‘Remember when Solstice Soul had time off and we used to stay in bed all day?’
She sighed with pleasure. ‘Mmmm. And we’d stagger downstairs to grab another bottle of wine and go back to bed – and then,
when we got hungry, we’d sneak off in the small hours to that all-night shop on the corner and eat curry in bed and fall asleep
just as the dawn was breaking …’
They held each other, smiling, remembering.
‘We could do it all again.’ He ran his fingers down her body. ‘Unless you really want to go back to Fiddlesticks and dance
in the rain.’
‘We did that before, too. Remember? Somewhere in the wilds of Shropshire, wasn’t it? After a gig? In the middle of summer
at about two in the morning? Naked.’
Clancy laughed. ‘God, yes … And then we made love. And we were like drowned rats and afterwards we couldn’t find our clothes,
so we ran back to the van without them …’
She took his face between her hands and kissed him. ‘I don’t think Fiddlesticks will miss us tonight, do you?’
Dancing in the Moonlight
‘If it don’t rain tonight,’ Gwyneth puffed as she and Big Ida trudged across the village green in the rapidly falling darkness,
‘I’m going to shrivel up like me veg. And Pike hates it being hot like this. So do the hens. The cats now, they’re still enjoying
it, but us humans ain’t meant to go without water for this long.’
‘Ah, it’s like being in the Gobby Dessert,’ Big Ida affirmed. ‘Lovely weather for camels.’
Amber, walking with them, smiled in the gloaming. She was so pleased that she’d decided to stay in Fiddlesticks. How could
she ever leave it now? Loving Lewis was a bit of a bummer, of course, but hey, no one had ever promised her that life would
be perfect, had they?
‘It’ll rain,’ Big Ida tipped her head back. ‘Count on it. Leo’s Lightning will see to that.’
Amber also looked up at the sky. It was perfectly clear, with a lemon-slice moon and a sheen of stars. If it was going to
rain it’d be some sort of miracle.
‘We’ll see you later, duck,’ Gwyneth said. ‘When Leo’s in the right place and we do the rain dance. Me and Ida are booked
to spend the evening with Mona Jupp and the Motion gels.’
‘Rather you than me, then,’ Amber giggled. ‘Have a nice time.’
She paused on the rustic bridge and pushed her hair away from her damp face. The temperature didn’t seem to have dropped since
midday. The air was motionless, humid and oppressive. The majority of Fiddlestickers were, like her, still dressed in vests
and shorts.
Leo’s Lightning she’d learned, didn’t involve the usual eating and drinking extravaganza. It all sounded far more pagan, with
the entire village gathering together to ask for rain.
‘Even if you’ve had a really wet summer?’ she’d queried. ‘Wouldn’t that be a bit pointless?’
Gwyneth had looked shocked. ‘Leo don’t just make it rain at the drop of a ’at, duck. It ain’t hit and miss. He knows exactly
what we needs and when. If we’ve ’ad a wet summer, then ’e ’olds back on the old waterworks until we do need it. See, Leo’s
there to guarantee we gets what we needs to make the Plough Night wishes for good crops come true.’
Amber had nodded, still slightly sceptical. ‘But, how? I mean – what about meteorology and weather forecasts and climate change
and global warming and stuff like that?’
Gwyneth had shaken her head sorrowfully at this glaring gap in Amber’s education. ‘All rubbish. Leo is in charge of the weather,
duck, not the likes of that Michael Fish or those dopey girls with long fingernails and no command of the English language
what you gets on the telly these days. It’s preordained in the heavens. In the lap of the gods. If you asks him proper, Leo
measures out exactly the right amount of rain from one Lightning Night to the next. Garn – I thought everyone knew that.’
Amber had looked shamefaced and said she must not have been concentrating on that day at school.
She smiled to herself in the sultry darkness now. Poor old Leo was going to have to rip the skies apart to keep the Fiddlestickers
satisfied tonight.
Amber scanned the crowds sitting late-night picnicking on the parched grass, knowing she was looking for Lewis.
She could see most of the familiar faces – but not his.
The Hayfields mob, out in force, were sitting on tartan rugs, laughing. She could see Win amongst them, and oh yes, Jem, chuckling
and eating – so surely Lewis wouldn’t be far away?
‘Looking for someone?’
‘Yes – no – sort of …’ She smiled at him. ‘And how do you do that? Always manage to creep up on me out of nowhere?’
‘Years of practice, having learned to sneak silently away from jealous lovers.’
‘Show-off.’
He laughed. She hoped he couldn’t hear her heart. Oh, God – he was sooo gorgeous. Was she ever going to be able to simply
look and not touch? Would she turn into another Zillah, resigned to accepting lifelong celibacy because no other man would
measure up to the only one she ever wanted and couldn’t have?
She’d give it a try. She could do no more.
‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t see you for ages. Not since – I didn’t like to—’
‘No, I needed to be on my own. To have time to myself. Just to sort stuff out in my head.’ He looked at her. ‘I appreciate
you keeping your distance. You understand me really well, don’t you?’
‘I’ve learned quite a bit about you, yes.’ Amber felt ridiculously flattered. ‘Enough to know that when you wanted to talk
to me about it you would, and if you didn’t, you wouldn’t. And, especially after our chat in the park at Winterbrook, I know
what this – what Clancy appearing like he did – must mean to you. Too much to take in?’
‘Far too much,’ Lewis sighed. ‘But I’m getting there. He’s a really nice bloke. He’s taking it easy too with the absent-father
stuff – at least he hasn’t suggested he takes me to the zoo or football matches or bloody McDonald’s.’
Amber giggled. ‘And Zillah is so happy, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘She is. Really happy and carefree
for the first time in my life – which, at first, totally pissed me off, but then I thought that was bloody selfish of me.
I’ve always been secure. I know how much she loves me. The love she felt – feels – has always felt for Clancy, is different.’
Amber really, really wanted to cuddle him. She managed not to. ‘And you always wanted to know who he was, and why he wasn’t
around – and now you know everything.’
‘More than I ever imagined. It would make a great weepy film, wouldn’t it? All that time they wasted, loving each other, unable
to love anyone else – and I never knew Ma had been to Oxford or any of that. She had a whole secret life. How amazing is that?
Christ! So much stuff has come tumbling out of the closet …’
‘But you’re OK with it?’
‘Getting there.’ He looked at her. ‘I can understand now, that with a secret as huge as that, the longer you leave it to talk
about, the more impossible it becomes. I suppose if Ma had told me about it all when I was little, it would have simply become
part of my life. I’d’ve accepted it and not thought too much more about it. But she didn’t – and then there was never going
to be a right time.’
‘I think she’s been amazingly brave,’ Amber said. ‘And the way she was with me when I arrived – it all makes sense now. Gwyneth
and Ida and everyone, including me, thought she loathed all your girlfriends and was pathologic-ally jealous of them, whereas
all she really wanted to do was protect them from you.’
‘Cheers.’
Amber shook her head. ‘No, sorry – badly put – but you know what I mean. She knew you looked like Clancy and obviously thought
you were going to behave like him, too. Or at least how she
thought
he’d behaved. Which in turn made her fiercely protective underneath all that dreamy sadness, and no one really knew why.’
Lewis nodded. ‘Yeah – you’re right. And most of it has fallen into place now. But I’ve always been dead proud of
Ma, doing what she did for me, giving me the life she did – now I’m more than proud. And if this doesn’t sound too wet for
words, it is a truly romantic story, isn’t it? Ma and Clancy? They really were made for one another.’
‘Yes, they were,’ Amber said, with a lump in her throat. ‘I hope they spend the rest of their lives making up for the lost
years and being happy. Do you think he’ll move into Chrysalis with her?’
‘No idea. He’s got a place in Henley, which isn’t that far away. Maybe after all those years of living apart they’ll just
sort of move between the two? It’ll be strange for them both, I guess, living together after all this time of having their
own space. Whatever they decide, as long as it’s what they want and they’re together, I’ll be happy.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yeah, honestly,’ he nodded. ‘Mind you, I have told him that if he ever hurts her, then I’ll kill him.’
‘Right – OK – and what did he say to that?’
‘That if he did, then I’d have every right, but that he never, ever will. And I believe him. He worships her. Adores her.’
Lewis laughed. ‘It sounds odd, doesn’t it? Like suddenly I’m the parent, the carer, the protector, anxious that my beloved
offspring should be making the right life choices?’
‘I think it sounds as if you’re a thoroughly nice man, who has been brought up exactly right, with a fair set of values, and
a caring, compassionate and generous heart – which is, after all, why you do the job you do at Hayfields so brilliantly.’
‘Christ!’ Lewis laughed. ‘And that makes me sound like the most boring paragon on the planet!’
‘Oh, no – you’ll never be that.’
‘There is one thing I do regret about all this, though,’ Lewis said wistfully. ‘Just one.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That along with all the other obvious stuff I’ve inherited from Clancy, I haven’t got a bloody musical bone in my
body. I could have made a fortune – not to mention the groupies …’ He sighed, then grinned at her. ‘Anyway, enough about all
that for tonight – there’s something I want to show you.’
He held out his hand but she didn’t take it. Couldn’t. She simply followed him along the side of the stream, skirting the
crowds, past the bridge, ducking under the willows, until they reached a clearing.
‘Lay down.’
‘What?’
‘Lay down,’ he grinned at her. ‘Just do it. Please.’
‘OK, but I didn’t think we had this sort of relationship. And I’ll have you know I’m not the kind of girl who—’
‘Amber –’ he was laughing ‘– shut up and lay down. On your back.’
Giggling, she did and he lay beside her, mere inches away, so that she could feel the warmth of his skin, smell the lemon
of his shampoo and shower gel mingling with the scent of the crushed thyme and baked earth.
‘There,’ he pointed upwards. ‘Isn’t that sensational.’
She stared up at the sky.
It was a vast, never-ending canopy, the deepest blue-black, and the stars, millions of them, were a giant’s throw of glittering,
brilliant, three-dimensional diamonds.
‘There’s nothing – or almost nothing – more beautiful than an August sky,’ Lewis said softly. ‘Nature has all the best shows.’
Amber didn’t speak. It was enough to simply stare upwards at the celestial glory with him beside her. She felt as though her
body was floating towards the sky, that she only had to stretch out a hand and she’d be able to catch the stars in her fingers.
It was as if time and space no longer existed. It was simply stunning: primeval and wondrous and out of this world.
‘Leo is the August constellation,’ Lewis said, also still gazing upwards, ‘both in astronomy and astrology. He’s also, conveniently,
the god of the elements which is why
we have Leo’s Lightning tonight.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ Amber whispered. ‘Do you know, I’ve never looked at the sky like this before. Never seen it. Just taken
it all for granted.’
‘We all do that with familiar things. It’s only when you start to peel back the layers and look at what you’ve got that you
realise …’ he stopped. ‘Yes, well, you know what I mean.’
Amber turned her head to look at him. He was smiling at her, his eyes gentle.
She took a deep breath. ‘Lewis—’
‘Sorry to break up the party,’ a wheedling voice hissed from above them, ‘but I don’t suppose either of you has got a spare
fag?’
‘Bugger off, Slo!’ Lewis groaned, rolling over and sitting up. ‘And no we haven’t.’
Amber sat up too, the moment of astral enchantment shattered.
‘Do you think Martha or any of the Hayfields lot will have a fag?’ Slo looked twitchy. ‘Those bloody do-gooding cousins of
mine have found the stash in the Weasel’s lavs. Flushed the lot. Mean witches.’
‘No one at Hayfields smokes,’ Lewis said, picking dried grass out of his jeans. ‘But if it’s any good to you, I do know Goff
keeps a few cigars tucked away for special occasions.’
‘Does he?’ Slo frowned. ‘Sly old fox! I never knew that. So, ’e has them on him, does he?’
‘Oh, yes. Carries them all the time.’
‘Thanks, young Lewis, you’re a pal’ Slo beamed, marching purposefully away into the darkness.
‘He doesn’t, does he?’ Amber chuckled. ‘Goff, I mean. Keep a few choice Havanas about his person?’
‘Probably not,’ Lewis agreed cheerfully. ‘But he might – and it got rid of Slo, didn’t it? Now, where were we?’
‘I don’t know where you were –’ Martha, the Hayfields housemother, bustled up in a matronly way, looming over
them like a beomoth in the gloom ‘– although I can probably hazard a pretty good guess, but they’re just about to start the
Leo’s Lightning thing proper and Jem won’t do it without you.’ Turning on the heel of her sturdy Mary-Jane’s, she gave Amber
a cursory glance. ‘Sorry, love – duty calls.’
‘Sometimes,’ Lewis grumbled, standing up and brushing the remaining grass from his jeans, ‘I really, really hate this place.’
Amber, itching to join in the jeans-brushing but managing to resist, also stood up. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘No,’ Lewis grinned. ‘I don’t. What about you?’
‘Me? Oh, I hate it so much that I’ve decided to take up Mitzi’s offer of a permanent job, start the day-release course at
college in Winterbrook, stay for the foreseeable future …’