Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
This is just the beginning of the exodus. Ryan is next. “I’d better go with him. He might punch someone. There’s no bad blood between us, so he’s less likely to have a go at me. Will you come, Clara?”
She looks startled, as though she’s surprised to hear her own name. “Fine, but we should check on Bridget too.”
“Press nineteen and then hash on any phone to tell us she’s okay,” Ade mutters without looking at them.
Clara nods before stepping outside after the others. Without them, the room is quiet. Ade goes back to his desk and tidies up the papers. He takes a sheet from the top of a pile, folds it away into an envelope and drops it into a drawer.
“Don’t you think we should go too?” I ask when I realise that we’ve left them to fend for themselves.
Ade just shrugs and puts his fountain pen away in its case.
Until now, I felt that there was safety in numbers. I didn’t consider the crew and figured that Bridget was okay so long as the rest of us were together. I would have noticed someone slipping off to kill her, but things have changed. The group has dispersed, and I don’t know what to do next.
“Don’t you think we’re acting like children?” He makes a sound which I suppose might be described as a laugh, but it’s too short and bitter to convey any humour. “Sasha falls off the boat in the storm, so we start an amateur murder investigation. We’re trapped in an episode of Scooby-Doo.”
“Don’t be so flippant.” I still can’t say that I trust him entirely after what Ryan said. “It’s better than allowing ourselves to be picked off like sorority girls in a horror film.”
He doesn’t move for the count of five, and I find it quite out of character. “You’re not the same person I used to know, are you?”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s not a criticism, but you’ve changed more than anyone else.” He falls still again, and I copy him. “When we were at Goldsmiths, all you cared about was making people laugh. You know, impressing them with a gag or a one-liner.”
“So you’re saying I’m not funny anymore?”
“No, I’m saying you’ve learnt not to care. That’s a real talent, that is.”
I sit down in the exact same spot on the bed where Tom was hunched over ten minutes ago. “Except for my daughter, who is almost too old to care, I don’t have anyone to impress.”
He puts his elbows behind him on the desk to support his weight. “That sounds heavenly. I envy you.”
It occurs to me that this is the first time we’ve spoken on our own since the band started touring. I know that might sound unlikely, but we were never alone then. There was always a girlfriend, a groupie or a drummer there with us. I can only imagine what his life has been like ever since.
“Do you want me to feel sorry for you?” I ask as I look about his plush suite. “Is that why you brought us out here? So that we’d all show our sympathy for the poor little rich boy?”
We’re on the verge of speaking honestly to one another, and it’s kind of frightening.
“I don’t need your sympathy, Jake. I already told you. I’d like your forgiveness.”
I want to ask him why, but we’re not there yet, and so I let him talk.
“You might not have realised it, but I’ve never been a junkie. I’m not an alcoholic or a relationship addict or any of those rock star clichés.”
I admit this surprises me, and I lean forward, eager to know more. “Ryan said that he’d heard rumours about you in the industry.”
“He did, but not the obvious kind.” He takes a deep breath, and I get the sense that he still likes me more than I ever imagined – or perhaps that’s what he wants me to think.
“I got depressed. I mean, seriously miserable for months on end. The last five years have been a procession of lows. The more money I made and the more famous I became, the lonelier I was. I had girlfriends and even got engaged once, but whenever I found happiness, it turned dark soon after.”
My mother’s love of celebrity gossip comes rising to the surface, and I have to resist asking him whether it was true that he slept with Cristiano Ronaldo’s ex and was secretly married to a French actress on Richard Branson’s island.
“I developed a reputation for being difficult to handle. Maybe some people mistook me for an addict. I can’t say.
All I know is that whenever the record company obliged me to make another record, the people I’d worked with on the last one were unlikely to return my calls.
Mick was the only person who stuck around, and he was even less reliable than me. ”
I can hear the rain crashing down on the balcony above. It’s a little less intense than an hour ago, but it’s still there: a constant soundtrack to the night.
“So what changed?” I ask when he doesn’t volunteer anything more.
“You mean, how did I move on with my life?” I shrug and he continues.
“Well, I spent a small fortune on therapy. That definitely helped, but I think the biggest thing was that I’ve come to look at my work as just that.
Like an accountant or a butcher – or a day trader for all I know – I turn up at the right time, I do what’s expected of me, and then I clock out. ”
“The rock ’n’ roll dream,” I tease, and he points across at me.
“That’s the thing. Why should it be a prerequisite to party like crazy if you want to be in a band? Brian May from Queen has a PhD in astrophysics. Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones collected American Civil War weaponry, bred Arabian horses and largely hated touring.”
I would tell him that neither of them was a frontman, but he’s speaking more rapidly now, and I can’t get a word in.
“I spent so long trying to be the person that everyone expected me to be that I lost sense of myself. Perhaps I was an addict, but it was the feeling of approval that I craved more than anything. I wanted people to say I was as original as Bowie and as talented as Hendrix, even when I was releasing a single called ‘Luv Me, Luv Me (Oh Yeah, Baby)’. You know, I never listen to any of my own music except for a few amateur CDs from the time we were at uni?”
“With me playing?” I ask in surprise. “I didn’t even realise they still existed.”
“You can find anything on the internet.” He tuts to himself and turns away. “I genuinely envy you, Jake. You were lucky to get out when you did.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or scream, and so I whisper instead. “Incredible. You’re almost as clueless as Tom.”
He raises his long fingers in the air. “No, wait. I’m not explaining this well. I’m trying to make you understand that none of this was worth it.”
“Fine, I’ll take it off your hands.”
He has something to tell me, and my responses barely matter.
“You’re still not listening,” he insists, which I find a bit rich.
“I’m not saying I can turn my back on it.
This is who I am now. I am a monster, and as easy as you might think it is to give everything away, that would come with such shame that it would destroy me entirely.
I am nothing without stardom – without my fans.
I hate that I need them so much, but I do. ”
“You could at least try,” I hear myself say, but these aren’t my words.
They’re Bridget’s. Her sense of justice has taken over.
“You could find a middle ground between gross excess and barefoot charity. You could sell half of the property you own and invest the money in good causes, which would then produce more money that you could feed back into society.”
He stands up from his chair and brings his hands together to beg understanding. “It’s not about the money, Jake. It was never about the money.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.” I almost leave it at this, but I can’t let him get away with lying to himself. “The mysterious letter summoning us, the first-class flight, the helicopter ride to your own portable city: what was all that for if not to show off your wealth?”
He shakes his head and turns away from me. “I just needed to get you here.”
“And why was that? You keep dropping hints to keep us interested, but I don’t feel we’ve got the whole story out of you.”
“You know most of it.” He is desperate for me to understand him – for me to believe, but something still doesn’t click. “I admit I have a secondary motive but, most of all, I need you to know that I’m not as bad as you might think.”
I’m tempted to walk away, but there’s this niggling worry at the back of my head that I might end up being stabbed to death or shot with one of those crossbows he has, and so I stay right where I am.
“I don’t think anything of you. How do you like that?”
He shrugs as if to say, That’s a decent start.
“I had to learn to stop caring about this stuff, and now I’m finally in a position where none of it matters.
” I wait to see whether this is enough for him, but when it clearly isn’t, I keep talking.
“I have a kid, Ade. I have a daughter I’ve done my best to build a relationship with because, for years of her childhood, I simply ignored her existence.
Of all the people I’ve known in the world, even if I see your face on aftershave commercials three times a day, you no longer rank very highly. ”
When the various inputs I’ve fed into his very expensive system don’t compute, he repeats a simple sentiment, “I just need you to know that I’m sorry.”
“What for?” I finally shout. “For stealing my songs and paying me off with a fraction of the money they generated? Or for kissing the woman I have loved since the very first moment I met her?”
I finally said it. There’s no taking it back now, and even though I have to wait half an eternity for him to react, it was worth it.
“So you knew,” he mumbles as he walks over to a cupboard in the corner of the room, takes a key from on top of it and unlocks the upper cabinet.
“And you didn’t.” I feel like laughing but don’t make a sound.
I tune into the rain again and the crashing waves in the background as he removes a bottle of whisky and a single glass. He places it on the desk and pours it half full, then realises he’s being a poor host and fetches me one.
He’s about to pour again when he stops himself. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t drink.”
I can cross another question off my list. He has been checking up on us. He knows about my private life, while I only know about his very public one.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say when he sits back down to take a steadying gulp.
“I’m sorry for just about everything,” he replies, which I reckon is a cop-out, and so I tell him just that.
“Nope, I didn’t come all this way to hear your platitudes. Tell me why you chose me to come here and not that annoying guy Jonathan, who you punched after a gig, or the girl who followed you everywhere. What was her name?”
He looks a little crumpled now – no longer belligerent or exhilarated – and he sighs as he answers. “Sally.”
“Right, that was it. Sally.” I think back to the three-month period when she was everywhere. “That girl was obsessed with you, and you treated her like she was less than human. So why isn’t she here?”
“I’m not trying to be a saint, Jake. I want to make it up to the people I care about.
You and Bridget are the best friends I’ve ever had.
I strung Sasha along the whole time we lived together.
Tom is only here because Sasha wouldn’t have come otherwise.
Clara was always special to me, and we would never have formed a band if Dawn hadn’t encouraged us.
I owe my thanks and apologies to all of you, because you were good to me, and I threw you over. ”
“Wait, that doesn’t explain why you fell out with Dawn,” I say because I’ve always wondered what happened between them. “We were all set to stay in the same house together for our third year, then she said she wouldn’t live with you, and it fell apart.”
“I don’t know what happened.” I show my scepticism at this, and he instantly tries to persuade me. “I’m serious. I even asked her when we spoke on the phone last week, and she said it should stay in the past.”
“Fine, but that still doesn’t explain why you couldn’t just fly to England to see us there.”
He hesitates then tells the truth. “Tom was right. I got you out here because I knew that, once we’d set sail, there would be no backing out.
I mean, a four-day voyage from one set of beautiful islands to another is pretty pointless.
If I’d wanted to show you tropical wonders, we could have stayed around Mauritius. ”
“Do you know what, Ade?” Even though this is a rhetorical question, almost by its nature, I wait several seconds before revealing the answer. “I like you better when you tell the truth. Was it really that hard?”
He runs his hands back through the short, bright dreadlocks at the top of his head. “Yes, actually, it was. I’m surprised you haven’t worked that out yet. The thing none of you—”
He doesn’t finish that sentence because the Batphone starts ringing. It somehow suits Ade that I haven’t seen him with a mobile since I got here, and the only way to communicate on the ship is by a phone that looks like it was made in the 1960s.
“Okay…” he replies to whoever is at the other end of the line. “Yeah, I understand… Go somewhere safe.”
He puts the phone down and remains staring at it for a while without saying anything. When he finally turns to me, he simply says, “Tom,” and I know it’s time to leave.