The last time Lara had seen Danny Belfont he had been standing in her mother’s kitchen doorway. His hair had been a lion’s mane of golden curls falling past his shoulders. His jeans had been on the sexy side of tatty and clinging to his slim hips. His beautiful blue eyes had been turned towards the floor as he told her that he couldn’t marry her, that he was sorry. Minutes later, her mother ran in screaming like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, attacked him with a wet mop and drove him out of the house. Out of her life. That was fifteen years ago. And though she had tried not to think about him since, he had crept into her thoughts thousands of times as if he had a home in her brain.
Onstage, the guitarist raised his head and the years fell away. The face was thinner – and so was the hair – but there was no mistaking those eyes. His blond locks had faded, but his eyes were as bright and blue as they ever were. Lara felt something hurt inside her, like an old pain that had suddenly stirred into life and become active again.
‘Sorry I was so long. I had to wait ages at the bar,’ said Vicky, plonking herself down next to Lara. ‘I bet you thought I’d got lost . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she took in the expression on Lara’s face. ‘What’s up, Lara? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I was just daydreaming about the wedding and all I’ve got to do before it,’ lied Lara. She forced out a false smile. The one thing she didn’t want to do was let Vicky notice that it was Danny Belfont onstage. Vicky was likely to leap up there and take over from where her mother and her mop left off.
That was nothing compared to what she would do to the singer, because Lara had worked out who she was. No wonder she looked familiar. She might have lost half her body weight, had a boob job and buried her face under a ton of make-up, but the singer was clearly Sammy King. She who had stepped into Lara’s shoes in the band and slid next to Lara’s boyfriend in bed.
‘The boat is moving a bit, isn’t it? I think, if it’s okay with you, Lara, I’ll make this one my last drink.’ Vicky gave a pained smile. ‘I know this looks bad, me being the chief bridesmaid and all, but . . .’
Lara cut her off. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘What?’
‘I SAID, DON’T BE SILLY,’ Lara said again but more loudly.
Now that Lara had seen it was Danny and Sammy, she couldn’t un-see them. She wished she hadn’t worked out who they were. She was only glad that Vicky had her back to the stage.
‘We should have gone to the other bar, I can barely hear you talk for that racket,’ said Vicky with a tut, thumbing behind her. ‘Whoever booked them must have been let down by someone good at the last minute.’
The truth of it was that she was right. Stardust, as a group, were rubbish. The drummer looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but on that stage. And the singer hit one good note in every ten. The guitarist’s skills were wasted playing basic chords that any kid could play after one music lesson.
‘I can’t wait to see the Anne Frank house tomorrow,’ said Vicky. ‘One of our chefs went and said it was so much bigger than she thought.’ She yawned then. ‘Sorry.’
Lara smiled. Even though the four of them had been best friends since school, she was probably a little closer to Vicky than to the others. They were the noisy ones. Jo and Pip had never been sent out of the classroom for talking when they shouldn’t have. But Vicky and Lara had been loads of times.
Out of them all, Vicky was the most clever, though she didn’t go to university like her parents had wanted her to. She was happy to cook for a living. She took a job in a newly opened Greek restaurant outside town and, after a week, fell in love with the owner’s son. Vicky found her place in life helping to run Zorba’s and being a mum. This was the girl who’d once told Lara, ‘I never want kids – they’re horrible little things.’
‘I can’t keep awake,’ said Vicky, yawning yet again. ‘And to think I used to be a party animal.’
‘You go back to the cabin,’ said Lara. ‘I’ll follow you in a bit.’
‘I’m not leaving you by yourself in a bar, Lara.’
‘No, really. I shan’t be all that long. I just want to sit here and think for half an hour.’
‘How can you think with that din?’ Vicky laughed. ‘But okay, if that’s what you want. I’ll see you soon.’
‘It is. I’m not ready for bed just yet. I’m too excited, I think.’
‘You can finish off my vodka,’ said Vicky. ‘I’m too tired to drink it – and I don’t think I’ve ever said that before in my life.’ And with that, she left.
Now Lara was free to watch Stardust on her own. This wasn’t a good thing. She was on her hen do, and yet her eyes were fixed on the man she had loved so much that she had never got over him. Not fully. The first time he kissed her, he almost took her breath away.
‘Take my breath awaayyy-yyyeee,’ Sammy King sang, and the man on the next table made a face. ‘I wish someone would take her breath away,’ he said loudly before his wife told him to shush and asked, ‘Was it Berlin that used to sing this, Dave?’
‘Yes, and I wish she were in Berlin and not on this boat busting my eardrums,’ he replied.
That should be you up there onstage with him, not her, said a voice in Lara’s head which she wished would shut up.
Lara willed Danny Belfont to lift up his head and spot her in the crowd. He wasn’t lifting his head much at all. He was staring at the floor as if embarrassed at being there strumming basic chords that any idiot could play. He must feel like a giant, bouncy dog on a short lead, thought Lara.
‘Thank you,’ said Sammy at the end of the song. A few people clapped – more of a slow clap than a fast one. Then Danny lifted his head. Lara’s heart stopped beating for a second. As if he sensed her staring at him, Danny’s eyes turned to hers, locked with hers. It was only for a second at most, but it felt so much longer. The drummer counted in the next song by knocking his drumsticks together, jolting Danny back to the job in hand, but Lara knew he had seen her.
She tried to guess what he might be thinking now, because he surely had to be thinking something. Maybe about the moment when they were first introduced. He grunted a hello before telling her she didn’t look like a singer, but like someone who worked in an office. Or when he asked her to marry him one winter night after a gig, when the sky was flooded with stars. Maybe about the time when she lost her voice and a girl called Sammy King, who sang in another band, offered to step in so they wouldn’t have to cancel important bookings. Maybe about the moment when Lara’s mother hit him with her mop and he ran away dripping wet. Maybe, though, just maybe, he was thinking that he’d seen a woman, who looked like someone from his past whose name he couldn’t quite recall.
Lara had been out with a lot of boys and men in her life, but there were only two that she could ever say had really stamped themselves on her heart. Freddie was one and Danny was the other. Her friends always said that she picked the wrong men because she was always trying to replace Danny, and what a mistake that was. They were so happy when she told them that she had fallen in love with a man who was as different from Danny Belfont as it was possible to be. Someone kind, caring, gentle, a man to trust – and not a selfish tosser.
‘Wow the ship is rocking and rolling tonight, isn’t it?’ said Sammy into the mike. She was putting on an air of being cheerful. But Lara could tell that her smile was fake and hiding that something was wrong. She looked like Pip trying to cover up the fact that she was very close to being sick.
‘Take it away, boys,’ Sammy went on, as if she were playing the O2 arena with Queen behind her. The drummer drummed, Danny strummed, Sammy opened her mouth to sing and then closed it again. The boat rose on a giant swell and people in the bar made ‘ooh’ noises. Then Sammy King ran for the exit, but not before she had thrown up over the curtains at the side of the stage.
Someone cheered and clapped at the singer’s misfortune. The drummer didn’t seem to know what to do, but decided that maybe this was a good excuse for him to leave as well. Only Danny Belfont stayed. He stepped to centre stage and spoke into the mike.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that, everyone. Well . . .’ He played that one chord again and Lara’s heart responded with a kick. ‘Erm . . . rather than us leave you with the image of Sammy running offstage like that, I’d like to play us out properly with a song I wrote a few years ago. It’s called simply . . . “The Girl That Got Away”.’
‘Sounds like he’s an unlucky serial killer,’ laughed the loud man on the next table, but Lara didn’t laugh. She couldn’t shift her eyes away from Danny. With the stage all to himself, he began to play properly, like the true artist that he was. His fingers moved expertly over the guitar strings and his soft, smoky voice began to sing. The crowd carried on talking, laughing, drinking. Lara felt as if she alone were listening.
‘. . . The years have helped me see
The girl that got away
Was the only one for me . . .’
Lara gulped. Danny was looking right at her as he sang.
‘I was a fool to let her go
Is all I have to say
My dreams were hers and hers were mine
The girl that got away.’
Danny was desperate for stardom, and he was sure that his music and Lara’s singing would help them find it. And she’d wanted him to have it so much. Was this song about her? Was that what he thought – that she had deserted him? Suddenly she felt stupidly sad and had to blink hard to push tears back down to wherever they were stored.
His voice had got better with age. He had a classic rock-star voice – rough around the edges but capable of so much emotion. He belonged in a different league to a crap group like Stardust. There was no one in this large room who could know how clever and talented Danny was – not from watching him perform tonight. He played the final chords. The song ended. Danny said, ‘Thank you very much’ and walked offstage to a rumble of polite applause.
Well that was that then, Lara supposed. There was nothing more to hang around in the bar for. She sipped at the last of the toffee vodka. It was a shot really, but it was far too nice to drink fast. She hoped it would make her sleep, because her head was sparking with images of the past. She stood to go but someone put two glasses of wine on the table in front of her.
‘I wasn’t sure if you were still a white-wine girl, but I thought if you weren’t, maybe you could fling it in my face. Hello again, Lara.’