Public Secrets

to get out again as quickly as possible.
“You remember, Johnno.” Brian stepped inside. The smell, gin, sweat, and grease from yesterday’s dinner, reminded him uncomfortably of his own childhood.
“Sure.” Jane nodded briefly to the tall, gangly bass player. He was wearing a diamond on his pinky and sported a dark, fluffy beard. “Come up in the world, haven’t we, Johnno?”
He glanced around the dingy flat. “Some of us.”
“This is Pete Page, our manager.”
“Miss Palmer.” Smooth, thirtyish, Pete offered a white-toothed smile and a manicured hand.
“I’ve heard all about you.” She laid her hand in his, back up, an invitation to lift it to his lips. He released it. “You made our boys stars.”
“I opened a few doors.”
“Performing for the queen, playing on the telly. Got a new album on the charts and a big American tour coming up.” She looked back at Brian. His hair fell nearly to his shoulders. His face was thin and pale and sensitive. Reproductions of it were gracing teenagers’ walls on both sides of the Atlantic as his second album, Complete Devastation , bulleted up the charts. “Got everything you wanted.”
Damned if he’d let her make him feel guilty because he’d made something of himself. “That’s right.”
“Some of us get more than they want.” She tossed her long hair back. The paint on the swingy gold balls she wore at her ears was chipped and peeling. She smiled again, posing a moment. At twenty-four she was a year older than Brian, and considered herself much more savvy. “I’d offer tea, but I wasn’t expecting a party.”

“We didn’t come for tea.” Brian stuck his hands in the wide pockets of his low-riding jeans. The sulky look he’d worn throughout the drive over had hardened. True, he was young, but he’d grown up tough. He had no intention of letting this old, gin-soaked loner make trouble for him. “I didn’t call the law this time, Jane. That’s for old time’s sake. If you keep ringing, keep writing with all your threats and blackmail, believe me I will.”
Her heavily lined eyes narrowed. “You want to put the bobbies on me, you go right ahead, my lad. We’ll see how all your little fans and their stick-in-the-mud parents like reading about how you got me pregnant. About how you deserted me and your poor little baby girl while you’re rolling in money and living high. How would that go over, Mr. Page? Think you could get Bri and the boys another royal command performance?”
“Miss Palmer.” Pete’s voice was smooth and calm. He’d already spent hours considering the ins and outs of the situation. One glance told him he’d wasted his time. The answer here would be money. “I’m sure you don’t want to air your personal business in the press. Nor do I think you should imply desertion when there was none.”
“Ooh. Is he your manager, Brian, or your blinking solicitor?”
“You weren’t pregnant when I left you.”
“Didn’t know I was pregnant!” she shouted and gripped Brian’s black leather vest. “It was two months later when I found out for sure. You were gone by then. I didn’t know where to find you. I could have gotten rid of it.” She clung harder when Brian started to pry her hands off. “I knew people who could have fixed it for me, but I was scared, more scared of that than of having it.”
“So she had a kid.” Johnno sat on the arm of a chair and pulled out a Gauloise which he lit with a heavy gold lighter. In the past two years he’d gotten very comfortable with expensive habits. “That don’t mean it was yours, Bri.”
“It’s his, you freaking fag.”
“My, my.” Unperturbed, Johnno drew on the cigarette, then blew the smoke lightly but directly into her face. “Quite the lady, aren’t we?”
“Back off, Johnno.” Pete’s voice remained low and calm. “Miss Palmer, we’re here to settle this whole matter quietly.”

And that, she thought, was her ace in the hole. “I’ll just bet you’d like to keep it quiet. You know I wasn’t with anybody else back then, Brian.” She leaned into him, letting her breasts press and flatten against his chest. “You remember that Christmas, the last Christmas we were together. We got high and a little crazy. We never used anything. Emma, she’ll be three next September.”
He remembered, though he wished he didn’t. He’d been nineteen and full of music and rage. Someone had brought cocaine and after he’d snorted for the first time he’d felt