Chapter 5 Hard to Handle
HARD TO HANDLE
‘Hard to Handle’ initially sounds like a song I’ve written about having a life that is hard for someone else to handle.
It’s years of being a pain in the ass for my friends and family.
But actually, it’s about how I find my own life hard to handle.
How I want to be able to live a normal life again, but I still want to be successful.
How maybe I don’t really know who I am or what I want anymore.
The waiter collects our plates, and Luc pours us another glass of wine.
He pours slowly, so that he can make sure each glass is even, filling my glass before his own.
He takes the dribble at the end of the bottle and lifts his glass.
It clinks against mine, the satisfying ringing staying in the air for a few seconds longer than the glasses.
‘To our relationship,’ he smiles, and it’s not insincere.
‘To our relationship,’ I repeat, but it’s harder for me to respond with that same sincerity.
At no point in the next five months can I forget why I broke up with Luc the first time. Even ten years ago, my life was too unmanageable to force someone else into that.
I know everyone only wants what’s best for me, but all I want is more control over my own life.
My dating life was the only aspect I could control.
The fact that I never let anyone in, never let anyone close, was a choice I made.
Everyone leaves eventually anyway, and I don’t want to have to police myself while they’re around to make sure they haven’t got any dirt they can sell when they do leave. NDAs expire eventually.
Jess and I had another friend: Hazel. Between Sweethearts Inside at Night and Party Pooper, stories kept cropping up about me in the papers: break-ups, where I was going to be at any given time, leaked song titles, new album news, my relationship with Mauve.
Stories too close and intimate to have come from anyone outside that inner circle.
After months of speculation and me accusing Mauve several times, Jess and I eventually caught Hazel out with a fake story we only told her.
It’s easier to see someone a couple of times, have some fun and then cut them off.
With Luc, it was different.
Jess is the only one who knows the truth.
And only because she was sitting on the sofa in my studio while I was at the piano.
Tears ran down my cheeks as I played the notes over and over, painstakingly putting words together for Unlikely Silence – the lead single for my fifth album of the same name.
The truth that I didn’t change my mind, no matter how much it looked like that.
It’s the only time I haven’t.
I cross my legs and fiddle with the buckle on my shoe, pulling the strap and running my finger inside it against a rogue hair which seems to have sprouted near my ankle.
‘I guess all that’s left today is to get papped.’ Luc runs his hands through his hair, pushing his glasses up his nose. His smile is crooked, rising more on his right than left. The overlap in his front teeth has been corrected, his pearly white smile in near-perfect condition.
Another thing I’ve missed.
He shakes his head, looking at the table. ‘I don’t know how you can live like this.’
My back straightens, my muscles and joints stiffening. There we have the reason I had to let him go, no matter my feelings. My life was not for him. He was always so stationary, while I was always moving, always doing, always working. A timely reminder of why I made the right call a decade ago.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard something like this. My brother says it constantly. That’s why Rory hides from the spotlight, why he tries to keep his life as separate to mine as possible.
‘Now is the time for you to back out if you don’t want to do this.’ I try and fail to swallow a lump in my throat, a slight aching pain settling in my neck. ‘If you don’t want to be involved, we can leave here separately, and everyone will be none the wiser.’
Luc looks into my eyes, his own full of searching.
Neither of us breaks eye contact. I gulp down half my final glass of wine, and the room spins slightly as I put it back on the table.
I notice a few drops have spilled through the course of the evening, the dark red splotches seeping through the table cloth protecting the oak table.
The initial drops are darker, the liquid lightening as it seeps into a star around it.
I look at the door, captured by Luc’s eye as my own brush past him.
‘Sie,’ he says softly. ‘If this is something you don’t want to do, you can say. If you don’t want to follow Mimi’s plan, that’s okay. It’s still your decision, your life, at the end of the day.’
‘It doesn’t work like that unfortunately.’ I shake my head. ‘My life stopped being my life as soon as I signed the recording contract.’
Luc frowns.
‘If I don’t do this, if I don’t overhaul what people think about me, we won’t sell enough tickets to the tour to meet the contract for venues we’ve already committed to.’
He dips his chin, glasses slipping down his nose. ‘We’re really doing this then.’
‘Looks like it.’ I drum my fingers on the table, the hardness of the wood against my skin settling me. ‘What are you getting out of this?’
Luc shrugs. ‘I get to help a friend.’
I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. ‘Be serious.’
He sighs and cracks his fingers. ‘Rose. She’ll think I’ve moved on, like she has.’
I nod. I get it.
It took years to get to the point where we could talk as friends.
And then he met Rose, and they made a promise to marry each other, and I pushed myself aside.
Rose was so refreshingly normal, so perfect for Luc.
A greetings card designer for Marks and Spencer.
I mean, come on, it’s so fucking wholesome.
For a long time, I thought if I wasn’t going to get Luc in every way, I’d take the crumbs. But I don’t deserve to take the crumbs from someone who gives him everything.
From someone whose life wouldn’t overshadow his.
From someone who could let him live the life he wants to live.
I take a deep breath. We’re really doing this.
‘And, full disclosure,’ he continues.
Here we go.
‘I recently found out that Hostile Minds isn’t being renewed. I somehow need to find a new writing contract and I could do with the good press myself.’
Tension zips up my spine and I have to quickly remind myself that I can’t be annoyed about this. It’s different. He’s being honest, and I’m using him too.
The waiter comes back with the bill, placing the discreet envelope in the middle of the table. I reach out to grab it, but Luc has already picked it up.
‘Luc, I’ll get this.’
‘No. A lady should never pay on the first date.’
‘I thought we agreed this was a business meeting.’ I frown and touch the back of my neck. ‘And didn’t you just admit you were unemployed?’
‘It’s the debut of our relationship.’ He checks how much the bill is, nodding and pulling out his card. ‘I’m good for it.’
He should hate me. The disappearing, the dragging him back with a silly plan to get good press. Ruining his life over and over. But Luc is too nice. I don’t deserve it.
‘Right, shall we get this show on the road?’ Luc asks.
I watch the waiter leave the room and disappear down the stairs before nodding. ‘Follow my lead.’
I grab my bag on the way out the door, checking I’ve got everything, and Dennis takes it off me, listening to something on his earpiece.
‘Ready?’ I ask Luc at the bottom of the stairs.
But, truly, he can never be ready for what is about to happen. Not for the first time, I consider whether this plan will work or whether there will be another negative story about me having my third man this week in the papers tomorrow.
‘Thank you, ma’am. Thank you, sir,’ the ma?tre d’ says as we open the door to flashing cameras. There are more now than there were when I came in, fans standing behind them and screaming for my attention. Word got out that Sienna Martin is here.
There are seemingly hundreds of cameras, both professional and phones, trying to catch a glimpse.
‘Sienna, is this your next victim?’ one shouts.
‘Are you in a relationship with this man, Miss Martin?’
In answer, I reach out and find Luc’s hand.
The shouts get louder, hungrier, and I’m unable to distinguish what each person is saying over the cacophony of the others.
The cameras clicking. The screams of fans somewhere in the periphery.
Luc’s hands are clammy, and my hand nearly slips out of his grasp.
He squeezes and runs his thumb over my index finger.
It’s slippery but has the same effect as a tight hug.
It makes me feel twenty years old again, when we would leave restaurants with coats draped over our heads so that we could develop a relationship privately.
Those early stages are so vulnerable, and we didn’t want the added pressure with the increased media interest around me since crying on Eric Lancaster’s sofa.
Oh, if baby Sienna and Luc could see us now.
We follow Dennis, with the restaurant’s security right behind us, towards Kareem’s car.
‘Hey, Kareem,’ I say, climbing over the seats to make room for Luc next to me.
The cameras are blinding, every few seconds a new flash tries to catch their perfect shot of the happy couple, or whatever the headlines are going to call us tomorrow.
‘Hello, Miss Martin,’ Kareem smiles in the interior mirror. ‘Are you both going back to your house?’
‘Yes, that’s fine. I can get out and get the bus from there,’ Luc replies politely.
I shake my head. ‘Kareem will take you home.’ I rest my head on the window and close my eyes, a throbbing in my head I hadn’t noticed now intensifying.
‘If you’re sure, sir,’ Luc says, giving Kareem his full address.
I open my eyes. ‘How’s the baby?’
‘She is absolutely gorgeous. Perfect,’ Kareem beams. ‘Patrick and I are completely in love.’
‘With each other, or her?’ I smile.
‘Both!’