Pressure and explosions, I think, slowly—starting to feel excited, like a very useful thought is happening—make the extraordinary things.
And as with these minerals in the ground, so with the minerals in us. Surely. For we are made of the same stuff as the Earth, after all—and so we must alchemize when we are pressurized, or when things explode, too.
This is why certain places in the world—Nashville, New York, Liverpool, Berlin, London, Detriot, Vienna—keep producing voices, and geniuses; storytellers, and singers. Things exploded there—politically, economically, socially. There were fires, or bombs, or floods, or plagues—and so the chemical compositions of their citizens change. This is the geology of creativity. Pressure, and heat, make astonishing people.
And sometimes the cataclysms are smaller, though just as painful. Terrible, life-changing cataclysms happen on every scale—from an entire continent, down to a single house, or heart.
I think of Suzanne’s early years—the hotel rooms, alone.
Or John’s childhood—his mother ill, then dying.
As I reach the cabinet containing a supposedly cursed diamond, I think, finally, of what is happening to me. I stared at it, lit up from all sides. This was, once, just carbon. It went through an almost intolerable pressure—the world literally bore down on it—and now, there are untouchable red-blue fires in it; tiny pink and green comets streaking across its core. A whole galaxy, in something the size of a baby’s fist.
This is what happens, when it feels like the weight of the world is crushing right down on you.
You fear it’s going to change you forever.
And you’re right. It is.
It’s going to turn you into something that is both beautiful, and the most indestructible thing on the planet.
I am both touched, and amused, by how apt its name is: Hope.
“I relate to you,” I say to the Hope Diamond, as I stand there, staring at it. “I get what you are saying. You are the sparkliest metaphor I have ever seen.”
“We can stay away forever, if you like,” John says, after a week, as we sit on the balcony of his hotel room in Savannah, Georgia.
John’s tone is very casual, but when I look up from my poached eggs on a silver plate, with the weird, light, insubstantial toast America inexplicably fucks itself with—his look is earnest.
“What?”
“If you don’t want to go back,” he says, voice still breezy. “We don’t ever have to go back, if we don’t want to. I could make one call now, and by this evening, they’d have a yearlong tour laid out for me. You could go anywhere you wanted. Canada. New Zealand. Japan.”
“India?” I say. “I’ve always wanted to see the palaces of the last maharajahs!”
“That’s not one of my key territories—so, no,” Kite says, looking comically pained. “I’ve sold absolutely fuck all there.”
“Mexico, then? That’s astonishingly beautiful.”
“No—no, I sell fuck all there also.”
“They’re not going to care about you in Nepal, either, are they?”
“No.”
He lights a cigarette.
“But you do see the general principle of what I am saying—which you are fucking with your arcane travel preferences for countries that, by and large, have little-to-no appetite for angst-stricken white singer-songwriters from Wales? We could just—fuck off from Britain. It’s finished. We need never go back there. Take off, and nuke it from space. If you don’t want to go back. We can stay away forever.”
I’ve finished my eggs. I drink my coffee. The cups are pleasingly white, and chunky. In my equally white robe and slippers, I feel like I am in an advert for a satisfying new life.
The idea of simply trotting around the world with John, for a year or more, is, obviously, what Willy Wonka would have put in a special chocolate bar for me, if he knew how bad I would be at the day-to-day admin of running a chocolate factory—but, nonetheless, still wished to reward me.
And yet—I know I can’t.
“Well. The thing is. All this. It isn’t . . . real, is it?” I begin, musingly. This conversation is an experiment—as I am still trying to work out, exactly, what the problem is. And the only way I could do that was—as I explained before—by talking. This is why I was often stupid around bad listeners.
“Quid in the box, babe,” he says, rattling a tin, and putting it on the table.
We have a “cliché tin,” for every time one of us uses a rock ’n’ roll cliché.
I put a dollar in the tin.
As I put the dollar in the tin, I suddenly realize what my reservation was. Finally, everything falls into place—why I can’t touch him, why I can’t stay.
John is rescuing me.
“You’re rescuing me!” I shout, because I am so excited that I’d worked it out. “That’s why I can’t do it.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, looking confused.
“If I run away on tour with you—which would, of course, be the most extraordinary thing . . . the most perfect and amazing thing—then you will, technically, when you get down to it, have rescued me. And I can’t be rescued.”
“Oh, you’re not that bad,” John says, ruffling my hair. “It’s probably blown over alrea—”
“No, no. You don’t understand. I can’t be rescued. As in—I will not accept being rescued. It is—not my thing.”
John looks hurt. I really don’t want him to feel hurt. But I am so excited that I’ve just worked out what this persistent, chirping worry in my guts was, that I had to share it with him. I feel like a professor, sharing a new theorem with a colleague. I expect him to be proud of me. He always is, when I work a thing out.
“Jerry did a thing which made me vulnerable, and sad. Now you have done a thing which has made me safe, and happy. But what if you stopped doing the thing that was making me safe, and happy?”
John looks absolutely bewildered. “That could never, ever happen! Unless it was funny. And only then for, like, two minutes. I am you. You are me. How could I ever stop wanting to make you happy?”
“You might die.”
“Balls. I will absolutely never die.”
“You will die at some point.”
“Impossible. You think I am going to die?”
He laughs, lights another cigarette, and then coughs, furiously. “Fucking hell—is coughing exercise? It feels like it.”
He drinks his orange juice down in one.
“There. I am healthy again. Easy.”
I light a cigarette, and lean back in my chair. The sunshine is bath warm; it is so beautiful on this balcony with John; and, as a sidebar, he has never looked more wonderful—the mess of his hair, the swell of his belly, his clever, fast fingers on the lighter. His eyes, so full of love and amusement. It is so perfect.
And somehow, it is the loveliness of the morning that makes it easier to say: “It’s a long story, but I saw this diamond, and it’s me. I have to go back now.”
We have never argued once, in all the time we have known each other, and it isn’t an argument now. Just John, being baffled—even as he rings his manager to arrange plane tickets—and me unable to say anything other than, “I just have to go now. I’m so sorry. Thank you for everything.”
“You can’t thank someone for something that has made them inordinately happy,” John says, miserably, watching as I packed my suitcase. “I am with you for wholly selfish reasons.”
I left for the airport two hours later.
32
Back in London, as I walked through my door, I noticed two things, in quick succession. The first was that the dog was running toward me. The second was that the house smelled of curry. Delicious, cinnamon curry.
Both of these were confusing, as I’d left the dog with Suzanne, at her flat, while I was away; and, as far as I knew, the dog did not know how to make curry—and so the combination of dog and curry was incredibly disconcerting.
For a moment, I wondered if I’d walked
into the wrong house—but then Julia emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel.
“You’re home,” she said, implacably. Nothing ever seemed to surprise Julia. She picked up the phone, and dialed a number.
“Dolly’s here. Come,” she said. There was a pause, and then, patiently: “They’re under your tights. No—UNDER your TIGHTS. Look properly. No, don’t do that. Why? Because last time you did, you passed out for sixteen hours. Okay. See you in ten. Bye.”
She put the phone down.
“Welcome,” she said. “Tea?”
I dumped my suitcase, and followed her into the kitchen—utterly bewildered.
“I thought the dog was staying at yours?” I started.
“Yeah,” Julia said, putting the kettle on. “That didn’t really work out. Our flat’s not really geared up for dogs. She kept eating things, like a hairbrush, and a fur hat. So I thought I’d stay here, with her. Your dad made her a basket.”
She gestured to a bread crate with . . . with one of my coats in it, as a blanket.
“My dad?” This morning was getting more surreal by the minute. “Is he here?”
“No,” Julia said, plonking the tea down in front of me. “We had a good chat, and, in the end, we agreed it would be for the best if he went back to your mum, and just . . . said sorry.”
I put my head on the table. Nothing was making any sense, and my body still thought it was in Georgia. Julia took pity on me.
“Right. So. I moved in, with the dog. Then your dad turned up—said your brother had told him you were going through a bad time, and might need the loving help of a father.”
Krissi! He’d used my sex scandal to off-load Dad! I knew that when you had lemons, you had to make lemonade—but Krissi had stolen my trauma lemons to make his lemonade! What a bastard!
“We had a good chat, me and your dad. Once I realized he wasn’t a burglar, and put the cricket bat down.”
“I don’t have a cricket bat!” I wailed.
“Oh, I always travel with one,” Julia said, gesturing to the cricket bat propped up in the corner.
I drank my tea. I needed it.
“Anyway, we got chatting, and in the end, he told me about how things have gotten a bit . . . edgy with your mum.”
I nodded.
“He’s a fascinating man, your dad,” Julia said, musingly. “Bright, charismatic, funny, keen on drugs, selfish, insane. Reminded me of someone.”
Right on cue, the doorbell rang.
“That’s Suzanne,” Julia said, going over to open the door. Suzanne was standing there, in a nightie with a fur coat over the top, smoking a cigarette.
“We were just talking about you,” Julia said, pushing a cup of tea in front of Suzanne, as she sat down. “About how Dolly’s dad is like you.”
“Pat? Yeah. He’s a darling,” Suzanne said, cheerfully.
“And from everything he told me about your mum—downbeat, sensible, keeping the wheels on—she sounded—”
“Well, she’s you, Julia,” Suzanne interrupted. “She’s totally you. We all know she’s you.”
“So I told your dad what had kept me and Suzanne together, in our relationship.”
“Is it mutual love and respect?” I asked.
“Not so much,” Julia replied. “It’s cash. Love and respect are so much easier if you both just . . . have the same amount of cash. You can put up with an enormous amount of balls if you have an equal ability to buy shoes.”
Suzanne nodded wisely.
“So I told him to either sell the stupid car, and split the proceeds with your mum; or let her take out a loan, too, and let her spunk it on whatever she wanted.”
Apparently, my father’s reaction to that had been to start heffing and peffing about the size of the potential repayments, to which Julia had replied, “Well, now you know the APR for equality, Pat. That’s the marriage maths,” and he’d quietly agreed to sell the car and split the money, and then gone home.
“So that’s it?” I asked, faintly. “You’ve sorted out my dad? Is that why you’re here?”
“Oh no,” Suzanne said. “That’s just a sidebar.”
“Curry, anyone?” Julia asked, going over to the hob. In answer, Suzanne rattled her bottle of pills—“They were under the tights! You were right!”—and I gratefully received a plate.
“I’m here for the real business,” Suzanne said, putting her feet up on the table, and promptly having them pushed back off by Julia.
For the next half hour, Suzanne and Julia told me of everything that had happened since I’d left.
The press had, obviously, been interested in the story, but were unable—for legal reasons—to speculate in print that it was anything to do with me.
“So, they’ve been hinting,” Julia sighed. “Lots of blind items. Zee’s been great—put out press releases about how Suzanne’s speech was ‘addressing general misogyny and abuse in the industry.’ It’s been a big topic.”
“I got the headline ‘THIS CITY IS RUN BY SEXUAL CRIMINALS’ in the Evening Standard,” Suzanne said, proudly. “And they ran a plug for the album at the end.”
“I’m so pleased for you,” I said, faintly. “Has all that . . . stopped it?”
“Oh no,” Suzanne said, regretfully. “I’m so sorry, babe. Everyone in the industry is still talking about you. And it’s been pretty disgusting. I’m so sorry.”
My heart felt sick. For one beautiful minute, I thought the problem might have solved itself.
“But we have not been idle!” Suzanne said, gleefully. “Since that night, and all the pieces in the press, I’ve had other women getting in contact with me. Dolly, there’s so many.”
She shivered.
“There are so many women Jerry has wronged. He was basically a full-time abuser, and part-time comedian. It’s a miracle he ever got any work done, to be honest. And, during my time as the unofficial hotline for all sexual wrongness in London, I managed to procure this.”
Suzanne put a huge Jiffy bag on the table.
“Go on. Open it,” she said, pushing it toward me.
Fumbling, I opened it. Inside—there were half a dozen video cassettes, with scribbled labels: “SH,” “IB,” “VR,” “DW.”
“One of Jerry’s current ‘girlfriends’ called me. Only, she’s not his girlfriend anymore. Not after she found these.”
Suzanne nodded at the collection of cassettes, and pushed one toward me.
“There was a whole cupboard of these. ‘DW’ is you,” she said.
I looked at the video. God, what an odd thing. A black plastic box that contains a mere half an hour of my life—but a half hour that had threatened to eat up my name, and work, and life, like acid, until there was nothing left.
“Is this the only copy?” I asked, touching it with my fingertips, as if it were dirty.
Suzanne nodded, and put the video on the floor.
Julia handed me the cricket bat.
“So now, you can get rid of it,” she said, with quiet glee. “You can smash it to bits.”
I held the cricket bat in my hand. The idea of smashing up the tape seemed deeply, deeply appealing. But I also had a feeling that, if I could just keep talking for a while longer, I would come up with an idea that was even better. I knew I was on the verge of thinking something . . . different.
“Ladies—could you just let me talk at you for a while?” I asked, putting down the bat. “I just need to talk. I just need to talk.”
33
The launch party for The Branks’ album is at the Astoria—they are going to play the album, live, from beginning to end, and then the plan is to “get more fucked-up than anyone else in creation,” as Suzanne puts it, happily.
I go to their dressing room, where Zee is fussing over the cheese and meat plates. As I walk in, Suzanne is exclaiming over something.
“It’s so cute!” she says.
I go over to see what’s in her hand. It’s a wrap of pink cocaine.
“Cute?
” I say.
“It just came in from L.A.!” she says. “It’s what all the L.A. heiresses are taking now.” She names a few. “They didn’t like the taste of Coke Original—so some fucking genius has started cutting it with Strawberry Nesquik. It’s adorable.”
Zee leans over, and takes the wrap off her.
“Shall we call it pudding, and keep it for later?” he says, putting it into his pocket, like a dad.
Suzanne looks at me. “How you feeling about this?” she asks. Julia and Zee put hands on my shoulders.
“Yeah—you okay?” Zee says.
“I don’t think there’s anything else I can do,” I say, bravely. “I have my notes.”
I wave my pages of A4 around.
I had been writing all week. I have always had faith that you can write your way out of anything, if you think hard enough. That is my primary belief. It got me out of Wolverhampton, it brought me to London, it made John write commercially viable songs without wanting to end himself. It is my comfort, my weapon, my wealth, and my better self. It is all I have, really.
Obviously, right at this moment, I’ve reached the point in the process where I believe what I’ve written on these A4 sheets is total dog shit, and that I have made an unbelievable error—but it’s too late now.
Suzanne gets up, and hugs me. “Just—stay angry,” she whispers. “Anger makes your eyes really blue.”
At nine twenty p.m. I am standing at the side of the stage with Suzanne, levitating with panic, when the house music cuts out. I hadn’t noticed I was holding Suzanne’s hand until she squeezes it—then lets go, and walks out onstage.
“Good evening, London!” Suzanne says, to whoops and applause. “I am Suzanne Banks—”
More whoops and applause. “And we are The Branks! Thank you for coming tonight!”
Cheering.
“This is the launch party for our album—due to go Top Ten this Sunday!—and it’s brilliant to see you all here, ready to rock!”
Screams.
“Before we start, however, there’s a little business we must attend to. We are all,” she said, unhooking the microphone from the stand, and starting to stalk the stage, “part of a gang; part of a pack. I hope some of you tonight have come here tonight with your pack.”