Secrets at the Little Music Shop

Chapter Twelve

Half way through my attempts to tame my hair into something sleek, the phone rang. ‘I’ve got it!’ Rosie shouted up the stairs.

‘Good! Because if I have to stop now I’m going to look like an explosion in a wig shop.’ I carried on straightening my hair. Thanks to an afternoon in the bathroom with a bottle of peroxide my roots were now back to their usual blonde and I was battling my ever-present, but hardly ever seen, curls. Harry was in bed, Rosie was glammed up to the eyeballs, and we were both starving. Ben had better be a whizz in the kitchen because if he produced three cheese omelettes we might just eat each other.

‘Who is it?’ I went onto the landing but Rosie had taken the phone to the extent of its cord into the living room. ‘It’s not Ben cancelling, is it?’

Ben’s new-found perkiness made me suspicious. Why had he suddenly taken it upon himself to start cooking meals for women? It all seemed to be some kind of backlash to his self-imposed exile and the one thing I know about backlashes is, sometimes they lash right back to the beginning again. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that Ben was hiding in his basement with a cushion over his head.

Rosie called back something I couldn’t hear and appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Can you apologise to Ben for me?’ She was pulling on a jacket. ‘Something’s come up. I’ll be back in a bit but . . . there’s something I have to do first.’

‘Rosie?’ I started down the stairs but she was already on her way out of the front door, calling over her shoulder, ‘Harry shouldn’t wake up, if he does there’s a bottle in the fridge all made up. Thanks, Jem!’

‘Like I have a choice,’ I muttered mutinously. The door slammed. ‘I presume the wicked Saskia is behind this,’ I said to the straighteners. ‘Probably wants to open a sweat-shop.’ There was an ominous smell of singeing. My hair got more and more resistant to being straightened every week. Added to the all-pervading lingering peroxide, I smelled like some kind of chemical reaction. I gave a couple of squirts of perfume to offset it and hoped that Ben wouldn’t think I smelled nice just for him.

God I was hungry. Could I get away with a cheese sandwich before he arrived? I’d got the loaf out and had a furtive gnaw at the crust when I heard a car pull up. ‘Hello?’

I went outside to be greeted by the sight of Ben loaded down with boxes of pots and pans and ingredients. ‘Blimey. Looks like Jamie Oliver’s tour bus,’ I said, peering into the car. ‘What the hell are you making, a seven-course banquet?’

‘I can do.’ Ben carried several crates through into the kitchen. ‘Are you going to help?’

‘I thought this was a relaxing evening where you did all the work and I sat around?’

‘Ha! Come on, you can whisk egg-whites. Where’s Rosie?’

‘She’s just popped out for a little while.’

‘Damn. I had her down for sauce-making duties. Never mind we can cover. Now, wash your hands.’ Ben bounced into the middle of our tiny kitchen and began to sort through his boxes. ‘Pans, butter, eggs, cream. I’ll get the rest from the car as I need it.’

I watched him as he began measuring by eye. There was something different about him, something sparky and energetic. ‘So. Bit of a turnaround for you, isn’t it?’

There was a momentary pause before he tipped butter into a pan. ‘Yeah. I’m sorry, Jem. Life got a bit out of perspective for a while. I need to get my head around the fact that just because I’ll never play guitar again doesn’t mean—’

‘Who says you’ll never play guitar again? You haven’t lost the use of your hands, have you?’

The pause was longer this time. ‘No. But I just can’t.’

I had my back to him as I began separating the eggs. ‘So, why not?’ I tried to sound casual. There was no answer. Ben had his head down, putting a pan on the stove and concentrating on its contents. ‘Is it something to do with what happened in Philadelphia?’

His head jerked up suddenly. ‘Where are you from, Jemima?’

As a diversionary tactic it worked. ‘It — I — lots of places, you know.’

‘No, I don’t know.’ His eyes were on my face. ‘I returned your favour yesterday. Googled you. I thought you’d have a website.’

‘I have!’

‘Yeah. I found it. Jemima Hutton Jewellery. What puzzled me about it was the date it was set up.’

My heart was beating fast and my palms were too slippery to hold the whisk. ‘What?’

‘You’ve only had the website for eighteen months. Before that, nothing.’

Adrenaline flooded through me like a dam had burst. ‘Well, that’s all there is. The website, for marketing and selling.’

Ben turned from the pan. In the little galley kitchen he was only a breath away from me. I found I’d got my fingers around the milk-pan in a defensive hold. ‘But you’ve been making the jewellery for years, you told me so, when you gave me your spiel the first time we met. How come you only just set up a website?’

I’d had time to recover. ‘Eighteen months ago was the first time I could afford to set one up.’ I made my tone light, amused. ‘We don’t all have bank loads of cash sitting around, you know.’

I felt as though his eyes were scanning me, reading me. Like there was a barcode printed somewhere on my head. ‘Then how did you do your marketing? Where were you based? Most people who have websites run at least a Facebook page. A blog maybe. Or they’re registered on Friends Reunited, or have a piece in the local paper — they show up somewhere . You there’s no trace of.’ He went back to unpacking food from a freezer box, but kept looking at me. ‘So I’d guess you’ve got secrets, things you’d rather people didn’t know about you. Like the fact you aren’t really Jemima Hutton at all.’

I dropped the whisk. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sorry?’ His eyes flicked over my face, quickly. Almost as if I’d frightened him.

‘Really, I don’t know what you mean.’

Ben inclined his head. ‘Okay, maybe you don’t. I’m just guessing here. All I’m saying is, you know what it’s like not to want people pushing and prying into your life.’

I took a deep breath. ‘So keep out of yours? Is that what all that was really about? You trying to warn me off? Blackmail ?’

The look Ben gave me was level and steady. Damn ! ‘It can’t be blackmail if there’s nothing to hide, can it?’ Then he’d flipped away and was tying his hair back. ‘Right. Thought I’d start with melon . . .’ He pulled an alarmingly green melon from the cold box. ‘. . . with Parma ham. Then Lemon Sole in a Béarnaise sauce followed by Baked Alaska.’

The kitchen was too small. I felt suddenly huge, as though I was trying to hide myself behind matchboxes, naked and exposed. ‘I — it all sounds very — um.’

He turned to me and his expression was a mixture of sympathy and warning. ‘This is how it feels to be me, Jemima. Like — like I’m made of holes. People just want to keep poking, see how deep they can get before I flinch. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable, but maybe now you can understand how it is for me every fucking day .’

‘Then why don’t you open up?’ Was that a little sob there, just at the end, as though my voice caught on my teeth?

‘For the same reason you don’t.’ Ben weighed the melon in his hand, fingers playing over its rough surface, as though there was still a guitar lodged in his subconscious. ‘We’re both scared shitless of what the world can do to us, so we never talk.’ He took a step towards me. ‘I wish I could. I wish I could get involved, fall in love, really . . . really touch someone because it’s pretty lonely where I am.’ The hand not cradling the melon reached out, twisted a strand of my hair. ‘But it’s like this wall, you know? Between me and everyone else.’

‘And you daren’t let it down,’ I whispered. I was giving him ammunition. I knew it but I didn’t care. Now, here, with the kitchen getting hotter by the second, and not just because of the melting butter, my guard was splitting infinitesimally.

‘For fear of what might come through,’ Ben finished, and kissed me.

And, oh God, I let him. Dropped the shields and pressed myself into him, catching at his arms to balance myself, then winding my hands around his neck to pull myself closer against his warmth. I closed my eyes and felt the pressure of his tongue on my lips, opened my mouth and relaxed as his guitar-player’s muscles took my weight and rolled me so that I was squeezed between the corner cupboard and him. It was a long, long way from that kiss he’d given me outside his shop to avoid talking to his visitor. Now his kisses were so hard that I couldn’t breathe, he kissed like a drowning man given a Scuba mask. Like he literally couldn’t get enough. When I felt his hands travel over my thighs, rucking my skirt until his fingers touched skin, I touched his face. Ran my fingers over his cheekbones, down his stubbled cheeks then on to his shoulders. His belt buckle, ironically one of mine, dug into my stomach but even with that distraction I could feel the rigidity of him.

And it felt so good . To forget all the promises I’d made to myself, to forget all the awfulness, all the terror that had gone before. To free myself momentarily from the fear that being close to a man would wipe my personality away and replace it with that of a kicked dog.

And then he shuddered. Moaned in his throat, a cry of — what? grief? frustration? and let me go. Closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass-fronted cabinet above the fridge, arms wrapped around his torso and his fists clenched.

I was left gasping. For air and for sense. My brain was scrambled by the onslaught of emotion, both his and mine. And then the heat of desire suddenly drained away, leaving me chilled with the horror of what I’d so nearly done. And with a sadness, an awful, overwhelming ache.

‘It’s okay,’ I found I was saying. ‘It’s okay, Ben.’ Like the aftermath of a crash while the metal is still ticking itself cool, I was forcing myself to be calm. ‘Really.’

He was still huddled over himself, eyes shut. Rocking.

My heart was trying to escape. The room seemed to wheel and split and I grabbed at the washing machine to steady myself. ‘Ben.’ I put a hand on his shoulder.

He jumped. As if he’d forgotten I was there, or hadn’t heard my reassurances. ‘ Christ .’ I’d never heard anyone sound so regretful, so empty, so lost .

‘It’s okay.’ It seemed to be all I could say. I wanted him to echo it, to tell me that everything would be all right, too. That nothing had broken that couldn’t be fixed, that he didn’t think of me any differently now. That we could forget this had ever happened.

And then like the call of sanity from the living room, the phone began to ring. Ben opened his eyes and stared at me as though he’d never seen me before.

‘ Christ .’

He was actually shaking.

‘The butter is burning.’ It was all I could think of. What do you say to a man who’s just kissed you like that? What do you say when the memories come back to haunt you and all you want to do is run?

‘Where are you going?’ His eyes were wide, his pupils huge, they seemed to swallow up his face until all I could see were those holes in his soul. ‘Jemima?’

‘It’s okay . I’m just going to answer the phone, it might be important.’ And I needed to get out of that room where the smell of burning butter was beginning to take on a brimstone tinge.

It was Jason. ‘You sound rough. What’s up?’

‘Nothing. Ben’s here cooking a meal.’

‘Yeah, right . Cookin’. I getcha. You want to get back in there and show ’im that trick with the ice cubes . . .’

‘Jason, why are you ringing?’ I had to interrupt otherwise Jason would be on the line all night giving me his favourite sex tips. And I so — so — did not want to think about sex right now.

‘Ah. Well, thing is, luv, I think I might have left the welding iron on down at the studio. Any chance you can pop over and turn it off? I mean, it’s not like the place’ll burn down or nothing but . . . you know, safe side an’ all.’

‘Can’t it wait until the morning?’ Or any other time when I don’t have a possibly suicidal guitarist in my kitchen?

‘How much do you care about your stuff in the workshop? On a scale of one to ten where one is Terry Wogan and ten is his gorgeousness out there?’

‘All right, I’ll go over now. Just to set your mind at rest.’

‘Thanks. Oh, and Jem—?’

‘What?’ There was a sound of saucepans clanking from the kitchen.

‘The ice-cube thing. Honest. Every time.’

‘Shut up, Jason.’ And I put the phone down.

Ben had scoured out the burned pan, remelted the butter and was stirring it with careful, close attention. His eyes, when they met mine, were slightly desperate. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Just Jason wanting me to run over to the workshop, check he hasn’t left the welding stuff switched on. Are you—?’

‘You’d better do it then. I’ll get the starters prepped while you’re gone. This is nearly done, so we’ll be ready to eat by the time you get back. Rosie will just have to have hers later.’

The heat was making his skin flush and his eyes were vast through the steam. I wanted to fall into them, I wanted to run. How could one person feel so much conflict? My mind was tearing itself apart. And now, thanks to Jason, all I could think about was the ice-cube trick and how Ben would have reacted to it. ‘I’ll be quick.’

‘Maybe sometime you could show me your workshop? It would be cool to find out how you actually make the buckles.’

Had I fallen into a parallel universe? One in which Ben and I hadn’t been on the verge of ripping one another’s clothes off but had instead spent a decorous evening discussing art and improving literature? ‘Yes. But not now, unless you want to burn the bottom out of another pan.’

He smiled, and it was only the touch of wildness at the edge of his expression which gave the lie to his words. ‘I’ll be fine here.’

The coolness of the night air spread like a lotion over my hot skin. Already the events of the evening were beginning to seem a distant memory, or a dream. Maybe I’d over-reacted, maybe his kiss had been simply an affectionate peck that went wrong. But my thighs jumped and twitched under the remembrance of his touch, the sureness of his fingers against the gap between my hold-up stockings and my knickers. No-one makes that kind of mistake — even if the kiss had been a figment of my imagination it would have taken a work of creative genius to explain away those hands.

Ben had wanted me. And I’d wanted him. And then with a flash of horror my mind opened and let the memories in. The huge emptiness where our parents had been. Randall, trying to keep us together, Christian falling apart. And Gray. Love that wasn’t love but fear turned on its head. And then the running, always the running . . .

I shook my head, letting the air circulate around the back of my neck. It was just one of those things, I had to keep telling myself. It didn’t mean anything. Ben was lonely, hurting, wanting reassurance and happened to be there. Meaningless. So why was my skin burning where he’d touched it?

The welding gear was standing in the centre of Jason’s workspace. I couldn’t see any indications that it might still be connected to a power supply but I switched off the plugs, just in case. It was typical of Jason — a man who could quite happily leave bacon grilling for hours but when it came to professional equipment was a worrier.

I made my way back towards the cottage. As I crossed the lawn, I saw the shadow of a vehicle pull up. It was too far away for me to tell what it was, or where it had come from, but the headlights breezed past my feet momentarily then carried on a little way down the drive, past the cottage. I heard the stealthy sound of a door opening then voices whispering. There was a short break, another whisper, the expensive clunk of a large car door closing and then the engine raced the vehicle away, towards the village.

Rosie came through the gate. She and I caught sight of one another and both clutched at our hearts in mock fright.

‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ she asked. Her voice was a little shaky, maybe I’d genuinely scared her, looming across the grass out of the night. ‘I thought you’d be cosy with Ben by now.’

‘I might almost suspect you of arranging to go out this evening simply to get that to happen.’ I might have sounded a bit shaky, too. ‘I keep telling you, Ben and I — it’s nothing.’

‘That why you’ve got stubble burn that I can even see out here in the DARK, is it?’

‘No, I’m blushing, that’s all.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Then Rosie paused, cocking her head. ‘Is that Harry?’

‘He was fine when I left, fast asleep.’

‘He’s not fast asleep now.’ She increased her pace and thankfully stopped interrogating me. ‘He sounds really upset.’

‘I’m sure Ben will have gone to him,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

But when we got into the cottage Ben was cooking madly, grilling fish with one hand and whisking meringue with the other. A tea towel was draped over his shoulder and his hair had come down over his face.

‘Ah, there you are. Food is just about ready. Good timing, Rosie.’ But Rosie pushed past him without even stopping to exchange pleasantries, heading for the stairs. I followed her, anxious not to be left in those close confines with Ben again.

‘Harry?’ Rosie rounded the corner into her bedroom. ‘What . . .’

I could hardly hear her above the sounds of Harry screaming. He’d somehow managed to flip the carry-cot over on top of himself, trapping his body under its weight. Rosie released him and picked him up. She was trembling all over.

‘Oh, my God,’ she kept saying. ‘Oh, my God.’ Harry’s little red face was streaked with tears and one arm looked slightly blue. ‘Oh, God. Should his arm be that colour? Oh, God, Jem, what am I going to do?’ She hugged the baby tightly against her chest, rocking him until his screams subsided into a more general grizzle. ‘Oh God.’ She carried Harry downstairs and sat on the sofa with a kind of numb expression.

‘Call the doctor. He’ll check Harry over for you but I’m sure he’s fine.’ I dragged the phone to her and left her dialling, whilst still trying to reassure a hiccupping Harry that he was all right.

Ben had stopped cooking and the steam had died from the kitchen. He was peering through into the living room, watching Rosie and the stricken Harry; he looked pale.

‘What kind of sicko leaves a baby to scream like that?’ I launched myself at him. ‘And don’t give me some pathetic story, because you were cooking away and obviously not taking a blind bit of notice. How long had he been crying?’

‘I can’t — ’

‘You bastard !’ And before I even knew I’d done it I’d pulled my arm back and smacked him right across his perfect cheekbones. It was a full-powered, open-handed strike that knocked his head to one side with its force.

Ben froze completely. His whole body seemed to fold in upon itself and his face was made up entirely of eyes. A tear trembled on his eyelashes but the immobility of his expression meant that it couldn’t fall. Something inside me tore apart. ‘Ben?’

A sudden movement as he swiped a hand across his eyes and then he was gone. Out of the door, fleeing through the garden and down to the road. A pause, surely not long enough for key to meet ignition system, and then the noise of a powerful car being driven at reckless speed down the lane.

* * *

Rosie was convinced she was such a bad mother that Social Services would be along any day to take Harry away.

‘I can’t believe I went out! What was I thinking, Jem? Anything could have happened!’ Rosie was so caught up in her own feelings of inadequacy that she hadn’t thought to blame me or Ben. ‘I mean, what if he’d got himself trapped under the wardrobe or got his face stuck in something — he’d have suffocated! And I wouldn’t have been there!’ Another fresh burst of tears. Harry picked up on her misery and began wailing again, despite the fact that the doctor had looked him over and pronounced him to be ‘one of the healthiest specimens I’ve seen in a while.’

‘You weren’t to know. And we’ll make sure it never happens again, so stop fretting.’ Half my mind was trying to follow Ben’s actions in all of this, wondering what had been going through his head. ‘Harry, there’s nothing wrong with you and that’s official.’

I could feel my own lip trembling in sympathy with the weeping pair. Why hadn’t Ben stayed and explained himself? Was all this tied up with his fear of — yes, exactly what was Ben so scared of? Physical contact? He hadn’t felt scared, not for those few moments holding me in the kitchen. Turned on, yes. Desperate, yes. But not afraid, not until afterwards. I tried to think back over those moments when I’d seen that look of panic appear in his eyes but it all seemed so unrelated. He’d been frightened of going to Saskia’s opening, when I’d found out about his being in Willow Down, when I’d asked him to come for dinner — perhaps he was just plain weird .

I picked at the melon Ben had left and put the rest away in the fridge. Neither of us had much appetite, although Harry gulped down his bottle and then fell asleep. ‘Honestly, Harry, you’re such a bloke ,’ I said, watching him settle drunkenly in Rosie’s arms. ‘No sympathy with emotional turmoil at all.’

I left her cuddling her son and went up to my room. Most of my gear was bagged; shirts oozed over the lip of my rucksack and my toiletries scattered like a puzzle over the jutting window ledge. I stared at it all. I’d never hung anything up or made use of the tiny cupboard. Even though I’d thought I was settled, my subconscious had known and told me not to bother, not to unpack.

I started to sweep loose items back into my bag. Panic was floating somewhere in my chest, unhooked from its perpetual moorings by this turn of events. Time to go, time to run. My mind raked back over Ben’s behaviour, his desperation for contact and then his ultimate rejection of it, but I didn’t kid myself that it was because of the way he’d let his guard down that I was going. It was my lowering of the barrier that had frightened me the most. The sudden rise of a desire that I thought I’d killed, the desire to be held, to be loved. An emotion that I could not allow. One I couldn’t afford. To let myself desire was to risk falling in love, and to love was to trust. To trust was to hand over control and no man was ever going to control me again. Never. Especially not that bony freak with the messed-up hair and even more messed-up mind.

A sudden, unbidden vision of his expression when Rosie had come down the stairs carrying the screaming Harry. It had been a mixture of fear and an almost unbearable resignation, as though he was coming to terms with something that he’d never wanted in the first place. A hungry longing mixed with such pain that his eyes had blackened with it and his face had fallen into stark lines. My heart twitched like a kick.

* * *

20th May

I’m sorry. I can’t go on with this. I wanted her, wanted the life I thought I could have, and now I know I can’t. All that happens is that I can see what I’ve lost.

There’s nothing left.

I have to go.