November 17^th 1965 10.30pm

 

 

George lay on his side on the thin mattress on the hard wooden bunk. He was still wearing the clothes he had changed into before accompanying the police to the station. Although they had been clean on, they now smelled of the stale cigarette smoke and alcohol he hadn’t had the opportunity to wash off yet. They also smelled, very faintly, of Grace. She’d washed them for him.

 

His evening meal lay untouched and cold on the floor. Only beans on toast, but George couldn’t face it. He thought he might never eat again.

 

The prison cell was cold but George didn’t move to draw the blanket around him. He didn’t move at all. He stared straight ahead at the white tiled wall, afraid to close his eyes.

 

His Beatle status, it seemed, still afforded him some things. He had a private cell, at the end of the corridor, away from whoever else was staying the night. Where he couldn’t hear them and they couldn’t hear him, but the silence did him little good. His mind was a jumble of noise and broken images. Fragments of the memory he was so desperately trying to put together. 

 

He should try and sleep, he told himself. Rest would prepare him for the morning. Perhaps allow him to remember something that would set him free. For one frightening moment George wondered if there was anything to remember at all – except perhaps killing Grace. Could he have done it, in the haze and anger of a drunken mind? Then he firmly forgot that notion. If he doubted himself, what chance did he have of convincing anyone else of his innocence?

 

Once again, from the start, he tried to remember the events of the previous night.

 

From the top, Paul said, back in Abbey Road Studios…

 

The metal was cold on George’s forehead, as he rested his head, leaning on the roof of the car. Grace, behind him somewhere, was yelling and screaming and nagging but George was beyond it all now – he simply didn’t care anymore. She prattled on in his ear, me and you and Mickey, we’ll be so happy. And my mother can come and live with us. We’ll have a cottage in the dales.  

 

“Are you even listening to me?” Grace demanded, shoving George hard.

 

George straightened his back. He shook his head, calmly. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

 

“If you don’t… if you don’t listen to me, I shall break all the windows on the car!”

 

George shrugged. “Knock yourself out,” he said.

 

Grace looked round, seemingly for something to put the glass through. She had already smashed all the crockery and glasses when she’d tipped the table up inside the restaurant. Her left hand was still bleeding from when she had picked up the shards of the broken glass and squeezed, a favourite trick of hers, it appeared.

 

“Give it up, Grace,” George said, flatly. “You’ve had us thrown out of the restaurant. Isn’t that enough drama for one night?”

 

“You don’t understand, do you? You just don’t know,” she said.

 

“No, I don’t,” George agreed. “But – darling – I couldn’t actually care less.”

 

“George, you must listen to me. You’re ruining everything. You don’t know what you’re doing. I love you and you love me. We’re meant to be together.”

 

“So you keep saying.”

 

“You will choose me George.”

 

“Choose you for what?”

 

“Forever. You’ll choose me over Pattie.”

 

George shook his head. “I would never choose you over Pattie.”

 

“You already have.”

 

George opened his mouth to argue but stopped. Pattie’s infidelity had hurt George more than he cared to admit, even to himself. But now that didn’t matter. He’d already decided he would swallow his pride. He would find Pattie and tell her how much she meant to him, that he didn’t care about what she and Paul had or hadn’t done. He wanted her back. He loved her.

 

“I’m going home,” he told Grace, finding the car keys in his pocket. “I suggest you do the same.”

 

“George!” Grace said, as he got into the car. “George, wait for me.”

 

“I’m going alone,” George said to her over his shoulder, but she wasn’t there. She’d already run round the other side of the car to the passenger seat. “Alone,” George repeated as she climbed in.

 

“And where am I supposed to go?” she asked, closing the door.

 

“That’s your problem,” George said. Grace looked at him. Her eyes were tearful. George put the key in the ignition. “Back to your own flat, Grace. Go home, go anywhere, but you’re not coming home with me.”

 

“George, you’ve been drinking. You’re drunk. I can’t let you drive like this.”

 

He stared at her. “Get out of my car.”

 

“You’ll have an accident.”

 

“I’ll take my chances.”

 

“Please George.”

 

“I won’t tell you again.”

 

“George, if you leave me, I’ll kill myself.”

 

George put his hands on the steering wheel. “Then I can’t stop you,” he said, after a pause. He wasn’t falling for this emotional blackmail again.

 

“I’ll do it,” she threatened. “I’ll take pills and then I’ll cut my wrists.”

 

George shrugged. “Please yourself.”

 

“It will all be because of you, George, it’ll be on your conscience.”

 

“I’ll cope,” George said glibly, and then turned to her, “I’d like to see you dead,” he said, with venom that even shocked him. “I’ve a mind to finish you off myself.”

 

Grace began to cry again, but her sobs sounded hollow and they were starting to give him a headache. He unclipped his seatbelt and opened the door.

 

“Where are you going?” she asked.

 

“To get a taxi,” he said, stepping out of the car. “Alone,” he added as he slammed the car door on her.

 

George turned away from the Aston Martin. It was cold and late. He wasn’t really dressed for walking. He hoped he would be able to flag a cab down soon, but they’d parked off road, away from the busy roads. George pulled his jacket around him, though it didn’t help much and set off towards the main street.

 

Later, he couldn’t remember hearing the car engine start. It could have been that he’d started it himself when he was sitting in it. It didn’t even register in his mind until she revved it and pressed down on the pedals so hard, the tyres spun.

 

George had walked quite a way from the vehicle so he had had plenty of time to turn and see her, behind the wheel, aiming the car towards him. It actually took a moment for him to get over the disbelief and realise that she was intending to hit him with it.

 

For a moment, panic gripped him and he stood staring at her, unable to decide what way to move. He could see her behind the wheel, behind the glare of the headlight. A black shape, but an unmistakable silhouette. As the car got within a couple of feet from him, George jumped, throwing his back against the building that bordered the ally. The car shot past him, the wing mirror passing within an inch of his stomach.

 

George let go of his breath and suddenly found his voice. “You fucking crazy…” he began to shout, but the grind of the clutch drowned him out, as Grace shifted it into reverse. George moved early this time, as Grace began to reverse the car towards him at a high velocity.

 

He ran towards the other end of the ally, the high pitch of the car’s engine ringing in his ears. The back of the building at the rear of the ally way was coming up to meet him quickly and so was the car. George glanced back at it and threw himself into an adjoining, narrower ally just as the car reached him once again.

 

He landed heavily on his side, and pain shot through his shoulder and back. He rolled onto his back, momentarily winded and gasped for air. He heard the car, in the first ally way, hit the steel industrial bins lined up at the end of it. They clattered noisily as they fell over and glass from the rear headlights shattered.

 

George forced himself to his feet, His shoulder protested and sent another sharp pain shooting through him. George wondered if he’d broken something.

 

The ally he had leapt into was much narrower and shorter than the first – just a gap between tall buildings. It didn’t look wide enough for the car to fit down, but it was a dead end and George knew he would have to get back out onto the main ally and run in the direction he’d been walking for the open road.

 

He could hear the Aston’s engine still purring, but it didn’t sound as if it was moving. Perhaps Grace had hurt herself when she’d hit the bins?

 

He put his arm across his chest and cradled his hurt right shoulder. He was breathing heavily, still trying to catch his breath. He stumbled towards the mouth of the ally way, bouncing off the wall next to him and sending shockwaves through his pain-wracked body again. Just as he neared the corner of the building, the Aston Martin arrived, blocking the exit. Its headlights illuminated the ally as it slowly crept into the mouth of the ally way. If it weren’t such a sleek sports car, it probably wouldn’t have fit. A cruel cat waiting at the entrance to a mouse hole.

 

George backed up, panic and fear rising inside him. He backed into the wall at the end and pressed himself against it. The car stayed where it was, not even six inches either side for George to squeeze past it. He looked up at the wall behind him. It was a blank, bleak brick wall. Featureless. Nothing to grab hold of, or to climb on to.

 

George looked back at the car, and swallowed. What’s she waiting for? he thought. She had him trapped. There was no way out. 

 

The engine cut out and silence filled the night.  George stared, trying to make Grace out, behind the bright light.

 

“Grace,” he shouted. “Please, don’t do this –“

 

“I’ve changed my mind,” she called back. “I’m not going to kill myself, George, I’m going to kill you! You’re a liar, George. And liars deserve to die!”

 

The engine rumbled to life again, roaring at George, deafening him.

 

George closed his eyes. He thought of Pattie. He would never see her again. He’d die here and never have the chance to tell her all the things he wanted to. Her last memory of him would be when they’d met in The Crossroads club, when he’d grabbed her arm and hurt her and made her cry. When he’d said all those hateful things. She’d never know how much he really loved her and she’d never know that the night he’d died, he’d been on his way back to her.

 

And that couldn’t be. No, George couldn’t let that happen.

 

He opened his eyes again and looked into the headlights with renewed determination.

 

It all happened at once, a blur, but George’s finely tuned sense of timing – the hours spent counting beats and chords, playing song after song – wasn’t about to let him down.

 

He knew his car well. He knew how fast it accelerated and how fast it would be going when it reached him. The Aston Martin had an elongated bonnet, and as it neared George, he threw himself, with all his strength at it, on to the bonnet, reaching up across the windshield.  As the car hit the wall behind him, it narrowly missed sandwiching George’s legs in between the brick and the metal.

 

George gripped onto the rubber seal around the windscreen with his nails. He looked down, face to face with Grace. As the car had hit the wall, she had been thrown into the steering wheel. She slumped over it, momentarily and George thought she’d been knocked out, but then she moved back, putting her hand up to her bleeding nose.

 

George wasn’t about to see if she was okay. He scrabbled up, pulling himself over the top of the car, his feet slipping and sliding on the shiny, metallic surface. He half-climbed, half-fell off the back of the car and started towards the main road, staggering and nearly falling in his desperation to get away.

 

Listening for the car behind him, it didn’t come. He reached the opening of the ally way and turned onto the main road.

 

In the police station cell, George’s eyes shot open and he sat up. He’d been dreaming, but it had been a traumatic, temporarily repressed memory that had returned to him. His shoulder twinged again, a reminder that it hadn’t been a dream. “She tried to kill me,” George said to the empty room and swung his legs over the side of the bunk. “She tried to kill me, and I’m in here for her murder!”

 

He stood and went to the cell door, eager to attract someone so he could tell what he’d just remembered. Then he stopped himself, standing at the small viewing window in the door.

 

She’d tried to kill him, yet she’d been the one to end up dead. And not in the ally way where it would have been self defence, but at home in her own flat. And his car, his poor, battered car had been outside. Grace must have driven it there after George had escaped. It must have been pretty beat up, George thought, though the police hadn’t mentioned that. How could George prove it wasn’t him who had followed her home, and in anger, or in revenge for her attempt on his life, he hadn’t succeeded where she’d failed?