Chrissie stared at Alex, momentarily speechless, as embarrassment replaced indignation. ‘Shit, I’m sorry, I just thought … you know …’
Alex pushed her hand through her hair and took a good, hard look at the other woman. She had Johnny’s unruly brown hair, although tamed somewhat, and her eyes were a darker shade of blue. She shot Alex a smile and the resemblance was undeniable. ‘I really am sorry,’ she was saying, ‘I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. But,’ she glanced at her father, ‘he doesn’t have the best track record, you know?’
Alex grinned. ‘I know, I met Sonia,’ she said in a stage whisper. ‘Well, I saw her leave, anyway.’ They both glanced at Johnny.
‘Okay, you two, you can do the character assassination routine when I’m not here.’ He grinned at Chrissie. ‘Play nice.’
She grinned back. ‘I’m on my best from here on in. It’s only the bimbos I go for, you know that.’
Alex felt excluded from their easy camaraderie. Whatever had happened while Christabel was growing up, father and daughter clearly had a strong, close relationship now.
Johnny turned to Alex. ‘Chrissie turned up this morning, she was stood on the doorstep with the milk.’
‘I’m a penniless student, so I thought I’d spend some of my holiday with my dear old dad. Eat his food, drink his booze, cadge some dosh. Oh, and run around after him in his dotage, make sure he doesn’t leave the gas on and blow the house up, you know the sort of thing.’
Johnny’s face was a picture; Alex laughed out loud. ‘I’m not that bad,’ he was protesting. ‘So I left music playing all night the last time you were here. For that, you typecast me as a senile old duffer?’
Chrissie stood up, still laughing. ‘I’ll clear these dishes, then I’m off into the village to see Gerry and Elaine. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Are you around for long?’ asked Alex.
‘Until Friday, then I’m off again. I’m spending the weekend with Mum and Becky.’ Rebecca was Johnny and Nicci’s youngest daughter.
‘Can we talk while you’re here? For the book, to help get some background.’
Chrissie looked at her father. ‘Dish the dirt on Johnny, you mean? Love to. I can fit in with you, just let me know when you want to do it.’
***
‘I’m sorry about the mix-up back there,’ Johnny began, when he and Alex were seated in the living room.
‘Forget it,’ Alex said, ‘I have. I like Christabel.’
‘Yeah, she’s a great kid. Not that she’s a kid anymore. None of it’s down to me, anyway, I hardly saw her for a big chunk of her childhood. After Nicci and I split up, I had to fight to see my girls regularly. Becky and I aren’t as close, but she’s younger, she had no solid memory of me before her mum took them away. I was just this bloke who started turning up to see her when she was four or five. I’m still reaching out to her; and Chrissie helps, puts in a good word for me, you know?’
Alex nodded. ‘I’m glad I met her. It’ll be great to talk to her and get a different angle on things.’
‘I’ve got the guys coming a week on Thursday with their wives. Paul and Siobhan have been married for ages; you’ll like her, and she loves to talk. Marilyn, Colin’s wife, has only been around for about six years or so. She wasn’t there for Heartbreaker. Dan can’t make it, which is a shame, but Chrissie’s coming and Killer’s planning to be here, as well.’
‘Killer?’
Johnny grinned. ‘Mark Killian. “Killer” because he’s shot more bands than anyone else in the business. He’s on tour with Drunk Monkey at the moment, but he reckons he should get back in time to join in the fun. He’s been with us since the early days, we all started out together. He shot us for the mags, came on tour, and we hired him to do the photography for the albums. He’s a great guy and he always comes up with the goods.’
Alex nodded. She knew Mark Killian’s work. He had captured the definitive image of Johnny in the band’s heyday, comparable with shots of Pete Townshend’s windmilling arm, Jimi Hendrix’s guitar face, and Slash posing like a porn star with or without his guitar. Mark Killian got a superb shot of a man doing what he loved, what he excelled at, every inch the iconic rock god. ‘They’re all staying over,’ Johnny was saying. ‘You should stay, too.’
Alex nodded. ‘Okay, then, I will. Thanks.’ She paused. ‘Tell me a little about Paul Scott and Colin Carson.’
‘They’re good guys. Paul is unusual for a drummer in that he isn’t mental. He’s daft as a brush, but basically stable. I reckon that’s down to Siobhan. She’s a great woman, a bit like him in that she’s daft but not crazed.’ Johnny laughed. ‘Of course, it goes without saying that he can drink his own volume in Guinness.
‘When we were touring in the early days, if Dan had any trouble getting anyone to pay up, he’d shout for Paul. He’s a six-footer and being a drummer, pretty well muscled. He also has this way of looking incredibly menacing. We normally got our cash.
‘Colin is a wind-up merchant. Or he was, anyway, he’s not so bad now. When the band was together, he loved to get a rise out of people and he started most of the fights. Heart of gold, though, and a hell of a good musician.
‘The two of them were Heartbreaker’s backbone. We’d take up positions on stage, Andy in the centre, Tom to his right and me to the left, and, and Colin and Paul would just kind of lurk at the back and make it all happen. It was all very well us three showing off, but without them we’d have just looked like silly arses.’
Johnny smiled into the middle distance, lost in his own thoughts. Then he said, ‘I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed them until we got back together to promote the album. We always kept in touch and we got together a few times a year, but I’ve seen so much more of them lately. It’s been great. Working together again has been a blast.’
Chapter 19
On Thursday, Alex and Christabel got together for their chat. Johnny was busy in his studio, sorting out some stuff he wanted ready for the weekend, which he planned to spend with Colin Carson. Christabel set the table for lunch, putting out just two place settings. ‘Johnny won’t come out until he’s finished,’ she said, in answer to Alex’s enquiring look. ‘Normal hours don’t exist when he’s busy with his music. He often used to work all night and sleep all day when he was in the band, he reckoned it felt more normal.’
‘How come you always call him “Johnny”?’ asked Alex, helping herself to salad from the bowl on the table.
‘I just copied everyone else. Then, of course, Mum married again when I was eight, and she wanted me to call her new husband “Dad”. I didn’t like it, but Johnny didn’t mind.’ She glanced at Alex. ‘I asked him, just to be sure, and it made life with Mum easier. I’m on my third “Dad” now, but I still have Johnny. He means the world to me.’
‘What do you remember about the time you lived with him?’ asked Alex, drizzling dressing on her salad.
‘Well, I was just five when Mum took Becky and me away from here, but I remember a bit. Johnny seemed to be always either touring or in the studio. He worked really hard.’ She paused, remembering her childhood. ‘He was a great dad. He always made time to be with me. We’d do stuff I wanted to do, he’d read me stories almost every night when he was home, he was just so patient. He taught me to swim, because he was worried in case I fell into the river and drowned. We’d get up early sometimes and swim before anyone else was about, then he’d make pancakes for breakfast. God, I loved those times with him, when I had him all to myself. He was the same with Becky, too, but she can’t remember.
‘There was one time,’ she continued, ‘I think it was my fourth birthday, he built a castle in the garden.’ Alex looked surprised. Christabel laughed. ‘Just a kid-sized one, but it was great. I had a thing about being a princess at the time and he threw me a fairy tale birthday party. Johnny, Uncle Ian, and some guys from the village built a wooden frame and then it was all dressed up like a castle. You should ask Gerry about it, he helped. In fact, I think Killer’s got some photographs, he was in on it, too. It was out the back there,’ she gestured in the direction of the rear lawn. ‘I knew something was up because I wasn’t allowed out there for about a week. I wasn’t even allowed to look out of the windows on that side of the house. It felt like an eternity.
‘Finally, my birthday arrived and we had a big party. Everything was arranged, my friends were here, all dressed up. I had a dress with ribbons criss-crossed here,’ she put her fork down and indicated her midriff, ‘and long, floaty sleeves. It was fantastic. We had such a good time. Mum and Johnny had a party, too, for the grown-ups. Johnny loved to entertain. He got a buzz out of having the house full of people, making sure they all enjoyed themselves. He changed so much when Tom and Andy died.’
‘What do you remember about that?’
‘Not much, to be honest. I do remember Tom and Andy, particularly Tom. He spent quite a lot of time here, much more than the others.’ Christabel pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘I knew something bad had happened. People kept shushing each other when I was around, they didn’t want me to know anything. I remember Johnny and Mum fighting, and that was odd. They never fought. In fact,’ said Christabel, screwing her face up to think, ‘I remember them fighting before then, too. Not long before, but I can remember going into their room and they were angry. Mum had been crying. I don’t know what it was about, but something was wrong already and what happened made it worse.
‘Johnny was so distant afterwards. I hardly saw him even though he was home. Mum was tearful and short-tempered. We were trapped here. The village was awash with journalists. Johnny had security on the gates, people patrolling to keep the ravening hordes out. It was unreal. We had a nanny but she upped and left in the middle of it all. Becky and I just kept our heads down and tried not to be a nuisance.’
Christabel paused, looking thoughtful. ‘I remember seeing Johnny in the garden back then. He was staggering around, he couldn’t speak properly and his eyes looked … wrong. He scared me quite badly. I remember crying because I couldn’t make him understand me. Then Mum came and took hold of my hand. She just turned her back on him and led me away. It was just after that we left.’ She looked up at Alex. ‘I missed Johnny so much. It wasn’t like him touring, I felt that he had really gone. For good, you know? We stayed with Mum’s parents for a while and I thought Johnny had sent us away because he didn’t love me anymore. Mum wouldn’t talk about him. She said just to forget him. But I couldn’t. He was my world, he meant so much to me. I always felt more alive when Johnny was around.’
‘What happened next?’
‘I didn’t see him for a couple of years. Or hear from him. It felt like an eternity. We’d moved into a house of our own and Mum had workmen in. One of them left a newspaper lying around. It was Christmas time, I remember the tree was up. There was a big photo of Johnny on the front page, that’s what got my attention, and the headline was “Johnny Burns out: guitarist dies from drugs overdose”. I was hysterical. Mum had to explain that he hadn’t died for good, he’d just taken something he shouldn’t have and it had stopped his heart. The doctors had started it again and he was okay. Or he would be, if he got over this and sorted himself out. The press turned up again, of course, and we had a week or so of dodging photographers and not answering the phone.
‘Johnny spent some time in hospital and, I think in a clinic. He went back to Gran and Granddad, lived with them in his old room while he got better. When he came back here, he started looking after himself properly and he started swimming again. He still swims most days. And eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime of pestering Mum, I got to see him again.
‘It was strange at first, we’d both changed so much, you know? A couple of years is a long time for a kid and Johnny had been to hell and back.’ She laughed. ‘Possibly literally. But we started again. Becky wouldn’t see him for ages and that hurt him. She sees him occasionally now, but they’re not close.’
‘Does she look as much like him as you do?’
‘No, she looks like Mum. Nothing of Johnny to be seen.’ She smiled and pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘Mind you, there’s not much of Mum to be seen in me. She always says that they have a daughter each.’
Christabel was silent, her brow furrowed, as she worked out how to move on. ‘We’re getting into what I think of as Johnny’s bimbo years now. He was so sorted in so many ways, but relationships? Forget it. Just a string of women, all younger than him. For a while I thought he had an account with the LA Rock Wives Factory. He went through a phase of dating surgically enhanced suicide blondes with scary lips. Then he just went back to women who looked more normal, thank God. Some of them were quite nice, others pretty nasty, some wanted to be the girlfriend of the famous guitarist, others, like Sonia, just wanted to spend his money. Jesus, she was a bitch. I don’t know how Johnny could bear to be near her.’
‘She must have had her charms. He seemed as if he was very generous towards her.’
‘He was, and she milked his generosity for all it was worth. Then again, it’s not like he can’t afford it. He’s pretty well off, you know.’
Alex looked around her at the spacious house and sprawling grounds. ‘I’d guessed.’
‘Oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. He’s seriously loaded, despite what Mum took off him. I mean telephone numbers. He’s pretty sharp when it comes to money and he’s made some shrewd investments over the years. I just wish he’d find someone and settle down. He’s going to end up very lonely if he keeps on going the way he’s going. I know he’s got Paul and Col and they’re tight, but having good mates isn’t the same as having your own special someone to come home to.’
Alex nodded. She knew what Christabel meant. She missed Dave and seeing him at the weekend had taken more out of her than she liked to admit. She’d sent him packing, but it would have been so easy to give things another chance. She hadn’t dared let him into her flat; alone with him like that, she might have done something she’d live to regret.
‘Do you think people ever really change?’ she asked Christabel.
The younger woman looked thoughtful. ‘Rarely. Only if they really want to, I reckon. Like Johnny, when he got his wake-up call, if you can call overdosing on smack and being dead for two and a half minutes a wake-up call, he did change. Did you know, if one of the people at that party when he overdosed hadn’t been a nurse, he would have died that night? I mean really died, no way back. She was with someone who was with someone who knew someone who’d been invited, that kind of arrangement. Pure fluke she was there. That was part of the process of deciding to get clean for Johnny, he thought it must be meant to be, that he must still have things to do. You know what, though Alex, I still don’t know why he went as badly off the rails as he did.’