Dream On (16 page)

Janice was shocked. "God, that must have been awful. Was there a big row? Oh - silly question. I suppose there must have
been!"

"Well, I sorted them both out, yes." He laughed,
and stared over her shoulder, as if he was reminiscing.

Although she couldn't help wondering what form this
'sorting out' had taken, Janice felt a rush of sympathy for him. Perhaps they
had some common ground, after all.

"I know how that feels," she said.

"Do you?" He patted her hand again. "That anger, it
really burns, doesn't it? Did your ex do something like that to you,
then?"

"Well, not exactly, but I thought we were going to get back
together again at one point, and then I found out he was seeing an old
girlfriend."

"Can't trust anyone, can you? Now, where's that
desert menu?"

"The waiter's just serving the big table. I'm sure
he'll bring it in a minute." Tom closed his eyes, and said nothing.

The silence lasted a rather awkward thirty seconds
or so.

"Yes," she said, skirting around for something to
say, "infidelity, it's just the worst thing you can do to someone, isn't it?"

Still no reaction. Tom didn't look up; he just
took his phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and started scrolling
through it. She waited; he was still silent.  A complete change from the
vociferousness of before.  He just staring at his phone.

She tried again. "I mean, it doesn't matter now, about
Dave finding a new girlfriend, I mean, but I was a bit shocked when I found
out."

Still Tom didn't look up, but frowned, as if he was reading
a text.
Rude bastard,
she thought.
He did ask, after all.

"It's probably just as well," she went on, "We were really
happy together for ages, but I wonder if maybe we'd reached the end of the road
anyway - "

And then it happened. Tom looked at her, picked up
a knife, and pointed it at her.

"Listen," he said, "I don't want to hear anymore about your
ex boyfriend. You're out with me, I'm spending good money on you, and I'm
not paying to sit here listening to you talking about some other bloke. Got it?"

Janice sat there with her mouth open for about half
a second, and then she grabbed her bag, and ran.

"And I left my bloody coat in the restaurant!" she
moaned to Max. "Oh, my God, it was awful, I can't tell you. He made me on
edge almost from the start, but I kept thinking, is it just me? Is it because I
haven't been out with anyone for ages? Is it because he's drunk about two
bottles of wine? Should I give him a chance?"

"No, no, no, you did the right thing," said Max. "What
a lucky escape! We'll get your coat in the morning - whew! I'm glad you ran
when you did! He sounds like a psycho!" He shuddered, visibly. "Not to
mention the worst kind of alcoholic. That's the sort of man who'll end up
knocking you about within the first few months. Terrifying."

"He was so horrible, about everyone and everything,"
Janice said. Then she found herself crying again. "I don't know why it's upset
me so much! I mean, it's not like I was involved with him, or anything."

"Apart from the fact that it must have been an
awful experience, it's because your hopes have been dashed," Max said. "You've
had a big setback with all the Dave business, and you were pinning your hopes
on this Tom chap maybe being your next boyfriend. It's perfectly
understandable." He stood up. "Are you sure you don't want a glass of wine? I
do keep some for guests, I'm not one of those alcoholics who can't have it in
the house."

"No, no, coffee's fine - I've had enough to drink." She pushed her mug across the table. "I'd love another one of these, though,
please!"

"Sure."

She watched him moving around the kitchen, nice big
kind Max, and she thought what a shame it was that she couldn't fall in love
with someone lovely and ordinary and decent, like him. And he with her, too,
of course.  No more unrequited love. She didn't think her poor little heart
could survive another battering.

Max was right, of course. She was crying because
she'd been hoping that Tom might be her reward for all she'd been through with
Dave - as if by weathering a bad time you necessarily
earned
a run of
good luck, instead. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Life didn't work like that,
unfortunately. Sometimes it just piled disappointment upon disappointment,
drudgery upon heartbreak. She wanted to cry again but it wasn't fair on Max;
he'd already come straight out to pick her up from the shop doorway in which
she'd stood, shivering in her thin, silky top, looking at the bright lights on
the Christmas tree outside the church, and dreading Christmas. He'd driven her
back to his cosy little cottage in the village of Marsham, just outside
Fennington, where he'd introduced her to his dog, a beautiful border collie
called Sam.

Janice felt happy there, in his peaceful, warm,
untidy house. When he asked her if she wanted to stay the night she agreed -
in the spare room, of course. She wouldn't have minded sharing the bed with
him, just to have someone to cuddle up with, but she didn't want him to get any
ideas; Max was lovely, but she just didn't fancy him.

She'd fancied Tom, for about ten minutes. And she
still fancied Dave, like crazy. Why, oh why, couldn't she fancy the nice men? There was nothing wrong with Max; he was tall, had thick dark hair, cut a bit
like Dave's, though not so long; he had a pleasant face and he smiled all the
time. He exuded
good,
in the same way that Psycho Tom had exuded
bad.
 He was a bit stocky, but she didn't mind that; she'd never liked skinny
men. But she just didn't fancy him.

Mind you, she thought, he probably felt the same
way about her. No doubt he looked at her and just saw a reasonably pretty girl
who could do with losing a few pounds but scrubbed up quite nicely; this was
one of the few times he'd seen her in anything other than the t-shirts,
leggings and trainers she wore underneath her big red Sunrise Café apron,
though she always wore make-up and earrings for work. No, she was sure he didn't
see her in 'that' way either.

Later on, she curled quite happily into the most
comfortable single bed in the world, and slept peacefully for eight hours.

Two days later there appeared on her MySpace page a
series of abusive messages from Tom, written late at night; drunk in charge of
his laptop, no doubt. She was a selfish bitch, a gold-digging cow, a neurotic
single mum who was just after a free meal, and various other choice things,
including fat. That was by far the worst thing he'd said, of course. Even
though she knew she wasn't, it was the only thing that really stung. She
deleted him from her friends list, and, on Carolyn's advice, blocked him, too,
and reported him to the site administrators. Thank goodness she'd never given
him her address or phone number, Carolyn said; it was certainly a lesson
learned, though, and she found herself becoming less open with all these
'friends' she'd made on the computer.

"You could write a blog about it," suggested
Carolyn, "on MySpace. As a warning to others."

Janice supposed that might be a good thing to do,
but she didn't want to.

She just wanted to forget it had ever happened.

Christmas Day dawned bright, crisp and clear that
year, in Fennington St Mary.

Dave Bentley woke up alone in his bed in Ritchie's
spare room, feeling depressed. He'd never woken up in an empty house on
Christmas morning before; Ritchie had gone with Our Pete to stay with his
parents in their retirement bungalow in Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, the day
before. Boz, who was between rabbit hutches (his words) and had been kipping
on the sofa for the last two weeks, had gone back up north until December the
twenty-eighth.

This time last year Dave had been woken by Harley
bouncing on the bed, chattering excitedly about his presents from Father
Christmas, and demanding Daddy get up, now, because Mummy was downstairs
cooking a special Christmas morning breakfast - and then they were going to
church to sing carols! Thinking about it now made tears prick at his eyelids,
though he smiled when he thought of being dragged to church by the two of them;
Harley loved to light a candle by the little nativity scene on the way out, and
he loved to sing carols best of all; perhaps he was going to be a rock star one
day, too. Dave wasn't sure whether he believed in God or not, or indeed if
Janice did, but he thought it was good that she took Harley to church, anyway.

He wouldn't see his son until later. He and Janice
had stayed over at Linda's on Christmas Eve night, so they could have a proper family
Christmas altogether. The family, even Linda's new boyfriend, but not him. After
lunch, they would all go to Fenland Lodge to see Evelyn. He was invited for tea,
at five o'clock; that was all.

Ariel had been working in The Bandstand the night
before, which, it being Christmas Eve, had been so busy that he'd hardly
managed to speak to her. Then, when he finally managed five minutes with her
while she was having a quick cigarette outside at about ten o'clock, she'd told
him that she wouldn't be accompanying him home because she had an early start;
she was going with her dad and his girlfriend, Pam, to spend Christmas Day at
Pam's daughter's in Chatteris, near Cambridge. Dave and Shane always called it
Clitoris, but he wasn't sure whether or not Ariel would find that funny.

He'd spent the rest of the evening having drunken
conversations with anyone in the pub he vaguely knew who happened to lurch his
way, and watching Shane making a last ditch attempt at getting off with
Melodie, who'd continued to spurn his advances and was later to be seen
snogging local radio DJ Brendan Shanks outside the kebab shop. Undaunted,
Shane had turned his attention to two girls called Kerry and Sharon, or Sherry
and Karen, or something, who had tinsel round their necks, bra straps on
display, and reindeer antlers on their heads. The last time Dave saw him he was
walking out of the door, one hand stroking the ample bottom of
Kerry/Sharon/Sherry/Karen, pausing only to give his mate a cheery 'thumbs up'.

Dave thought about Shane, now, and laughed. He'd
rather be on his own than waking up in the flat of some strange girl who would,
inevitably, look significantly less appealing than she had the night before,
and would probably hound him for a fortnight, until she got the message that
the night of passion had been nothing but a drunken one-off.

He got out of bed, stepped into the shower, thought
about Ariel, dealt with the erection he always got when he thought about Ariel,
dried himself off and padded into the kitchen to make coffee and find some
hangover easing breakfast. Eggs. Had to be eggs. He unearthed the frying pan
from the heap of crockery and pans on the draining board, and set to work. Three fried eggs, grilled tomatoes, two slices of fried bread and three cups of
coffee later, Dave felt like a Viking again. He sent quick 'happy Christmas'
texts to Ariel and Janice, then settled down to play his guitar for half an
hour before going out.

He'd decided to walk round to his mother's house so
he could drink when he was there; on the way, though, he began to wish he
hadn't. It wasn't so much the vast bunch of flowers he'd bought for his mum
that were sticking out of his present filled backpack and kept flopping in an
annoying fashion against his head - and making him look pretty silly, he feared;
from the front, he must look as if he was wearing some sort of mad head-dress
made from carnations and gypsophila.  No, it was more the twinge in his back
from bending over to wheel the bicycle he'd bought for Harley, to take round to
Linda's later. Fuck, why hadn't he been more organised and taken it round in
the week, like she'd suggested? Because he hadn't bought it until three
o'clock on Christmas Eve afternoon, that was why. He'd meant to be so
organised this year, to stop being a typical
bloke
and buy presents people
would really want instead of just going into the garage and snapping up random
boxes of chocolates at the last minute, but it hadn't happened. Phil Wiseman
Construction had ceased work for the Christmas break the week before, but all
Dave had done was practice his songs for Raw Talent and have sex with Ariel when
she bestowed her presence upon him, or think about having sex with Ariel when
she didn't.

Christ, but he was besotted with her.

There existed within him this rampaging passion, worse
than when they'd been together in their youth; he just wanted to hold her to
him, weld their bodies together all the time; he couldn't get enough of her. Before, when he was younger, the love he felt for her had been more of a dewy
eyed romantic thing (he thought; it was hard to remember), but now it was like
a
rage
inside him that he couldn't quell, not even when he'd just fucked
her three times in one afternoon.

Perhaps it was his inner Viking breaking through.

Thor had definitely awoken
something
.  

That night back in the summer, when he'd had the
lightning bolt idea, something had told him,
Dave, this is what you're meant
to be. Who you truly are.

He couldn't express any of this to the guys, of
course, or even to Ariel, but Thor wasn't just a band, a vehicle for the songs
he wrote. The more he became Lars Erikson (for that was who he was, even if
no-one else knew it), the more sure he was of his ancestry. His father was
tall, big and flaxen haired, too, and hadn't he run off, unable to be tied by
the constraints of small town domestic life? Okay, he hadn't gone off to
discover new lands, or anything - actually, he'd gone to live with a woman called
Eunice who he'd met while he was on a shop fitting contract in Macclesfield -
but Dave was sure that if he spoke to him about it (during one of their biennial
meetings) he would understand what he meant.