo had asked. "The band, I mean. When it all fell apart?"
Maeve had considered this. "No. I think that was the problem. It would have been easier if we hated each other."
"Why?"
She laughed. "Because then I could have blamed them. Instead, I had to blame myself."
Mo had nodded at this, like this made sense to her. Maybe it did. Teenagers understood guilt better than adults gave them credit for.
"You were pretty famous though, right?" Mo asked later, chewing on a packet of crisps she'd wheedled out of Maeve when the trolley came around.
"For about ten minutes."
"That's longer than most people."
"Profoundly philosophical for someone who just crammed six crisps in her mouth at once."
Mo grinned, unrepentant. "What was my mum like? Back then, I mean. Before she was, you know. A mum."
Maeve considered the question. Iona at nineteen. Iona with her guitar and her laugh and her complete inability to not care about every single person she met. "Annoying," she said finally.
Mo raised an eyebrow. She was getting better at that. It reminded Maeve painfully of Iona.
"In a good way," Maeve amended. "She was relentlessly cheerful. Aggressively optimistic. The sort of person who would see storm clouds and insist they were just 'dramatic lighting.'"
"Sounds about right," Mo said, grinning.
"And talented. Really talented. People always focused on the singing because that's the front of house bit, but your mum could play. Can play. She just never believed it."
Mo was quiet for a moment, crisps forgotten. "She still doesn't."
"No," Maeve agreed. "She still doesn't."
"You could tell her."
"I could."
Mo waited, but Maeve didn't elaborate. Some things you couldn't tell someone. Some things they had to figure out for themselves, or they'd never believe you anyway. Perhaps that was true of more things than she thought.
She was battling with what to say to Iona.
But perhaps Iona had to figure it out herself or it wouldn’t mean the same.
Maeve knew her word wasn’t to be trusted, she’d made peace with that a long time ago.
So her actions would have to speak for her.
And the rest, well, Iona would have to decide, wouldn’t she?
THEY MANAGED TO catch an earlier connection and pulled into King’s Cross an hour and a half early, which could either be a good omen or the universe laughing at her and pushing her into action, Maeve didn’t know which. Either way, they were early. So she texted Iona and asked where she was.
The reply came immediately: Rehearsal room.
Maeve looked at Mo, who was stretching and yawning and looking remarkably undamaged for a teenager who'd traveled four hundred miles on public transport. "Change of plans. We're going to the rehearsal rooms."
"Cool." Mo pulled out her phone and started texting. "Mum says she's going to kill me, but in a loving way."
"That seems fair. Probably more or less what you deserve, no?"
They took the tube, which Mo navigated with the casual competence of a London teenager while Maeve tried not to look like someone who'd been living in the Scottish highlands for fifteen years.
The Piccadilly line was packed with tourists and commuters and one extremely loud hen party in matching pink sashes.
"City's got worse," Maeve muttered.
"It's literally always been like this."
"I have fond memories of it being quieter."
"Those are called delusions."
Christ, the child really was Iona’s. Maeve grinned to herself and thought that now that it came down to it, she really liked Mo.
WHEN THEY REACHED the rehearsal room, the door was propped open. Maeve could hear voices inside, overlapping, not quite arguing but not quite agreeing either.
"Ready?" she asked Mo.
"Are you?"
"Absolutely not."
They went in anyway.
The reunion wasn’t exactly a Hallmark moment. Iona spotted Mo first and made a sound that was half sob, half laugh, and entirely undignified. She crossed the room in three strides and pulled Mo into a hug that looked like it might crack ribs.
"Don't ever," Iona said into Mo's hair. "Don't you ever."
"I know. I'm sorry. I know."
Cam was hovering nearby, practically vibrating with the effort of not interrupting. Ellie stood by the piano, quieter, watchful. Shepherd was at the back of the room with his arms folded and an expression Maeve couldn't read.
And then Iona looked up.
Their eyes met across the room, over the top of Mo's head, and Maeve felt something lurch in her chest. Not a dramatic romantic lurch. More of an internal, oh, there you are, which was somehow worse.
Iona's face seemed to… calm somehow. Seemed to relax, perhaps, to edge into something closer to her normal look.
They didn't move toward each other. There wasn't time, wasn't space, it wasn't the right moment. Maeve didn’t know if there’d ever be a right moment, to be truthful. Mo was still clinging to her mother, and Shepherd was already stepping forward with his professional face on.
"Maeve," he said. "Glad you could join us."
"Shepherd." She nodded at him. "I believe this belongs to you."
Mo extracted herself from Iona's grip long enough to make a face. "I'm not a parcel."
"You traveled four hundred miles without permission. You're lucky you're not in a crate."
Shepherd's mouth twitched. It was the closest thing to approval Maeve had seen from him since she’d left Scotland the first time.
"Right," he said, looking around at all of them. "Now that we're all here. Lakeside is still on."
Cam made a noise that might have been excitement or might have been indigestion.
"But," Shepherd continued, "this is it. Last chance. You play, or you don't. You're a band, or you're not." He looked at each of them in turn. "I've risked my reputation for this. I've called in favors I'll never get back. So I need to know, right now, from each of you: are you in?"
???
Mo was by her side, warm and safe, and Maeve was in the room, and just having them both close made Iona feel a sense of comfort, of rightness, that she hadn’t known she’d needed.
And she knew that she loved Maeve, had always known it, really. But now she knew that Maeve and Mo liked each other. She knew that Maeve had come back. She knew that Maeve was actually, now that she came to think about it, the only person she’d ever really wanted in her life at all.
But she also knew that Maeve might not stay. That Maeve might not want this at all. Or, to be more honest, that Maeve did want this but was terrified of it. Maeve might run.
There were demons here, for all of them.
And the only way to put those demons to rest, the only way that any of this might work out to be a happy ending, was if the band played together.
That would do it, Iona was sure of it. If they could all somehow see their way to working together, playing together, it would all…
not disappear exactly, but be painted over by something better. Something worth keeping.
So when Shepherd asked his question, Iona didn’t even have to think. She looked at Maeve and something passed between them. An understanding. A question and an answer in the same glance.
Iona found herself nodding before she'd consciously decided. Maeve nodded back.
"I'm in," Maeve said.
"So am I," said Iona.
Cam punched the air. Ellie smiled, small and tired but real.
"Good," said Shepherd. "Then you’ve got about a week and a half to rehearse so that you don’t embarrass yourselves in front of thousands of people." He gathered his papers. "I'll send the finalized schedule tonight."
He paused by Iona on his way out, one hand on her shoulder. "Our daughter," he said quietly, "has good judgment about people."
Iona blinked at him. "Sorry?"
"Maeve." He glanced across the room to where Maeve was talking to Mo, heads bent together. "I may have misjudged her. Mo didn't run to someone dangerous. She’d never do that. She ran to someone safe." He squeezed Iona's shoulder once and left.
Iona stood there for a moment, processing. Shepherd trusting Maeve. Maeve trusting herself enough to come back. Mo trusting all of them enough to tell the truth.
"I need to say something," Ellie said suddenly. Her voice was steadier than it had been in weeks. "I'm sorry. For lying to you. For making you part of something you didn't choose."
"Ellie…" Iona started.
"Let me finish." Ellie looked at each of them. "I was scared. I still am. But I should have told you the truth. You deserved the choice."
"You were protecting us," Cam said. "That's what you do. It's annoying, but we're used to it."
"It was still wrong."
"Then we forgive you," Iona said simply. "All of us. Don't we?"
Maeve nodded. Cam made a gesture that might have been a salute or might have been an obscene hand sign, it was hard to tell with her.
Ellie gave a sharp nod in acknowledgement.
"While we’re on the subject of forgiveness," Iona said, turning to Cam. They might as well get everything out of the way at once. "The Elijah thing. It… It wasn’t okay. But we understand. Don’t we?" She looked around at the others.
Cam looked down at the ground, her bravado flickering.
"I don’t want to say this again. Just this once.
He used me. I trusted him, and he used me to get a story.
He sat in my flat and drank my wine and asked questions about Maeve like he was interested in the music.
And I told him things. Because I'm an idiot who wanted someone to listen. "
"You're not an idiot," Ellie said quietly.
"I'm a bit of an idiot." Cam sniffed.
"I'm sorry." Iona touched her arm. "That's awful."
"He’s an arsehole," Maeve added.
"Yeah, well, don’t be too sorry." Cam's smile was sharper now, edged with something almost gleeful. "I've already handled it."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that Elijah may or may not think that something’s going to go down at the festival.
" She cleared her throat. "As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t already written most of the story based on the kind of rumors that he’s been hearing.
" She gave a wicked grin."You know the sort of stuff.
Public meltdown. Career-ending disaster. "
Ellie lifted an eyebrow. "Cam…"
Cam rolled her eyes. "Just you wait and see," she said. "Best that you don’t ask too many questions."
"You’re either brilliant or insane," Maeve said.
"Bit of both, probably." But Cam's smile had faltered slightly. Under the bravado, there was something else. Something bruised.
"You liked him," Iona said softly. "Didn't you?"
Cam didn't answer. She didn't have to. Her face said everything her mouth wouldn't.
Iona moved first, pulling Cam into a hug. Then Ellie joined, and then Maeve was there too, all four of them tangled together in a mess of arms and hair and someone's elbow in someone else's ribs.
"This is very emotional," Cam said, muffled. "I'm uncomfortable."
"Shut up," said three voices at once.
When they finally separated, Iona looked around for Maeve.
The space where she'd been standing was empty.
Maeve would play with them at Lakeside. She'd said yes. Shepherd had her commitment, the band had her voice. But Iona didn't know if she had Maeve. Not yet. Maybe not ever.