Page 11

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Nicole had briefly considered moving back home, the guilt of not being by her mother’s side 24/7 laying heavy on her shoulders. But the row with Cassie and their dad last week only served as a reminder that the four of them all being under one roof again might not lend itself to the calm and harmonious environment her mother needs right now.

Nicole had tried to mediate, but Cassie is so deeply entrenched in the fantasy life that following that stupid band has seemingly afforded her that she can’t see the wood for the trees. And their dad is so stubbornly stuck in his ways that he refuses to give her the leeway a sixteen-year-old needs to learn from the mistakes she makes. It seemed as if history was repeating itself and if something didn’t change soon, Nicole wouldn’t be surprised if his overbearing ways didn’t drive Cassie away, just as they had done with her. Though the all-consuming threat of something happening to their mother in the meantime may cause a break with convention.

It’s at times like this, when Nicole’s conflicting emotions threaten to get the better of her, that she turns to the one thing that keeps her sane: music.

These lyrics have been in her head for years, gnawing at her subconscious like a dog with a bone, never quite letting go. But now they hold so much more resonance and she has to give them the space to breathe, if not to comfort herself, then to honor her mum.

She strums her guitar, easing into the four-chord melody. “ If you ever loved someone as much as I love you, you’d know there is nothing I wouldn’t do…” Her lilting voice drifts out of the open window of her studio flat.

She takes the pencil from behind her ear. “ I’d go to the ends of the earth if I had to …” she chimes, writing it down as she goes. “ If it meant …” She chews on the end of the pencil. “ If it meant …”

“Nope,” she says abruptly, before ripping the page out of her notebook, scrunching it into a ball and throwing it onto the pile of other discarded lyrics in the corner of the room.

There’s a knock on the door and, knowing she hasn’t buzzed anyone into the communal hallway downstairs, Nicole assumes it’s a neighbor from one of the other tiny flats that the landlord had greedily carved out of the imposing Victorian building.

But as she swings the door open, standing on the threshold is Aaron, the man she’d once naively allowed herself to believe she might marry one day.

“Please, just give me a minute,” he begs, as she goes to shut him out.

“What are you doing here?” exclaims Nicole, exhausted by his attempts to get her attention. “It’s almost midnight.”

“I need to talk to you,” he says, his breath reeking of alcohol.

Nicole lets out a heavy sigh. “I’ve told you a million times, there’s nothing you can say that’s going to make any difference.”

“But I can’t imagine my life with anyone but you,” he says.

“Well, you should have thought of that before you screwed Stacey Herriott.”

“I’ve told you how sorry I am—I was drunk and it meant nothing. What more do I have to do?”

Nicole’s heart momentarily tugs at the pained expression that stains his normally handsome face. It would be so easy to take him back; she misses the love they once shared and is still devastated that the life they’d planned was never going to happen. But she digs deep, remembering her mother’s advice to hold on to the bitter disappointment she felt four months ago when he chose to toss their future aside in favor of a quick shag with a girl not known to be choosy.

“You’ll never respect him again,” Gigi had said. “And if you take him back, you’ll not respect yourself either.”

Back then, Nicole had refused to consider his pathetic attempts to win her over because she didn’t want to let herself down. Now she won’t fall for it because she refuses to let her mother down, and as she looks into Aaron’s pleading eyes, Nicole feels nothing but a reinforced resilience.

“For the last time: I will never come back to you,” she says. “Now will you please leave me alone and get on with your life.”

A flash of something crosses his face and his top lip curls. “Is there someone else?” he snarls.

The turn of events takes Nicole by surprise. “ What? No, of course not!”

“If I find out there is…”

Aaron had always been somewhat intense, but she could never accuse him of being jealous, so his twisted features unnerve her.

“You’ll what?” she asks.

He fixes her with a steely stare. “If I can’t have you, nobody can.”

Nicole doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A veiled threat, coming from a man she once adored, seems too preposterous to take seriously, but an irrational fear still creeps into her veins. Slamming the door shut, she catches her breath as she waits to hear movement on the other side.

The phone punctures the uncomfortable silence and Nicole almost doesn’t want to answer it, knowing Aaron might still be there. Not because she’s got anything to hide, but because she doesn’t want him to get the wrong idea from a one-sided conversation, especially if he’s going to use it against her.

“Nicole, it’s me,” says her dad, sounding panicked when she picks up.

Her stomach drops. “Is… is everything OK?” she asks, wanting to shut herself off to the answer.

“It’s Cassie…” There’s a pause. “She’s not home yet.”

Nicole raises her eyes to the ceiling, both in abject relief and pent-up frustration. Did he not realize that she was living on tenterhooks? Waiting, with her heart in her mouth, for the phone call that was going to change the rest of her life?

“Well, where did she go tonight?” she asks.

“She went off to that bloody concert, didn’t she?” His voice is laced with hostility. “And if I find out this has got anything to do with those boys…”

Nicole considers the possibility but dismisses it out of hand. The closest Cassie would have been able to get was the stage door, and a band with Secret Oktober’s following were likely to have got themselves out of there before the first fan even realized they’d left the stage.

“Who did she go with?” she asks, remembering that their mother had originally planned to accompany her. It pained Nicole, and worried her, that Cassie would surely have felt her absence even more profoundly than usual today.

Sometimes, she thinks both she and her dad take Cassie’s strength of character too much for granted; they assume that what’s going on at home isn’t affecting her in the cruelest of ways. Because while she may come across as a sassy teenager who’s got it all worked out, Nicole’s sure that you’d only have to scratch the surface to see that she’s perhaps not coping quite as well as it seems.

“She was going with some girl,” says John, his anxiety rising with every passing word. “God knows who she is, or whether she even exists. Because, let’s face it, Cassie’s not exactly known for being upfront about where she is or what she’s doing these days.”

“Maybe we should cut her some slack,” says Nicole. “Let her go do her thing, whatever that is.”

John snorts. “Perhaps, when you’re a parent, I’ll remind you of the gut-wrenching nausea that comes when your children don’t come home when they say they will. Because whether they’re two or twenty-two, they’re still your child, and that feeling never goes away.”

Nicole rolls her eyes, accustomed to the well-used routine, but deep down, she knows that his frustrations are borne out of being a father to children he can no longer protect, and now a husband to an ailing wife he can’t make better. And whichever way she looks at this, it doesn’t sit right knowing that her little sister could be anywhere in London, feeling vulnerable and heavyhearted.

“She could be anywhere ,” John goes on, echoing her thoughts. “I shouldn’t be having to worry about her, as well as everything else that’s going on.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” says Nicole. “Probably just coming down from the high of the concert. How is Mum tonight?”

He sighs heavily. “Surprisingly good. I’ve been showing her photos of when we met and we’ve been laughing about the time we drove all the way to Cleveland in our old camper van, only to get to the venue and realize that we’d left my guitar in London.”

Nicole can almost hear him smiling at the memory. Or is it because he’s unexpectedly been able to have a conversation with his wife?

“Well, I say ‘we,’ but your mum was quick to remind me tonight that it was most definitely my fault.” He chortles. “She was really quite determined to make the point; her eyes were shining and she had something about her that I haven’t seen in weeks.” There’s a pause before he goes on to say, “Maybe a miracle awaits after all.”

Nicole’s chest constricts at his misplaced optimism, knowing enough from what she’s read on death to know that a mysterious flash of vitality often occurs in the final days and hours.

“Maybe” is all she says, desperately trying to keep her voice upbeat. “I’ll be over tomorrow, but if Cassie’s not home in the next half an hour, call me back.”