by Brigid Coady
And there it was. Gee having a dig at her job. Again.
It always came down to this. He didn’t respect what she did, because of his experience he had painted all PR and publicity at all management companies as awful.
Things had moved on from ten years ago. He knew that.
‘Look Gee, I know you and Johnnie had a rough time of it. But Mega! isn’t like your old management company. We don’t make someone pretend to be something they aren’t, we just give them a storyline to showcase who they are in a better way, one that works with their brand strategy. And we make sure all our clients are fully bought into any of our plans. They all have a choice, if they didn’t want to do it they wouldn’t.’
‘Ems…’ Gee started.
‘No, I get it.’ She interrupted. ‘Johnnie should never have been blackmailed into having to pretend he was straight or get engaged or any of that horrible mess he went through.’
She shuddered when she thought back to the headlines after his fall from grace, when all the lies were exposed and the blame firmly shifted off the record company.
‘But if you pick it apart intellectually, you could see why it happened. There was a marketing strategy and if all the players had done their part…’
Emma couldn’t finish.
‘Still can’t say it?’ He sighed. ‘How the record company and my own management company were using my sexuality as a weapon? Forcing me to stay quiet along with Johnnie. Making us lie. But you don’t ever seem to get it.’ He sighed as if he were exhausted. Which was probably true, they seemed to have picked over the carcass of this particular argument for years.
‘But I don’t understand.’ She couldn’t help going back over it, maybe one day she’d get it. ‘What was wrong with telling a little white lie, and saying you weren’t bisexual? It wasn’t that big a deal, surely? You could’ve hidden it and then, when you needed to, told people later. It wasn’t about lying, it was more a matter of timing. Because announcing it right before the start of your US tour was, well… And you were dating that girl, whatshername, then anyway so no one needed to know.’
She felt herself wince. No one usually mentioned the tour that never was. It was amazing how many parents in Middle America didn’t want their daughters idolising a band which included two guys who weren’t completely straight.
Tickets stopped selling, and Status Single were ‘has-beens’ almost the next month and the month after that the record company quietly jettisoned them.
‘Her name was Felicity, as you well know.’ He frowned at her. So sue her if she always pretended to forget the names of his girlfriends and boyfriends. She knew it was petty but it relegated them to the insignificant pile, where they wouldn’t encroach on their life.
‘I’m not having this argument with you again, Ems. A lie is a lie. They wanted to deny my identity, is that something you can swear Mega! would never do?’
Mega! wouldn’t. She knew they wouldn’t. Not that any of their acts were LGBT, but if they were…
‘They wouldn’t,’ she said with certainty. ‘Don’t judge me or my job because of something that happened a decade ago. The business has changed, no one has a problem with an out gay artist now. Look at Sam Smith.’ She could feel her hands curl into fists.
Sometimes she wanted to punch him. He was only three years older than her but he always did this holier than thou spiel about how he knew more because he’d been in the industry for years.
There was a pause, the tension between them quivering. Was he going to walk off, with his superior face in place?
She watched as the tension flowed out of him, his wide shoulders in the grey faded T-shirt falling. He reached his hand out, and it engulfed her fist, making her feel small.
‘Ems, please.’ His overly mobile brows scrunched up in a plea, ‘I don’t want to fight.’
Damn it, why did he pull out the big guns? She was incapable of staying angry when he brought out the puppy dog look.
‘Let’s agree to disagree?’ She hated fighting with him too. ‘So, the party?’ She made her eyes big and blinked slowly. She knew she wasn’t in the same league as Gee in terms of physical beauty or charisma but…
‘Damn it, Woodhouse. You know I can’t take it when you do the Bambi eye blink.’ He reeled back from the door, throwing his arm over his eyes as if hiding from Medusa. ‘Not today, Satan,’ he howled dramatically.
And just like that the tension faded, and was blown out of the room by the fan whirring in the corner.
‘That wasn’t an answer, Knightley?’ she called into the hall.
‘Fine,’ he said coming back into the room. ‘You can have your party. But if anyone starts doing karaoke with Status Single songs, I will not be responsible for my actions.’
‘You should probably take the Brit award out of the loo and the Teen Choice surfboard off the landing then,’ she said. He threw himself on the other sofa, landing with a grunt.
Differences of opinion on her job aside, Gee was a great housemate.
Make that landlord.
She stared at him as he slumped across from her, trying to angle his body to get a blast of air when the fan rotated back in his direction.
Their house was in a terrace near Victoria Park in Hackney, and the area had gradually become full of professionals and yummy mummies the longer they’d lived here. Gee had bought it back when he’d been in the band and it was one of the few things he had hung on to, and with the music studio he’d built at the bottom of the large garden, it meant security.
‘It’s my pension,’ he’d explained to her, ‘because god knows I didn’t make much money. Enough to buy this outright, build the studio. The rest of it…’ Gee had made a whooshing gesture with his hand.
He’d told her this a few months into their first year at university, when Emma had come around to work on a project.
Compared to her cramped halls of residence, it had made Gee seem like a grown up. With a plan and a structured life. So far removed from her experience.
Any structure in her childhood she’d put there herself.
And when it was time move out of halls… well, there had been a bit of a mix up but Gee had pulled through and made one of his spare rooms ready for her. Saved her. Maybe it was weird that she was still living in the same house she had lived in all the way through uni, but it was the longest she’d ever stayed anywhere.
It gave her roots that she’d always craved.
She’d made him up the rent as soon as she’d started earning some money. Just because he could afford the house without a tenant didn’t mean she could freeload. There were some things you didn’t do and that was mooch off your famous best friend.
And now that he was one of the most sought after music engineers in the business, he didn’t really need the pension. She couldn’t help but smile, she was so proud of him.
She loved their house – the way it was spread over five floors, with the kitchen in the basement and the living/dining room running from the front of the house to the back on the ground floor; the two battered leather sofas diagonal to each other facing a massive flatscreen TV mounted above the fireplace.
Home.
It meant they had a sofa each. And whoever got into the room first was in charge of the remote control, that was the rule. If there were still wrestling matches and sofa cushions flung on occasions then that was kept between themselves and these four walls.
Filled bookshelves lined the walls either side of the chimney breast.
‘Have you been mucking around with my books again?’ Gee said from his prone position on the sofa.
Emma groaned. This happened every time she picked any book off the shelf, and she was pretty sure she’d put it back exactly where she’d found it.
‘You are so OCD,’ she said, wondering if Amazon could deliver an extra fan in the next hour? How did September end up being this hot? June had been a soggy mess.
‘Little Miss Planner has no cause to throw stones in glass houses, I’ve see
n what you can do with a spreadsheet,’ he said as he leveraged himself off the sofa and moved a book from one shelf to another. He stepped back and scanned it before nodding his head.
It looked like too much effort for her, she was sweating just looking at him. And not in a good way.
‘It has been ten years, Ems. When are you going to remember I don’t like my fiction and non-fiction to get mixed up. Fiction on these shelves,’ he pointed, ‘in alphabetical order by author – not title.’ He glared at her.
‘I did that once, when I thought I was being helpful,’ she squawked, some people were so ungrateful.
‘It took me a whole weekend to sort it out.’ He pointed to the upper shelves. ‘And this is where the non-fiction goes.’
‘I know, Gee. You go through it every time.’
‘Well, I’d expect it to stick. Maybe it’s because you don’t know the difference between fact and fiction at work.’
‘Ha, very funny,’ she said. ‘Sit down, I’ve ordered Turkish because I’m not going anywhere near an oven and we’re marathoning the latest season of Ten Peaks.’
‘Ah, the rock and roll way we spend our Friday nights.’ He pulled his T-shirt up to get some of the air underneath it.
Had he been waxing his chest again, she thought?
He usually only did that when he wanted to impress someone. It always seemed to happen just before Emma would start falling over some random woman, or more unusually a man, coming out of his room, who would then use her Nutella and not replace it.
Damn.
She should be happy. She should, no, she was. Of course, she wanted Gee to be happy and if that meant dating, then so be it. Just because her plan wasn’t about prioritising dating at the moment.
Gee worked too hard, he needed someone nice. But… he would have less time for her. Instead of the two of them, there would be three. And other than when it was musketeers, Hanson or Destiny’s Child, three was a crowd.
‘Earth to Ems.’ He chucked a pillow across at her, she was too slow and it smacked her in the face. She couldn’t complain as the displaced air cooled her for an instant before it hit.
‘What?’ She said, letting the cushion fall to the floor without stopping it.
‘Turn on the TV, and there are some tissues on the side table to wipe up your drool as soon as Austen Wentworth comes on.’
‘I don’t drool.’
Gee laughed.
‘You drool just as much,’ Emma muttered as she picked up the remote and clicked onto Netflix. ‘That is the reason Harry won’t invite us to meet Austen,’ she said, mentioning their friend, Harry Harville, who also starred in the show. His husband Lewis worked with Gee.
‘No, Lewis was very clear it was because of your high-pitched squealing when you caught sight of the topless photo of Austen on his phone.’
She turned on the episode and turned up the volume. He didn’t know what he was talking about. She had merely gasped in surprise.
Half an hour later they paused the show when the Turkish takeout arrived.
‘Do you think we’re stuck in a rut?’ Gee asked around a mouthful of carrot dipped in humus.
What did he mean? There was no point her going out on the town and getting drunk for at least another twelve months. Then she’d have to put some serious thought into finding ‘the one’.
The hummus was a bit drier than normal, she thought as she struggled to swallow.
‘What do you mean a rut?’ she answered.
He definitely was dating, that was what this was about. Or he wanted to. Who was it? No, she didn’t want to know. There was no point in her getting attached to them.
As if she ever did.
Maybe she could make sure her next clients needed someone to travel with them? Then at least she wouldn’t be around. And by the time she was back it would be over.
But then they would have a clear run at him, she thought, they wouldn’t know that Emma and Gee came as a pair.
‘I mean, it’s a Friday night and we’re staying in with takeout and Netflix. And we aren’t even using it as a euphemism. You’re not yet thirty and I have a Brit Award and a VMA in the downstairs toilet. What has happened to us?’
Okay, maybe he wasn’t dating. But he was obviously having a midlife crisis. Early.
‘See, this is all because you don’t have a life plan,’ she said as she found the energy to wrap her kebab up tighter, so she didn’t lose any. She watched in fascination as Gee stuck his tongue out to lick the juice travelling over his hand. It was disgust she was feeling, definitely disgust. It couldn’t be anything else, she thought, as she watched, mesmerised.
‘What has a life plan got to do with us being stuck in a rut?’ He gestured with his kebab, another stream of juice starting to coat his fingers.
She had to stop staring. She shook her head. Life plan. That is what she needed to think about.
She swallowed her mouthful of kebab. How many times had she had this conversation with him?
‘Okay, you map out your life, right. Break it down first by year. Then work out where the big milestones are going to be. When you want to be promoted at work, when you want to get married, when you want to have kids, that sort of thing. Then you make sure that you put in month by month all the stuff you need to do to get to achieve it.’
Why didn’t he get that it was as simple as that? Everything plotted out.
‘So, you’re telling me you have a calendar entry for September 3rd that says “Netflix and takeout with Gee”? Because that is weird and slightly scary. And I’m not sure how that adds up to you getting your life plan done?’
He put his feet up on the large battered coffee table and actually started eating his kebab instead of waving it around.
‘No, it isn’t that detailed. Well, only in places.’ Was he seriously asking this? Maybe he wanted to make it up to her since their earlier fight about her job.
If only she could get him to understand. She put her kebab down, wiped her fingers with a napkin, because she wasn’t a savage, and picked up her phone so she could illustrate her points.
‘See, at the moment I’m in my career growth period.’ She waved the graphs on the Google doc that she checked every morning and updated weekly at him. ‘All social events that I go to need to be focused towards growing my professional network or be somehow related to work. Anything else would be a waste of time and energy. But if we move forward to next year, that is the beginning of my professional and personal period. I’ll start having to go out socially, I’ll probably join a dating service. Then after a period of three months, I should find Mr Right. I give it another six months before we move in, then engaged a year after that…’
She looked up.
Gee was staring at her with his mouth open, his kebab halted halfway to it.
Chapter Six
‘What?’ Surely, she’d told him this before?
‘I knew you had a plan, but I…’ He looked like she’d hit him. ‘But what happens if you fall in love before that? Or you don’t find the right person at the right time?’
She clicked her phone shut. As if that would happen.
‘It will be fine, I’ll make sure I don’t fall in love before then, it’s just a matter of will power. I haven’t been in love, so I can’t see why it should change this year. And I’ll find the right person. I have a list. I’ve told you, it is a matter of planning for these things.’
Why was Gee looking at her like that? As if she’d not only mis-shelved his books but she’d changed all the faders and knobs on his production board in the studio.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said quietly.
She picked up the remote control.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
‘Erm… okay,’ Gee said.
As the frozen face of Austen Wentworth sprang to life, she could feel Gee staring at her for a few moments. She stopped herself from turning to see why, her shoulders tense till eventually she felt him turn to watc
h the screen.
***
‘No, Mum, I’m doing Christmas at home this year. I told you back in March. You said that you were okay if we shared the day with Dad and Janice. You know, because Boopsie is with her dad.’ Emma carried on typing on her laptop, with her headphones plugged into her phone as she spoke to her mum.
‘But… Derek and I have just decided that we want to do the Alps this year.’ Her mum sounded on the edge of tears.
Emma closed her eyes briefly. Lord give her strength. She knew it was rude to feel this way if your mum was on the verge of crying but her mum’s default setting was tears. If they showed the Dog’s Trust advert on the telly, if she didn’t get her own way, or even if they were down to the last inch of milk. Permanently lachrymose. As a child it had been like living with a leaky tap.
And this supposed trip to the Alps for Christmas wasn’t anything but hot air, Emma knew. She wondered what programme her mum had been watching to get the idea. She still woke up in a cold sweat thinking about one of the few times her mum had actually followed through on a plan, well, half a plan. They’d flown to India for Christmas when she was ten, and her mum had forgotten the small issue of a visa. Only for Emma though – her mum and dad had been fine.
And people wondered why she was overly pernickety with plans. When you’ve spent Christmas Day on your own on the floor of an airport immigration office because your parents decided to do a bit of sightseeing while they waited for you to be deported, you double and triple checked everything.
And stopped believing in Father Christmas.
She was probably worrying without reason, it wasn’t as if they would have booked anything. The India trip was a mere blip in broken promises. With hindsight, she realised it must have been their last-ditch attempt at staying together. By the following Christmas she had two houses to spend the big day at, but neither were a home.
Now she had a home, they would all be sat around the dining room table on Christmas Day no matter what Mum said. She knew after everything they had done, or rather, not done, she should cut them loose like they had her. She’d made her own home and living her perfect version of life meant that you didn’t ditch your family. Just because they’d done that to her didn’t mean she should do it to them.