The Sick Rose (18 page)

‘I’m Louisa,’ she said. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you properly at last,’ but her words bounced off his retreating back. Angie followed close behind, carrying the bass drum that was half her size. She looked at Adam.

‘On a scale of one to ten, you’re a ten and he’s an eleven. Or are you an eleven and he’s a ten?’

‘Eh?’ said Adam.

‘I’m trying to work out who’s the biggest arsehole, him for being such a moody bastard or you for being such a lazy cunt. Are you just going to watch me lug all this shit up the stairs?’

‘Yes,’ said Adam fondly.

‘Wanker,’ she replied, with the same affection. ‘Van’s waiting, when you’re ready.’ She looked at Louisa and smiled expectantly.

‘This is Louisa,’ said Adam with a sigh, as though the information had been dragged out of him by an interrogation squad. ‘I’m going to walk her home now.’

‘Good luck, it’s pissing down outside,’ she said brightly. ‘Where d’you live?’

‘Sort of Gloucester Road, South Ken,’ said Louisa.

‘But that’s on our way home! Why don’t I drop you off?’

She felt Adam stiffen beside her. ‘I like walking in the rain,’ he muttered.

‘Suit yourselves,’ Angie said.

The noise from the rain was as loud as traffic. It fell at an angle and drove the filth and litter into the gutter. Drenched clubbers sheltered in chip shop doorways and under the ineffective bus shelter. The only bus that passed them was headed for the mysterious elevated hinterland of High Barnet in the north. The hem of Louisa’s dress was already heavy with water. Walking back to Kensington would be romantic for about five minutes and then it would be miserable. She gathered the strength to challenge him.

‘I’d quite like that lift, you know. It’s a long way to walk even in the dry. And I
have
been on my feet all day.’

He said yes in a way that made her feel it was her fault it was raining.

Now that she was in the van she could see that it was actually a customised minibus, with most of the back seats ripped out. Metal stumps poked from beneath the pile of equipment and redundant seatbelts dangled lifelessly from the walls like streamers after the party was over. Angie was driving while Ben was in the front seat with his feet up on the dash. Louisa could see his face in the rear-view mirror. He was attractive in a small, French sort of way. In a band without Adam, he would have been the looker. He was counting out the money they’d made from the gig, excited because they’d actually managed to turn a profit, even if it was only ten quid each, which he handed out to the other members in coins and notes. Ciaran took his with mumbled thanks; she still hadn’t managed to meet his eye. Adam handed his to Louisa for safekeeping. She was touched by the old-married-couple nature of this trusting gesture and made a big show of putting the money into her own purse so that the others wouldn’t miss it. She felt an unexpected diffidence and was happy to listen while they spoke.

They had to shout to make their voices heard over the drumming of the rain on the roof. Ben had got them an unpaid gig at the polytechnic in Luton and opinion was divided over whether they should accept. Angie and Ben argued that all exposure and experience was good, Adam was insulted that they should be asked to play for free and Ciaran was saying, in a voice that sounded almost tearful, that he’d been doing this for ten years and he had never heard of anyone being spotted by an A&R man in Luton.
Ten years
, thought Louisa. How old
was
he? Ciaran was like a warning from history. By thirty you should be coming out the other side of your career, not still hoping that it would one day take off. She wondered why he had not yet achieved success and how he could bear to be surrounded by such blistering youth.

‘I think we should all get hideously pissed,’ said Ben.

‘Everywhere’s shut,’ said Angie. ‘Unless you want to pay to get into a club, and I need that tenner.’

Louisa’s parents were in Devon with Miranda and Dev. Louisa weighed up bonding with the rest of the band versus bed with Adam and decided to play a long game.

‘You can all come back to mine.’

‘But your folks!’ said Adam, as though it was a trap.

‘At the cottage, and so’s my sister,’ said Louisa.

They all pulled into the mews. The van had to be the cheapest vehicle that had ever graced the cobbles.

‘Nice gaff!’ said Ben.

Ciaran looked up at the mews and then at Adam.

‘I’m sorry, all of a sudden I’m not thirsty.’ He slipped through the gate as it closed, swinging his long black trench coat around him like a toreador and splashed his way into the night.

‘Well, at least that answers my question about who’s the biggest arsehole,’ said Angie. ‘Tonight, anyway.’

Once in, Louisa set about raiding her parents’ wine cellar, which was recessed in the floor of the utility room, starting with a Liebfraumilch, a gift from one of her father’s grateful patients, that she knew her parents would never touch. She noticed that, when it was free, Adam didn’t insist on whiskey but drank the white wine he professed to despise. When she came back up, all three of them were crouched by her father’s Bang and Olufsen.

‘Nice kit,’ said Ben. ‘This must have cost a grand, easy. What have you got?’

‘Nothing much, I’m afraid,’ said Louisa, who still listened to everything on cassette. She opened the glass-fronted tower that housed her father’s CD collection. ‘Only classical.’

‘
Only
classical?’ said Adam. ‘My dear girl, I have so much to teach you.’ He pulled out a recording of Britten’s
War Requiem
and turned it up so loudly they all jumped in surprise. Angie spilled her glass down her front.

‘Damn, that was the last of it,’ she said.

‘Plenty more where that came from,’ said Louisa.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Adam. ‘I’m going to the loo anyway.’

Ben leaned in so close that for a disorienting moment Louisa thought he was about to kiss her. ‘I’m sorry about Ciaran. That right there is your typical love-hate relationship. Ciaran resents Adam because he’s the front man and he gets all the glory and the credit, not to mention he’s fighting off the girls with a stick, the bastard.’ Ben didn’t seem to see Louisa’s face crumple at this. ‘And Adam resents Ciaran because I think that deep down he knows Ciaran’s the real songwriting talent in the band.’

‘If Ciaran hates Adam so much why doesn’t he go and form a band on his own?’ said Louisa.

‘Because Adam is beautiful, and he can sing,’ said Angie simply. ‘And that’s where the magic is. Also, Ciaran’s thirty-four. Adam’s young.
We’re
young. We could all start again. Ciaran thinks this is his last shot at success.’

‘He’s right,’ said Ben.

‘The thing is, they’ve both got that unteachable quality, that talent. Me and Ben, we’re plodders – we are, Ben – we work hard, but they don’t even have to try. And with that comes the artistic temperament, which brings us back to the fact they’re a pair of arseholes.’

‘He’s started talking about Hamburg again,’ said Ben. Angie rolled her eyes. ‘Whenever there’s a schism in the band – well, whenever Adam doesn’t get his own way, which is much the same thing – he throws a tantrum and threatens to go and live in Hamburg.’

‘It’s Berlin now, haven’t you heard? Ciaran’s convinced him the Wall’s going to come down. Adam thinks he’s going to soundtrack the revolution.’

‘As
if
!’

‘
Mein Gott
!’

They were crying with laughter, as though Adam leaving the country was no big deal, as though it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Maybe to them it wasn’t. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll cure his wanderlust,’ he said in a way that made Louisa feel the joke was on her.

Adam came back with a box of wine. After another glass, Angie fell asleep on the sofa. She had taken her wet shoes and socks off to reveal toenails like pieces of gravel. Louisa felt a stab of pity and frustration. You’d think she could at least try to do something with her hair: a henna rinse would give it a bit of depth.

‘Sleeping Beauty herself,’ said Ben nastily; when Adam joined in the laughter Louisa was ashamed of her relief.

‘Let me get her a cover,’ said Louisa. ‘You two can crash here if you like.’

She went upstairs to the airing cupboard for the spare blankets. The sooner she could get Ben to drop off, the quicker she could take Adam downstairs.

The CD came to an end as she descended the stairs. Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet and she stopped halfway down, the better to hear them talk. Adam and Ben had been raising their voices all night and through habit or intoxication did not think to lower them now.

‘She’s nice,’ said Ben. She wondered what gesture Adam’s silence contained: she imagined an arrogant shrug that confirmed he was due nothing less. ‘Does she know about . . .?’

She could almost hear him shake his head.

‘No,’ said Ben. ‘They never do, do they?’

Chapter 23

May 2009

Paul passed his driving test first time with only three minor faults at 2.53 p.m. on 29th May 2009. He knew as he watched the examiner complete the paperwork that it would be one of those dates that you never forget, like a birthday or a deathday. He was right about that, but not in the way he thought.

That evening Michaela Johnson, who was in his English class, threw her eighteenth birthday party. Emily knew about the party but she wanted them to go to the cinema instead. She didn’t like Michaela Johnson; she thought that she was promiscuous, emphasising each syllable. (‘A right slag, that one,’ said Daniel, with less eloquence, but more justification; Michaela had been one of his more vocal sofa conquests.) But Paul didn’t get invited to many parties, still less have a genuine reason for celebrating, and Emily’s primness, usually part of her charm, had annoyed him. The week leading up to it had been tense, with tearful phone calls from his mum (not pregnant again), juggling Daniel and Emily, sitting his last A level and having extra driving lessons; he wanted to let off steam properly, the way people his age were supposed to do. An evening of serious cinema followed by the usual protracted sexual rejection was more than he could take. He tried to persuade Emily to come – even good girls were famously loose at parties – but she stood her ground.

Michaela had a baby brother, and someone had filled the child’s plastic bath with fruit juice and spirits to make a punch. People were pouring cans and bottles in. Paul dipped a paper cup into the mixture. It tasted like Troy’s hairspray. Within seconds he felt calmer and happier. Almost everyone from college was there along with a few stragglers from Grays Reach High, including, Simeon and Lewis – who had graduated from bullying twelve-year-olds to selling them drugs – and Hash, who drunkenly greeted Daniel like a long-lost brother. Paul hid his laughter as Daniel tried to disentangle himself from the embrace; by the time Hash had really hit his stride as a bully Paul had been safe under Daniel’s wing, and so he had never been on the receiving end of his petulant brand of violence. He wanted it to stay that way.

There were too many people; the press of bodies was actually not unpleasant – squeezing past her in a rammed corridor he got closer to Michaela Johnson’s bare stomach than he had ever managed to Emily’s. Teenagers spilled out of the house to litter the grassy banks outside. The houses on either side of Michaela’s were vacant: the front door of one had been battered down before 8 p.m., and the empty rooms contained the overflow. Twice the police were called, but both times they just sent Community Support Officers on pushbikes who told them to turn the music down only for it to resume, louder and faster than ever, once the boys in the wrong shade of blue were out of earshot.

‘They clock off at half ten,’ said Daniel, ‘and after that, they won’t send plod out for a teenage party. Not unless something really kicks off.’

Normally Daniel didn’t like Paul to drink in case he needed him for some unspecified high-precision emergency, but tonight he was encouraging him, producing cans of Special Brew from somewhere and telling him that he was proud of him for passing his driving test. In the living room, the two of them commandeered a sofa. Girls in tiny clothes were gyrating in front of them, but it was still too early for any but the drunkest boys to dance. Though all of the girls naturally looked over at Daniel, once or twice Paul couldn’t help wondering if some of their glances had been directed at him. He looked as good as he was ever going to get, in clothes that Daniel had chosen for him: a grey T-shirt with a low V-neck and charcoal linen trousers.

‘Gemma likes you,’ said Daniel, gesturing to a girl in the eye of the dancefloor.

‘Gemma
Collins
?’ said Paul in disbelief and amusement.

Popular wisdom held that Gemma was the most beautiful girl in Grays Reach, in all Essex. Paul didn’t understand why she would go for him, and if he was honest he didn’t see why he should go for her. She had an undeniably lovely face and was always beautifully dressed and made up, but there was something arch and brittle about her looks. She looked like a model – but the skinny, fashion kind, not the soft, welcoming glamour models that he preferred.

‘You’re well in.’