The House On Willow Street (41 page)

But Suki didn’t look too good today. Without her hair all fluffed up and without the war paint properly applied, she looked her age. Definitely forty-something, despite all the Botox and fillers and the eye lift.

“Hi, Nico,” Suki said, grabbing herself some water and drinking it straight down.

“You’re up early,” Nico said. “Do you wanna sit with me?”

Suki looked at him, wondering whether she could confide in him. She and Nico got on really well. Plus he knew she wasn’t the sort of person to go and dump Jethro and sell her story to the tabloids the way so many other girls had tried to do.

She sank into the chair opposite him.

“Coffee?” asked a waitress.

“Yeah, loads of it—strong, thank you,” Suki growled. She started to light up a cigarette.

“Not in here, I’m afraid,” said Nico.

“Aw shit,” Suki said. She put a couple of lumps of sugar in her coffee.

“You look tired,” Nico said.

She’d tell him, Suki decided. “Jethro has another woman in our bed,” she blurted out, and then felt stupid. She shouldn’t have said anything. Now she’d look like a sad loser who couldn’t keep her man.

“Ah.” Nico poured some more coffee into his cup. “That tends to happen with Jethro. I would have liked to have told you, but . . . y’know, sometimes people don’t like to be told these things. They have to find them out for themselves,” Nico said delicately. “That’s the way he is. I’ve known him for twenty years and that’s the pattern, Suki. You can stay or you can go, but if you stay, you gotta put up with that.”

“But he’s never done that before, not to me. I mean, why now?” Suki wailed. “We’re so happy, everything is great.”

“He gets bored.”

Suki took that one. It felt like a body blow, but she took it.

“And he likes . . . younger girls, sometimes. Not the teenage ones, but the early twenties: the ones who’ll do anything so long as they can say they’ve been to bed with Jethro.”

It was the word “younger” that did it.

“Younger women,” she breathed. “I thought I was enough for him.”

Nico looked at her pityingly. “Nobody or nothing is enough for Jethro,” he said. “You wanna stay on the tour, you need to remember that. He wants it all.”

After an hour, she went back to the suite, let herself in quietly and walked into the bedroom. Jethro was lying in the bed, looking happy, smoking a cigar. She hated the smell of cigar smoke. He didn’t smoke many, but when he did, it always signified that he was in a particularly good mood. And today, it wasn’t her who had provided that good mood.

“Jethro,” she said, determined to be calm, “we need to talk.”

“About what, honey?” he asked, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

“About the fact that you had another woman in our bed. I can’t live with that,” Suki said. She felt herself growing stronger with every word. “It simply isn’t acceptable, Jethro. You and I have a great relationship; we can’t mess it up with other women. And how disrespectful is that to me, to bring her into our bed?”

“Honey,” he said, and this time his voice was the low throaty growl that had so captured her the first time they’d
met, “this isn’t
our
bed, this is
my
bed. I allow you to sleep in it. Whoever else I want to bring in—that’s my business. If you don’t like it, you can get out. Stas says he’s always fancied having a few rounds with you.”

Suki stared at him, horrified. Stas was the band’s guitarist. She considered him a friend, but much as she liked him, she didn’t fancy him in the slightest. Stas had always joked that if he wasn’t in TradeWind he’d still be a virgin.

She looked at Jethro in horror. “What do you mean, go to Stas? After all that we’ve been through? After all this time, after all these years.”

Jethro stared at her, uninterested. “I’m bored, honey,” he said. “So you can either take what I’m offering . . . or get out.”

Suki tried to gather her dignity about her. She looked at the man lounging in the bed, the face and body that so many women wanted, and realized that it was over. She couldn’t stay with him if he brought other women into their bed.

The calmness of the tranquilizer allowed her not to break down and cry.

“Okay, Jethro, if that’s the way you want it, fine. Goodbye.”

She walked into the dressing room and started packing, half hoping he’d come in and say,
“No, baby, I didn’t mean it, I’d be lost without you. None of those twenty-four-year-olds can talk with me late into the night. They’re not like you—superbright, clever, funny . . .”

But he didn’t come.

When she’d gathered her stuff together, she hauled it out into the hall. There were ten bags in all. Everything she’d amassed in her time with him. Finally, she took off the big watch. It was one of the few things he’d bought her that was actually valuable, and she threw it at him in the bed.

“You can have this for your next girl,” she said.

And then she left, head held high.

Suki got out of bed and went downstairs to make herself another cup of coffee. Then she sat outside on the deck with blankets wrapped around her and thought about the psychic she’d met in the trailer park.

Addicted to powerful men, she’d said.

Suki tapped out a cigarette and lit up. The woman had been right. Suki had always been waiting for some guy to fix it all—and she still was. Even with no-hoper Mick, she kept praying he’d get a decent job and support her. So much for her feminist principles! She might have been talking the talk but she’d never really walked the walk. Instead, she’d moved from one man to the next all her life. And that had to change.

M
ara was flinging Danae into Avalon’s social scene as if her very life depended upon it.

First up was the town meeting to discuss what last-ditch efforts they could make to salvage Christmas, with shoppers staying away in droves thanks to the recession. It was being held in the town hall and as mayoress, Belle was in charge.

On the agenda were a series of festive-themed shopping nights. Mulled wine and nibbles, and a choir singing carols had worked a treat the previous Christmas. This year, there had been resistance to the idea, led by Dessie, who feared his takings might suffer if drink was being given away for nothing.

“We aren’t all runnin’ fancy hotels, making a fortune,” Dessie protested, with more than a whine in his voice. “Sure, I’m only breaking even. I don’t hold with all this prettifying the place for Christmas. I have the odd decoration and that’ll have to do you. I’m not shelling out money for any old tinsel or other daft things.”

Others had protested that, with takings down, they
couldn’t afford to contribute either. Now, with shoppers going elsewhere, it seemed they couldn’t afford not to.

Danae, who wasn’t open in the evening and had no real reason to get involved, was reluctant to attend the meeting, but Mara had insisted.

“We’re a part of this town,” she said, “and we’re going.”

Danae was entirely astonished to find that she was enjoying getting out. She didn’t quiver with nerves when she put her hand up to say she’d donate money for wine and some spices for the mulled bit.

“Thanks, Danae,” said Belle, who was thinking of ways of dispatching Dessie into the great hereafter. “At least
some
people understand the concept of community.”

“Dessie’s not the worst, Belle,” Danae said. “He doesn’t see the bigger picture, not the way you do. This is a wonderful idea for the town, you’re a marvelous organizer.”

Ruffled feathers smoothed, Belle relaxed.

After the meeting, Danae found herself sitting in the café with a coffee and a scone, surrounded by people she’d been acquainted with for years but had never really known. Mara was there in the middle, chatting away.

“. . . well, it’s different for her because Brenda
works
!” shrieked someone, and they all roared with laughter.

A private joke, Danae thought. Life was all about private jokes and you were either in or out of it. She’d always been out of it, one way or the other. But she was determined not to be on the outside in future.

Seeing Danae’s confusion over the joke, Lorena from the café explained: “It was something Margaret’s husband said once. According to him, Brenda couldn’t be expected to do normal things because she worked. As if we don’t.”

“Tell me, is Brenda good looking?” asked Mara shrewdly.

Danae admired her niece for being a part of it all.

“Lord, yes! Stunning.”

“So she should be—she’s got the time and money to have her hair done!”

Tess had gone along to the meeting but she’d felt like an interloper. Before long, she wouldn’t have a shop anymore. There was no point kidding herself: Something Old was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Nevertheless, she’d found herself swept up in the great exodus to the café. Tonight, Danae from the post office and a few other local women, including dear Mara, were deep in conversation at a table near the door. Tess walked past them quietly and ordered tea and a scone.

She had some auction house catalogs in her handbag but she didn’t have the heart to read them. What was the point? She was nearly broke. It was only the thought that she had to get the shop and the family past Christmas that was keeping her going at all. Christmas was the final hurdle. For all their sakes, she had to keep the shop limping along a few weeks more. Then, in the New Year, she could consider her options and make decisions.

She ate her scone, drank her tea and found her eyes wandering again. It was odd how Danae seemed to be everywhere now that they’d broken that barrier of politeness which encased so many relationships. Years of saying hello and nodding, and suddenly they were friends, and here was Danae, all over the place.

As if sensing that someone was looking at her, Danae’s head lifted. She smiled as soon as she saw Tess.

“I wasn’t avoiding you all,” Tess said when Danae sat down beside her.

“I understand,” said Danae. “Sometimes it’s nice to be on your own, isn’t it?”

Tess nodded. She didn’t want to confide in this lovely woman or she might cry.

As if she knew how Tess was feeling, Danae got to her feet again.

“I better get Miss Mara home,” she said. “We both have work in the morning and she’d stay here all night if I let her. Do drop in on us any time you’re in the mood for a chat,” Danae added, feeling daring. She liked this new feeling of going out and meeting people.

Tess bent her head to her scone again, undone by Danae’s kindness. She wouldn’t cry, not here. She wouldn’t cry because her business was going to collapse, her husband had found a new love, and the first man she’d ever loved had been back in town the last month and hadn’t even come to see her, not once.

Danae was lovely, but she had neither husband nor children to cause her anxiety. She lived happily on her own most of the time; how could she understand Tess’s pain?