There weren’t a single pair of eyes that were wide with surprise or amusement - there was a sea of hundreds of faces, and I was the only one who could see her.
When I looked back at the stage, she was gone.
***
By the end of their set Will was definitely getting into the music, and even though I was sure the beer had something to do with it, I was glad he was having a good time. They finished their last song, ‘Feel the Fear’, and left the stage to rapturous applause.
I held onto Will’s arm to avoid being swept away with the crowd - which was now moving to the exit doors en masse - and we headed towards the bar. I ordered a tap water and, to my surprise, so did Will.
I tried to keep the conversation light, pretending I hadn’t just been sufficiently spooked. “You pretty dehydrated too? Getting into the gig a bit too much, were we?”
He rolled his eyes but his cheeks flashed slightly red. “Just too much beer.”
We drank our water and watched most of the crowd leave. A lot of them seemed to be under eighteens who couldn’t stay for Rock Magic after the gig; there were only about thirty or so people left near the bar. I knew it would pick up soon once they opened the doors again, but for now it was nice to have a bit of a breather.
I was about to ask Will what he honestly thought of the gig when I heard someone say my name behind me. Swivelling on my bar stool, I came face to face with Mark Robson. He was looking entirely too handsome to have just finished an energetic gig.
“It is Beth, right?”
I nodded slowly as my heart rate rapidly increased. “It sure is… wow, I must be an annoying fan for you to remember me!” I cringed at the overenthusiastic tone of my voice.
He laughed at my response. “Actually, you’re one of our cooler fans.” He stood back and slowly moved his eyes up and down my body as his smile broadened. I was half flattered, half creeped out. “You look amazing in that dress.”
Creeped out or not, I was full on blushing now. I looked down at my lap and swept some invisible lint off the purple fabric; Mark’s face was so perfect it almost hurt to look at it for too long.
“Thanks… you don’t look too bad yourself.”
He smiled his dazzling - almost too brilliant - smile at me and held out what looked like a business card. “Look, me and the guys have got to go, we’ve got a gig in London tomorrow and we want to get there tonight. But you should hang out with us sometime.”
Was the lead singer of my favourite band in the entire world actually asking me out? I took the card with a shaking hand and nodded, unable to respond with anything even remotely coherent.
Mark leaned forward then, kissing me on the cheek, and everything else blurred into unimportance.
“Oh, and bring your friend, the hot brunette. We’ll make it into a little party.” He gave me one last stunning smile and walked off back towards the stage.
My good mood disappeared in a second; people didn’t even have to say her actual name now for me to feel like crap… ‘hot brunette’ seemed to do it just as well. I jumped when Will put his arm around me; in all the Mark Robson drama I’d totally forgotten he was there. Oops.
It was as if there was some kind of spell around Mark that made you forget everything else.
“Hey, it’s OK. Hell, tell Veronica about what just happened and she’d be your friend again in a flash!”
I knew he was just trying to cheer me up, but I wasn’t in the mood for joking anymore. I wasn’t in the mood for even talking anymore. I wriggled out of his arm and started walking towards the exit.
He followed and stopped me. “Sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.” I didn’t respond and my silence obviously made him nervous. “So… that Mark guy, he was a bit of a psycho, wasn’t he?”
I raised my eyebrows at him..
“What? I know you idolise the guy and everything, but you don’t seriously want to be a groupie, do you?” I didn’t respond. “Do you?”
I smiled humourlessly at him. “What is it to you if I do?”
Will flinched and his expression cut through me like glass. I didn’t mean what I’d said. Obviously I fancied Mark, but I didn’t particularly want to be a rock star groupie; how lame were those girls? Sighing, I looked up at Will. “OK, no I don’t. Clearly, I don’t. Happy now?”
He didn’t look like he entirely believed me, but he smiled anyway.
I started walking again; all of a sudden I’d had far more of The Pit than I could deal with.
“No Rock Magic tonight then?”
I shrugged. “I think I just want to go to bed. You stay if you want, though.”
He shook his head and put his hood up as we emerged into the cold, wet night. “Nah, I’ll walk you home. I’m pretty knackered too from all that jumping around and sing…” he broke off.
I smiled in victory, letting Veronica and the disturbing stage show sink into oblivion. “I knew it. You love Random Violation!”
He looked at me sideways, whispered a low “No comment” and walked off into the night.
I had to run to keep up.
***
That night before I went to bed, I was sorting out my bag when I came across Mark’s business card.
I twirled it round in my fingers, smiling to myself. Idiot or not, he was ridiculously good-looking, and even though his comment about V had caused me to become a blithering idiot, I couldn’t deny that I was thrilled he’d come up to me, and even more so that he’d remembered my name.
I held it up to my bedside lamp to read what it actually said (I’d been too star struck earlier to look), and saw it was a simple white card with just four solitary words printed in a boring font: ‘Mark Robson: Rock Star’. The number was underneath.
I looked at it for a few seconds, trying to think what it reminded me of, and as soon as I thought of Patrick Bateman and American Psycho, I laughed so hard I dropped the card down the side of my bed.
Staring into the dark space that had now engulfed the card, I decided to leave it there; I was physically exhausted after the gig and mentally fatigued after spending the rest of the night avoiding thinking about Emma and the girl at The Pit, and all of a sudden Mark Robson didn’t seem worth the energy it would take to reach down and find that ridiculous business card in the darkness.
So instead, I got into bed, silently laughing to myself.
Mark Robson: Rock Star.
Will had been completely right about him. Psycho.
What if Will was right about another certain handsome stranger?
***
The next morning I decided that if Veronica didn’t want to talk to me, I’d respect her wishes and leave her alone.
Then I decided to just go and hassle her until she spoke to me.
I psyched myself up and left the house, almost running to hers in case I got nervous on the incredibly short journey and bottled it.
Although we lived just one street apart, Leaf Lane was much more aesthetically pleasing than School Road, where I lived. Each of the gardens looked immaculate, even during autumn and winter, and the pavement was separated every few feet by large, beautiful trees.
I got to her front garden and slowly opened the creaky wooden gate. My heart was pounding and I wondered why I was so scared, and then the scene from the Diner flashed in front of my eyes.
At least if this went wrong it wouldn’t be a public humiliation, although I knew for a fact that Mrs Teasdale across the road was a regular curtain twitcher and shameless gossip. If V did yell at me again, half of Little Forest would know by nightfall.
I took a deep breath, quickly walked down the path and pressed the doorbell before I could think about the consequences.
I needn’t have worried; after a few more minutes of ringing the bell, knocking on the door, and shouting, it was clear that no one was home. I had a brief thought that V might be inside and ignoring me, before I realised what day it was and grumbled to myself in annoyance. Of course she’d be working at the Diner, why I ever thou
ght otherwise was a mystery to me; I knew her timetable pretty much off by heart. The recent lack of sleep and constant worrying was probably a factor, as well as pure old-fashioned stupidity.
I sat down on the cold, concrete step in front of the bright green door and took my phone out my pocket, going to ‘V’ in my address book and calling her number without much hope.
After a few rings it went to answer phone and I waited for the beep, wondering what would come out of my mouth. It would probably be one of two things - pathetic whimpering and crying or lots and lots of shouting. Instead it was somewhere in the middle: angry, but pathetic.
“Veronica, it’s Beth. Again. I’m at your house but you’re not here, and I refuse to come to the Diner just so you can yell at me again in front of the whole village. I just wanted to let you know that if you don’t get back to me, I’m going to wait here until you come home. I don’t care how long it takes; you are not going to ignore me any longer.”
I hung up and immediately wished I’d left a cooler message. Maybe next time I should plan it and write down what I was going to say in advance. My lame thought was interrupted by my phone going off and I looked down to see I’d got a text. It was from V.
I opened the message with a sense it wouldn’t be good news. I was right.
‘You’ll be waiting a long time. As soon as I have the money, I’m out of here. Please don’t contact me again.’
I looked at the text for at least a minute. She was leaving without me?
Of course, I didn’t think we were going to London together anymore, but I never thought she’d go on her own. At least she’d been polite when telling me not to contact her - a ‘please’ was better than a swear word. I looked at that sentence again. Why bother putting please at all when she’d been completely horrible to me the rest of the time?
I could feel the tears starting to form in my eyes and I stood up quickly, wanting to get out of there. I thought I could see Mrs Teasdale’s netted curtains moving in her living room window and I hurried home before she could see me lose it.
***
That night I sat on my bed with the cat on my lap and cried until I couldn’t breathe. I tried to be quiet at first so my parents wouldn’t hear, but then I gave up and just stuck loud music on (Random Violation, of course) to drown out my piercing sobs. Keaton was staring at me with wide, green eyes and I stroked his black fur, reassuring him that I hadn’t gone totally mad and would still continue to fuss him and feed him despite my current behaviour.
I thought about calling Will but then decided against it. No one needed to hear me cry down the phone to them for hours, especially not someone I actively used to avoid just a few days ago.
Instead, I picked my laptop up off my duvet and propped it on my bedside table to avoid disturbing the cat. I logged on, opened up the web explorer and immediately went to Calling all Covershire. I went to my Friends page and scrolled down through some of the updates.
Rach was deciding what her next book club book would be, Will was rambling about some TV movie he was watching, and Freddie Steiner was cooking lasagne. I scrolled down some more until I saw V’s update from just thirty minutes ago. ‘Veronica Summers: Pissed off. Can’t wait to get out of this hell hole and away from everyone in it!’
I laughed in shock. Putting something like that on a local social network site was really stupid, and it wasn’t like V at all. Pretty much all of the younger people in the village were signed up to that site, and most of them were either friends with Veronica or worshipped the ground she walked on and stalked her profile religiously. If she’d had any friends left at all in Little Forest, she wouldn’t now.
My phone beeped at me, interrupting my thoughts. I picked it up from the table and looked at the screen, surprised. It was a text from Tom Durden, my ex-boyfriend from back in high school. He was a couple of years older than me and when he’d moved to France to go to University, we broke it off; neither of us thought we could deal with a long distance relationship. He hadn’t been back to Little Forest since, but he’d kept in touch for about a year afterwards. This was the first time I’d heard from him in at least three. I opened the message.
‘Hey, Liz. Just thought I’d check in, how is the Shire? France is just as French as ever, nearly finished my Uni course now. Got a new job lined up too. Let me know how you’re doing, it’s been an age. Tom xx’
I shook my head, amazed. It had been so long since I’d spoken to him I’d completely forgotten he called me Liz and not Beth. I’d gone through a phase in high school where I rejected my normal shortened name and had made everyone call me Liz (it had been Eliza for a while but I stopped that when Veronica kept laughing at me).
Just reading that name made me remember high school: me and Veronica were inseparable, we had a completely different group of friends (we hadn’t yet met Will or Rach), and everyone thought I was incredibly cool for having an older boyfriend. I shook my head in wonder; I’d been devastated when Tom left, but it was nothing compared to how I felt now about Veronica. I realised in that moment that I’d never been as unhappy in my entire life as I was now. The thought made my stomach lurch.
I briefly thought about calling Tom and telling him about everything that was going on, but my mobile couldn’t afford long distance calls and I’m pretty sure I’d get thrown out if I tried it on the land line. Instead, I settled for a quick text message, hinting at my misery in case he felt like calling but not so much it would freak him out:
‘Tom, good to hear from you. I’d like to say I’m great but things are a bit weird here at the moment. Someone from my work died recently and it’s not been easy. It’s been strange to say the least. But I won’t bore you with that! Good luck with the new job. Beth/Liz xxx’
I hit send and then put my phone back on the bedside table. I didn’t want to go into the whole Veronica thing again with another person; it was just too painful to keep bringing up that day at the Diner.
Closing my laptop, I leaned back against my pillow, Keaton meowing loudly as he got moved. I waited for a few minutes in the vague hope that Tom would text back or maybe call, but there was nothing.
I threw my phone at my bed covers in frustration. Until I’d received that text from Tom, I’d been focusing on Veronica and Emma and all the weirdness surrounding that. Now I had loneliness to add to the mix.
I sighed, hugged Keaton close to me, and reached out to retrieve my phone. I hesitated briefly, then found Will’s name in my contacts list.
He answered on the first ring.
***
On Sunday I woke up with a vague sense of foreboding, and it took me a few minutes to realise why; it was the day of Emma’s funeral.
I forced myself out of bed with a moan and tried to think what I had to wear. I’d never been to a funeral before and I wanted to look right. Not that my outfit really mattered in the grand scheme of things.
It was around nine a.m. when there was a knock on my bedroom door. I groaned inwardly, wondering what my parents wanted. “Yes?”
My mum poked her head around the door and asked if she could come in. I nodded, smiling, pretending everything was normal, like I’d been doing for days.
“Beth, Darling. I’m putting some light washing in, do you want me to do any of yours?”
I felt a small bubble of anger rise up my throat, the same one I’d been getting whenever my parents talked to me recently. “Washing? That’s what you wanted to talk about?”
She rolled her eyes in exasperation and gestured to the basket in her hand. “Yes, washing. Is that concept too confusing for you?”
I shook my head, not taking my eyes off her. “No. I just thought you’d want to make sure I was OK or something.”
“OK?” She looked lost.
“It’s the funeral today.”
Understanding - with a possible hint of relief - flooded through her face. “Right, sorry. I’d totally forgotten. Are you going with…” she faltered, then recovered. “Are you going on your own?” r />
I shook my head. “With Will.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“Yeah, it is.”
I waited to see if she’d say anything else, but she just looked down at the wash basket again.
“I did my washing yesterday, thanks.”
She nodded and I gave her my best fake smile, letting it drop as soon as she had her back turned.
She was almost out the door before I decided she didn’t deserve to get off that lightly. “Mum?”
“Yes?” She turned round again, looking glad I’d said something but wary as to what I was going to say next.
“How come you haven’t asked me why I’m not hanging around with Veronica anymore?”
Her smile faded. “Sorry?”
“I’ve gone from hanging out with her every day, to not seeing her in almost two weeks. I was just wondering why you hadn’t asked me about it?” I stared at her expectantly while she started looking more and more flustered.
“Well, Darling, I didn’t want to upset you. Your father told me about your fight at the Diner, of course. I figured if you wanted to tell me the details, you would.”
I nodded, pretending to think this over. “Makes sense. And I would have told you, but you see, I don’t actually know what the fight was about. Do you?”
My mum looked even more uncomfortable now. “No… I can’t hazard a guess.”
I shook my head. “I meant, has Veronica told you?”
A deep crimson was creeping into my mum’s cheeks and she started playing with her ring like she always did when she was nervous. “No, why would she? I haven’t seen her since your birthday.”
There it was. The blatant lie again. One she’d told me in another way before, back when my life was still vaguely normal. I decided to push it. “Are you sure?”
I held her gaze and she had no choice but to look right into my eyes. “Of course!” Her smile widened so much it looked almost alarming, and she walked over to the door quickly and out onto the landing.
I sat looking at the now closed door and wondered why I didn’t feel more upset or angry.