Chapter 1

Gerald Smith had no brothers or sisters, and having to amuse himself, had always been into music. His mother told him he used to 'sing' to tunes on the radio before he could talk. When he was four, he wanted to play the piano and his long-suffering father bought him one. He tried to play but became frustrated, so his parents sent him for piano lessons. He learned quickly, and by the time he was 14, he had passed his grade eight piano, and at sixteen his DipABRSM (Diploma of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) for Performance...

At the age of eleven he had asked for an electronic keyboard for his Christmas present. It opened up a whole new set of possibilities – sound effects. With his avid thirst for knowledge he learned about the inner workings of amplifiers, and bought a broken Marshall Amp. with his own money, which he took to pieces, learned the function of each component and rebuilt it. He saved and bought a synthesiser and this took him further.

As a teenager he joined and formed bands in school. His ability to sight-read music made him popular, and he also began to find that girls found him attractive. With the typical insecurity of his age, he thought it was his musicianship that fascinated them. That was true, but he was also a good-looking boy. However, many of the other lads disliked him. He was a geek, and their girls were far too interested in him for their liking.

It was at this time that he began to write songs, setting his own poetry to music. Most of his songs he kept to himself. Those he considered the best were only played by the school bands to which he belonged, and did not make an impression anywhere else.

It was his mother, a hospital nurse, who sat him down 'for a chat'. He was fourteen, about to enter the final two years of high school, and he began by resenting her intervention in his life. Her 'chats' usually comprised her telling him what he should do. He folded his arms across his chest, a gesture not lost on her.

"Don't be like that," she said with a smile.

"Like what?" Surly. Well, he was a teenager and had a stereotype to live down to.

"You know – the folded arms." She continued to smile, with all the confidence of a mother who knows her son loves her to bits.

"What do you want mother?" he asked peevishly, but uncrossed his arms and couldn't help a half grin escaping from his lips.

"I want to know what direction your school work is going to take for these next two years, and then for 'A' levels. I mean you've practically got your DipABRSM. Were you thinking of music or branching out a bit? It's just better to have more strings to your bow."

"Are you going--"

"No, neither your father nor I is going to tell you what to do," she said, reading his thought. "Or even advise you, unless you ask for advice. We're interested in knowing whether you've thought about it."

Now he smiled at her. "You're right Mum, I hadn't thought. Science rather than languages definitely, but I like geography and history as well. I can do all that up to GCSE, but after that it would have to be science – especially physics and electronics. I never thought of music – I can get my Diploma in two years with Miss Turner privately."

Miss Turner was the woman to whom he went for piano lessons.

Eleanor Smith sighed in relief. "See, that wasn't so difficult, was it? You've a good head on your shoulders, Ged. You know that whatever you do, we will support you. I'll bet the electronics is for your music though?"

"It's good to have a clairvoyant mother, mother," he said with an affectionate laugh. "You're right of course."

He did gravitate to Sciences for his last years at high school, and his music took a back seat apart from getting his DipABRSM, as he devoted himself to his school studies. His top grades got him into university where again he concentrated on Physics. He also took courses in computing and electronics gaining a first class honours degree in physics and electronics.

He dabbled in music with friends at university, but his first love was writing poetry and setting it to music. Unlike some bands who put words to music, his songs were composed the other way round, and as a result were thought provoking and deeply evocative. It was for his own enjoyment and satisfaction, so he still kept his songs to himself, and no one else knew of them.

As far as relationships were concerned, he had lost his virginity in High School to a pretty girl who had lost hers a couple of boys before him, and had dumped her current boyfriend for him. Sexually, she seemed as clueless as he was, and so he assiduously researched the whole subject of sex and experimented with his new and enthusiastic girlfriend.

Looking back, the relationship seemed a little calculated to him, but eventually, deciding mutually they had learnt enough from each other and there was nowhere the relationship was going, they split up.

She went back to her previous boyfriend, Lee Preston, who had taken up keyboards as a way of impressing her and getting her back from the geek. When Lee bedded her again he found she had now a wealth of sexual experience she had not had before, and knowing whence this knowledge had come, he hated Ged all the more.

There followed a series of one, two, or three night stands during College. He learned that every girl was different, which intrigued him, but sex was sex whomever one was with and he loved sex as any hormonal teenager would, and it seemed the girls loved his technique.

At university he had already tired of trivial one night stands. He embarked on a relationship with one girl in first year, which lasted the whole academic year. Essentially they had a good deal in common, and the sex came from that. They were friends who provided emotional warmth for each other in their first year away from home. They both knew the relationship was not permanent, and they split up when, being a language student, she went abroad for her second year.

Half way through second year, he fell in with another girl. This time it was lust at first sight; they simply could not get enough of each other's bodies, and they rutted together day after day and night after night. She moved in with him and most of their free time together was spent in bed. He loved the carnal selfishness of their life together. However, they expressed a certain commitment at the outset.

"I'll only fuck you," she said with considerable candour. "There'll be no one else until we split."

He agreed, and he was faithful to his promise. She was not, but it took him three months to find out. He had gone home to see his parents and came back a day early. He went to their favourite club to find her, and was unfortunately successful. As he entered the back street leading to the club door, he heard a noise down an ally, and looking, saw his girl with her jeans and knickers round her ankles and her bare behind on view being roundly tupped by a man he didn't know.

He approached them. She became aware of his presence and gave a little scream. There followed a predictable sequence of communication.

"You some sort of pervert?" the man asked aggressively.

"Ged, it's not what you think," she squeaked, oblivious to the cliché.

"You know him?" the man asked, having paused from his endeavours, though remaining embedded.

"He's my boyfriend."

"Was her boyfriend." Ged spat.

"Please, Ged!"

"You'd have been more convincing if you'd got your cheating cunt off his prick," Ged snarled, reduced to profanity in his outrage, which was unusual for him, with his gift for words.

"Get lost! She's mine now." The man was still buried in her and thus was in no position to make an aggressive move towards Ged.

"You're welcome to her," Ged replied, and then to her: "Your stuff will be in the hall Tiffany, leave your keys on the kitchen table; we're finished."

Gerald had learned something, and it went into a heartfelt song of betrayal. The song wondered about the faithfulness of a sexually greedy woman and the hurt she inflicted. He had himself tested for STDs. He was clean.

He had enjoyed a sexual friendship lasting nearly a year, and a lust-driven relationship which in its sexual expression was deeply selfish. For the remainder of the second year he remained celibate.

He had girl friends, and on occasion one of them would sleep with him, but it would be a hug, a cuddle and real sleep rather than sex. The girls said it was a refreshing change, and Ged felt their love and affection and valued it greatly.

It was two weeks into his third year that he met Cassie. It was a life-changing meeting, and all because he sang the betrayal song in a pub, with some friends who had formed a folk group.

He was sitting in the bar of the Student Union early one Monday evening in October, sketching ideas for a song about a lonely man. The Union was sufficiently far from his flat to make the journey tiresome, and since the bar was practically empty at that time of the day and week, he was less likely to meet any of this friends. The song idea had come to him the night before, and it was pestering him but he couldn't seem to get the hang of it.

"Gerald Smith?" came a female voice.

"Ged," he said without looking up, still intent on the words he had written. "The only person to call me Gerald is my mother when she's pissed at me."

The owner of the female voice gave a little chirping laugh and sat down opposite him. He looked up. If he had wanted to finish the song, looking up was a big mistake.

They say that men are turned on by sight, and women by touch. Whoever 'they' are, they have vastly oversimplified the process of sexual attraction and arousal, but in this case the idea was devastatingly accurate.

Different men find different types of women mesmerisingly beautiful. There are women who are generally agreed by all to be beautiful, but there is a particular beauty which burns itself into a particular man's being and which is unique to each man's vision.

Ged's ideal woman had just sat down in front of him at the table, and the shock was at once deeply shattering and at the same time all embracing and complete.