Page 61 of All Right No
Ash closed his eyes and inhaled. Both his cheeks were burning now. “I’m making it sound like it was all down to him, and it wasn’t. I wasn’t coerced. At the time, I was just fine going along with it.” He looked up at her. “It would be wrong of me to pretend it wasn’t good. It was Xane for God’s sakes. The man knows what he’s doing, and he does it well. Maybe too well, because my heart melted a bit and I got slightly crazy and started imagining there was more to it than it was. Just for a few hours, you realise. Long enough for us both to have worn ourselves out, slept, woken, repeated the whole thing, and then roused to reality.
“Elspeth turned up at reception and told us the guys, or rather Paul, had managed to total the bus. He’d rolled it down a goddamn embankment. It’s a miracle the three of them emerged unscathed.”
“You never repeated what happened that night?”
“We never really spoke about it until recently, and then we didn’t really speak about it so much as acknowledge it happened. The crap he pulls on stage is meaningless. He does it to provoke a reaction from the crowd, and because he likes pushing my buttons. I don’t want him, and he doesn’t want me. Are you happy now?”
“Ready for my guitar lesson, I think.” She kissed him on the brow. “I’m glad you told me.” She hopped off his lap and started clearing up their plates ready to take through to the kitchen.
Ash caught hold of her hand. “Why… Why does it matter?”
“It’s a part of your past. I never feel I know that much about you. You don’t say a great deal about your family. Sometimes I think I only know Ash Gore the rock star, not Ash the person.”
“I told you about my birth mum, and Auto.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “You did.”
“It takes time to get to know people well. You can meet my folks at Christmas. There’s no escaping Christmas dinner. That’s unless we need to go to your mum’s? You don’t say a lot about your folks either.”
“We really don’t speak, Ash. My mum’s remarried twice since Dad. I don’t even know where she is right now. Her latest is a hedge fund manager. The last one was a race horse jockey. He was cute but tiny, and way, way too young for her. Also, he loved horses, and mum doesn’t do animals, unless they’re dead and part of a coat.”
Ash made ‘ack’ noises, with his tongue stuck out. That about summed up her opinion too, but her mum was all about money and prestige. She wore fur as a statement about her status, the fact an animal or two had been slaughtered to provide their pelts for her grandstanding meant nothing to her. She’d never been particularly socially aware or empathetic. With her as a role model, it was a miracle she hadn’t made more mistakes in her youth, and she’d made plenty. It was hard to spot your own folly when your mother was cooing over your future prospects, and making out you’d snagged the biggest prize imaginable.
“Was your dad a blunderbuss carrying sociopath?”
Ginny instantly pictured her father in tweed plus fours wearing a flat cap. It was such a ludicrous image it made her laugh out loud. “Nah, he was a joiner by trade, down to earth and practical. He liked the simple things in life, like a take-away on a Friday night, a couple of bevvies down the pub with his mates after work, and competing in the dad’s races on school sports days. Not that mum let him do any of those things. She made him play golf and join the Cricket Club.”
“They don’t sound like an obvious match.”
They’d seemed perfect when she’d been little, but maybe that was how parents seemed to their kids. She’d realised the truth as she’d grown older. “Mum had nothing and came from nothing. When they met, Dad had wheels and cash in his pockets. In her eyes that made him a millionaire. I think she always regretted not holding out for one. That isn’t to say he didn’t do all right. He did.” It explained a lot about why her mother had worked so damn hard to make sure her daughter got the opportunities she missed, and why the results had been so ugly.
“I’ve got it,” Ash said.
“You can teach me how the hell to secure my contacts, so I don’t lose them every time my phone goes walkabout.”
Sure, yeah. She could do that. “Maybe I could just teach you how to spot a thieving bitch. You’re way too trusting.”
***
Ginny’s first guitar lesson wasn’t entirely what she’d anticipated, in that extracting notes from an instrument didn’t feature for a considerable portion of time. Apparently, the key to success was to look the part. Hence, Ash had her mimic him performing an assortment of rocker stances, almost all of which appeared to involve having the guitar battering her knees or holding it at an angle that made her wrists ache.
“I think your arms must be much longer than mine, none of this is remotely comfortable, and why do I need to wiggle my head around as I play? I feel like a metronome. Can’t we sit down and work on making some actual music?”
He set her up with an acoustic guitar and taught her a few finger positions and how to strum. The problem came when they leapt from that to playing whole sequences of notes. She’d still be trying to figure out where on the fretboard her fingers were supposed to be, and he’d be halfway through the piece. On the upside, contrary to what he’d been claiming for weeks. He could play. In fact, he could play damned well. So sure, he needed to flex his fingers now and then, and even she could tell that he fluffed up sometimes when he segued from teaching her to playing Black Halo numbers, but the situation wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d supposed. The silly fool just expected perfection from himself.
Her lesson forgotten, Ash quickly got lost in the music. It was odd hearing so many familiar tracks without the vocals and drums to support his playing, but her mind filled in the missing components. The day had grown long before Ginny stirred and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Maybe it’s time for a break.” His hands were clearly tiring. Every few bars saw him shaking his hand and stretching his fingers out.
“One last thing,” he insisted. “Please, Gin, I want you to hear this.”
He played. She listened. The piece moved between moments of despair followed by relentless anger, but when he was done, he sat smiling.
“What is that? Is it the piece you’ve been swearing at Xane for being unable to play?”
Ash stood and returned the guitar to its stand. “It’s something I’ve been working on, like you told me to.”
“You mean you wrote it? Are there words?”
