Chapter Eighteen Mo
Chapter Eighteen
MO
Mo woke groggy, still on the couch, his mind still hemmed in by the shadows that had invaded before he nodded off.
The fire had dulled but its warmth lingered, the morning sun muted through heavy clouds.
His head felt heavy as he pulled himself up to sit, the diary tucked safely under the cushion he’d been resting on.
He slid it out of the bag, his fingers instantly familiar with the texture of the cover as he turned it over in his hands, unable yet to open it but immediately transported back to the time when it had changed his life.
They’d called it an overdose. Nobody had mentioned the word ‘suicide’ to him—he’d only been a kid, after all—but he wasn’t stupid.
He’d known that taking too many drugs was something some people did deliberately, because his mum’s friend had done it—and she’d died too.
On purpose. His mum had told him her friend had felt like nobody loved her.
That nobody would miss her anyway. And then he’d gone and made his own mum, and Mav’s mum, feel exactly the same way. All because of this stupid diary.
After the ambulance arrived, the police turned up. Mo had haphazardly packed a bag of his things and another for Mav, and they’d followed a policewoman out of their house, not yet understanding that it would be the last time they would ever be there.
At the police station, they were guided through the reception area, down a hallway to a quiet room where they’d been given hot chocolate neither of them had felt able to drink.
They had no idea what was about to happen but Morrison had wrapped his arms around his little brother and told him they would be okay.
He didn’t know that, not for sure, but he knew that Mav needed him to make him feel safe.
And after what he’d done, it was the absolute least he could do.
An eternity later, a woman had arrived. A policeman told Mo she was from DHS and that she would arrange somewhere for them to stay until they could locate next of kin to care for them. ‘There’s nobody,’ he’d said. ‘It’s always just been us and Mum.’
Mav, wide-eyed and wobbly lipped, had moulded himself around his brother’s frame, clinging to Mo like a koala to a branch.
In that moment, Mo had felt simultaneously indestructible and completely and utterly shit-scared.
His heart had bounced between the anguish of losing his mother and the terrifying possibility of being separated from his brother too.
But he’d also known, with absolute clarity, that he was Mav’s only protector now—it was his job—and that responsibility had filled him with a strength he hadn’t known he possessed.
‘We have to stay together,’ he’d said to the woman, puffing his chest out and raising his chin. ‘I’m not going anywhere without him.’
The desolation of that day sat just as heavily on Mo now, thirty years later, as it had then.
The free fall of having no control was something he remembered acutely.
The fear of it. The anger and frustration of having no real say in what happened, just because he was a kid.
The sinking realisation that no extended family meant there was no other option than foster care.
Mo took a deep breath and pushed himself off the couch.
He took the diary to his bedroom and stuffed it in the back of a drawer, hidden again.
He couldn’t get stuck down that burrow today.
He had to prepare himself for the meeting with the record company and turn up strong.
He was Morrison Maplestone, for fuck’s sake.
He’d won a Grammy! And he needed this contract.
Play On needed it. He wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers.
***
The meeting wasn’t going well. Mo had been told, in no uncertain terms, that the new album had to be on time or earlier and that it had better be the best fucking thing he’d ever made in his life or the contract was off.
The words ‘losing relevance’ had been thrown around by a snotty kid practically young enough to be his son.
Photos of him and that pap had been shown on a screen (‘it doesn’t matter what really happened, Mo—all that matters are the optics’) and the kid had made a point of the viral stats for the ‘Mo-deliser’ article.
It was excruciating. And to make it worse, he had nothing to show them.
The album he was working on was nothing but smoke and broken mirrors so far.
He had to come up with something concrete or he was screwed.
It seemed being Morrison Maplestone wasn’t quite enough anymore.
‘We’ve got strategies in play,’ Rhona said. ‘Mo’s going public about his charity work, finally, and he’ll be taking a proper date to the Christmas Eve Gala.’ She flashed Mo a pointed look.
‘It’s a start,’ said the head executive. ‘But it’s not enough. No more bullshit in the media, Mo. No more outbursts with the paps, perceived or otherwise, and no more drunken photos with twenty-year-old models. It’s getting old.’
Humiliation burned in Mo’s belly. ‘Got it.’
As they left, he stopped in the lobby, weighed down by the knowledge that it wasn’t just his career on the line, but Rhona’s too. Hit hard by the realisation that once again, just like that day at the police station, he really didn’t have much of a choice about what he had to do next. ‘Rhona?’
‘Yeah?’ she said. She looked exhausted.
‘I’m going to ask Netta to come to the gala with me.’
Rhona rewarded him with a pat on the chest. ‘Good move,’ she said. ‘Lucky I’ve already invited her to dinner tonight, hey? You can ask her then.’