‘It’s ok. I quite like the burn.’
Ryan knocks the honey coloured liquid back in one and hands it straight back for a refill.
Something’s definitely bothering him. At the risk of annoying the life out of him, I don’t dare ask.
A low buzzing sound catches my attention, patting the back pocket of my pencil skirt I try to locate my phone. The screen is black and silent. Not mine then.
The low hum of the relentless vibration continues. I eye Ryan’s pocket, but he does nothing to acknowledge it.
When it rings for the fourth time I have to say something. ‘Are you going to get that? It could be important.’
‘It’s not, trust me.’ He takes another mouthful from his rapidly depleting second glass, before removing his phone and switching it off.
Try as I might, I can’t quite catch a glimpse of the caller identity.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
RYAN
Four large whiskeys finally takes the edge off my unease. Jayden wasn’t joking when he said Dad wanted to talk to me. My father’s calls have been relentless for the past forty-eight hours.
I’m only grateful I’m this side of the Atlantic, because it wouldn’t be the first time he’s turned up at my door, a drunken howling mess. There’s no way he’d arrive here.
For a man who was certain fleeing the country was going to solve all our problems, he sure made a terrible job of acting like it. He promised us the all American dream, yet he abandoned us the second we got there.
Jayden and I slept rough for months because he dragged us there on the promise of a home at his sister’s ranch. He went on the missing list the second we landed and her hospitality came to an abrupt end shortly afterwards. We decided there and then if we were going to make it, we had to do it by ourselves, whatever it took.
Months later, when I was busking near the subway, a talent scout approached with an offer. Wary to trust anyone, I immediately refused.
The next day, he returned with double his original offer. Jayden was with me the second time.
Sleeping rough changes a person. Hardens you in ways that can’t be imagined. Any offer of kindness always had a cost. So again, I refused.
The following week the same man arrived with another suit in tow and after a particularly rough night on the harsh streets of LA, I agreed to go for coffee with them just to get a break from the elements.
The other guy was Richard Lambert, CEO of Diamond Records. He didn’t appreciate having to slum in it in the roughest part of the city. Not when people usually snatched his hand off for an offer from his company. His offer was genuine. The scout saw something in me that no one else had before. Well, no one apart from Sasha.
It was a case of right place, right time.
But it should never have had to be.
The other teenagers roughing it on the streets alongside us were orphans, or runaways, all with pasts way crueller than ours. We’d already lost our mother, but for our dad to drag us to another country and then simply abandon us was abominable.
If he’d have left us in Ireland we might have had to lie low from the criminals he was involved with but surely that would have been easier than the alternative?
At least in Ireland I had Sasha. And her parents were the best kind. I know without a shadow of a doubt that Mrs Sexton would not have thrown us out. She might not have let me bunk in with her daughter, but she’d never have seen us on the streets the way our own family did.
When my debut album took the world by storm the following year, Dad reappeared in our lives, livid we hadn’t kept a low profile as he demanded, barely acknowledging the way he abandoned us or the stardom we’d achieved.
After a blazing row, he fucked off again for another eighteen months. When he returned the next time he was desperately apologetic with a million excuses for his absence, none of which justified any of it. He claimed he had no idea his sister had thrown us out until it was too late and he had no way of contacting us.
I set him up in a nice detached house in one of the wealthier suburbs and that’s when the drinking began again.
Over the years his behaviour only served to grow progressively more aggressive and unpredictable. Usually, I’m all about second chances. Especially since I just got my own with the only woman I’ve ever really felt anything for. But unless he commits to rehab, I can’t let him back in my life. Been there, done that. Too many times.
Through multiple slurred gargling messages, he’s insisting it’s urgent this time. Apparently there’s some stuff he needs to get off his chest.
I’ve heard it a million times before. It’s always the same ending. Every time I think he might open up to me, to finally admit what the fuck happened to him, to all of us, he shakes his head, clams up and hits the bottle again.
