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  Oh, dear. Dave looked up, and swallowed hard. Janice had her back to him but he could see by the set of her shoulders that this was by no means a casual question; she'd been working up to it.

  She stirred sugar into the mugs, frowning, as though the process called for a great deal of concentration.

  "What?" he said. "Oh, yeah, Alison. She's changed her name to Ariel, now."

  "Has she?" Janice laughed, and turned round, handing Dave his coffee. "She would!"

  Dave grinned. "She thought it sounded better for a singer."

  "Did she? So you've talked to her? You have seen her, then?"

  "Only at the gig. She was there, didn't you see her? I just talked to her then. You know, after you buggered off without waiting for me."

  Janice ignored that. "So, is she on MySpace too? If that's where all the cool people are. She's pretty cool, isn't she?"

  "I don't know, I haven't looked," Dave said. This was the truth; it hadn't occurred to him. Until now, the whole mysterious world of online social networking had interested Dave not a jot. He felt in his pocket for a cigarette.

  "Outside," said Janice.

  "Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot." Dave opened the kitchen door and stood just outside, lighting his cigarette.

  "Dave," Janice said.

  "What?"

  "Since - well, since you've not been living here - "

  "Since you chucked me out, yes," Dave said. It was getting cold; a sharp autumnal breeze blew across his face.

  "Yes, well, okay." She looked at him. "What I wanted to know is - since we've not been together, properly, I mean, have you been out with anyone else?"

  "No," he said. Well, it was the truth, wasn't it? He hadn't been out with anyone. He'd slept with a few girls, yes, but he hadn't taken any of them out.

  "Oh. I just wondered." He could see the relief spread across her face. "Because I couldn't complain if you had, could I? I mean, we're officially on a break, aren't we?"

  "A break that you instigated," Dave said. Come on, he thought. "But no, I haven't."

  "You'd tell me, though, if you started seeing anyone, wouldn't you?"

  "Yeah. Course. But you and H are the most important things in my life." He knew she didn't mean that about not being able to complain. She'd go ape-shit.

  Still, she'd said it, hadn't she? They were officially on a break, so he could officially do what he wanted.

  As long as he didn't think about being in bed with her, when it felt, to both of them, as if he was back to stay.

  But you couldn't chuck someone out then expect them to remain faithful, could you?

  Driving home, later on, he reasoned with himself that maybe he should go and see Ariel, after all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  One of the things that made Dave so sexy was the very fact that he was nice, Ariel decided. He felt guilty about Janice, which he had every right not to do, considering the fact that she'd forced a split he hadn't wanted. He cared about Janice, he loved his son - and seemed to really care about her, too, not just want to have sex with her. He listened when she talked, really took an interest in all the frustrations she'd experienced over the years. He was a down to earth nice guy - without being a wimp. Oh no, Dave Bentley was no wimp; well, hey, he was a Viking, wasn't he? She laughed to herself as she watched him moving around the room, lighting a fag, pulling on his clothes; band practice beckoned.

  "When do I get to see you again?" he said, gazing at her as he pulled his white t-shirt down over his lean, hard torso. Decidedly edible. He'd just made her come three times and she still wanted him. "We're playing in The Romany on Saturday; will you be there?"

  Ariel sat up in bed and pulled the duvet around her. It was cold in Dave's bedroom; she'd only just noticed, having been pretty hot and sweaty for the past couple of hours. "I'm working the next two nights," she said, "but yeah, I'm free on Saturday, I'll come along."

  "You going to bring Melodie? Shane keeps hassling me about her because he hasn't scored there yet," Dave said, and laughed.

  "I think she's cottoned on to that one!" said Ariel. "Okay, okay, we'll be there!" She laughed, too. "Not that it'll do Shane any good. Melodie's saving herself for bigger fish!"

  "He's such a twat," Dave said, and sat down on the side of the bed.

  "The trouble with Shane," Ariel said, "is that he's such a daft slapper that no woman's going to take him seriously. I mean, who the hell wants to be just another notch on his bedpost?"

  "Yeah, I know, it's time he grew up." He stroked her face and they cuddled for a moment. "It's lovely being with you again," he said.

  "Yes." She smiled. She felt confused when he looked at her like that; it reminded her of how she'd broken his heart all those years ago. She felt confused, full stop. She loved sleeping with him, she was fond of him, she liked him, but she couldn't think about a full time relationship. She wanted to concentrate on getting her music together, not her love life; the last time she'd fallen in love she'd let everything slide, and she was scared of doing that again. Besides, Dave was clearly still so involved with Janice; of course he was. Did Janice want him back? If so, Ariel didn't want to be the cause of her upset. There was a child to be considered. Dave was evasive when she asked him about the current state of play on Greyfriars Estate. Getting too involved with a man who was still so committed elsewhere was asking for trouble.

  She knew, though, that if she felt as much for him as she suspected he did for her, she would put all these misgivings to one side.

  At least she had a job, now; Shane had mentioned to his Uncle Vic that she was looking around, and he'd snapped her up to work in The Bandstand immediately, even though he didn't really need another member of staff. Bar work was ideal; she was a morning person, and, thus, these were left free for writing songs and practising her guitar. Dave had been telling her all about Thor's MySpace page; perhaps she ought to do that, too. Her father had a computer. Perhaps she ought to stop thinking gigs and the traditional route, and start thinking YouTube, social media. The music business was changing, and she didn't want to get left behind, just a girl and her guitar sitting on a stool in a pub.

  "I'll see you on Saturday then, shall I?" Dave said, fiddling with the zip of his leather jacket. He seemed reluctant to go.

  "Yes," she said; and then something occurred to her. "Will Janice be there? Only I don't think - well, if she's there I don't think we ought to look as if we're - well, as if we're - "

  "We won't. Yeah, I think she might be there, actually. I know what you mean." He smiled. "We'll just act like we're long forgotten history and save it for when we get back here, shall we?"

  She breathed out. "Okay." There. That proved it, didn't it? If their relationship, such as it was, had to be kept a secret from Janice, then it wasn't right, not really. Hmm.

  "You can let yourself out, can't you?" He laughed, a bit nervously, she thought. "Or you can stay here, if you like. I'll be back by eleven."

  "No, I've got to go home. I'm working on a song."

  "Okay. I'll see you, then."

  He left, eventually; Ariel snuggled back down under the luxurious, warm duvet, and fell asleep.

  ***

  Janice had entered a whole new world!

  MySpace was brilliant!

  She'd signed up for the site with the idea of doing no more than following the progress of Thor so that she could do as Dave suggested, i.e., post comments on their page as if she was their biggest fan.

  But no sooner had she set up her page, chosen a sunset as her background picture, added her music ('Keep the Faith' by Bon Jovi), 'friended' Thor and written a bit about herself, than she began to get friend requests! Other people who liked rock music, too; local people, who went to see bands in the area, the friends and family members of the rest of Thor, like Shane's sister Zoe. They'd seen her on Thor's page, and wanted to include her in their cyberspace lives, too! She loved it; she could chat to them online, too, on all those long evenings when Harley was asleep and she was fed up with watc
hing telly. It was like having a social life without leaving her living room - and on the occasions she went to see Thor play, she could say hello to all the people she'd met on her laptop! She almost liked Thor - it was giving her a new life.

  Their page looked terrific; Ritchie had made a background of Vikings and darkened skies, and they'd posted some professional looking photos of them looking very serious - like a real band!

  This Thursday lunch time she'd logged on for a quick browse around while she waited for her mother to pick her up for a visit to her grandmother, and she'd noticed that Thor were collecting quite a lot of girl fans in their friends list. Probably added by Shane. Alison Swan, or whatever she bloody called herself these days, wasn't one of them. She'd only been at one more of the gigs, too; the last one in The Romany, where she hadn't talked to Dave much. He hadn't been doing his boggle eyed thing at her, either; perhaps he didn't still hanker after her, then. Perhaps it was all in the past for both of them, after all.

  Linda's car pulled up outside and the horn sounded; Janice logged out, switched off, grabbed her bag, and dashed out.

  "When are you going to take me home?" Evelyn asked, picking at a loose thread on the arm of her chair. "I've got to go home," she said, "they'll be wondering where I am."

  Janice glanced at her mother and rolled her eyes. "It's all right, Gran, we all know where you are. You're safe here."

  "I don't want to be here. Why do I have to be in this place? I want to go home."

  "Mum, you've got to stay here for now. It's because of your Alzheimer's, we've told you," said Linda, reaching over and stroking her mother's thin grey hair away from her forehead. It was too warm in the room. Evelyn jerked away, irritably.

  "Because of my what? There's nothing wrong with me. I don't like it here, with all these people. I want to go home."

  Janice looked at her mother. Since Evelyn had been in Fenland Lodge, Linda had looked so much happier, less careworn, but on bad days, like today, her face showed all the signs of stress, just like before.

  It was the guilt, of course.

  During the last year, before they made the difficult decision to give her up to permanent care, looking after Evelyn had been like dealing, twenty four hours a day, with a truculent child who tried to escape every time you took your eyes off her for five minutes, but still it hadn't been easy.

  Linda rested her head against her hand for a moment.

  "Here," she said, looking up again. "You remember we told you about Harley starting school?" She rummaged in her bag and brought out a photo, showing Harley in the royal blue Greyfriars Elementary School sweatshirt he wore so proudly. "Look! Here he is; I took it on his first day. I thought you might like a copy of it to put on your dressing table."

  Evelyn took the photo with shaking, age spotted hands. "Who's that, then?" she said, peering at it. "Is it Ivan?"

  Janice glanced at her mother again. Ivan was Evelyn's brother; he'd been killed at Dunkirk in 1940, aged just twenty.

  "No, Gran, it's Harley," she said. "My son. Your great-grandson. You know, I've brought him to see you lots of times."

  "Oh." Evelyn looked away; the picture fell out of her hands and fluttered to the floor. "Are you taking me home?"

  "No, Mum, you've got to stay here," Linda said, reaching down to pick up the photo. "I've explained it all to you. I'm not equipped to look after you anymore. I can't always be there to watch you in case you fall over, and then there's the accidents in the night - "

  "I can look after myself," said Evelyn, shifting in her chair. "I've got to go home now. They'll be expecting me to cook dinner."

  "Gran, no." Janice put her hand on her grandmother's; her skin felt thin and papery. "Shall I get us a cup of tea?"

  "No, I haven't got time," said Evelyn. "I'm needed at home." She looked around her. "When's Linda coming in to see me, anyway? She never comes to see me." She leant forward to speak to Janice. "I'll give you her phone number. You phone her and tell her to come and get me. Linda will take me home, even if the rest of you won't."

  "Gran, Linda's here. My mum. Look."

  Evelyn looked over at her daughter and her face broke into a smile. "Oh, hello, darling!" she said. "I didn't see you there. Have you come to take me home?"

  On the way back to Fennington, Linda was quiet.

  "You okay, Mum?" Janice asked.

  Linda sighed. "Yes and no. Oh, you know."

  Janice knew. It was that constant inner battle between relief that she no longer had the day-to-day stress of being her mother's sole carer and could, thus, live her own life again - she even had a new man in her life - and the guilt, always the guilt.

  "But you've done the right thing," Janice was always saying to her. "She needs professional care, especially since the incontinence started. You couldn't be expected to deal with that. She's in the best place."

  And Linda would agree, because of course Janice was right. Janice worked hard at not allowing the guilt to taint Linda's new found happiness, but she wasn't always successful.

  Back at home, Harley ate a banana in front of CBeebies, fresh from his after school bath, and Janice opened the laptop to log on to MySpace again. Oh look, Thor had a new friend. Ariel Swan. Well, well, well.

  It was a nice photo of her, black and white, serious; she was looking out of a window. Not a silly, pouty one. Oh, why did she have to come back? Why couldn't she have taken her size ten jeans and fluttery eyelashes and slightly aloof air elsewhere?

  Janice wished she could do aloof. It was so sexy, wasn't it?

  She scanned down the page. Ariel wasn't giving much away. Only a couple of photos, and they weren't professionally taken. They were all black and white, not posed. Damn, Janice thought, what must it be like to be as pretty as that?

  "Mummy, please can I have some milk?"

  Janice smiled at her son, so sweet in his Spiderman pyjamas - she felt a rush of love for him, reached out to give him a cuddle, and closed the laptop.

  Oh, bollocks to Ariel Swan, she thought. Who cared?

  Sometimes, just sometimes, what with the plight of her mother and grandmother and her daily worry about how going to a school in that not particularly salubrious area was going to affect Harley, all the stuff about Dave, worrying about who he might or might not fancy, seemed not really very important at all.

  ***

  Their first write-up!

  Ritchie's brother Pete's marketing strategies seemed to be working - his old school friend Neil Mann, now the entertainments editor on The Fenland Chronicle (the 'muso journo', Pete called him), had accepted his invitation to attend 'rock night' at Fennington Labour Club, where Thor had been fourth on the bill - 'fourth out of four fucking bands, mind', as Ritchie reminded them, though Pete had said it was best not to highlight this fact.

  He had bought Neil Mann several drinks during the course of the evening, after which, Pete assured the members of Thor, he could hardly say anything bad about them, could he?

  "Or if he does," Pete had said, "either he or you lot owe me for six Jack and Cokes."

  Dave purchased the Chronicle when it was still warm from the press, and saved it for band practice that evening.

  "Are we all sitting comfortably?" he said, opening the paper with a flourish and scanning his eyes down the appropriate column. "Right! Here's what the man says. Ahem!" He swallowed. "'.....and then I laughed my socks off when four Vikings walked out on stage, including one with a horned helmet; I couldn't work out if they were a send up - but they were great! They handled the covers well, and their own stuff was surprisingly good. During the middle of a track with the predictable name of 'Valhalla', I was almost tempted to mosh! Nice one, lads - a good start to a great evening!'"

  Ritchie was not at all happy.

  "Makes us look like a right load of divs," he said, approximately once an hour. "I told you we shouldn't dress up. I'm a fucking serious musician, not a fucking comedy act."

  "Ah, hold your noise, man!" Boz said. "We stand out from the crowd
. People will remember us. And the fella says we're great. This is a good review, lads!"

  "Well, I'm not putting it on the MySpace page," said Ritchie.

  Dave was pleased for more reasons than one; if Boz considered them to be doing well he would stay, and not move off to more lucrative jobs to subsidise his other 'bit of this and bits of that' by which he kept a roof over his head. And, of course, a good review like this raised his own profile in front of Ariel, too.

  Dave was hopelessly in love. He was trying not to be, because he felt guilty about Janice, but he was. He didn't know if Ariel felt the same; he prayed she did, but she was so elusive; she was like a beautiful nymph who wafted in and out of his life, weaving spells around him. When she was with him, sprinkling her magic fairy dust his way, he was in heaven. Having sex with her made him feel like the king of the world!

  Dave couldn't think about the future. Until now, always in the back of his mind had been the assumption that his long term future lay with Janice, safe and warm and happy and cosy, with a brother or sister for Harley some day. Home. No more shagging around; he'd been there, done that, and walked away with the lacy thong in his pocket. He wanted love, a meeting of minds, a proper relationship.

  Oh, but oh dear, oh dear, now he wanted that proper relationship to be with Ariel. Oh God, he did. They understood each other, because they were both musicians. Janice had always been great at letting him come and go as he pleased, but she didn't really understand about his dreams. How could she?

  Dave Bentley's head was filled with a whole bunch of stuff, these days; sometimes he thought it would explode with all the activity. There were the new songs that ran through his mind constantly, words and chords twisting in and out of all his other thoughts - his ideas for promoting the band, and reminiscences of times with Ariel which never failed to send an arrow straight to his groin, so sharply, sometimes, that he would groan out loud, in the middle of wheeling along a barrow of bricks at work, or something. Then there was all that warm stuff about Janice and Harley that made him feel so guilty that he had to tuck it safely away where it wouldn't pop out and worry him, usually somewhere in the back of his head behind the ideas-about-the-band section.