Dream On (6 page)

Dave looked round.  Melodie Waters. He'd hardly
noticed she was there. Hadn't seen her in a while, either.  She was looking
good, too; all women tended to fade away next to Alison, though.
Ariel.

"Thanks." He smiled at Melodie. Pretty girl; long
black hair, too much heavy suntan make-up. He looked back at Alison. Must stop
calling her that.
Ariel.
His Alison. He found he was holding her hand
again.

"Well, we'd better get off," said Ariel, though she
didn't take her hand away.  "I've got a busy day tomorrow. Got to go out
with Dad to visit various relatives."

"Perhaps we can meet up some time," said Dave. "I'd love
to hear all about your travels, and everything that happened in London."

"Too much to tell about the travels, not enough to
tell about London!" she said, and smiled.  "But yes, that would be good.  I'll
be at Dad's, when I'm not looking for a job that doesn't actually make me feel
sick at the thought of turning up for it." She glanced up at Melodie and gave
an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Dave saw it, though; it was as though
she was warning her not to say something.

"There's nothing much about, is there?" Ariel
continued. "Anyway, we'll have to exchange numbers."

"Dave! Are you going to give us a hand, or what?" Ritchie
called out from the stage.

"Yeah, in a minute!" He leant forward and kissed
Ariel on the cheek. "I've got to go. But soon, right? I'll call you
at your dad's. Thanks for coming, both of you. Soon, okay?"

He dropped her hand, and watched as Ariel walked
away from him.

"Dave!" Ritchie again.  "Bloody hell, Shane's bad enough,
I've just had to drag him away from two little slappers. Don't you start!"

Dave jumped back onto the stage and started
unplugging stuff - and then he remembered Janice. He'd been going to suggest
that he went home with her, then he could tell Harley all about the gig, in the
morning. Perhaps she could phone a cab, while she was waiting for him.

But when he looked around for her she was nowhere
to be seen.

She'd done some things to earn a crust in her time,
but this had to be the worst.

Ariel Swan hated what she did, and she hated
herself for doing it.

Okay, it was a job, and they were hard to come by. It put money in her pocket, though it made her feel as if she was selling
herself cheap, prostituting her soul. At least prostitutes were honest about
what they did.

Every time she walked out into that hateful room,
felt all those eyes on her, she wanted to run and hide.  Shove back on the jeans
and sweatshirt she'd so reluctantly stripped off, and get the hell out of
there. She hated wearing that gaudy, tasteless costume; she wondered if people
looked at her and thought,
isn't she worth more than this
? She knew the
women (the few who actually deigned to look at her at all) felt superior to her;
with their jobs in offices, shops, banks, they were
better
than her, that
was what they thought.
They
would rather go without the money than
do this.

What she dreaded most was seeing a man she knew, there
in the crowd. Like all the others who tried to catch her eye, his attention
would be captured only by her immediate fulfillment of his needs - except that
he would think,
ah, so this is what became of Alison Swan, is it?

Enough.

This would be the last time she put herself through
this. When she tore off that outfit at the end of this evening, it would be for
the last time.

She looked at the man directly standing just a few
feet away from her. He was dark, handsome; had he met her elsewhere he might
have looked at her so, so differently.

She formed her lips into a bright, puppet-like
smile, as instructed by the greasy, leering oaf who'd given her the job.

The dark, handsome man just stood there, waiting
for her to respond to him in  the way she had learned, the way she had to force
herself to do.

She took a deep breath.

"Cheeseburger, sir? And would you like fries with
that?"

No, nuts to this.

She wasn't doing it anymore.

Her feet hurt, she was fed up with smelling of
chips, and it only paid a pittance, anyway. First, she served Dark Handsome, not
because he was so lush but because he had a sweet little boy with him - not
that his father should have been feeding him that crap in the first place -
then she locked her till, walked off into the Staff Only area, and hurled off
her bright emerald green jacket, trousers and baseball cap.

Oran, the eighteen year old assistant manager, hurried in
after her, then averted his eyes when he saw she'd stripped down to her
underwear. "You can't just walk off in the middle of a shift!" he said,
gesturing at her with his clipboard.

Ariel pulled on her jeans. "I just did," she said,
then finished dressing and walked out of the side door, giving Oran a pat on the cheek as she passed.

Freedom!

Now what?

It was only half past eight; she didn't feel like
going home just yet. Dad wouldn't be there, he'd be being pampered at Pam's. Home
cooking, all his laundry done, sex on a plate - and Pam wondered why he hadn't
asked her to marry him. Didn't need to, did he? Ariel sighed, and lit a
cigarette with difficulty, shielding her lighter with her hand; the wind
blowing across the flat fenlands was so much more brisk than in London. She didn't feel like going round to see Melodie to talk about hair, nail and
whatever else extensions. Didn't want to go for a drink, either; what was the point
of sitting on your own at a bar if you couldn't have a cigarette to go with it? Stupid bloody smoking ban. Bloody England. What did you do at eight-thirty on
a rainy Monday night in Fennington St Mary?

Burger City was on the outskirts of town; it was a long walk back
to her childhood home, but she didn't mind. She quite enjoyed getting wet. Perhaps, on the three mile journey, she would write another song, in her head. Something about being at a crossroads in her life, she thought, and laughed inwardly. Yeah, she was at one of those, all right! All those plans, and she'd ended up,
at the age of twenty-eight, with no job, back at home, living with her dad. No, she mustn't think of it as 'ended up'. Going home to live with her dad was
just a temporary lifestyle choice, while she took a breather and decided on her
next move. She must use the time wisely, write, have a good think, not get
despondent.

A car raced past, music blaring out, and showered
her with the spray from a puddle. Wanker! She looked across the road; there
was The Bandstand in the distance. Her thoughts flitted briefly towards Dave. Should she? So tempting. She'd seen the way he looked at her that Saturday,
after his gig; sort of wistfully
.
Yes, the thought of a little fling
with Dave was very appealing indeed. But only because she had nothing much
else in her life right now. She didn't want to run the risk of falling for him
and staying in this town
forever
, or, worse, not falling for him and hurting
him all over again. No, she wasn't big on using people.

Still tempting, though. Dave had this weird thing
going on. He was really nice, and a bit of a pushover, but he was still sexy. Usually, pushover men weren't sexy. Or maybe she was wrong, and he wasn't a
pushover anymore. That would be good to discover.

Mustn't start thinking about Dave. How he'd looked
the other night. Older (well, he would, wouldn't he?), bigger, more overtly
masculine. It made her feel all - well, restless. As horny as hell,
actually. Hmm.

Seeing him again had got to her a bit. Things had
been so good between them, once upon a time.

Dave Bentley and Alison Swan were together for two
years. They met when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two. Frantically in
love though they were, Alison always knew she had the upper hand - or presumed
she had. She'd thought Dave would go to the ends of the earth for her, but as
it turned out he wouldn't even go a few miles down the M1.

He wanted to be a rock star, she saw her future as
a singer-songwriter, and she knew the best way of both of them realising their
dream was to move to London. She assumed that Dave would go with her; he
assumed that she wouldn't go without him. They were both wrong. Dave refused
to go to London because he didn't want to leave his mum. His father had
abandoned her only a year before, to live with another woman. His older
brother had bailed out to live in Scotland in 1995, and Dave said he couldn't
desert her, as well. Alison understood; Yvonne Bentley had been like a mother
to her, and she didn't want to see her lose her entire family all in one go,
any more than Dave did.

She understood, but it was still an impossible
situation.

Alison loved Dave and Dave adored Alison; he
pleaded with her not to go, declared she would break his heart, but she had
to. She was fed up with doing gigs in the local pubs; yes, she was getting
some local recognition, but it wasn't getting her anywhere. She needed to be where
it was all happening, where she could discover for herself the prestigious
venues, with whom she needed to schmooze to get the right connections. A
regular spot at The Bandstand and sending out her tapes and CDs to record
companies was achieving precisely zilch. She was sure the tapes and CDs were
never even played.

They tried the long distance relationship thing for
a while, but it didn't work, as these things rarely do when the people involved
are so young; Alison put a stop to it before it took another few months to
peter out more painfully. So Dave stayed in Fennington and nursed his broken
heart, while Alison became Ariel, because she wanted people to remember her,
and the name 'Alison Swan' was instantly forgettable. She got the idea from 'The
Tempest', which she'd studied for GCSE at school; looking it up, she remembered
that Ariel was actually a fella, but that didn't matter; Ariel didn't do
'girly', anyway.

Home was a crumby flat in Stockwell with a nurse who'd
advertised for someone to share. Ariel did shop work in the day and bar work
in the evening, in pubs that specialised in live music, so she could get to
know the right people, she hoped. Then her friend Melodie decided to join her.
 They rented a flat together, in Camberwell, and started to have fun.

Melodie wanted to be a singer, too. She had the looks, she
said.

The pair went to gigs at The Forum, at Camden Underworld, Brixton Academy, the Jazz Cafe. They hung out at The Intrepid Fox, got
in with all the musos, and became part of the scene. They were popular; two
wildly attractive, fun girls, one blonde, one dark. When they weren't working
or partying, Ariel was writing songs, using her hard earned money to get flyers
printed to advertise her guest slots in the music pubs. Just Ariel and her guitar,
her treasured Tanglewood TMFE 9 that her dad had bought her for her eighteenth birthday.

That was what Ariel was doing. Meanwhile, Melodie
was using her non-musically orientated talents to get a married record producer
into her bed. Married he certainly was, but Ariel was less than convinced
about the 'record producer' bit. He claimed, in time honoured tradition, that
he "longed for him and Melodie to be together properly", "wished he could
introduce her to all his family and friends" and "no longer slept with his
wife". His wife got pregnant at about the same time that Melodie started seriously
pushing him to get her a recording contract, and he disappeared without trace.
Upset and humiliated, Melodie returned to the warm bosom of her family in
Fennington St Mary, leaving Ariel high and dry and with no-one to pay the other
half of the rent.

Luck was on her side, though; just a week later,
she met and fell utterly and completely in love with a bass guitarist called
Frankie. Frankie moved in with her within a fortnight and, blissfully happy
together, they decided to take time out to go and see the world. Once these
new plans were made, Ariel's career aims took a back seat. She stopped chasing
after gigs, just playing the odd one here and there. When she and Frankie were
not working their two jobs each, they stayed at home, cosy, in love, saving
every penny they could. After a year, with twenty thousand pounds saved up,
they were ready to go.

As she walked along in the rain, Ariel thought
about Frankie and the good times they'd had together. The happiest of her
life. It made her feel sad, and she wondered where he was, who he was with. If she would ever be that happy, ever again.

Her phone bleeped. A text. Melodie.

Wot time ya finish hun fancy a drink lol.

Ariel made a 'pffft' noise, and put the phone back
in her pocket. She didn't really feel like seeing her friend right now. Somewhere along the line Melodie had changed; or maybe she'd always been the
same, and it was she, Ariel, who'd changed, broadened her outlook.

She'd never been the sharpest tool in the box,
Melodie, but the illiterate nature of her text message annoyed Ariel more than
usual. The woman was twenty-seven; why did she have to text like a fourteen
year old?

Ariel had imagined Melodie's ambition to be a
singer would end with the affair with the alleged record producer, but
apparently this was not the case. Well, not quite.

Melodie didn't just want to be a singer, now; she wanted
to be
a celebrity.

She was unashamed about this. She didn't want to
go down the 'glamour' modelling route, though, and she didn't want to try to
marry (or have an illicit affair with) a footballer. Every pretty girl in the
country was aiming for that, she said (
really?
Ariel had thought). No,
Melodie Waters was determined to become a reality TV star. Reality TV stars were
the household names of the present and maybe the success stories of the future,
weren't they?