Page 32 of The Little Cottage by the Cornish Sea

A rockstar? Piers?

How had I never even heard of him? I liked to consider myself pretty knowledgable on celebrities; even if he’d been a child prodigy, he was still young, so it couldn’t have been that long ago. In any case, not long enough for people to forget. What the heck was going on?

After Nan had taken her leave, I made a beeline for Piers’s office.

He was on conference calls and, Justin told me, would be so for most of the night.

I wanted to tell him I knew, to hear it from his own mouth.

But when I went to bed, his conference call was still going.

So I gave up and brought my phone with me as I knew that there was no way I was going to sleep without putting my detective skills to the test to find out which famous rockstar had turned country squire.

I typed in his name, Starry Cove, Cornwall and all sorts of key words, like mystery famous rockstar , rockstars who have disappeared off the face of the earth , etc. , and thousands of websites popped up.

Most of them were dedicated to Blade, the faceless lead guitar and singer of the rock band Kyllyx Attica. His identity had always been concealed due to the fact that he always wore a mask and make-up to cover up his face.

How was this possible? Piers Henshaw, CEO of Whisper Farm and Lord of Rosestones, was also the lead singer of a famous rock band? It simply didn’t compute in my mind. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with a double identity. Fancy that!

I’d had a passing fascination with Blade when he came onto the scene; like most people, I was intrigued about the man behind the mask, and why he chose not to reveal himself.

That night, I stayed up and read everything I could find about him, watched every video, every interview and listened to every song.

And then, only looking very closely, did I recognise his hands.

He had large hands, with long, strong fingers.

But apart from that, nothing else gave him away.

I sat there, stunned, and continued to read.

People were crazy about him all over the world, and I’d been living in his home completely unaware.

His real name was Kevin Sharpe, the websites said.

Was it true, and Piers Henshaw was a pseudonym?

Or was it the other way around? I typed in Piers Henshaw and only documents pertaining to Whisper Farm appeared.

So Kevin Sharpe was a made-up name. How clever was that? He had a pseudonym for his pseudonym.

The die-hard fans had even resorted to identikits to try and posit what he looked like under the make-up, and the drawings were surreal.

Some even went so far as to say that he was disfigured like the phantom of the opera, and all sorts of drawings popped up in my search.

His face was unfathomable. No one knew his real eye colour, or the real shape of his mouth.

If he really had any eyebrows. And yet, beneath the get-ups, the garters or the heels or whatever he chose to wear on any given night, he was perfectly masculine.

If they only knew how beautiful he was in real life.

Though it was only two years since he’d left the stage, it seemed like a lifetime had passed. I could scarcely recognise Piers in the made-up face contorted by pure passion for song. He wasn’t afraid of showing his softer, feminine side.

In a tuxedo, he was to die for. Looking at the footage, you would think he had it all.

Tall and fit, anything looked good on him, even the trashy newspaper headings he wore as a loin cloth in the video of the song ‘Trash’, whose lyrics were in defiance of the press who seemed to be obsessed with him.

One day, they hated him, the next, they crawled back to him, begging for more reasons to hate him and write about it.

Whichever way you looked at it, he was their meal ticket, although he didn’t care about them one jot.

He was a completely different person in his onstage outfits.

Black leather pants, bare-chested, he was halfway between Tim Curry’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show and any one of the members of the band Kiss.

There was an almost insurmountable difference between his stage persona and the humble and grounded person I knew, who was capable of saying and doing things so profound.

You would have never thought he was the same person stripping on stage while licking the microphone.

He was every star rolled into one, and yet, he was like no other. He had done every look, from schoolboy to Clark Kent to warlock, and had invented a thousand more. He had even done a drag number where you recognised him only when he opened his mouth to sing.

How many times he must have performed each song over and over again.

It must have made him sick to the back of his teeth.

But like every showman, he did it, making it better and different every time.

Without flinching. Without tiring. On the outside.

Judging by his sudden exit from the industry, and the fact that he was clearly desperate to keep it hidden from me, it was a different story on the inside.

There were crazy, high-octane songs that only true fans were familiar with, where his voice reached the highest octaves humanly possible, according to the press, who tagged him with irreverent yet awed rag titles and comments.

The articles were endless. And as I studied the footage, I couldn’t help but agree with the press that his flamboyance went beyond confident and arrogant.

He was at one with the camera, but even more so with his fans, who adored him like a god.

They knew every song, every pause, every silence.

And all he had to do was raise an eyebrow or smile and the crowd would go ballistic.

I personally never subscribed to that kind of fangirlish behaviour, but I had to admit that he did have an undeniable, inescapable allure.

In one video I watched, just as one song ended, he swayed on the stage in a tiny, latex loincloth with rhinestones that even Tarzan would have been shy in, the footage suddenly skipped to a darkened stage where he sat on a stool, lit by a single spotlight, in yet another outrageous outfit, delicately plucking away at an acoustic guitar or the piano while singing a delicate ballad.

Nothing could have been more of a mixed message, an anachronism. Your eyes saw one thing, yet your ears heard something completely different, and it was a few moments before you could even put the two together.

He and his band mates seemed to have been very close, practically living in symbiosis, more than brothers on the road, happy and carefree with their music. And yet, today, he lived like a recluse. So where were the others, his friends for life?

As far as his rapport with his fans went, he adored them. He was a real crowd-pleaser and communicator, stopping concerts to check on the wellbeing of his fans and helping Security to drag someone in trouble onto the stage to be carried to the medical station.

He never refused anyone an autograph and was always very amiable. He gave generously to various charities and pre-recorded public announcements in favour of social improvement, against drinking and driving, the use of drugs, respect for the more fragile, the diverse, etc.

But his relationship with the press was the opposite.

And when his wife, drummer Jenna Rogers, alias Miss XS, was found floating face down in the pool of their LA mansion with a bullet in her head, the media went to town, blaming him for her drug- induced death.

I remembered the scandal. It went on for more than a year.

The trial, his (masked) face splashed onto every paper, TV show and website.

That poor girl! What a waste of a life! And poor, poor Piers!

The man I knew could have never murdered anyone, let alone his wife.

During the trial, fans had worried about his excessive weight loss while the media hounded him 24/7. You couldn’t change the channel or open a newspaper or navigate the internet without seeing his image plastered everywhere.

People spoke of nothing else for months and months on end and frankly, I personally had grown sick and tired of seeing that same made-up, angry face without ever seeing the person behind it.

During the trial in LA, cameras had not been allowed in the courtrooms. The fact that very few people actually knew what he looked like had almost dehumanised him.

Friends of his and Jenna’s had testified how he had tried to wean his wife off the drugs, but she was in with a bad crowd, and drugs were part and parcel when it came to the rockstar lifestyle. She’d been in rehab several times but nothing had ever stuck.

When the trial had finally come to an end with his acquittal due to lack of evidence, his subsequent disappearance from the scene had sparked suicide rumours.

To this day, people were still wondering whether he was still alive, or if he was wasting away in a trailer somewhere in the backwaters of Idaho.

That was pretty much the gist of his life. A life I had no idea belonged to Piers. If they only knew how resilient he was! He’d managed to pull himself out of that mess and start a new life away from the spotlight, surrounded by his people who genuinely adored him, not some projected persona.

Now everything fell into place: the huge Steinway, his aversion to bright, artificial lights, his stand-offish attitude toward any kind of attention, his desperation for privacy, the villagers’ stony silence wherever he was concerned.

Starry Cove protected him, and he protected Starry Cove in return.

There wasn’t a village problem he couldn’t solve, working closely with the parish to make sure his people were never left wanting.

This was the Piers I knew. Blade was just an act. A potboiler.

How could I have not known, not recognised him as my kindred spirit? We had both forgone a life that, in one way or another, had kicked us to the kerb. We had both divested ourselves from who we were, or thought we were. And now there was nowhere left to hide.

The next morning, I cautiously made my way down to the orangery where Piers was having breakfast and reading the paper.

He was probably very happy to not be in it anymore.

How everything made so much more sense now.

But I had to tell him I knew. It would be wrong to let him go on thinking that I had no idea.

‘Hey, good morning!’ he said with a smile while pulling out a chair for me. ‘Sorry about last night but the meeting went on forever! Are you hungry? Mrs Watts has made your favourite—’

‘I have to tell you something, Piers,’ I said as I sat down opposite him.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Mrs Nankivell came to see me yesterday.’

‘Yes, I know, we had a nice chat.’

I swallowed. ‘She… told me your secret. It just slipped out, I think. I hope it’s okay. I won’t tell anyone, of course. You can trust me.’

He looked at me, his eyes searching mine for any judgement or awe. When he found none, he smiled shyly. ‘Ah, the old dear’s been positively dying to tell someone. Well, I’m glad it was you, Kate.’

I smiled. ‘So am I. You never know what those gossips can do!’

We laughed and he caressed my cheek.

‘Seriously, I want you to know that your secret is safe with me. I know what it’s like to be accused of something you didn’t do, to have your home and your privacy invaded.’

He studied me in silence, then finally nodded. ‘Okay. I appreciate it.’

‘I know what it means to be under a spotlight now. It sucks.’

He laughed. ‘You got that right. But it never used to be that way. Not in the beginning, at least. But I guess I need to reinforce the concept of secrecy with old Nan!’

‘You know, I’m almost ashamed to admit it. Of all people, I know my celebrities. I should have known.’

‘Well, my fellow villagers did a great job in protecting me.’

‘So everyone in Starry Cove knows?’

‘Pretty much. I grew up here. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, my rock.’

‘Ah, that’s so nice. Is she… still with us?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘What are you talking about? Mrs Nankivell is my nana.’

I felt my jaw drop. ‘Mrs Nankivell is your grandmother? ’

‘I thought you knew.’

‘Knew? I knew absolutely nothing! Oh goodness, there go any investigative journalism ambitions I had!’

‘She was instrumental in my career,’ Piers said.

‘Every decision, every big tour, I’d always call her on the phone and she’d give me the courage to go ahead, because she believed I had a gift.

But with a proviso: that no gift is ever just that.

You will pay for it dearly for as long as you have it.

But even though I gave it up, I’m still here paying for it all.

Every single award, every single show, every single penny. ’

‘But you are still famous. People want you back; do you not read the papers? Stop checking the stock markets and get on Instagram.’

He laughed and pulled me in for a kiss. A nice, slow one, full of gratitude and trust. And, well, a little something else.

I teased him by pulling away slightly. ‘So does that make Robert your cousin?’

‘Yep. Although he and I don’t get along much. At all, really.’

‘But why?’

Piers sighed. ‘He never approved of my lifestyle. I think he resents that I wasn’t here for Nan like he was. Says she missed me a lot. Instead of leaving Cornwall to follow my dreams, he wanted me to stay here.’

‘Looks like he got his wish in the end.’

‘Yeah, looks like it. I mean, I’ve seen the whole world and now I just want to stay here. Everyone is like family to me, and they’ve guarded my privacy so far.’

‘Even still, I’m surprised the press hasn’t managed to track you down,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Luckily, when we started out, we didn’t use our real names. Yeah, we had stage names, but under that, we thought to protect ourselves with aliases. It’s only thanks to that that I have total privacy. People think my real name is Kevin Sharpe. Good luck with that!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘to have just stumbled upon your life like this.’

‘You were going to find out sooner or later. I’m just grateful that you’re in it now.’ He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight against his chest. ‘No more secrets; no more lies. Because I think I might just more than like you, Kate!’