Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
The sun sets early around here. By six o’clock, it’s already getting dark, and there are clouds sweeping in to block out the twilight.
The temperature drops just enough that it’s no longer comfortable to be half naked, and we run back to our cabins to change.
Wearing long sleeves and trousers once more makes me think that I’ve put my real skin back on.
The Love Island reject I’ve been imitating for the last day wasn’t me, and the feel of the fabric gives me an unexpected sense of contentment.
When we reconvene in the dining room, which was previously separated from the lounge by a sliding partition, Jake is back with us.
He’s shy with me in a way that I don’t recognise.
Despite the sweet and generous person he has shown himself to be whenever we are alone together, his public face has always been different.
Jake once punched a guy for flirting with his cousin when she came to stay.
Jake would get drunk, and I sometimes didn’t see him for days as he fell from pub to party and back on a forty-eight-hour trail across London that wouldn’t finish until late on Sunday night when there was nothing left to entertain him.
Jake has several different personalities, and the cautious, hesitant person who stands in the shadows as Ade addresses us isn’t one I recognise.
“We need to start again.” Ade walks around the table as he speaks.
“I told you that I invited you all here for a purpose, and that still stands. Mick was one of the main reasons I bought this yacht; I knew how much he needed to get away from everything, and it is eating me up that I failed to protect him.”
“How did he get the heroin?” Tom has long forsaken any attempt at charm. “I thought you said you checked his bags.”
Ade glares at him, and I wonder if the real reason we’re here is so that he and Sasha had an excuse to meet up. If that is the case, why did they invite her husband?
He stretches his guitarist’s fingers out on both hands and waits for the instinct to throttle Tom to die back down. “Mick was an addict, and addicts generally find a way. Perhaps he bought it from one of the crew, or he managed to get some brought to him when we were last in port. The point is…”
I get the definite impression that he had a whole speech prepared before Tom set up this roadblock, but he hesitates over it now. “The point is, we’re still here together, and you’re all very special to me. When I think of the years we shared in London, they seem… perfect.”
I know just what he means. As Sasha sits in one of the dining chairs with her husband’s hand on her shoulder, and the rest of us lurk out of the way, I think we all do.
“I was happier than at any other time in my life. Money and success don’t bring fulfilment,” says the rich, successful man, “but you guys did, and I’ve spent the last I don’t know how long wishing we could go back.”
I’m tempted to suggest that he should buy the university so that we can cosplay our old lives, but what started out as a hopeful speech has taken a sadder turn. The sorrow that is present in so much of Ade’s music is plain to see.
“We haven’t exactly disappeared.” Sasha delivers this simple truth, and for once she’s not trying to impress him. “You could have called us whenever you wanted. You didn’t have to do all this.”
Ade leans forward with his fists pressed against the long glass table as he replies. “No, I couldn’t. I have been in a dark place for a long time. I’m glad to say that I got out of it a couple of years ago, but I feel like it’s my fault that Mick never did.”
With each new nugget of information, I try to join the dots. The fact that a rock star had a hedonistic lifestyle is not surprising – his wish to rehabilitate almost inevitable – but I fail to imagine how he is to blame for his drummer’s death.
“There’s another reason I wanted to see you.” He pauses and releases a breath he’s been holding. “I’ve always felt like I let each of you down in some way.”
He looks at Ryan, which reminds me just how little he fits into any of this. He was never one of the group – he told me himself that he thought Ade barely knew his name. I’m not saying that a relative stranger isn’t welcome, but it strikes me as odd that Ade should address this comment to him.
“And so I need to apologise.”
Ade stops to look at Clara, and I consider for the first time that I know nothing about their friendship.
Even though he was at the centre of our collective universe, he preferred to spend time with one or two people at a time.
He always hung out with Jake and me together (and then Jake and me separately).
And I vaguely remember him talking to Clara when the rest of us were busy, but I can’t imagine why he would feel the need to apologise to her.
He had a far better excuse for not staying in touch with her than I did.
For the most part, we listen to his oddly contrite message with quiet respect.
Sasha nods gratefully throughout, and Jake doesn’t throw any more bottles, which is a massive improvement on our last meeting.
In fact, he puts his arm around Clara as if he’s so moved by what’s happening that he has to share his emotion.
I should have known that Tom would screw it up.
“I don’t know why you think I deserve an apology.
I had very little to do with you, even when we lived together.
” He keeps blinking as if he’s got something stuck in his eye.
“As far as I’m concerned, you weren’t even that talented.
You have to admit there were better bands around who never got to record a duet with Ariana Grande. ”
I wonder what programme of spiritual realignment Ade has gone through. I can practically hear him repeating a mantra to stay calm.
“I fully accept that I am not the best at anything I do.” This response is almost enough to shut Tom up for a while. Almost.
“Either way, I don’t need your apology. Keep it for Jake. He’s the one you screwed over.” He shoots a glance towards our friend in the corner. “Cutting him loose just before you made millions. That’s cold, that is. If I were him, I wouldn’t have come.”
Tom puts his free hand to his head, and I can see that he’s trembling. Sasha tries to grab hold of him, but he moves away from her to stand on his own.
“Unless you’ve brought us here to give him this lovely boat of yours… Is that what’s happening? You’re giving back what should have been his?”
Ade closes his eyes and stands perfectly still. In his black shirt and trousers, there’s something juvenile about him. He looks like a boy going for work experience at his mum’s company, praying that he won’t make a prat of himself on the first day.
“I thought not.” Tom folds his arms and looks proud. “You’re not really that sorry after all.”
Sasha is caught in the middle. She stares into space, unable to look either at the man I assume she loves or her husband.
“What’s got into you?” Weirdly, it falls to me to ask this.
“You can see that Ade is making an effort. I know you might have your reasons not to get on, but at least he’s trying.
” It suddenly occurs to me that I might not have been the only one who saw Sasha and Ade together, and I decide I’ve said enough.
“Yeah, Tom.” Jake looks unimpressed. I’m amazed he’s stayed quiet for as long as he has. “Learn when to shut up.”
Tom is perfectly restless: the muscles in his arms flex in a seemingly random sequence that a genius mathematician might be able to extract some great secret from, but it’s lost on me.
When he sees that even Clara is glaring at him, he backs away with a shout of fury and frustration. There’s something melodramatic about the way he moves. He is the stooped, limping monster, escaping from a mob of torch-bearing villagers. “You’re a bunch of worthless, unfeeling—”
“Oh, come on!” Jake cuts the insult short, his voice now raised. “We went through this last night. How often can you show us how miserable you are and still expect anyone to care?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” He sounds so broken and desperate, but his wife can’t bear to look at him, and he’s lost any sliver of sympathy he might have had from the rest of us. “You never saw me for who I am.”
“This isn’t you, Tom,” Ade tries again. “I’ve seen it with other friends before. It’s your body crying out for alcohol that’s making you act this way.”
“Then you had no right to take it away from me.” Tom points his finger back at him like a gun, but when he tries to shout again, nothing comes out.
He doesn’t leave us entirely this time. He collides with the long curving sofa near the door and falters. Instead of running from the room in the hope he’ll make us feel guilty for the way we’ve treated him, he lies down just as the rain starts to fall.
In the space of a few seconds, every drop sounds like a bullet hitting a metal plate, robbing Tom of his dramatic moment.
The rest of us hurry to the windows to take in the otherworldly display.
We look on in silent wonder, like children excited for the first snow of the year.
Thunder carries through the room like a drum roll, and I flinch as the sky lights up.