Chapter 7
SEVEN
The sound of Ade playing an acoustic guitar is picked up by the breeze as we laze around the oversized jacuzzi.
For the moment, we’re all still faking it.
Everyone’s so amazed by the man and his world that we’re pretending that we’re the best of friends and there is nothing strange about us hanging out together.
There’s a sort of forced positivity to everything we say that helps us gloss over any drama that occurred back when we were still in one another’s lives.
No one mentions the end of our time together.
No mentions anything of any real importance.
“Have you got a boyfriend now, Bridget?” Sasha asks ever so innocently.
She is kneeling in front of me with her chest beneath the water so that she looks even more toned and fit than before. Her electric blue bikini is like a flashing sign directing all eyes straight at her.
“I actually just broke up with someone.” This seems like an honest answer, but then I realise that a whole year has passed since Paul moved out. “I’m enjoying being single for a while.” I fail to not look at Jake as I say this.
“It’s kind of weird that none of us have children,” Ryan puts in from across the pool. “I mean, we’re old enough, but here we are. Free to jet off at a moment’s notice.”
In response, Tom looks at his wife with a wounded grimace. Clara looks away altogether, and Jake tips his head back to challenge him.
“How do you know I haven’t got kids?” There’s an edge to his voice, and it’s clear he’s taken it personally for some reason. It makes me wonder once more why Dawn isn’t here to stop this kind of thing.
“Sorry, I just assumed—”
Jake bursts out laughing, which somehow makes the atmosphere worse. “I’m only joking, Ryan. I mean, you shouldn’t make assumptions, and I do have a kid, but I’m messing with you.”
Tom turns to look at him. “You have a kid?” He does nothing to hide his surprise. “How old is he?”
“It’s a girl, not a boy,” Jake answers with a smile. He has made an attempt to look summery, in that he’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but the fact that they’re both black and the T-shirt has a picture of a snake escaping from a skull limits his laid-back vibe. “Heather’s thirteen.”
“Thirteen!?” we all want to say, but only Sasha does. “You had her when we were in our first year at uni?”
Jake wears the same reluctant smile he had when meeting Ade. “In a way. Though, in a far truer way, I got a girl pregnant, denied that the baby was mine and had nothing to do with my daughter until I got my head together a few years back.”
The hush that now falls is so loud that it drowns out the sound of the wind and the waves as the boat pushes on. Even Ade’s tuneful strumming does nothing to make it better.
Jake always liked awkward moments and waits a few seconds before continuing.
“The mum was a girl on my music course. She dropped out after the first semester and raised the kid without my help. I was a pretty terrible person, to be honest, but I’m trying to make amends.
I spent most of my twenties a total mess, but drugs and drink and feeling sorry for yourself will do that to you.
It’s a good thing you got rid of me from the band when you did, eh, Ade? ”
His stare is so intense that I half expect him to lunge forward and smash the guitar over Ade’s head. For his part, our host shows no sign of having heard. He just keeps sliding his fingers up and down the strings with that metallic scrape you hear on intimate acoustic recordings.
When Jake laughs next, he wants us to think that it’s not a big deal, but I can tell it is.
He looks over at Mick, who is lying on the white sunbed in nothing but a pair of tiny red Speedos.
I finally think of an explanation for the weirdly purplish colour of the drummer’s hands.
I look at his body for track marks, but the light’s too strong, and I can only see the black hair that covers him like a suit.
Sasha changes the topic to avoid any further confrontation. “You always were a wind-up merchant, Jake.” She shakes her head encouragingly. “I reckon you’re a big kid at heart.”
He leans back and takes the half-compliment, half-insult with a smile.
“Dawn has kids,” Ade says, and his contribution makes everyone turn to look. “I invited her this week, but she couldn’t come. I called her to catch up instead.”
This almost makes me laugh. A phone call? Why didn’t the rest of us get one of those?
“She sounded good, you know?” Ade flashes his pearly whites. His voice is thick with nostalgia. “The same old busy little bee, organising her family now instead of us.”
Perhaps that’s why he brought us here: for old times’ sake.
This doubt hangs over us, and when no one knows how to continue the conversation, it fragments.
Sasha paddles over to stare adoringly at Ade, who guffaws at whatever she says as her husband glares.
Tom distracts himself by talking about football or rugby or something that makes Ryan look intolerably bored, and I turn to Clara, who’s hiding under a parasol beside me.
Near-transparent people like us know not to mess with ultraviolet rays.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” I say, having decided that there’s no need to apologise for losing contact because friendship goes both ways. “And I’m sorry for not getting in touch.” Fine, I instantly abandoned this resolution. “I don’t know where the time’s gone. It’s been years.”
Her golden-brown eyebrows curve, and her shyness rises to the surface – much like Sasha’s possibly enhanced cleavage. “I’m sorry too. I moved home after leaving London, and I felt so stupid for not doing more with my life that I stopped talking to anyone from back then.”
“It was a bubble.” I suppose I identify a little too closely with what she’s said as, instead of immediately explaining what I mean, I stare up at the sky. “We were surrounded by all those talented people, and we convinced ourselves that creativity was all that mattered.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” She smiles, and it makes me happier.
“When we were at uni, it felt as if only the artists with their own gallery shows and the writers who already had short stories published would go on to change the world. I always saw myself as so inferior, but when it comes down to it, everything is just as messed up now as it was before. We may be sitting on Ade’s billion-dollar yacht, but he’s just another pop star, like all the others.
There are still wars and hatred. At least my work at the old people’s home helps in some small way. ”
“So you stopped painting?” I ask a little too keenly. I hate that I want her to say yes so that I don’t feel bad about my own creative inertia.
“No, I still paint.” She looks at the horizon as if searching for a colour to daub over a canvas. “I just don’t show anyone anymore.”
My throat is dry, and I wish I could continue our friendly conversation in the same tone as before, but the only comments that come to mind sound trivial or mean, so I hold my tongue.
“I still see Dawn sometimes,” she explains in a more serious voice. “She was always so good at looking out for us, wasn’t she? She even brings her kids to story time in the home on Saturday mornings. We’re quite good friends these days.”
I forgot that she and Dawn came from the same place. Chester or Chelmsford or Chichester or somewhere. I suddenly feel left out of their cute little meetups, and before I can reply, Tom’s loud voice interrupts us.
“No, just a normal beer.”
“I’m afraid we only have alcohol-free, sir.” Phoebe the waitress is holding a tray with a can and a glass on it, and her eyes stray over to her boss, who just keeps strumming.
“What do you mean?” Tom’s little mind is working away. I bet he’s thinking back to the wine we had and wondering what was in it. He’s about to open his mouth to complain when Ade starts singing.
“Yeah, I broke all my promises.”
If he’d chosen any other song, it wouldn’t have worked. Tom would have thrown a tantrum like a two-year-old, and there would have been nothing we could do to repair the mood.
“I did it all for me.”
But like the star that he is, he knew exactly when to play us his biggest song. He knows the power it has. Because even though he’s had three massive albums since then, and each has had its own stratospheric singles, he’ll always be associated with the enormous hit that made his name.
“I left you crying, left you alone.”
If you go onto setlist.fm, you’ll see that he’s finished every single concert he’s ever played with that song. It would be insane not to, and that’s why he brought it out right now.
“I chose to set myself free.”
Ade has a voice that’s part Tracy Chapman, part Jagger.
It’s coarse and tortured and, even though “Promises” is all about betrayal, it’s somehow the singer you end up feeling for.
It’s so potent that Mick wakes up from his doze and starts drumming on the bench just at the moment that the digital beat comes in on the record.
That was what helped Ade break through. He was the indie darling who embraced the club scene.
The remix of his biggest single helped him sell ten times as many copies as the original version.
And after a few bars of that breakbeat, a bass line starts pounding, his voice gets all distorted, and it sounds as if he’s singing through tears.
When you’re jumping about to it with your mates, you forget all that, but the emotion is still there.
Sasha isn’t worried what the lyrics mean as she grins up at our hero, and she certainly isn’t thinking about her husband’s desperate need to continue his bender.
I doubt she’s even questioned what the possible absence of alcohol on the boat might mean.
She is in love with Ade and with this moment. She is happy.
I feel as if I’m watching this whole thing on television, and, in keeping with the high production values, a desert island comes into view.
I stand up next to the jacuzzi to make sure it’s real.
Long-tailed white birds swoop along the coast like arrows shot from the heavens.
There’s a perfect beach that a child might have drawn, studded with large rocks and a neat treeline with swaying branches.
At the far end, an immense cliff face rears up, seemingly out of nothing, and I want to jump from the yacht to swim out and claim the place as my own. I want to live there for ever.
Just as I’m thinking that this really is paradise, there’s a thud on the parasol above me, and I jump out of my skin as an immense black bird slides grimly off it to land on the deck in front of me.