Sheila’s nice enough to get me a job at a bookshop in another town because she feels so bad about the Winsteads. My license is revoked, obviously, so I purchase a bicycle. It’s miserable to ride it around in a northern December, but I haven’t got much of a choice, have I?

Working at a bookshop has its benefits. For one, I get to keep approximately the same working hours as the rest of the world.

Not that it particularly matters to me. It’s not as if I was keeping regular hours when I was with Dirtshine, and I’ve never exactly had a regular job.

Still, it can be nice to be home by eight instead of midnight. For one, when I get back to my cottage, some of the sheep are still awake and stare at me over the stone wall that separates my cottage’s yard from their paddock.

They still jump it sometimes, the pillocks, but they mostly want to eat the few flowers still growing out front, so we get on all right.

Tonight, one glares at me beadily as I pull up, not breaking eye contact as I get out of the car. He — she? I can’t tell with sheep — keeps glaring as I walk to my front door, opening my mail box on the way, pulling out mostly junk and my latest royalty payment.

I roll my eyes at the thing, because thanks to a lawsuit that I settled, the building I nearly burned down while drunk and high a year and a half ago gets the majority of my earnings. Yes, I know it was my own fault; yes, I know I ought not have nearly caught a building on fire.

But I could still use the money. After losing my bartending job, which was considerably more lucrative than the gig at the bookstore, I had to turn down Gavin’s wedding for lack of funds. I feel fucking rubbish about it, particularly now.

We’ve been talking again, a few times a week even, and it feels good. He’s been my best mate for nearly my whole life, ever since the two of us worked together in grade school to save a cat from the schoolyard bullies who were tormenting it.

Dirtshine’s taking a quick break from work right now, he’s told me. They just finished a massive tour and are going to start recording again after Gavin’s wedding, and after they find a new drummer.

We don’t talk about Dirtshine finding a new drummer. We don’t talk about any of their drummer problems at all. Gavin brings their lack of percussion up as little as possible, and even though I well know that door is fucking closed, anytime he steers close to that conversation I want to stand up, wave my arms in the air, and shout.

Me. It could be me, I’m right fucking here.

Dirtshine was supposed to be the two of us. That’s how it started and that’s how it was supposed to stay, and even though I know perfectly well that everything happened for a reason, it still feels like a betrayal that Gavin and I had the same problem, only he got to keep his life and his band and everything he loved, and I didn’t.

He’s still out there, on massive stages, playing for fans.

I sold my drum kit right after my second stint in rehab, the first one in England, to pay for a bus ticket home. I got far less than I should have for it, and then I spent most of that on smack anyway. Took one more go at rehab before it finally stuck.

Anyway, none of it’s his fault. It’s mine, and though I do want to go to his wedding in a month there’s simply no way I can.

I toss the mail on the kitchen table, between the purple wine stain that’s never going to come out and the scorch marks that I still haven’t dealt with. I’m not sure how to remove either, and frankly, they’re constant reminders of what my problems have cost me.

Any time I want a drink these days, I just look at the kitchen table and the temptation vanishes. I’ve not had a drop in over a month, and believe it or not, that’s a record.

I put the water on, let it boil, make tea, lean against the counter and open junk mail while I drink it. All bullshit. I tear open my latest royalty check, fingers silently crossed.

I just want it to be enough to cover the gap in my rent this month. Even with the bookstore job I’ll come up a bit short, and even though I’ve looked I’ve not found a second job yet. There’s simply nowhere around here to work, and though in theory I could move to a larger city, that comes with its own set of problems.

Not to mention the £5,000 fine that comes with a DUI conviction. My court date’s not for two months yet, but I’ll be properly fucked when it does.

But then I see the amount on the check. I frown. I blink. I look away from it and then back, count the digits that precede the decimal point.

Mother of God, a miracle.

They must have stopped docking my royalties. This will cover my rent. Fuck me, it’ll cover my entire rent near twenty times over.

I could move to a flat where my neighbors aren’t sheep, I could maybe even buy another drum kit and start playing again.

I could go to Gavin’s wedding. I could see the rest of Dirtshine for the first time in a year and a half, apologize in person, see what’s changed. Apparently, Darcy and Trent have started dating, or started admitting to everyone else that they’re together — I know I was usually high but I’m almost certain something was going on there — and that ought to be interesting.

Then another thought stops me short.

I could go to New York.

It’s not the first time I’ve considered it, but it’s the first time it’s been a real possibility. I could go to New York, stay until the royalty check runs out, and look for Frankie until I’ve got to leave.

It could work. Maybe it could work, and at least I’d be doing something about the hole in the pit of my stomach rather than trying to find her using every detail of her life that I can possibly remember, because that’s turned up nothing.

I’ve emailed costume designers all over New York, asking to be put in touch with her, and met with curt dismissals or radio silence, not that I can blame them for wanting to keep her contact information private from a strange man. I’ve found about twenty women named Françoise Strauss on Facebook, and I messaged them one after another until one reported me as a stalker and got my account shut down.

I even called Winstead Manor. I didn’t talk to Alistair — I’m not stupid, I know that would get me nowhere — but I did try to talk my way to their social secretary, said that Frankie had left something of hers behind at the pub and I’d like to contact her.

No dice. No luck anywhere, no matter what I’ve tried, no matter how creative I think I’ve gotten. Frankie may as well have vanished into the ether for all the trace she’s left in my life.

I turn the check over in my hands, thinking.

I’m thinking that I’ve tried to forget about her, get over this American girl who’s impossible to find, but it’s not working. There’s not a day goes by that something doesn’t remind me of her, the way she scrunched her nose when she laughed and her freckles collided with each other, the way her hair rioted around her face and over her shoulders.

Her face the first time I told her we didn’t have appletinis, her face when she told me about her fiancé.

Her face when I nearly kissed her. The way she looked a few nights later when she was inside and Alistair was outside, calling her name and pounding on the door.

I miss her. Desperately. I can’t stop thinking about her, can’t stop coming up with new harebrained ways that I might be able to contact her, tell her I didn’t forget her, that I never called because I’m my own worst enemy all the time.

I want to tell her that destroying her number is what made me finally stop drinking.

I want to tell her that finally, now, I’ve got a reason to try to be a better person.

Going to New York would be fucking stupid. It would be an idiotic waste of money, because it’s a city of eight million or so people and simply wandering the streets looking for one of them is going to get me nowhere.

But I’m already nowhere.

* * *

A week later, it’s settled. For once I’ve been responsible, sat down with a cup of tea, pen, and paper, and written out a budget that accounts for the time until my next royalty check in three months.

It’s a bit of a stretch. The payment was for quite a sum of money, but not so much it’s impossible to spend. Hell, I used to receive much larger checks quite regularly, and I plowed straight through those.

But it’s enough.

Enough for three months of rent at this flat, for starters.

Enough to fly to Los Angeles for a week, rent a cheap hotel room, and watch my best friend marry the love of his life.

The five thousand pounds will have to wait.

And enough to spend two weeks in New York City before that. I know it’s crazy and far-fetched, and I know that I’m fucking unlikely to find her by simply showing up and walking the streets until she pops up in front of me, but I can’t do nothing.

Frankie’s got a hold on me. Still. She did even when she was technically someone else’s, she did when she was briefly mine, and even though she’s gone now, I can hardly think about anything else.

Whatever it is I can do to find her, I’ll do it.