by Kevin Brooks
‘Yeah, I know,’ Jake said. ‘But you know what Malcolm’s like … he’s always doing deals behind the scenes, all kinds of sneaky shit. By the time he agreed to include us in the line-up it was either bottom of the bill or nothing.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Curtis muttered. ‘We’ll just have to blow the rest of them off the stage, won’t we?’
‘Exactly.’
A couple of days later, the significance of the Screen on the Green gig became even greater when Jake told us that he’d just come back from another meeting with Polydor records – who’d been showing a lot of interest in us for a while – and that they were now very close to offering us a contract.
‘How close is “very close”?’ Curtis asked him.
‘Well, they’re still being a bit cautious, so it’s hard to say for definite, but I kind of got the impression that they’re going to make a final decision after the gig in Islington. Most of them are going to be there, and I think they just want to see us one more time before they make up their minds.’
‘No pressure then,’ Curtis said.
Jake grinned. ‘Like you said, all you’ve got to do is blow everyone else off the stage … do that, and we’re made.’
The concert was advertised as a ‘Midnight Special’, with films being shown in the cinema until midnight, and then live music from midnight until dawn. So, even as the first group to play, we still weren’t due on stage until just gone twelve. Curtis, though, was adamant that we should get there a lot earlier.
‘Everything’s got to be dead right,’ he explained. ‘The soundcheck, lights, equipment … we can’t afford to get anything wrong. There’s too much at stake. So I think we should aim to get there for seven o’clock at the latest.’
‘That’s five hours before we’re due to start,’ I pointed out.
‘So?’
‘Well, it’s a long time to hang around.’
‘It’s better than being late and fucking things up.’
I was fairly sure that the real reason he wanted to get there so early was to make sure that nothing happened without him. All the big names were going to be there – the Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks … Rotten, Strummer, Devoto – and there was no way that Curtis was going to let anyone forget that he was a big name too. And if that meant getting to the gig five hours early … well, so be it.
The plan, then, was for Chief and Stan to pick us all up from the squat on Sunday evening around six thirty.
‘So if you aim to get here about an hour earlier,’ Curtis said to William, ‘we can get all the gear ready –’
‘It’s easier for me if I meet you there,’ William said.
‘Where?’
‘At the Screen on the Green.’
Curtis looked at him. ‘Why?’
‘It’s my little brother’s birthday on Sunday. We’re going to the zoo in the afternoon and then he’s having a birthday party in the evening. It won’t finish until around sevenish –’
‘A birthday party?’ Curtis said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You’re going to be late for the gig because you’re going to a fucking birthday party?’
‘Did I say I was going to be late for the gig?’
‘Well, no –’
‘And it’s not a birthday party, it’s my brother’s birthday party. And I promised him I’d be there.’
‘Oh, well,’ Curtis said sarcastically, ‘that’s all right then.’
‘Yeah,’ William said, staring at him. ‘I know it is.’
It was obvious that Curtis wasn’t happy about William making his own way to the gig, but I think he realized that there wasn’t much he could do about it. He couldn’t force him to change his plans. And if Curtis changed his plans – if he offered to wait at the squat for William, having already committed himself to leaving at six thirty – that, to Curtis, would be a sign of weakness. And there was no way he was going to let William think he was weak.
‘Don’t worry,’ William said to him. ‘I’ll be there by seven thirty, OK?’
‘Seven thirty?’
‘Eight o’clock at the very latest.’
Things didn’t get any better for Curtis when, on the Saturday night before the gig, I came back to the squat, after ringing home from the phone box across the road, and told him that I had to get back to Hampstead as soon as possible because my mother was having some kind of breakdown.
‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘What kind of “breakdown”?’
‘I’m not really sure,’ I said, quickly gathering all my stuff together. ‘It was a friend of hers on the phone – Laura. She’s staying for the weekend and they were supposed to be going out somewhere tonight, but apparently Mum started acting really weird … like she was convinced that someone was after her –’
‘After her?’
‘That’s what Laura said. Mum thought that someone was coming to get her.’
‘Who?’
‘She didn’t say … she just started panicking, really losing control, and then she locked herself in the bathroom and she wouldn’t come out. Laura said Mum was terrified … crying and screaming –’
‘She’s probably just stoned.’
I looked at him. ‘What?’
He shrugged. ‘It can do that to you sometimes, cannabis. It can make you feel really paranoid.’
‘Yeah, well … whatever it is, I have to go –’
‘Are you coming back tonight?’
‘I don’t know, Curtis,’ I said impatiently, heading for the door. ‘Probably not, OK?’
‘What about tomorrow?’
‘Ring me,’ I said, hurrying out. ‘I’ll let you know.’
By the time I got home, Laura had called Mum’s doctor and he’d come over and given her something to ‘calm her down’. Dr Samaros – or Doc Sam, as he liked to be called – was a ‘private’ physician, with a very select clientele, and Mum had been using him for years. I’d never really liked or trusted him that much, partly because he always looked so unhealthy – permanently off-colour would be a good way of describing him – and, the way I saw it, if he couldn’t look after himself properly, how could he look after anyone else? But the main reason I disliked and mistrusted Dr Samaros was that all he ever seemed to do was give Mum drugs. It didn’t matter what she claimed to be suffering from, his answer was always the same – take these pills. God knows what he gave her over the years – uppers and downers, slimming pills, painkillers … packets of pills, bottles of pills, whole boxes of pills – he dished them out like sweets. And Mum, being Mum, never asked any questions. She was more than happy to take whatever he gave her.
Her medicine cabinet was the size of a small wardrobe.
That night, when I got there, Dr Samaros was just on his way out.
‘She’s sleeping now,’ he told me, putting on his coat. ‘I’ve given her a mild anti-psychotic and something to calm her down, and she should be quiet now for the rest of the night.’
‘An anti-psychotic?’ I said, somewhat alarmed.
He smiled. ‘It’s all right, Lili, it’s only a precaution. Your mother’s probably just a little overstressed, that’s all … you know how she gets.’
‘Yeah, but –’
‘A good night’s sleep and she’ll be fine, don’t you worry.’
‘I am worried.’
He smiled again and ruffled my hair, as if I was six years old. ‘I’ll call round again in the morning, OK?’
And, with that, he was gone.
I gave Laura a quick hug, and thanked her for calling the doctor, then I went up to Mum’s bedroom to see how she was doing. The lights were off in her room, and she was curled up in bed, her knees tucked up to her chest and her hands clamped over her head.
‘Mum?’ I said quietly, sitting down next to her. ‘Mum …?’
She was fast asleep.
I put my hand on her shoulder and whispered t
o her again, but there was no response whatsoever. No movement, no sound … nothing. She wasn’t just fast asleep, she was as good as unconscious. On her bedside table was an open bottle of pills. I picked it up and tried to read the label, but the writing was illegible. I sighed, put the lid back on, dropped the bottle in my pocket, and went downstairs.
Laura told me a little bit more about what had happened. They’d been getting ready to go out, she said, helping each other choose what to wear, and everything had seemed fine.
‘We were just enjoying ourselves,’ she told me. ‘You know, having a bit of a laugh, looking forward to going out, and then suddenly your mum just kind of flipped. She went to the bathroom, and I carried on getting dressed, and when she came back she just started ranting and raving …’ Laura shook her head. ‘It was if she’d suddenly become a different person.’
‘What was she ranting and raving about?’
‘She kept saying that there was someone downstairs, a man … she could hear him walking around. She said she knew who he was, he’d been after her for weeks, but she couldn’t tell me his name. And when I asked her why this man was after her, she said he was going to kill her.’
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘No,’ Laura said, shaking her head. ‘There was no one there. I went down and checked. When I went back upstairs, your mum had locked herself in the bathroom. She was absolutely petrified.’
‘Had she been taking anything? You know, drugs, pills …?’
‘We had a couple of glasses of wine …’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Not that I’m aware of …’
She looked away then, and I was pretty sure she was lying. I knew how it was when she got together with Mum for a night out – a couple of lines of coke to get themselves in the mood, a bottle of wine, a few joints …
And maybe Curtis was right, maybe Mum had just had a bad reaction to the dope or the cocaine or whatever … maybe that’s all it was. She wasn’t losing her mind, she’d just had a bad reaction …
I wished it was true.
But I knew that it wasn’t.
‘Has she ever done this before?’ Laura asked me.
‘No …’ I said cautiously. ‘I mean, she hasn’t done this … but … well, you know …’
Laura nodded. ‘She’s been through a lot.’
‘Yeah …’
We spent the next few hours just sitting around talking … mostly about Mum. Laura told me lots of stories about the ‘old days’, laughing and joking about all the crazy things that Mum and her used to get up to when they were models, before Mum was married. I’d heard most of the stories before, but I didn’t really mind hearing them again. It was nice to imagine Mum being happy. Later on, Laura asked me how I was doing – school? boyfriend? the band? – and I managed to avoid telling her anything about school or Curtis by concentrating on Naked instead. The who, the what, the where … the music, the punk scene, the gigs …
‘Have you played anywhere I’d know?’ she asked.
I named a few places, but she hadn’t heard of any of them.
‘How about the Screen on the Green?’ I said. ‘Have you heard of that?’
She nodded. ‘It’s a cinema, isn’t it? In Islington.’
‘Yeah, we’re playing there tomorrow night with the Sex Pistols and a few other bands …’ I started to tell her, but then I remembered Mum. ‘Well, we’re supposed to be playing there tomorrow night … I mean, if Mum’s not any better –’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine tomorrow,’ Laura said. ‘And I’ll be here anyway – I’m staying till Monday at least. So you don’t have to worry …’ She smiled. ‘I’ll babysit for you.’
I checked on Mum again before I went to bed, but she was still completely dead to the world. I covered her up and tucked her in, fetched her a glass of water in case she woke up during the night, and then I went to bed.
The next morning, when I took her a cup of coffee, Mum was already awake and out of bed. She wasn’t dressed or anything, she was just sitting in a wicker chair by the window, still in her nightdress, reading a book and smoking a cigarette.
‘Hello, love,’ she said, surprised to see me. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came round last night,’ I told her, putting her coffee on the windowsill. ‘How are you feeling, Mum?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m fine … is anything wrong? You haven’t had a fight with Curtis, have you?’
‘No … why?’
She smiled. ‘Well, you don’t usually come home on a Saturday night …’
‘I was worried about you.’
She frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Well, last night … you know …’
She shook her head, perplexed. ‘What about last night?’
‘Laura told me what happened, Mum.’
‘I’m sorry, love, but I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You were frightened …’
‘Frightened of what?’
‘You thought there was someone in the house –’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know … a man. You told Laura that he was after you, that he was trying to hurt you –’
Mum laughed. ‘No one’s after me … why would Laura think that?’
‘Is it Dad?’
‘Your father?’
‘Yeah … I mean, did you think it was him in the house last night?’
She shook her head in dismay. ‘Why on earth would I think that?’
‘I don’t know –’
‘Did Laura tell you that Rafa was here?’
‘No, she was just worried about you –’
‘Why?’
‘You were terrified of something.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, laughing again.
‘You locked yourself in the bathroom, Mum.’
‘No, I didn’t –’
‘You were crying –’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Do you remember Doc Sam being here?’
‘When?’
‘Last night. He gave you some pills –’
‘That was last week.’
‘Do you remember going to bed?’
She looked at me, blinking rapidly, trying to remember … but she couldn’t. Or perhaps she just didn’t want to.
‘Is Laura still here?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Yeah –’
‘What time is it?’
‘About ten …’
‘Is Laura still here?’
Dr Samaros came round a little bit later, and as always he insisted on seeing Mum privately, in her bedroom … just the two of them. I tried arguing with him, telling him that I should be with her, that she was my mother, but he just did what he always did – gave me a patronizing smile and told me that he was only following my mother’s instructions.
‘If you’d like to ask her …’ he said.
I shook my head, knowing full well what her answer would be, and left them to it.
Half an hour later, when Doc Sam finally came out of Mum’s bedroom, all he had to say was, ‘She’s fine.’
‘But she doesn’t remember anything about last night,’ I pointed out.
‘Well, that’s not unexpected really … it’s nothing to worry about. In fact, it’s probably best if she doesn’t remember.’
‘Yeah, but –’
‘I’m sorry, Lili,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I really have to go.’ He gave me that condescending smile again. ‘If she starts playing up again, just call me, OK?’
Nothing much happened for the rest of the morning. Mum seemed to be doing OK. A bit detached perhaps, not altogether there … but that wasn’t unusual. Without actually discussing it, Laura and I decided to avoid any mention of the night before. We just kind of pretended that nothing had happened. We ate lunc
h together, drank coffee, sat around talking …
And then Curtis rang.
I took the call on the phone in the hallway.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘Not too bad at the moment,’ I said, keeping my voice down. ‘She’s just a bit … I don’t know. It’s hard to explain –’
‘Are you coming back this afternoon?’
‘I don’t know, Curtis … I think I’d better stay for a while, just in case –’
‘But you just said she was fine –’
‘No … I said she wasn’t too bad –’
‘Same thing.’
‘No, it’s not –’
‘Well, anyway …’
‘Lili?’
I turned at the sound of Mum’s voice. She was standing at the end of the hallway, staring angrily at me. Her body was rigid, her face tense.
‘Who are you talking to?’ she snapped.
‘It’s just Curtis –’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I’m not –’
‘Lili?’ I heard Curtis say. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Just a second,’ I said into the phone.
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ Mum hissed.
‘Mum –’
‘I know what you’re doing!’
‘Mum, please –’
‘Give me that!’ she yelled, grabbing for the phone.
As I instinctively yanked it out of her reach, she suddenly flinched, turning her head away from me as if I was going to hit her.
‘No …’ she muttered. ‘Please …’
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I said, reaching out to comfort her. ‘I’m not –’
‘Don’t touch me!’
I pulled my hand back.
She stared at me for a few seconds then, her lips moving, but no sound coming out … and I knew – I knew – that just for a moment she didn’t know who I was.
‘It’s OK, Mum,’ I said softly. ‘It’s me … Lili … everything’s OK –’
‘Lili?’ Curtis said over the phone.
Mum stared at the handset, her head cocked to one side.
‘What’s she doing?’ Curtis said.
Mum’s eyes widened and she clamped her hand over her mouth, suddenly terrified.
‘It’s Curtis, Mum,’ I said. ‘It’s only Curtis –’