See You at the Show (47 page)

“No.
 
It’s not wrong, Luke.”

Luke stared at the ground, his hands still shoved deep in his pockets.
 
“It’s going to feel weird though.”

Connor stood up, going over to his son, gently touching his shoulder.
 
“Of course it is, but she’s not that scary you know.
 
She might look it, but she isn’t.”

Luke looked up and smiled.
 
“Can I have a tattoo, dad?
 
Stevie’s got some amazing tattoos!”

“Yeah, I know she has.”
 
And Connor knew the reason why she’d had a lot of them done now.
 
The ones on her arms especially.
 

“So?
 
Can I get some done?
 
Please?
 
While we’re here in
L.A.
?
 
It would be so cool to have them done here.”

Connor smiled.
 
Now
he was acting like a typical seventeen year old.
 
“We’ll see, ok?
 
And that’s all you’re getting, for now.
 
Come on, grab your jacket and let’s get going.
 
We don’t want to be late.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re the best.
 
I want you to know that.
 
The best dad in the world.”

***

“I think I might owe you an apology,” Dave Deacon said, sitting down next to Stevie at the back of the arena as the set-up for that night’s gig carried on around them.

She looked at him.
 
She’d been back with the band for a couple of months now and this was the first time he’d really spoken to her in all that time, but she knew him now.
 
It was just the way he was and anyway, some people just didn’t know what to say to her after everything that had happened.
 
He was probably one of those people.
 

“No apologies, Dave.
 
It’s a new start, ok?”

He looked over towards the stage, where Mark and Jack were laughing over something.

“I should have just banged your heads together ages ago and made you both see sense, made you both see that you should be together.
 
I shouldn’t have tried to keep you apart, that was wrong.”

“It wasn’t just you, Dave.
 
I fell in love with Daniel, that was the problem.
 
So many things drove me and Mark apart…you didn’t help, but you weren’t entirely to blame.”

Dave smiled as he looked at her.
 
She seemed a little different since all the drama had kicked off.
 
A little softer.
 
It was a side of her he hadn’t seen before.

“He was a mess without you y’know.”

“We’re together now.”
 
She looked down at her hands then back up at Dave.
 
“I’ll keep him on the straight and narrow.”

He smiled again.
 
“Yeah, well, you can let him veer off-track now and again you know.
 
We’ve still got an image to keep up.”

She laughed, leaning over to kiss his cheek.
 
“I knew there was a human being in there somewhere.”

“Yeah, I let him out occasionally.
 
Look, I know your son’s coming over soon so…give him an access-all-areas pass and I’ll show him around the place, ok?”

She smiled.
 
“Thanks, Dave.”

“Hey, not a problem.”

“Stevie?”

A voice from behind made her turn around to see Connor standing there.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Dave said, getting up and leaving them alone.

“Where’s Luke?” Stevie asked, as Connor sat down next to her, clasping his hands together, and that knot of nerves she felt in her stomach so often these days rapidly returned because Connor’s arrival meant that the prospect of finally seeing her grown-up son was closer than ever now.

“He’s with…Johnny, I think it is.
 
Is that right?”

She nodded.
 
“Yeah.
 
Johnny.
 
He’s my best friend.”

“Yeah, he said.
 
That made Luke even more star struck than he already was.”

Stevie smiled.
 
To her he was just Johnny but to a seventeen year old fan he was obviously far more than that.

“Is he ok?
 
Luke, I mean…is he…”

“I’m fine.”

She swung round again to see a tall and incredibly handsome young man standing there in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and jeans, with short, dark hair and piercing blue eyes that were almost a mirror image of her own.
 

“Luke…”

He smiled, an action that made his face instantly light up and she breathed an inner sigh of relief, letting herself smile a small smile back as he came over, sitting down on the other side of her.

“Do you want me to stay?” Connor asked his son, but Luke shook his head.

“I’ll be fine, dad.”

He had an accent that was unmistakably heavy
Manchester
-
 
very Liam/Noel Gallagher - with the tiniest hint of his dad’s Southern Irish lilt.
 

“Ok, I’ll…I’ll go grab a coffee then.”
 
He looked at Stevie, mouthed
“Alright?”
and she nodded, watching as he walked away, leaving her alone with the boy she hadn’t seen in over fifteen years – the boy that had now grown into a man.
 
And she’d missed every second of that journey – her own doing, but that didn’t make things any easier to handle.

Luke looked at the woman sitting beside him as she turned to face him again.
 
She was something else in person.
 
She was stunning, there was no other word for her, and she was his mum.
 
It was crazy!
 
His mum was this beautiful woman with hundreds of tattoos who hung out with rock stars and that was so cool!
 
But what would both their lives have been like if she’d stayed with him and his dad?
 
He couldn’t help wondering, and who could blame him?

Stevie stopped fiddling with her cuff watch and looked back up at Luke.
 
“I know…I know they’re empty words and said far too often – God knows I’ve been saying them so much lately but…I
am
sorry, Luke.
 
Really.
 
I’m so sorry.
 
For everything.”

He looked at her, into those blue eyes that were so like his own.
 
He could see himself in her, he really could, and that made him feel safe for some reason.

“Why did you try and kill yourself?
 
Was it because of me?”

She felt her stomach dip as he said those words, her breath catching in her throat.
 
They were questions he should never have had to ask her and it brought the enormity and seriousness of what it was that could have happened that day right home to her.
 
“Oh, Jesus, Luke, no!
 
Of course not.
 
No!”

“Was it because of what happened with you and the Prime Minister?”

She looked down at the mention of Daniel.
 
Thinking about him and the way it had all ended still hurt her more than she cared to admit.

“It didn’t help, let’s put it that way.”
 
She looked back up at him.
 
He shouldn’t have to be thinking about this, he shouldn’t have to be going through it, and all she could do now was try and explain as best she could, try and help him get his head around everything.
 
Even though she was still trying to get her head around it all herself.
 
“I was confused, and I was selfish, Luke.
 
I wasn’t thinking about anyone else, just like I wasn’t thinking about you and your dad when I left you both all those years ago…I was wrong and it was stupid, taking that overdose.
 
I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have even thought about it but at the time…it was no excuse, but I just wasn’t thinking straight.”
 
She smiled at him, a small smile to mask the nerves she was still feeling.
 
“But something came out of it Luke.
 
Something good
did
come out of that whole crazy situation because it was a wake up call of the highest order, believe me.
  
It opened my eyes and made me realise what’s important in life, it made me realise that there are things you can’t run away from, things you have to face up to and deal with.
 
Sometimes things happen that just shake you back to reality and change the way everything looks…am I making sense?”

He nodded, unable to take his eyes off this woman who’d turned up back in his life after fifteen years, because he really had no memory of her as his mum.
 
His dad had never shown him any pictures of her, there’d never been any in the house that he could remember.
 
It was almost like he’d tried to block her out of his memory.
 
So as far as Luke was concerned he was meeting her for the first time, and he liked this vulnerable, beautiful woman in front of him.
 
He’d been through a lot, true, but so had she.
 
Maybe now it was time to team up and go through the rest of it together.
 
What was the point in trawling through the past yet again?
 
He was tired of doing that.
 
He’d been through it with his dad more times than he cared to remember, he’d done all the thinking he needed to do.
 
Oh, he wasn’t saying he had everything totally worked out in his head just yet but he wanted to get there.
 
Eventually.
 
And he wanted to get there with the help of Stevie.
 
He just hoped she wanted that too.

“I want to make it up to you, Luke.
 
Oh, I know everyone says that in these situations but I mean it.
 
I really mean it.
 
I want to get to know you…if you’ll let me.”

He looked down at his clasped hands, kicking his heels against the wall.
 
“Yeah.
 
I was kind of thinking the same thing.”

He looked up and smiled at her and she felt her shoulders almost sag with a fresh wave of relief.
 
He was the most incredible kid.
 
Connor had done a fantastic job of bringing him up and Stevie felt tears pricking the back of her eyes at everything in his life that she’d missed.
 
But then, would he have been the same well-mannered, level-headed young man if she’d been the mum she should have been to him?
 

“I never missed you, Stevie, because I didn’t know you existed, but now…now I think I
would
miss you, if you went away again.”

“Connor must be very proud of you,” she smiled, still feeling as if she was in the middle of some surreal dream.
 
She’d always kidded herself she’d never wanted to be a mum because thinking that way eased the guilt slightly, but she was beginning to realise now how much she needed to do this.
 
She couldn’t turn the clock back, but she could try and make up for the years she’d missed.
 
Somehow.

Luke shrugged.
 
“Dad’s just dad, y’know.”

She smiled again.
 
“I thought it would be harder than this, for some reason.
 
But you’ve made it all so much easier, Luke.
 
Thank you.”

He smiled back, his whole face lighting up again.
 
“You learn to live with what life throws at you, that’s what dad always says.
 
Besides, my mates think it’s so cool that you’re my mum.
 
And you’re going out with Mark Cassidy; do you know how many points that scores me with the girls?”

Stevie laughed out loud.
 
For fifteen years she’d missed out on this boy’s life yet here beside her sat her son.
 
And he was everything she’d ever dreamed he could be.
 

“Can I meet him?” Luke asked.

“Mark?
 
Have you not seen him yet?”

Luke shook his head, sliding down from the bench they’d been sitting on.
 
“No.
 
Johnny’s really cool too, of course.
 
He’s really nice, but…”

“You want to meet Mark,” Stevie smiled, standing up and running her fingers through her hair.
 
Luke nodded.

“Ok then.
 
Let’s go find him.
 
And here, put this on.”
 
She threw him a V.I.P. access-all-areas pass and he looked at it.
 

“Wow!
 
Does this mean I get to hang out backstage and everything?”

“That’s exactly what it means.”
 

He looked at her, smiling that smile again.
 
“Stevie?
 
I’m really glad you came back.
 
Even if it wasn’t your choice.”