Chapter 11

"She was born in early 2003. We named her Emilie." Skorpa stopped and ran a hand through his hair, avoiding my eyes. Then he pulled his hand out of mine again and folded his arms. "This was a bad idea."

I could see from his haunted expression that he wasn't going to tell me a happy story. I wondered if perhaps his ex-wife wouldn't let him see the girl. I couldn't imagine what it would be like even to have a child, but that had to hurt. I didn't know what to say either but I did my best.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want. But if you do want to talk about it, you can trust me."

"I know that." He got up and began pacing around the room. "She would have been twelve this week."

Would have been? My breath caught in my throat. "Skorpa, what happened?" I whispered.

"She was six. I was supposed to drive them to Mette's parents' house for a visit. Her parents always hated me. They thought I wasn't good enough for her. They were right. Mette and I had a huge fight about her siding with them to keep the peace, and I started drinking. She said something like, 'Go on, drink the whole bottle and pass out.' Then she took Emilie in her own car and they went without me." He was still pacing, and my gaze followed him back and forth across the room.

"If I'd swallowed my stupid temper and just taken them there myself, they'd have been in my Cadillac Escalade. It's a huge four by four, built like a tank. They went in her beat-up old Mini, so when a half-blind old guy who shouldn't have been on the road hit them head on, they didn't have a chance."

"Oh, Skorpa," I groaned. I didn't know if he even realised he had tears running down his face. I got up.

"They said Emilie died instantly. Mette had a head injury and broke both legs, but she survived. The first thing she said to me when she came out of the coma was that it was my fault our daughter was gone, and she never wanted to see me again." He turned away and punched the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster.

"I'm so sorry." I went to him and slid my arms around him. I didn't know what else to do. He was shaking, and for a moment he hugged me back. Then he pushed me away, went into the bathroom, and closed the door. I sat on the bed thinking about what he'd told me, and trying unsuccessfully to imagine the pain of losing a child, and being blamed for it. Skorpa probably blamed himself, without Mette having done so.

I waited a while. He stayed in the bathroom for half an hour, with the shower running for most of that time. When he finally emerged, he wore only a towel and droplets of water ran out of his wet hair.

"I wasn't sure if you'd still be here." He sat down next to me.

"Do you really think I'd leave you alone after what you just told me?" I slid my hand into his.

"I'm okay. Sometimes it's worse than others. Like I said, I don't talk about it. Only Ragnar knows the details, and that's because he scraped my arse off the floor when I overdosed. I'm guessing you read about that part."

"Yes."

"The press said I fell off the wagon again."

I nodded.

"I'm sorry." He forced a smile.

"Whatever are you saying sorry for?"

"Being like this. I'm not great company today."

"That doesn't matter. I'm glad you told me and I hate that you hurt so much. I can't do anything to help, but you can talk to me. I'd like to know more about you."

He grinned now. "There isn't much to tell that the press hasn't already painted a black picture of."

"They paint a black picture of everything. If I believed all that shit, you'd be—"

"A drunk, a drug addict, and a rapist?"

"Exactly, but I know you're not any of those, so tell me something. How'd did you get into music for example?"

"Hell, I'm not sure I can remember that far back." He wrapped his arm around me instead. "I was sixteen. My parents were strict and we lived in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Me and this other kid I knew from school stole a bottle of whiskey from a fuel station and got drunk. After my father stopped beating my arse for it, the police turned up at the door and he let them arrest me. I spent a night in a cell as punishment, while the other kid's dad bailed him out and talked to him instead. The next day, I left home and took a bus to Alborg which was the nearest city. It's up in the north of Denmark. I lived on the streets for a week until I found a factory job and I rented a room. One of my workmates was Bjorn who you might remember was the drummer in the first line-up of the Vikings."

"Yes, I remember. My dad used to listen to your music."

"Thanks for making feel even older."

I laughed. He seemed better already. Perhaps because he had been living with this heartbreak so long, if it became overwhelming it didn't last. Or maybe it really did help having me there.

He told me about how the Vikings got together, and later about meeting Mette. She was friends with a girl their manager was dating, and her parents did their best to interfere when she started seeing Skorpa. Eventually, he showed me a photo in his phone of a little blonde girl with pigtails—Emilie. Then he put the phone away.

"Enough about me. I never tell anyone all that shit."

"I liked hearing it."

"Well, I'd rather hear about you. Do you want to get some food first?"

"Sure."

Skorpa searched for takeaway options on his phone and ordered some Chinese food to be delivered so we didn't have to go out. We didn't leave his room for the rest of the evening, and later we played the new song several times until a guest in the next room banged on the wall. Then we fell into bed. In the morning, Skorpa seemed like he normally did. It was as if telling me about Emilie had helped shake off the unhappy mood he'd been in. I didn't breathe a word of it to any of the others.

A few days' later, we were in some other city in the west of England, and I hung out at the motel with the other girls while the Vikings rehearsed at the club we were playing that night. I went back to the room I shared with Gisela, plugged headphones into my phone, and practised the new song some more. The others didn't know about it yet, so when Gisela and Mildrith came into the room and caught me singing, they were immediately curious.

"What are you singing?" Mildrith asked. "It sounds sort of ballady."

"It's called 'Let it Go.' Skorpa wrote it."

"For us?" Gisela frowned.

"No, for them. I worked on it with him a little bit. It's a duet."

"I can't really imagine you singing a duet with Skorpa. He doesn't do ballads," Mildrith said.

"Well, it works. He wants me to sing it with him at the last show in London."

"And you're going to?" Gisela asked. "That's pretty intense."

"Not really. It's just a song. Anyway, it'll probably be good for our band. Erik and Ragnar are putting drums and bass to it."

"We hardly see you anymore. You haven't spent one night away from him this week," Gisela said.

"And?"

"Are you in love with him?"

"Don't be stupid," I scoffed. "I like his company. We get on well." I glanced at the two of them, both frowning. "And he's hot as hell in bed," I added, laughing as the frowns turned to grimaces.

"You're getting talked about." Mildrith took out her phone and searched for something. She turned it around to show me a picture of Skorpa and me outside the stage entrance of one of the clubs we'd played. We weren't touching each other, but our lips were inches apart and he was gazing at me like he adored me. It was shared on Twitter over a hundred times with various captions: 'Skade and Skorpa romance;' 'Lucky Skorpa;' and 'Skade seduces Skorpa to gain fans.'

"Shit," I muttered. "This is crap."

"There are similar posts about how Brida and Ragnar, and Aethelflaed and Erik always being together. Brida and Ragnar haven't even tried to be discreet. There are pictures of them kissing everywhere you look and comments about how she only let him get into her pants because it'll get her talked about. She says she doesn't give a shit."

I checked my own phone and realised then I had a missed called from Aelswith from an hour earlier. I hadn't noticed because I'd been singing.

"Shit," I said again. "Aelswith called."

"You'd better call her back," Gisela told me. "She'll have seen what people are saying for sure."

"There is good news," Mildrith put in. "Our album's up to number twenty-six. Five places behind the Vikings."

"Yeah, I know." I nodded, and called Aelswith's number. "Let's see what she has to say."