Chapter Nineteen
Glasgow was a hard city, all sharp Scottish corners and accents and from the moment I stepped from the train I knew I’d made a mistake. Even the sunlight was gone, replaced by a damp greyness which seeped through my clothes. The tears which had haunted my journey threatened to reappear, making the outline of the railway buildings blur. I sat heavily on a step. What was I doing?
Getting old, that was what. Twenty-eight, and the months of comfort staying put in Rosie’s little cottage had blunted my edges. Time to get back into practice, get back on that horse and ride. I shouldered my rucksack and leaned into the straps, heading up the hill towards Sauchiehall Street where the craft shops stood. I put the tears down to tiredness, to the anxieties of relocation. It often hit me this way. Well, not exactly this way . . . I usually enjoyed the heart-thump of new possibilities in a new location. Especially when scoping out the shops, looking for possibilities. The thrill of a new chase, new conquests.
And then on the other side of the road, I saw a figure. Tall and skinny, in ripped black jeans. Long dark hair tracing its way over the collar of a huge grey coat. Walking away from me, heading down the hill. ‘ You bastard ,’ I thought. ‘ How dare you follow me? How dare you even think . . . ’ I swung myself after him, confronted him, hand on shoulder as he was about to turn into a side street.
‘Awae, hen, what’s the matter?’ The broad Glaswegian vowels spun me out of my self-delusion. Not Ben. Not even really close, this guy was broader, had earrings in both ears and nowhere near the cheekboned glamour of the ex-guitarist. I stammered my apologies and walked away, keen eyes watching me go amid a highly accented attempt to get me to stay.
Stupid . Stupid . Seeing what I wanted to see, deep deep down, hidden behind so many layers of self-loathing and fear. As I walked I saw more faces in the crowds that littered the streets. A guy, so much like Randall that my heart went into free-fall, pounding the air from my lungs. Same hair, same quick laugh, passing me by as easily as if I didn’t exist. And over there, sitting by the river, dropping beads of bread for uninterested ducks — Christian. Or Christian as he should have been; clean, blond. Older . Holding a small child by the hand, amused at her efforts to get the bread to land in the water.
I was seriously losing it.
I paid for a week’s lodging in a B my default activity when my hands weren’t occupied with buckle-making. Sitting in the park, feeling the sun on my back and flipping my coin. On this particular evening I felt someone move into the space between me and the park railings and instinctively I put a foot on my rucksack to prevent a casual running theft. But the figure didn’t touch my bag. Instead he reached over the top of me and snatched the coin at the top of its arc.
‘You could have had everything.’
I turned my head. Ben was standing beside me watching my face with an almost greedy expression. He looked awful, which was how I knew he wasn’t an illusion. My illusions nowadays were better dressed. ‘Have you been following me?’ My heart began to thunder in my throat.
‘ Following ? Believe me, following would have been a piece of cake.’ He sounded rough, too. Like his throat was sore. ‘Why did you do it, Jem?’
I waved an arm. ‘New life.’
Ben shook his head. ‘Really? What’s so new about it? Running, tramping the streets, always moving on, in what way is this a new life? Because it looks exactly like the old one to me. Only with a distinct lack of people who care about you.’
‘Maybe that’s what I like about it.’
‘So it’s okay to destroy people’s lives then, is it? To wreck people’s emotions?’ A hand went to reach for me and then dropped, drawing my attention to the fact he was wearing one of my buckles, the one I’d seen him wearing before, in the shop. Decades ago. In another life.
‘I thought you sold that one.’ I gestured.
‘No, bought it myself. I wanted something that you’d made. Yeah, stupid, I know.’ His voice was sour. ‘To care so much for someone who wants anything but concern for her welfare. But I do.’ He coughed. ‘Bloody Zafe, he’s wrecking my throat with those fags.’
‘You went to Zafe ?’
An inclination of the head. ‘I needed to find you and I needed help to do it. Someone who could hear. Jason’s got his work cut out looking after Rosie, and there was no-one else to turn to so I . . .’ A small shrug. ‘It took him hard when I explained. It was weird, you know? He said he thought that I’d . . . Christ, stupid sod . . . that I’d been diagnosed HIV positive. That I’d taken myself off somewhere to die. So at first the fact that I was as deaf as a brick was, like, a good thing. And then he realised — ’ Ben closed his eyes briefly. ‘He realised it was the death of music for me and that was almost as bad. Worse, in some ways.’ He looked me in the eye suddenly, for the first time. ‘There was a lot of hugging that day.’
My blood was settling down now, rather than heaving and retching through my veins. There was a small, slow burn in my chest that I wasn’t familiar with. ‘I’m glad.’
He shrugged. ‘Why? It’s nothing to you, is it? I’m nothing to you.’
‘Ben I . . .’ But he interrupted me.
‘Just to leave ? Not a note, no explanation? Jesus, Jem, what were you trying to do? Prove something? I thought . . . I thought you cared . I saw it in your eyes and don’t tell me you were lying because I’m a bit of an expert there and no-one can lie with their eyes. Not like that.’ He slid down to lie on the crisp-packet strewn grass as though fatigue would no longer let him stand.
‘Maybe I can.’ Under the bravado my tone wavered, just a bit.
He shook his head. That was all.
‘So. How is everyone?’
A shrug. ‘Do you really want to know? Rosie is missing you. She said you told her you were going and that you argued about it when she tried to make you stay. She told me that you — never mind. And Harry cries a lot. She blames you for that, too.’ Another shrug. ‘And who knows what Jason thinks, but his message for you is — now, hang on, let me get this straight — “get your head in gear, babe.” Oh, and something about ice cubes, but I’m not sure what that was about.’
A hot blush lit my cheeks. The feeling setting itself like a crystal in my belly acquired a name. Guilt. I looked at him, digging his fingers into the soil and the feelings rushed over me like an incoming tide. I had to breathe slow and deep so as not to drown. ‘Ben. I—’
‘Yeah, I know. You’re not interested.’ Now he stood up, dragging himself upright as though his bones were reluctant. ‘Sorry. I thought, maybe, I could make a difference. That you might just be able to look inside yourself this once, and see what you’re doing to everyone who ever loved you. See that maybe you should stop being so fucking selfish all the time.’ He put both hands against the railings and looked into my eyes. There was a fire in his intense brown stare that I’d never seen before. ‘Yeah, it was shitty what happened to you. But you really think that Randall and Christian would want you to live like this? You think you’re doing their memories a favour by cutting and running all the time? Okay, yes, I applaud your decision not to get involved until you feel whole, feel like a real person, but don’t you ever stop to think that maybe being involved could make you feel that way ? And you know what really makes me mad?’ Ben lowered his voice, speaking right into my eyes now. ‘You listened to me. You took it all on board, told me it didn’t matter my not being perfect, when all the time you were planning to run. You lied , Jemima. You fucking lied .’
‘My name isn’t Jemima. I told you.’
‘You’re Jemima to me. That girl you were, that Gemma, she doesn’t exist any more. Jemima is who you’ve made yourself into, that’s who I . . .’ He stopped. Coughed.
‘Ben, before . . . it wasn’t a lie. I just never knew it would be this hard.’
‘Yeah? Well it’s not exactly a picnic with the Queen from where I’m standing either. You aren’t the only one with problems you know, but you are the only one who runs away.’
Now I stood up too, feeling the strain in my thighs and calves as wobbly muscles tried to take my weight. ‘How did you find me?’
He smiled a rather humourless smile. ‘Zafe rang around and a guy at the station remembered you.’ The smile briefly became warmer. ‘Honestly, what were you thinking ? Over seventy quid in one pound coins — the guy was in serious trauma.’ Then his expression became wary again, eyes watchful. ‘So we knew you’d come to Glasgow. And I waited for you, Jem. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, thought when you realised what you were doing, what you were making of your life that you’d . . . I thought you’d come back to me, you know that? I was that deluded. And then, when I knew you weren’t coming, that I wouldn’t ever see you again unless I did something, d’you know what? For five seconds I thought, “Why should I? Why should I care?” But there’s something, something that wouldn’t let me sleep, wouldn’t let me rest until I knew you were safe. With me or without me, I wanted you safe. So I drove up four days ago. Been looking for you ever since. And let me tell you, this accent is a bitch to lip read. Half the Glaswegian population thinks I’m Care in the Community now.’
The warmth rose from my stomach to engulf my body and my face and I realised that what I was experiencing was the scalding blush of shame.
This man — this man had driven several hundred miles with no guarantee of finding me. He’d left himself at the mercy of a strange city, unable to communicate properly, just for me.
I looked at him standing there, looking sleep deprived and even skankier than usual. But, and I had to admit it to myself, very sexy. Very cute. And here. Despite what I’d done, despite the awful way I’d betrayed him by running away, he was here. Giving me another chance. And the thoughts didn’t send the usual sting of fear through my bloodstream. He wasn’t here to possess me, to force me to go with him. He didn’t want me to belong to him, he just wanted me safe.
I stared across the water. What did I do now? Back down, return with him? But what would that mean about all those other times when I’d run . . . that those hadn’t been real? That I just hadn’t tried hard enough?
And there, clear and hard as good diamonds, were Chris and Randall. Shouldering their way forward to stare at me across the years. Loading me with the memories of the things we’d had to do back then to survive.
We’d all made our decisions. Chris had turned to heroin, his decision. Ran had killed Gray, his decision and I’d lied for him. My decision. And now I was beginning to understand. The boys had loved me. They wouldn’t have wanted me to keep their memories safe at the expense of forming new ones of my own. Our parents had loved us. It hadn’t been their choice to die, after all. They would have wanted me to have a proper life, a settled life.
And now Ben was giving me the chance to move on. Not forget it, I would never forget any of it. But I could get over it.
‘I didn’t lie, Ben.’ My lips hardly moved. ‘But running is what I do and I don’t know if I can break the habit.’
Wary and huge, his eyes were on my face now. ‘You need to . . .’ A finger touched my mouth. ‘I can’t read if you don’t. Please.’ As though it hurt him to ask. I repeated myself, feeling a bit ashamed and he stroked my hair very gently. ‘Hey, Jem? Clean now for five years, six months and two weeks. If there’s one thing I know about it’s breaking habits. Break yours, now. Come back with me.’
Could I? Could it really be that simple? Just . . . go back? And then I remembered Rosie’s words about the line in the sand. The way I’d felt sitting on the steps of Glasgow station, too old, too tired to keep going. Maybe it really was time to face those demons.
‘Ben.’ I stood up. ‘I’ll come back with you. But it has to be on my terms. I have to be able to sort myself out, I can’t — won’t — rely on you to do it for me.’
‘Understood.’
‘I have to find out what Saskia is doing buying all that stuff from Rosie and burning it. Why she’s got me blacklisted from here to . . . well, not from here , obviously, even the devil doesn’t deal in Glasgow, but why she’s got eBay to shut me down.’
Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay. We do all that. And then what?’
‘Then when I’m back on an equal footing I’ll decide what to do. I can’t be tied, Ben, I have to feel that I’m free to do what I want. If I stayed . . .’ My voice tailed off.
‘If you stayed you’d want to know you were staying because you wanted to, not because you’d got nowhere else to go. Yeah?’ His fingers closed very gently over mine. ‘That’s what I want too, Jem. I want you with me because you can’t bear to be anywhere else, not because you owe me. You’ve made me realise so much about myself, about the way I’ve behaved, that I . . .’
For a long, long time we just stared at each other. His huge eyes seemed to suck me in until they were all I was aware of. Eyes, and a wisp of hair which blew across to tickle at my cheek. ‘Ben . . .’ He smelled sweet. Indefinable. So much himself that I found it hard to breathe.
‘Jem. It’s okay.’ A small step and he was so close. The panic tried to rise in me but there was simply no room for it, not with the sudden flush of my skin and the racing of my heart. ‘It’s really okay.’ He leaned forward to brush his mouth against mine and suddenly I found myself winding hands in his hair, pulling him down, pulling him closer. Desperate, hungry for the contact, for his tongue searching my mouth and his body pressed tight against me.
I did it in the sure knowledge that, wherever they were, my brothers were cheering and catcalling and probably making hand gestures that Jason would have been proud of.
‘I’m afraid, if things start to get difficult I’ll run again,’ I whispered. It was as if I had to say the words aloud, even though he had no hope of seeing them . But then he did that disconcerting thing of speaking without knowing what I’d said, yet continuing the conversation.
‘You know your past?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s just that. Past. Instinct might tell you to run but I hope — God how I hope — that you’ll stop and think. Rationalise. Talk to me. And if things ever get so bad that you can’t, well then maybe you’ll run somewhere I can find you.’
‘You’ve had a long time to work on that speech, haven’t you?’
‘Since the day you walked out.’
‘Smooth, Mr Davies, very smooth.’
‘You have no idea.’