The Summer We All Ran Away (3 page)

“And that's it, is it?” said Sid. “You got blanked by Jack Laker? That's your observation?”

“I just thought it was interesting that - ”

“Fame turns everyone into a monster,” said Sheila. “I just wish you'd known him before, he was just the sweetest guy.”

“You weren't the only one who knew him before he was famous,” said Jane.

“I never said I was.”

“He should never have done it,” said Sid. “The dozy sod.”

“Done what?”

“Sold out. That tour was his downfall.”

“He didn't sell out,” said Mike. “He wrote an album that was a freak hit. Happens all the time.”

“He didn't have to do the lifestyle as well. Nobody made him spend half his money on this place and shove the other half up his nose.” Sid laughed. “Did you hear what he's got in the garden? A panther. An actual panther. What kind of pretentious tosser keeps a big cat?”

“Want some sour grapes to go with that beer of Jack's you're drinking?” asked Jane slyly.

“Sorry?”

“Genius is never recognised; nobody buys my paintings; therefore I must be a genius.”

“You utter bitch, how dare you.”

“Shut up and let me explain,” Mike demanded. “I haven't finished my observation yet.”

“Excuse me, but can you tell me where Jack Laker actually is?”

The group turned around and saw a tall girl in a green frock.

“Around,” said Mike vaguely. “You could try upstairs. Why?”

“Doesn't he mind people wandering around his house?” The group looked at her blankly. “Never mind. Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” sang Mike sarcastically as she disappeared.

“For fuck's sake,” said Alan. “Everybody tours. Everybody. You want to sell albums? You get your arse out on the fucking road and you work for it.”

“I've done my time. I've got a fanbase. People buy my stuff.”

“You know how fast they'll stop buying it if your profile drops? This is a business! New boys come on the scene all the time. They'll have your spot in the sun in a frigging heartbeat.”

“And?”

Alan forced himself to take a deep, calming breath.

“Open up,” said Jane, banging on the bedroom door.

“Who is it?” A man's voice, and a trickle of female laughter.

“The drugs squad.” The door opened a crack. Jane dangled her bag of sugar cubes. “Come on, Jeff, let me in and I'll share.”

The door opened wide, and Jeff, stripped to the waist, welcomed her inside. On the bed, Anna lay propped on her elbows, long black hair in plaits over her shoulders, smooth brown back gleaming with oil. A silver feather hung on a leather thong between her bare breasts.

“You're overdressed,” she told Jane.

Jane peeled off her clinging nylon dress, revealing sunshine-yellow knickers. Jeff watched her with barely disguised lust. Anna patted the bedspread beside her. Jeff drizzled patchouli-scented oil onto his palms and began to caress Jane's shoulders. Jane offered Anna a sugar cube.

“Hardly need one in here,” murmured Anna, gesturing to the hypnotic orange swirls on the walls. “This whole room is like tripping.” She looked hungrily at the sugar cube. “I shouldn't, I really shouldn't.”

“'Course you should. It's a party. Live a little.”

“But I promised, oh, well - ” she popped the cube into her mouth and sucked it luxuriously.

Jane wriggled with pleasure as Jeff's fingers probed the base of her spine.

“So what do we make of Mr Laker's place?” she murmured.

Anna shrugged. “The front's alright. The back's like a haunted house. Apparently he ran out of money.”

“He's about to make a shitload more. I heard he finished
an album.” She sighed, and blinked. “Maybe then he'll be able to buy a swimming pool. Is that wallpaper moving? It looks like it's moving.”

“Where's everyone else?”

“Mike's in the library, holding court about I Knew Jack Before He Was Famous.”

“Christ.” Jeff shuddered. “Is it the story about the Irish builders?”

“Some observation about the last night of his last tour. I don't know, I got bored.”

Anna was staring at the carpet. “Jeff, this is really good, you should try some.”

“Happy as I am.” Jeff watched in fascination as Anna's hand moved down Jane's spine.

“Are you Jack Laker, by any chance?”

The three of them glared at the girl in the green dress, embarrassed and annoyed.

“Why would you think I'm Jack?” demanded Jeff, pulling the sunburst bedspread over himself.

“You're having sex in his bed. Doesn't he mind?”

“Excuse me,” said Jane, “but who are you, anyway?”

“Try the garden,” said Jeff, guiltily.

“So, this is what you want, is it?” asked Alan. “Forget wild nights and adulation and a chance to share your gift with the world, you've got a near-derelict country manor with massive trees and a view of the North Atlantic. And no staff. And a panther.”

“The front half's finished.”

“So?
It's fucking miles from anywhere!”

Jack patted the trunk of the tree. “This tree's been here for hundreds of years. Growing. Branching out, getting stronger. All that time.”

“Imagine that. Do the tour.”

“All the people who've come and gone, it's lasted them out.” He picked up a pine cone. “Look at this. A whole forest,
just waiting to grow.” He grinned. “I might write a song about that. Maybe even a whole album.”

“If you write an album about a Cedar tree, I really will kill you. Do the tour.”

Jack threw away the cone in despair. “Why won't you listen?”

“I'm your manager. I'm not here to listen, I'm here to save you from yourself. For God's sweet sake, Jack, be kind to an old man. I've got your name etched on my stomach in peptic ulcers. Do the tour.” Jack shook his head stubbornly. “Do you even know what you're saying? You get one chance in this business. One bite of the cherry. One moment to shine. And that's if you're lucky. Most people don't even get that. It's bad enough that you're buried down here, you need to be nearer London. And if you won't tour –
Jesus
, Jack, how the fuck am I supposed to – I thought you wanted to be a superstar!”

“I
never
said that,” said Jack, suddenly fierce. “I said I wanted to be a
musician
.”

They stared at each other in the light of the lanterns.

She tried each of the bedrooms in turn, but they were all filled with guests taking drugs or having sex or both. Half the house throbbed with sound and blazed with light; the other half was enigmatically silent, as chilled and dusty as an unheeded warning.

“Like a carnival in Hell,” she muttered in disgust. Was this what her agent meant by
up-and-coming people?
And where was her host, anyway? Escaping through a door at the end of a corridor, she found herself in the unfinished side of the house.

This was the bone beneath the skin, the unchanging skull beneath the pretty, fashionable façade. If this was her home, she'd keep this side exactly as it was, no matter how rich she became. Jack Laker, on the other hand, had simply run out of money. She wandered through lightless rooms with peeling wallpaper and abandoned, half-rotten furniture, wondering who had last collapsed gratefully in the pillowy beds, last
rested their heads against the high chair-backs, last feasted at the long tables.

If she died in here, would she ever be found? Perhaps that had happened to her host. Face-down at an abandoned dining table, toasting a kindly convivial Death in the bottom of a bottle; or perhaps sprawled across a tattered chair, sightless and breathless, with a needle in his arm.

Down the half-rotten staircase, and then a sudden side-door led her outside. The garden was tangled and unruly, but the basic shape was still there, and she plunged gratefully into the silence beneath fat orange lanterns. Maybe Jack Laker wasn't even at the party. A man in a green suit and a lobster-pink shirt barged angrily past her and stormed off towards the house.

Then she heard a hoarse, snarling roar, a sound that said
I'm angry and hungry and you're on the menu
. She hadn't actually believed anyone would keep a panther in a garden. Was it loose? Was it near? Didn't they lie on tree branches and drop onto their prey from above?

In a clearing ahead was a red-skinned tree like a branching chandelier. Swarming up it would be like climbing a ladder.

“Hello.”

Jack, propped in the tree and staring blankly out across the moorland to the open sea, was startled to find a girl climbing towards him. Automatically, he helped her up onto his branch. Her fingers felt cool and soft. Across the garden, the panther growled again, and he felt her flinch.

“Is it caged? Or is it roaming around?”

“What, the panther? It's in an enclosure.”

She pushed her hair back from her forehead.

“No wonder it sounds so angry.”

She had a long, elegant nose and wide cheekbones, and her eyes were a cool, pale grey. Her mouth was wide and rose-coloured. Her hair made him think of a lion's mane. He wondered if it would be rough to the touch.

“Er - ” He was no good with women, he never had been. Even in those wild disastrous touring days, when girls in their hundreds had materialised backstage and unwrapped themselves like presents, he'd always been tongue-tied and mystified, by their beauty and by their interest. But for the first time in how long? Years? He wanted to make a good impression.

She was studying his face, her gaze very frank and undisguised. He envied her ability to look at a stranger without shyness.

“I thought it might be loose,” she said at last. “I climbed up here to escape. Although now I think about it, it can probably climb much better than I can.”

When she smiled, he had to restrain his hand from touching her cheek.

“So why are you in the tree?”

He considered the possible answers. “I suppose I don't really like parties,” he said at last.

She had an unexpectedly dirty laugh. “No, me neither. This one's fairly disgusting. And I can't find Jack Laker anywhere.” She sighed. “I'm supposed to try and meet him, but I can't think why. He sounds like an absolute maniac.”

The knowledge that fairly soon he would have to tell her that he was, in fact, Jack Laker, sat in his stomach like a stone. “Is he really that bad?” he asked.

“He doesn't speak to any of his old friends, he had girls sent up to his dressing room, he slept with the nurses in rehab and he keeps a wild animal as a pet. What do you think?”

“My God,” said Jack, in shock. “Where did you hear all that?”

“His friends.” She considered this. “Well. I say
friends
.”

“So what did you think of the house?” he said hastily.

“The finished bits'll date horribly,” she said. “Right now it's probably the coolest pad in the Western world. Five years from now, people will look around it and say,
My God, this place is so nineteen seventy eight! Can you believe we thought
a maroon bathroom was a good idea? And those curtains!
I think I prefer the empty half.” She considered for a moment. “But thirty years from now it'll probably be the last word in cool again.”

“And in a couple of centuries, the National Trust will preserve that gold-flocked orange wallpaper as a national treasure.”

This time, they laughed together.

“Are you a guest?” she asked. “Or do you work here?”

“Does it matter?”

“You're the only person I've met who isn't vile. I thought that might be why.”

He liked the crisp economy of her speech. He liked everything about her. Above her head, the orange lantern blazed like a torch. “I look after the garden,” he offered. “Oh, and I feed the panther.”

“You
feed
it? Is that what happened to your shirt?”

“Just doin' my job, ma'am. So why are you here?”

“In this tree?”

“At this horrible party.”

“My agent sent me.” He was amused by the venom in her voice. “I'm supposed to suck up to Jack Laker. Or maybe just, you know, suck Jack Laker. He didn't really specify.”

He tried not to blush. “Are you a musician?”

“An actor. Maybe. I mean, in my head I already am one. But I don't make enough to live on yet.”

The silence between them was warm and companionable. When she leaned against him, his blood leapt and galloped through his heart.

In the distance, the panther roared again. Unease tickled the back of Jack's neck.

Anna lay blissfully on her front, eyes half-closed, watching the wallpaper and listening to Jeff and Jane making love. A loose thread from the bedspread was becoming a line of light, enticing her through the doorway.

She took her time over the stairs, tucking the heel of each foot close against the back of each step. She was tripping; it was important to be careful.

“Hey, Anna.” A group of people with purple hair and wide, stretched faces loomed out of the library towards her. “Um, do you know you're naked?”

She didn't like the way their faces looked, and hurried outside, where huge glowing oranges hung from the trees. The flowers made faces at her as she passed. Within moments she had lost her bearings, but it was cool and peaceful, the oranges were pretty and she liked the feeling of being alone. Time stretched out like a ribbon as she wandered beneath ancient trees, oblivious to the chill on her skin or the sharp leaves beneath her feet.

“Just take it easy,” she whispered to the blooming night. “Don't do anything stupid. Remember you're, shit, what the - ”

She had found an enclosure built into a deep hollow, with a smooth concrete wall and an iron gate, like a prison. Inside, a black-haired man watched her from behind grass-green eyes.