by PJ Adams
“You think it’s that bad?”
“You’re a fan.”
She knew what he meant by that. She knew the stories. Rake was the one who had nearly died. He’d spent several days comatose after an OD. But it could have been any of them.
“They feed off each other. Sometimes it’s a beautiful thing, and sometimes, well, it’s ugly. And Róisín... Róisín is probably the least stable of them all. It’s a dangerous mix, Emily, and right now they’re out there in another country with nothing to check them in.”
“So what do I do?”
“Go after him, Ms Rivers. Talk to him. Win him back. Save him like I can’t save him.”
She looked at Marcia. Her friend just shrugged, then said, “I think you should do what the gorgeous man says, honey. And don’t worry: I’ll look after Mo while you’re gone.”
§
The song was playing at the airport when she went to check in, but now it sounded different.
It was no longer the knife twisting in her heart.
Now it was an anthem, a symbol.
Let’s make this thing happen!
8
The journey was a blur. A long, tiring blur.
If she thought she had looked bad at midday, then after several hours riding in taxis and planes she looked a complete disaster area now.
Approaching the chateau along that straight, poplar-lined drive, the vineyards tumbling away to either side, she did her best to fix her face with the help of a small hand-held mirror. She didn’t know what she was going to do, or what she might say. She didn’t know what she would find: Mo had hardly painted a promising picture.
She stood at the front door, trying to decide whether to ring or just go in. The chateau didn’t look any different. If anything, there was a sense of calm about this place.
She turned around. The cab was leaving, still visible at the far end of the driveway but too far away to hail if she changed her mind. Now was not the time for second thoughts, though. Not the time to realize that for someone who claimed to shy away from ultimatums, always fearing that forcing an issue might be more likely to force the outcome the wrong way, she had a freakish habit of making exactly those kinds of demands.
How would this look to Ray, her just turning up at the door like this? For a man clearly in a volatile state, might this be the last straw?
The decision, for what it was worth at this late stage, was taken out of her hands as the double doors opened.
She turned back to face the entrance and Justine stood there, looking surprised to say the least. “Ah, Ms Rivers,” she said. “Were we... that is... I...”
“It’s okay,” said Emily. “I wasn’t expected. I just came out here. Is Ray here? I’d like to talk.”
Justine glanced back into the interior of the chateau, and then again at Emily. “I... He is hard work, your boyfriend. I... I left him a letter. I quit. I am leaving.”
Emily stared at her, wondering what had occurred. “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing that is much,” said Justine. “I just... This is not me, you understand?”
“Where is he?”
“He is where he always is when he is here,” said Justine. “He is in the studio.”
“Oh. I... I’ll wait.” Bursting in on a mixing session was hardly going to be the best way to make an appearance.
Justine shook her head. “Do not be so polite,” she said. “Go there. He will not mind. He will not even notice.”
§
Emily watched Justine head down to her little Peugeot where it was parked at the side of the chateau, a bag slung across her shoulder. Then she turned and headed into the house.
She’d never been inside the studio before. It hadn’t exactly been out of bounds, but it was a working place, a place that seemed somehow not relevant when she had been here. Ray was always so intense about the time he spent in there.
Now she walked through to the terrace at the rear of the chateau. The studio was in an old stable block, off to the right. She went across, pulled the door and stepped into a small lounge area. It was like a doctors’ waiting room, with easy chairs, a coffee table stacked with music magazines, potted plants, a water cooler. Doors opened off this area; there were offices here, and one of the doors led through to where Ray and Rake had been working in the studio.
She pushed that door and stepped through into a small passageway. There were two more doors here. She opened the first and entered the studio itself. The floor was polished wood, the walls plain white plaster, the ceiling a bank of suspended panels which might have been speakers or equally could have been some kind of acoustic structures to manage the sound. She looked around and saw a full grand piano, half a dozen guitars on stands, some African drums, cables everywhere. A small glass-screened cubicle to one side had a microphone suspended from the ceiling; a larger booth held a drum kit.
It looked just as she had imagined it would look, and then she glanced across to the last of the glass-screened areas and into the mixing room.
The first thing she saw was Rake, lying sprawled across a mixing desk, blood smeared across his face and pooling over the desk’s sliders. Beyond him, Ray sat back in a swivel chair. His eyes were closed but he must be still awake because the chair twitched from side to side, a lunatic, junky tic.
Starting to panic, she stepped towards the glass.
Rake was breathing, at least. Had they fought? Had they been attacked?
Rake looked up. He twitched in surprise as he saw Emily. He sat up abruptly, then put a hand to his nose. The blood was old, mostly dry. He said something, and Ray’s eyes opened.
He saw her, but was clearly straining to focus.
She turned, walked out of the studio. Back in the small passageway, she took the second door and emerged in the mixing room.
She looked at the two of them, trying to work it out.
“You’re angry,” said Ray. He was still trying to focus.
“You’re wasted.”
“You know what I’m like.” He started to giggle then, stifling it only with the back of his fist. “I’m a rock star. This is what we’re like.”
“What happened here?”
Ray peered around. Rake just sat in one of the other chairs, scowling.
“Well I’m guessing that Angry Cans reunion might be back on hold,” said Ray, more to Rake than to Emily.
Rake stood, and almost fell over. Steadying himself against the mixing desk, he looked around the room, then put a hand to his head and found his way to the door.
“Well fuck,” said Ray softly. “I think we might have hit ‘artistic differences’ again.”
Emily studied him. “What did happen?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I hit him. I remember that. I think I might have broken my hand. Record company sure will be pissed at that.” He gave another laugh, then stopped himself again.
“Mo’s worried.”
“Mo? He’s like a mother hen, sometimes.”
“You don’t need to keep fighting off people who care.”
He had the decency to look sheepish at that.
“You’ve just lost another one who cared. Justine says she’s left you a letter.”
“Shit.”
She’d decided she wasn’t going to press, but he went on: “She’ll be hard to replace. I think Rake might have tried to get a bit too friendly. He can be a bit hands on. Is she okay?”
“She was upset,” said Emily. “Maybe you need to give her some time, then talk to her.”
“More good advice.” It sounded like a dig, but the smile said otherwise: he meant it.
“So what about Róisín?”
Silence. He looked confused. Not what she had expected.
“I saw her interview,” she said. “I know that you two are back together. I just wish–”
He almost choked. He sat up, leaning forward, his hands clasped so hard together the knuckles were white. “We’re what? I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
“She said–”
“An interview, you say? Jesus... but that one’s a scheming, mischievous bitch when she wants to be. She says we’re together? And you believed her?”
Emily’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
He stood and approached her, coming to stand a pace away, as if he wanted to take her into his arms but wasn’t sure how she would react.
“Róisín is trouble. She’s poison. Jesus. That woman... she just wants to ruin everything that’s good in my life. She’s unbalanced.”
“She’s here.”
Ray’s eyes darted around the room, as if he actually thought she meant here.
“She’s in Paris. That’s where they interviewed her.”
“God, she’s turned into a stalker now!”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“Sorry.” He reached out, almost by reflex, and put a hand on her arm. Looking down at that hand, he let go again, let his arm fall away. Then: “I went to Paris with Rake,” he said. “That’s where he’s been staying some of the time. I wonder... He came back from there stoked to the eyeballs one time.”
Now Emily could see it: the manipulative ex, staying a couple of hours away in Paris, casting her web to draw in, first of all, Rake and then, she must hope, Ray. Had she been the one to plant the idea of an Angry Cans reunion? The one to get Rake wasted in the sure knowledge that he would drag Ray down, too? If she couldn’t have him straight then maybe she would settle for having him wrecked.
He reached out again, that hand on her arm. “I fucked up, didn’t I?” he said.
She nodded.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he told her. “I’m learning as I go along.”
She knew that by ‘this’ he didn’t just mean her, their relationship: he meant everything. The band. Róisín. Life.
“We all are,” she said, and finally she allowed herself to step forward into his embrace.
§
She allowed herself to take him by the hand and lead him from the studio, out into the golden evening sunlight, across the terrace to the chateau. In, and up those sweeping stairs to his suite.
In the bedroom she eased the shirt off his back and slid it carefully down his arms. Taking his damaged hand, she examined it carefully. The knuckles were swollen, but he could straighten the fingers and clench a fist. She didn’t think there was any serious damage there.
She unbuttoned his jeans and slid them down his legs so he could step out of them.
Then she turned and pulled the bedcovers back, a lump in her throat.
She wasn’t going to cry now. She wasn’t going to be the kind of person who broke down when they said one of the toughest things they would ever have to say.
She was stronger than that.
She glanced back over her shoulder. He was watching her. His eyes were focusing. Sobriety had struck him like a hammer.
“Are you going to stay?” he asked.
She looked away from those dark eyes, and that would have been answer enough.
She looked back, met those eyes.
“I don’t know if I can do this any more,” she said.
He rubbed at his face, as if that would straighten him out. “I... It can’t end like this,” he said.
“It can’t carry on like this.”
“I’ll get help. I’ll get clean.”
“Do that.”
“I won’t give up.”
She said nothing.
He sat on the bed, and looked up at her.
“Rake’s still here,” she told him. As she’d led Ray through the chateau, Rake had been standing in a doorway, watching. “You need to talk to him.”
“That thing about driving away people who care, right?”
She smiled. “Yes, that thing. Maybe it’s time you both started acting like grown-ups?”
She went to him, took his head in her arms, and held him against her chest, stroking his hair. It would be so easy to crumble.
“Don’t worry about Róisín,” he said. “Ignore her. I really haven’t seen her in weeks. She just makes a lot of noise. She likes the mischief, but she’s not dangerous. She likes to remind me of the damage she can cause but she’s ultimately quite harmless.”
It really was another world, and not one Emily felt part of.
“I’ll talk to Rake,” he went on. “We’ll get straight together. We’ll finish up here tomorrow and then I’ll head back home to London. Clean start. I’ll get my shit together.”
She stroked his hair, kissed the crown of his head, let him go.
§
She could stay here tonight, she knew. There would be another room. Hell, there were dozens of other rooms.
She found a number and, in her clumsy schoolgirl French, called a cab.
She couldn’t stay here any longer.
She had to step away.
9
She spent the night at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, waiting for the 7.05AM flight out to London Gatwick.
At first she tried to sleep across a row of seats in the departure lounge but it was no good, so she resorted to chain-drinking espressos. Ray texted, just minutes before she switched her phone to airplane mode.
Don’t give up on me. We can still make it happen. xx
She didn’t reply.
The next time her phone buzzed it was with a message from Thom. She was on the train heading back into London, not quite her old commuter train, but close enough and crowded enough to make her think back to those days that now seemed so distant, when she had shared a house with her husband and commuted into the city on a train like this.
It seemed uncanny that he should text just then, but he did.
Can we talk? We have things to work out. I hope you’re well.
He was right: they did. The house, the money, the practicalities. They should try to keep it civil.
That’d be good? Where and when?
§
They met in a bar close to the station, early evening. Easy for her to get to from Marcia’s apartment; easy for him to reach from work and then head back to their house that he still lived in.
He stood as she approached. He was wearing dark trousers and that gray linen jacket. A tie, even. He’d shaved, made some effort. Such a transformation from how he had been!
He leaned forward, hands on her arms, and kissed her cheek.
“Hi,” he said, and she nodded in return.
They sat, and an awkward silence settled around them.
“Erm... drink?” he asked.
Emily nodded. “Vodka and–”
“Slimline tonic? Slice of lime?” He laughed, then went to the bar.
This was strange. She’d never done this before. A break-up that had to be followed up with practicalities. Before, when boyfriends became exes, it had simply been a matter of making sure they each had the few things they might have left at the other’s place. This was far more complicated: the house, the incomes, the legal stuff. What was a fair split when she had earned more than him, and paid more than him, but now might not even have a job? Were they going to fight over every little detail?
He brought her drink and she sipped, while he sat, raised his pint and took a long draw.
“You’re looking good,” he said, his eyes flitting towards her and then away again.
Good, not well.
“Look, I know this is awkward. God, I know it’s gut-wrenchingly painful, or at least it is for me. But we need to sort things out. I don’t want to be the kind of guy who drags everything out for as long as possible. You’re a good person, Emily. You deserve good things.”
Damn it, but he was doing sensitive, too. This was old, charming Thom, not the sullen, resentful man he had become. Not too long ago, this would have worked on her. Not that she even suspected him of trying to work something on her now – he was just being the decent man he could still sometimes be. But it was a natural thing he did, pressing those buttons.
It came as something of a shock to h
er to realize she was still susceptible.
“So how are we going to do this?” she asked.
He had a list. He’d set everything out, the assets, the debts, the commitments, the things that were in joint names and those that were in just his or hers. The house, the mortgage, the life insurance, the cars, credit cards and loans, savings.
It was only now that she wondered if he might actually be trying to pull something after all.
“It’s not going to work, Thom,” she said. “It’s over.”
She remembered what Marcia had said: Thom had spoken to Marcia, trying to convince her to talk to Emily, to persuade her. This wasn’t a sudden switch to practicality: he knew what he was doing. He was offering her everything, making it easy, showing her what a decent, charming man he could be. He knew he was pressing those buttons.
She looked into his eyes, and he knew, also, that she understood what he was doing.
“I’ll do anything,” he said.
How was it that he could still do this to her? Would there always be something deep inside her that would be vulnerable to his charms like this?
But those charms... no matter how sweet, they were always laced with poison.
“You tried to hit me.”
He looked down, said nothing.
Perhaps worse, he had relentlessly tried to grind her down and break her with his resentment and envy of her success. She almost told him now that she was in the process of losing her job: a parting gift to him, a final bittersweet acknowledgement that her success had only ever been transient.
“I love you.”
“I never questioned that part.”
Why was it that she was always attracted to these flawed, dangerous charmers? Now she could see it so clearly: just as Thom was a damaged man of many fragmented facets, so too was Ray.
Ray had made that transition for her, from teen crush to something very different. No longer the rock god, he was a flawed man, capable of brilliance and charm, but still fragmented and broken. He knew that: he’d said as much when he’d told her he was learning this whole thing from day to day. Trying to keep it together.
She looked now at Thom and smiled. Ironic that while Thom had succeeded in making her see his own positives, seeing him as the complete man he was, in doing so he had refined her understanding of Ray, too.
