The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

I bought a round of drinks, then Nat bought one and the room started to fill up, without ever being in danger of getting really full. The other musician, Ralph, arrived with his guitar. He was wearing a checked shirt, canvas trousers and trainers with no laces. ‘Is he here?’ he asked, as he sat down at the table with a pint.

Nat nodded at Suede Man, who was now tapping away at his BlackBerry. ‘He seemed pretty keen, but Hayden sorted him out.’

Ralph seemed gloomily unsurprised and just gulped some beer. ‘Are we ready?’ he asked.

They got up and edged their way through the tables. Most of the audience seemed to be people they knew. A couple of men stood up and said hello. A woman gave a shriek and ran across and put her arms around Hayden. I felt a sharp stab of something that felt like jealousy, but that was ridiculous. How could I be jealous? He didn’t put his arms around her, just a hand on the small of her back, as if to steady her, and for a moment it was as if his hand was on me, not her, and desire snaked through me. This was why I had come. Because even when I wasn’t thinking about Hayden, was refusing to consider him, I was conscious of him.

My body held the memory of him: the night I had spent with him returned to me in sudden flashes—I could be listening to music or eating a sandwich or standing at a bus stop and suddenly I would feel his lips pressed against my shoulder or his hands on me. Even as I acknowledged this, another text arrived and, of course, it was from Neal. It just said: ‘Thinking of you.’ He was thinking of me and I was trying not to think of Hayden and Hayden was—Well, what? He was impenetrable to me.

The three of them took to the stage without any introduction. Nat went to the side and unpacked not the bass guitar I’d been expecting but a battered old double bass. As they arranged the chairs, altered the mike stands and generally sorted themselves out, I saw a change in them. Around the table they had been edgy, scratchy, sniping, but on stage there was an easy familiarity between them. They had the intimacy that only people who have played music together have. They tuned up quickly, Hayden gave a nod and then, without any introduction, they were away.

This was what I had been waiting for. I knew Hayden. The cliché would be that I had ‘been intimate’ with him. I’d been naked with him, I knew his smell and his taste, he had been inside me, I knew the sound he made when he came. We had talked a bit. I had seen him play. And yet I didn’t really feel I knew him at all. He was a musician, but even when I’d seen him at our rehearsals he was constrained, like a huge winged seabird on land. With people like Amos and Neal, he couldn’t be much else. What I wanted was to see him in the air, flying free.

The change was immediate. They started with a country song I didn’t know, and at once I understood that I was in safe hands. They communicated with the occasional glance and nod but mainly you could see that they just trusted each other, like acrobats who know that their partner will always be there to catch them, so that they didn’t even need to look round. Nat was a real presence on the bass, slapping away, enjoying himself, grinning across at Ralph. They were definitely the support. Hayden was up at the front, slightly in a world of his own, eyes mostly half closed. But, even so, he understood that they were behind him, filling in the gaps. The first song finished and there was a burst of applause, shouts, even a few whoops. Hayden’s face relaxed into a smile. He even looked slightly shy.

I glanced at Suede Man, who was doing something with his BlackBerry, then back at the stage and my eyes briefly locked with Hayden’s. He gave me a small slow smile, which sent a peculiar sort of pubescent thrill through me. Having the lead singer in a band smile at you. Singling you out.

When the band struck up the second song I felt an odd twinge of desire for something and it took me a few moments to identify it. It was the longing for a cigarette. It felt wrong somehow to be sitting in a bar, drinking beer, and not have a cigarette between my fingers.

Song followed song and in between there were bits of banter, jokes that sounded like private ones with old friends, raising laughs from particular tables. They played a few of their own songs. I noticed that Ralph wasn’t quite as good as the other two. Did this mean that he was a stand-in? Or perhaps he was a founding member of the band, someone Hayden was never quite able to get rid of. He looked the part, though. I could imagine them on a poster.

But mainly I just enjoyed watching Hayden. When you saw him in a normal house, he was gangly and unkempt. Here on stage he had an odd arresting grace, cradling his guitar in an embrace, his long fingers drooped over the strings. He held the audience. But then, gradually, I began to think of something else as well.

Years and years ago when I was a teenager I had played tennis. I even had a coach—he was in his mid-twenties, more than six feet tall, and had long hair and, of course, I had a crush on him. He taught at a local club. Just occasionally when he was with us he would let go with a proper forehand and the ball would rocket past about a millimetre over the net. It was