What Lies Between Us(17)
Still, after almost a quarter of a century without him in my life, there’s so much I miss about Dad. A lot has faded as the years march on and it saddens me that I draw a blank when I try to recall his voice. Mum disposed of all the photographs of him and I, apart from the one I have kept tucked away inside my purse.
I remember when it was taken. He drove us into town so that he could get a new passport picture in a photobooth. I waited outside while the flash went off behind the curtain. In the fourth and final photo, I squealed when his hands suddenly grabbed me and pulled me inside. That’s the one I have kept all these years: the two of us laughing our heads off. Mum doesn’t know this private moment between us was captured on film. And I treasure it because without it, I might not remember his face either.
My phone vibrates and an email icon appears on the screen. My inbox says it’s a Google News alert and my body stiffens. I set it up for when stories appear about one person only. I’m scared to open it. I remove my earphones and start tapping my feet against the metal floor of the bus. Then as I clutch the phone to my chest, I suddenly feel clammy and queasy and I crave fresh air.
I push my way through the commuters holding on to rails and exit through the rear doors three stops earlier than my scheduled one. I need time to read why he has made the headlines and to digest it before I return home for dinner with Maggie. Standing by the side of the road with my eyes half-closed, I read the email.
‘Troubled singer dead,’ says the headline. Underneath, it reads: ‘Convicted killer Jon Hunter dies after an 18-month battle with leukaemia.’
I am vaguely aware of traffic and pedestrians passing me, but I am simultaneously frozen in the present and welded to the past. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.
Jon’s photograph is familiar. It’s the one the newspapers used at the time of his trial but which I only saw for the first time years later. It’s unflattering and doesn’t do his good looks justice. He’s scowling in it and to someone who didn’t know him like I knew him, he’d appear empty and soulless. I don’t remember much, but I know he was more than that.
Without warning, a series of images appear in my head, like pictures hanging from string in a photographer’s studio, slowly developing. I struggle to put them in order. I’m somewhere at home, I think, sitting down while Maggie is standing behind me. She moves closer and she’s talking, only her voice is quiet and I can’t make out what she’s saying. As quickly as they arrive, the images fade.
Without realising it, my fingers have moved towards my lips and the tip of one is tracing the tattoo hidden inside my mouth.
CHAPTER 13
NINA
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS EARLIER
He is moving across the stage just a few metres in front of me and he is so beautiful, I literally cannot breathe. I gasp as he turns his head sharply and the sweat from his shoulder-length dark hair flicks across my face. I can taste him on my lips. You can kill me now because nothing is ever going to feel as good as this moment does.
When he cups the microphone with both hands, I notice his fingernails have been painted black. I’ll do the same with mine tomorrow. And when he moves his mouth closer to the mike, I imagine he’s holding my face and is about to kiss me. He isn’t as tall as his bandmates and he’s kind of skinny, yet he dominates the whole stage.
The heat coming from the frenzied crowd in the Roadmender’s main hall creates condensation that falls from the ceiling like warm raindrops. At the halfway point of the song, he slips the mike back into the stand and lets the lead guitarist take centre stage for a solo. But even then, all eyes are still on him when he lifts his T-shirt over his head and throws it into the crowd. Now he’s standing here, shirtless. None of the boys I’ve been with are anything compared to him, and I blank them from my mind. He is the only one who exists and I want to be with him like I have never wanted anything else in my life.
I love you, Jon Hunter.
Saffron is jumping up and down next to me; her screams are so hysterical, she’s going to make me deaf at this rate. She doesn’t realise that she’s digging her fingernails into my arm so hard that it hurts. But I don’t complain. She, like every other girl in this audience, is fantasising that each word coming from Jon Hunter’s beautiful lips is being sung just for her. But she’s wrong. They’re all wrong. Because he is going to be mine, not theirs. It’s me who he’s looking at right now with those piercing grey eyes, not anyone else. It’s me he sings the words ‘crazy little woman-child’ to. He knows me better than anyone and we haven’t even met. If my best friend or any one of these crazy bitches thinks they stand a chance with him, they’re idiots.
Saffron and me have been following Jon’s band The Hunters for months now, ever since she first spotted their picture in the Chronicle & Echo newspaper. Its music reviewer gave their EP five stars out of five and said they were the most exciting thing to come out of the town since Bauhaus back in the eighties. I don’t remember them. The Hunters are supposed to be the next big thing in Britpop, and I reckon they could be even more popular than Oasis or Blur. And it’s all down to Jon. Right now, he is everything. And he is going to fall in love with me like I have fallen for him.
Saffron arrived here much earlier to start queuing so that we could get the best spot at the front. Since Dad walked out on Mum and me, Mum’s upped the strength of her sleeping tablets. I reckon they could knock out an elephant. I wait for her to fall asleep before I spring to life. It doesn’t take much to sneak out of the back door unheard.