by KE Payne
Freya.
I reached over and pulled the paper back to me, my eyes scanning the article until I found the sentence again.
“If it hadn’t have been for Freya, I think my life could have worked out very differently.”
The words ebbed and flowed.
“I’m in love for the first time…”
“Now I finally know who I really am.”
I sat back and stared at the wall in front of me, and kept staring at it, as if it held the answers to all the questions tailspinning through my mind. Only the buzz of my phone on the table behind me brought me back to reality, the sound worming its way into my ears and breaking my trance. I stumbled to my feet and, seeing Robyn’s name flashing on and off the screen, snatched my phone up and answered it.
“I know I’m not the sharpest tool in the box,” Robyn said, sounding breathless, “but am I right in thinking Nicole just came out to the entire country?”
*
Alex had written me a song. Nicole had dumped a whole pile of nastiness right on me. I kept telling myself these two things as I sat on the Tube over to the studio.
Ed had called. He’d been quiet, which was more worrying than if he’d yelled at me. In fact, I think I’d have preferred it if he had yelled, even though none of this was any of my fault, because then at least I’d know what he was thinking. Silence didn’t give me anything to go on. Just being asked to Head over to the studio as soon as you can gave me even less.
Everyone was there when I arrived. Alex too.
Alex had written me a song.
I smiled over to her as I threaded my way around the equipment, disappointment knifing me when she turned away and started to do something on her phone. I didn’t get a chance to go over to her; my arrival apparently signalled the start of the impromptu meeting and, while Alex’s back was still turned to me, Ed started to talk.
“You’ve all read it?” he asked, asking the question again, louder, when he wasn’t satisfied with our answers.
“Read every stinking word,” Robyn muttered under her breath.
Ed sat up on the edge of the mixing desk. “It’s important to remember,” he said, “that Nicole is nothing to do with us any more.”
I knew what expression would be on Robyn’s and Brooke’s faces without even looking.
“She’s chosen to go to the press,” Ed continued, “and tell them what she thinks is her side of the story.” He looked at us all. “What you all have to remember as well is that Be4 are strong. United. Flying high. The fans?” he shrugged. “They’ll have forgotten who she is already. As far as they’re concerned, Be4 is you lot, not her.”
“And the fans will think, thanks to her, that everything’s been bollocks from day one,” Robyn said. “All our interviews when we said we were best friends, when all we talked about was how tight we all were. So who’s to say now they won’t think this current set up”—she rolled a hand around the room—“isn’t a load of bollocks too?”
“We were tight.” I stepped in. “Everything we told the fans was true.” My voice caught. “We were solid. Best mates, living the dream together.” I stopped. “And when she went away? You all know no one was more gutted than I was. No one felt more guilt-ridden about what happened to her. But what could I do? I had no idea where she was. None of us did, so she’s got no fucking right to say we didn’t support her, or that…” I stopped again, my voice sounding small. The words hurting my closed throat.
All eyes were on me. I was crying, my words tumbling and bubbling out through a cascade of tears and I’d had no idea.
Unsurprisingly, it was Alex who came to me. I’d seen her watching me, listening to me. I’d seen it on her face that she was with me. In a heartbeat she was by my side, her arms tight around me.
“It’s okay,” she whispered into my hair. “It’s all going to be okay.”
*
Nothing was going to be okay ever again. At least, that’s what I thought. The press wouldn’t leave us alone, constantly wanting our thoughts, our versions of events. The Internet, too, throbbed with a new salacious article practically every hour, on the hour, not helped by Nicole feeding the beast by giving it endless fresh titbits about her new, fabulous life now she was out of rehab.
I sat in the gloom of my room and listened to Alex’s song for the fourth time in a row, then immediately pressed repeat. I needed to hear her voice, because that made me feel as though she was close to me, even though I knew she was across the other side of London. The words burrowed into my head, formed shapes, spoke to me. No one had ever written me a song before, and in my eyes that made Alex perfect, and lovely, and everything I would ever want in a person. But what had I done? Instead of thanking her, instead of going to her and telling her I felt exactly the same way about her as she obviously did about me, I’d stayed away.
And then Nicole had intervened. All the time she’d been in rehab she’d been the invisible barrier that kept me away from Alex, and now she was out, it seemed to me she was still doing the same thing.
I had no idea why Nicole had gone to the papers. For the money? Possibly. To hurt me? I didn’t even want to think about that, because I couldn’t believe Nicole could stoop so low. So I chose to believe she’d done it for the money, so she could start again with a financial cushion to fall back on.
I pressed repeat and let Alex’s velvety voice soak into my consciousness.
I just hoped it was a very big cushion. Nicole would be needing it.
*
“You’re still in pieces, aren’t you?”
Alex’s voice was like an oasis of calm in amongst all the mess. Why she still wanted anything to do with me, after the way I’d treated her, was anyone’s guess. But I was glad she did.
“It’s the betrayal.” I shook my head slowly. “The mud-slinging. The lies.”
We were tucked away in the corner of the studio, alone, getting ready for a final recording of “Perspectives.” Work, apparently, still went on, and the irony that we were recording a song I’d written about Nicole was lost on neither Alex nor me.
“Nicole obviously feels the need to tell her side of the story.”
“From her perspective, you mean?” I asked sarcastically.
Neither of us smiled.
Alex lounged back in her chair and crossed her legs. “You should go and see her,” she said, and I’m sure I wasn’t mistaken when I saw the brief flicker of anguish that passed her features as she said it.
“Maybe I should.” I lowered my head. I was tired. Exhausted from the anxiety of it all. “I’m sorry.” I spoke to the floor.
“What for?”
“Everything.” I raised my head again and looked at her. “For being so horrid to you.”
“Stop.” Alex uncrossed her legs, reached over, and took my hands in hers. “You’re just having a fight with yourself at the moment.”
I gazed at her. She had so many beautiful layers.
“Remember the words of my song?” she asked.
“Your beautiful song.” My throat tightened. “I never got a chance to say—”
Alex shushed me. “Do you remember the words?” she asked again.
“Every one.”
“Then you’ll know.” She smiled. “I can wait.”
Those layers just kept on coming.
Chapter Twenty-eight
It’s true that music has the ability to calm a person. “Perspectives” was three-quarters of the way to being finished, and even though the smell of Nicole’s betrayal still hung in the air of the studio that day, we were determined it wasn’t going to ruin everything for us.
Ed had been right when he’d said his little speech before. We were united and we wouldn’t be beaten. The song was mine and Alex’s, and right now it needed my full attention—not Nicole, not her stories, not the press hanging around outside being constantly sent away by security, only to reappear time and again.
I sat in the studio, my guitar in my hands, and waited for Alex to j
oin me to record our guitar parts. Our mixing engineer had already edited and arranged the first rough instrumental mix, which would be played back to us while we played. It already sounded awesome, and I knew the final version was going to sound just as I imagined it would do when I wrote the song.
When Alex arrived in the booth, her guitar strung, as always, around her shoulders, she brought in with her a sense of the normal. When I looked up at her and into her eyes, it was as though the past twenty-four hours had never happened, and suddenly everything that Nicole had done was immaterial. It was a relief. As if I could breathe easily for the first time in what had seemed like days.
Alex settled herself on the stool next to me and plugged her guitar into the fuzzbox next to her. When she was satisfied with the quality of the sound, she bent her head to catch my eye and asked, “Everything seem a bit better now?”
I nodded and opened my mouth to answer, but before I could, Ed’s voice sounded in my headphones.
“Going for a take.”
The melody Alex and I produced sounded beautiful. My guitar became an extension of me, just like it always did, and as I relaxed into the rhythm, I know I played better than I possibly ever had done before. As I strummed and plucked, I looked over to Alex and saw the serenity on her face too. While I watched her, she caught my gaze, and in that moment I felt we were as one.
I smiled across to her.
Maybe she’d been right.
Maybe everything really was going to be okay.
*
“I’m going to see her.” I snapped my guitar case shut.
“Nicole?” Robyn was lounging in an easy chair in the studio. “You think that’s wise?”
“Yes, Nicole.” I sighed. Adrenaline had paled into tiredness. “And yes, I think it’s the right thing to do.”
“When did you decide that?”
“I spoke to Alex,” I said, lifting my guitar. “She made me see sense.”
“Alex?” Robyn asked.
I stole a look to Alex, still packing her guitar away.
“She told me to go and see her,” I said, remembering the look of pain on her face as she’d said it. “If I’m to move forward,” I continued, “I need to get rid of the past.” I slipped another look to Alex. “Because the past is stopping me right now.”
The realization arrived swift and heavy.
It was time to start thinking about me for a change.
*
Nicole’s apartment seemed like the most logical place to meet up. About the same size as mine, hers was the same side of the Thames but nearer the West End than my place. Less cosy too, I’d always thought. My apartment was my home; Nicole’s always struck me as just being the place where she happened to occasionally sleep.
She buzzed me up, and the time spent coming up to the sixth floor seemed to stretch out forever as my body and mind hummed with nervous energy.
I wished I didn’t feel so apprehensive. I’d understood my trepidation when I’d seen her in Croft House, but that meeting was entirely different to this one. Then, I’d been awash with guilt; now, I was abuzz with nervous energy because I knew I wanted answers and I wasn’t sure Nicole was going to give me any.
Her door was already open when I got to it. I pushed it open, called out, then waited. It looked exactly the same as it had when I’d last been in it, nearly four months before. Nicole had always loved pop art, so there were a multitude of bold and bright Andy Warhol prints lining the walls, none of which were to my taste. Nicole appeared, looking every inch as refreshed and at ease as she had in her pictures that had appeared in the papers, and my resentment towards her rose.
“You’re here.” Nicole smiled. If she was as apprehensive as me, she hid it well. “Tube okay getting here?”
“Fine.”
I accepted her offer to come in, and stood in her hallway, the Warhols staring down at me from all angles. Her apartment was spotless, but then again I figured she’d not spent much time in it just lately. I looked around me, into the lounge, and saw her guitar propped up against the arm of her sofa.
“You’ve been playing.” I nodded towards the guitar.
“It’s all I’ve been doing just lately,” Nicole said, her gaze following mine, “playing. It kept me sane in…you know. Drink?” She started walking into her kitchen before I could answer, so I followed her.
“OJ. Thanks.” I rested a hip against the counter.
It was all too friendly, and that threw me. I’d spent the Tube journey over thinking how our meeting would pan out, how furious I’d be with her the minute I saw her. Every time snippets of her interview came back to me, and I thought about her betrayal, my fury would jump up another level, and an argument would form in my mind. Now I was here, though, I just didn’t know what to say to her.
She passed me my juice and wandered into her lounge, which I took as my cue to follow her. Instead of sitting down, she walked to the window and stared out. She didn’t have a drink; her arms, were wrapped tight around herself, her body stiff. I didn’t know if I should sit down or join her at the window, so I chose the latter.
“I always thought the view from this window was a bit crap,” Nicole said, without looking at me. “Just roofs and that. But it’s actually not too bad, is it?”
I looked out of the window across the rooftops. She was right. It was a crap view. Actually, it was no view at all.
I took a sip of my drink. “I didn’t come here to talk about the view, Nic.”
“I know.”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I asked.
She turned and slowly looked at me.
“What I’ve done?” she repeated.
I ignored that.
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
“Sell my story?”
“Why?” I heard the hardness in my voice.
Nicole shrugged, which really annoyed me. “To tell my side of things,” she said, “so everyone could see it wasn’t all the sweetness and light you lot were telling everyone it was.”
“Wait,” I said, turning to look at her, “you were the one that spoiled everything. Not us. Everything was fine until you decided it was more fun to mess with dope than it was to be with us.”
“Because it was,” Nicole replied bluntly. “It was certainly more fun than being with you, anyway.”
Her words stung like a slap. I swallowed.
“You could have ruined everything,” I said. My voice had lost its hardness. “You could have ruined Be4 thanks to the drugs, and now you could still ruin us, thanks to you wanting to tell everyone that we were vile to you, when you know the truth is we were anything but that.” I shook my head. “I mean, what part of you thought it was okay to talk about betrayal when you’re doing precisely that right now?”
“Don’t make me out to be the bad guy in all this,” Nicole said.
“But that’s just what you are,” I replied, “isn’t it?” I drew in a deep breath. “And it’s unfair to say we never came to see you. I was told to stay away by Ed.”
That, at least, caused a reaction to pass across Nicole’s face.
“And you do everything Ed tells you, don’t you?” she replied.
“Not always.” I briefly cut my glance away, then back to her. “I understood why we had to keep quiet,” I said. “It’s a shame you couldn’t have kept quite as quiet as we did.”
“I felt abandoned!” Nicole threw her arms out. “Booted out, ostracized. What is it they say? Not wanted on voyage. Do you have any idea how that made me feel, shacked up in that place?”
I had no answer.
“Ed took me there personally,” Nicole said. “Croft House. Said he’d come and see me again in a few days so we could talk about the future. That gave me a pinprick of hope.” She nodded. “I’d get my head sorted, Be4 would take a small break while I was doing that. Maybe write some stuff. You lot would come and see me so I could have some input on it.” She chewed at her lip. “He never came back. Next thing I knew
, some reject from a lamebrained TV show has been shuffled in, and suddenly you’re all over the Internet and TV.”
“Don’t call her a reject.” A flame ignited inside me. “Alex isn’t, and never has been, a reject.”
I saw Alex in my mind’s eye. It was midafternoon, and I wondered where she was, and what she was doing. I saw her sitting, her guitar in her hands, a pencil tucked behind her ear, that look of adorable concentration she got on her face when she was writing music, and felt my chest ache.
“You all replaced me like that,” Nicole said, clicking her fingers. “All of you.” She hesitated. “So when the press come calling, asking me for my thoughts, what do you suppose I’m going to say?”
“You could have told them the truth.” The flame inside me blazed hotter. “You could have told them it was your way of punishing me.”
“What was?”
“The drugs,” I said. “You could have told them it was me that sent you into rehab.”
“That would have been a lie.” Nicole’s voice was almost inaudible.
“What?”
“I was bored, okay?” She snapped her head round to me. “We were on the verge of something massive, but we weren’t moving quickly enough. Weren’t the success I knew we could be.”
“But you told me—”
“I know what I said,” Nicole said, “and for a while I did blame you. But then I met Freya, and she made me see that—”
“Ah, Freya,” I cut in. “The girl in the interview.”
“She told me it was too easy for me to blame others for my mistakes,” Nicole said, “when really I only had myself to blame.”
“Sounds like this Freya girl talks more sense than you do.” I glared at Nicole. “So you and Freya are, what…?” I asked.
