Music Man Pt. 03

"He did! That woman was all over him, they spent nights together in his room."

"Zak, you bloody fool, she's a lesbian, and she's got a civil partner. I've met them both, and I know who I believe. And your emails, Zak, Amos never deleted them. You admitted you fabricated the evidence. That 'tart' you mentioned, you know Ged was helping her out. Amos told you."

"She came out of his room looking fucked!"

"A different room, Zak. You know that perfectly well, and I didn't notice it, but she was coming out of Amos's room; the numbers were on the doors. It wasn't even the same girl if you looked closely!

"And that's not the only lying and cheating you've done, is it? What about that Standing Order on Ged's account? You know, the one where you got into Ged's account and moved the bill money he put into it? You put the money into another account using my name. My name, Zak! Then you used the money to pretend you had a good job.

"Coincidence was it that you got the job when your first standing order came in, and you lost it when Ged stopped the order? You really are a lowlife, Zak. We're finished. Go away and leave me alone. I never want to see you again."

"That bastard is suing me!" he stated, as if he had not heard her.

"Are you surprised?" she shot back. "You stole his money, he lost his flat because of you."

"Serves the bugger right," he smiled, and it was not a pleasant sight, "for stealing my woman."

"Fuck off, Zak!" she shouted hotly. "I'm not 'your' woman, and never have been, and it was months after I finished with you when I met Ged. That's another lie - this time to Amos, your best mate, saying Ged took me from you. You've no guts and no morals. I'm sorry I ever met you!"

"You were hot for me as soon as you saw me," Zak was shouting as well, "I bet you never felt hot for him that way!"

"You aren't very bright, are you Zak?" she muttered. "With you it was always just lust - just biology. You've never really had the whole of me. What Ged and I had was fuller, deeper and I'm not sorry to tell you now, that he gave me orgasms like you never did because we were soul mates. And," and here she smiled viciously, "He's bigger than you - in every dimension!"

She couldn't have cared less, nor had she ever noticed any difference in size, but Zak stared at her, his fists clenched at his sides and real anger and shame suffusing his face.

"OK," he spat. "That's how you want it. Don't come crawling back when lover boy tells you to fuck off."

"If you were the very last man on earth," she said with some venom, "I would never come anywhere near you. I would choose anyone - get that Zak - anyone over you."

"You'll not get him," Zak said over his shoulder as he walked out. "I'll see to that." At that he stormed out.

Cassie felt fear. She had to tell Ged of Zak's threat at the very least. He needed to protect himself. She shouted Cheryl and told her she was going to Ged's place. Then realised she did not know where he lived.

Cheryl reminded her that Marie knew where he lived, and she was soon on her way with her younger sister's blessing in her ears.

As she drove out of town into the outer suburbs she noticed the houses getting bigger. Ged's house impressed her, but she was non-plussed by all the cars parked on the long drive and on the roads around.

She made her way to the front door expecting to knock, but found it open and the sound of a party inside. She walked in and arrived at a large room full of people drinking and chatting.

At the far end of the room she saw Ged and her heart leapt, then plummeted as she took in the gorgeous blonde on his arm. They looked as if they belonged together; all their body language said they were an item. She assumed it was an engagement party and that she had lost him.

Then she saw Annette touch his arm and he looked over at her. She panicked and ran. In her car's mirror she saw him come to the front door as she drove out of the grounds. Further down the road she stopped; she was unable to drive through her tears. She had lost him.

Cheryl took one look at her when she arrived in the house and opened her arms. Cassie looked thoroughly woebegone and empty, and once in Cheryl's arms the tears came again.

"So you saw him?" said Cheryl, though it was more of a statement. Cassie was cried out.

"Not to speak to," she said. "I gatecrashed a party, and I think it was an engagement party - he was with a gorgeous woman, she was so pretty, and tall. Blondish, long legs, slender. She was on his arm, it was the look really. I think he's moved on."

Cassie was thoroughly depressed, and took herself off to bed. She lay awake for hours, not really thinking, feeling regret and self-loathing for what she had done. For the first time in her life, she felt she had no future. All that was left was day to day survival.

Next day Cheryl decided that for Cassie's sake they needed to know one way or another if Ged was still free, or engaged to someone else. She found his number in Cassie's mobile phone and called him. He rebuffed her but she phoned back after he cut her off, and then she heard Karin's voice in the background, and hung up.

But Cheryl was an optimist by nature, and she realised that Karin might just be a bedmate rather than a fiancée. She determined to talk to Ged. If he wouldn't talk to her on the phone she would find him and talk in person. She knew he would probably be with his group at the pub on Friday, and resolved to wait until then.

Cheryl urged Cassie to go back to the house and try to see Ged, and hear it from him. She pointed out that Cassie had made a serious mistake not talking to Ged in the first place, and that here she was doing it again.

Cassie saw the wisdom in that; how could she not? So on Monday evening she took her courage in both hands and arrived at the house to find it empty. She tried again on Wednesday and again on Thursday, and then realised he was away for the week. She sighed and gave up. It did not strike her that Ged's 'fiancée' was not in residence either.

Cheryl, however, did not give up. She would carry out her plan, unknown to Cassie. Ged would not escape her. She engaged Cassie as baby-sitter and went with Brian to the pub. The group was playing and Ged was there, though he looked tired. Cheryl wondered where he'd been that week.

By agreement, Brian left when the group finished, and Cheryl, summoning up all her courage went and stood behind Ged, and when he turned he was face to face.

"Please Ged," she said with obvious distress. "I'm very sorry. Please talk with me."

Ged sighed. "What are you drinking?" he asked.

---

Chapter Nineteen

Ged and Cheryl went to a quiet corner of the pub and sat down, Ged sitting on the bench seat which ran the length of the room, and Cheryl opposite him.

"You rang off the second time," stated Ged.

He was not angry; he was not resentful that she had cornered him. He seemed unconcerned, distant.

"I heard your fiancée in the background." she said, looking him in the eye.

"Fiancée?" He seemed perplexed. "I'm not engaged."

"The party on Friday; not an engagement party? Cassie thought it was."

Realisation dawned on his face. "It was a house-warming party. You're thinking of Karin. She furnished the house for me, and wonderfully too. The party was as much a thank you to her as a housewarming."

"Then you're not...?" Cheryl's eyes lit up with hope, and he saw it.

"Not engaged," he said, "but we're sometime lovers." He knew it would upset her, but felt it was a sort of justice.

She was upset for Cassie, but not unduly so. She had a mission, to find our how things stood with Ged with regard to Cassie.

"Well," he said after a pause. "You wanted to see me?"

"Ged, I'm very sorry I did not believe you when you emailed me." she began.

He said nothing.

"It all seemed so cut and dried, the evidence..."

"You do know," Ged cut in, "that after the evidence has been heard in a court, the defence has a chance to counter it?"

She nodded, and felt guilty. Put that way her reaction had been totally wrong.

"A basic human right I think," he went on. "I knew Cassie's temper and her reaction to unfaithfulness, but you, Cheryl; you were always so fair."

Cheryl felt worse. "I can only say how sorry I am. I can see what it's done, my anger at you. I can see what it's done to Cassie. If I'd listened to you, I don't think she would ever have gone down the road she chose."

"So?" Ged asked.

"Before I go on," she said almost shyly, "Can you forgive me? Will you?"

Ged looked at her. She was a good woman, and she was loyal to Cassie, utterly loyal. He knew she had come to him on Cassie's behalf.

"I did that long ago," he said. "I still get angry because of what we have all lost, but let's get on."

"You know why I'm here," she said. "Cassie."

"Yes, I know you're here for her, but I don't know what exactly you want."

"Well, Ged, she's a real mess now. She feels she has no future any more. I'm worried about her, she's sinking into deeper and deeper depression. Everything she thought was true is false.

"The man who she thought cared for her in her distress over you; the man whom she loved because of that care when she thought she had lost you, he turned out to have used her as a means of revenge against you. You know she used to go out with him before you?"

He nodded. "I couldn't work out why she hated the band so much, or come to that why Zak hated me so much, until she told me about him, and that he was a serial cheater. Knowing how she felt about cheating, I didn't worry about him being around while I was away. I never dreamed she'd go back to him. I don't understand that at all."

"Ged, when you first met her, how did you feel?"

"She was simply the most wonderfully beautiful woman I'd ever met. She was my ideal woman. I wanted her from that moment."

"Well," explained Cheryl, "When she first met Zak she fell for him in the same way. She's told me since that it was a biological urge - very primitive. She never had the rapport with him that she had with you. Even after she married him, they never really fitted together. He convinced her that he was a different man now, and she fell for it. Needless to say she is mortified that he took her in a second time."

"I don't follow."

"I think when she fell for you and it was so much deeper and more intimate than with Zak, she was ashamed she had fallen for him before, out of lust. She thought she should have waited - you were so much better for her."

"So what are you asking me?" Ged suspected she was asking him to just go back to her. That would not happen. Her response surprised him.

"She needs to clear up things with you. Obviously now she knows you were innocent she's beating herself up about it. She's going downhill fast now she's seen how she's been abused by Zak. I think she would benefit from talking with you."

Ged was at a loss. He could not see what he could do; how talking with her would help her. He began to suspect that the hidden agenda was she wanted him back.

"I think there is a hidden plan here," he said. "There is no chance we can go back together, if that's what she wants."

"I'm sure that's what she wants." Again Cheryl surprised him, then he remembered how straight and honest she always was.

"But she doesn't know I'm here," she continued. "You know she went to your house three times this last week to see you? It took a lot of courage on her part. She's exhausted."

Ged sat and thought, and Cheryl waited. Eventually, being the man he was, he agreed.

"OK, Cheryl," he said with some resignation. "I can't see how it will help her, but most of our troubles have come about because she did not talk. How do you suggest we do this?"

"How about tomorrow afternoon?" she asked. "Brian and I and the little one are going to his parents for the long weekend. You can have our house. It's almost neutral ground."

"Phone me to confirm," he said and then surprised her again. He stood, came round the table and kissed her cheek.

"See you," he said, and smiled. She knew she had been forgiven. Perhaps he could forgive Cassie as well? The optimist in her speeded her return home.

As soon as she got inside the door she called Cassie.

"Tomorrow afternoon," she enthused, "Ged is coming here. I went to see him at the pub and he's agreed to come here. We won't be here so you'll have some peace."

To Cheryl's surprise Cassie looked apprehensive.

"Don't worry," Cheryl said. "He'll probably give you a hard time, but you can both talk it out. By the way, the party was a housewarming, and he isn't engaged to that woman."

Cassie was surprised and elated at first. Ged might be having flings with other women, but he was not settling with them, at least she hoped not.

However, after psyching herself up three times to go and see her ex-fiancé and failing each time to find him at home, she was not ready or really eager for this, but Cheryl had arranged it and it would happen. She felt now that it was unlikely to do any good.

As she lay in bed she played the events of the past year over and over in her mind. By turns her reaction against Ged horrified and perplexed her. She remembered clearly twice making that solemn promise to Ged to talk things through before making decisions about their lives together.

She remembered just as clearly his injunction not to listen to the press. In self-justification she had been given that additional false 'proof' of his dalliance with Annette and the other girl. It was comprehensive and convincing, but she wished she had examined the photos more closely, for the lie was clear once one looked at the door numbers.

It would have got her wondering and the wondering would have led to questioning, and the questioning might have delayed her enough to talk with him at length before making a decision.

Suddenly she felt resentful. Here she was feeling guilty about the way she had treated Ged, when she was as much a victim of Zak's deception as Ged was. Both of them had suffered terribly. She remembered the days of weeping and depression, those first days when she would not even get out of bed except to struggle to work, she was so distraught.

Yes, Ged had suffered from her intense reaction, and that was what it was, and how she wished she had held off and thought about things, but everyone who saw the pictures and read the emails were convinced he was cheating on her. She remembered words they used - 'callous', 'insensitive', thoughtless', 'selfish', 'heartless'.

All her friends had fallen for Zak's lies, not just she herself. She realised that there had been a lot of pressure on her - well-meaning pressure - to exact revenge on Ged. It was early morning when she eventually slept, and she woke to the sound of Brian and Cheryl and the baby having breakfast and getting ready to go to his parents.

She lay in bed and felt that sinking feeling of fear about the coming meeting. She began to worry that it would do more harm than good. Perhaps it was too early for her, or perhaps he resented Cheryl setting it up. She shrugged; too late now, she could hardly put him off. She wandered round the house, and then went for a walk to fill the time, not being able to settle to anything. At two o'clock the doorbell rang.

--

Ged went home from the Friday meeting with very mixed feelings. He had been unsettled by seeing Cassie at the party after so long, and getting all the feelings he had had when he first met her in the Students' Union.

She looked lost and lonely as she stood in the doorway at the party, and he had automatically gone to her. He thought about that event as he went home and felt resentful that he should be so affected by her, after what she'd done to him and his hopes.

No sooner had he reached home he left again went to see his mother. He was all she had and he knew how lonely she was since his father had died. As he drove there, he went over all the events of the tour, and the remembrance of the feelings he had then, surfaced one again.

Cassie had hurt him very deeply, though now the feelings were now less acute. The bereavement was still there. There were so many things to cause him pain. She had gone to Zak so quickly, she had taken Zak into their flat, for which he was paying, and into their bed, which thankfully had been repossessed by the bailiffs.

As with all such breakdowns in relationships, he needed to know why. As he arrived at his mother's house, it came home to him powerfully how his mother must be feeling the same sense of loss.

After a long chat with her, he drove back home. He did not resent Cheryl's intervention, and was surprised that Cassie had tried to see him while he was in London, indeed that she had tried repeatedly to do so.

He admired her persistence and against all his better judgement warmed towards her. Emotions are difficult to control, and he noticed the feeling and resented it. Indeed resentment was his predominant emotion in general, but if pressed he would not have been able to say about what or whom he was resentful. There was that yawning sense of emptiness, as he thought of their previous life together. There was a sense of futility as he thought of what could have been.

He sat and drank a few whiskies which made him sleepy, and unlike Cassie, he fell deeply asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

After a morning nursing a headache which he ruefully realised he richly deserved, and like Cassie some miles away, being unable to settle to any work, he set off for Cheryl and Brian's and a meeting he dreaded.

There was a scintilla of hope, a hope for something positive from his ex-fiancée, but that hope was thoroughly repressed. He rang the bell.

--

Chapter Twenty

"Hello Ged."

"Hello Cassie."

She had the wildest dream that when she opened the door he would hold his arms out to her and she would fall into them and from then everything would be all right, but of course it did not happen. He stood there with a neutral expression on his face and waited to be invited in. In fact he had seen the message in her face, but couldn't respond.

She stood back and he entered, waiting for her to lead him to the living room, though he had been to the house many times and knew perfectly well where it was. She indicated the armchair, and he appreciated her delicacy in leaving the sofa to herself, allowing him to keep his distance.

"Let's skip the pleasantries," she said. "They'll only be awkward."

He agreed with a nod.

"So," he said. "Do you want to start?"

"Will you let me talk until I finish?" she asked. "Then I'll do the same for you. After that we can ask each other questions. Is that OK?"

Again he nodded, and she steeled herself to begin. He saw it.

"You're going to want to interrupt. Please don't," she began.

It was an aggressive start, but she remembered her sleepless night and still felt weary. He had not been the only one to suffer. It was a relief that he seemed quite quiet and relaxed. Perhaps this would go well.

He thought for a moment how strange it was, Cassie and he talking at a distance who had once been so close, but that was the way of it. He prepared to listen and understand. He felt the strong tug of her beauty but refused to respond to it.

"First of all, I'm humbly asking your forgiveness for breaking my promise to you not to break up without talking it through with you. I accept the blame totally, and it is because of my foolishness in that regard that we are in this mess now."

He smiled and with a gesture accepted her apology and showed he had let it go. She smiled in gratitude.

"I won't try to excuse my behaviour, but I will talk about it later."

She took a breath, as she thought of her next statement.

"I will not apologise for believing the press, though I promised not to, because I didn't believe them - until I saw the emails and extra photos from Wendy, who got them from Amos. We had no way of knowing that Amos had an agenda, as far as we were concerned he was just writing to his girlfriend about the tour. That's what made the emails so convincing. If we'd known Zak was involved as well...