Dream On (8 page)

"I don't know, I haven't looked," Dave said. This
was the truth; it hadn't occurred to him.  Until now, the whole mysterious
world of online social networking had interested Dave not a jot. He felt in
his pocket for a cigarette.

"Outside," said Janice.

"Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot."  Dave opened the
kitchen door and stood just outside, lighting his cigarette.

"Dave," Janice said.

"What?"

"Since - well, since you've not been living here - "

"Since you chucked me out, yes," Dave said. It was
getting cold; a sharp autumnal breeze blew across his face.

"Yes, well, okay." She looked at him. "What I wanted to
know is - since we've not been together, properly, I mean, have you been out
with anyone else?"

"No," he said. Well, it was the truth, wasn't it? He hadn't been out with anyone. He'd slept with a few girls, yes, but he
hadn't taken any of them out.

"Oh. I just wondered." He could see the relief
spread across her face. "Because I couldn't complain if you had, could I? I mean, we're officially on a break, aren't we?"

"A break that you instigated," Dave said.
Come
on,
he thought. "But no, I haven't."

"You'd tell me, though, if you started seeing anyone,
wouldn't you?"

"Yeah. Course. But you and H are the most
important things in my life." He knew she didn't mean that about not being
able to complain. She'd go ape-shit.

Still, she'd said it, hadn't she? They were
officially on a break, so he could officially do what he wanted.

As long as he didn't think about being in bed with
her, when it felt, to both of them, as if he was back to stay.

But you couldn't chuck someone out then expect them
to remain faithful, could you?

Driving home, later on, he reasoned with himself
that maybe he should go and see Ariel, after all.

One of the things that made Dave so sexy was the
very fact that he
was
nice, Ariel decided. He felt guilty about Janice,
which he had every right not to do, considering the fact that she'd forced a
split he hadn't wanted. He cared about Janice, he loved his son - and seemed
to really care about
her,
too, not just want to have sex with her. He
listened when she talked, really took an interest in all the frustrations she'd
experienced over the years. He was a down to earth nice guy - without being a
wimp. Oh no, Dave Bentley was no wimp; well, hey, he was a Viking, wasn't he? She laughed to herself as she watched him moving around the room, lighting a
fag, pulling on his clothes; band practice beckoned.

"When do I get to see you again?" he said, gazing
at her as he pulled his white t-shirt down over his lean, hard torso. Decidedly
edible. He'd just made her come three times and she still wanted him. "We're
playing in The Romany on Saturday; will you be there?"

Ariel sat up in bed and pulled the duvet around her. It was cold in Dave's bedroom; she'd only just noticed, having been pretty hot
and sweaty for the past couple of hours. "I'm working the next two nights,"
she said, "but yeah, I'm free on Saturday, I'll come along."

"You going to bring Melodie? Shane keeps hassling
me about her because he hasn't scored there yet," Dave said, and laughed.

"I think she's cottoned on to that one!" said
Ariel. "Okay, okay, we'll be there!" She laughed, too. "Not that it'll do
Shane any good. Melodie's saving herself for bigger fish!"

"He's such a twat," Dave said, and sat down on the side of
the bed.

"The trouble with Shane," Ariel said, "is that he's such a
daft slapper that no woman's going to take him seriously. I mean, who the
hell wants to be just another notch on his bedpost?"

"Yeah, I know, it's time he grew up." He stroked
her face and they cuddled for a moment. "It's lovely being with you again,"
he said.

"Yes." She smiled. She felt confused when he
looked at her like that; it reminded her of how she'd broken his heart all
those years ago. She felt confused, full stop. She loved sleeping with him,
she was fond of him, she liked him, but she couldn't think about a full time
relationship. She wanted to concentrate on getting her music together, not her
love life; the last time she'd fallen in love she'd let everything slide, and
she was scared of doing that again. Besides, Dave was clearly still so
involved with Janice; of course he was. Did Janice want him back? If so,
Ariel didn't want to be the cause of her upset. There was a child to be
considered. Dave was evasive when she asked him about the current state of
play on Greyfriars Estate. Getting too involved with a man who was still so
committed elsewhere was asking for trouble.

She knew, though, that if she felt as much for him
as she suspected he did for her, she would put all these misgivings to one side.

At least she had a job, now; Shane had mentioned to
his Uncle Vic that she was looking around, and he'd snapped her up to work in
The Bandstand immediately, even though he didn't really need another member of
staff. Bar work was ideal; she was a morning person, and, thus, these were
left free for writing songs and practising her guitar. Dave had been telling
her all about Thor's MySpace page; perhaps she ought to do that, too. Her
father had a computer. Perhaps she ought to stop thinking gigs and the
traditional route, and start thinking YouTube, social media. The music business
was changing, and she didn't want to get left behind, just a girl and her
guitar sitting on a stool in a pub.

"I'll see you on Saturday then, shall I?" Dave
said, fiddling with the zip of his leather jacket. He seemed reluctant to go.

"Yes," she said; and then something occurred to
her. "Will Janice be there? Only I don't think - well, if she's there I
don't think we ought to look as if we're - well, as if we're - "

"We won't. Yeah, I think she might be there,
actually. I know what you mean." He smiled. "We'll just act like we're long
forgotten history and save it for when we get back here, shall we?"

She breathed out. "Okay." There. That proved it,
didn't it? If their relationship, such as it was, had to be kept a secret from
Janice, then it wasn't right, not really. Hmm.

"You can let yourself out, can't you?" He laughed,
a bit nervously, she thought. "Or you can stay here, if you like. I'll be
back by eleven."

"No, I've got to go home. I'm working on a song."

"Okay. I'll see you, then."

He left, eventually; Ariel snuggled back down under
the luxurious, warm duvet, and fell asleep.

Janice had entered a whole new world!

MySpace was
brilliant!

She'd signed up for the site with the idea of doing
no more than following the progress of Thor so that she could do as Dave
suggested, i.e., post comments on their page as if she was their biggest fan.

But no sooner had she set up her page, chosen a sunset
as her background picture, added her music ('Keep the Faith' by Bon Jovi),
'friended' Thor and written a bit about herself, than she began to get friend
requests! Other people who liked rock music, too; local people, who went to
see bands in the area, the friends and family members of the rest of Thor, like
Shane's sister Zoe. They'd seen her on Thor's page, and wanted to include her
in their cyberspace lives, too! She loved it; she could chat to them online,
too, on all those long evenings when Harley was asleep and she was fed up with
watching telly. It was like having a social life without leaving her living
room - and on the occasions she went to see Thor play, she could say hello to
all the people she'd met on her laptop! She almost
liked
Thor - it was giving
her a new life.

Their page looked terrific; Ritchie had made a
background of Vikings and darkened skies, and they'd posted some professional
looking photos of them looking very serious - like a real band!

This Thursday lunch time she'd logged on for a
quick browse around while she waited for her mother to pick her up for a visit
to her grandmother, and she'd noticed that Thor were collecting quite a lot of
girl fans in their friends list. Probably added by Shane. Alison Swan, or
whatever she bloody called herself these days, wasn't one of them. She'd only
been at one more of the gigs, too; the last one in The Romany, where she hadn't
talked to Dave much. He hadn't been doing his boggle eyed thing at her,
either; perhaps he didn't still hanker after her, then. Perhaps it was all in
the past for both of them, after all.

Linda's car pulled up outside and the horn sounded;
Janice logged out, switched off, grabbed her bag, and dashed out.

"When are you going to take me home?" Evelyn asked,
picking at a loose thread on the arm of her chair. "I've got to go home," she
said, "they'll be wondering where I am."

Janice glanced at her mother and rolled her eyes. "It's all right, Gran, we all know where you are. You're safe here."

"I don't want to be here.  Why do I have to be in this
place? I want to go home."

"Mum, you've got to stay here for now. It's
because of your Alzheimer's, we've told you," said Linda, reaching over and
stroking her mother's thin grey hair away from her forehead. It was too warm in
the room. Evelyn jerked away, irritably.

"Because of my what? There's nothing wrong with me. I don't like it here, with all these people. I want to go home."

Janice looked at her mother. Since Evelyn had been
in Fenland Lodge, Linda had looked so much happier, less careworn, but on bad
days, like today, her face showed all the signs of stress, just like before.

It was the guilt, of course.

During the last year, before they made the
difficult decision to give her up to permanent care, looking after Evelyn had
been like dealing, twenty four hours a day, with a truculent child who tried to
escape every time you took your eyes off her for five minutes, but still it
hadn't been easy.

Linda rested her head against her hand for a moment.

"Here," she said, looking up again. "You remember
we told you about Harley starting school?" She rummaged in her bag and brought
out a photo, showing Harley in the royal blue Greyfriars Elementary School
sweatshirt he wore so proudly. "Look! Here he is; I took it on his first
day. I thought you might like a copy of it to put on your dressing table."

Evelyn took the photo with shaking, age spotted
hands. "Who's that, then?" she said, peering at it. "Is it Ivan?"

Janice glanced at her mother again. Ivan was Evelyn's
brother; he'd been killed at Dunkirk in 1940, aged just twenty.

"No, Gran, it's Harley," she said. "My son. Your
great-grandson. You know, I've brought him to see you lots of times."

"Oh." Evelyn looked away; the picture fell out of
her hands and fluttered to the floor. "Are you taking me home?"

"No, Mum, you've got to stay here," Linda said,
reaching down to pick up the photo. "I've explained it all to you. I'm
not equipped to look after you anymore. I can't always be there to watch
you in case you fall over, and then there's the accidents in the night - "

"I can look after myself," said Evelyn, shifting in
her chair. "I've got to go home now. They'll be expecting me to cook
dinner."

"Gran, no." Janice put her hand on her
grandmother's; her skin felt thin and papery. "Shall I get us a cup of tea?"

"No, I haven't got time," said Evelyn. "I'm needed
at home." She looked around her. "When's Linda coming in to see me, anyway? She never comes to see me." She leant forward to speak to Janice. "I'll give
you her phone number. You phone her and tell her to come and get me. Linda will take me home, even if the rest of you won't."

"Gran, Linda's here. My mum. Look."

Evelyn looked over at her daughter and her face
broke into a smile. "Oh, hello, darling!" she said. "I didn't see you there. Have you come to take me home?"

On the way back to Fennington, Linda was quiet.

"You okay, Mum?" Janice asked.

Linda sighed. "Yes and no. Oh, you know."

Janice knew. It was that constant inner battle between
relief that she no longer had the day-to-day stress of being her mother's sole
carer and could, thus, live her own life again - she even had a new man in her
life - and the guilt, always the guilt.

"But you've done the right thing," Janice was always
saying to her. "She needs professional care, especially since the incontinence
started. You couldn't be expected to deal with that. She's in the
best place."

And Linda would agree, because of course Janice was
right. Janice worked hard at not allowing the guilt to taint Linda's new found
happiness, but she wasn't always successful.

Back at home, Harley ate a banana in front of CBeebies,
fresh from his after school bath, and Janice opened the laptop to log on to
MySpace again. Oh look, Thor had a new friend. Ariel Swan. Well, well, well.

It was a nice photo of her, black and white,
serious; she was looking out of a window. Not a silly, pouty one.  Oh, why did
she have to come back? Why couldn't she have taken her size ten jeans and
fluttery eyelashes and slightly aloof air elsewhere?

Janice wished she could do
aloof.
It was so
sexy, wasn't it?

She scanned down the page. Ariel wasn't giving
much away. Only a couple of photos, and they weren't professionally taken. They
were all black and white, not posed.
Damn,
Janice thought,
what must
it be like
to be as pretty as that
?

"Mummy, please can I have some milk?"

Janice smiled at her son, so sweet in his Spiderman pyjamas
- she felt a rush of love for him, reached out to give him a cuddle, and closed
the laptop.

Oh, bollocks to Ariel Swan, she thought. Who
cared?

Sometimes, just sometimes, what with the plight of
her mother and grandmother and her daily worry about how going to a school in
that not particularly salubrious area was going to affect Harley, all the stuff
about Dave, worrying about who he might or might not fancy, seemed not really
very important at all.