I had expected Gabriel to simply stand at a microphone, but to my surprise he walked over to a specially placed grand piano and pulled up the stool. ‘Lilith Bresson, this one’s for you.’ He effortlessly played a breathtaking, almost classical, sequence of chords. I honestly hadn’t expected him to be this good.
‘Almost an angel,
You took me to heaven on a scheduled flight.
Almost an angel,
Then you broke my heart in two like a creature of the night...’
It was a clever, funny, song that revealed the talent behind the manufactured glamour. Jay and Al sat rapt, proud aunts at a junior piano recital, and I saw the love they had for their charge. I envied him.
‘...Warm, sweet lips and ice-cold kisses
Sucked out my soul and left me wanting more.
Pick up your mail, answer your phone,
Answer my texts, I’m so sick of being alone.
Spread your wings and fly my way,
Be the devil I know for a heavenly day.’
A final skilled flourish on the piano, and the song was finished. Applause thundered around the room, and mine joined it. Gabriel took his bow, and I could see him scouring the audience for my face, looking for my reaction like a tournament knight appealing to his lady. When he caught sight of me standing and clapping, his grin widened and he blew handfuls of kisses in my direction. He leapt from the stage and landed on the first table, to cheers of encouragement from the crowd.
The tables that separated Gabriel from me became stepping stones and he jumped from one to the other, lithe and agile and high on life itself, until he was back at his own seat. He lifted me off my feet, swung me around and kissed me full on the lips and still the applause didn’t stop. Every red-top in the country had its cover story for the next day.
‘So, what we doin’ to celebrate then, sexy?’ Gabriel asked, between mouthfuls from his champagne bottle. He offered me a drink, but I shook my head.
‘Driving, later,’ I explained.
Gabriel’s whole face crumpled. ‘You’re kidding me!’
‘I’ve got somewhere I have to be.’
‘A somewhere, or a someone?’ he asked, with a real edge of hurt to his voice.
I said nothing, and Gabriel put the bottle down. ‘This is something to do with you havin’ a face like fuck earlier, isn’t it?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Anything I can do?’
It was a genuine offer, and for an intensely pleasurable second I envisaged Jay and Al dismembering Coyle in a lively game of tug o’ war, then I looked at Gabriel’s eager, pretty face and suddenly realised exactly what he could do for me, and felt the adrenaline charge around my system and chase away the impotence that had smothered me in these recent weeks. I had to act now, before any thought of repercussion or consequence bit at my heels. I linked my fingers behind Gabriel’s neck, and he gave the smile of a man who knew his luck was in.
‘I take it that’s a ‘yes’?’ he asked.
I gave him a secretive smile in return and kissed his nose. ‘Not here. Five minutes. Meet me in the ladies’, third cubicle down. I’ll tell you more then.’
Chapter Twenty One
Finn
As soon as Blaine left for the airport in the early hours of the morning, Coyle installed himself as Lord Albermarle. He came back on the launch with Henry, bringing with him three bottles of Irish whiskey, five hardcore jazz mags, a gram of coke and a smug bastard grin that heralded trouble.
I had spent two long hours unsuccessfully chasing sleep, and was skilfully combining lethal doses of caffeine and nicotine in the kitchen when the smirking bastard imposed his company on me.
‘Now then, fag – good night, was it? Gobble enough cock to keep you smiling?’ As Henry washed up and did his best to become invisible Coyle pulled up a chair, spinning it so that the back faced me and he could straddle the seat in a perfect display of macho posturing. He took a cigarette from my open packet before asking, ‘She back?’
I took the packet back and lit my twelfth smoke of that shiny new morning. ‘Not yet.’
‘’Yet’?’ Coyle snorted with amusement. ‘Fuck me, you’re sittin’ here waiting for that prick-teasing bitch to come running back to your side like your ugly mutt there?’ He nodded at Bran before leaning back and blowing a smoke ring into the air. ‘Anyway, enough of the small talk. Got a wee present for you - hot off the press,’ he smirked. ‘Called into the newsagent’s to pick up my fags, and look who I found starin’ up at me from the front page?’ He threw that day’s copy of The Herald across the table. ‘Take a look at that, faggot. Then tell me she’s comin’ back to you.’