Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
When I met Bridget, I knew that I was in love from the very first moment. I could see that she was too nice for me, but I would have done anything to be with her.
I knew that I couldn’t be Jake, the guy who gets drunk and angry and starts fights for absolutely no reason.
I’d be Jacob, who’s into arty movies and long books and is open to the idea that pop music is actually bearable.
I got better at the guitar, joined a band, wore smarter clothes, and it was all for Bridget.
And okay, ‘Jacob’ never quite stuck, but for a little while, the rest of that persona felt like a good fit for me.
When I saw her on the day we moved into our flat in Loring Hall, I couldn’t quite believe that the girl of my dreams would be living in the room next door.
Sasha was the bold, flashy one. She walked straight over like she expected me to fall at her feet.
Dawn was outgoing, and Clara was sweet and kind, but there was magic in Bridget’s eyes.
It was like she had a secret and, if I was my very best self, she might share it with me.
It took me months to convince her that I wasn’t a moron.
It didn’t help that, even in my nice new clothes and with my hair grown out like I thought I was Kurt Cobain, I still looked like a neanderthal.
I realised at an early age that my neck and hands and shoulders are just too big and broad for anyone to take me seriously.
When I was at school, teachers took one look and decided I was trouble: so that’s what I became.
If they’d given out end-of-school prizes, I’d have been voted boy most likely to do a spell in prison. And they’d have been right.
Bridget made me want to change. And to be fair to him, Ade did all he could to help.
The three of us were inseparable back then.
Most men would have been intimidated by a pretty boy like him, but we were always mates, and I doubt Bridget would ever have gone out with me if it weren’t for my best friend.
It wasn’t just that he used to talk me up to her.
No, he let me be in his band when I had no real right to be there.
I mean, I wasn’t a terrible guitarist, but if I hadn’t stood on a stage with a man who would become a legend, it’s unlikely that Bridget would have rushed up after our first gig and planted her lips on mine.
She fell in love with me because of the energy in that back room in a crappy pub in Peckham.
She saw something in me that was never supposed to be there.
Eighteen months later, she told me I wasn’t the same person she’d fallen in love with.
It sounds stupid to say that fame had gone to my head, seeing as I wasn’t the slightest bit famous, but being in a band meant that my mask had started to slip.
I guess that I’d forgotten to show so much of my softer side.
I would go out all weekend without replying to her messages, and we spent much less time together than before.
When I realised what an idiot I’d been, it was already too late.
I asked her to move in with me, and she said that it would be better if we broke up.
I’m not so arrogant that I think the boy I pretended to be back then was the real me.
When I was supposedly heartbroken over Bridget refusing to go out with me in our first term, I slept with a girl off Sasha’s course.
To be fair, I didn’t know that I’d got her pregnant, but when she wrote to me seven months later and told me that I was about to become a father, I replied telling her she was a liar.
So that was eight years of my daughter’s life that I wasn’t there for.
And to be totally honest, it may not even be the worst thing I’ve done.
I’ve recently come around to the idea that, for much of my life, I really haven’t been the nicest guy.
I couldn’t even hold on to the girl I loved.
Bridget and I broke up at the same time as the band got signed.
Those two overwhelming events split me down the middle.
On the one hand, I was ecstatic over the idea that the kid my teachers had looked down on could become a rock star, but that night when I went back to my flat, I felt like jumping out of a window or smashing my head against the wall.
Instead, I went out to a bar, started a fight with the first guy I could find who looked like he would punch me back and spent a night in hospital as a result.
A month went by, and Bridget stopped hanging out with me entirely.
All I could talk about when we were together was how much I loved her and how miserable my life was, so it was natural that she cut the cord.
I scraped through university, but all I cared about was the tour I was about to do with Ade.
I built it up to be my salvation, but in the end all it offered was the chance to get drunk, do drugs and sleep with girls who really wanted to sleep with Ade but settled for approximately second best.
Bridget wouldn’t respond to my emails anymore. I sent her postcards wherever we went because I thought she’d get a kick out of that, but who needs a photo of Leeds Town Hall from their long-distance stalker?
The last time I saw her before this week was at our homecoming gig a few months after we graduated.
I knew she was going to be there, and I built it up to be the turning point it never could be.
There was a party at Ade’s swish new flat after the show, and loads of our old friends came.
I played it cool with Bridget. I made small talk and didn’t give away that I was still crazy about her (or crazy in general).
I went to talk to other people to give her space, and I was building up to having a real heart-to-heart when I noticed her chatting to Ade.
I guess they were both drunk. I mean, I’ve held on to that idea, and it certainly didn’t lead to anything long-term.
But when I saw them slinking off towards the coat cupboard by the front door – hands entwined, guilty looks on their faces – I wanted to smash up that irritatingly modern flat.
I wanted to splash paint all over the walls and rip down the neon-blue curtains.
Instead, I plotted revenge. I’m not saying that the plan I came up with was any good, but I made the decision through the fog of heartbreak and jealousy.
We were heading into a big London studio to cut our first demo a week after the party.
We’d been playing the songs we wanted to record for the best part of two years, but I decided to sabotage the whole thing.
I told Ade that we couldn’t play the songs that I’d helped write unless we shared lead vocal duties.
Now, I’m a terrible singer, so I knew he’d never accept this.
The label tried to talk me down, and Ade stayed out of it altogether.
I doubt he even knew why I was so upset.
Perhaps if he’d realised, we’d have been able to talk it through.
He would have told me that he and Bridget were just friends who’d had too much to drink.
And it wasn’t even as if she was my girlfriend anymore.
Obviously, if that had happened, I would have punched him with my big dumb fists.
But after that, I would probably have seen sense and gone into the studio with him.
The fact that he couldn’t put the pieces together drove me crazy.
I needed him to apologise for something he had no idea I knew about.
He was admittedly a bit thick not to join the dots, but the day came for us to head to the studio, and I simply stayed away.
Ade was a better guitarist than me anyway, so he took over my job, and the label found a new bassist, who would go on to be a permanent member of the band.
That lucky guy would become richer than everyone I know from my normal life combined, but I kept my battered pride – which really is the worst consolation prize in the history of idiots.
They only used a few of the songs I’d worked on because it turned out that Ade was overflowing with ideas. He came up with “Promises” in fifteen minutes while the others went to buy kebabs. Or at least that’s how the official story goes.
He got his own back by claiming that he’d written every last song on his own.
I didn’t have any money or the knowledge to go about suing him.
I also didn’t have a scrap of proof. There’d only been two of us in the room when we wrote the songs, and we both had guitars.
He was so good at building up my confidence that it’s more than possible he had the ideas and made me believe it was the other way around.
Ade came out of the womb with talent. He was born into a big family of second-generation British Nigerians, and every one of his siblings ended up being incredible in whatever they devoted themselves to.
One is a high-court barrister, another a concert pianist. His parents had given them the support that they needed to excel.
When I told my mum I wanted to study a degree in popular music, she told me she wouldn’t speak to me if I did.
Dad was there for me, but she stuck to her word.
And so Ade became famous, and I self-destructed.
Instead of getting a job and scraping together a living, I tried to form another band, convinced of my own brilliance.
Hardly anyone turned up to our first gig.
The label sent a guy to listen, but he didn’t stay till the end.
Inevitably, there was a lot of screaming and anger, and I was on lead vocals. It was all very clichéd.
I’d got it into my head that I was a rock star and carried on down that well-trodden path to excess. A year after I last saw Ade, I was living in a squat in an abandoned pub in Croydon. I had devolved way beyond the status of hard-done-by mess to something far nastier.
And then one day I went to a cash machine to raid the bank account where Dad sent me a hundred quid a month because that was all he could afford to waste on keeping me alive. I punched in my pin number, and the little blue screen told me I had a balance of ￡36,000 (and a hundred from my dad).
I remember peering around me to check whether I was being pranked.
The old gent standing behind me, with a bow tie and hair pomade, didn’t look like a character from a candid camera show, so I withdrew ￡500 and stuffed it into my pocket.
I didn’t go into the bank to find out how the money had got there.
I was convinced it was an error in my favour, and I had to make the most of it while I could.
A week later, after filling that time with headache-inducing alcohol and plenty of other substances I no longer remember, the money ran out, and I had to go back for more.
￡35,600, the statement on the screen revealed this time.
I was feeling sore from my bender and would probably have died if I’d jumped back on that particular train, so I did something I hadn’t planned when I arrived there. I entered the bank.
Dirt and grease don’t bother you so much when you’re plagued by them daily.
But walking into the Lloyds Bank on the high street, I became aware of just how out of place I was.
Feeling more self-conscious than I had since that first day at university, I went up to the counter and handed over my card to the presentable young lady who, in any other situation, would have looked offended by my very presence.
“How can I help you, sir?” she had been trained to say.
I put on my most polite voice, smiled and tried to sound like a human being. “I need to send some money to my dad. He’s always so good to me and doesn’t have much. So I thought I’d send him ￡1200.”
She nodded efficiently and took the bait.
I don’t know if I did this because I wanted her to think well of me.
I’d like to believe that my love for my generous father made me want to give something back while I could.
More realistically, this was part of the camouflage I needed to take out another ten grand.
When she handed over this windfall, I slipped it into the inside pocket of my leather trench coat and was about to leave when curiosity got the better of me.
“Is there anything else I can help you with today, sir?” the girl in the blue uniform had been trained to ask.
“There is one more thing. I was wondering if you could tell me who the last deposit in my account was from?”
“I can provide a printout of your recent statement if you’d like me to.”
She didn’t wait but got to work clicking. As she did so, she must have caught the name at the top of the list as she suddenly looked at me differently.
I’d seen it happen countless times before.
“You know Adesina Okojie?” girls used to ask in amazement, as though they’d discovered I was the heir to a small oil-rich kingdom.
I didn’t need to see what was printed on the statement, but I looked anyway.
15.04: Transfer – ￡36,000.00 – A. Okojie.