Pieces // H.S

Chapter 27: Jane: You can't repeat the past

I had just forgiven my stalker. That wasn’t part of the plan of coming here. My plan was to scarper A.S.A.P. Instead I ended turning our conversation into a mushy sentimental load of rubbish. I always compared people to books: it did not do me any favours.

“What day is it?” He asked. Simple question, but I faffed to answer it.

“Er… twenty-third… wait no it’s midnight, twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve. You’ve been in there for a long time. Come out for Christmas? Please. If not for yourself, for your poor mum. Or Sergeant Lonsdale. It’s his first baby’s first Christmas.” Everyone wanted Sergeant Lonsdale to be sent home, and switched to a different case, but Chief Inspector Lansdown wouldn’t let him go. You can probably guess that he doesn’t have any children and resents the fact.

“Are there a lot of people out there?”

“Are you scared of people? A multi-millionaire pop-star slash socialite? Huh, well, there’s about four people you don’t know: Sergeant Lonsdale, Chief Inspector Landown, Lindsay and Jenkins. They’re all with the police. Louis is here, he came back about an hour ago, but promptly fell asleep. Your Mum and Stepdad are camping in a tent like right next to me. Niall came back as well, after he dropped Felicity home. That just leaves me. Oh, and the press, but they’re sitting outside your front gate.”

“I don’t exactly look great. I can’t look like this.”

“You’re so vain it’s funny. If you come out now, then no one will see you. Well, just me. I don’t count though, I look bad all the time.”

I heard the sound of a large metal structure screech away from the door. The bolt lifted making his mother stirr. He was right. He did look a state, but I was still glad to see his face.

“There. See, I do look horrible. I seriously need a shower…”

“Shh! You’ll wake everyone!”I said cutting off his moaning. He carefully stepped over all his visitors who didn’t have tents (Niall and Louis) and the tent wires. I wasn’t sure whether to follow him until he waved to me to come through the back door.

Firstly, I forgive my stalker. Then I go into his house. What was I thinking? He was a certified nutter! He locked himself in his shed for nearly a month. However, my good nature made me wait in his living room while he ran upstairs to shower.

He had a few photos on his mantelpiece below a large mirror. One photo was of his old school friends. The other was of his parents, his sister and himself. They were on a family holiday in a hot country. I smiled. They all looked so happy and perfect. If you looked at any of my family photos, my Mum would be frowning and my dad would look more worried than a professional worrier. I would look like an ugly child who wanted to go home.

I wandered around the front of his house into the kitchen. Fragments of hardware and wires lay all over the worktop and flooring. A hammer lay at the side. I picked up the pieces of glass and hardware off of the floor and laid them by the hammer. He had smashed up the expensive laptop, phone and ios devices. It felt weird in his house. One part was perfectly in order the other parts had been completely messed up. Bits of washing up lay in the sink where a dripping tap had covered them in a small amount of water. I put his plates and things in the dishwasher, and made it wash them. I didn’t like him enough to bother to hand wash them for him.

“What am I going to do, Jane? I have no A levels or qualifications, no future in music. What can I do?” He called down the stairs. I immediately stopped messing in his kitchen and tried to think about his questions.

“If you’re lonely, you could go back on the dating scene. That would get you fame and money. You don’t need A levels to be famous. You can still sing. You could get help from someone, launch your career as a solo artist. You could get lessons, or go to night school. Learn something completely different…” I was just making up random stuff. How should I know? I had only met him a few times. He seemed to take my ideas seriously.

“Could you help me? Like teach me how to read music and stuff, if you have time at some point.”

I suppose I would have some spare time seeing as Felicity and Jade would be out of action for a while. Wouldn’t this be like teaching the blind to see, though? He does have some musical talent, I could just manipulate it so he could see the sounds with the notes.

“Yes, I suppose I could. You should come round at some point, but call first. Security won’t let you anywhere near at the moment, Matthew went over the top about that whole situation.” I wondered he was doing for Christmas, because he couldn’t be left alone, not in this state. “You will go with your Mum and spend Christmas with her, won’t you?”

“I don’t know, I don’t feel very Christmassy at the moment.” He sounded cheerful enough, but he might be very bipolar and go crackers again tomorrow.

“You need to go with her. Spending Christmas alone would be dangerous. If you won’t go with her, you can come with me, to my Aunt’s. My Uncle would like to see you again. You remember him, Peter Coles?”

“Of course I do. That’s very kind of you. I’ll see.”

I didn’t mind inviting him to my Aunt’s. She was desperate to meet one of my ‘famous friends’. I hoped he wouldn’t have to come, though. My family are very boring, like me. They can talk for hours about stuff you couldn’t care less about.

“You know why people really like your music,” Here we go again, a whole lecture on how I was lucky that I have the background I do. “It’s because people want something harder, more serious. You have a beautiful member, a thick member and a hard member…”

“Ha! You think I’m hard! You need to get out more. I think cold is a better adjective.”

“As I was saying… People don’t want our happy, poptastic songs. They want your variety of pop, acoustic and hard electro beats. You have your fingers in many pies… How come you didn’t think I would describe you as beautiful or thick?”

“You obviously think Felicity is thick, because you basically targeted her. Jade’s obviously the beautiful one, and people described me as hard in the press: ‘hard but sweet and childlike’. Bit of an oxymoron, don’t you think?” I take offence very quickly, but I couldn’t snap at Harry. Especially with what he had already been through today. “I see what you mean, though. Trust me, I didn’t set out to turn out famous like this.” He hopped down the stairs with wet curly hair covering his eyes. He was just like child. I forgot how short he was. His childlike qualities soon disappeared as I glanced down his arms which were covered in weird tattoos. Everyone my age knew that he had more tattoos all the way up and down his body.

“People don’t like tattoos." I commented "We did a user poll, because Jade was going to get one done, then she didn’t because our listeners didn’t like them. Our fans and listeners do genuinely mean alot to us.” We heard people stir in the garden, so I told him to go outside and prove that he had unlocked himself, and that they could all go home for Christmas. Meanwhile, I slipped off before the press could get a reaction from me.

A/N: Sorry, bit of a boring chapter...

**Coming Soon: Family and other animals**