Bad Boy Rock Star (13 page)

Now, you'd think I'd have been totally over the moon to see Dad again. He could fix this mess. He would look after things and say it was all going back to the way it had been. But, when I saw him, my stomach lurched. Instead of running to him, my feet stayed cemented to the ground. My old life had been perfect, so why didn't I want it back?

I watched as all the shouts and cries flooded the room with noise then I turned and went to find Angie.

"What's wrong?" she asked but I didn't want to go into it.

"Nothing. Let's get this shit organised so we can get everyone as they come out.
I'm wishing now that we'd invested in more stock. At least we won't have to lug those heavy boxes home, right. That's a good thing."

Angie gave me a quizzical smile but then she grinned, not willing to push it any further.

Then the band finished. It'd be fairly quiet until after the headline act Angie had said but people flooded out the doors before the next band even started.

"What do you mean you have no
t-shirts left?" a girl asked me. "Can I go on the mailing list so I can get one?"

I looked at her in confusion but Angie whipped out some paper and a pen.

"Put your details on there and we'll get you sorted."

Inside the
sound of the next band started but the energy had gone from the room. I almost felt sorry for them, playing to a few of their friends.

The line got longer and longer.
I swear half these people had already bought stuff before. Then to make it worse, Eric came out and decided to help us but that just meant more people flooded around us so he could sign things. In the midst of the chaos, a man waved me over.

"Are you two okay on your own?"
I didn’t want to run off and leave Eric and Angie to deal with these crazy fans alone.

"Yeah, we're fine.
And he looks like some bigwig. Better run." Angie gave me a shove.

I walked over to the guy
.

"You're the manager?" he asked.
"We'd be really interested in having a chat with you. I think you'll be interested too."

He handed me a business card with the name of his record company on it.
I didn't squeal out loud but I did just a little bit in my heart.

"Call me during the week," he said, "and we'll set something up.
I'm sure you'll want to celebrate tonight."

When I got back to the table, Eric and Angie both looked at me.
I showed them the card.

"This is awesome," said Angie.

"It's just a card. It might come to nothing."

"You are the best manager we've ever had," said Eric.
"We'd have never got anywhere with someone like that before. He'd have kicked us out the door."

"Well
, if you guys hadn't played your arses off tonight, he'd have never been interested."

"
And thank you, Angie. You really made it all happen. How did you get so many people here?"

Angie grinned.

Finally, the crowd died down. We had a box of money and pretty much no stock left. I began to understand why people loved business so much.

"Are you coming out for drinks with us?" Eric asked.

"Hells yeah," said Angie.

But I could see Dad and Frank waiting just outside the doors.
I couldn't put that off.

"It'd only be for a few days," Dad said.
"It's not like it's a big deal."

"You're kidding, right?
I can't believe you’re asking me that."

I hugged the cash box to my chest.
This was money I'd earned with my own sweat and brains. My precious money, well some of it was my precious money. Most of it, of course, had to go to the band. But I had a nice cut of it just for me.

Not only had he got me to agree to him staying with me for a few days, Dad now wanted to borrow the money we'd made on the merchandise sales.
When Dad realised I had a box full of cash, he'd come straight out and asked for it. He said he knew someone who could help him but he needed a few grand to tide him over. I could see his point – maybe he could use the money to get out of trouble – but I couldn't just give it to him like that.

Dad had settled down on a mattress on the floor.
He had a small bag with him and not much else. He hadn't told me what he'd been doing since he left. I sat on the edge of my bed, removing my makeup.

I wanted to curl up in a little ball in my bed and have a good cry but I couldn't even do that with Dad
there. I had to pretend to be happy to see him. This room, with its crappy furniture, worn and stained by lifetimes of random strangers using it, the draught coming up through the cracks in the floorboards, the stains on the walls – it'd been barely as much as I could deal with when I thought it was just for a few weeks but now, now I realised I'd be here much longer than that. There was no end in sight. I crumpled inside as though I'd fallen into a big, black hole, and the only way out was to scrape my way out inch by inch. There was no rescue team. I couldn't depend on Dad after all.

I'd always believed that Dad would return and, on that day, he'd have regained all his money and the house and the cars and my life.
He'd come charging in and take me back to that life, handing me a fist full of bills to go shopping. All this poverty would dissolve away like the grime on my skin in the shower. I would never have to have another night of listening to the weird sounds of that house or worrying that I'd get home and find my door kicked in and all my stuff gone. I'd not have to catch the train and have to walk past that guy holding up the sign asking for money, the one who sat curled up with his clothes all turned to a sludgy grey. I'd not have to dress up in stupid costumes and hand out promotions to stupid, greedy people.

Instead he was in a
worse position than me. Since he got back he couldn't even meet my eyes when he talked, and instead of bellowing in roars of laughter that shook his whole body, he'd become quiet.

I threw the used makeup wipes in the bin and turned out the main light.

I couldn't sleep though.
All these emotions boiled up in me. Out there, my life, my real life, carried on without me in it. Like a soap opera when you missed a few episodes. My friends at uni got together for coffee and went to parties. Tom probably had a new girlfriend because he sure as hell hadn't called me. There would be an empty desk in the exam room. It wasn't fair. I didn't deserve this life. My muscles quivered and my eyeholes prickled. It was okay for people who were born poor. They knew how to deal with it. I'd grown up not even knowing how to use a washing machine or cook two minute noodles. I had no life skills. Then people laughed at me for not knowing stuff. I tried to choke back a sob.

"Are you okay, princess?"

Hearing him call me princess just made me want to sob more.

"What do you need the money for anyway?"

"It's not that I don't want to tell you, you’re just better off not knowing."

That didn't reassure me.

"I can't, Dad. If it was my money, I would in a heartbeat, but it's not."

He turned away from me and faced the wall.
A lump rose up in my throat. I wasn't a princess anymore. I was a girl who had nothing.

I had to put the cashbox somewhere while I
slept. If I hid it, Dad would see where it was. A band squeezed tight around my chest. Did I really not trust my own father? He'd do anything for me. He always had. But the look in his eyes when he'd asked for the money scared me. It reminded me of the sludgy grey man outside the station. It wasn't that I didn't trust him; I just didn't want him to have that temptation around. I put the box in my bed. Just in case. If I slept with it in my arms then I'd know where it was.

Dad still had his back to me but he wasn't asleep. I could tell by his breathing. It felt strange, having him sleeping in my room, yet familiar in a way.
I'd almost drifted off to sleep when a flood of memories came rushing back. I didn't even know if they were real or just something I'd imagined.

"Dad, I want to know something?
Dad?

"Yeah?"

"When I was a kid, we went away somewhere, right?"

He turned slightly.

"Huh?"

"Somewhere in Asia, I think?
We stayed with a man and you slept on my floor like this."

He turned but didn't answer me for a long time.
Just when I’d given up trying to get an answer, he spoke.

"Yeah.
After your mother died. I couldn't cope with things and Harry got me to come and stay with him. What made you think of that now?"

So it was true.

But the dates didn't seem to match up. By my adding up, it didn't seem right. I'd been two years old when Mum died but, when we went away, I'd been in school.

"Where did we live before that? Where did we live with Mum?"

I tried to picture the house but all I had was a memory of a kitchen, a green and orange kitchen.
On the top of the cupboard, she had a big, brown jar that had cookies in it. Those cookies were mighty tasty. I'd look up at the jar, hoping she'd notice and hand me a cookie and the whole kitchen smelled like cinnamon. That house had been small with that nice, warm kitchen.

Then it turned cold without Mum
, and I was on my own a lot. One day, I climbed up on the bench and got down that jar. If Mum wasn't around to give me a cookie, I'd get one myself. It took me so long to get the lid off the jar. It was on tight or maybe I was just a weak little kid. Anyway, I finally got it off.

The cookie jar was empty.
That's when I realised Mum wasn't around. She was gone. She'd never come back.

Then one night, Dad woke me up.

"Pack your stuff, princess. We're going on an adventure."

But it had scared me and I cried.

"Hush, princess. You have to be strong, stronger than anyone."

He went out and left me to pack.
I put my teddy bear and my colouring-in books in the bag. Then I shoved in my pretty red shoes.

"Are you done, princess?" Dad asked when he came back to my room.

I nodded my head.

When I got outside, I shivered in the cold night air.
Dad scooped me into his arms.

"I need my coat."
Dad always remembered my coat.

"We don't have time, princess."

We sped through the dark to the airport but I
’d had no idea where were going or why. I still didn't.

"Who was the man we stayed with?" I asked Dad, trying to figure this all out.

"Harry? A friend. You don't need to worry about him."

"And the woman? Pet-lee?
His wife?"

"Her name wasn't Pet-lee.
And she wasn't his wife. You called her Pet-lee because you couldn't say her name properly. You shouldn't worry about these things now. Forget all about it. It was years ago."

She'd been so angry with Dad when she'd helped me unpack my case.

"She have no clothes? Only a teddy bear? No underwear?" the woman hissed at Dad. "Didn't you check her bag?"

Dad had
shaken his head and not met her eyes.

The next day, Pet-lee took me shopping.
Not to a nice store but a big, dusty market, with blurs of colour and sounds and smells I couldn't recognise. I clung to Pet-Lee's hand. She smiled and told me not to let go or I'd get lost in the crowd. Brown faces whizzed passed up on motorbikes and people yelled so loud. I’d had to wear the pyjamas I'd had on when I left home and I got so hot, they stuck to my legs. When a man yelled at us in strange words, I started crying, so Pet-Lee took me a stall and got me an iced drink. It tasted like sunshine and happy days. The ladies from the stall patted my hair and said I looked so pretty that I forgot to cry.

Then we found the blue dress with white ruffles and bows and big, puffy sleeves. I wanted it because it looked like the princess dresses in my books even though it felt scratchy.
Pet-Lee bought it for me and I put it on straight away. The women put bows in my hair and I wanted to dance and twirl so that everybody knew I was a princess.

That's mainly what I remembered from that time.
Dad was away a lot and I spent most of my time in the kitchen with Pet-Lee. He'd slept on a mattress on the floor in my room and he'd come in late at night and fall straight into bed and start snoring.

One night, Dad had come home and said we were leaving.
Pet-Lee hugged me and cried. I cried too. When we came home, we moved into the big house in a different town. I started living a different life. I never even remembered until now that I'd left the blue dress behind.

It did seem odd when I thought about it.
I'd never questioned how Dad had got his money or what happened in his business. After that, he'd been rich, it seemed. I had a maid to look after me, and everything I wanted.

Even when he'd disappeared, I'd believed he was innocent and it was all a misunderstanding.
One day, he'd come back and explain it all. Now he was back and there were no explanations, just him wanting to borrow money. I wondered what had happened before. If that's when this all started.

I woke up the next day to someone banging on my door.
I put the pillow over my head. They'd go away. The banging continued. Surely they'd go away. They had the wrong room or they were someone I didn't want to see. Why wouldn't they stop?

Dad stirred in his sleep.
Whoever was at the door kept banging and, if I didn't answer, they'd wake up the whole house.

I opened the door to see Jack Colt on my doorstep.
Why was he there? When I'd left, he was off to some bar with the band. Surely he should be in bed, nursing a hangover with some slutty blonde next to him. Maybe the singer from that band. What the hell was he doing at my door, looking so bright-eyed?

He grinned at me
, which threw me for a moment. The intense gaze of his brown eyes softened as the smile crinkled the corners.

"What's up?" I asked, rubbing my eyes and trying to focus.
I didn't wake up easily. I probably looked a mess in my pink rabbit pyjamas and my bed hair.

"I thought I'd come and check on you.
You took off so fast last night I didn't get to see you after the show. I wanted to thank you and see if you were okay."

I stared at him for a moment.
This wasn't right. Had he been taken over by aliens? He seemed so nice and concerned. It took me a moment to register what he'd said. He was worried about me?

"I'm fine.
I just had things to do."

The polite thing to do, I guess, would have been to invite him
in but that's kind of hard when you live in one room. One room that had gotten very messy, not to mention having a big lump of Dad in the middle of it.

He leaned on the doorframe.
"Well, if you want, I'll take you out to breakfast."

"Cool, I'll just chuck some clothes on.
You wait out in the hallway."

I pushed the door closed.

I rummaged around the clothes pile, looking for a dress to throw on. Something that made me look incredibly hot yet as if I'd made no effort whatsoever. Should I put makeup on? Would that look like I was trying too hard? I didn't want to look as if I actually cared but I didn't want to look like a scuzzy mess either.

I found a cute dress that I knew hugged my curves and slipped it on.

"Who's at the door, honey?" Dad rolled over in his sleep, shielding his eyes.

"Just a friend," I said.

I heard angry footsteps in the hallway and ran out just in time to see the front door slam.

I ran out after him.

"Jack?" I called as he stormed off down the street.

W
hat was up with him? Too bloody moody for my liking. Why was he asking me to breakfast then taking off like he was in a big huff?

Then it dawned on me.
He'd heard Dad's voice. Since he didn't know I had Dad staying with me, it must've looked like I'd picked up some random guy and bought him home. Surely he wouldn't think that? I'm not the type of girl who'd pick up some guy. And I'm definitely not that kind who'd go out to breakfast with one man while I still had another in my bed.

I ran after him in my bare feet but he'd gone so fast and the roughness of the concrete footpath cut into my feet.
I wanted to explain to him. I wanted to see that happy, crinkly smile again that I'd seen a minute ago.