Page 102 of The Sound Between Us

24

london grey skies

Seren

The basement flat feels smaller than I remember, the air thin and stale after three days of California sunshine. Everything exactly as I left it—tea-stained mug in the sink, piano gathering dust, stack of books I never got round to reading. But it feels different somehow. Contaminated by memories of Italian coffee machines and golden light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows.

Mrs. Martin left a care package of essentials, and I hate that I needed it more than I should.

The photographers are gone from outside, Dad’s handiwork, no doubt. I can hear him upstairs now, probably on the phone with his publicist, spinning my breakdown into his comeback narrative. “Seren’s taking some well-deserved time to focus on her art,” he’ll be saying. “The family is closer than ever.”

A stack of newspapers sits on the kitchen island upstairs, headlines I can see from the stairwell: “Damon Rogers: ‘My Daughter’s Strength Inspires Me’” and “Rogers Family United in Music.” Of course he’s made this about him.

Three days, I tell myself. You were gone for three bloody days.

But three days was apparently long enough to ruin everything I thought I knew about myself.

Flick appears within an hour of my return, letting herself in through the garden entrance and carrying Thai takeaway.

“Right.” She sets containers on my kitchen counter with practiced efficiency. “Tell me everything.”

I hold up my hand whilst death-squeezing a teabag with the other. “Nothing to tell.”

Her eyebrows shoot up toward her hairline. She’s gone from cotton candy beach waves to mystic violet spirals in the time it’s taken for me to go to LA and crawl back home. “Bollocks. You look like you’ve been hit by a very expensive truck.”

I want to argue, but I catch sight of myself in the reflection of my oven door and realise she’s not wrong. I look hollowed out, scooped clean of essential organs and left to figure out how to function without them.

“I slept with him.” I say it because avoiding it will only make Flick more determined to extract the information.

“How was it?”

“Flick.”

“What? I’m asking for clinical details. Scale of one to ten, did Harrison Carter live up to the fantasy?”

It wasn’t Harrison Carter, I want to say. It was Harry, and that’s the problem.

Instead, I grab plates from the cupboard and focus on the mundane task of serving pad thai whilst my chest caves in on itself.

“It was a mistake,” I say finally.

“A good mistake or a bad mistake?”

“The worst kind. The kind that makes you forget why you were being sensible in the first place.”

Flick studies my face whilst she twirls noodles around her fork. “So what happened? Why are you back here looking half-dead instead of living it up in LA with your pop star boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend. And his other girlfriend has keys to his house.”

“Ah.” Flick’s expression shifts to something more serious. “The classic ‘famous person’s life is a complicated mess’ situation.”

“Exactly. She walked into his bedroom, looking fresh off a catwalk, making it very clear that I was just the latest in a long line of temporary fascinations. And that she wasn’t at all surprised to find me in his bed.”

“Did he explain?”

“He tried. But what’s the point? It’s his life, Flick. This is what dating Harrison Carter looks like—other women with keys, paparazzi, industry politics, the constant performance of being someone worth being seen with.” I pick at my food, appetite non-existent despite not eating properly for days. “I can’t be that person. I won’t become another woman orbiting around his life, fighting for scraps of attention.”

“So you ran.”