I slept on the floor. Neil gave me a pillow and blanket, and even though we’d swept up, I’d occasionally feel a fragment of calculator digging into me. I woke up properly at half nine. The sun had been trying to get through the curtains for hours, and finally a white beam hit my face. Neil was fast asleep. He breathed heavily, in, out. The first decent sleep he’d had in three years. I quietly got up, folded my blanket, grabbed my bag and left.
I slept some more on the train, although I kept on waking up, afraid I was going to miss my connection. But I thought a lot as well. By the time I was back in Sholeham it was late Saturday afternoon and I had made many plans in my head. I was going to get things the way they needed to be. I started with Caroline.
I wanted so much to end it there and then that I nearly just phoned her up as soon as I came in my door. But I knew doing it by phone would be cruel and I’d regret it later. So I just said I’d like to come round if that was OK. She was going out with her mates at eight, she hadn’t thought I’d be back until much later, but I could pop round before if I liked. I got in my unreliable Vauxhall. I parked it outside the house she rented with two of her friends. I rang the doorbell, and she answered, and we went inside. She offered me a cup of tea and I said no and I had something to tell her. She asked what it was. I said it was over. She was silent. And then she cried. And she asked why.
I said I was going to go to London with the band and make it.
She said I was a fucking idiot and told me to get out.
I couldn’t raise the band that Saturday evening, so I had no choice but to wait until morning. I didn’t get much sleep that night, because voices telling me I’d made a terrible mistake kept on haranguing me, but the next morning I still felt that it was the right thing.
At nine o’clock I started phoning. Nobody was out of bed.
‘We need a meeting,’ I told them.
‘Can’t it wait until the next practice?’ they all replied.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s really important. Something’s come up that could make us.’
They all wanted to know what it was. I refused to tell them. I said they needed to hear it as a group. Finally I got everybody to agree to meet round Jase’s.
I picked up Ben in the car. ‘So what’s this all about then?’ he asked again.
‘All I can say is, it’s time for you to move out of your parents’ house at last.’
He looked as if someone had told him he had to eat shit off a plate.
‘Right, what’s the wankering point of this?’ said Thomas, as we met up in Jase’s living room. He still hadn’t learned to speak normally.
I sat backwards on my chair and faced the others. Looking at them, I could see the effect that wasted time had already had. Ben had a pot belly from all the takeaways he’d wolfed down while lying on the big puffy sofa at his parents’. Thomas’s hairline was beginning to recede, his curly hair cut short now, revealing the loss all the more. Even Jase, who had always been in excellent shape, was beginning to look a bit stocky.
‘Guys, we’re going to have to move to London.’
Their mouths dropped open.
‘Why?’ said Thomas, with a venom I hadn’t heard for some years. He’d become quite sedate of late.
‘Because we’re achieving nothing here! We’re playing the same venues to the same people. The people who need to hear us aren’t hearing us. We need to be there, right at the heart of things, where the A&R men are. We need to be making a demo in a good-quality studio, and getting people to listen to it. Don’t you get it? We’re wasting our time. We’ve got to go out and make it happen!’
There was silence.
‘I’m not moving to London,’ said Jase.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t want to. Why would I? I’m happy where I am. I like my job, money’s coming in and I’ve got a flat with my girlfriend. We’re actually talking of trying for a baby next year. Why should I leave?’
‘Because of the band!’
‘I was only ever doing it for fun, Chris.’
‘You fucking liar!’ I screamed. ‘You’ve always wanted it to work, right from the beginning.’
‘I never said that.’
‘Well, fuck you then. We can get a new drummer. London’s full of them.’
‘I’m not going to London.’ This time it was Thomas who spoke.
‘What? You’ve got nothing! You’re the man who repairs the vending machine in the office! You have got absolutely nothing to lose. You gave up the chance to do anything else for the band! What’s the point of not seeing it through?’
‘I’m not going to London,’ he said simply.
‘What about you, Ben?’ I twisted my chair round to face him. ‘Are you happy on the bins? Are you happy living with your parents? Does being a lazy slob really make you happy?’
He thought about it for a full half-minute. I knew he couldn’t pull the girlfriend card on me because he hadn’t had one since last year. He’d gone out for a bit with this girl called Claire, who was a lazy slob like him, and they used to spend all their time together lying in their own filth at his parents’. Then she got tired of being broke so she found someone with money to leech off. It tore him apart, I could tell, but he never expressed it except for his guitar solos, which got too angry for our West Coast harmony sound for a few weeks.
The silence pressed down on me as I became aware that my face must have turned very red.
‘I’ll go with you,’ he said. It was barely audible.
‘What?’
‘I’ll go with you,’ he enunciated sarcastically.
‘OK, fine, we’ll do it. Us two. We’re really going to do it!’
I stood up quickly. The chair went flying.
‘Come on, Ben,’ I said. ‘We’ve got plans to make.’
Ben looked like he wanted to stay and drink Jase’s beer, but I motioned for him to follow me.
We sat in the car. I was having trouble breathing.
‘I can’t go to London,’ Ben said.
I felt as if I’d just been kicked in the throat.
‘You are fucking kidding me.’
‘No, I can’t go to London. It’s too big. I couldn’t handle it.’
‘You just said, not five minutes ago, that you would. So you’re fucking wimping out on me too!’ I slammed the dashboard. It fucking hurt.
‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just can’t go to London, that’s all.’
‘So what are you saying, then?’ I said through clenched teeth. I felt anger rise within me like it had never done before.
‘We don’t need to go to London. We can go to Brighton. Loads of people are moving there from London now. Loads of music people. The London scene’s dead, now Britpop’s over. We can do just as well in Brighton. It’s smaller, better for us. We’d just disappear in London.’
He was right. We would.
‘So you’ll really do it then,’ I said, ‘you’ll come to Brighton with me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you sad this is all over?’
‘Nah, not really. I always thought the songs were shit. Waste of my time playing my guitar over them.’
‘You could have mentioned that sooner.’
‘Yeah, s’pose.’
I started the car. I looked up for a second, and saw Thomas glowering out of the window. And then I drove off.