Chapter Six Mo
Chapter Six
MO
Rhona and Don’s house was chaotic and busy and loud—everything Mo’s house wasn’t.
He loved his Thursday night family dinners with them and their kids.
Here, in the warm fug of their overworked kitchen, crowded around their dining table, he felt more at home than he did at his own place—like he was part of something bigger than himself.
Like maybe he could forget about the incident with the photographer.
Like the resurgence of his career might be as safe and as sure as he felt here.
In Rhona’s house, and with Rhona’s family, he wasn’t Morrison Maplestone the Grammy award–winning musician, he was just Mo, and he had to scrape his plate like everybody else.
Tonight, the cheerfully mismatched crockery was paired with chopsticks and little bowls of soy sauce, and the Reality Bites soundtrack played softly in the background—Rhona’s favourite.
Rhona set bamboo steamers full of Don-made dumplings on the table and sat down opposite Mo, the giant shoulder pad of her nautically inspired outfit brushing against her husband’s arm.
‘Hey, Uncle Mo, watch this!’ Fourteen-year-old Miles flicked a misshapen dumpling into the air with his chopsticks and attempted, unsuccessfully, to catch it again.
‘Ah, for fuck’s sake, Miles!’ cried his sixteen-year-old sister, Carly. She retrieved the splattered dumpling from her lap and flicked it back onto his plate. ‘These jeans are new, you idiot. If Dad can’t get this stain out, you’re totally buying me another pair.’
Don raised his eyebrows from across the table.
‘And why is it my job to wash your jeans? You’re old enough to wash them yourself.
Or maybe Miles should do it, seeing as it was his lack of finesse that led to this truly ruinous situation in the first place.
’ He selected a dumpling from his plate and expertly executed the trick, popping it into his mouth with an exaggerated flourish.
‘And,’ he said, swallowing, ‘maybe we could keep the profanity to a minimum, given we have company.’
Carly smirked. ‘It’s only Mo. He doesn’t care.’
‘I’ll have you know, young lady,’ said Mo, ‘that my ears are highly offended by such language and I am both shocked and appalled to hear it.’ Carly snorted and Mo’s face creased into a smile. ‘Just stop swearing so fucking much, okay? It’s not nice.’
Don chuckled and reached for another dumpling. ‘Rhona, keep your little friend under control, would you? He’s encouraging Carly’s inner chav.’
Rhona shrugged in response, held her hands up in a what-can-I-do pose, and downed the rest of her wine.
‘You’re right, Uncle Mo.’ Carly’s tone was solemn. ‘Swearing is bloody fucking shitting awful. I shall stop,’ she promised, hand on her heart and stifling a laugh. She turned her attention to Don. ‘But seriously, Dad, will you get the stain out of my jeans? Pleeeeease?’
Don rolled his eyes comically. ‘I will do my best, my flower, I will do my best. Now go and grab the next batch of dumplings out of the steamer, would you?’
‘I’ll get them,’ said Mo, pushing his chair out.
Rhona waved her wine glass at him.
‘I’ll grab the wine too.’ He grinned. ‘And some soap for Carly’s mouth.’
***
After dinner had been cleared up and he’d packed himself a container full of leftovers, Mo sat down with Rhona and Don at the table for one last wine.
The candle at its centre was down to a drippy stub and the playlist had moved on to the Eurythmics, Annie Lennox’s voice gliding effortlessly over a backdrop of choppy synth.
Rhona rolled the stem of her glass through her fingers. ‘Hey, Mo, I know we made a promise not to talk shop at the dinner table, but I got an email today you might want to see.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘A woman from Australia wrote to me saying she thinks she might’ve found an old diary of yours. From when you were a kid.’
Mo’s heart careened and his blood pressure dropped. Grateful to be sitting down, he counted a silent inhale to four, held it for a second, and let it rush out again.
‘Mo? You okay? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’
‘Ah, yeah.’ He straightened in his seat and took what he hoped looked like a nonchalant swig of red. He forced a cough to clear the sudden tightness in his throat. ‘What did she say, exactly?’
Rhona extracted her phone from the back pocket of her sailor-style jeans, brought the email up on the screen and slid it across the table to Mo.
He hoped she couldn’t see the tremor in his hands as he picked it up and read the message silently, the words slicing through the sudden chaos in his brain like feedback screeching through a speaker.
QUERY
Netta Phillips
To: Rhona van der Wilden
Dear Rhona,
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you, but Google tells me you are Morrison Maplestone’s manager and I have recently found something that I believe belongs to him hidden in my house in Melbourne.
It’s an old journal from 1994, and I wondered if you could please ask him what he would like me to do with it.
I’m happy to post it to him if he would like it back, or I can dispose of it if he doesn’t want it—just thought I should check. Photo attached!
Kind regards,
Netta Phillips
He placed the phone soundlessly on the table. ‘You think she’s, ah, been to the press with it or anything?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Rhona. ‘But I’m sure we’d know about it by now if she had and I don’t think she would’ve bothered with the email if she was the sort to flash it around.
She certainly doesn’t seem to be, anyway.
’ Clocking Mo’s raised eyebrows, she added: ‘I did a little digging and found her on a school website. She’s a primary school teacher.
Runs regular fundraisers to support kids’ charities.
Looks like an ad for multivitamins. Very wholesome. ’
Mo felt the seed of dread at his core expanding, ring by ring, into a dark whorl that filled his chest. ‘I’d like to get it back. I don’t want it out there. There’s stuff in it …’ He ran his hands through his hair and squeezed the back of his neck until his muscles protested under the pressure.
‘Like what, Mo? Is it stuff I need to know about if she does take it to the media?’
Mo looked at his friend, her concerned face, her obvious awareness of his sudden discomfort.
He’d never told Rhona the whole truth about his messed-up childhood.
About his beautiful, drug-addicted mother and her horrible, unnecessary death.
He’d never told anyone. Even Mav, his own little brother, barely remembered their mum.
Mav had only just turned four when she died, and in lieu of his own memories, Mo had fed him much more palatable, if mostly untrue, stories.
And that’s how it had to stay. If the contents of the diary were exposed and Mav found out that Mo had kept the truth from him all these years …
Well, Mo couldn’t bear to think about it.
Losing Mav, or even just his trust, would kill him.
‘Not really,’ he lied, the dread expanding from his chest down to his belly. ‘But you know I don’t speak about my childhood, and I don’t want to have to start now just because someone’s found my diary from when I was eleven.’
There was a long moment of heavy silence before Don slid his chair out and left the room, giving his wife and Mo a chance to speak alone.
‘So,’ said Rhona, ‘you want it back?’
Mo dug a fingernail into the tip of his thumb until it hurt and nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Say no more.’ Rhona and Mo had known each other for long enough for her to know pushing him for details would be an exercise in futility. ‘I’ll ask her to post it to me ASAP. It’ll be here within a week or so.’
‘No,’ said Mo, a little too quickly. ‘I don’t want to risk it getting lost. The post is hopeless and I don’t want a courier. It’s too … delicate.’
‘So, what do you want me to tell her? To jump on a plane and hand deliver it to you, my liege?’
Mo thought for a moment, ignoring the smartarse comment.
‘I can’t go to Australia myself,’ he said.
‘It’ll draw attention, and even if it didn’t, I have rehearsals and promos and fittings and all that shit for the gala.
I’ll pay for her to come, first class—nice hotel, all that—and if she gives it to me and I can see that she hasn’t read it or flashed it around on the internet or anything, I’ll pay her, I don’t know, ten grand. Do you think that’s enough?’
Rhona straightened her glasses and gave Mo a hard, are-youfucking-kidding-me stare.
‘Do I think a free first-class flight, complimentary luxury accommodation and ten thousand pounds is enough to compensate someone for returning a book to a handsome celebrity?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Mo, what the hell is in that diary?’
Mo looked at her—his manager, his best friend, the person he trusted most in the world outside of his brother—and knew he could never bring himself to tell her the truth.
He scraped his chair back and stood. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘Just forward the email.’