Page 37 of Washed Up

He was famous. He was a famous musician. He’d been telling the truth all along.

How had she not realised? Sally had known for God’s sake. And the way people reacted to him, the way they’d been staring in the pub – they can’t take their eyes off you, what a bloody smooth talker – he could only have been who he said he was. She was an idiot. She was a fool. And now, in just one day, he’d managed to crack open her heart, as she had always suspected he would.

‘Are you okay, Frankie?’ said George, coming over to her.

She wiped her eyes hastily with her sleeve. ‘Yeah, course,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Your eyes,’ he said, pointing.

‘Just the wind,’ she said. ‘From the helicopter.’

George shrugged as if this made perfect sense. He and Harry gave her a little wave practically in unison – they did that – and headed back to the harbour, no doubt whispering all the way about how incredibly cool it had been to have a famous musician on Herm and how lucky they had been to spend time with him.

Meanwhile Frankie sat down in the grass and put her head in her hands.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The door of the hotel banged open so loudly that Sally leaped up from her seat behind the reception desk, eyes wide.

‘Where’s the fire? Oh, it’s you. Good morning.’ She frowned when she saw Frankie’s face. ‘Blimey. Are you okay, Franks?’

‘I need to borrow your phone,’ said Frankie, teeth gritted, hot and sweaty from running straight along the lane from the field, her golden-brown hair no doubt ridiculously enormous and frizzy again.

Sally was clearly trying not to look at The Hair. ‘Woah, calm down. Okay, okay… let me get it. Hold on.’

‘You. Don’t. Understand,’ said Frankie, trying to catch her breath. ‘He left.’

‘What?’ Sally glanced at her watch. ‘The ferry? Did it go early?’

‘No…’ Frankie tried and failed to catch her breath. ‘Helicopter.’

‘You’re making no sense,’ said Sally, coming round to her side of the desk and handing over her mobile. It was much more up to date than Frankie’s old brick of a phone, with a cool psychedelic plastic cover that somehow didn’t have a scratch on it despite chaos following Sally wherever she went.

‘Dylan. Gone. Helicopter,’ said Frankie, still incapable of full speech. It was like all the breath had been sucked from her body.

Sally’s eyes widened. ‘That’s what the noise was?’

‘He really is famous.’

‘Well, duh. Anyone could see that. Didn’t you see that leather waistcoat thing? Who wears that in normal life?’

‘Yeah, I know, but I…’ Frankie grabbed at her side as a stitch kicked in. ‘I didn’t bloody believe him, did I?’

Sally led her over to the sofa in the foyer and pulled her to sit down beside her. ‘What? Why not?’

‘I don’t know,’ wailed Frankie, putting her head in her hands, the phone clutched in her fingers. ‘I thought he was some kind of a wind-up merchant. He could have said any old thing, couldn’t he? How would I know if it was true or not?’

‘Surely you could see it, Franks? He had one of those faces.’

‘What do you mean, “one of those faces”?’

Sally waved a hand. ‘I don’t know. Luminous, somehow. Like he didn’t belong with the rest of us. You know, when someone comes to the hotel who’s famous and everyone starts muttering under their breath. Except with Dylan it was the same even if there was no one else around.’

Frankie glanced across at her with a frown. ‘Are you going to make some sense in a minute?’

Her friend waved a hand again as if it was obvious and Frankie resisted the urge to strangle her. ‘Oh, I don’t know. He was just a whole vibe. Surely you noticed?’

‘Well obviously I didn’t, did I? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’