Chapter 34
LYRA
The Last UK Gig of the World Tour
I check the time on my phone again from the back of the luxury car Guy sent to pick me up in London and drive me back up to Sunderland.
Ironically, he said the national rail system is too unreliable and he wanted me to see the final concert in the UK leg of The Hand Me Downs’s World Tour.
It’s another sell-out show at the Stadium of Light and if I’m not there in thirty-seven minutes, I’ll miss the start, because we’ve hit more road works and bumper-to-bumper traffic on the motorways than Guy’s eaten my Yorkshire puddings.
‘How long is the satnav saying?’ I ask the driver again, foot bouncing against the floormat.
His name’s Ed and he’s driven me around enough times now that I don’t have to spend the entire journey making polite conversation. Which is great because I’ve worked myself up into a giant ball of stress.
It’s the Stadium of Light. Sunderland. Their home crowd – for all except the new guitarist who’s from Manchester. I haven’t been to every gig on the tour because I’ve been travelling for my own work, but I know tonight is important to the band, to Guy especially.
I want to support him in the way he does me. I wouldn’t have even been in London today if it hadn’t been for Guy sharing the crazy article I wrote about him two years ago with a contact at Rock On the Edge, the fastest growing music magazine in the world.
I’d never intended that article to be for anyone’s eyes except Guy’s. All I’d wanted was to show him how much I loved him, how inspired by his music and in awe of his strength I was, still am, every single day.
It was days after my sister’s wedding when my now editor – one of them because I’m freelance – called me and said he’d read my article. He asked if he could publish it as the first exclusive interview Guy Walker had given since his brother died.
Despite the enormity of the opportunity, I’d refused to sell the story. It won’t ever be for anyone else to read, only Guy.
But I had said I’d write him another one. An interview with original photographs. The first official comeback story for The Hand Me Downs.
So far as my career goes, the rest is history. I spend my days photographing people and places, in new countries, across continents, creating the kind of stories I’ve always wanted to write.
I spend as many nights as possible with Guy, listening to the voice I’ll never tire of, singing lyrics I’ll never stop feeling in the depths of me.
And I wake up all the mornings I can in the arms of the man I am still, nine years on from the first time he asked me to meet him, utterly besotted with.
‘Five more minutes,’ Ed tells me.
‘Are you coming in tonight?’
‘I’ll drop you first, then park and come inside.’
Every show, the band has a huge suite and one thing I love is that, in with their family and friends, amongst celebrity friends, there’s always space for the team who tour with them and generally run around after them.
If there’s a perk of coming right down to the wire, the stadium’s searchlights already dancing against the dark September sky, it’s that there’s no traffic around the venue.
Ed pulls up to the main entrance and I hot-foot it inside, the security team waving me on. I pull up, sliding to a stop along the marble floor when I see Dave, not stage side where he should be but, ‘Waiting for me?’
‘Aye, flower. Guy’s asked for ya to come and watch from the sound pit tonight, not the suite.’
‘At the front of the stage?’
He holds out his arms and says, ‘It’s the best spot in the house.’
‘Best spot for the best night of the tour?’ I ask, stepping into the lift.
There’s a roar in the stadium and the concrete walls of the corridors are literally shaking as we stop by the dressing room to drop my bag and leather jacket.
I know from experience that I’m going to be hot amongst the lights and electronics, though not hotter than seeing Guy do his thing on stage makes me feel.
The room smells of Guy’s aftershave and makes me desperate to get out there.
‘Ready?’ Dave asks, and he looks at me weirdly.
Everyone is on edge for tonight.
‘Absolutely.’
The sound from the stadium gets louder and louder as we approach the backstage doors. The rattle of the walls, the pounding of feet, and when Dave opens the door for me, I’m assaulted by the wild screams of fans. The place is electric. The voltage higher than any normal human could withstand.
It’s all for them, the four extremely talented men on stage.
Trev building the frenzy with his electric guitar, George on bass, Jay steadily increasing the pounding of his bass drum like a heart rate that’s rising.
And Guy, strumming his Martin, approaching the standing microphone.
The stadium is exploding, literally with pyrotechnics, and with the wild voices yelling Guy’s lyrics back at him as he plays the opening song.
‘All the voices scream,
As we come home.
Out of the steam,
We’re in the zone.
‘Rock to the sound,
Let us hear you pound.
We’re moving you,
Falling for you too.
‘This is where we’re from,
Back on the north-east scene.
We never went to prom,
Started rocking as a teen.
‘Rock to the sound,
Let us hear you pound.
We’re moving you,
Falling for you too.’
In the instrumental, he calls out to the crowd, ‘Let us hear you sing, Sunderland!’
As the place hits the roof again, he looks to the sound pit and nods to me, that heartbreakingly sexy half-smile tugging on the mouth I get to kiss, and the women in the stadium ignite as he winks on the big screen, but I know it’s mine.
All mine. Even when he’s not on stage, without a guitar in his hand, when he’s putting up shelves in our home or we’re falling out as we construct flatpack furniture, he’s still my guy.
Someone puts a bottle of cold water in my hand halfway through the set and I glug it down without my hips stopping their unrelenting twist and swing.
‘Thank you,’ Guy tells the fans at the end of a song.
Then he looks my way again and despite my smile, he gives me an expression I can’t read. One I’m not used to. He stops speaking and the arena is relatively quiet. He’s just staring at me, until eventually he seems to remember what his job is up there.
‘I’ve got something a bit different for you tonight, Sunderland. Something I’ve been working on.’
He unhooks his guitar from around his neck and sets it against the speakers behind him, then moves to the piano that George usually plays for a few of the slower tracks. The session violinists set their instruments under their chins – whatever this song is, it isn’t a surprise to them.
Guy sits down to the piano and the sight has me biting my lip. I’ve been teaching him to play pretty much since the day we got together, but he rarely plays on stage.
‘I wrote this song a couple of years ago. The woman I wrote it about not only showed me the light, but she’s the reason we’re onstage tonight.
She also taught me to play it on the piano.
So this one’s for her, always.’ He adjusts the microphone overhanging the Yamaha. ‘And she’s standing right over there.’
I hide behind my hands when the cameras put my face on the big screens. Peeking through my fingers, I see Guy laughing, then move my hands to give him a teasing death stare.
Then he starts to play. The camera moves in close on his fingers, expertly working the keys like he’s been doing it since birth.
And he sings the lyrics I love. My song.
He plays piano through two verses and two rounds of the chorus, then he picks up his acoustic and strums. The violins kick in, the guitars ramp up, and Guy walks across the stage, his gaze fixed on me.
He doesn’t sing the next verse, he leaves it to Trev and the others, and he comes to sit on the edge of the stage, right in front of me. We’re on the big screen and my heart is pounding harder than the drums because I don’t know what’s coming but… God, is he going to…?
I swallow so hard, my throat might burst.
‘Marry me,’ he says.
I blink. Is he…? Is this…? ‘What?’
‘Marry me. Because I’m so in love with you, Lyra, none of this matters without you.’
The Stadium of Light is as loud as I’ve heard it for any of their concerts.
Guy unhooks and sets aside his guitar, then jumps down from the stage to take hold of my face in his hands.
‘Marry me.’
Oh. My. God.
‘Yes,’ I whisper, watching my toes to stop myself from crying on a big screen in front of sixty thousand people I don’t know.
Guy gently nudges my chin until I’m looking at him.
And I nod. ‘Yes.’
He crashes his mouth against mine as if no one else is watching, then wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the floor, twirling me around the sound box, ecstatic happiness bellowing out of me as laughter.
When he sets me down, he tells me, ‘I really fucking love you, Lyra.’
And he watches me the whole way back across the stage, making it to centre stage, the frontman in all his beautiful glory, singing the final chorus of my song along with every single fan at the concert.
He only takes his eyes off me to look to the heavens.
I don’t believe there’ll ever come a time that Guy doesn’t imagine Scott is still the frontman, that his brother isn’t up there on that stage with him with every note he sings.
But from where I’m standing, Guy does a pretty good job of being the star of The Hand Me Downs. The brightest of all the stars in my life.
I think that’s how it was always supposed to be.
* * *