27 CARTER
C ARTER
“She must have kept her promise to you in her writing—barely a mention about your brother has appeared anywhere. And nothing about the problems with Alex or any of your personal struggles. Your history,” Michael says.
“It’s because I hadn’t told her,” I tell him.
“Not until a little later, anyway. It was such a strange thing—wanting to share everything with someone for the first time in my life, but not being able to. I understood the conflict of interest she was dealing with. She did a great job, though. She was moving away from writing profile pieces in favor of the films she wanted to make, anyway, so it was fine. But truthfully, I couldn’t wait for the whole project to be over and done with so we could get on without it hanging over her—the idea of us having to cross lines in working together.
I think she worried at times that I didn’t support her career—that everything became about me and my work.
I probably should have done a better job at that. ”
“Bits of the story about your brother did end up coming out over the years, but nothing from you. Are you ready to talk about it now?” he asks.
Michael had seen his opportunity, and I respect him for taking it.
But my mind is in a different place. I consider his question for a moment.
“We just wanted to get on with our lives. But when you keep secrets while living in the public eye, people start to make things up just to color in the blanks. I regret that a bit.”
“Nah, we did the right thing,” Tommy says, chiming in then.
I look over at him. “You think?” I ask.
“You were still dealing with the loss. We all were. And Alex was ... Well, we were just worried about him. We all still missed Jacob, and nothing about any of it felt right without him during those early years,” Tommy says, and he’s right.
“Jacob and I were inseparable growing up—or at least, as the kid brother, I used to like to think we were,” I tell Michael.
“I fairly worshipped him even though my mum used to tell us that we were as different as night and day. I was the quiet kid, and Jacob was the one who got all the attention, often for all the wrong reasons. He had a sort of street-smart intelligence that made him popular and feared at the same time. Once, a kid had tripped me on purpose while playing football on the field, and I turned up at home with my face all scratched up. The next day, the kid landed in the nurse’s office, and Jacob ended up suspended.
“He would stay up late so he could look after my mum in case my dad showed up in one of his states and she needed help. My dad could get pretty scary. More bark than bite, really, but a bark can often be far worse sometimes, if you ask me. The worse it got at home, the angrier Jacob seemed to get. He had a temper. Funny it ended up being me with that reputation in the end; he would be so confused by that, wouldn’t he? ”
Tommy nods, looking to Michael. “Carter was the quiet kid who stuck to himself. But Jacob was the opposite. He was wild. Unpredictable. He had no fear. Kind of the town rough kid, you know? But deep down, he had a heart of gold and was totally protective of his family, especially when kids started getting mean about their home life. Their dad and such. Carter withdrew. But Jacob lashed out.”
“We both shared a love of music, thanks to our mum,” I continue. “When a few of us started playing in that shoddy little band in secondary school, Jacob was the lead singer. We were all Brit pop, rock, and teen angst, you know? Bit of a mess, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.
“For the first couple of years, we mostly played pubs around Yorkshire. Jacob and our original bass player, Deke, being a few years older, moved down to London eventually, and you grow up a little faster once you’re there.
Tommy and I were quieter, but Jacob and his friends—they were headed down a bad path.
Even though we were all close, we were different in that way. ”
“He always had his head in a book. We used to call him the Professor, and he hated it,” Tommy says with a laugh. “Carter, I mean. Not Jacob.”
“I forgot about that,” I say.
“Well, now it’s on the record.”
“Great. Eventually, Tommy and I headed down to London and were at university. Music was still a dream, though, and by then, Alex and Jacob had made some good contacts. But he and Jacob would take off after shows and turn up the next day all strung out. They started disappearing for days at a time. Blowing off practice.”
I hated it. And I hated having to keep it all from my mum, who knew enough to be worried, but not nearly the full extent of how bad the drugs had become.
“We were at a place in Camden, supposed to be opening for a band we pretty much worshipped,” I continue.
“It was meant to be a huge break for us—but Jacob showed up too late and was completely a mess. We got into a massive fight.” I remember at the time pretending it was all about the show, but the truth is, it was the first time I was ever truly scared for my brother.
“We were this gang of brothers, and it was all falling apart. We blew the show, and it was a disaster. We broke up for a while. Decided to give up the whole thing. Focused on school.”
“School always came easy for him,” Tommy says, pointing a thumb my way. His arms are crossed, and his eyes are closed as he talks. It’s getting late. “Used to drive me crazy. This guy could ace exams after being out all night.”
“So you two weren’t into the same scene as Jacob. The drugs?” Michael asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “Drinking, well, that was more of a challenge. But I saw what had happened to Jacob, and I didn’t want any part of the rest of it. He was barely around for a while.”
“And Alex?” Michael asks.
“He’d taken off down the same path with Jacob,” I say, and Alex shrugs in acknowledgment. His stint in rehab was public knowledge by now.
“They were both a mess.” Tommy had grown quieter and opens his eyes. “It wasn’t long after that when they found Jacob.” His voice falters a bit at the end as he speaks.
“It was always said that he died in a fire?” Michael asks.
Neither Tommy nor I speak for a little while.
Like good memories, the bad ones are embedded just as surely.
The night of the fire, I went out looking for Jacob and found him at some girl’s shoddy place in Brixton.
They were all strung out, and I tried to get Jacob to come with me.
But he was totally out of it and wouldn’t go.
Finally, I stormed off, leaving Jacob there.
Told him I was done with him. I should have tried harder.
I should have done more. A few hours later, he overdosed, the place caught fire, and Jacob never made it out.
Because of me. And Alex was the one to get them the drugs that night.
He’d left just before I arrived, planning to return. He never got over the guilt.
But some stories are better left untold.
“Yeah,” I say simply. “That’s right. Electrical fire.”
Tommy meets my eyes in mutual understanding. He nods his head just slightly, knowing the details of the wheels turning in my head.
“Jacob had some kind of demon that no one was going to change. No one could get through to him after some point. Not even you,” Tommy says eventually, reading my mind. Always looking after me, even after all these years. But that’s who we are.
The lights in the cabin have grown dimmer, and the plane hits a bit of turbulence, jostling us in our seats ever so slightly. The club soda I’ve been drinking sloshes a little, and Tommy shifts in his seat.
“I disappeared for a while after that,” I say. “But when I came back—”
“Out of nowhere one day, this guy shows up at my door looking five years older, with a stack of the best music he’s ever written. Beautiful stuff. He hands it to me and says, ‘Let’s do this.’ Just like that. We got the other guys and convinced Carter to take over on vocals.
“Everything that happened with Jacob had scared Alex straight, and by some miracle and a lot of willpower, he showed up clean as a whistle,” Tommy says. “For a while, anyway,” he adds with a shrug. In response, Alex salutes.
“We made this pact. We’d seen the way other bands had self-destructed.
So we told ourselves we’d walk the straight and narrow.
Focus on the music. No distractions. Nothing.
For Alex, that meant drugs. For me, that meant .
.. well, anything that could throw me into a downward spiral.
They’d never seen me in love, but they knew I could get a little . ..”
“Intense?” Tommy says, raising a brow.
“Devoted,” I correct. “And I think they were worried that if things went poorly with her, it would break me.” They weren’t entirely wrong.
I never told Tommy the full story of what went on during those months when I disappeared after Jacob’s death.
Only Alex knows the full extent of it. That I barely survived the depression.
I still don’t know how I did. Or why the universe bothered with me.
But Alex was the one to remind me that my mum had already lost one son.
It was why he was so concerned when he saw me diving into something with my entire heart.
“How long did you keep the pact?” Michael asks.
I shrug. “Not long enough.”
A minute passes while Michael is taking all of this in. “It’s funny,” Alex says a moment later.
“What?” I ask.
“Do you remember? I’m the one who ended up telling her everything about this back then.”
“That’s right. I’d forgotten about that. One of those early nights with her out on tour, right?”
“Who? Cameron?” Michael asks.
Tommy chuckles, and a smile crosses my lips. Michael looks to both of us questioningly.
“We’re laughing because that’s not her real name,” I explain. “She had reasons to stay anonymous, so she used a pen name.”
Realization dawns on Michael’s face. “Ah, that explains a few things.”
Alex looks off into the distance, pictures playing in his mind. “I told her over a couple of beers before a show. She’d overheard a conversation and knew we were worried about you. But she couldn’t understand why. She needed to know.”
“She did,” I agree. “I probably should’ve thanked you for that.”
He bows his head slightly in reply.