Solstice

Chapter Seventeen

It was the early hours of the morning when the train pulled into London. Ricky looked out into Paddington Station and noticed that it was still as busy as ever even at that time of the day. He glanced at his watch. It was 2.43am precisely. The train was on time, he thought as he looked up at the boards. He stretched and rolled his head around to try and bring his body back to life. He had tried to sleep on the train but his brain just refused to switch off for any length of time. If he wasn't thinking about Elizabeth, Ricky was running Avalanche's performance through his head. He couldn't shut down even if he wanted to. He had managed to discreetly call ahead to the London management and get a late hotel booking for the night in order to try and get some rest. They had also done their homework and found out where Elizabeth was playing. The Palladium certainly wasn't a small venue. Elizabeth was a much bigger star than the paper had made out. Ricky quickly hailed a cab as soon as he left the station, keeping his head down in case there were any late night revealers or paparazzi hanging around. He had told the management to keep his visit to London low key, but with Nathan's office, nothing was ever low key.

As the cab sped through the London night, Ricky settled his head back onto the leather of the seat and watched the orange glow of the street lamps go past in a blur. Suddenly his head felt heavy and all he wanted to do was close his eyes. The cab driver's voice had blended into an audible blur of noise which Ricky had tuned out around five minutes into the journey. He closed his eyes and let a wave of relaxation flow over him for the first time that day. It was around about 3.00am when the cab pulled up outside the hotel. The sudden jolt awoke Ricky from his impromptu slumber. He stretched and yawned loudly before giving the cab driver his fare and tipping him rather more than he deserved.

The hotel itself was comfortable and clean but stark and somehow uninviting. Everything was white. The bed sheets, the walls, the bathroom, nothing about it make Ricky feel like he was at home. London wasn't exactly home to him anyway. It was a base when he wasn't wandering around the world. It wasn't a home. Sunset Ferry on the other hand felt different. After growing up at the seaside he felt life he had just left home again. He checked his phone and saw that there were already four emails from Nathan reminding him to be back in a day with or without Elizabeth. None of the emails got a reply that night. Ricky just deleted them and threw his phone onto the hard wood bedside table. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face. He knew that she should get some sleep but once again his brain would not let him switch off. Images of Elizabeth flashed through his mind like scenes from his favourite movie. He smiled as he lay down on the bed resting his head on the surprisingly comfortable pillow, letting Elizabeth's smiling face send him into a peaceful sleep.

The sharp shrill of the alarm clock awoke Elizabeth with a start. The sharp pain in her head accompanied with the dull ache in her limbs and sick feeling in her stomach confirmed what she already knew.

"Bloody Pinot Nior..." Elizabeth said to herself as she rolled over onto her back. The bright light resonating from her ceiling chandelier was only causing her head to throb even more. She flopped her arm over her face to try and block it out but then found that, when she tried to place her arm back at her side, she couldn't move it at all.

"Can someone just come in and kill me please?" The singer said to herself again as she tried getting out of bed. Elizabeth eventually rolled herself over and fell onto the floor of the bedroom she hadn't slept in since the night she left Sunset Ferry.

Elizabeth negotiated the stairs carefully placing one hand on the wall and the other on the banister. She surveyed her living room and groaned at the sight of the two empty bottles and chipped glass that lay on the sofa and coffee table respectively. Elizabeth was quite surprised that she had actually managed to get downstairs considering the amount of alcohol that was still in her system. She padded slowly into the kitchen cursing herself for not displaying any sort of self control the previous night. After Avalanche's music video had appeared on her television, Elizabeth had decided to blank out everything that had ever happened in her life.