Dream On (12 page)

"Can I come with you?" he asked, sniffing. "I could sit in
the big chair in Max's office and draw pictures."

"I thought you didn't feel well?" she said. "Anyway,
I've got to be there for five hours; that's a lot of pictures to draw!" She
kissed him again. "How would you like to go and stay with Daddy for the day?" Bugger Thor. Dave never worked at the weekend; whatever he'd planned to do, be
it band practice or preparing for some gig, he could just bloody well cancel
it. He always said that she and Harley came first, didn't he? Now was his
chance to prove it.

"Yes!" said Harley, visibly brightening. "I love going to
stay with Daddy! Him and Ritchie drink beer and say rude words, it's
funny!"

Oh,
great.

"Okay," Janice said. "Well, you get your clothes on and
I'll ring him. Are you sure you're well enough? Does your tummy
still hurt?"

"Yes," he said. He did look a bit pale.

"Okay," she said, again, "we'll take some of your tummy
medicine, I'll phone a taxi and let Daddy know we're on our way. And if
you feel poorly when you're there - I mean, if it gets worse - you make sure
Daddy phones me at work, right?"

Dave's phone went straight to voicemail; Janice
wasn't surprised. At only ten on a Saturday morning he was probably still in bed,
sleeping off Friday night. How the other half lived, eh?  She phoned for a
cab, anyway. He'd just have to bloody well wake up, wouldn't he?

"How old do I have to be before I can smoke
cigarettes like Daddy does?" said Harley, coming down the stairs.

Oh dear. That was something else she was going to
have to talk to him about, wasn't it?

Ritchie answered the door, holding a bowl of
cereal. He was yawning, and wearing an uncharacteristically ostentatious black
silk kimono, a large dragon clawing its way down his chest.

"He ain't up yet, Jan," Ritchie said, glancing back
over his shoulder into the flat. "Do you want to come back later?"

"No, I don't," Janice said. "We've come here in a taxi,
Harley's not well and I've got to go to work. I need Dave to look after
him."

Ritchie ruffled Harley's hair. "Are you feeling a bit
crappy, then, lad?" he said, bending down to him; but still he didn't open the
door properly.

"Yes, my tummy hurts," said Harley. "Can I go and see my
Daddy now?"

"Ritchie, will you let us in please?" Janice said.

"Oh - yeah, well, do you want me to go and wake Dave up
first?"

"Yes, or Harley can." Still Ritchie stood there,
grinning inanely, holding his bowl of cereal aloft. What was the matter with
him? Was he still drunk from last night, or something?

"Ritchie, be a duck and shift out of the way so I
can go in, will you?" she said.

"Ah - yeah." Ritchie stood aside and Jan stepped
into the hall way - which was when she saw, at the end of the passage, coming
out of the bathroom dressed in one of Dave's Motorhead t-shirts and probably nothing
else, the platinum blonde hair and long, slim legs of Ariel Swan.

Customers were taking their cups of tea and slices
of fruit cake elsewhere that afternoon, apparently, for which Janice was
thankful; at four o'clock, Max was happy to turn the sign on the door of the
Sunrise Café round to closed. It was only then, sitting there in her apron,
mop and bucket at her side, that she allowed the tears to flow.

"I'm so sorry, pet," Max said, holding her hand
across the table. He handed her a piece of kitchen towel; she blew her nose
and wiped her eyes. "What a way to find out. That selfish - oh, never
mind. He could have told you, couldn't he?"

"Yes," Janice sniffed. "I asked him, I bloody
asked him, and he lied to me. I was right, wasn't I? I knew it, I should have
listened to my own instincts. All this time I've been hoping that he and I
were going to get back together, all that crap I believed about us being the
most important thing in his life, and all the time he's been seeing
her.
I've
been waiting around like an idiot, but he'd moved on, hadn't he?" Janice
clutched her stomach; the pain in her head and in her chest was making her feel
sick. If only she'd never chucked him out - or perhaps he would have still got
together with bloody Alison Swan anyway, behind her back -

"It might not be serious. Might have been just a
once in a while thing," said Max. "You know, for old times' sake."

"Oh no, it's serious," Janice said. "I can tell with Dave. I could see the look on his face when she was shoving on her coat and saying
sorry to me, and getting the hell out of there as quickly as she could. He
was more concerned that she was going than with how upset I was."

"Perhaps it's serious for him but not for her," Max
said. "If she said sorry to you and made a quick exit, it might be that she'll
call it a day, anyway."

Janice laughed. "What, so he comes back to me because he
can't have her? Oh, yeah, that would be just great, wouldn't it? I'm
not being anyone's consolation prize. I've got a bit more bloody pride
than that."

She began to cry again. Max moved his chair closer
to her, and took her in his arms.

"Come here. I don't reckon anyone would see you as
a consolation prize," he said. "That idiot bloke, I don't know what he's
playing at. He'll come back, once he's got this little fling out of his
system, you'll see. Do you still love him, Jan?"

She leant against his shoulder and looked up at
him. "Yes - well, of course I do.  There wasn't anyone that
important before him, it's only ever been him, and the thought of him with
Alison Swan hurts like fuck, so I suppose I must, mustn't I?"

"Of course it hurts," said Max, quite softly. "It's the shock, the feeling you've been made a fool of, the realisation that
the future you thought you could rely on might not happen after all. But maybe
you're just so used to being in love with Dave that you haven't considered that
life without him might be okay, one day." He gave a little laugh. "A bit like
me and the booze, I suppose!"

"Do you think so?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'm no expert! I just meant
that - well, there might be other ways you can be happy, eventually, that's
all."

They looked at each other and smiled, and Janice
was surprised to find herself hoping, for one tiny moment, that he would kiss
her. But he didn't, and the moment passed.

Actually seeing Dave, post dirty secret revelation,
was another matter altogether, of course. He returned Harley, whose tummy ache
had miraculously disappeared, at seven o'clock.

Dave walked straight into the kitchen and got a beer out of
the fridge.

"We need to talk," he said.

"Nothing to talk about," she said. "Oh, get me one of
those as well, will you?"

Dave opened her a bottle and passed it to her.

"Mummy, why do men and ladies drink beer?" Harley
asked.

"Oh, because they can't face up to reality, I don't
know," said Janice; and Dave had the nerve to laugh. "Sweetheart, go off and
play somewhere for a bit, would you?"

"Okay!" said Harley, and ran off, quite happily.

"Come on," Dave said. "Talk to me."

"What about?" she said, and sat down at the table. "You've
led me to believe that you still loved me and wanted us to be a family again,
but now you're knocking off Alison Swan instead. There, we've talked about
it. End of."

"But we could still get back together," said Dave, pulling
out a chair; it made a loud scraping sound across the floor."

She laughed.  "What? When she gets fed up with you
and goes back to London? Are you mad, or just stupid? Dave, we've
been sleeping together, not for a while, admittedly, and now I know why - but
we've still been having a relationship of sorts, and now you've just thrown all
that back in my face and taken up with someone else, and you didn't even have
the fucking decency to tell me about it."

"I know." Dave looked particularly shame-faced. He looked up at her. "I do still love you, Jan. You and Harley, you're the
most important things to me."

"No, we're not. You keep trotting out that line, but
you don't back it up. Your band and Alison Swan come top on your list of
priorities, not me and Harley."

"That's not true.  If it was a choice between the band and
you and my son, the band wouldn't stand a chance."

"And Alison?"

"Ariel."

"Whatever."

Dave exhaled, loudly. "I don't know, Janice. We're
not, like, a couple. It's just - well, it's just unfinished business, you know?"

"Crap." How dare he come out with this trite
bullshit? "You're sleeping with her because you'd rather sleep with her than
me. Yet you say you love me. Funny kind of love, that. So how
do you feel about her, then?"

"I don't know," Dave said, and for a moment he
looked just like Harley did when he didn't want to go to school.

Janice lifted her beer to her lips and drank the
last bit down. "Oh, just get out, will you, Dave? Just bugger off. Go and see your girlfriend."

"She's working tonight."

Janice laughed. "Poor little you. Well, go and write
a song about her, or something, then. Just go. Just get out, will
you?"

Ariel knew that asking Shane what she should do was
probably pointless, but she did, anyway, and he advised her against going to see
Janice. What good could possibly come from such a confrontation?

She ignored his advice.

Knocking on the door of number twenty-seven,
Woodstock Close, Greyfriars Estate, bottle of wine in hand, Ariel's nerves were
well and truly wracked.

At first, as she had expected, Janice just opened
the door, said, "I don't want to talk to you," and shut it in her face, but
Ariel persevered. She didn't know why she wanted to talk to her, or indeed why
she thought she ought to; it just seemed like the decent thing to do. And now
they were sitting there drinking wine at her kitchen table, in a superbly
civilised fashion.

Ariel could see the pain and resentment on Janice's
face; it reminded her of how she'd felt when she'd had to be mature and
civilised around Frankie and Sadie, back in Goa.

She'd felt like slamming a door in Sadie's face at
the time, too, and lots of other things as well, like kicking her to the ground
and pulling her hair out, for starters.

"I didn't realise Dave was still so involved with you,
honest I didn't," she said.

Janice laughed; a shrill, mirthless sound. She was
laughing
at
her, though, wasn't she? "We've got a child together, love. Of course he's still involved with me."

"Yes, yes, I know," Ariel said, feeling herself
going pink; she felt silly. "But women get together with men who've got
children from past relationships every day, don't they? I just meant that -
well, I didn't know you and
he
were still so involved. He didn't
tell me. I made him, afterwards, though. I could see it, anyway,
when you came round to Ritchie's. How upset you were that I was there, and
how ashamed Dave was to be - well, caught with his trousers down, I suppose."

"Yes, well, I don't usually act like that in
public, but it was a bit of a shock," Janice said, pouring out more wine into
both glasses. "Do you smoke?" she asked, suddenly. "Have you got any
cigarettes?"

"Oh - yes." Ariel felt in the pocket of her coat. "Here."

"We'll go outside and have one," Janice said. "I don't
allow smoking in the house because of Harley.  I don't really smoke,
I gave up when I was pregnant."

They stood outside the back door in the cold, dark,
frosty night, and lit up. "I suppose you and Dave share those post-shag
cigarettes, do you?" Janice said. "We used to do that, years ago."

"Don't," said Ariel. She found it hard to look at
Janice, knowing how much she must hate her.

"Why not, does it make you feel awkward?" Janice
laughed. She coughed. "Oh, I don't know, you've probably done me a favour. I thought we were going to get back together again, but if it hadn't been you it
would probably have been someone else."

"I don't think so. He's not that bad," said
Ariel. "I mean, he's not like Shane, he doesn't shag around."

"Ah, so you're special, then, are you?" Janice
asked. She closed her eyes for a moment. "Is he in love with you? Does
he say so?"

Ariel looked at her and wondered whether or not to
lie. No; she didn't think Janice seemed like the sort of woman who needed to
hear white lies.

- and maybe a little part of her was showing
off, too, getting back at Sadie -

"He does, yes."

"Yeah, he tells me he loves me, as well. Did you know
that? I don't suppose he loves me in quite the same way he loves you,
though. I'm good old Janice, the Mrs."

"Don't put yourself down."

"I'm not. I'm just speaking the truth. And
don't you be so fucking condescending. If I want to put myself down, which
I'm not, I fucking well will."

"I'm sorry." Ariel felt silly again. "I don't think
Dave's a bad person, I really don't. He's not one of those arch
manipulator types who feed women a load of bullshit. I think he genuinely
cares very much for both of us. If I wasn't around he'd probably be back
with you by now - oh, shit, I'm sorry, that sounds awful, doesn't it? I
meant that - "

"I know what you meant." Janice sighed, ground her
cigarette out with her slippered foot, and held the door open for Ariel to
follow her back inside. "The question is," she said, sitting back down at the
table and picking up her glass of wine, "which does, of course, impact very
strongly on Harley and me - the question is, how do you feel about him? Is
it serious for you?"

Ariel frowned. "Yes and no. I mean, I do feel a lot
for him, but, to be truthful, the most important thing to me is my career. My music. If something happened that meant I had to go away from here, I'd
go. I never planned to stay here, anyway."