by Kevin Brooks
I looked at him then, caught up once again in the familiar confusion of not knowing what to believe – was he really being thoughtful and caring, or was he just stringing me along, telling me what I wanted to hear …?
I didn’t know.
And I realized then that I never had.
‘I’m ready whenever you are,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
I don’t actually remember very much about going to Polydor to sign the contract. I was still really tired, probably even more so by then, and everything was so sudden and so unexpected, and so confusing, that the rest of the day seemed to pass in a daze. I can’t even remember exactly where we went to sign the deal. I’ve got a feeling that it might have been somewhere in Kensington, or maybe Hammersmith, but it’s no more than a feeling. All I can really recall is going into an office building somewhere, then hanging around for a while in a really plush reception area – deep carpets, leather settees, gold records framed on the walls – and then eventually we were all escorted into an equally plush office where we were introduced to lots of men in suits. They were all smiling and shaking our hands, telling us how delighted they were, how excited, how thrilled … and then some of them left, and we all sat down, and the guy called Chris sat at his desk and talked for a while about options and publishing and recording plans and a load of other stuff that didn’t make much sense to me, not that I was really listening anyway. Curtis and Jake seemed to know what he was talking about, and I noticed that William was listening intently to every word that Chris said, but I was just sitting there really … not listening, not concentrating, not doing anything.
My mind was somewhere else, a million miles away.
After a while, the talking stopped, and then it was just a case of actually signing the contract – sign here, and there … and once again, just here – and as we were all doing that, a couple of photographers came in and started flashing away, and William did his usual trick of making sure that his face was always at least partly hidden, and then the champagne corks started popping …
And that was pretty much it.
We’d done it.
Signed a record deal.
We’d made it.
Curtis and Jake were already celebrating – glugging down the champagne as if it was water – and even Stan was joining in, although I think he was a bit pissed off with Curtis because Curtis had told Chief to stay in the van, and Stan thought his brother should have come in with us …
But he seemed to be getting over it now, clinking glasses with Curtis, pouring himself another …
I had a glass in my hand too, but I didn’t seem to be in the right mood for celebrating. I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t really sure what kind of mood I was in. I just felt kind of quiet, I suppose. A bit deflated. A bit down.
‘Hey,’ William said quietly, sitting down next to me. ‘Are you OK?’
I smiled at him. ‘Yeah, you know …’
‘Not drinking your champagne?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m just a bit tired …’
‘Yeah, me too.’
I smiled again.
He said, ‘Why don’t you just go home, get some sleep?’
‘Yeah, I think I probably will.’
We both looked up then as another flashbulb went off across the room, the photographer capturing the moment when Chris handed over the £20,000 cheque to Jake.
‘Welcome to Polydor, boys,’ he said, before adding – with a smarmy look at me – ‘and girls, of course.’
There was a slightly odd little moment then as Jake suddenly realized that a cheque for £20,000 is only actually worth £20,000 once you put it in the bank. And he certainly didn’t have a bank account, and neither did Curtis …
‘Stan?’ he said. ‘Have you got a bank account?’
Stan shook his head.
‘Lili?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘How about you, Billy?’
William just laughed.
So then Jake had to ask Chris if we could possibly have some of the money in cash, just enough to tide us over until we’d set up a bank account … and Chris had to make some phone calls … and eventually, when we left Polydor’s office, we had £1,000 in cash and a cheque for £19,000.
‘All right,’ said Curtis, standing on the pavement outside the office, triumphantly waving a handful of £20 notes around. ‘Who’s up for a drink then?’
While Curtis and Jake headed off to the nearest pub, and Stan went to fetch Chief from the van, William hailed a taxi and told the driver to take us to Hampstead.
‘Don’t you want to go for a drink with the others?’ I asked him, settling down in the back of the cab.
He smiled. ‘Not especially, no.’
‘They’ll be talking about us, you know.’
He looked at me. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Well, yeah …’
‘Maybe I’d better join them then,’ he said seriously. ‘I mean, we can’t have them talking about us, can we?’
I smiled at him. ‘You’re not funny, you know. You think you are, but you’re not.’
He laughed. ‘It must be the champagne … I’m not used to drinking stuff that costs more for a bottle than most people earn in a week.’
‘Maybe you’d better get used to it. You know, if things work out with this record deal and we start making pots of money –’
‘I wouldn’t count on that,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m only guessing really … I mean, it’s not like I’m a lawyer or anything –’
‘But?’
‘I think Polydor are probably ripping us off.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Well, firstly, they should have advised us to consult a lawyer before we signed anything –’
‘But Jake told us that he’d looked over the contract –’
‘Jake knows shit,’ William said simply. ‘I wouldn’t ask Jake to look over a wall for me, never mind a contract. I mean, I could tell it was pretty dodgy just by listening to what Chris what’s-his-name said, or – more to the point – what he didn’t say.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like who pays for everything – the recording studio, the engineers, the producer … transport, accommodation, wages, whatever … do you think Polydor are going to pay for all that?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘They’re not, believe me. We’ll be swanning around in limousines, staying in posh hotels, thinking we’ve got it made … but even if we do make it, even if we do sell thousands of records, we won’t actually make any money until we’ve paid back everything that Polydor have spent on us, including the £40,000 advance. And that could take years.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything about this before?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, if you knew they were ripping us off, why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Do you really think Curtis and Jake would have listened to me?’
‘Well, no … I suppose not –’
‘Curtis would probably have kicked me out of the band, right there and then. And that would have meant …’ William looked at me. ‘Well, the truth is, Lili … I really need the money. I mean, whatever happens with the band, whether we sell any records or not, I’ve got £200 in my pocket right now, which means we can pay the rent for a few more weeks, and then hopefully – once high-flying Jake gets a bank account sorted out – I’ll get my share of the rest of the £20,000, and with a bit of luck that should just about be enough to get Nancy her new ID.’
‘And what if we do make it?’ I asked him. ‘The band, I mean. If we start selling lots of records, getting our pictures in the newspapers … you won’t be able to keep hiding your face for ever, will you?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, we’ll see what happens …’ He smiled. ‘We’ll pr
obably just sink without trace anyway.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘We’re too good for that.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Yeah.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, I suppose I could always start wearing loads of make-up, you know, like Kiss or something.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, smiling. ‘Or you could call yourself Billy Stardust, and paint a big orange stripe across your face.’
He grinned. ‘I like that, yeah … I could start wearing hot pants and thigh-length boots and pretend that I’m Ziggy Stardust’s long-lost son.’
‘Or daughter.’
‘Even better.’
‘You could go solo …’
‘Or we could both leave the band and form a duo. You could pretend that you’re my sister –’
‘Or brother.’
‘Husband?’
I shook my head. ‘Wife, maybe.’
‘OK, wife. And you’d have to wear all the glam-rock gear too, of course … all the make-up and glitter and everything.’
‘What would we call ourselves?’
‘Billy and Lili?’
‘Why not Lili and Billy? Or Lili and Willy?’
‘I hate being called Willy –’
‘All right, Lili and Billy then. Or maybe just Lilibilly –’
‘How about Mr and Mrs Stardust?’
I started laughing then.
‘What?’ William said mock-seriously. ‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Yeah, I love it … Mr and Mrs Stardust … it’s a really snappy name.’
‘OK, so now all we have to do is write some really snappy songs –’
‘No, hold on, I’ve just realized something …’
‘What?’
‘Ziggy Stardust didn’t have a big orange stripe across his face, that was Aladdin Sane.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, Ziggy had a big silver circle on his forehead.’
‘No, I don’t think so –’
‘He did.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah …’
By the time we got to Hampstead, I was feeling a lot better. I could barely keep my eyes open, and my head felt so mushy that I was beginning to slur my words, but I was nowhere near as down as I’d been when we’d signed the contract at Polydor. It seemed that joking with William about the possibility of being famous was somehow more enjoyable than experiencing the potential reality of it …
Which was kind of strange.
But I was too tired to think about it.
As the taxi pulled up outside my house, I said to William, ‘Do you mind if I don’t ask you in? I’m just so tired at the moment, I can barely keep my eyes open.’
‘No problem,’ he said, smiling. ‘You go off and get some sleep.’
I looked at him, hesitating slightly. ‘Will I see you …?’
‘Yeah, of course. I’ll ring you tomorrow, OK?’
I smiled. ‘OK.’
He leaned across the seat and kissed me. ‘See you soon, Mrs Stardust.’
‘Yeah …’
When I opened the door and got out of the taxi, I felt so numb and wonderful that I thought I was going to float away.
32
I saw quite a lot of William over the next week or so. We didn’t see each other every day, which at first – having got used to being with Curtis almost all the time – I found quite strange. But after a while, I realized that by not being together all the time, it made the times when we were together all the more wonderful.
And they really were wonderful times.
The day after we’d signed the contract, for example, William called me in the morning and we arranged to meet up later on in Camden Town. I had no idea what we were going to do when I got there, and I really didn’t care … it was just so nice, and so exciting, to be meeting up with him. I hadn’t actually gone out on anything like a proper date for ages, and I’d kind of forgotten what it was like – choosing what to wear, fiddling around with my hair, getting a bit nervous …
It made me feel how I was supposed to feel at my age.
Excited and stupid …
But stupid in a good way.
When I met William outside the underground station, he looked a little bit anxious too. But even that was OK. It was nice that we were both a bit nervous, it felt kind of natural, how it should be … and, besides, it didn’t last very long anyway. Once we’d smiled at each other and shared a slightly awkward kiss – and then laughed at the fact that it was slightly awkward – everything was fine.
And we had a perfectly wonderful day.
We went to the zoo, had cold hotdogs and coffee at the sea lion enclosure.
We walked in Regent’s Park, ate ice creams and fed the ducks.
We went back to Camden, looked round the shops … and William bought me a secondhand music box from a dusty little antique shop. He didn’t let me see him buying it, he sneaked back into the shop while I nipped into a café to use the toilet, and when I came out of the café, he just shyly placed the box in my hand and said, ‘I thought you might like this.’
It was only a tiny thing – a little wooden box, not much bigger than a matchbox – with a little wooden birdcage on top. Inside the birdcage were three tiny brightly coloured birds, and when you wound the handle at the side of the box, the birdcage revolved to the tune of ‘Silent Night’. I’d always absolutely adored ‘Silent Night’, and it had always made me feel quite emotional, but when I stood there that day, holding that tiny little box in my hand, slowly turning the handle, the sound that came out of it was so incredibly beautiful, and so hauntingly sad, that I actually started crying.
‘It’s lovely …’ I mumbled between tears. ‘Thank you so much …’
It was probably a bit embarrassing for William, standing with me on the pavement while I sobbed like a baby to the sound of a music box, and it was probably even more embarrassing for him when I flung my arms round his neck and buried my snotty face in his shoulder …
But he didn’t seem to mind.
And after that …?
Well, that was about it really. We didn’t go home together, we didn’t spend the night together, we just thanked each other for a wonderful day, hugged and kissed, said our goodbyes, and went our separate ways. And when I got home that evening – feeling happily worn out and content – I couldn’t wait to see William again.
And that’s pretty much how things continued.
William would phone me every other day, we’d arrange to meet up, and then we’d just spend the rest of the day together. Sometimes we’d just hang around with each other, not doing very much at all, other times we’d get on a bus or a train and go somewhere … it didn’t really matter where. Anywhere would do. One day we went to Epping Forest, another time we took a trip to the Natural History Museum … we even took a train out to Southend-on-Sea and spent a day at the seaside, eating candy floss and playing on the slot machines. I went round to William’s flat a couple of times, once for a meal with Nancy and Joe, and another time when it really was Nancy’s birthday, and we all went to the cinema to see Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales, which I didn’t think I was going to like, but I actually really enjoyed it.
I always felt very comfortable at William’s flat. There was no awkwardness, no embarrassment … none of the usual family tensions. In fact, it was more like being with a group of good friends than being with a family. It just felt perfectly normal.
Which, for me, made a really nice change.
My home life was awkward and embarrassing, and although I was used to it, and I could deal with it, the prospect of sharing it with anyone else had always scared me to death. And while William wasn’t just ‘anyone else’, and he knew all about my mum’s problems anyway, I still found myself making excuses every time he talked about coming over to my place. I didn’
t like myself for doing it, making up pathetic stories all the time – we’ve got the builders in, the house is a mess … maybe next week – in fact, I hated myself for doing it, because I knew that William knew that I was lying. But I just couldn’t help it. Mum had become even more unpredictable than usual recently, and there was simply no way of knowing what state she’d be in on any given day. So while it was perfectly possible that I could have asked William to come round and she would have been on her best behaviour – the ideal host, the ideal mother – and she would have made him something lovely to eat, and they would have had a nice chat, and everything would have been fine … it was also equally possible that William could have come round and she would have been drunk out of her head, or stoned, or – God forbid – she would have tried to seduce him or something … and I just couldn’t bear the thought of that happening. Not just for my sake, and not just for William’s either … but for Mum’s.
So I kept putting him off.
We didn’t sleep together again. I’m sure we could have if we’d really wanted to, and perhaps if the opportunity had arisen, and everything had been just right, we would have. But it just didn’t seem to bother us all that much … if it happened, it happened. And if it didn’t …?
It didn’t.
And as for the band … well, on Thursday 2 September, we went into a recording studio just off Tottenham Court Road and began work on our first single. We were booked into the studio for four days, from noon to midnight each day, and although that wasn’t long – at least, not in comparison to the vast amounts of time some bands spent in the studio – it was still a long time for four people to be together all the time, working in close proximity … especially if there were tensions between some of those four people. Which, of course, there were. So although I was really excited about going into the studio, I was also really anxious, because I couldn’t see us getting through the next four days without something disastrous happening.
But, as it turned out, I was wrong.
There weren’t any disasters.
There was a lot of tension, and plenty of awkward moments – mainly between Curtis and William, but also between Curtis and me – and, of course, there were disagreements and arguments, and every now and then the arguments escalated into shouting matches, but they never really got out of hand. And, what’s more, they were always about the music – how things should sound, who should play what, who shouldn’t play what – they never descended into anything personal.