Chapter Twenty-Two
We made love slowly, stretched out on the huge bed in the attic, surrounded by printed sheets of music and lit by a single streetlamp. Ben’s room was like him, rumpled and spare, full of half-written tunes and as colour-co-ordinated as a litter of kittens. His skin, barred with light from beyond the blinds, was cool over mine, his eyes were black, then yellow as he moved over me, into the beam and then back into shadow, staring into my face as though he was waiting to see my soul rise.
‘Jem,’ he was breathing my name. ‘Jem. You and me . . .’ I opened my mouth to reply but he pressed his lips to mine to cover the words, and then it was too late to speak. Too late for anything but mounting heat and motion that built until I was catching at his back with my nails and stammering meaningless syllables while he raised himself above me and groaned my name. He held his weight on his arms a moment longer, then let himself slide so that our faces were level once more. ‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘Mmmm?’ I could hardly bring myself to talk now. It was so easy here to forget the doubts. My arms and legs were heavy and my head was drowsily full of the sense of his closeness. I wanted to lie here and just enjoy the feeling while it lasted. ‘What about?’
Ben propped himself up, his face animated. ‘How would you feel . . . I can’t believe I’m about to say this . . . if, maybe, we could, you know . . .’
‘No. No idea, I’m afraid. How many syllables?’
He grinned widely and stroked my shoulder. ‘How about if we bought a place out at Little Gillmoor?’
‘ What ?’ Claustrophobia snatched my breath. I sat up sharply, gathering covers to my naked chest.
‘Hey, don’t panic, Jem. It’s okay. Like I said, no pressure. I just thought it might be good, one day, to have somewhere out of town. I’m going to need a studio and you need a proper workshop space, and — you know we’re good together. Couldn’t you stand more of this?’ He waved a long-fingered hand. ‘Us. Properly.’ Ben sat up beside me.
Blood thundered in my ears as he pressed a kiss to my hot skin, his hair painting a pointillistic design across my collarbone. ‘I’m . . . not sure . . .’
‘I want to be with you, Jem. Committed. No half-assed “seeing each other”, but a real couple, living together. Security.’ Under the covers musician’s fingers stroked my leg, my back.
‘I don’t know. Ben . . .’
Another firm kiss covered my mouth. ‘Don’t say anything yet. Sleep on it.’ He was sliding next to me, slipping already into sleep and curling his long legs and strong arms around my body. Pulling me tight against him. ‘We’ll talk in the morning, babe.’
I lay very still until he fell asleep, carefully judging the moment when his restlessness settled into heavy slumber. My heart was beating so hard that I felt sick and my head buzzed. My mouth tasted like bleach, but I didn’t dare move. At last Ben sighed and turned over and I slipped out of the bed. One good thing, I thought, about sleeping with a deaf guy, you didn’t have to worry about floorboards creaking and waking him up. I dressed and sidled into the guest room where my rucksack squatted in the middle of the bed, fully packed. Even now with all that had passed between us, I’d kept it zipped and buckled. I’d sneaked clothes from under its flap as though stealing from myself, returning them furtively each night. The simple task of unpacking, of taking up space in the cupboards Ben had cleared for me, had felt fraudulent. Couldn’t do it. To empty the bag would be to settle, to admit to feelings that I couldn’t understand, let alone come to terms with. And now I knew why I’d never settled — because I never would. It simply hurt too much. I swiped an arm through the strap and hauled it to my shoulders. The weight felt familiar, comforting, with all my belongings hanging down my back. This was how it should be. Everything contained, clothes, possessions, books. Feelings . All wrapped up and ready to move on.
Down the stairs. I gave the place one last complete glance. Even in my panic I recognised this would probably be the last time I found myself in such luxury and I wanted to remember it. All of it, from our last panting embrace in the untidy bedroom to the exact way the moonlight gleamed on the top of the scrubbed pine table. There was a new picture on the dresser, an old photo, five years old maybe, from the length of Ben’s hair and the acute boniness of his hips. It looked as though it had been taken during a live performance of Willow Down; it had that kind of almost-blurredness of people who have hardly stopped moving long enough for the shutter to freeze them. Zafe and Ben stood with their arms locked around each other’s shoulders, shirtless and sweaty and wearing two identical expressions of total bliss. Ben was grinning out at the photographer, eyes wide, and Zafe was half-turned towards him, guitar slung over his back, total elation shining from every sweat-soaked pore. Ben must have had this image in his mind every day, locked away in a cupboard to stop it reminding him of everything he’d lost; the band, Zafe, the music. And now he’d taken it out. Somehow he’d found the courage to put the picture where he could see it, where it would remind him of everything that had gone.
Something deep in me broke like a china doll. I’d seen that look on Ben’s face. Not just in a photograph but when he’d talked about buying a place in the village, when he’d looked at me and spoken aloud his hopes and dreams. He’d had that same shining look of optimism and anticipation. How could I destroy that? How could I walk away from a man who looked at me like that?
But I had to. Had to go, or risk that terrible pain of loss once more. And I couldn’t stand it, not again.
Saskia had showed me what it would be like. You put all your trust in one person, left yourself open to them, and that gave them the power to hurt you. I’d so nearly fallen for it, been so close to loving Ben. So close to giving him everything. But doing that only got me hurt. So now — time to go before things got worse.
Ben had been wrong. Running was the only answer. Sooner or later everyone went. And what I felt for him — my insides squeezed as the enormity of my feelings made themselves known — it was something I couldn’t bear.
I looked at the photo again. Two men having the time of their lives. No inhibitions, no holding back, but throwing everything into their music. No worries about what would happen tomorrow, no foreshadowing of the terrible disease that would strike the heart from the band. Living for the day. For what was now, not what had been or what was to come. Proof that, even while you had the world at your feet, it could be breaking your toes, one at a time without you even knowing.
Life really was shit sometimes.
I swung the rucksack onto my shoulders and tightened the straps. Hefted the weight from side to side, and turned for the door.
There he was in the moonlight in front of me. Completely naked, bleached by the white light except for the dark shining circle of the Celtic mark around his bicep. Softly he trod the floor that separated us. He smelled of sleep, of clean bedsheets and, smokily, of sex.
‘So,’ he said carefully. ‘You lied again, Jem. You said — and I think I quote here — that you’d stop and think before you ran again. Is this stopping to think? Or is this a knee-jerk reaction?’ He reached out and touched the rucksack.
‘I can’t stay, Ben,’ I whispered. ‘I’m too afraid of getting hurt.’
He hardly looked real, his body pale and ghostly in the weird glimmer, hair dark as blood. ‘Everyone’s afraid of getting hurt, Jem, me included. But sometimes you have to gamble.’
‘I’ve been left alone too many times to want to put myself through it all again, not for anyone. I’m sorry Ben. I have to protect myself.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ Ben leaned against the counter. ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, naked in the middle of the night. Is this all because you think I’m going to wake up one day and realise you were a big mistake? That I felt obligated to you because I told you about the deafness? Jem, my love, you have got some seriously warped ideas, haven’t you?’
‘I only know what I can see. You,’ I waved a hand. ‘All this. You say that you love me, that you want me. But how long does that last Ben, really? And I’ve got nothing but myself. You’ll always have Willow Down to save you. But there’s nothing to save me.’
He moved so quickly I hardly saw him coming, and then he had me by the shoulders. ‘But you are saving yourself, don’t you see? Do you not see what you’ve become? Jemima, you . . .’ He broke off, shaking his head and dropping his hands from me. ‘Christ. You really don’t. You don’t know. Okay. When I first met you, you were someone else, someone defeated. What had happened to you, it had you running scared. And over the time I’ve known you, look at what you’ve achieved! Tonight, when you faced down Saskia because you were afraid of what she was doing to Rosie . . . Would you have done that before?’
‘Ben . . .’
‘You ran to Glasgow, but you came back. You faced up to what you’d done. You told me, you told Rosie, about your past. You’ve confronted what you were, and you’ve become someone stronger as a result. You don’t have to be with me. You could be anywhere.’ His voice dropped. ‘But I want you here. And, believe me, Jemima, you aren’t the only one who’s afraid of being hurt.’ A slow hand raised and touched my cheek. ‘Please.’ His voice was a broken whisper now. ‘Please, don’t leave me.’
My breathing snagged. Tears began to dribble towards my chin. ‘I’m still so scared .’
‘We all are. We’re all scared, Jem. Everyone. But we have to trust someone, sometime. I trusted you when I told you about what had happened to me. In fact, I trusted you from the beginning.’
I did a snorty laugh. ‘Yeah, right. You didn’t even notice me until I asked you to dinner, and scared you half to death!’
‘Oh, Jem.’ He sounded so regretful now, so sad. ‘Hold on, stay there a minute.’
‘What? Ben . . .’ But he was gone, vanishing upstairs with a pad of bare feet against the polished wood of the staircase. I wiped my face on my sleeve and managed to smear tears across my cheeks, leaving them sticky and stiff. This had never been so hard.
‘Good, you’re still here.’ Will-o-the-wisp-like he was back, jeans covering his lower half now, and a small bound notebook held out in front of him. ‘Here. Read this. It’s a diary that Doctor Michaels wanted me to keep. To help me manage my emotions, or something equally farty, but it did help. Look.’ He flipped the pages. ‘It’s all about you , Jem. It’s what I think, what I feel.’ He laid the book down on the pine table and backed off, swinging a leg over a stool in the far corner of the room and tipping it to lean with two legs against the wall. ‘Read or not. Your choice. Everything is your choice, Jem. It always has been.’
I riffled the pages. The book was slim and not all pages were written on. Some contained sketches, little thumbnails of portraits, a guitar, even an unpleasantly lifelike gun. Others were makeshift staves with bars of music scribbled down and much amended. ‘So. You can draw, you can write music and lyrics, you can cook . . . is there anything you can’t do, Ben?’ I kept my voice steady, despite the continuous motion of the tears down my cheeks.
‘Embroidery. Just read it.’
So I read. And gradually the tears stopped and I gave a little laugh. ‘You self-centred bastard.’
‘Did you just call me a bastard?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. It’s hard reading your lips in this light.’
I raised my head and moved my mouth exaggeratedly. ‘I called you a self-centred bastard, actually.’
‘Yeah, that’s me. But a self-centred bastard who loves you. Do you see? Now , do you see?’
I let the book fall. It landed on the flagstones, splayed open, a loose page protruding to show scratched notes and words. Ben came across the room and picked it up, pulling the page free. ‘Here. It’s the first song I’ve written for the new band line-up, still needs a bit of work but . . .’ He held the page out to me. ‘Called “You Are All I Have”.’
I sniffed. ‘Isn’t that a Snow Patrol song?’
He ran both hands through his hair. ‘Bastards always beat me to it.’ Now his eyes were enormous, unblinking.
‘Is everything you wrote true?’
‘True as I’m here. True as I’m breathing. True as I would personally knock down and kill anyone who tried to hurt you.’ A single tear left the corner of his eye and rolled down to his top lip. He ignored it.
‘Did you really want to die?’
An embarrassed shrug. ‘Sometimes.’
‘And you honestly think I have fantastic legs?’
Now he smiled. A slow, deep smile. ‘Jemima, you have fantastic everything .’
‘And you need me?’
‘Oh, so much .’ Now he came close and the moonlight made his tattoo look deep and dark against that white skin. ‘Don’t do this to me, Jem. Don’t do it to yourself .’ Another step forward and he hooked a finger under the strap of the rucksack, slid the strap down over my shoulder, my elbow. The rucksack tilted under its own weight and fell to the floor.
I looked again at the book in his hand. If what he’d written was the truth then he’d loved me a long time. Loved me even when I ran, even when I treated him so badly that he had no righ t to love me. Needed me, when I was scared to death that it was I who needed him. My heart scudded against the walls of my chest and I put a hand on his tattoo, tracing the lines.
He looked down at my finger dancing along the pattern on his arm. ‘Do you love me, Jem?’ The strain in his voice told me how scared he was of the answer.
I kept my eyes on those intricate swirls. ‘Everyone I’ve ever loved has died.’
‘Not cause and effect. Do you love me ?’
Now I looked up. Met those grave-deep eyes. Knew. ‘Yes,’ I said into them. ‘Yes.’
‘And do you believe me when I tell you that you are a strong, lovely woman, who can grab life by the bollocks when she chooses, and doesn’t need to take shit from anyone?’
‘I’m trying to be.’
‘Good.’ Ben smiled and wiped the last of my tears from under my eye with one finger. ‘Then let me be the one that you were running to, all this time. Let this be the end.’
I reached out. Switched on the kitchen light and stood directly underneath, fully illuminated, where he could see my lips move and have no doubt. ‘Yes.’
There was a surprising number of ice cubes in Ben’s fridge. We used them all.
THE END