by Wells, Nicky
‘But by all accounts, no pun intended, you were good at it.’
‘I was! And that frightens me. What does that say about me?’
‘Um.’ Mike hesitated. He probably didn’t have a clue where I was headed. ‘Um. That you’re very clever, as well as smart and beautiful?’
I shook my head. ‘Nah. Looking back, it would suggest I was greedy and empty.’ I spread my hands out on the table and looked at my fingers as though they were tea leaves that would hold the answer to all my questions.
‘Emily…’
‘Mike, look at me. I kicked out my boyfriend for all the wrong reasons. When I realised what I’d done, there wasn’t a soul I could ring, no friend, nobody. I’ve lost touch with most people that matter to me.’ My eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I’ve made a real pig’s ear out of my life, and I’m done with that. I’m going to start over.’
‘You are?’
‘I am. Mike Loud, you are in the presence of a real bona fide life-changing crisis and turning point.’
‘Wow.’ Mike bowed his head and touched two fingers to his forehead as if saluting me. ‘I’m honoured. And what, pray, will this turning point entail?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. There are so many things I could do… I’ll figure something out. For now, I’ve got to get out of that job and breathe.’ The tears dried as quickly as they had sprung up, and suddenly I was full of laughter. I felt as light as a feather. My decision was monumental, but perfect. ‘I’m quitting. Oh my God, I am so quitting!’
Mike clinked his coffee cup to mine. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
‘Cheers.’
We sat in silence for a few seconds before Mike spoke up again. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, this was the last thing I expected when we rolled up to the lawyer’s office this morning.’
I laughed. ‘I had no idea, either, but it’s definitely the right thing to do.’
Mike pointed a gun finger at me. ‘Hey, you said you’d be my PR girl. I thought you were joking, but how about it? Would you do my publicity?’
‘Are you offering me a job, Mike Loud?’
‘I suppose I am.’ Mike chuckled. ‘Another unexpected turn of events for the day. What do you reckon?’
I paused, but only for a second. ‘I reckon you’re nuts. You don’t need a disgraced financial analyst botching up your PR. I mean, I wouldn’t even know where to start, really. Okay, so I’m good with words but…’
‘You’re good at getting the measure of people. I remind you of Dexter. Plus I’ll teach you. I’ll tell you what to do along the way, and I bet you’ll learn really fast.’
Mike was undeterred. His eyes burned with the intense light of conviction, and his enthusiasm sent a shiver of excitement down my spine. Could I? Would I? And why not indeed? It could be fun, and I had nothing to lose, did I?
Thoughts raced around my head as pieces of a plan clicked into place rapidly and with frightening clarity. Mr Budd’s letter would hit like a bombshell. I had no doubt that Mark would be prepared to ‘talk’ after the explosion. He wouldn’t want me to come back, not really, although he would have to make all the right noises. And of course, I didn’t want to go back, but he didn’t need to know that.
However, I had a six-month notice period. If, on the back of the prospect of my forced reinstatement, the firm and I could work out a settlement that would give me gardening leave in lieu of working out my notice, or a lump sum payment to the same value, if they preferred… Then I would probably have a few months’ grace in which I could do what I pleased. I could be a lady of leisure. I could go travelling. I had always wanted to ‘do’ the US, coast-to-coast.
Or I could have a go at being Mike’s publicity person. Simply for fun, to begin with. Who knew what might happen?
‘You’re on,’ I declared breezily, and Mike’s eyes lit up even more. ‘However. One condition.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You don’t pay me. You couldn’t possibly pay me, not until I have at least some clue of what I’m doing. Train me, apprentice me, and then we can talk about whether you “hire” me officially.’
‘Really?’ Mike scrunched up his forehead in confusion. ‘But what about your flat? How will you afford to live?’
‘I’ve got that worked out in my head, you’ll see.’
Mike leaned back in his chair. He laced his fingers together and put them behind his head. His entire body language said, well, I’ll be damned. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth and quickly consumed his entire face. His eyes danced. Abruptly, he released his right hand from its improvised headrest duty and gave an almighty air punch.
‘Yes!’
His fist stayed poised in the air for a moment. Eventually, it came down sharply, fingers extended, and Mike offered me his hand to shake. ‘My new publicist. Deal?’
I took his hand and shook it. ‘Deal.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
During the following weeks, Mike and I focused on extracting ourselves from our respective contracts. My solution was relatively straightforward in the end. As Mr Budd had predicted, the firm caved quite quickly and offered to reinstate me. I had a meeting with Mark and HR during which I threatened to accept my job back. But when management’s discomfort became more and more obvious, I subtly suggested an alternative and eventually tendered my resignation. I demanded, and was granted after much ostentatious objection and shaking of heads, a full letter of apology and gardening leave.
After the meeting, I took my sweet time clearing my desk, chatting with my former colleagues and making sure they knew I was quitting, not being fired; and at four p.m. on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in August, I walked out of the office a happy and carefree woman.
Terminating Mike’s contracts with the band proved more stressful. Will in particular fought tooth and nail to get a bigger share of the royalties, even though the contracts were unambiguous about the division. Frustrated, Will got a lawyer of his own to comb through the contracts word by word and, lo and behold, discovered that overseas royalties had not been specified in the original agreement. Money was rolling in from Europe and the States, and the bulk was going to Mike in line with the domestic royalty split.
But when Will’s lawyer was done, Will got to enforce his five-way even split for overseas royalties, and Mike had to pay the band back every penny beyond the twenty percent share to which he was now entitled. I was more furious about this than Mike.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ I seethed the day the letter arrived on my doormat, redirected from Mike’s house. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. Why should they get more money for the same work and the same songs abroad than they should in the UK?’
Mike shrugged. He was worn out and past caring. ‘They shouldn’t. But Will’s lawyer found a loophole, something that was missed in the original contracts, and he’s exploited it. It’s what he’s paid to do.’
‘But surely, if it doesn’t mention overseas royalties, you go with the overall agreement, right?’
‘Evidently not. Look, Emily, there’s no point fighting it.’
‘There is, you could…’
‘I don’t want to. I want out. You can be sure I won’t make that mistake ever again, but I really want to be done with it now.’
‘It’s not fair,’ I grumbled once more.
‘Life’s like that. You live, and you learn.’ Mike wrapped his arms around me. ‘And you move on.’
I gave myself a mental push. I wasn’t the one needing comforting here, after all. ‘Okay. I’m a little pissed off on your behalf, but I get it. Move on. Right.’
‘There.’ Mike smiled. ‘That’s my girl.’
After Will scored his victory, he allowed the lawyers to terminate the contracts between the erstwhile members of MonX swiftly. The royalty split for domestic and overseas territories was written into a new, perpetual contract that would govern the musicians’ income from all future sales, downloads, streaming, and airplay of the work they had recorded together. Mike itemised a list of so
ngs that he had presented to the band for potential future records that would now no longer be made, and he secured the rights to all of them, effectively barring Will from claiming them as his own. Will retaliated with a list of his own, on which Mike signed off with a flourish. And that, as they say, was that.
In the first week of September, the decree absolute arrived in the post, and Mike was officially divorced from MonX. To mark the occasion, we went out for a slap-up meal in a local gastropub. We hid in a small enclosed booth in the upstairs dining room because once the news of the final dissolution of MonX hit the airwaves, there were bound to be people looking for Mike, and we wanted to remain anonymous. Miraculously, Mike’s presence in my flat had remained a secret despite Mrs Bowden’s excessive curiosity, and we thought it was unlikely that anybody would come searching for him in the Silver Purse, but it was always worthwhile being careful.
‘I feel like I’ve been through the wringer,’ Mike commented while he tucked into his medium-rare steak. ‘Please, God, don’t ever let me go through this again.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ I agreed and lifted my glass of red wine. ‘But as you said, lessons learned and all that.’
‘Lessons learned,’ Mike toasted back, and we smiled at each other.
Dealing with all the contractual wrangling had brought us closer and closer together, and there was an easy friendship with a deep familiarity between us that I relished from the bottom of my heart. Mike was like a soulmate. We understood each other perfectly, and we had no secrets from each other.
Very occasionally, we helped each other out sexually, in a casual way, simply because we lived together and we both had needs. But there was no romance and no repeat of the fireworks we had sparked earlier on. In the absence of a love interest in either of our lives, we were simply taking care of each other, as strange and unconventional as that may sound. And we both knew, by unspoken agreement, that this arrangement would stop if and when one of us found a ‘real’ partner.
‘So,’ I challenged Mike. ‘What’s next? Now that you’re a free man, are you going to take a break, or what?’
‘Ha! You got to be kidding.’ He speared a piece of broccoli and pointed it at me with his fork. ‘From tomorrow, I’ll be writing in earnest, and you’ll be working on my PR, missy. It’s back to work in a big way.’
‘Cool.’ I wiggled up and down excitedly. ‘Bring it on.’
‘I am simply bursting with songs,’ Mike continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘I know exactly what I want them to sound like. And I know exactly the kind of musicians I’ll be looking for.’
‘Musicians? You’re not going solo?’ This was news to me. Until now, Mike had only ever talked about writing, and I had assumed that he meant songs only for himself.
‘Of course not. That’d be no fun. I want to bring together a new band. I want to go where Jon went and beyond. I have big plans.’
‘Jon—Bon Jovi?’ I needed a little clarification.
‘Oh yes. He’s a hero. The way he writes and runs his band… Awesome. In fact, one of your first tasks as my publicity agent should be to read his biography.’
I nearly choked on my potato rösti. ‘You serious?’
‘Absolutely. Learning from the greatest. Look at the band.’
He began to count up points on his fingers as he spoke. ‘Almost thirty years in the business together. Still featuring the original core members in the line-up…after a few minor hiccups and changes along the way, but it’s still Jon, Richie, Tico and David. Dozens and dozens of hit singles. Sell out tours. A huge fan base spanning generations. And all of that after some serious difficulty, shall we say, around the midpoint somewhere. But they came through it, because they had vision, and friendship, and music. I want that for me, too. It wasn’t ever going to happen with MonX, but I can make it happen, I know I can. In…’
He paused and gave a little drumroll on the edge of the table with his knife and fork. ‘…the Mike Loud Project.’
Mike looked at me for a reaction. I swallowed.
‘Brilliant. Awesome. I love the vision.’
‘But?’ Mike wasn’t fooled.
‘Um.’
‘Out with it. Go on. You’re my publicist. You’ve got to believe in it, how else are you going to promote it?’
Fair point. I swallowed some more. ‘It’s only… it’s not the zingiest name, is it? Mike Loud Project.’
Mike pursed his lips. ‘Is it not?’
I shook my head. ‘Nh-uh. Sorry. You’re an ace song writer, but as for naming the band…’
‘And what name would you propose?’
‘Who, me? What, here? Right now? Off the top of my head?’
‘Yup. Let’s hear your ideas.’ Mike was putting me on the spot and enjoying himself.
‘Um.’ I twiddled my hair. A crazy notion formed in my head. There was something I had said to Mike a long time ago, or so it seemed, about what had happened to me while on tour with MonX.
‘What is it?’ Mike probed. ‘You’ve thought of something, I can see it.’
‘Well. Yes. But…oh God, it’s so hard! Here’s me, criticising you, and now I’ve got to come up with something, and it’s all so cheesy and naff.’
‘Let me be the judge of that. What is it?’
I gulped. ‘It’s probably more to do with me than with you but… I suppose not, really, I suppose it describes you too.’
‘You’re driving me nuts,’ Mike growled. ‘Am I going to have to extract it by force?’
‘No, no, of course not. Let me run it around my head one more time, see how it sounds.’
Mike rolled his eyes and tucked into his steak again. Me, I sat and pondered. It could work. It might be cool. It certainly intrigued me. I twiddled my hair and stared into space until Mike slammed his hand on the table.
‘Dammit, woman, out with it.’
‘Okay, okay.’ I took a deep breath. ‘You ready?’
Mike simply nodded. I breathed in once more and offered my suggestion as I exhaled.
‘Fallen For Rock.’
‘Fallen for rock?’
‘No… You’ve got to say it right. Capital letters and all. Not just “fallen for rock”.’ I paused, allowing myself to weigh each word properly when I continued. ‘Fallen For Rock.’
‘Fallen For Rock,’ Mike imitated me. ‘Hmmm…’
I backtracked hastily. ‘Let’s stick with Mike Loud. Fallen For Rock is probably a dumb name, like really dumb…’
‘I like it.’
‘You do?’
‘I do. It has something.’ He sipped at his wine. ‘“Fallen For Rock”. Yeah, that could work.’
‘Really? You mean that?’ I felt my ears glow with pride.
‘I really mean that. I believe you’ve landed yourself your first publicity coup. Naming my new band.’ Mike wriggled his eyebrows, and I giggled.
‘They’ll probably shorten it to “Fallen”—you know, the fans—but that’s cool too. It has a nice dark ring to it. Yup, I like it. “Fallen For Rock”.’
‘So you’ll take it, just like that? You don’t want to think about it?’
‘Yep, just like that. And no, I don’t want to think about it. This will always be the place when my genius publicist blurted out the name of my new band over steak and potato cake, just like that. There’s a story right there. In fact,’ he searched for his smartphone. ‘We should take a photo to immortalise the occasion.’
‘You’re nuts.’ I laughed.
‘No more than you. And that’s why we’ll rock.’
He inserted himself into the booth next to me and pressed his body next to mine, holding his hand up high so he could take a selfie of the two of us.
‘Say “Fallen For Rock”,’ he instructed.
‘Fallen For Rock,’ I sing-songed, and the flash went off to capture our likenesses.
‘There. Done. Deal!’
And thus I became a birthing partner for Fallen For Rock. Ha! I hugged myself inwardly.
&nb
sp; Chapter Forty
I didn’t see Mike much over the following days. Well, in fact, I did see him, but I didn’t get to interact with him. Most of the time, he was in his room with the door firmly shut. I heard keyboard chords and melody lines, guitar riffs, bass lines, and synthesised drums. I heard singing. Don Octavio put in a brief appearance every day as a kind of warm-up exercise, and he gave me goosebumps every time. Inevitably, I heard random bits of songs that didn’t make much sense to me to begin with.
When Mike emerged, it was typically to grab a cup of tea or a hastily thrown-together sandwich. He looked hollow-eyed and pale, but buzzing with it. A few times, he colonised the lounge, spreading out with reams of blank paper that he filled rapidly, almost feverishly, with notes, notations and words. He completed weird-looking charts with numbers that didn’t make sense to me. In amongst all of that, I spotted harmonies and complicated arrangements worthy of a small orchestra. Mr Bach would have been impressed.
Speaking of, Mike did remind me of a different classical musician. His absolute absorption with his music to the exclusion of all else, including decent meals, mirrored almost exactly the second half of the movie Amadeus. I had visions of Mozart writing at his small table, manically working on his Requiem and The Magic Flute all at once, in failing health and under financial pressure, wild-eyed, dishevelled, consumed by his music.
Superimposed over the image of Mike hunching over my coffee table, the vision was so vivid that I got frightened. I retreated to the kitchen for a cup of hot chocolate, and I made one for Mike while I was at it. He got extra cream and a double helping of marshmallows for sustenance.
‘It’s merely a superficial similarity,’ I reassured myself while I dissolved the cocoa powder in hot milk. ‘For starters, Mike is already earning money from his music. Plus I’m not Constanze, and there’s definitely no Salieri in the picture here.’ I thought of Will and grimaced. ‘Well, not anymore, at least.’
