-15-

 

Ginny took the opportunity to pull on some clothes while Ash was in the kitchen. She debated furnishing him with a pair of sweatpants, not wanting him to sustain burns in intimate places, but actually there was something monstrously endearing about watching him potter about in nothing but a butcher’s apron and a pair of socks. He’d insisted his feet were cold due to the tiles underfoot. He had dressed, much to her disappointment, by the time he served up his creation, and admittedly, he seriously rocked those spray-on jeans and tatty old T-shirt. In place of Danger Mouse, today he was sporting Captain Caveman.

“Breakfast, madam.”

Ginny looked down at the dish, then did a double take of the man who’d delivered it. Definitely Ash, not Jamie Oliver. “Looks good.” She picked up her cutlery and dived right in to the fluffy golden yellow confection. The centre oozed with ham and cheese. “Is this a soufflé?”

He nodded, still waiting apprehensively for her verdict.

“You made soufflé? The man who professes not to be able to cook and who eats reheated curry for breakfast and cold baked beans out of the can is able to make soufflé omelettes with a bad hand?”

“You needn’t sound that incredulous. I might not know how to cook, but I can read and follow instructions. YouTube has the answers to everything.”

She took a bite. “Wow, Ash! This is amazing. It’s so good.” She wolfed down several more bites before holding out a forkful of it for him to try, even though he had one of his own ready to tuck in to.

“Mm, I guess it did come out rather well.”

“Not just well. Incredible.” She chuckled, and waggled her fork at him. “You’re busted now. No more excuses and claiming you’re incompetent in the kitchen.”

“It did get a bit messy in there. Look, don’t tell the guys. It’s not like I want to end up slaving over a hot stove for them. I only cook for the special lady in my life.”

He picked up his fork and dropped it again immediately. “Ow!”

“Damn, are you all right?” Ginny was half out of her chair, before he waved her back down.

“I’m fine. A minor twinge that’s all. Whisking is hard work.”

“You did not whisk this by hand.” She gaped incredulously at him.

Ash nodded. Allowed her to believe for a moment then shook his head instead. “Spook owns every kitchen gadget imaginable. I don’t think most of it has ever seen the light of day. I found an electric hand mixer. I think the vibrations might have been a bit strong.”

“Ah, okay. Remind me not to put any games involving buzzy toys onto the agenda.”

He caught hold of her hand when she reached out to lift her drink and kissed her knuckles. “I wouldn’t mind them, unless they involve Ever Ready Ash. Being fucked by myself would be too weird. However, I was thinking maybe I would try playing guitar this afternoon. Unless you’ve other tasks you’d prefer I focus on. Spook has an acoustic over the studio. I thought I might pluck away on that.”

“That’s okay. You’ve worked pretty hard this morning.”

“You don’t mind not being directly involved? All the tasks we’ve done so far, we’ve worked on together.”

Ginny turned over that fact as she chewed and swallowed. Them working together had helped him to stay focussed and calm. Allowing him to trot off on his own to practise ran the risk of him going off like a rocket again if he fucked up playing songs that ought to be ingrained into his muscle memory. “What about if I joined in? You could give me a lesson.”

“A guitar lesson?”

“Yeah, what other sort of lesson would I mean? I’ve always wanted to know how to play, and I’m a complete novice, so I’ve no preconceptions about how one goes about learning.”

Ash considered with his head cocked to one side. “I’ve never taught anyone. I’ve only ever hung out with guys who were already competent.”

“Didn’t you have lessons?”

“They were one on one, not with a group. The only person there who consistently mucked up was me.”

“I won’t know if you muck up.”

He ate his soufflé in silence for a few moments before agreeing. “But you have to teach me something in return. Okay?”

That involved having an actually communicable skill she could teach. “Like what?”

He shrugged. “What can you do well?”

Having polished off her brunch in record time due to its utter deliciousness, Ginny set her knife and fork aside. She didn’t have any particularly amazing talents like he did. She didn’t play any instruments, and she wasn’t especially artistic. She’d been a competent gymnast in her youth, but she wasn’t about to teach him how to cartwheel or backflip. For one, she wasn’t sure she was still up to doing either of those things herself, and secondly, she didn’t want him to end up with another injury. Other than that, all her skills were pretty mundane. If she could teach him not to lose his phones that might be useful, but mostly the issue there was down to his over-trusting nature when it came to entertaining women of dubious backgrounds. He’d mislaid his phones so often in the past because he spent too much time having intercourse with groupies, and not checking their pockets before they left. Strangely enough, he hadn’t mislaid nearly so many items since they’d begun dating.

“You must have some skills.”

“Well, I’m told I give amazing blowjobs.”

“You do, but that’s not something I need to master.”

“Sure?” She gave him a hard stare through narrowed eyes.

Ash sat back in his chair and laughed. “I know exactly what you’re thinking. I don’t know why you have such an obsession with this. Look, I’ve never blown anyone, and I’ve no intention of doing so.”

“You didn’t wrap your lips around Xane’s dong?” She left her chair and came to sit in his lap.

Ash smiled up at her. “No. Other way around.”

She kind of already knew that. He’d dropped hints their first night together when he’d ranked her efforts as the third on his all-time best blowjobs listing. She’d managed to deduce that his ex-girlfriend Connie was one of the two occupying the hotspots, and that Xane was the other. Though by now, she hoped she’d managed to usurp them. “No reciprocal action?”

“Nope.”

She pressed her thumb to her pursed lips. Ash watched her, a smirk dancing across his face, betraying his amusement over her fascination with his sexual history. “For God’s sakes, just spill it. Tell me. I need to know. All of it, from beginning to end. How it happened, where and when it occurred, and how the heck it even came about.”

She hooked her arms around his neck and waited. Ash sighed and wet his lips. He took a drink and then set it back down.

“Alcohol would be the primary factor. That, and Xane’s an addict and not fussy in any way. Leastways, that was the case back then. He was pretty mucked up. I guess you could say I was too, since I let it happen.”

“So what, you were bored on the tour bus and he said, ‘Shall I blow you?’ and you said, ‘Okay.’”

He shook his head, then kissed the top of her arms. “It was a cold cruel night. Sky like pitch, with nary a hint of moonlight, when the great arch-fiend Xane Geist went prowling door to door seeking out a victim.” He broke off cackling. “I’m sorry. It’s just you’re turning this into a big deal and it isn’t. It’s just something that happened. It probably shouldn’t have done, but everyone makes stupid mistakes.”

“I still want to know.”

“Yeah, I got that.” The muscles of his thighs tensed as he shifted uneasily beneath her. “Okay, just accept that for some excessively complicated and irrelevant reason we—the band—ended up in separate locations. It doesn’t matter to the story other than to know that Xane and I got separated from the rest of them.”

“While on tour?”

He nodded. “Our third or fourth. I’m not sure. They kind of blur into one. Anyway, Xane and I ended up stranded at some pokey backwater hotel. Paul, Spook, and Steve were with the bus; and Elspeth with our Hungarian support act. Knowing we were going to be stuck there a while, we hit the bar.”

“As one does.”

“As one does,” he agreed. “Things went pretty much as you’d imagine. Xane attracts admirers like a magnet. So, roll forward a couple of hours and we end up back in my room accompanied by a couple of lovely ladies.”

“Your room, not Xane’s?”

He crooked an eyebrow as he frowned. “It could be we were sharing a suite. I don’t remember. It’s not really important.”

“You’re right, go on.”

Ash sought her hand and gripped it. “We’re all on the bed making out, the four of us that is, only one of the girls gets a phone call. Suddenly, she’s not quite so into it anymore, and she’s like, ‘Actually, I’ve got to get out of here.’ And she leaves, and her friend leaves with her.”

“Leaving you alone with Mister Horn Dog.”

Hurt flashed through his eyes and he looked down at the floor. “Leaving the pair of us alone on the bed. Xane—he just rolled over, and threaded his fingers through my hair.” He raised his hand to the side of his head in demonstration. “And kissed me. He didn’t stop for a beat. I don’t think there was any conscious thought involved in it. He needed his fix, and I was right there. And for whatever insane reason you care to imagine, I didn’t push him away.”

“He went down on you?”

“He went down on me.” A thread of colour snaked across the ridges of his cheek bones. “When I didn’t leap to reciprocate, he rolled me over and…” Ash clammed up.

“Fucked you,” Ginny mouthed.

Ash closed his eyes and inhaled. Both his cheeks were burning now. “I’m making it sound like it was all down to him, and it wasn’t. I wasn’t coerced. At the time, I was just fine going along with it.” He looked up at her. “It would be wrong of me to pretend it wasn’t good. It was Xane for God’s sakes. The man knows what he’s doing, and he does it well. Maybe too well, because my heart melted a bit and I got slightly crazy and started imagining there was more to it than it was. Just for a few hours, you realise. Long enough for us both to have worn ourselves out, slept, woken, repeated the whole thing, and then roused to reality.

“Elspeth turned up at reception and told us the guys, or rather Paul, had managed to total the bus. He’d rolled it down a goddamn embankment. It’s a miracle the three of them emerged unscathed.”

“You never repeated what happened that night?”

“We never really spoke about it until recently, and then we didn’t really speak about it so much as acknowledge it happened. The crap he pulls on stage is meaningless. He does it to provoke a reaction from the crowd, and because he likes pushing my buttons. I don’t want him, and he doesn’t want me. Are you happy now?”

“Ready for my guitar lesson, I think.” She kissed him on the brow. “I’m glad you told me.” She hopped off his lap and started clearing up their plates ready to take through to the kitchen.

Ash caught hold of her hand. “Why… Why does it matter?”

“It’s a part of your past. I never feel I know that much about you. You don’t say a great deal about your family. Sometimes I think I only know Ash Gore the rock star, not Ash the person.”

“I told you about my birth mum, and Auto.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “You did.”

“It takes time to get to know people well. You can meet my folks at Christmas. There’s no escaping Christmas dinner. That’s unless we need to go to your mum’s? You don’t say a lot about your folks either.”

“We really don’t speak, Ash. My mum’s remarried twice since Dad. I don’t even know where she is right now. Her latest is a hedge fund manager. The last one was a race horse jockey. He was cute but tiny, and way, way too young for her. Also, he loved horses, and mum doesn’t do animals, unless they’re dead and part of a coat.”

Ash made ‘ack’ noises, with his tongue stuck out. That about summed up her opinion too, but her mum was all about money and prestige. She wore fur as a statement about her status, the fact an animal or two had been slaughtered to provide their pelts for her grandstanding meant nothing to her. She’d never been particularly socially aware or empathetic. With her as a role model, it was a miracle she hadn’t made more mistakes in her youth, and she’d made plenty. It was hard to spot your own folly when your mother was cooing over your future prospects, and making out you’d snagged the biggest prize imaginable.

“Was your dad a blunderbuss carrying sociopath?”

Ginny instantly pictured her father in tweed plus fours wearing a flat cap. It was such a ludicrous image it made her laugh out loud. “Nah, he was a joiner by trade, down to earth and practical. He liked the simple things in life, like a take-away on a Friday night, a couple of bevvies down the pub with his mates after work, and competing in the dad’s races on school sports days. Not that mum let him do any of those things. She made him play golf and join the Cricket Club.”

“They don’t sound like an obvious match.”

They’d seemed perfect when she’d been little, but maybe that was how parents seemed to their kids. She’d realised the truth as she’d grown older. “Mum had nothing and came from nothing. When they met, Dad had wheels and cash in his pockets. In her eyes that made him a millionaire. I think she always regretted not holding out for one. That isn’t to say he didn’t do all right. He did.” It explained a lot about why her mother had worked so damn hard to make sure her daughter got the opportunities she missed, and why the results had been so ugly.

“I’ve got it,” Ash said.

“You can teach me how the hell to secure my contacts, so I don’t lose them every time my phone goes walkabout.”

Sure, yeah. She could do that. “Maybe I could just teach you how to spot a thieving bitch. You’re way too trusting.”

 

***

 

Ginny’s first guitar lesson wasn’t entirely what she’d anticipated, in that extracting notes from an instrument didn’t feature for a considerable portion of time. Apparently, the key to success was to look the part. Hence, Ash had her mimic him performing an assortment of rocker stances, almost all of which appeared to involve having the guitar battering her knees or holding it at an angle that made her wrists ache.

“I think your arms must be much longer than mine, none of this is remotely comfortable, and why do I need to wiggle my head around as I play? I feel like a metronome. Can’t we sit down and work on making some actual music?”

He set her up with an acoustic guitar and taught her a few finger positions and how to strum. The problem came when they leapt from that to playing whole sequences of notes. She’d still be trying to figure out where on the fretboard her fingers were supposed to be, and he’d be halfway through the piece. On the upside, contrary to what he’d been claiming for weeks. He could play. In fact, he could play damned well. So sure, he needed to flex his fingers now and then, and even she could tell that he fluffed up sometimes when he segued from teaching her to playing Black Halo numbers, but the situation wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d supposed. The silly fool just expected perfection from himself.

Her lesson forgotten, Ash quickly got lost in the music. It was odd hearing so many familiar tracks without the vocals and drums to support his playing, but her mind filled in the missing components. The day had grown long before Ginny stirred and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Maybe it’s time for a break.” His hands were clearly tiring. Every few bars saw him shaking his hand and stretching his fingers out.

“One last thing,” he insisted. “Please, Gin, I want you to hear this.”

He played. She listened. The piece moved between moments of despair followed by relentless anger, but when he was done, he sat smiling.

“What is that? Is it the piece you’ve been swearing at Xane for being unable to play?”

Ash stood and returned the guitar to its stand. “It’s something I’ve been working on, like you told me to.”

“You mean you wrote it? Are there words?”

“Some.” He turned away from her, massaging his knuckles.

Ginny followed him in heading towards the stairs. “Do I get to hear them?” They clattered down the iron staircase. “It’s not finished, and I don’t sing, but when it’s done, I’ll let you look over them.”

“Cool, but no more work tonight, eh? I think you’ve done enough.”

Outside the studio, Ginny hooked her arm around his as they wandered back up to the main house. “Is that the level of playing you’ve been doing, or is it new? You did a lot, you know.”

“I know.” He put an arm around her shoulder and hugged her close. “It’s far more than I’ve managed before. I don’t know… I didn’t get so frustrated and enraged today while you were listening. It didn’t feel as if I was under the same sort of pressure as when the guys are around. My fist feels like frickin’ iron now, though.”

She saw his hand was curled tight.

“I can still flex them, but, there’s a firework extravaganza going on in there and shooting up my arm.”

Ginny twisted her head to get a clearer look at him. There was a slight glossy sheen to his eyes, but a smile stretched across his face, not a grimace. “I suppose there’s no sense in suggesting some painkillers might help.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Hm. I guess I’ll have to rethink what I was going to cook tonight. I’m not seeing you wielding chopsticks.”

“I can play that,” he joked, and gave her a demo. “In all seriousness, though, I’ve never figured out how to hold those things properly, and I’d prefer my food hot when it reaches my mouth. But Chinese food does sound yum. I don’t suppose you could let me cop out and use a fork.”

“Suppose,” she conceded.

He squeezed her tight. “You’re too good for me. Tomorrow, I’ll ensure you have extra, extra pretty nails, and maybe I’ll cook again.”

He let out an enormous yawn. “Do you mind if I lie down for a bit?”

“Go ahead. I’ll wake you when it’s ready.”

 

***

 

In the end, Ginny ate alone and stowed the leftovers. When she’d attempted to rouse Ash, he’d grunted at her, but failed to stir, and it seemed better to allow him to sleep if that’s what his body needed to recuperate. Food could wait. He’d inevitably want an enormous breakfast anyway. She crept into bed alongside him, and spooned against his back in the wee hours of the morning, having flicked channels on the TV for a while, and dozed over a book. It wasn’t long afterwards, that he sat bolt upright in fear, with sweat beading on his skin.

“We didn’t use any condoms!”

“Huh?” she remarked sleepily, squinting at him in the gloom. “I thought you had a nightmare.”

“In the hot tub, we didn’t use anything.”

“Ash, I’m on the pill,” she said, drawing him back down onto the pillows, and hiking the duvet up around his ears again. “Did you forget?”

“Still.”

“Relax Ash. There’s nothing to worry about. You haven’t just created a little Ash.”

He blinked at her. “You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. Nothing’s a hundred per cent reliable.”

He nodded and kissed her brow. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s true. We should go back to sleep.”

Good plan, she was all onboard with that one. Only a few minutes later, he disturbed her again. He was lying on his back staring up at the ceiling. “Do you want kids?” he asked.

It wasn’t something they’d ever directly discussed, but it wasn’t difficult to infer his feelings about the subject. Having a whole brood of them was part of the fantasy future he’d imagined having with Connie.

“Not right now,” she yawned.

“I didn’t mean this minute. I meant once we’re hitched.”

“Maybe then, yes,” she agreed, while alarm bells rang inside her head, and her heart started pumping like she’d just done a two-hour workout session in the gym. She bit her tongue and kept her eyes tightly closed, praying he didn’t turn that odd little statement into a formal proposal. If he did that, then there’d be no more delaying that huge heart to heart they still needed to have. She knew continuing to put it off was a risk, but these last few days, he’d been doing so well, and she hadn’t wanted to knock the wind out of his sails or risk their relationship. Truthfully, she’d expected more forward motion by now on those aspects of her past that required attention. She’d have to call again tomorrow and check that the nudging had taken place.

She turned onto her side, facing away from him, but Ash snuggled up to her back. “I love you, Penfold. I didn’t ever think I’d feel like this again, but you made it happen.”

“I’ve barely done anything.” Was the second part in reference to love, or were they talking about his future with the band? “Didn’t I mention I’d rather be Jeopardy Mouse?”

“But D.M. and Jeopardy Mouse always fight, whereas Danger Mouse and Penfold are a team.”

“She’s sexier.”

“Yeah, I know… I know, but—”

“One without the other is like strawberries without fish fingers and custard—”

“—fish paste and broccoli,” he corrected her. “You’re mixing your fandoms.”

“Yeah, well none of those things actually go with one another.”

“Have you tried them?”

He had to be joking. “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

Ash released a huge sigh, of what sounded like relief. “Phew, that sorts breakfast out, then. I was really struggling with what I ought to offer. I didn’t want to serve you plain old eggs again. The omelettes were super messy and Spook’s back tomorrow. I might not have minded the idea of him murderlizing me a couple of days ago, but I’d rather he didn’t now.”

“Actually, I prefer my strawberries with cream.”

Ash settled himself more comfortably again. “No probs, I can fold the fish paste and broccoli into it.”

Bleurk…bleurk…bleurk! Never mind Spook ending him. If Ash served up that crap, she’d do it herself.