Chapter Fifteen
Glinna answered on the fifth ring, which was approximately four rings more patient than Maeve had ever managed in her life.
"Maeve! Hang on, let me just… Charity, put that down, it's not a toy, it's Mummy's… sorry, I'm here. How are you? How's London? Is it terrible? Tell me it's terrible."
Maeve pressed the phone closer to her ear and sat on the edge of her hotel bed. The bed still felt too firm. She'd complained to reception twice and they'd sent up extra pillows, which had solved nothing. "It's terrible."
"Oh good. I was worried you'd gone soft."
In the background, something crashed. Glinna didn't acknowledge it, which meant it was probably fine. Or she'd deal with it later. The Campbell household operated on a system of triage that Maeve had never fully understood but deeply respected.
"So," Glinna said. "Check-in time. How are you really?"
This was the question. Glinna always asked how she was twice: once for the performance, once for the truth. Maeve had learned not to try lying on the second one.
"I'm steady," she said. "The Manchester gig stirred things up a bit. Lot of old feelings. The smell of the bar. You know."
"But you didn't drink."
"I didn't drink."
"And you're not thinking about drinking."
"No more than usual." Which was honest. The whiskey smell had itched at something in her brain, but it was an old itch, familiar and manageable. She knew how to sit with it now. "I'm fine, Glinna. Really."
"Good." There was genuine warmth in Glinna's voice, underneath the briskness.
"Because if you weren't, I'd have to come down there and sort you out, and I've got far too much on at the moment.
The sheep are lambing, Charity's got a cold, and Angus has decided he wants to be a vegetarian, which is going to be interesting given that we're a sheep farm. "
"Angus is six."
"Five, actually. And very committed. He's been reading pamphlets."
"Where does a five-year-old get pamphlets?"
"The internet, I assume. Everything comes from the internet now. Hamish, if you throw that at your sister I will personally remove your Xbox privileges until you're forty!"
Maeve waited. The sounds of domestic chaos faded slightly, as if Glinna had moved to another room.
"Right," Glinna said. "So. The gig went well?"
"It went well."
"And the band?"
"They're fine. We're getting there."
"And Iona?"
Maeve's jaw tightened. Of course Glinna would ask about Iona.
Glinna knew everything. She'd known Maeve for years, through the worst of it and the slow climb back, and she had an unerring instinct for the things Maeve didn't want to talk about.
Which was sort of the point of being a sponsor, but still.
"Iona's fine," Maeve said carefully.
"That's not what I asked."
"Yes it is."
"I asked about Iona in relation to you. How is that going?"
Maeve stared at the terrible bridge painting on the wall. "It's different."
"Different how?"
"Different from before. Different from what I expected. Just… different."
Glinna made a noise that somehow conveyed both patience and skepticism. "And what about feelings? Are those different too?"
"I don't know."
"Maeve."
"I don't. I genuinely don't know." She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye. "She's not the same person. I'm not the same person. We're playing music together and it's good, actually good, and sometimes she looks at me and I…" She stopped. "I don't know."
Glinna was quiet for a moment. In the background, something else crashed.
"I miss Eejit," Maeve said suddenly.
Glinna laughed. "The sheep?"
"Don't call her a sheep. She's a nemesis."
"She broke into your garden again yesterday. Ate half your rosemary."
"Typical. The arsehole." But she smiled saying it. There was something grounding about Eejit's consistent awfulness. She was reliable in her chaos, unlike everything else in her life right now.
"Maeve," Glinna said, her voice gentling. "I'm proud of you. You know that, right?"
The words landed somewhere in Maeve's chest and sat there, warm and uncomfortable. She didn't know what to do with them. "Don't get soppy on me."
"I'm not being soppy. I'm being factual. You could have stayed here. You could have kept hiding. You didn't. That matters."
"I'm just doing a job."
"You're living a life. There's a difference." Something beeped in the background. "Right, I've got to go, something's on fire. Call me if you need anything. And Maeve?"
"What?"
"It's okay not to know. About feelings, about any of it. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to keep showing up."
She hung up before Maeve could respond, which was typical Glinna. Always had to get the last word.
Maeve set her phone down and looked at the bridge painting again.
Keep showing up. Right. She could do that.
THE REHEARSAL SPACE was the temperature of the sun's core.
"Is the air conditioning broken?" Cam asked, sprawled dramatically across a folding chair. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, and she was fanning herself with a takeaway menu she'd found somewhere. "Tell me the air conditioning is broken, and this isn't just London trying to murder us."
"The air conditioning is definitely broken," Ellie said. She was sitting very still in the corner, conserving energy like a sensible person. "The building manager said someone would look at it tomorrow."
"Tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll all be dead. We'll be little puddles of band. They'll have to mop us up."
Maeve had taken up her usual position by the window, which was cracked open approximately two inches and providing a thin stream of air that smelled faintly of bins. It was still better than nothing. Iona was tuning her guitar, her fingers moving automatically, her mind clearly somewhere else.
The door banged open.
Mo slouched in, headphones around her neck, phone in hand, wearing an expression of profound teenage indifference. "Mum," Mo said, not looking up from her phone. "I'm bored at Dad's. He's on conference calls all day. Can I stay here?"
Iona sighed. "Mo, how did you get here? And we're rehearsing."
"Are you, though? And I took the bus. I’m not an infant." Mo glanced around the room, taking in Cam's dramatic death pose and the general lack of music happening. "Looks more like you're all just sitting here sweating."
"The air conditioning's broken," Cam said. "We're in mourning."
Mo shrugged and dropped onto a stack of equipment cases in the corner. "Cool. I'll just sit here then. Pretend I'm not here."
Nobody seemed capable of pretending Mo wasn't there. The girl had a presence, somehow, despite her studied disinterest. Maeve found herself watching as Mo pulled out her headphones and then, instead of putting them on, tucked them away again. Her eyes were on Maeve.
"What?" Maeve said.
"Nothing." Mo shrugged. "Just wondering something."
"Wondering what?"
"How do you write a song?"
The question was so unexpected that Maeve almost didn't process it. She'd been bracing for teenage disdain, for an eye-roll or a pointed comment about how boring old people were. Not this.
"That's a broad question," she said.
"So give a broad answer."
Maeve narrowed her eyes. Mo met her gaze steadily.
There was something sharp in that look, something almost challenging.
Something that reminded Maeve very much of Mo’s mother.
"It depends," she said slowly. "Sometimes you start with lyrics.
Sometimes melody. Sometimes it's just a feeling you're trying to capture and you have to figure out what shape it wants to be. "
"How do you know when it's done?"
"You don't. Not really. You just reach a point where you stop fiddling with it."
Mo considered this. "That sounds frustrating."
"It is."
"Then why do it?"
Because the alternative is worse, Maeve thought.
Because the songs come whether you want them to or not, and if you don't let them out they eat you from the inside.
Because sometimes it's the only way to make sense of things that don't make sense.
"Because it's better than not doing it," she said instead.
Mo nodded, slowly, like she was filing this information away. "Cool."
That was apparently the end of the conversation. Mo pulled out her phone again and started scrolling. But there was something different in her posture. Something slightly less hostile. Maeve caught herself almost smiling and stopped immediately.
Cam, who had apparently been watching this entire exchange, sat up in her chair. "Oh. My. God."
"What?" Maeve said.
"I think she likes you."
Maeve rolled her eyes. "She does not."
"She definitely does. That's the most words she's voluntarily spoken to anyone who isn't her mum in weeks."
"Cam," Iona said, a warning in her voice, but Mo had put her headphones back in.
"I'm just saying. Mo actively sought out Maeve for a conversation about art. That's unprecedented. That's historic. I should be taking pictures."
Mo didn't look up from her phone.
Then Maeve looked at Iona.
Iona was watching Mo with an expression that made something twist in Maeve's chest. It wasn't just love, though there was plenty of that. It was worry and hope and fierce protectiveness, all tangled together. It was the face of someone whose entire world was contained in another person.
Mo was the most important thing in Iona's life. The most precious thing. That was obvious, had always been obvious, but Maeve had never really thought about what it meant until now.
It meant that whatever Maeve felt about Iona, whatever was stirring between them, Mo came first. Would always come first. And that should probably scare Maeve or annoy her, or make her want to run.
But instead she found herself looking at Mo differently.
Seeing not just the sullen teenager but the kid underneath.
The one asking questions about songwriting because she actually wanted to know.
The kid who, for whatever reason, had decided Maeve was worth talking to.
"Right," Ellie said, standing up with visible effort. "Should we actually rehearse? Or are we just going to sit here until we dissolve?"
"It's so hot," Cam groaned. "My drums are going to warp. My sticks are going to melt. I'm going to melt. They'll find me in a puddle and no one will ever know I was once a person with dreams."
"You're being dramatic."
"I'm being accurate. This is how I die. In a rehearsal space that smells like feet and dead people."
"It doesn't smell that bad," Ellie said.
"It smells exactly that bad. Maeve, back me up."
Maeve considered the air quality. "It's not great."
"See? Even the grumpy recluse agrees with me."
"I'm sure we can manage one run-through before anyone melts," Ellie said patiently.
"I'm really not sure we can."
Iona held up her hand. "Actually, I think we sort of have to."
"Why?" moaned Cam.
"Er, because I talked to Shepherd," said Iona uncertainly. "And, um, he's working on something big. Won't tell me what yet, but he says he's coming to rehearsal tomorrow to talk to us all."
Silence.
"Big how?" Cam asked.
"He wouldn't say."
And then the rehearsal was really shot, because there was no way they were getting any work done when all they could think about was what Shepherd was going to say.