Julian’s popularity kept rising towards the heavens, with side effects that were not entirely unexpected, but rather difficult to deal with nonetheless. One of those side effects was the money. I know I said I wasn’t in it for the money, and I wasn’t, but now that it was there I came to enjoy it quite a bit, although I didn’t really know what to do with it. I let my inner fangirl off the leash and went on a shopping spree. I bought all the singles and albums of all my favourite bands, their DVDs and other merchandize like photo books, T-shirts, and posters. I also hauled the West End and Camden for new shoes and trousers, dresses and skirts and jumpers and accessories, and when I was done I still had 47,000 of my initial 50,000 pounds left.
The next day, Michael sent me another 50,000.
“It’s insane,” he said when I called him on the phone. “We’re currently making 10,000 quid a day from music downloads. And that doesn’t even include downloads from iTunes or Amazon, it’s just the stuff we sell directly on our website. The White Smoke video is rapidly approaching 200 million views on YouTube. Do you even know what that means?”
“200 million?” I said. “That’s not quite the same league as Gangnam Style, is it?”
“No. It’s at least one or two leagues higher than that.”
“What?”
“It took Gangnam Style five months to get to a billion views. At the current rate we’ll get there in five weeks.”
“Wow.”
“And may I remind you that YouTube pays us on average two pounds per 1000 views? You do the maths.”
“Actually,” I said, “can you do the maths for me? I’m getting dizzy.”
“Two pounds per 1000 views, that’s 2000 pounds per million. At 200 million views that’s 200 times 2000, that’s 400,000 quid we have made on YouTube this month alone.”
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” I moaned.
“Nope.”
“400,000 pounds and you’re fobbing me off with 50,000? Are you running some kind of embezzlement scheme or something?”
Michael laughed. “No. YouTube hasn’t even paid us yet. Neither have Amazon or iTunes. The money we have in our account right now is just from direct sales through our own website. And that’s probably just peanuts compared to all the rest.”
I needed a moment to let it all sink in. “How did we get here, Michael?” I finally asked. “How did it come to this?”
“Hey, don’t blame me. I didn’t do anything, I’m just the bloody accountant. Ask Julian.”
“Speaking of Julian,” I said, “have you heard from him recently?”
Michael snorted. “Who hasn’t? It’s almost impossible not to hear from Julian Monk these days, isn’t it?”
“No, I mean, has he called you? Or sent an email or anything?”
“No.” There was hurt in his voice. “You?”
“We talked on Twitter once or twice,” I said, “but that was almost two weeks ago.”
“I guess he’s being busy getting us all through uni without having to take out a student loan.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, and when Michael didn’t reply I added, “I miss him.”
Long pause. “Yeah well, I miss him too, but ...”
“But?”
“I don’t know. I miss Julian, but I’ve come to the point where I think that he made the right decision to stay in America, just like we made the right decision to go back home.”
“Do you really?” I asked.
“Yeah. I mean, look. In the last two weeks I was able to step back and watch the whole Julian Monk phenomenon as an outsider, and I can’t deny that it’s bloody intriguing. He’s doing what he thinks he has to do, and he’s bloody good at it. I feel happy for him, but I certainly don’t miss all the media frenzy he’s going through, and as much as I enjoy watching it, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with any of that.”
“You don’t? I mean, aren’t they harassing you on the phone ten times a day begging you for interviews?”
“No,” Michael said. “Dad and I are big on privacy, remember? Our phone number isn’t listed.”
“Lucky you. You have no idea what you’re not missing. I swear to you, it’s crazy. Our phone never stops ringing. It’s driving my parents insane. Me too, actually.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“What about Tummy?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“I mean, is he getting stalked by fans and the press as well?”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Probably not quite as much, now that he moved out.”
“He what?”
“Didn’t you know? He moved out. Apparently his mum went into complete mental meltdown the other day, so Tummy packed his things and left.”
“Wow, good for him.”
“Yeah. He didn’t tell me where he went, but whenever I triangulate the position of his phone signal, he seems to be at Momoko’s place.”
I laughed. “Those two really hit it off together, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. I used to think that Tummy gained his new self-confidence because he was being a rock star, but I guess the real reason is that he’s banging a real hot chick.”
“So you think Momoko’s hot, huh?”
“No!” Michael shot back. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that Tummy obviously thinks she’s hot. I mean, I’m not saying that she isn’t. She’s very attractive and all, she’s just not my type.”
I was tempted to ask Michael what his type was, or if he had a type to begin with other than MINDY. But that was a can of worms I wasn’t ready to open, because I had a feeling that Michael wasn’t ready for it yet, and even if he was, it would have been too awkward a thing to discuss on the phone.
“I still think it’s funny how Tummy keeps pretending there’s nothing going on between him and Momoko,” I said.
“Yeah well, it’s probably the best thing he could do, though.”
“How so? If you had a really hot girlfriend, wouldn’t you want to let the whole world know?”
“Not if you could get her into really big trouble you wouldn’t,” Michael said. “He’s 17, she’s what, 22? That’s not exactly legal, is it? Now who’s a lawyer’s daughter, you or I?”
I laughed. “All right, all right. I keep forgetting she’s already an old woman and Tummy is still a baby. But I guess you’re right. Legally she’s probably a child sex offender.”
“I’m pretty sure Tummy quite enjoys being offended like that, though.”
We both laughed.
After my conversation with Michael I sat on my bed for a while and thought things through. Something wasn’t right. I wasn’t as happy as I should have been. Julian was the biggest celebrity in the world, Michael was on the verge of inventing an artificially intelligent entity that would turn the whole Internet into a global brain, Tummy had a love affair that millions of blokes would have envied him for if only they’d known about it, and I was watching TV all day while sitting on my bed—and on a hundred grand. What a waste.
When I went downstairs to get something to drink from the kitchen, my mum was shouting at the telephone again, and the moment she saw me, she started shouting at me.
“This has to stop! I can’t take this anymore!”
“I agree,” I said.
“Well, we have to do something!”
“Yup. We need a break.”
“Damn right we need a break,” Mum said. “Before I kill someone.”
“No, I mean we all need a break. A real break.”
Dad looked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a getaway. A family vacation. Let these people call all they like while we go and see the world, at least until Julian is back from the States. The press are only interested in him anyway. They only call me and the others all the time because they can’t get hold of him. So let’s just take a little time out and go some place where nobody knows us.”
“And where would that be?” Dad asked.
“I’v
e been thinking ... Japan?”
Mum and Dad looked at each other, and then Mum frowned at me. “Why Japan, of all places?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Momoko told us a lot about Japan when we were in Rome, and it sounds like an exciting place. Besides, I really want to go somewhere where I haven’t been before, and where hopefully nobody knows my face.”
“Do you have any idea what this is going to cost?” Mum said. “The three of us going to Japan for a week or ten days?”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Yeah, don’t you worry about that. I’m buying.”
Mum and Dad exchanged another look, raising three eyebrows between them.
Dad shrugged. “I like sushi.”
Finally, Mum picked up the phone.
“Who are you calling?” Dad asked her.
“The hospital. Tell them I’m not coming in for the next two weeks.”
The Gospel According to Tummy – 17
Winston Churchill once said, ‘Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.’ And not like, you know, the secret police who are coming to take you away and throw you in jail and torture you until you confess to all sorts of crimes that you never committed.
Here’s the thing about politicians, though: they all lie.
Our elected officials are paid with taxpayer money to lie to us and spy on us and keep us under control, all in the name of national security, all in the name of the law. It wasn’t me who said that. It was me dad. Me dad, the politician.
Democracy means that we get to choose who we want to lie to us and spy on us and keep us under control.
And so it wasn’t the milkman who rang Momoko’s doorbell at 7 a.m. one day. It was a bunch of people in police uniforms and with an arrest warrant.
“Momoko Suzuki,” one of them said, “you are under arrest on suspicion of child abduction and abuse of a position of trust in order to engage in sexual activity with a child.”
That’s when I stepped out from behind the open front door and looked down on the policeman, who was about half me size and weight.
“I’m the child,” I said.
“Very well,” he said looking up to me with his head tilt back as if I was Big bloody Ben. “You will come with us so we can reunite you with your family.”
I was about to tell him to go to bloody hell, but Momoko looked at me and shook her head.
“Tummy,” she said. “Is okay. We must go with them.”
And so we went with them. They put Momoko in one police car and took her to the police station for questioning. They put me in another car, together with a scrawny scarecrow of a lady from child protection services to take me back home.
“It’s going to be okay,” Scarecrow said. “You will be back with your mummy and daddy soon.”
I looked at her and said, “Shut the fuck up, will you?”
When Scarecrow dropped me off at home, all me mum had to say to me was, “Go to your room.”
So that’s what I did. I went to me room, grabbed another bag and packed some more clothes and personal belongings that I forget to take the last time I left. Then I went back downstairs and headed for the front door.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” I heard me mum’s voice behind me, sharp like a knife.
I turned around and looked at her. “As far away from you as possible.”
“How dare you!” She rushed towards me, ready to slap me face, but I saw it coming. I stopped her arm in mid-air and squeezed her wrist until the pain brought tears to her eyes.
“You are done making me life miserable,” I said. Then I let go of her wrist, opened the door and stepped out. Before I pulled the door shut behind me, I turned around one more time, looked at me mum who was rubbing her wrist, and I said, “Seek help, Mum. And by help I don’t mean a crate of wine.”
Then I left.
I went back to Momoko’s place, but it wasn’t until I stood at her front door that I realized that when the police had come to take us away, I had forgotten to take the spare key. So I went to the only other place I knew.
“Tummy!” Michael said in surprise as he opened the door. He only wore boxers and a wrinkly T-shirt. It was still early in the morning, and he had probably spent all night playing with his virtual girlfriend. “What’s going on?”
“Can I crash on your couch until Momoko is released from jail?”
“Uh …”
“Long story,” I said. “Don’t ask. I’m going to tell you.”
Without waiting for an answer I went inside and walked down the stairs to Underground Zero.
As Michael gobbled down a bowl of breakfast cereal, and I munched on a bag of crisps I had bought at a kiosk outside East Finchley underground station, I told Michael all about Momoko’s arrest and about the second time I moved out from home.
“Nice going, Tummy,” Michael said.
“Thanks.”
I picked up me mobile and opened me contacts.
“Who are you calling?”
“Ginger,” I said. “Momoko needs a defence attorney, so I was thinking Mr Saunders …”
“Good luck with that,” Michael said. “Ginger and her parents are on vacation in Japan.”
I looked at him as he was slurping his cereal. “Oh bloody hell!”
Since I didn’t know what else to do, I called Ginger anyway. When I told her what had happened, she immediately handed me over to her dad, and I explained the whole situation to him as well.
“That’s completely ridiculous,” Mr Saunders said after I had finished. “Child abduction law only applies to children aged 16 and younger. You’re 17. They have no case.”
“I know, right?”
“As for the abuse of a position of trust, they might be onto something there, I’m afraid. It usually applies to people like teachers, guardians, care takes and such, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they managed to twist the facts to make them stick on Miss Suzuki.”
“But Mr Saunders,” I said, “Momoko didn’t abuse anyone or anything. It was all me fault. I’m the one who started it all.”
“I believe you, Thomas,” Mr Saunders said, “which is why our chances aren’t too bad when this case goes to court. But I can’t make any promises of course.”
“I understand.”
Mr Saunders then told me that he’d contact his associate Mr Dewberry who would take care of the situation until Mr Saunders returned from Japan.
Momoko spent the night in police custody, I spent the night on Michael’s couch, and in the morning Mr Dewberry slammed his hand on the desk at the police station and cited half a dozen sections from the code of criminal procedure. The police charged Momoko with abuse of a position of trust to engage in sexual activity with me, which meant that there was going to be a trial, but at least Momoko was released on police bail and allowed to go home.
I was sitting on the doorstep of Momoko’s house when she pulled up in a cab that had taken her home from the police station. She jumped out of the cab and came running towards me. I held out my arms to give her a hug and welcome her home, but she ran straight past me into the house and into the bathroom where she vomited her heart and soul out. When she was done, I was waiting for her in the kitchen, ready to put the kettle on.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“No,” she said and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m pregnant.”
The Gospel According to Ginger – 14
I didn’t particularly like Japan. It wasn’t any worse than any other place in the world, but it wasn’t much better either, and from the moment we arrived to the moment I left there were too many little things that annoyed the hell out of me. Not that this was anybody’s fault, but I expected Japan to be different. Well, it was very different; I just expected it to be different in a different kind of way. It’s difficult to explain, but one thing I found impossible to deal with was the weather.
Our flight arrived at Narita airport at 7 o’cl
ock on a Tuesday morning, and the moment I left the nicely air-conditioned cabin of the aircraft, I walked into a wall of incredibly hot and humid air that almost made me choke and want to turn around on my heels and go Iceland instead. By the time we reached our hotel in Shibuya 90 minutes later I was drenched in sweat. My parents hadn’t been able to sleep much on the plane, so they decided to take a little nap before they did anything else. I took a shower, put on a set of fresh clothes, and went out to explore the neighbourhood. After just a few minutes I had to look on helplessly as my pores opened the floodgates and drenched me in sweat once again. As droplets of sweat kept running down my neck and into my collar, I looked at the Japanese people around me busily buzzing about like bees on a pleasant spring day. None of them looked particularly sweaty. I don’t know how they did it. I was feeling like a polar bear in the African desert, and I noticed how people kept staring at me. I wasn’t quite sure if they were staring at me because my hair was a mess or because I was the only obviously non Asian person around, but I soon found out.
After walking around through the relentless summer heat of Shibuya for a while, I found refuge in a pleasantly air-conditioned bookstore. As I was standing in the magazine section leafing through some magazines, I suddenly noticed a group of schoolgirls, five of them, 15 or 16 years old, standing a few metres away from me. In their pristine Sailor Moon school uniforms they were staring at me bashfully, hiding their whispers and giggles behind their hands until one of them finally managed to muster the courage to approach me.
“Sumimasen,” she said with a shy smile and a half bow. Of course I had no idea what sumimasen meant. I must have looked properly puzzled because the other girls said something to their vanguard and giggled, and then she tried again.
“Excuse me,” she said with an accent that reminded me of Momoko. Momoko had told us that most Japanese people probably did understand a fair amount of English, but they weren’t very good at speaking it, because English lessons at school focused on translating English into Japanese rather than learning how to do it the other way around and actually practicing conversation.
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