Don't Stop Me Now: The perfect laugh out loud romantic comedy

by Colleen Coleman

  ‘Poppy, what a gorgeous creature you’ve grown into. You sure you’re Ray Bloom’s daughter?’ He smiles a sad smile and bites his bottom lip. ‘The magnificent bastard has left the building.’

  Tom waits outside while Otis and Carlos come inside with me. They take my hand on either side and we agree to do this together. We make a bizarre trinity, standing in silence over the body of a man we all knew differently yet can all identify. Together we nod to the pathologist. Yes, we confirm that this is Ray Bloom. A man to love or loathe depending on him, depending on you.

  It only seems right that we go for a drink afterwards. Yesterday’s vow to never touch another drop dissolves as I order four pints of Carlsberg with whisky chasers. Today is no day to make promises that can’t be kept. I knock back my whisky, then wince and slam the glass down on the counter.

  The four of us settle into a booth in the corner. Carlos hands me a sealed plastic bag containing the belongings Dad had on him when he was admitted last night. I take out his battered leather wallet and open it. It is overflowing with betting stubs, cash, cards and a lone photo of me and him; I’m about two, sitting on his knee behind his drum kit. I show it to Carlos, who shrugs. ‘Complex man. A dark and complex man. I guess all his secrets are gone with him now and we’ll never know.’ We sit in silence. Perhaps Mum was right not to come. I mean, he’s not here to shed light on anything. God knows we tiptoed around him when he was alive. What did I expect? What could possibly change?

  There is nothing around this table but death. Death and unanswered and unanswerable questions. My head hurts, my chest is heavy. I rub my neck to soften the stiff, cloying feeling that is creeping over me. I have a burning urge to get up from this stool and abandon all the shards of my father’s life; to go out into the street and walk and walk and walk until I’ve left this place and every memory of him behind, until I am past all the little cottages and the looming coastal sky, until I am back out on the hard shoulder of the motorway, cars and lorries roaring past, walking and walking and walking until the soles of my shoes wear down to nothing, until I get back to my new life and my new flat and make a new resolution to pretend that Ray Bloom never existed.

  Tom catches my eye, and I can tell that he picks up on the flash of urgency that must be written across my face. My breathing is tight. This is just too much.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asks, placing a gentle hand on my thigh.

  ‘I don’t think so. I want to go now.’

  He picks up my hand and plays with my fingers. ‘What do you say we finish this drink, and then we can head back together? No problem at all.’

  I nod. I can manage one drink. One drink to show my gratitude to Carlos and Otis for helping me, for being around. But that’s all I can manage. Then we’re definitely going.

  Otis takes a swig of his pint. ‘You know,’ he tells me, ‘by the end of the first month of interviewing, we thought we were going to have to cut the project; we couldn’t get him to talk about anything other than you. How you were a genius, Banbridge graduate, psychologist, you were working on this amazing thesis that was going help people; not just in a superficial way, but in practical, life-changing ways. He said that’s why he didn’t mind being broke; he saw it as an investment. He’d put his money into his daughter and she was going to save the world – well, save the world’s sanity.’

  Really? This is news to me. I didn’t even know he ever mentioned me to other people. I certainly didn’t realise that he felt … well, proud.

  ‘But then I brought this in to show him.’ Otis opens up his laptop on the table and turns it towards me. It’s a picture of a Black Horn album cover. Iconic black-and-white photo of Dad standing on the very edge of a railway platform, looking backwards into the tunnel. I was about a year old then. It was the year Mum left him. ‘That’s when he finally opened up to us. Started telling us stuff we’d never heard about before. That’s when we knew we could justify carrying on, we finally started getting places.’

  ‘What sort of stuff did he tell you?’ asks Carlos.

  ‘That this …’ Otis indicates the album cover, ‘was when everything started getting out of control. That the album – the words, the cover – was deeply autobiographical; he felt like he was always drawn to looking into the darkness, that he couldn’t help it. That he thought he was going to be able to get through it, move past it, but it didn’t work out that way. His wife left. Took his baby daughter away from him. He didn’t cope. Couldn’t cope. That was when his life broke down, and with nobody around, the darkness sucked him in.’

  Oh my God. I’ve never heard all this before. I’ve never thought of it like this.

  ‘Did he mention anything about Jonnie-O?’ asks Carlos, tearing strips off his beer mat. Jonnie-O was the lead singer of Black Horn, who overdosed when he was just twenty-six, but I knew that he and Dad had fallen out before he died and hadn’t spoken in ages.

  Otis pauses and nods. ‘Yeah, he did. Just once. He was very, very pissed. You could tell it still hurt. Still raw even after all these years.’

  Hearing these two men speak about my father, I feel ashamed. I feel ashamed that I only ever considered how I was hurt. Didn’t even think that he was hurt too. I only thought about him not being there for me. Not about me not being there for him. My father was an addict, he was alone and he was damaged. And even though I tried to help him, despite being his daughter, despite my training, despite how much I wanted him to get better, for us to be closer, it didn’t work.

  This is not something to solve or fix or figure out any more. My dad is gone now. And like my mother said, I’m going to have to take what I can from the good times we shared and try to learn from the shit bits. Whatever I could have done better, whatever he could have done better will have to be laid to rest now. Along with him and the ghosts of all we could have been.

  Four more whiskies arrive on the table. I slug mine back and squeeze Tom’s hand. Even though it’s hard to hear, I’m glad we stayed. Maybe some of the unanswered questions are answerable after all.

  Otis plugs in a tiny speaker to the side of the laptop. ‘Listen to this. I recorded it the morning before he died; can you believe it? I asked him if he had any regrets – you know, generally.’ He presses play, and my dad’s disembodied voice grumbles through the speaker like a gravel-voiced ghost.

  ‘Regrets? Every time you take a risk, you leave yourself wide open to regret. So of course I’ve got regrets, loads of them, because I’ve taken loads of risks. Some bad risks that I really regret; especially about the people I’ve hurt. But I’ve realised something, and that’s if you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It’s called a lobotomy. And I think I’ve actually tried to lobotomise myself through drink and drugs and gambling and all the rest. But if you want to be fully functional and fully human and fully humane, I think you need to learn to live with regret. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get there some day. I’d like to think I will.’ The voice stops and there’s a shuffle, a wheezy cough and a sigh. ‘Here, have a listen to this; I’m not much of a talker. Forgive me.’

  And then the music begins. It soars, a discordant symphony of slashing strings and crashing drums. There is something raw and powerful in the sound, its energy seizing the air, like it’s causing the space between us to move, fluid and rhythmic as a current, thrusting us together then drawing us apart. Slowly Otis twists up the volume, then closes his eyes, his lashes fanning out to perfect crescents. The first low note of the lead vocalist, deep and slow, resonates from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It swells in the space between us; the space we now share.

  Carlos catches his breath, pressing his hand to his heart. ‘I love this song,’ he whispers, and begins to sing in perfect sync: ‘Moon and stars; just holes in the blindfold of night. Across the eyes of those born of dust, and the eyes of those born of light …’

  We stay, wordless, cradling our warm, golden whiskies and listening to the original, uncorrupted, heartfelt, riotous music o
f Ray Bloom, our magnificent bastard, until the bell rings for closing time and the barman ushers us out into the cool night air. Then we stand at the door, Carlos in his cowboy hat, Otis with his beardy little face and me holding Tom’s hand, with my throat full of tears, and we look up to the sky and sing the final chorus again in his honour. Together.

  ‘Moon and stars; just holes in the blindfold of night. Across the eyes of those born of dust, and the eyes of those born of light …’

  Somewhere in the dark and silent chambers of my heart I tell my father that although I don’t understand everything, I forgive him.

  And then I whisper to the darkness, ‘Goodnight, Ray Bloom.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Tom and I stay the week in Whitstable. Otis and his little crew have a rented house with a spare room they let us sleep in. Carlos deals with any press that arrive, speaking on my behalf, on behalf of the band, and answering questions about Ray as a drummer, as a writer, as a friend, as an addict. Tom and I clear Dad’s cottage. It doesn’t take very long. Everything of rock provenance we give to Carlos; the rest is binned – not even Oxfam-worthy. We scrub the place from top to bottom, music on in the background – Tom has a playlist for everything – and by the end I feel quite cleansed myself. The days follow a pattern, with me making coffee and French toast for the guys in the morning before they go down to the shed at the end of the garden, where they have set up an editing suite. I usually stay with them for a few hours each day; the process is fascinating.

  ‘For us, the first point of call is to tell the truth,’ Otis tells me. ‘We may find interesting ways of getting there, but we always get there in the end. It’s essential.’ It seems really important to him that I know this. That he won’t be distorting reality. He won’t portray Dad in anything but an honest light, and whatever the audience makes of that is fine.

  I start to understand Otis as a story-teller, cutting and capturing different shots or scenes or conversation snippets or moments of stillness to carve out a cohesive narrative. I love the way he listens to everyone, from the camera man to the sound guy, their core principle being ‘never say no without trying’. I can feel he’s really excited about the way it’s coming along and believes that Dad’s reflections will help people everywhere to understand the internal life of an addict, especially one who has essentially isolated the only people who could help him. I hope he’s right. I genuinely wish him well with it and I’ve agreed to attend the premiere in London once it’s ready. I’ve more than agreed; I’ve promised. And watching Otis and the boys at work this week has given me loads of ideas that can be easily transferred to radio, ways we can expand the show, develop our team, maybe reach out to more listeners using new digital technologies.

  While we are all out the back in the editing shed, Tom is keeping us going, fuelling us with great food and banter. He is an amazing cook; every night we sit at a big family table with a delicious spread in front of us: lasagne, salad, baked potatoes and bottomless jugs of red wine. They are all so kind to me. We play charades, we listen to music, they try to beat me at Scrabble.

  I ask Tom for commis chef jobs; he tells me not to be silly, to rest and enjoy the peace and quiet, to walk on the beach, but I insist, so he then tries to make up stuff to placate me; says I can chop vegetables or peel potatoes or cook rice if I really want to but not to feel that I have to. When I mention that I have a hankering for Coco Pops, he blows out his cheeks and throws me an apron. I catch it, smiling at the cheeky glint in his eye. ‘Come on then, am I getting my own personalised nutrition lesson?’

  ‘Yes. You need emergency intervention to get you off that chocolate crack you’re on. Can’t have you dying from sugar rot. Watch me now and write down this recipe.’ Into a bowl he chucks a cupful of oats, a mashed banana, some cranberries and peanut butter. ‘Mix that together, just roughly, no need to go over the top, and then form it into little balls.’

  I do exactly as I’m told.

  ‘Now, oven for ten minutes. They’ll keep for a week in the fridge. So after I leave today, you’ll have plenty to keep you going, okay?’

  I nod my compliance. I don’t know how I would have coped without Tom. After I called him about Dad, he dropped everything, flew to my side and has been here ever since.

  ‘Promise me you will eat Tom’s yummy balls every morning, and I guarantee, when I see you again next week, you’ll feel like Superwoman.’ He slurps his coffee and starts to gather his stuff for his journey back to London without me.

  ‘What is it I need to do again?’ I ask with a wry smile.

  ‘Eat my balls. Every morning,’ he tells me as I slide my arms around his hips and pull him close to me. He tips my chin towards his, and that’s when he says it. No mistake, no fuzzy, fragmented, drunken mishmash of slurring sentimentality. Just us, bright as buttons, standing in this kitchen with nothing but the sound of the wind whistling through the windows and the gentle ticking of the clock.

  ‘Poppy, I love you,’ he says.

  And everything else just falls away.

  Because I am loved. And I feel it in every crease and fold of my being. And now that I know it, I’m never, ever letting go.

  I wave Tom goodbye from the front door, which the heightened wind slams shut. I wish I was going with him. Otis and the boys will be leaving next week, and once I’ve fixed up some final paperwork with Carlos, I’ll be on the train and back to the show. And I feel ready, I feel excited to get back to the studio, to go back to my lovely flat. I actually can’t wait to see Jake and Astral and get stuck in.

  I make my way to the kitchen and start up my ancient laptop. I take a bite of Tom’s yummy balls. My nutritional intake improves forty-fold. As does my contentment, to be honest. So c’mon, Superwoman. I log into my work email for the first time in a week, since the netball final and Dad’s death.

  I wait for it to load, expecting there to be a couple of hundred unread mails: promos, agendas, schedule plans, playlists, meetings, policies to read, plans to check, billions of photos and video links to the awards, of course. I press reload; this thing is very slow. I imagine the hype, the energy that’ll be all around the office next week. It’ll be electric, absolutely phenomenal. I feel privileged to be a part of it, lucky to belong. I might call a meeting myself! Check me out! Who knows, I may even win over Carol King. May wrangle a Beyoncé interview now that I know she’s so connected. Can you imagine? I’m giddy with the thought of it. So much potential, so much to look forward to.

  The page loads, but something is still wrong. I stare at my inbox in confusion.

  One email.

  One email in my 105 FM inbox?

  The connection isn’t great here, so I reload again. But it still shows JUST ONE email marked unread. This can’t be right. It was sent on Monday, the first working day after the awards show.

  I open it.

  Dear Dr Poppy Bloom,

  This mail confirms that with immediate effect, we no longer require your services as freelance presenter at 105 FM.

  This is due to a reshuffle in our programming and a new contract with a US media group that does not include freelancers in its terms and conditions.

  I have been pleased with our prior relationship and it is my wish that we part on good terms. I wish you every success in your new ventures.

  Please contact HR with any queries you may have regarding specific details regarding contract termination.

  Best regards,

  Carol King

  Contract termination?

  CONTRACT TERMINATION?!

  I don’t know what to do with myself. Panic rushes into my mouth, making it taste sour and tacky. I reread the email, just in case I’ve got this all wrong. Just in case they are EXTENDING my contract. But no, as I scan through, the words leap out at me: with immediate effect … no longer require … termination. Nowhere on the page does it say extend or don’t worry or of course you can show up here on Monday morning and get your coffee and joke around with Jake and make up the
clues for You Do the Maps and be flooded with calls from listeners all over the capital.

  My hands fly to my face. How? How has this happened? Have they really sacked me for not attending the awards? I was expecting a harsh telling-off. But we won, for God’s sake. Why cut a winning show? Why throw it all away when we’re only just getting started? Why stop us now?

  Heart pounding, I pick up my phone and punch in Jake’s personal number. He doesn’t know about my dad’s death; I just told them I’d be off for a week for personal reasons.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Teagan. It’s Poppy.’

  ‘Poppy, wow! Congrats on the Superleague!’

  ‘Oh yes, thanks.’

  ‘And the awards! How amazing was that! I mean, Beyoncé, she was just PHENOMENAL, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes! She’s phenomenal all right … Teagan, would it be okay if I had a word with your dad?’

  ‘Of course, he’s just walked into the room. I’ll pass you over. Bye, Poppy!’

  I hear the phone being handed across. ‘Jake, it’s me. I’ve just got a termination letter from Carol King! What’s going on? Tell me there’s been a mistake.’

  ‘What? You got a letter? She didn’t meet with you? I told her she had to see you; I made her promise that she would break this to you face to face. I know you’re freelance and you weren’t with us very long, but you made a big difference to us here; I felt you deserved that at least.’

  Oh no, this means it’s real. It’s already accepted as a done deal. Jake is just upset about how it’s been delivered to me, not the fact that it is happening.

  ‘So it’s true? It’s not a mistake.’