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from last night: jeans, a Ben Sherman shirt – balled up and stuffed into a corner of the tub. The shirt was still wet and stained with
vomit, but the jeans were fine. He pulled them on and took the
t-shirt he would’ve worn to bed from his overnight bag.
Tom fought to remember the gig.
How had he played the guitar in such a state? Back in the day,
he was always alright when he’d had a few. Sometimes it even gave
him a little more confidence, made his solos that bit bolder – and
his stage presence, too. But it had been fifteen years since he last
played a gig with a drink inside him. He very well could have been
awful, letting the audience and the band down. Perhaps even costing
them their fee, having ruined the party. But he could remember
nothing except for the first song – ‘Country House’ by Blur – and
the pogoing audience on the dancefloor in front of him.
Opening the hotel-room door as gently as he could manage, Tom
stepped out of the room and into the hallway. The smell of cleaning
products hit him so hard he almost retched. Ignoring his senses, he
carried on through, towards the lift. What had the guests in the
rooms bordering his heard from the night before? Did they know
more than he did right now?
The night clerk on the reception desk looked surprised to see
him. Or perhaps just surprised to see anyone so early on a Sunday
morning. Tom nodded dutifully at her cheery ‘Morning!’ and stalked
through the brightly lit, windowless lobby. Beyond the sliding glass
doors he felt the slap of cold, fresh air, and the smell of sitting water from the dock.
Tom walked away from the hotel, towards the Tate building.
As he passed the bobbing boats, tourist cruisers and one yellow
submarine, he wondered if what he was about to do was the right
thing. Or would he just be compounding lies with more lies, adding
deception and foolishness to his litany of mistakes? Would it, he
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wondered, be better just to come clean? To admit the lapse? Or, rather, lapses?
But the timing . . .
Last night, of all nights.
With his back to the gallery building, he took out his phone,
opened his email and started to write.
Hey Es,
Sorry you haven’t heard from me since yesterday. My
phone and wallet were stolen at the gig. I’m sending this
from the computer in the hotel reception. Sorry it’s so late
(or early). Only got back half an hour ago after doing the
police report. Will be back around 1 p.m.
Hope you’re okay.
Love you,
Tom xx
He deleted the Sent from my iPhone messaging from the bottom
of the window, hit send, and sat himself down on the dock wall,
legs dangling.
Despite a strong history of self-loathing, Tom hadn’t hated
himself more than he did in that moment. He knew Esme would
be angry that it had taken him so long to get in touch. But at least
that was the kind of argument they could get over, one that perhaps
would only last a couple of days. The truth, on the other hand . . .
With the guilt and the remaining alcohol coursing through him,
Tom turned his phone off and threw it into the water of the Albert
Dock. For a second, he watched it float – shiny black screen on
shiny black water – before it disappeared beneath the glassy surface,
taking his secrets with it.
*
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Tom woke Louisa when he arrived back in the room, the slam of the heavy door shocking her out of sleep. She pushed her body up onto
the pillow and looked at him in the half-light. He noticed that she
was wearing a T-shirt, but that her jeans and bra were scattered on
the floor by her side of the bed.
‘Hey,’ she said, sleepily. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Getting some fresh air.’
She nodded. ‘Feeling any better?’
‘Not really.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not surprised. Sober for, what, ten years?’
‘Almost,’ he said, a little taken aback to hear it out loud. ‘Who
told you?’
‘Mogs. Eventual y, anyway. Couldn’t real y stop you by that point,
though.’
‘Fuck.’ Tom moved to the couch and put his head in his hands.
‘Was the gig okay?’
‘Errm.’
‘Oh fucking hell,’ he said, fighting the impulse to throw up again.
‘How bad?’
‘Well, you haven’t been paid.’
Tom began to thump the heel of his hand against his forehead.
‘Don’t, Tom,’ Louisa said. ‘You can’t blame—’
‘I can,’ he snapped back. ‘I really can.’
The two of them waited for a moment. They were no more than
acquaintances, now reunited and with a new, unwanted proximity.
Tom had to know what else had happened. What he – or they – had
done. But before he could ask, Louisa spoke.
‘Look. I’m sorry I didn’t sleep over there. I tried. But it was just
fucking uncomfortable. And I didn’t really fancy the bath either, for
obvious reasons.’
‘It’s fine,’ Tom said, taking a moment to realise what she’d said
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and what that meant. Or at the very least: what it might have meant.
‘Sorry, Louisa. I know it’s awful but I have to ask. Did we . . .’
‘Tom.’
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CHAPTER TWENTY
4 – 5 pm
MY LOSS OF CONTROL
February 2017 – Hanover Street, Liverpool
He noticed her as soon as he stepped inside the venue, carrying his
two guitars and a holdall full of his stuff for the night. She was on
stage, tuning her bass guitar and laughing with her bandmates.
Tom hadn’t seen Louisa in almost ten years. The last time had
been at a gig in Cheltenham, when the Oasis tribute band he occa-
sionally formed part of shared a bill with her 1980s act. That time,
it was a Christmas party for a huge engineering firm whose staff
were smashed by 9 p.m., and who felt it their place to join Tom’s
band on stage whenever any of them felt the urge to pose like Liam
Gallagher and bellow tunelessly into a microphone.
As ever, Tom and Louisa had caught up like they always did when
they met on the circuit. There was always a little spark of something
between them. But the timing was never quite right. He had recently
got together with Esme; she was engaged to a tax accountant she’d
known from school, and who she had reconnected with online. Both
of them were in the process of winding down the time they spent
playing gigs, preferring the home lives they were gradually building.
‘He poked me,’ she had said of her fiancé. ‘It sort of all went
from there.’
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Not long after that gig Tom stopped playing with Supersonic.
Inevitably, he and Louisa lost touch. She drifted from his memory
and whatever friendship they once had faded.
So he was surprised to see her now. And found himself drifting
back to another time, as she launched her band into a note-perfect
version of ‘Manic Monday’ by The Bangles.
Tom took a seat at the back of the venue and watched as she
played. Louisa hadn’t changed an awful lot in the years since they’d
last seen one another. Her hair was slightly longer, in an untidy bob, and the pink streaks were gone. The bell-bottom jeans and a tight
T-shirt depicting the logo of one of Hole, The White Stripes or Ani
DiFranco, had been replaced by tight black jeans and a plain white
cotton Oxford shirt. He wondered if she still had her tongue pier-
cing, which she would stick out of her purple-painted lips whenever
there was a camera around.
The song drifted to a clunking, grinding close mid-chorus, as the
singer complained about the levels of the monitors. He was about to
get up, wave and go over to interrupt their soundcheck. But before
he could, the band members he would be playing with later that
evening began to filter through the door, carrying their guitars and
drum bags.
He’d not seen any but one of them since his last gig with them
seven years ago, when he’d stepped in at the last minute because their regular guitarist’s wife had gone into labour. Tom would occasionally
run into the drummer, Steven Moggach – or Mogs – while watching
Arsenal games in any one of the dwindling number of crap North
London pubs that favoured their Sky Sports subscription over tapas
and craft beer. It was Mogs who kept him up to date with the band
and who had asked Tom to fill in tonight.
‘The gig’s in Liverpool,’ Mogs had announced, while rolling a
thin cigarette. ‘Two hours of nineties covers crap for a bloke who
owns a chain of restaurants. It’s his fortieth or something. Neil’s at 226
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EuroDisney with his kids and his ex-wife. You’re still on the roster, if you fancy it?’
The timing was awful. But they were short of money and it was
£1,000, plus expenses. So Esme told him to take it before Tom had
to admit that all he wanted to do was to go, to be surrounded by that
world of bands and live music he’d lost sight of years ago. To forget
a bit about who he was and what he was struggling with, under the
glare of stage lights and in front of a sing-along crowd.
He accepted Mogs’ offer.
‘Tom!’ Louisa said, in the high-pitched posh voice he had all but
forgotten. She had finished the soundcheck and was climbing down
from the stage at The Social Bar. He was chatting to his bandmates,
catching up. ‘Tom fucking Murray!’
Louisa threw her arms around Tom, hugging him tightly, as
though he was an old friend returning from years spent abroad.
‘How the fucking hell are you?’ she said, Tom remembering her
habitual, casual swearing in all and any circumstances. ‘What are
you even doing here?’
‘I’m good, thanks. I’m part of the nineties tribute band for the
evening.’
‘Shit, Tom. I thought you left the circuit ages ago.’
‘I did. This is a brief return. One night only,’ he said. ‘Anyway,
what about you? I thought you’d given up, too.’
‘Yep. Gave it all up for marriage, two kids and a messy divorce.
The lot,’ she said. ‘And now I’m back. So maybe think of this as
some sort of mid-life crisis.’
‘The old band back together then?’
‘Sort of. Tonya’s a yoga teacher in Amersham now, so we’re a three
piece. Forty-five minutes of eighties classics before you guys go on.’
‘A warm-up act for a fucking party?’
‘Oi,’ she said, whacking him on the arm. ‘Co-headliners. I get
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the sense the host likes to throw his money around. Anyway, where are you now?’
Tom was about to answer when he heard his name called from
the stage. Just as well, because he didn’t know where to start when
talking about his own life, let alone the questions he could ask about Louisa’s. Why the divorce? How old are the kids? What went right?
And more importantly, what went wrong?
‘Look. I’ve got to soundcheck. But wait around. We’ll catch up
afterwards.’
After playing ‘A Design for Life’ on loop for twenty-five minutes,
Tom found Louisa at a high, round table near the bar. In front of her
a cold, clear drink was bubbling away. The glow of her smartphone
illuminated her face as she scrolled through.
‘There he is,’ she said, as Tom climbed onto a stool and took a
seat in front of her. This was the part of life as a gigging musician
he could never get comfortable with. The endless hours of hanging
about before stage times. ‘So, you first. Tell me about the last ten
years.’
met, their home in London and his work composing music for busi-
ness videos and teaching the children of rich parents and private
schools. The life they had settled into since he had drifted away from the live music scene he and Louisa once shared.
But as he was speaking, Tom realised that much of what he said
were half-truths. When he spoke about marriage, he omitted his
botched proposal the year before. And he’d decided not to share that
things had been hard of late, that the reason he was in Liverpool was
because all of the composing and soundtracking work had dried up,
and their mortgage payments were backing up.
He knew as he was doing it that he was making up a different
version of his life. The one he wanted people to see when they looked
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at him and Esme. Not the actual one they were living. Complete with all its unhappiness, secrecy and heartbreak.
Then, when Louisa asked if the two of them had any kids, Tom
replied: ‘Not yet.’
It was true, of course. But those two words concealed so much
more than Tom was letting on. They didn’t tell Louisa that three
weeks ago he and Esme were still having a baby, that the accidental
pregnancy they learned of shortly after New Year’s Eve was, for a
short while at least, the joy their relationship desperately needed.
‘Not yet’ didn’t tell her about the bleeding, the blood tests, the
irregular HCG levels. It omitted the doctors’ appointments and the
language: non-viable, high risk.
Tom gave no indication to Louisa of his devastation at the
mis carriage, or that in trying to be Esme’s rock, he hadn’t allowed
himself to grieve. Just as he’d not admitted to Annabel how it made
him feel, when Esme suggested that he talk about it with a friend.
On the surface, Tom was keeping calm and c
arrying on. Below he
was struggling. Knowing that money was getting tight, Tom stopped
seeing Christine under the pretence of his feeling better. But his
recovery from the breakdown he had suffered on New Year’s Eve
two years ago was incomplete. This recent loss on top of everything
else had pushed him further towards the brink. And in the chaos of
their lives, Tom had successful y hidden from Esme his worst slide
into depression and anxiety in years.
‘Not yet,’ Tom repeated, and Louisa shrugged it away, telling
him that he was better off out of it, making a joke about the stress
of raising her own kids that she couldn’t possibly have known the
insensitivity of.
He faked a laugh and tried to forget the whole thing. Tom hated
that he had to be that person. The guy who was wracked with
anxiety-inducing thoughts about what could’ve been and how to
get past it. The guy who couldn’t admit he was struggling, because he
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worried about what it might mean for his life with Esme. His being crushed by the weight of the world he had built around himself, and
which he increasingly found hard to make sense of.
Instead, he wanted to be a previous version of himself. Someone
whose primary care was playing guitar, making people dance – find-
ing the after-party. Who would sit around in bars and chat and
laugh.
As Louisa spoke, Tom watched her sip her gin and tonic and
remembered how it felt. No matter how many years passed, Tom
would always be able to recall what it was like to drink. His first one the loosener; the second savoured, more enjoyable. The third the sign
he was settling in. The problem came when the numbers continued
to rise. But he wasn’t thinking about that now.
Tom was confused and anxious. Unable to trust himself. His heart
was beating hard and fast. He wanted to calm himself down. He
knew the best, most efficient way to do that. But it was a big step.
For a second he wanted to say ‘stop me’. He could tell Louisa
how he was feeling and what was about to happen. And she would
step in and help him. But rationale and sensibility were slaves to
pure, blind will.
She was midway through a story about one of her kids destroying
a dining table when Tom got up from the table without a word. He
rushed past the guitars leant up against chairs and stacked drum