Chapter 32
GUY
The Greatest Gift
‘Then she left me the best gift anyone has ever given me. It’s a photograph of Scott and me, laughing on stage together, really laughing.
She took it That Night. Before the shit hit the fan.
I’ve never seen it before. She left it by my mailbox with her article taped to it…
The things she says about me in it are…’
I’m standing in the window of my therapist’s office in London. I’ve driven down because being spotted has become as frequent as it used to be and, frankly, the petrol was cheaper than a train ticket. Jon has given me an emergency appointment on a Saturday because I basically begged him for one.
He’s sitting in his usual leather armchair, one leg casually resting on his other, as if I’m not having a complete meltdown two metres away from him.
‘You don’t believe them?’ Jon asks.
‘No one would believe them.’ There’s a tree beyond the window and it’s blowing in the wind. A green leaf breaks loose and seems to glide from side to side like a feather before landing on the lawn of the kept garden in Fitzrovia.
‘What are you so afraid of, Guy?’
I respond whilst watching a young boy play with a man, most likely his dad, in the garden, kicking a ball between them, and I think of Matty. Of the footballs he’ll never kick with Scott.
‘At this point, I’m scared of getting addicted to my own fucking shadow,’ I tell him.
‘Lots of people have addictive personalities. Motivated people, driven people. Normal people. The trick is to channel your addictions in a healthy way.’
I reposition myself, back against the old Georgian sash windows, water glass in hand, focusing on Jon and the calmness of his voice.
‘You go to the gym every day; you just need to make sure you’re going to stay healthy and to focus energy in the right way.
By the same token, you can let yourself fall in love.
You can love her harder than you love anything else in your life.
But you need to remember who you are without her, who you want to be with her, and that you don’t want to stifle or lose either of yourselves. ’
‘I don’t want to need her. I don’t want to mess with her.’
‘That’s all in your gift, Guy. I’ve seen what you’ve come through, as a young man and as a grown man. I reckon you can do anything you put your mind to. Including loving and respecting Lyra in the right way.’
I hate the way my body reacts to his words, the way it excites at the thought of us somehow making things work, that I can love her. And, hell, that she could love me.
‘Try to relax and go with it. Talk to her. Communicate.’
I scoff. ‘That might be a problem, since I haven’t spoken to her or even messaged her since I yelled in her face and walked out on her for doing… absolutely nothing wrong, other than preying on my own demons, inadvertently.’
I like that Jon doesn’t sugarcoat anything. He doesn’t push back when I admonish myself. It reminds me of Lyra, actually. The way she sits back and listens, doesn’t push a view on me that I haven’t formed myself.
‘If she’s the right girl for you, she wants to make this work. She’ll be afraid, too. Of feelings, of getting hurt. We all are, Guy. Shadows can be scary. But we want the sun to shine, so we work with the shaded patches.’
I smirk around my glass as I take a sip of cool water. ‘Can I steal that for my next record?’
‘Will you give me royalties?’
‘Mate, I can barely afford to pay you for today.’
We share the joke.
‘I’ve seen the interesting choice of car you’ve driven here in. What’s the deal with that?’
I chuckle again. ‘Dave’s daughter’s. I’m borrowing it whilst she’s doing what young lasses should be doing at twenty years old – travelling and living her best life.’
Lyra wasn’t, it occurs to me. Lyra was too busy doing exactly what I do – wearing guilt, doing what other people needed her to be doing.
But not That Night, before she slipped from my grasp.
‘Where did you go then?’ Jon asks, zoning me back into the room.
‘To That Night,’ I tell him truthfully. ‘The thing that’s scared me the most, I think, in all of this mess.
It’s hard to compute that I could’ve met Lyra on the night when everything started to go wrong.
Is that a bad omen? Should I look back and think it was a good thing?
It’s blurred lines and confused me. You know uncertainty and me don’t mix. ’
‘You always see that night as negative. The night it all started to go wrong,’ Jon says.
‘Can I put something to you? What if that night was a great one – on the cusp of all your dreams coming true, the band happy, your brother happy, and you’re about to meet a girl full of possibility?
Life changed because all those things started being pulled from under you one by one against your will. ’
‘The thing is, I don’t know if I want them back.
Not without Scott.’ I bring myself to sit in the chair opposite Jon’s.
‘This isn’t rock bottom. I found that at the bottom of a bottle.
Anything better is a bonus. But I don’t know if I need all that noise.
I don’t know if I want it all. How do I even know for sure that I can cope with it? Especially without Scott.’
‘What do you want, Guy?’
I don’t miss a beat as I tell him, ‘Lyra.’
‘Then go get her. Sacrifice yourself on the altar of dignity and get her back. But remember, she’s only human.
As much as you want to put her on a pedestal you can’t reach, she’s going to mess up sometimes, too.
That’s what humans do. You need to give her the freedom to get things wrong and not run into the wind every time she does, or you do.
You’re sitting here asking me how to love her and my advice is, ask her. Ask her how she wants to be loved.’
We talk for another ten minutes or so, me mindful that as much as I like Jon, I’m paying for his time, or rather, Dave is today.
He walks me outside to my Barbiemobile and fondles her lashes.
‘Steady, lad, she’s shy,’ I tell him.
‘You know, we’d need a whole other session on this but you could consider stopping giving all your money away. You’ve punished yourself enough for things that were never your fault.’
* * *
I don’t realise I’m driving to Matty’s house in North Finchley until I’m sitting in my car outside his mum’s terrace, watching Matty and Lou move around inside.
I’ve stunned myself enough by being here, so why not get out of the car and really set my head into a spin?
When Lou answers the door, she says, ‘I was wondering if you were going to come in.’ She starts walking inside and surprise at her lack of animosity makes me falter before following. ‘Nice wheels, by the way. Swish.’
People need to leave my car alone. Poor girl.
I follow Lou to the kitchen and freeze when I see Matty sitting at their kitchen island, eating a yoghurt, which has dropped all down his front.
I freeze because, ‘He looks just like Scott.’
Lou smiles softly, gently, as if there’s nothing but love still there for my brother. ‘Yeah, he does.’
‘Daddy?’ Matty asks.
‘Yes, baby,’ Lou responds. ‘And do you know who this is, Matty? Do you remember?’
Matty shakes his head and though it’s obvious he wouldn’t remember me, given I haven’t seen him since before he could even crawl, I’m gutted.
‘This is Daddy’s brother. Uncle Guy.’
‘Uncle?’ Matty asks, and Lou nods.
I end up spending a couple of hours with them, mostly playing football (sort of) with Matty in their small garden, and it’s fucking awesome.
‘He’s such a great kid,’ I tell Lou.
‘He is. He reminds me so much of Scott, too.’
I come to sit with her at the outdoor patio table. ‘Would it be okay if I saw you both sometimes? I’d really like to.’
‘We’d love that.’
Then I tell her about Matty’s trust and the seven-figure sum amassed for him from my royalties. ‘I’m gonna give you control, so you can get him whatever he needs whenever he needs it,’ I tell Lou, who hasn’t uttered a word since I told her about the money.
‘Guy, I don’t know what to say, I— Are you sure?’
‘It’s the least I can do.’ But as I say those words, I try to remember Jon’s, too. I’ve got to stop punishing myself. And that’s why, after today, I’ll take my royalties back and maybe stock my food cupboards with something other than baked beans.
I say goodbye to Matty with a ball of emotion in my throat and tears in my eyes that threaten to fall when he hugs me – not because he presses strawberry yoghurt into my white T-shirt, but because I absolutely adore him. My nephew. My brother’s son. Scott’s doppelganger.
They walk me out to my car and Lou hugs me in a way that tells me honestly, she doesn’t resent me or blame me, and it’s that hug that finally makes me pull on my sunglasses to cover my tears.
Unable to hide the weakness in my voice, I tell her, ‘When Matty’s ready, I’ve been keeping his Dad’s Gibson for him.’
* * *
Three days after getting my head closer to straight and my finances more like a functioning human being’s, I finally agree to Dave’s request to get me, Trev and Jay in the same room again.
When I walk into the living room at his and Kylie’s place, the lads are already there, sitting around the sofas and chairs. Kylie’s latest sofas and chairs – she loves upgrading the house décor.
I’m not sure what I’m expecting from Jay’s reaction to me or my own to him, honestly, but when I see him, there’s not the level of hostility there was before we had it out on the beach.
I don’t know that we’ve said our last words to each other on the subject but I think I’d like to draw a line under it all and finally try, or start trying, to move on.
The lads and I give our usual short hello and before I take a pew next to Trev on the leather two-seater, Kylie comes through from the kitchen, holding a baby with a shock of dark hair, like Trev’s, and a brand new, chubby and sort of squishy face – cute in a fugly way, like a pug.
‘Here’s yer Uncle Guy, babba,’ Kylie says, cradling the baby in her arms.
‘Meet Katie,’ Trev says, chest puffed out and full of pride, as he should be.
‘You’re a cutie, aren’t you, girlie?’ I say as Kylie hands the baby over to me, indifferent to whether I’m terrified of holding a miniature human or not.
But you know, she’s okay snuggled against my chest, curled like a seahorse. She smells like baby, whatever babies smell like, and she’s a warm bundle of undeniable cuteness.
‘Congratulations, mate, she’s a little belta,’ I tell Trev.
I hug Tally when she appears from the kitchen. The whole scene brings Lyra back to the forefront of my mind.
After handing Katie to her mam, I sit down next to Trev, where Dave adopts a kind of Chair of the Band role.
I know why we’re all here, of course. We’re talking about a reunion, or just a coming back together – the band minus one. Minus our frontman. A thought that wrecks me.
At the same time, I can’t deny how good it’s felt to pick up the guitar again and, even though I was playing other people’s songs, to play for a crowd again.
To be writing, letting everything I feel and am too inarticulate to say in conversation spill out of me onto pages, as easy as knocking over a drink.
The only part I’m not enjoying is the same piece I never did like – the encroachment on my privacy. That’s for me to work out, to deal with differently this time. But we all have demons, and that’s why I tell the lads…
‘If we do this, we do it right this time. We do it for as long as we’re happy and if we’re told no, fuck ’em, we walk away. We’ve never been in it for fame and fortune, lads, and we need to remember that.’
Trev and Jay respond by chanting, ‘Wallace’, which is a random Braveheart movie reference from our touring days but also quite funny. I guess I am giving something of a pre-war speech.
Once I’ve tossed sofa cushions at them and Dave has scurried to pick them up, telling us, ‘Not the new ones, lads. She’ll kill us,’ we settle back into our conversation.
‘Wives, kids, they come along for the ride this time,’ I tell them. ‘All of us in it together.’
‘For my two penneth,’ Dave starts, ‘I think having something else, something more, is a good thing. You lads didn’t have anything to root you last time. It’s easy to forget what really matters when nothing else does.’
He’s right. And I think, finally, I’m ready for some roots, but not the kind that tie you down and drain everything you have to give. The kind you want to come home to after a long, sweaty night on stage or two weeks on the road.
‘We’ll be the only sober rock band topping the charts,’ Jay says, only half in jest.
I let out a short laugh too, then rub the jaw I really need to shave and tell him seriously, ‘We do it for the love of it or we don’t do it at all, because I’ve seen rock bottom and I don’t wanna go there again.’
‘Same,’ Jay says.
‘D’you know what’s different this time, though?’ I ask rhetorically. ‘I also know that if I get there, I can come back.’ I look to Dave. ‘With a few helping hands.’
He nods, leaning across to thump me on my back.
‘We’re stronger. Older. Wiser. Greying and wrinkling,’ Trev says. ‘But we still know how to put a record together.’
I wonder whether Scott is listening in on this and telling us he’s still a spring chick, suspended in time, free of character lines and grey flecks. ‘We still need a frontman, though,’ I say, stating the obvious.
‘We’ve been turning you into a frontman for an entire wedding season, matey,’ Dave says.
Trev shrugs. ‘You always were the leader in my eyes.’
‘Second that,’ Jay adds.
‘None of that,’ I tell them, wondering whether I have what it takes to talk to a crowd, to entertain in a way that came naturally to my kid brother. ‘We’re all equal.’
‘I’m in,’ Jay says.
‘Me too,’ Trev adds.
‘And I’ll manage ya lads, if ya want,’ Dave tells us.
‘’Course we do, you dafty,’ I tell him, tossing another sofa cushion his way. ‘I do have an idea, though. Dave, do you have the number for the violinist and the cello player from your string quartet?’
‘Aye. Why?’
‘Before we do anything else, I’m gonna need a favour, lads.’