The table they had all sat at the previous night in the Jolly Sailor was taken, but there was a free one in the corner for two people. Lara and Vicky sat down and listened to Sammy King murdering ‘Locomotion’.
‘She’s no Kylie, is she?’ said Vicky, studying her. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised her in a million years if you hadn’t told me it was her.’
They’d all known Sammy King from school, even though she was in the year below. She’d been Samantha then. They’d had a fit of the giggles at a school speech day once when she’d won an award for effort, and the head had read out her full name – Samantha Ethel Gladys King. Thinking back, it had been Mr Fenton who whispered to them that, if they didn’t get control of themselves, they would be marched out of the hall. Pip’s lip had bled, because she’d had to bite down on it so hard to stop laughing. Lara burst into a chuckle at the memory.
‘What’s up?’ asked Vicky.
‘Samantha Ethel Gladys King, that’s what,’ said Lara, and that set Vicky off.
‘Do you remember Mr Fenton telling us off for laughing about it?’ said Vicky. ‘I think we were the only four girls in the whole school that didn’t fancy him. Isn’t it odd that one of us went and married him?’
‘Oh more than odd, much more. Even Pip thinks it’s odd.’
Vicky’s laughter died down as her eyes shifted from Sammy King to Danny Belfont.
‘What is he doing with his life?’ she asked, with a puzzled shake of her head. ‘I might hate his guts, but he’s so much better than what he’s doing now.’
‘Locomotion’ ended and there were a few pitiful claps.
‘And now for our last song . . .’ began Sammy, as someone heckled her from the crowd and said, ‘Thank goodness’. She ignored it and carried on: ‘ “The Wind Beneath My Wings”.’
‘I love this song – I can’t listen to her destroying it, so I’ll leave you, Lara,’ said Vicky. She leaned over and gave her friend a kiss on the cheek. ‘Be careful,’ she said sternly. ‘And don’t forget who the wind beneath your wings is, okay?’ And with that she was gone.
Lara listened to the song, taking in the lyrics. It was about a person who put someone else’s happiness before their own because they loved them so much. She suddenly felt very sad.
Danny started to play a short guitar solo, his fingers moving expertly over the strings, making it look so easy. He’d once told her that he couldn’t remember a time before he could play. All he had ever wanted to do was be a guitarist. The best in the world.
Sammy began to sing again and Lara was reminded of something her mother once said – Couldn’t hold a tune even with superglue and a sticky rope. Lara tried to think when she’d said it, and then remembered that it was at her parents’ golden wedding celebrations last year. They’d had a karaoke, and Freddie and her dad had got up to do it as a duet. ‘YOU are the wind beneath my wings,’ Freddie had sung at her, even though it was more of a growl which prompted her mum’s laughing comment.
She had been over six months single when she met Freddie. She was raw and bruised and felt as if she was made only of tears, and that, when all of them had been cried, there would be nothing left of her. She had decided she would never go out with another man ever. Being alone for the rest of her life was better than making the same mistakes over and over again. She was done, finished with trying to find love. It was only when she met Freddie that she found out that true love was two people putting the other first, not just one.
More clapping from the crowd as Sammy bowed and said, ‘Thank you, everyone, and goodnight from Paul, our drummer, Daniel, our guitarist, and from me, Sammy. We’ve been Stardust.’
Lara looked at her watch. She was five minutes away from an important moment in her life. Maybe the most important one ever.
*
Ten minutes later, Danny still hadn’t arrived. Lara glanced at her watch and decided that she’d give him another five. Another five came and went. Wouldn’t that be funny, if he stood her up yet again, she thought, with a heavy heart. She was about to leave when she spotted him walking towards her with two white wines.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get away.’
Lara wondered what excuse he had made to Sammy, what lie he had told her, because she knew that he wouldn’t have said that he was going to have a drink with his ex-fiancée and talk about fate.
‘Had a good day?’ He smiled at her as he sat down.
‘We had an amazing day,’ she replied.
‘Oh, Lara, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head,’ said Danny then. ‘I’ve had a rush of memories all about you. Things I haven’t thought of for years came flooding back to me.’
Lara stopped herself just in time from telling him that the same had happened to her.
‘Well, we can’t change what happened in the past, can we?’ she said, feeling proud that she sounded so grown-up and wise.
‘No,’ Danny said, ‘but we can change the path we’re on now, the future we’re heading to. You’ve made me think about my life so much, Lara. I feel as if I’ve been plugged into an electric socket and I’ve got energy in my heart. It’s fate that we met again. It has to be.’
This was the sort of thing that Vicky had told her to watch out for, the bullshit. But her old friend had no need to worry.
‘I’m glad I’ve had that effect on you,’ Lara said. ‘And maybe it is fate that we met again, Danny. Maybe me being here was meant to shake you up, and make you realise that you should be doing something better than what you are. Your dreams were as big as your talent, so what happened?’
‘You left,’ said Danny. ‘That’s what happened.’
‘I didn’t. You replaced me. I wasn’t the girl that got away, as in your song last night. I was the girl who got pushed out.’ Lara couldn’t believe she was saying this and staying calm.
‘You threw away your talent,’ said Danny.
‘I hated singing onstage,’ said Lara.
‘No you didn’t, you loved it.’
‘No, Danny, I hated it. I hated everything about it. I hated touring, having to set up and pack away, and running through the songs over and over again. I hated learning lyrics and not getting home until long past midnight. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to like doing it.’
‘I suppose you’re happy now, doing sums in an office,’ Danny scoffed.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Lara, meaning it. She was happy. She felt fulfilled and content, and work didn’t feel like work because she enjoyed doing what she did. ‘For your sake, I tried to pretend that your dream was mine too, but it wasn’t. And that was the only glue holding us together.’
‘How can you say that, Lara? We loved each other. I asked you to marry me,’ Danny protested.
‘You asked me to marry you to stop me leaving the group. That was the only reason.’
And there it was – the truth that had found its way to her that day. Vincent Van Gogh’s lovely pictures of stars and sunflowers had shown her what she hadn’t really been able to see before. What she hadn’t wanted to see before.
‘And then you got together with Sammy so you wouldn’t have to marry me,’ she carried on. ‘You never loved me, Danny. You loved my voice and the music we made together, but you didn’t love me. And once I’d told you that I really didn’t want to sing any more, I was of no use to you, so you moved on.’
‘I did love you,’ said Danny, but there was little force in his protest. ‘I never stopped loving you. That’s why I wrote that song about the girl that got away.’
‘You’re stamping a truth over a lie, Danny. Just as I have been for years. I think deep down some sensible part of me saw things as they really were, and that I had to let you go. Whatever we had wasn’t love, even if we thought it was at the time. Not true love. Not like I have now with my Freddie. His dreams really are the ones I want to share. And our dreams might sound really small and boring compared with filling the Albert Hall, but we are living them. And life is great.’
Lara got up from the chair. She hadn’t touched the wine he’d bought. It stood there as yet another symbol of how far apart they were. The Lara who drank white wine was long gone, the Lara who drank red was here and now.
She leaned over, planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Danny. Don’t look for what you need in other people, look for it in yourself. Because it’s there, trust me. It’s never too late to try and be who you always wanted to be. Good luck.’
The boat bounced on a wave and a loud creak came from somewhere. It sounded like something breaking. It sounded as if that connection between Lara and the past had snapped at last and set her free.
*
Vicky was sitting up in bed reading when Lara came in. She dropped her book and stared at her friend, waiting for her to begin talking.
‘So?’ she prompted when Lara stayed silent.
Lara smiled and that confused Vicky even more.
‘Guess what I realised today,’ she said. ‘That Danny Belfont never loved me at all.’ She was smiling but tears were dropping from her eyes at the same time.
Vicky’s face crumpled with sympathy. ‘Oh he did, Lara. I know—’
‘No, he didn’t, but it’s fine,’ said Lara, cutting her off. ‘I’m sure he liked me. But love . . . I don’t think so. That’s why I was so easy to replace when Sammy King came along with her big hopes of being a megastar.’ She flicked some tears away from her cheeks. ‘I could have insisted she leave, but I didn’t. He had more chance of living out his dreams of stardom with her than with me.’
Vicky huffed. ‘That worked out well for them both then didn’t it?’
Lara gave a soft chuckle but tears were still raining from her eyes. ‘I must have known in my heart that he didn’t love me; that’s why I gave him the chance to let me go.’
‘And the git took it and ran with it.’
‘Yes.’
Vicky opened up the bag at the side of her, hunted inside it for her tissues and then handed them to Lara.
‘I know you loved him a lot, Lara, so that can’t have been an easy thing to find out.’
‘He said that fate had made us meet again and I’m sure he was right, but not for the obvious reasons. I think I needed to face some hard facts about what true love is and what it isn’t. And I think fate wanted to give Danny a kick up the backside.’
‘Thank goodness.’ Vicky blew out two cheeks full of air. ‘I thought you were going to say that fate wanted to put you together again.’
‘No. Fate wants us to stay totally away from each other.’ Lara blew her nose, her tears were done with now. ‘You know, I love music, I love to sing in the bath and around the house and in the car with Freddie doing silly duets, but . . . I’m so much happier adding up numbers at a desk than I ever was performing on a stage.’
Lara sat down on her bed. ‘Sometimes I used to wonder if I’d done the right thing turning my back on stardom, because so many people told me I should sing and I shouldn’t waste what I could do with my voice. I used to feel so bad that I’d let Danny down, and that he might have filled the Albert Hall if I’d hung on in there and helped him. But I had to live my dream, not his, not anyone else’s. Now I see that, I feel totally free. Does that make sense?’
‘Perfect sense.’
‘All these years, I’ve been fooling myself that Danny loved me because it would hurt too much to think that he never did and he was just using me to make his own dreams come true.’
‘Time to put the past to bed, mate. Say a last goodbye to it, and a big fat hello to a fab future with Freddie. You’re going to have such a great life with him.’
‘I know and I can’t wait.’
Vicky grinned. ‘So, just to confirm – so I can stop worrying and sleep – you have no plans at all to join Stardust?’
Lara grinned back at her and put her hand on her heart. ‘None,’ she said.