To leave her father had been a trauma and she could only do it by telling him she would be gone for a short time and that she had booked a return ticket. With the money saved she took the Greyhound bus across country and arrived in Los Angeles in 1960, barely eighteen years old, with the calling card secured in her bag. A handbag, and a suitcase made from reconstituted cardboard, contained all that she owned in the world. All except the Singer sewing machine, which remained proudly on top of the cupboard in her bedroom in Duquesne.

She had, with the guilt of a lie, purchased a one-way ticket; the journey had taken the best part of three days.

Lomita returned her bedroom to darkness and laid her head on the pillow, realising her neck was still holding its weight. In forcing herself to relax the image of her standing at the bus station at 6th and Los Angeles Avenue came to mind.

She shed a tear at what she thought then.

The dream starts here.

She had felt, at the bus stop, like Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night.

And, one night, it would.

One day.

Chapter Ten

Ever woke as the sun was coming up.

A fly woke alongside him and darted from skin point to skin point, telling him to wake and supply some food. Or maybe it was just being annoying, but he liked to think everything had a purpose. Even a lonely fly. It was the perfect personal alarm clock.

His mind, he had moved inside to empty his bladder and hopefully relieve his liver of the Patrón, focused on his purpose for being in this city.

He chugged down half a litre of Fiji water as the shower started its slow journey from cold to hot. He stepped under the stream and then turned it to full cold for his daily two minutes. The one relief of warm climates like LA was that the cold never got really cold. A November shower in England was an exhilarating freeze that filled him with resentment until it was over and then he felt exonerated of all guilt. A hair shirt puritan, good for a few drinks at any rate. Through pain comes redemption.

He was building up to it. The visit. The day he would dress in his Cabazon Gucci outlet suit, shirt, no tie, to find the offices of the man who had prevented his father from achieving any success in the last seven years of his life.

An artistic drought for him that took away all that he lived for, stopped his breath from feeding his body, soul, blood and just every cell that needed the life-force to supply the charge that put creation in his hands and fire in his spirit.

A slow and cruel stifling of life.

For money.