Life, Death and Gold Leather Trousers Page 16

  “I don’t know,” I say. There isn’t much time. We’ll only manage one song, so it feels important to get it right.

  “What about that one Jupe wrote for you?” she asks.

  I push away the image of Ed playing “Clover’s Song” with his eyes screwed up, refusing to tell me how he knew it. “OK,” I say, picking up the sunset guitar. “Think you can remember it?”

  “Of course,” she says, laughing. Then she’s playing the intro, and I’m straight in, and it’s as if Jupe’s here with us, insisting that we could be a real band, even though I’m no singer – even he’d admit that. But we could find one, couldn’t we? And a bass player too? What was it he said about finding your soulmates? Jupe always believed I’d make something of myself. And I promised I’d give it my best shot, didn’t I?

  “Let’s play it again,” I say recklessly. And we do, over and over, until the song’s sounding almost right. We try playing it faster, then slow it right down, not noticing time ticking away, and no longer caring that Mum and Ed could come back with our fish and chips any minute…

  “Well, look what we’ve got here!”

  I stop dead. Lily staggers to a halt on the drums. My eyes slide in the direction of the open hatch.

  And I try to speak, but no words come out. A round, pink head has popped up through the hatch, its raisiny eyes fixed upon us. “So,” Ed says with a slow smile. “This is what you’ve been up to.”

  He steps up through the hatch. I’ve frozen with the sunset guitar slung across my body.

  “Can’t believe it,” Ed gasps, gazing around in wonder. “This must be Jupe’s band stuff. It’s incredible.” He walks around slowly, touching each instrument in turn. I can’t move, can’t even look at Lily. “Why didn’t you say anything about this?” he asks.

  I sense Lily staring at me, willing me to speak, to be the big sister who always knows what to do. Ha! When have I ever been good at that? “We … just wanted it to be our thing,” I mumble. “We, um…” I know how feeble this’ll sound. “We were … pretending to be in a real band,” I add meekly.

  A smile spreads over Ed’s face. It’s a kind smile, which softens his eyes, crinkling their corners. “Well, I can understand that,” he says. “It’s like a shrine, isn’t it, to your uncle?”

  I nod, speechless.

  “Ed!” Mum cries, and I hear her trotting lightly upstairs. “Where are you? The fish and chips are getting cold.”

  “We’re in the attic,” Ed calls back.

  “Why? What are you doing up there?”

  “Come and see,” Ed calls back. “You won’t believe it, Kerry.”

  “What’s going on?” Her voice is coming from the landing now. There’s the faintest smell of vinegary fish and chips.

  “Not sure I fancy climbing that rickety old ladder,” Mum announces. “It doesn’t look safe, Ed, and I’m not great with heights…”

  “You’ll be fine,” he says, stepping down to help her. “Just take it slowly, OK? You’re not going to fall.”

  “I really don’t like ladders,” she protests.

  “C’mon, you have to see this!”

  “All right, Ed,” Mum replies. “Don’t rush me…” I can hear the ladder’s metallic creaks, then her face appears at the hatch, eyes widening as she takes in the scene. “My God,” she breathes. “So he did keep everything after all. Why on earth didn’t you tell us, girls?”

  “We, um, were just … playing,” Lily whispers.

  I take off the guitar and carefully place it on its stand. Mum stares at it. “That’s not … the one, is it? The one you dropped?”

  “Yes,” I say dully.

  Mum steps towards it and runs a fingertip across its smooth surface. “Are you sure, darling?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s as good as new,” she says in a whisper. “I tried to tell him it could be fixed, but he kept saying that wasn’t the point, that it would never be the same again…” My heart feels like it’s being squeezed like a lemon. “He was wrong, wasn’t he, Clover?” she adds.

  “Guess so,” I say. Here it comes: How much d’you think we’ll get for all this stuff? Maybe enough to have that cruddy back porch knocked down that your dad should never have built in the first place, and a proper extension put up, or a home gym for Ed, for when he moves in and becomes your new stepdad… Oh my God, Ed, we’re going to be rich!

  I stare at Mum, barely able to breathe. It’s Ed who breaks the silence. “So, Kerry, bet you didn’t know your Lily’s one hell of a drummer?”

  We pick at cold, clammy fish and chips, have a final check of the house and post the keys through the letter box at the solicitor’s office. Then we drive home in Ed’s van. I catch a last glimpse of Silver Cove, the sea glinting in the distance.

  There’s a song playing in my head that no one else can hear. It’s the one Jupe wrote for me. It’s gentler than his other songs, which makes it seem even more special. Most of Jupe’s fans would be surprised to hear it, but I always knew there was another, softer side to him.

  A bit like with Mum, who’s looking out at the green, rolling hills and faraway sliver of sea. On my other side is Lily, and on her lap is a wicker basket. And inside that basket is a slight less scrawny but still mean-tempered ball of black fur called Fuzz.

  It’s after eleven when we get home. Mum carries a sleeping Lily up to bed, and even tucks me in, as if I’m little again too. “We’ll unpack the van in the morning,” she says. “Ed’s too tired to do it now.”

  I nod, feeling bleary after three hours in the van. “What are we going to do with all Jupe’s stuff?” I whisper.

  She’s silent for a moment, and perches lightly on the edge of my bed. “We can’t keep it, love.”

  I nod, feeling a lump tightening in my throat. “I knew you’d say that.”

  “It’s the space, and it’d be far too noisy,” she adds gently, but I wonder if that’s all it is. Maybe she just doesn’t want reminders of Jupe lying around our house. Kissing my forehead, Mum gets up to leave. “I’m sorry, Clover,” she says as she closes the bedroom door.

  Jess is round at our house by nine-thirty next morning, brown as a berry from her holiday. “What’s all this stuff?” she asks as we haul out guitars, amps and drums from the back of Ed’s van.

  “My uncle’s instruments,” I explain. “We found them all hidden away in the attic.”

  “Wow,” she breathes. “What are you going to do with them all, though? I mean, how many guitars d’you need?”

  Just two, I think: my own acoustic, and the sunset one. “We’re selling them,” I say, keeping my voice perky.

  “Course we are,” Mum says, lifting the drum stool from the van. “We can’t have electric guitars and drums in a terraced house. You do understand that, don’t you, darling?”

  “Suppose so,” I mumble.

  “Jupe lived in the middle of nowhere,” Mum adds, turning to Jess. “He could make as much noise as he liked…” She laughs, but it sounds forced and uncomfortable.

  “If I could keep the drums,” Lily grumbles, staring at the pavement, “I wouldn’t have any birthday or Christmas presents for years and years.”

  “Hon, I’ve explained,” Mum says wearily, “virtually all the way home, with my nose streaming from that cat … just drop it, would you, please?”

  Lily scowls. “I only said…”

  Jess shuffles uncomfortably on our front path. “C’mon,” I tell her, “let’s go round and see Betty and show her Fuzz. We’re going to ask if she wants to adopt him.”

  “Think she will?” Lily asks.

  “Hope so,” I say, grinning. I’m proud of my sister for not stropping about Fuzz. She knows Mum’s allergic, and that him living next door might be the next best thing to having a cat of her own. Anyway, he’s always made it pretty clear he doesn’t like me. Ma
ybe he was jealous because Jupe made such a fuss of me when I was younger. If that’s the case, cats don’t half bear a grudge.

  As Jess, Lily and I head around to Betty’s, I figure that I don’t really mind about selling the other guitars. It’s only the sunset one I want to keep – plus the amps and mics and drum kit for Lily – but I’ve given up wishing and hoping.

  I did all that with Riley, and where did that get me?

  Our “holiday” seems to have fired up Mum. During our first week back she has three job interviews, and by the following week she’s been offered a job at the travel agent’s next to Pet Heaven. “Well done, sweetheart,” Ed says, grinning approvingly as she models her sky blue skirt and blouse, blue high heels and spotted tie.

  I have to hold in a bubble of laughter – not because it doesn’t suit her, but because she looks totally respectable and not like my mum at all. The company’s motto, which is embroidered on the blouse pocket, reads: Reaching for the skies, which I suppose is a slight improvement on Smiles cost nothing so we give them for free, which Tony put on the wall at the chip shop and which would be harder to fit on to a pocket, I guess.

  The brilliant thing is, she hasn’t had time to do anything about selling Jupe’s guitars and drum kit yet. She’s been too busy doing herself up to start the job – including, at this precise moment, having her hair done at (eek!) the Cutting Room because Drunk Babs is on holiday. “You can’t go there,” I blurted out before she set off for her Thursday morning appointment.

  “Why not?” she laughed. “You go, don’t you?”

  “Well, just the once…” I could feel myself blushing furiously.

  “So what’s the problem?” Mum asked.

  I opened and closed my mouth, my heart juddering as I wondered whether to blurt out the truth. “Um … Bernice works there,” I said in a whisper.

  Mum stepped back and frowned at me, as if she was about to give me an almighty lecture about keeping this from her. “So what?” she said with an exaggerated shrug. “I’ll go where I like to have my hair cut. I’ve nothing to be embarrassed about, have I? I mean, I don’t have people drawing me with my clothes off.” And off she went, as if almost looking forward to breezing into the salon and freaking out Bernice.

  It’s so nerve-shredding, thinking of Mum confronting Bernice in the salon, that all I can do is plug in Jupe’s sunset guitar and play and play, while Lily bashes the hell out of the drums that Ed set up temporarily in our room.

  Can you believe that Mum actually complained about Lily’s drumming? “But you love music!” my sister protested. “You play it really loud…”

  “That’s different,” Mum argued.

  “Why? How’s it different?”

  “Because,” she said with a toss of her hair, “you can turn my music off.”

  Which, admittedly, you can’t do with Lily Jones.

  It feels like Mum’s been at the Cutting Room for a hundred years. Lily’s out too, having rushed off to help with a Brownie fundraising stall on the seafront. I check the street from my bedroom window to see if Mum’s storming up the road after a huge row with Bernice. I hope there’s not been any violence. Then I see him: Riley Hart. My ex-friend, who’s supposed to be in France right now. Maybe they’ve all come back early. Or they could have had a furious row on holiday, and his dad had to rush out to collect him… I watch him, trying to will him to cross the road and knock at my door.

  He glances at our house and I stagger back from my bedroom window, sensing my cheeks flaming up. Not that he’s looking at our house, of course, so there’s no danger of him seeing me. He’s walking self-consciously, as if it’s taking all his effort not to look, then he marches round the corner out of sight.

  Well, I’m not having that. The cheek of it! He can’t stroll down my street, where I’ve lived all my life, trying to make me feel bad. My hands are all sweaty and I can tell I’ve gone blotchy in the face. Why do bodies behave like this? You read in magazines that when you see someone you like, these amazing things happen to make you appear more attractive so that person will fall in love with you. Your lips are supposed to plump up and go pinker and your pupils are meant to turn into huge black saucers so you look totally gorgeous.

  I examine my face in our mirror. While my cheeks are sizzling, my lips are washed out, barely visible. My pupils are tiny pinpricks. If anything, I look sick.

  I put the sunset guitar away in its scruffy case, place it on my bed and hurry downstairs. Then I grab my keys and head out.

  I’m not actually going to Riley’s house. I just seem to swerve in that direction, carried along by my legs with no say in where they’re taking me. Soon his house is in view. It’s a muggy afternoon filled with cooking smells. I want to turn back but my legs won’t let me. Now I’m outside his place, and I can sense that my pupils are as tiny as it’s possible to be. Because, you see, I don’t even like him any more. I don’t even want to see him. It’s just … I need to know why he isn’t in France, what’s going on with him and Skelling, why he didn’t seem to care about cutting me out of his life, just like Jupe did. Then, once I know, I can forget all about him and be normal again, like I was before Riley came to Copper Beach.

  My mouth’s dry and my tongue feels like a shrivelled-up Jurassic burger as I knock firmly on his front door.

  For a few seconds, no one answers. Maybe he’s not in. He was probably just passing my house on his way down to the North Cove or something. Then, just as I’m about to turn back, there are soft footsteps in the hall, and the door opens slowly.

  “Hi,” Riley says, looking surprised. “You all right?”

  “Er, yeah. I … I was just passing,” I start, “and I wondered, I mean… I didn’t think you’d be back from holiday yet. From, er, France,” I add dumbly.

  He looks at me and blinks. “So why did you come?” he asks.

  “I, um…” Now I’m trapped. Well done, Clover, idiot. “I saw you in our street,” I add lamely, “and I wondered if, er … anyway.” We stare at each other. “Did you have a good time?” I blurt out.

  “No, I didn’t,” he says coolly.

  “Oh.” I’m starting to sweat now. Nice. “So, er … what happened?”

  “I didn’t have a good time,” he says slowly, “because I didn’t go.”

  He didn’t go! He didn’t go! “Why not?” I ask.

  Riley shrugs. “I just didn’t, OK? Plans changed.”

  I nod, and a tiny spark of hope bursts like a firework in my heart. He didn’t go! He didn’t go! I’m grinning crazily and I don’t care.

  There was no slathering sunscreen on to Skelling’s bare-naked skin.

  No drooling over custard bikinis.

  No kissing by the pool in the moonlight.

  “Well,” I say, trying to normalize my expression, “I’m back from my uncle’s now, er, as you can see … and he died, did I tell you that? And he, er, left us everything, so we’ve brought back all these instruments…”

  “Yeah?” Riley says icily.

  “I … I thought you might want to come over. And, um, see them. And play…” Why am I asking him over? This isn’t what I planned to say at all. I was going to be brave and straight to the point. I open my mouth, but can’t think of anything else to say.

  He pretends to swipe an insect from his brown, beautiful neck. “Clover,” he mutters, “I don’t want to do music with you any more.”

  Crash, goes my heart. Like Lily thrashing Jupe’s cymbal. “But … why not?”

  His eyes are cold and hard. “Well, I didn’t think you would after that time you stomped off…”

  “I just wanted to know about Sophie and—” I start.

  “Anyway,” he cuts in angrily, “why should I hang out with you after what you’ve been saying about me?”

  “What? But I haven’t said anything!”

  “Don’t lie,�
� he snaps. “I know what you’ve said. That I’m crap at playing guitar, and it’s so embarrassing when I come round, and you only spend time with me ’cause you feel sorry for me, but really you wish I’d jack it in and save you the trouble of humouring me…”

  He’s yelling now, really yelling. A woman pulling a shopping basket on wheels stares at us from across the street.

  “I didn’t say that!” I yell back. “I’ve never said anything like that. Who told you?”

  His mouth forms a grim line. How can such a sweet, handsome face look so brittle? “Doesn’t matter,” he says airily.

  “Yes, it does,” I shout, “because they’re lying!”

  He folds his arms. “No, they’re not.”

  “How d’you know? How can you be so sure?”

  “Because,” he starts, glancing down at his grubby trainers, “everyone knows you’re a brilliant guitarist. And when I thought about it – all those hours you’ve spent trying to help me, when I’ve played the same thing over and over and still couldn’t get it…” He snorts. “No one would do that without getting frustrated.”

  My eyes flood with tears. I’d give anything for some kind of Hoover thingie behind my eyeballs to suck them back in. They wobble like mercury on my lower lids and then – dammit – overflow and drip down my cheeks. “You really believe that?” I ask, my voice splintering.

  Riley shrugs. “I don’t see any reason not to.”

  Furiously, I swipe my tears with a sleeve. “Why didn’t you go to France, Riley? What happened?”

  He sighs deeply. “At first I said I’d go,” he mutters, “’cause me and Dad never go on holiday. We haven’t been anywhere since Mum left. But then, when I thought about it – being away for the whole summer – I realized I wanted to be here. With you.”

  “With … me?” I croak.

  Riley nods.

  I swallow hard. He chose boring old Copper Beach over France, because of me? “You mean,” I venture, “even though I’m supposed to have said those horrible things about you?”