Page 62 of All Summer Long

It seemed that Dessy had decided to stick with the country vibe, because the song he’d left her to grapple with was ‘Crazy’, the Patsy Cline classic. Alice looked pleadingly in Niamh’s direction but found her head to head with Stewie, laughing as she wiped the lipstick off his face with a paper napkin. Other than leave the karaoke to fall on its face, Alice had little choice but to just get the job over with. It wasn’t that she didn’t love to sing, she did. She just wasn’t a performer. But then hadn’t the last few months taught her that she was stronger than she thought and braver than she knew? Taking a deep breath, she gave herself a lightning-fast pep talk. She’d got this. Rolling her shoulders a little, she opened her mouth and just started to sing as if she were alone in the Airstream, or maybe in the bathtub at the manor looking out over the gardens. She closed her eyes and laid her palm flat on her chest, feeling the words vibrate huskily from her body. When she opened them she found that practically every eye in the room was on her, and the buzz of chat had faded away as they all listened to her sing. Dessy was back, standing in the doorway rather than coming to take over, and when she looked to him for help he just laughed and shrugged for her to carry on. Niamh sat shiny eyed, her hands pressed together beneath her chin, and Stewie sat still wigless beside a distinctly squiffy Hazel.

In all of the hubbub, no one noticed the door open and someone slip into the bar. He wrote a false name beside his chosen song as Dessy reached for the folder to scan for any final acts before handing Davina the stage for the finale, and stepped up on the stage just as Dessy pressed play.

‘Brace yourself, girls, it says Brad Pitt here,’ Dessy grinned as he squinted at the folder, and then the smile fell from his face as Brad took off his hoody and dropped it on the table. Taking the mike, he smiled round at his old neighbours, aiming for bashful, shy even.

‘Umm, wrong Brad,’ he joked badly, with a half laugh that he no doubt expected to be reciprocated. It wasn’t.

‘The prodigal son returns,’ Jase said from behind the bar as the opening beats of the intro ended and Brad started to sing the beautiful opening lines of ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ from Percy Sledge.

Alice sat rooted to the spot. Was she still breathing? She wasn’t even sure. Brad had a decent enough voice, and it cracked with emotion as he sang without taking his eyes off her. He was here, the man she’d hoped to love for ever, and it looked for all the world as if he was making the most public of apologies. Looking at him, she saw the face that had turned to watch her walk down the aisle, and the arms she’d hoped would hold her children. She saw the glisten of tears on his cheeks, heard the tremor in his voice as she stood up and slowly edged closer to the stage, every eye in the place on her once more. Brad reached the crescendo of the song and reached out a hand towards her, never one to miss the chance to pile on the drama. It had all of the elements of the final scenes of a romantic movie, boy makes impressive apology and wins his girl back, which only made it all the more spectacular when Alice threw the contents of her freshly refilled wine glass straight into Brad’s symmetrically handsome, shocked face.

Niamh stood up and cheered, thumping the air while Brad picked up his jacket and wiped it across his face, and Dessy hastily yanked the plug on the wine-soaked karaoke machine in case the whole place went up in smoke. Alice shook her head in disgust at Brad and then bolted out of the fire doors into the darkness, knocking a finally interested Marsh’s hat on the floor as she went by.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘I woke up and you weren’t there, Goldilocks,’ Robinson said, tapping on the open Airstream door the following morning. ‘Thought I better come and make sure you didn’t run into any bears in the woods last night.’

Alice buttered the toast she knew she didn’t have the stomach to eat and put the plate down on the table.

‘Hungry?’ she said, sitting down and nodding for him to come in and do the same. He sat opposite her at the table, studying her closely. She knew there was no way he could miss the pale grey tint to her complexion nor the bags underneath her eyes from lack of sleep.

‘Hangover?’ His clear green eyes danced with amusement. ‘Hair of the dog is your best friend right now. Whisky in your coffee should get you there in five.’

Alice’s stomach flipped unpleasantly and she pushed the plate towards him.

‘Brad’s back.’

Robinson blinked, wrong footed, and then nodded slowly and took a bite of toast. ‘You don’t look cock-a-hoop, pretty face.’

‘Should I?’ She’d lain awake for most of the night, and when she had fallen asleep it had been to dream of being in bed in the Airstream with Robinson, only to look twice and find it was Brad’s face over hers, his body pressing hers into the mattress. The dreams made her cry and left her troubled heart trying to work out how it was supposed to feel and who for.

She regaled the whole sorry story of last night to Robinson, leaving nothing out to spare his feelings because they’d never lied to each other once and it was a blessed relief not to have to consider how to present the truth.

He laughed approvingly about Stewie and Hazel’s unanticipated lust, and said how much he wished he’d been there to hear Alice sing, and he reached out and held her hand across the table when it came to the part about Brad turning up. His thumb moved reassuring and warm across her knuckles, and for a minute or two they just sat like that in silence, each of them considering how this changed things.

‘You should speak to him,’ Robinson said, after a while.

‘I don’t know what to say. So much has changed.’

Robinson moved around and scooched her along so he could slide in beside her, his arm along the back of the bench as she leaned gratefully against him.

‘I guess you need to take some time to think about things,’ he said. ‘Work on your own timescale, not his or anyone else’s. You don’t have to make your decisions today, or tomorrow, next week or next month. Just hear what he has to say and then come home again and think.’

The way he said come home again brought a lump to her throat. Come home to the Airstream, to the manor, or to him? They all seemed to be one and the same at the moment. It should have been odd to have this conversation with Robinson; he was probably the last person she ought to be having it with, yet at the same time he was the only person in the world she wanted to talk to. He knew how she felt without her needing to spell it out, because he’d been through the same emotional wringer then tumbled into these last strange and fabulous few months where their worlds had collided at the exact moment they each hit the bottom. Without him, she might have drowned. Without her, he’d probably have not bothered getting up again. And now reality was knocking on the door, and sooner or later they were each going to have to answer it. Marsh was here. Brad was here. Robinson had a concert he needed to be at and a career to hold on to in the States, and Alice had a meeting with the bank manager and hopefully a brand new career of her own. Rural England might still be baking under its unseasonably hot summer, but for them the season was drawing to its inevitable close.

‘He’s staying at The Siren,’ Niamh said without preamble when she came by the Airstream a couple of hours later. ‘I’ve just been down there and spoken to Dessy. He’s taken a room and hasn’t said when he’s leaving.’

Alice poured Niamh a glass of chilled water and they settled outside on the deckchairs.

‘You were my hero last night,’ Niamh said, raising her glass to her friend as if it were champagne rather than water.

‘It was childish,’ Alice sighed. Good as it had felt at the time, throwing wine over Brad hadn’t made her feel any better in the morning.

‘No, it was well deserved. In fact he deserved you to hit him over the head with the actual bottle. He got off lightly.’

‘What did you make of it all, Niamh?’

Niamh swirled her water as she considered the question. ‘I think Brad fully expected you to melt. It was quite a stunt.’

---