Chapter Twenty-Six
ALICE
There was no undoing the damage that had been done. A fuse had been lit behind Alice, propelling her involuntarily to a land far, far away, neither home nor L.A., the city she’d left behind. She was a circus cannonball now with not a horizon in sight – let alone a horizontal net.
The shock smarted. For as she totted up the weeks in her head, it was clear their mutual affection for River had dovetailed, at precisely the time he’d assured her – hell, she’d even assured herself – that the-thing-that-was-never-a-thing-with-Georgina – was well and truly over.
She had to get away and she had to get away fast, before he suspected a thing, before her heart attempted to sweet talk her into the kind of oblivion that would physically break it in the end. How wrong she had got it coming back to Glastonbury. You couldn’t run away from your problems. Maybe in one guise, but they’d only show up again in another.
She’d continued to clean the upstairs in Georgina’s absence, continued to lavish her false smile on the customers, continued to transport Great Gatsbys and Coco Fizzes, Sea Breezes and Little Tickles, Tors In The Mist, Avalon Ambers and a solitary Magical Mañana, all the while wondering how she’d got her life so very, very wrong. Most people started off with the rough ride, striving for betterment, fuelled by the kind of desire that only comes from the contrast of knowing hardship like a big brother. By the standards of Alice’s upbringing she should be married to Prince bloody Harry by now. Which wasn’t far off the grand plans Mummy had had for her.
Instead she was stuffing her few and increasingly threadbare belongings into her case, hoping against hope that River wouldn’t stir next door in his bedroom, and that his Uncle Tony’s snores would drown out the trundle of her suitcase wheels as it snaked its way out of the campsite, so that Aunt Sheba wouldn’t be on her proverbial case. Three am seemed a pretty safe bet, even if – as Heather had recently informed her – there was markedly less prana in the atmosphere at said hour, hence the increased risk of a heart attack.
Some twenty minutes later and she had somehow managed to pull it off, nobody any the wiser until sunrise. The taxi greeted her at the top of the driveway and she breathed a sigh of relief to see the driver was a woman: one less thing to worry about in the dead of the night.
“Am I right in thinking you’re wanting me to take you to Bath station?” the driver quizzed her.
It was all Alice could do to nod. If she spoke, the tears would match her word for word.
“But it’s pitch black, well, more like morning really,” the driver pressed her again for her reassurance, adding one of those annoying Australian question marks which really needn’t hang in the air as decoration.
“Yes please, I’ve got an early train to catch.”
“The first of the day by my reckoning,” the driver said as she mirror-signal-manoeuvred, loop-the-looped and headed back into the town. “We’ll go the scenic route.”
Great – in other words one last glimpse of The Cocktail Bar, one last pang of the stomach as they passed by all that she was leaving behind.
They drove in silence initially until the driver asked her if she’d mind a little music.
“No, no, you go ahead, be my guest.”
“Well, technically you’re mine, so I don’t want to play something that might assault your ears. What with you being a musician and all…”
“Oh, so you recognise me.”
“It’s hard not to with Avalonia being one of my favourite bands.” She let out a strange snigger. “But I promise not to get star struck, Alice – may I call your Alice? – I’m kinda used to ferrying the big names about. I’ve had Björk and her tatty hair knots, that Heather Small from M People, Ana Matronic out of the Scissor Sisters… her real name’s Ana Lynch, did you know? Then, who else, let me see… Ant and Dec… even old Kanye in the back of my cab over the years. So no biggie when it comes to discretion, I won’t be tipping off the press.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know.”
“De nada, love.”
“Ant and Dec though, really?”
“Oh yeah, well they needed a trip to the supermarket, were glamping it up in the VIP fields at the festival, like.”
“Oh right, yes. I suppose the festival attracts all sorts.”
“Certainly does.”
“Stop!”
“But we’re not quite in Bath yet, pet.”
“Please, sorry, stop here, just a short while. I need to write a note. I can’t leave it like this. Not after all he’s done to help me.”
“Whatever you say, nothing to do with me. You see to your business.” The driver pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road and tugged at the handbrake. “I can’t stop the metre running though no more than I can stop the Earth spinning, just so’s you’re aware.”
“No, it’s all right, it’s all right. This won’t take long. But do you have some paper, a pen?” Alice felt herself getting more flustered by the second, hardly helped by the random tidbits of gossip being involuntarily thrown her way, as if she were some kind of starved seagull.
“Course… here you go.” The driver twisted her bulky frame awkwardly, showing off an impressive neck tattoo, as well as an array of gold hoop earrings straight out of an Argos catalogue, proportionately decreasing in size as they ran down her earlobe. She handed Alice a notepad and pen.
Alice scribbled the first words that came into her head, hardly poetic at this time of the morning, but better than vanishing without a trace of an explanation.
“I’ll be fifty-nine seconds, literally,” she said, tearing the paper with its taxi details off the pad and opening the door.
“No probs, but how about some music? I’ll get the CD ready while you’re doing your thing.”
This woman was seriously something else at three forty-five am.
“I dunno… um… err… what about some Sting?”
Hardly her favourite, despite singing his praises to Heather, but bizarrely he was the first artist to pop into her head.
“Your luck’s in.”
Alice smiled wanly at the back of her head as the driver lunged at the glove box compartment and busied herself rifling through her musical collection. She stepped onto the kerb and walked the few metres behind her, past the organic bakery, to River’s bar, took a deep breath and then slid the paper under the door, immediately berating herself thereafter that Georgina might well return to work within hours, the first to place her grubby mitts on it.
She ran back to the cab only to be welcomed by the beats of The Police and Every Breath You Take, which serenaded her in an irritatingly timely fashion. The driver began to whistle along and Alice closed her eyes, trying in vain to focus on the woman in front of her and her tragic middle-aged impediment, as opposed to Georgina and her growing stomach. In any other circumstances this would definitely not be preferable.
Somehow it must have worked though, because when she opened her eyes it was to the site of the lush green hills of Peasedown St John, basked in a pretty pink sunrise, and not long after, the trickle of Georgian terraced houses and Bed & Breakfasts, witnessing her arrival into the glorious city of Bath.
“Almost there. I must say, I for one can’t wait – gonna treat myself to a fry-up in one of the city cafs before I head back to Glasters.”
“Sounds great,” Alice lied and again she tried to focus on anything but the kind of subject which threatened to evict the contents of her stomach.
“Now are you one hundred percent sure you’re doing the right thing?”
“I beg your pardon?” Alice wasn’t sure how much more of the driver’s tiresome quirks she could take.
“Look, far be it for me to interfere, and what is spoken in this taxi, stays in this taxi. From Dec to Kanye, Ana Matronic to Alice, Joe Bloggs to The Queen… should I ever be lucky enough to have her grace my behind.”
For almost five am this was beyond painful.
“What I’m trying to establishment, love, is are you sure you won’t change your mind about running away from him?”
“How did you… I mean, running away from who? I’m not even running away!” Alice tried in vain to reassure the both of them, completely overlooking her giveaway high pitched voice, now on the brink of a screech.
“Okay, fair dos, I see the subject’s off limits.” The driver held her chubby hands up and shook her head in defeat. “All the best to you, I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Yeah, thanks, same to you… no don’t bother, it’s okay, I’ve got this.” Alice held up her own hand to stop her chauffeur from heaving her weight out of the seat to help her with her luggage, and went to the boot to do the honours solo.
A round of completely unnecessary bon voyage beeps later and the mysterious woman, whose name had never been revealed, was presumably off for her Full English Breakfast in a greasy spoon, leaving Alice to feel equally full – of paranoia, fear, guilt, regret, and just about every other lower spectrum emotion one could conjure up besides, as she made her way to platform one.