Chapter 23
Nile does well. He gets callbacks at most of the best drama schools and courses in the UK. He works hard. Too hard. He doesn’t want to do anything else except rehearse his monologues. ‘Test my lines again,’ he orders, over and over. He gets impatient with me if he fluffs them. Like it’s my fault. Whilst he rehearses, I write some monologues myself in my notebook, I enjoy it, stepping into a characters’ shoes for a page. Only, the closer Nile gets to a place at drama school the more anxious he becomes. He punishes himself and it’s horrible to see. He hangs around theatre box offices to get the cheapest seats and lurks around after to chat to directors. He pulls all-nighters – reading plays and watching films – and this makes him irritable. I say, ‘You’re making yourself ill, Nile; they shouldn’t be making you feel like you need to put so much pressure on yourself. You’ll be paying for this course, after all; it’s only drama school.’
He talks about getting braces, closing the Madonna gap in between his front teeth.
‘Are you for real?’ I ask. ‘Your lovely hippo teeth are one of my favourite things about you.’
‘America don’t like imperfect teeth,’ he says.
‘But, we’re not in America. We’re here. And if they don’t like your lovely teeth then I don’t like America.’
Every rejection letter is just another finger being lifted off the cliff from which he’s been dangling, and Nile doesn’t get into any drama schools. It’s a disappointing shock for us all that leaves me furious at the broken system. But he doesn’t want to hear about that. ‘You can try again next year?’ I offer, even though I can’t bear to think of him going through all that again. Poor Nile. He scrunches up the letters. He can’t get an agent without a play to showcase himself in and his parents don’t have the money to bankroll him whilst he continues to audition off his own back in London, even if he was to live at Aunt Linda’s. ‘I’ll just get a job!’ he says brightly but his parents pull the plug on that. They have already set him up with a job back home – teaching Performing Arts at a summer school at the local arts centre. Besides, Aunt Linda has a new tenant moving into the box room and needs the rent. He sees this as insulting. His dreams, crushed. His bitterness manifests itself monstrously; it casts a physical effect over us. He very quickly cuts all ties with London. He say it’s ‘the worst place on earth’. He say it’s ‘overpriced’, ‘fake’ and ‘full of knobheads’. He asks, once, if I’d consider moving to Devon and when I say, ‘I’ll definitely visit you but not to live, I’m sorry,’ he doesn’t ask me again.
We don’t break up, exactly. At the end of college, he says he’s going back to Devon. For good. Too proud for the farewell drinks I suggest organizing.
‘I love you,’ I tell him. He doesn’t say it back. I watch his train pull out of the station, more sad than I thought I’d be. I really loved him.
‘My daughter,’ Dad announces, smacking his worn Levi’d thigh, nudging his girlfriend, Lovely Naomi (who owns at least thirty pairs of glasses with the exact same frame just in different colours, has a twenty-three-year-old son who lives off-grid and is Lovely).
‘Eighteen years old and the first in our family to go university, I can’t believe it! You’ll be buying me a house one day!’
Er. I don’t think so, Dad. I smile, not wanting to disappoint him in front of Lovely Naomi. It isn’t even a great university.
‘Let’s celebrate!’
Any excuse for a pint at the pub, a pint that I have to buy.
‘Where’s that nice Neil bloke gone?’
‘Nile,’ I correct. ‘He’s gone back to Devon.’
‘Shame. Why can’t he live here in London?’
I don’t have the energy to go into details with my dad about why the world isn’t exactly the same as it was when he was sixteen. ‘Dad, NOBODY can live here. It’s so expensive. I’m at university and I still have to live with Mum.’
‘You could always live with me?’ Dad asks.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
Lovely Naomi sips her vodka tonic.
Twice a week I commute to my ‘uni’ to study Creative Writing in an old, empty, dead Lord’s house. The course is taught by tutors who either don’t show up, or, if they do, very much don’t want to, and ignore us or slip off to have a breakdown. Or my favourite – just apologize, openly, for how embarrassingly bad the course is. I make one friend. (And yes, thanks to Myspace, they are a True Love fan. It’s kind of hard to find someone my age who isn’t.)
This is a hard landing after the joy I had at college, where I saw the world through rose-tinted glasses. Where life was bustling, it now feels stark. Meanwhile, Lowe’s on tour with his band. I try to visualize an invisible silver chain, hoping he’s still clenching to the links of us with our short and sweet exchanges:
Hey, Ella, we’re in Scotland! How are you? x
I try to anchor the chain. Cool! All good here, course is a bit dry but writing lots. Have the best time, miss you, hope the shows are going well. X
And he doesn’t reply and I can’t help but feel I’m not an anchor but a ball and chain.
We talk less and less because the patter of small talk is just anxiety-inducing and exhausting, our lives so different. The days go on and on. I begin to avoid updates on him and the band like my bank statements.
To fill the precious time that I’m meant to be using to study, my dad’s friend gives me a part-time job as a junior at his hairdressers. I wash hair, sweep dead hair, check in clients, make coffee, people watch. I write poems at the front desk on scraps of paper and take the fluff out the tumble dryer. This way I can spend more money on food and alcohol but also theatre tickets and books and gigs. I write lots. I read lots. I watch lots. I eat, very lots, of sandwiches. And although university really isn’t what I thought it would be, London is still the best city in the world. London has it all. I give myself an education.
That’s what I tell myself anyway as I wave goodbye to Aoife and Bianca. They’re headed for Gatwick airport, their towering backpacks loaded and strapped nearly as high as their expectations, for their gap year. They’re going travelling, flying around the world. And with clever Ronke doing us proud at Cambridge, the only place I’m flying is off the handle. I’d watched Bianca hand-write out the names of hostels and night clubs and cram it into her camo bumbag; it’s all so last minute. This is just crazy; No plan. No return ticket. No jumpers! Have they lost their minds?
‘Really?’ I ask again. ‘Do you really not know one person out there in Cambodia? Are you really just going to leave it all behind? Are you really about to share rooms with strangers? Are you not … scared?’
‘Of what?’ They laugh like I’m cute.
‘Errr … drugs, bugs, being mugged?’ I didn’t mean to make it all rhyme but they know what I mean. What about rape? Being kidnapped? Crocodiles? Ayahuasca? Diarrhoea? Full moon parties?
Their train pulls away and I wave them off, standing there with their families like the left-behind little sister. We turn and walk away, making patent chit chat. Bianca’s dad offers to buy me a hot chocolate from Caffè Nero as consolation, and obviously I say yes because he’s loaded. A guy my age stands behind me in the queue wearing a True Love t-shirt. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. HOW? I HATE THE INTERNET.
‘Cream and sprinkles?’
‘Yes please,’ I choke, tears in my eyes. I feel like a sinking toad in the hole.
For someone who was already feeling particularly lonely, I am now just alone.
One night after work, I sit on an empty bus. I love sitting up front on the top deck so I can feel like I’m driving the whole damn thing. The night glitters. I can see the stars. I miss Lowe. I should text him. The space between us overgrown and abandoned, I could try and make a path towards him. But what to say? And what if he doesn’t message me back? Should I tell him about splitting up with Nile? I’m definitely not going to tell him how much his band comes up in conversation, that people are now telling me about True Love like I’ve never heard of them. You’d love them, Ella – they’re so cool!
Thanks for the tip.
I settle for: Hey Lowe, how are you? x
And he’s calling me. Right now. Mini panic attack. Why is he calling me? That’s why I text you! I hate it when people use a phone as a phone. Why did I have to be on the goddam bus and not in a limousine or out having the time of my life?
‘You alright?’
His voice has a hint of long time no speak as though that’s my fault, as though I’ve been difficult to get hold of.
‘Yeah, I’m really good thanks.’ Currently not great. ‘You?’
‘I’m actually in Brighton!’ He laughs at himself, like it’s a joke.
‘On tour?’
‘I’m actually … K, don’t laugh but studying here.’
‘In Brighton?’
brIGHTON? Suddenly he seems so far away. It’s a place you go for a day-trip, somewhere you need a full tank of petrol for. I want to get off the bus and walk this news off, but it’s dark, so I let the feeling scramble about my body, trying to find a way to place this strange energy. I want to smash the ‘break in case of emergency’ glass, pull out the little red hammer and cave a window in just so I can breathe. I fiddle with my hair in the reflection of the window. It does not look like ‘Karen O’ like the hairdresser said it would; it looks like I’m wearing a wig. That’s the last time I ever let a hairdresser ‘have a play’ with hair attached to my head.
‘Yeah, I managed to get a place on the music course here last minute through clearing so, yeah, it all happened so fast. I’m a term late but Dad said I couldn’t sign a record deal unless I at least tried to get a degree’ – back-up plan, I guess – ‘so I’m living in a dump with three guys! The high life!’
So, they haven’t signed a record deal yet. The relief of normality rushes through me like a sea breeze.
‘Wow, Brighton … ?’ I say again. I conjure Lowe under the blue skies, the mint railings on the front, the pebble beach and the happy ice-cream faces. The town-houses with their sea-salt blistered edges.
‘I’m not actually doing any of the coursework. I’m just using the student loan to pay for rehearsal space until they kick me out.’ Great plan, you salad. ‘It’s nice by the sea. You and Nile should come down; we have some gigs coming up soon.’
‘Well … actually, Nile and I have split up.’
‘What?’ Lowe sounds genuinely shocked. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t know.’
‘No, no, it hasn’t been long and you weren’t to know.’
‘Aww, Ella, shit, man. He was a nice guy.’
So why does his voice sounds like he’s smiling?
‘It was the right thing,’ I tell him.
‘Come to Brighton? Stay with me?’
‘In the dump?’
‘Yeah, in the dump.’ He laughs. He tilts his voice to make it sound appealing. ‘It’ll be amazing.’
Amazing? It could be. But that all depends on where Rachel is in all of this.
So my new haircut and I make the effort to go to Brighton for a visit. I write a silly detective short story – to let off steam – on the train. My heart is thrumming at the station where we’ve agreed to meet, me begging that he’s not got Rachel in tow.
Here he comes. Ugh, I adore him. Annoying.
‘Nice hair,’ Lowe says. The wind traps in the station are not being too cruel to me and letting it sit still.
‘You’ve shaved all yours off!’
He rubs his skinhead, as if embarrassed like I’m his grandma. ‘Shall we go back to mine so we can drop off your stuff?’ He eyes my giant bag. He probably just has his phone, card, key and tobacco all in his jacket pocket. ‘Do you want me to carry it for you?’
‘No thanks, I’m good. I’ll panic I’ve forgotten it.’ When really, I need the heavy bag to ground me; I’m so happy to see him my feet could lift off the ground like a helium balloon.
Lowe shares what is meant to be a four-bedroomed family house, which has become a many-bedroomed party house with definitely more than three guys. But it seems any guy who isn’t him kind of blurs into one and multiplies. It’s a sad forgotten place – too sad for a family – where there is never any toilet paper in the cold and musty bathroom. Where every cupboard handle is sticky. Dirty plates with congealed ketchup, ominous wet stains on the floor. The only glasses are dirty, stolen from pubs with beer brands on them, cigarettes floating inside, bloated out like strange new species of marine life. And stolen traffic cones because hahaha, random. The housemates can’t get their heads around Lowe and me, our radical platonic relationship. It’s blowing their schoolboy minds.
Ryan, who has actual man beard stubble and looks like a scarecrow, puts his fingers to his temples and dramatically says to Lowe as though I’m not there, ‘Lemme get this straight: a girl that’s not having sex with you is going to sleep in your bed? Alright, whatever, mate. I know when I smell a rat.’
Yeah. Me too.
‘Sorry about him,’ Lowe says, embarrassed, quickly shutting the scarecrow out. ‘He’s showing off because you’re here. I don’t know why he said that; girls aren’t ever in any of our beds.’
Lowe’s room is downstairs by the kitchen, brown and all very much on the floor. I look for signs of Rachel but find no left behind earrings or shoes, no love letters or photographs – just a bed, CDs and records stacked, guitars and laundry bags filled with clothes.
And to me, it is heaven.
I can see living away from home has already taken its toll, that Lowe looks not great, that his clothes are hanging off him. He’s not eating or sleeping properly, smoking too much and not getting outside. His inhalers are empty and he’s not bothered to chase up the prescription. The rings around his eyes are darker. I don’t think the shaved head has helped matters. But sometimes, at certain angles, truly, the lack of hair just enhances his lovely face. A face so stupendous that if anything, hair only interrupted it. But the band are thriving in that underground unsigned way – there’s momentous tension, pressure and buzz about their every move. Everyone wants to know.
‘We’re waiting for the right label and the right offer,’ he shares. ‘Until then, though, I’ve got about three pounds in my bank account.’ He laughs in that way you probably can do when you’re pretty certain you’re going to be rich soon, picking a vintage Levi’s denim jacket up off the floor, sliding it over a hoody and still managing to look like James Dean.
‘So come on, let’s go for a night out on the town.’ He pops out his elbow theatrically like Dick Van Dyke and I link his arm in Poppins flamboyance, triumphant and jolly, ready to hit the town with our three pounds. And when the roads get narrower and we hit the lanes, he swaps the arm link for a hand-hold and I melt.
The weekend in Brighton is busier than when we met earlier and we can’t even get from his place to the pub without being spotted a thousand times, without somebody wanting a photo or to stop and chat. Strangers want to be his mate, want him to be their boyfriend. They look me up and down like oh so you’re his girlfriend, you’re the one he chose. But I’m not. And Lowe, being Lowe, just keeps his hood up and muddles along, taking the time out to talk to every friend, every fan, every passer-by with a giant kind smile and interested eyes, smoking rollie after rollie, nodding along, not fazed. He signs an autograph with his left hand. His right hand is in mine.
We sit on the pier, the water licking the slats. We watch a tired caterpillar rollercoaster take screaming children through the bite of an apple, and mess about and talk, and those sad eyes of his truly go on forever, go to that other place I have only read about in books or seen in films or heard in lyrics that I’ve never understood. Trauma to me is watching Moulin Rouge, falling out with a friend, running out of milk. But he has witnessed the darkness of grief and returned, as if rescued, his eyes holding everything inside the tie-dye sprawl of their infinite wonder. The colour of smudge. Where the sea meets the sky in a storm. Concentrated oil paint. Drenched in it all. Like a song.
I ask, when I am just about ready to hear the answer, because I feel obligated, ‘How are things going with Rachel?’
‘Alright.’
He tokes on his roll-up cigarette so hard I hear the nicotine travel to his lungs, his frown pinching at the top of his head.
‘Rach’s still in London and I’m here.’ He shrugs and relights it with one of those cheap plastic lighters, blowing the end to keep it alight. ‘She kind of annoys me, I dunno … ’
Sometimes I feel like I’m a competition winner fangirl meeting him; other times I feel like a volunteer, giving him an hour to relieve his loneliness. I flit between the two sad states. It’s for me. It’s for him. Then, there are these times when I trick myself that we are a couple. That this is us. That it always has been, always will be. That might be the worst state of all.
‘The band are my main focus anyway.’ He nods, looking out to the water.
But I can see ‘they’ are on his mind. She doesn’t call or text him the whole time I am there.
It’s a few days later and I’m back in London, when I get a text from Lowe:
Rach has gone to California. We broke up. I’m OK. R u about? x