Chapter 26
SCARS OF THE HEART
‘Scars of the Heart’ is a song for those who have been hurt in the past. It’s probably the most relatable song I’ve ever written because it’s about all kinds of hurt – both physical and emotional.
That every time you are emotionally hurt, it also leaves a little scar that hurts to touch over the years or aches when it’s cold.
These few days have been a slow haze, everything jagged at the edges but blurred in the middle, a sharp pain I can’t locate making my body ache every time I move.
I obviously did not get away with the stunt I pulled last night, and now I have to put in extra hours every day to make up for it. They knew quite clearly that my poorly foot was bullshit when I tottered up to an engagement party in six-inch stilettos.
I wish I found it in me to care about being in trouble. About doing something for myself for a change. I needed to go out. To get it out of my system. To feel like myself again after Luc.
Is that a crime?
Rehearsals for the tour every day slowly loosen me up, before making my muscles tight again by the next morning. We’re so close now – only a week to go. Soon I can move past all this Luc stuff and get back to doing what I do best.
My phone vibrates against my thigh. A message from Rory asking whether I’m okay, that he’s seen pictures of me in the papers and is concerned, which I ignore.
Another is from Renée thanking me for celebrating with her last night.
This morning’s message from Luc is still in my notifications.
I take a deep breath and click it, multiple messages from him since he left my house on Friday filling the screen. I focus on the most recent one.
LUC
I’ll still be here when you’re ready to talk
My fingers hover over the keyboard at the bottom of the screen. Heart thumping in the back of my throat, ears ringing. I hold my other hand to my head, rubbing at my temples, before my fingers start moving without my permission.
SIENNA
I think I need a bit of space. I will talk to you soon, but please give me some time.
I immediately delete the entire thread between us and put my phone back in my pocket.
My back-up dancers are still rehearsing, going over the bridge of Kind Regards once again to make sure they have it perfect.
The choreographer has already packed up and gone home.
Her job is basically done. She just needs to make sure we have it perfect before opening night.
I check my calendar. The first show is in exactly a week.
Only a week until I am standing on a stage built solely for me in Murrayfield Stadium.
Until I am belting out songs from the past fourteen years.
Until those songs are echoing in the night air around me, boomeranging around the stadium to come back onto the stage.
The first time I will perform songs like Kind Regards and Yours, Sie to a large, live crowd.
All the songs about Luc for the next album, the ninth album, are on various demo CDs, all dotted around my house, some of them left in CD players, the lyrics scrawled in notebooks in the studio. Written or recorded before I made the decision to retire.
No room in my house is safe from the memory of him, his lips imprinted on wine glasses, his scent lingering on pillows, his jumper on my bedroom floor.
‘Do you guys want to go for a drink?’ I ask my dancers, my back-up singers. It’s not even our last rehearsal yet, but I feel like we need to celebrate.
‘Sure,’ a choral voice agrees.
The tabloids last night published a story littered with pictures of Luc at the pub with a male friend, his eyes red-rimmed for the one picture which managed to catch him without his sunglasses on. TROUBLE FOR SIENNA AND LUC? the headline questioned.
It certainly doesn’t look good, especially when the other pictures in the article are of me, Renée Ross and some of her pals falling out of the club in the early hours.
I didn’t think I’d had that much to drink, but from the looks of these photos, I’d had more than enough. But I deserve to enjoy myself, right?
I opened up and look where it got me.
Everywhere I looked, I saw Luc. His eyes on the man across the bar, raising his glass to me, Luc’s mouth on the man behind me in the smoking area, his hot breath on my neck.
Everyone’s hands on me, everyone trying to get a look at Sienna Martin.
I’m lucky that I was hidden by a big group of people, moving in tandem with them circling me, Dennis never too far.
‘No, you’re not,’ a voice I recognise enters the room, Mimi standing in the doorway. ‘You need to be fighting fresh for your last few rehearsals and… look at you.’
I catch myself in the mirror. My hair is sticking up in all directions from the ponytail I haven’t taken out since last night. The grease and sweat are mixing to form a gel. ‘I’m here to take you home, Sienna.’
I want to stamp my foot, throw myself on the floor and scream while I bang my fists against the floor.
When did it stop becoming socially acceptable to have tantrums like that?
I want to scream into a pillow, to sob while I stand under the running water in the shower for the next forty minutes.
I want to go out, to drink all night, to crawl in in the early hours of the morning, to lay in bed for a few hours before it’s time to get up again.
I’m always so in control. I want to be chaotic.
I want to do things I would never do. I want to get smashed in a nightclub normally only frequented by university students to see what it would’ve been like, to have a good time with my friends and go home.
I don’t want to go to a fancy club where they want to put me on a table.
Either way, Mimi isn’t giving me a choice. She’s handing me my trainers to change out of the heels I’m rehearsing in now so my legs get used to it.
And then I’m back in Kareem’s car, Dennis in the front and Mimi next to me in the back. I feel like a petulant child, about to receive a telling off from an overbearing mother.
‘You need to stop acting like this, Sienna,’ Mimi scolds. ‘I am sick of it. You are thirty years old. It’s time to grow up.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Too bad, you already have. You grew up the moment you signed that record deal. This is what you wanted to do, so now it’s time to stop throwing a tantrum over it.’
I gaze out the window, hiding my face so that she can’t see my tears. If Mimi wasn’t there, everyone would let me do whatever I want, whenever I want. No one would tell me no. But Mimi is there to ensure I stay on the right path. I stay silent, stemming my tears with my knuckle.
‘I’m doing a drug test on you when we get back,’ she continues.
My head snaps around. ‘Er, why?’
‘Because of the way you’ve been acting. You know… I won’t keep working with you if you go down that path. It’s not safe.’
‘I haven’t, Mimi. Promise. Just alcohol.’
‘We’ll see what the test says.’
They won’t find anything, and I know they won’t. So, I won’t protest. I keep my mouth shut, tired of speaking, of arguing, of trying to hold onto what little control I have over my own life.
‘Now, it’s time to talk about Luc.’ Mimi drops her hands into her lap.
I groan. ‘Do we have to?’
Kareem pulls up outside my house and the gates let us in with a click of a button. He parks up outside and lets me and Mimi out, waiting at the bottom until we are safely inside. I flick the kettle on, and Mimi takes a seat at the breakfast bar, getting her notebook out of her bag.
‘Jess tells me you weren’t aware that Luc initially took payment for the arrangement.’
I nod.
‘This is my fault.’ Mimi shakes her head. ‘I– I should have made you aware of the situation. Fully. But I didn’t think you’d go near him if you knew exactly the terms of the arrangement.’
‘I don’t care, Mimi.’ I throw my hands up in the air. ‘It’s fine. I know now.’
‘No, listen to me, Sienna.’ Mimi holds her hand up to stop me from talking. ‘You have– you need to stop being your own worst enemy. You don’t always know best.’
My mouth slams shut.
‘Luc initially took one payment from me. I insisted that he took it because he would be losing a lot of his privacy and I was concerned that, after being made redundant from his last job, that he wouldn’t be able to find another one easily if anything with the arrangement went wrong.
’ Mimi taps her pen against the top corner of the notebook, leaving behind small dots.
‘I just wanted to tide him over, and I didn’t think you’d see an issue with that because you don’t want him to struggle financially, do you? ’
I hesitate but ultimately have to shake my head. I swallow, and it takes a lot of effort.
‘Obviously, he did manage to sell his four-part drama, but he wouldn’t get the money for that straight away.’
Mimi looks at me, her eyes seemingly trying to read what’s happening in my head. ‘The reason I reached out to Luc was firstly because I knew his relationship with Rose had semi-recently ended, and I’d also heard that Hostile Minds had been cancelled.’
She’s waiting for me to reply, but I can’t.
‘But he didn’t want you to swoop in and try to save him like you have a habit of doing for the people you love,’ Mimi says.
I’d never even realised that I do that, but it makes sense. I did everything in my power to get Jess a job when she needed one. I did everything Grampy asked for, even when he didn’t directly ask but it was underwritten in the context.
‘What do you think of all this so far, Sienna?’ Mimi asks.
‘It makes–’ My voice cracks. ‘Sense. I think.’
Mimi nods. ‘Luc can tell you the rest.’ She pauses.
‘I know this was all set up as an arrangement, but I’ve really seen something blossom in you since he’s been back in your life – and in him, too.
’ She sighs. ‘Invisible string theory, you said it yourself. You’ll keep crossing paths with each other if you don’t act now. ’
‘I don’t know if I can,’ I admit.
‘Just hear him out. I don’t want to be the one to tell you his news.’
Mimi opens her laptop and puts her headphones in, her way of telling me that she needs to do a bit of work.
I stare at my phone, willing Luc to call me, text me, reach out in some way. It’s only been a few hours since I told him I needed space, but I’m already aching for the feeling his messages gave me every time he fought for me.
I unlock my phone and start aimlessly scrolling through social media. I navigate towards Luc’s Instagram but find nothing of note. He hasn’t posted since the last photo he shared of us at my launch party, and there’s nothing on his story.
My page looks the same, a photo of us from the launch party – the one Jess took from across the room where it looks like no one else in the room matters. They all blur around us while we look only at each other.
Seeing it now is like being punched in the gut.
I leave Instagram and open TikTok, hoping that the endless loop of clips to flick through will numb the ache in my brain.
Will let me turn off the whirring in my thoughts for the first time in days.
But it doesn’t. I’m hardly taking in what is happening on my screen while thoughts of Luc remain prominent.
What if I’ve messed this up forever? What is his news that Mimi won’t share? Was I wrong to cut him off? Have I got the wrong end of the stick?
But then, the other side of my brain comes back.
That no matter what way I spin it, Luc was being paid to hang out with me.
Doesn’t that make our entire relationship inauthentic?
Even more inauthentic than the fact it began because we were faking it?
Clearly some of us more than others, but faking it nonetheless.
I will get the full story from Luc at some point, but I need to get over him first. To minimise the hurt the full story will cause me. If I’m already over it, I’ll care less. It won’t hurt as much.
All I ever wanted to do was protect myself. There’s been enough hurt now that I know how to see it coming, how to protect myself in advance. And, unfortunately, a lot of that is not letting people in. It’s not like I want to live this way, but the alternative is completely unfathomable.