FF Lyn Dowland - Distance Learning

The quest for fame has kept Alex Palmer focused on her concert pianist career and nothing else. Seeking to spread her acclaim beyond her native Great Britain, she eagerly agrees to act as a last minute substitute performer at a star-studded Hollywood gala and is immediately drawn to starlet Joanne Davison.
Both women believe they have good reason to keep any hint of a relationship a secret, especially when long distances challenge its success. But tragedy pulls Jo to Alex’s side—and neither of them realize that together they are now a target for more dangerous things than gossip.

Lyn Dowland debuts with a roller coaster ride of dangerous longing and breathless romance.



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Prelude

It was never part of the plan to be dependent upon anyone. Freed from the restrictions of her childhood and the expectations of parents, Alex had expected never to need anybody ever again. She had worked for this, striven not to have to lean on anyone, but the resolve had crept beneath her skin becoming a hidden mantra for self-sufficiency to the point of isolation.

Perhaps it was not entirely self-induced. Everyone had always presumed she was independent. But it had become a necessity. She had yet to find out why. Mistakenly, others had confused the ability to spend hours on her own for resourceful self-reliance. But true independence worked only when there was the power of choice.

It was misguided of her parents to place her on her own with unknown host families on childhood tours in other countries when she had not been old enough to know anything much. That was frightening to her. Not to speak the same language or understand strange, boisterous children and to be at an address she could neither find her way to or from without being driven in a car that reeked of unfamiliarity.

Alex was painfully shy at that stage. They had confused the ability to spend happy hours in her own company with the reluctance to spend uncomfortable moments struggling to communicate with other people. And perhaps it was her mistake too. She had pretended not to be like that, sometimes forcing an unnatural gregariousness to cover herself, although mostly only when in the safety of close friends.

The error made her withdraw and hide. The foreign families must have thought she was equally impenetrable. Sullen, her nose sunk in the pages of some book or other, an uncommunicative child whose fingers forever fidgeted, while longing to be somewhere safe, familiar. Actually hiding in the book to be away from prying eyes and inquiring words. Wanting to be left alone.

Thank goodness that was no longer an issue. That was in the distant past. Although some socializing was often necessary, at least now she could leave and return to solitude.

At least there is an adult choice now.

Chapter One

The Late Call in January

“Hi darling, it’s me.”

Josh’s voice purred with its habitual warmth down the receiver, raising the temperature of a flat, post-Christmas night. Although it was soft, intentionally appealing, it was a voice that betrayed a touch of insincerity and on this particular night it was simply too late to be calling; Alex was far too tired to be playing his game.

“You’re past my curfew. It’s gone ten thirty.” Her vain attempts at lightheartedness fell coldly across the ether.

“Yes I know. You sound sleepy.”

“I am…sorry.” It was not a heartfelt apology. Again, he managed to turn his intrusion around without fail, so that she felt the need to apologize. Disgruntled, she reached for a mug from the cupboard.

“It’s just a couple of pieces of news I thought you’d want to hear, about the tour. Make yourself a cuppa and bear with me for a moment.”

This apparent kindness caused her to scowl into thin air, forever hating that he knew her well enough to guess her actions so easily. “Aha. Go on.” But do we have to do this now?

“Everything’s finalized, including the Victoria arrangements. You’ll simply love the ferry, it’s spectacular.”

I know Josh, you’ve said so already. “Great, thanks, I will…and?” A helpless yawn overcame her feeble efforts at being approximately polite; a wayward piece of hair fell across her face causing her to juggle the mug and the handset. “Really, I am sorry. It’s just that I’ve been practicing for hours.”

She transferred him to the speaker, bracing herself. He was leading up to something, perhaps paving the way for a disappointment.

“And that always makes you grouchy. Believe me, I know! We’ve secured one of the suites at the first hotel after all, despite the Oscars clash. I don’t know what the delay was, and they’re finishing off the arrangements for the Steinway and…something more, that is going to interest you. Alex, stop yawning! I’ve just had another call from the fixer and it turns out you have more interest over there than we realized, needing you for a last-minute booking. Pay attention now…”

She stopped what she was doing, biting her lip at being turned into the obedient schoolgirl.

“…they want you for two stints as guest pianist at…wait for it…the Post-Awards Party, coinciding with your first available night. I don’t know what strings she pulled.”

Suddenly Alex was upright, alert. The mug fell from her grasp, on the cold, hard tiles, along with her apathy. Okay Josh, now you have my full attention.

“What was that crash?”

“Oh! Um, nothing vital. You are joking?”

“Would I, about something like that? Fabulous, isn’t it?”

“Which one?”

“Oscars of course, you fool. It’s massive.”

“But surely that was fixed ages ago?”

“Of course. However they’ve pulled the plug on someone at the last minute. Some scandal in the papers, a sordid affair, rehab, so I hear, I don’t know.”

“Who could that have been?”

“No idea. They weren’t opening up. But I suspect it’s Charlie.”

“That’s not unlikely. Last time I saw him he could barely stand up.”

“Exactly.”

“Will you call them back right away? I wouldn’t want to appear to be stalling. And you’re quite sure it fits?”

“Absolutely, darling. Just needed to double-check with you. I’ve told them it should be fine. I know you adore all that, the film world. So I must love you and leave you then. I’ll e-mail through the draft schedule by the morning…I’ll be up late tonight.”

Guilt irritated her conscience. He had a good reason to be calling after all. “That’s terrific. You’re a star.”

“Sweetheart, you’re the star. I’m just the dogsbody.”

“Ha-ha, very funny. Josh, you are simply brilliant!”

“Yes, I know. Speak to you tomorrow then.”



Her unassuming cottage was tucked beside the road, part of a sleepy woodland village in Surrey, an unintentional gateway to the future. The home-counties: reputed to be the haunt of the wealthier London overspill, where glamorous former manor houses rubbed shoulders with humble workers’ cottages squeezed onto the roadsides on a spare handkerchief of land, now hot property to be fought for.

City-weary commuters escaped to dive into their pools or perhaps dig their own vegetables in a place with a view and a gasp of fresh air, preferring the pace of life away from the unnatural hubbub of the city, somewhere down the leaf-dappled, root-tangled lanes, among those who have known its natural delights for generations. A piece of lingering nostalgia, unchanging, conventional. It would be quite easy to see this part of the world as the end of a journey, a place from which you would never wish to depart, rather than its beginning. To be unaware of the hypothetical slippery serpent’s slither beneath the façade, its passage smothered by the leaf mold, camouflaged by the mask of social graces.

Someone had been ambiguous and named this cottage Nightingale’s End. Meaning the nightingale’s final destination? Its demise? Or perhaps its home? But actually it’s her home. Sometimes when she stopped to think about it she supposed she might have escaped from London too. She thought it was definitely a possibility that she may have made a feature of escaping from people along the way. Someone had once, quite rudely she thought, mentioned the overbearing attention of her pushy parents. Perhaps it was more…neglectful, rather than pushy. A simple solution to childcare. She had disappeared into hours of practicing the piano. It had reaped its rewards, eventually earning her a place and winning prizes at music college that progressed to opportunities afterward; a series of concerts, promotional tours, appearances at the BBC Promenade Concert series and all the associated publicity, perhaps leading her toward too rapidly ascending the wobbly ladder from obscurity. But it was fortunate timing. The resulting financial independence had allowed her necessary escape from a fellow student, having not realized how deceitful he had been until it came to her notice that he’d maintained a string of equally blindsided girlfriends. One day in the interval at a Festival Hall piano recital, she had bumped into him, when he was supposed to have been elsewhere, with yet another one proudly on his arm. It was the final straw. He may have been charming, verging on the genius, but it wasn’t that hard to leave him behind, although it had left its own bleeding wound for a while, one of those aching leaps in growing up that are forced upon everyone from time to time.

It was easier, less damaging, and more rewarding to disappear into work.

Everyone had always assumed that she could cope. She wasn’t so sure. And about that time her Mum died suddenly. Her supportive mother, who had only wanted the best for her, or so Alex had always thought then. To see her daughter be able to choose and not be cornered in the way that she had been.

After all that she needed to have a place to hide. And the enclosing canopy of branches afforded by sleepy, Surrey lanes appeared to be the perfect hideaway.

The performing successes attracted agents, one of whom was a high-flying producer, who fought for and secured a decent contract. Subsequently, under the victorious Josh’s guidance, she released a series of recordings and a particularly popular Cocktail Pianist disc and at that point it was possible to buy this home, this bolt-hole. Surprising really, this success, even though it had been half-hoped for, idly daydreamed a decade ago. Not an achievement to take for granted either, or so she had been told, in the current competitive music climate where bands fought for media precedence.

And the flip side? She had spent most of her life so far, too long one might say, on her own, hidden away, eroding her too short fingernails down continuously on the keys of a grand piano like some strange hermit, expected to burst forth and shine when required, a butterfly equivalent. The reality being far from glamorous. Missing out on the normal habits of passing into adulthood, having spent too long cooped up with only a piano and a piano teacher for company. Perhaps she really was a social liability. Whenever the potential melting pot of a social gathering or a post-concert party bubbled up, she was not unknown to be inclined to freeze, afraid of saying something stupid or worse, blurt something out to fill the awkward silence, unused to easy-going conversation and the babble of background voices. It is a skill that requires practice too. She knew she tended to be better with people on a one-to-one basis. It was so much easier to interpret what was going on, what the hidden messages were. Perhaps half of her was too shy to fully enjoy the exposure, while the other half was too restless to find life fulfilling without the challenge. Too much time in thought, too much time spent in her own company, enjoying pacing the countryside, planning, traveling. She could spend the whole morning practicing the piano and the whole afternoon strolling the surrounding countryside. So therapeutic. And life had been easier without the added complications of other people. The jealousies and confusions that ensue.

Work had been a consistent friend. The piano her only rock-solid, unchanging companion waiting at home. A demanding housemate, leaving little time for others, but still reliable and infinitely interesting. And the cottage? A place to curl up and hide away from the intrusive alter-ego of that other life.

So, when she had been asked why does she prefer to live alone, the answer for her seemed straightforward. Why should she need to live with anyone else?