LONDON

I sit in the outer office and shred a leaf between my fingers. The plant it came from is beside my chair. It might be plastic, might not. That’s why I’m tearing it apart: to investigate. That’s also why I poured the last of my latte into the pot beneath: to see if the plant would wither and die from the caffeine.

Over the past hour or so I’ve smoked two joints, one on the walk to the Tube, the other by the bins at the side of the building that houses the label. They dulled the nerves about what Bower would say. What can he do, after all? What can any of us do? It’s only another bad review – bad reviews – so all we need is a good review or two and some decent sales. Simple.

‘Ready, Rob?’ Pierce has arrived. He steps in the coffee dribbling out from the base of the plant pot and his eyebrow lifts to his creased forehead. ‘Why is the carpet all wet?’

‘Do you think the plant is real, Pierce?’

‘I don’t know – does it matter?’

I shrug and let the scraps of leaf fall to the ground.

‘Now,’ Pierce says, ‘let me do the talking, OK?’

I try to suppress a smile, because it sounds like a line from a film. Not a good one. This is serious, though, I know – so I manage a nod and I rise to follow him to the wooden door. He knocks, and we wait until Bower’s deep voice calls out, ‘Enter.’

‘Thanks for coming in,’ Bower says, stretching his bulk across the table to grip at Pierce’s hand, then my own. ‘Not a crisis meeting, understand, just strategy.’

I’ve never been in his office before. It is oak-panelled like a headmaster’s study, but with photographs and framed cover art on the walls in place of bookshelves. It’s not these that draw my attention, though, or the view out over north London; it’s the potted plants on either side of the desk, with dark green leaves that have that same sheen as the plant in the hallway outside.

‘Pierce,’ Bower begins, after we’ve taken a seat, ‘I imagine you’ve seen the download figures I sent through?’

‘Yes.’ Pierce nods eagerly. His glasses slip down his nose. ‘Not good, I know.’

‘Not great, no.’

‘That’s only digital sales, though, so…’

Bower holds up a hand, to stop Pierce. ‘I’ve also had an email from that Guardian journalist who did that profile down at St Paul’s,’ he says. ‘With the proof copy of the article attached.’

‘Any good?’

‘Let me read you a snippet…’

Bower reaches across to click at his mouse and clack at his keyboard. Monkey with a typewriter, I think, but I say nothing. He finds what he is looking for and clears his throat.

‘“This is a young musician full of failed promise and empty rhetoric… he is arrogant enough to presume to speak for everyone present, whether they want him to or not.”’

‘Yes.’ Pierce tries out a grin. ‘There seems to be a bit of resistance, y’know? A bit of protest about the idea of a protest album, because it’s not…’ he lifts his hands to bunny-rabbit quotation marks ‘…“safe”.’

‘It was never supposed to be safe,’ Bower replies. ‘We’ve done this type of topical record with urban music and made it work. It doesn’t need to be safe, but it needs to be half-decent. It needs to appeal to a specific demographic, a particular market.’

‘I’m confident,’ Pierce says, with a wavering tone that undermines his words, ‘that we will appeal to that market, definitely, if we are patient and rely on word-of-mouth and social media, maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ Bower says. ‘But there’ll be a bit of damage limitation in the short term.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘I’ll call the journalist and try to get her not to run this piece, or at least not all of it, and our publicist will try to lift one or two positive quotes from the rest of it.’

He pauses and looks directly at me.

‘But it’s looking like saving the sweetcorn from a steaming shit, at this stage.’

Pierce shifts in his seat. This time he accompanies his grin with a nervous giggle, but Bower meets both with an impassive stare. There’s talk, then, of the co-headline tour being ‘under review’ and the release of a second single being delayed until they see how ‘Ivory Towers’ does with radio play and downloads over the next month or so. The single needs to do well to support the album, and the album needs to support the single. They want me to bend over backwards while standing up straight, basically.

‘We’ll be limiting our exposure to it,’ Bower says. ‘That’s the bottom line.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘We’ll scale back the ad campaign,’ Bower says. ‘And – ’

‘Just until this blows over, though, right?’ Pierce asks.

Bower nods. ‘Sure.’

‘And what can we do to help it blow over?’ Pierce leans forward.

‘Find something positive to highlight and get on social media to build up a following.’ Bower shrugs. ‘And, I don’t know, play some gigs, I guess. That’s always a good plan for a singer-songwriter.’

I think back to those weeks over Christmas when I went from venue to venue, cap in hand, asking for gigs. I could do that again, of course, but there’s something vaguely indecent about doing it when you’re an established artist. Isn’t there? Like the Queen having to ask for a visitor’s pass to Buckingham Palace.

‘Is there a – well, any sort of a…’ Pierce hesitates ‘… budget for that?’

‘From this end?’

Pierce nods, but also holds up his hand as if to apologise for the question.

‘The pot is empty from this end. I suggest you use the advance.’

The room falls to silence. I sit back and watch Pierce squirming in his seat, as if he’s trying an escapology act – trying to raise an objection without any direct confrontation.

‘I’ve got a question,’ I say.

‘Yes, Rab?’ Bower turns to me.

I want to ask about the plants, obviously, but there’s also another question which has emerged from the fug and falsehood of the last ten minutes. It is such a basic question, so fundamental, that I have to think carefully about how to word it.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘have you listened to it?’

‘The album?’

‘Bits and pieces of it, yes,’ he says.

‘But not all the way through?’

Bower pauses. ‘I don’t need to.’

When the silence returns, I softly chuckle through it. It is a dry laugh, from the throat. It marks my victory over Bower, over the music executive who didn’t even bother listening to his latest release. All those journalists, the reviewers and the bloggers, are probably exactly the same – they looked at the cover and they read the press release and then they decided. It is a hollow victory, but it’s a victory nonetheless, because it means that I can lift a stiff middle finger to the industry and wait, just wait, for the general public to make up their own minds. The success I have will be grass-roots and organic; it will be busker-to-billboard rather than manufactured pop.

It’s only been a month since the album was released, anyway. There’s plenty of time to win people around, to find folk who’ll actually listen to the lyrics. I just need to take the music to the people, right? Travel the country by rail the way Woody Guthrie did in dustbowl America. If only the trains weren’t so fucking expensive.

‘Second question, then,’ I say. ‘What’s the deal with these pot plants?’

‘It’s my house; I can wear what I want!’

‘But it’s misleading, you must admit.’

‘Misleading?’

‘Well, it’s all shiny and silky.’

‘So I misled you with fabric, then?’

‘No – well – ’

She draws in a breath. ‘It’s a dressing gown.’

‘Yes, but – ’

‘And let’s get this straight: even if it was a leather corset and stockings, even if I had chains hanging from my nipples, I’d still have every right to wear it in the privacy of my own house.’

This is not going well. Lydia is breathing heavily, granted, but it’s not from desire. I blame the sleeping tablets I popped last night, washed down with a solitary glass of wine. I’m rested, I’m alert. There were no twitchy fingers as I placed my hand on her thigh and slid it upwards, no doubt in my smile as her eyes met mine. All was going to plan until I noticed that her jaw was open wide enough to dislocate and that the panties I was inching my fingers up towards were not highend lingerie but plain white cotton. She slapped at my hand, then at my cheek. The sting from the second slap was what caused me to accuse her of leading me on.

‘Maybe I picked up the wrong signal, then,’ I say.

‘Damn right you did, you…’ she searches for the right insult ‘… scrotum of a boy.’

‘No harm done, though, right?’

‘You’re just a horny teenager, aren’t you?’

‘I didn’t mean – ’

‘I teach every evening, and I sit and translate shitty romance novels all day, just to scrape enough money together.’ She draws her robe tightly across her chest. It causes the hem of it to ride further up, but I don’t think it’s the moment to be pointing that out. ‘So if I want to sit for an hour or so in the mornings, over my coffee, in my pyjamas, then that seems perfectly acceptable to me – ’

‘Absolutely, I – ’

‘I have that right, surely. And I have the right not to be sexually assaulted by whichever fucking street performer my husband’s decided to bring home this month.’

‘Come on, that’s a bit strong.’

Her eyes flash and her cheeks flush. This needs defusing, I realise; this needs careful handling or I’ll end up kicked to the kerb. The mattress in Pierce’s front room may be more floorboard than air, but there’s a roof over my head and free food and drink in that scavenging hour between Lydia going off to her classes and Pierce coming home. I can’t lose that.

‘So you’re a translator, then?’ I ask, in a conciliatory tone. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘And it never crossed your mind to ask, Rab?’ she replies. ‘No?’

‘You didn’t ask because you don’t give a fuck,’ she says. ‘You thought I was just a mannequin, sealed in silk for your after-cornflakes shag, didn’t you?’

‘You lie there every morning disturbing my early-morning routine, clearing your throat every few seconds and making my front room smell like a back-room brewery, and I tolerate it because my husband’s got so much invested in your shitty little career, but all the while – ’

‘It was only a question,’ I mutter.

‘Yes, I translate. Italian into English. And I teach. Italian. My mother was from Bologna.’

I nod. I wish I could reply in Italian, just some short phrase to ease the tension, but I did French at school. Short of watching the Italian football on a Sunday afternoon when I was a boy, I’ve got nothing. Maldini, I think, Baggio, Batistuta – fuck, he’s Argentine – Del Piero.

Instead of reciting the names of footballers, I try another apology.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Really, Lydia, I just…’

She has folded her arms and crossed her legs. She sits angled away from me, squinting sideways at the muted tabloid talk show on the telly.

‘… I’ve only ever had one proper girlfriend, and she broke my heart. That sounds like a crap cliché, I know, but she did. And, after her, I’ve only slept with one other girl and she, well, doesn’t think much of me at all.’

‘Was this up in Glasgow?’

‘The girlfriend was. The other girl was down here.’

She nods; she looks across at me. She’s not melted, but there’s a crack in the ice. I keep talking, both because it feels good to speak openly and because I need to convince Lydia not to tell Pierce about this faux-fumble-pas.

‘The Glaswegian girlfriend,’ I say, ‘was supposed to come down here with me. We would have had a set-up like you and Pierce. Us against the world. She was planning on working in a café or something, just while I got established in the music industry, and then I’d support her though her university studies.’

‘And what happened?’ Lydia looks at the telly, then back at me.

‘She…’ I falter. ‘She bailed. There were reasons for it, on her part, but she bailed.’

‘Mitigating circumstances,’ Lydia says, softly.

I look across at her. ‘So, I know I’m not the best with gir– with women – but it’s because I’d worked out this version of my life, this settled version, where I only ever needed one girl to like me, where the rest of the world could do as it pleased. And it didn’t work out.’

She nods, unfolds her arms. For a moment I think she’s going to reach out to touch my arm, but she holds back. ‘It’s tough, I know, but you’re only a young boy, really. Patience is all you need, you’ll see.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ I say. ‘But I sometimes make bad decisions, is all…’

I stare across at the sunlight angling in at the window, so that I don’t have to meet her eye. I don’t want to tot up the misjudgements or the times I’ve strained at the leash until it snaps, because the scorecard – this morning, in this light – might cause the embarrassment of the situation to slip towards shame.

‘What you and Pierce have…’ I begin. ‘It’s important, isn’t it, to have someone to draw you out of your worries, drag you out of your own thoughts, towards, er, reality – ’

‘Some perspective.’ She nods.

‘Pierce is always positive.’

‘I envy him that.’ I pause. ‘And I think a lot of that’s down to you.’

‘I’m more than a scrap of silk, certainly.’

We share a smile, but it’s still a little forced on her part. Taking a breath, I decide to test the limits of our new-found understanding.

‘Lydia,’ I say. ‘Can I ask you a favour?’

She raises an eyebrow.

‘Please don’t tell Pierce about this.’ I pause. ‘I’ll get my act together and leave you two in peace soon, once sales pick up, but it’s really difficult for me right now.’

‘You’re lucky I’m not telling the police, Rab, never mind Pierce.’

She looks back across at the talk-show on the telly. A paternity DNA test is being slid from an envelope… the phrase Is he the father? scrolls along the bottom of the screen. The presenter says something and the potential dad jumps from his seat and starts dancing in celebration. Without the sound, it’s impossible to tell whether he’s happy because he’s gained a child or because he’s lost one.

‘You’re on notice,’ Lydia says, softly. ‘Best behaviour from now on, OK?’