Chapter 4
‘Nice gaff.’ Roly looked around as Charlie led him down a timber-floored hallway into the vast living space of his penthouse apartment. So this was what you could afford when you went the distance in Oh Boy! – when you didn’t fuck it up and throw it all away.
‘It’s mad, isn’t it?’ Charlie chuckled. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never been here before.’
Roly could believe it. He’d been surprised when Charlie had called him out of the blue and invited him over.
He hadn’t seen any of the band in ages – even Charlie, the one he’d been closest to.
After they’d spoken, he’d done some quick calculations, and he reckoned it had been almost a year since they’d been in touch, and then it had only been on WhatsApp.
The last time they’d seen each other in person, Charlie was living in London and about to embark on his first solo tour.
Roly had gone over for the opening night at the Roundhouse in Camden.
He really hadn’t wanted to go. It was too humiliating to be back in that world as an outsider, like some hanger-on with his nose pressed against the window, with all those industry pricks looking down on him and feeling sorry for him.
But Charlie had been so nervous about playing his first solo gig and had begged Roly for his support, anxious to have some friendly faces in the crowd.
So out of loyalty to his friend, he’d swallowed his pride and made the effort to show up.
At least he knew Liam, Zack and Alex couldn’t make it, so he wouldn’t have to face any of them.
They were all too busy with their own careers, which while it was a relief, made him feel like even more of a loser for being available.
He was the only one with nothing better to do.
The gig went well, and Charlie had invited him to hang out backstage afterwards.
They’d barely spoken, though. After a quick hello and a selfie for his Instagram, Charlie was too busy schmoozing more important people than Roly to do more than wave to him from across the room occasionally.
Roly got it – it was Charlie’s night and everyone wanted a piece of him.
It was like being the bride at a wedding – everyone was just there for you, but you couldn’t possibly give that level of attention back to each one of them.
But no matter how much he rationalised it, it still pissed him off that he’d been left feeling like a chump for doing his mate a favour.
Charlie had texted since and there’d been lots of talk of getting together when he was next in Dublin and having a proper catch-up, just the two of them.
But it never happened. Charlie had been back in Dublin several times, visiting family and friends, but he never seemed able to make time for Roly – not until he had another album to launch or gig to promote.
To add insult to injury, Roly had seen him on Twitter trying to persuade Liam or Alex to come to Dublin to meet him the last time he was home.
After that, Roly had ignored Charlie’s pleas to attend his gigs or post about his latest album on social media, making vague promises to ‘try to make it’ that were as phoney and meaningless as Charlie’s ‘catch up next time’.
They’d drifted further and further apart, until now Roly only saw Charlie the same way he did the other guys from the band, when he was hate-scrolling through their Instagram or Twitter feeds.
It sucked that even mild-mannered, easy-going Charlie, the peace-keeper of the group and the most sweet-natured of them all, had turned out to be a user.
Roly resented him for making him feel so spiteful and bitter.
He didn’t like being that person, and he hated that he cared.
But he’d thought Charlie was a mate, and the rejection hurt. It just did.
Charlie waved him to a large sectional sofa, but Roly was drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Sliding doors led to a terrace overlooking the curved glass structure of the Aviva Stadium, its blue light glowing into the night.
It was strange to think they’d lit that place up once – him, Charlie and the rest of them – filling it with so much energy and love.
He struggled to feel it, but he was so detached from that life now, it was like it had all happened to someone else.
‘Drink?’ Charlie asked from the kitchen area. ‘I mean, I’ve got Coke or Sprite,’ he added quickly.
‘Coke, please. Diet if you have it?’
He nodded and opened a big American-style fridge.
‘But you have whatever you want,’ Roly added as Charlie pulled out two glass bottles of Coke. ‘I’m cool with it.’
‘Nah, I don’t drink much these days anyway,’ Charlie said, as Roly turned back to the view. ‘I might have a beer later.’
He joined Roly at the window and handed him a bottle. ‘Well, cheers!’ He crashed his bottle against Roly’s and took a long slug. ‘It’s hard to believe we were on stage there, isn’t it?’ He nodded to the Aviva.
‘I was thinking the same thing. It seems like another life.’
‘It was another life.’ They were both silent for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. ‘Listen to us,’ Charlie said then with a laugh. ‘We sound like old men.’
Roly smiled.
‘Chilli will be ready in about ten minutes,’ Charlie said, nodding towards the kitchen as Roly followed him to the sofa. A bowl of tortilla chips and a tray of dips were laid out on the low glass coffee table in front of it.
‘You cooked?’
Charlie grinned. ‘Yeah, I’m a bit of a domestic goddess these days. I made that too,’ he said as Roly scooped up guacamole on a tortilla chip.
‘It’s really good.’
‘I’ve even started making my own bread.’
‘Bread? Seriously? You know you can buy that in the shops now?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘It’s something to do. I was kind of at a loss after the band finished.’ He shifted awkwardly. ‘You know what it’s like.’
‘You had your solo career, though.’
‘So did you.’
‘Hardly the same thing,’ he said wryly. Charlie’s couple of solo albums hadn’t exactly set the world on fire, but they hadn’t bombed as comprehensively as Roly’s. ‘You didn’t get shat on from a height and laughed out of town.’
‘Maybe not, but it took me a long time to get my act together. Too long, really. I kind of screwed that up.’
‘Your first album did well, didn’t it?’
‘Not as well as it should have done. When Oh Boy! finished everyone was telling me I had to move quickly, get something out as soon as possible, not let the grass grow under my feet. They were right. If I’d done it straight away, I’d have been flying. Look at Zack.’
‘Yeah.’ Zack had got his solo career off the ground with almost indecent haste after the band split up.
He was the least-talented member of the group musically, but he really excelled at showing off and his self-promotion was second to none.
His debut solo album had gone straight to number one and the supporting tour was a sell-out.
‘You don’t want to be like him, though, do you? His stuff is shite.’
‘Ah, it’s not that bad,’ Charlie said with typical grace. ‘Fair play to him. He did what I should have been doing. But I just couldn’t get on with it. Getting over the band was tough. I kind of lost the plot there for a while.’
‘In what way?’
‘Drinking, doing too much drugs, partying too hard. It was a strange time. It took me a while to pull myself together. It was like I was paralysed. I couldn’t shift myself to do anything. I felt kind of… lost. Was it like that for you?’
‘Well, no. It was a bit different for me. I mean, I got kicked out. And I went straight from the band into rehab, so it’s not like I was left to my own devices.’
‘Yeah. You were lucky.’
‘Seriously?’ Roly screwed up his face. That was such bullshit!
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. One minute I was in the band, and I was being told where to go and what to do every second of the day – what to say, how to dress, even who I should be going out with.
And then the next thing, I was on my own, and there was just…
nothing. I could do whatever I wanted, but I had no idea what that was.
I hadn’t even had to think about it in years.
So I just sort of… drifted.’ He sighed. ‘At least in rehab you had a structure. You knew what you were doing.’
‘Yeah. Group therapy.’ He rolled his eyes.
Charlie laughed. ‘Post-group therapy. That’s what we all needed.’
‘Even Zack?’
‘Yeah, probably not Zack.’
Roly felt a surge of warmth and sympathy towards Charlie. They’d first bonded over slagging off Zack.
‘Did you hear him on the radio the other day?’
‘Aw shit, I missed it.’
Charlie smiled. ‘He said that Liam had predicted when we split up that Zack would be the most successful of us all – and Zack says “and he wasn’t wrong”!’
‘Yeah, modesty was never his strong point, was it?’
‘Once he started believing his own publicity, there was no stopping him!’
Roly laughed.
‘Sometimes I envied you, you know?’ Charlie said quietly.
‘Me?’
‘Yeah. That you got out when you did – when it was still a laugh, you know? Before it all got so serious and all the bitching and in-fighting started. You had the best of it, and then you got out, got your life back.’
‘You think that’s what happened?’
Charlie turned to look him square in the eye. ‘Honestly? I envied the shit out of you. It was like you had the best of both worlds – you got to be in Oh Boy! when it was all new and exciting and… fun. And then you got to not be in it and go back to having a normal life.’
‘Yeah, it must have been a nightmare travelling the world, making tonnes of money, going to all those parties, girls throwing themselves at you everywhere you went…’ It came out more bitterly than he intended.
He got where Charlie was coming from, so why did he have to sound so angry? It was pathetic.
Charlie smiled. ‘I’m not saying it was all bad. It had its moments.’
‘And rehab isn’t exactly normal life.’