Simon, sensing he needed to do something drastic, got his guitar out, and plucked the melody to ‘My Heart Will Go On’, singing along in his best falsetto voice. Except, because we were thirteen and easily amused, he changed the lyrics to ‘MyFartWill Go On’.
I fell about laughing.
I wish my only problem with that recital had been the choice of music. Unfortunately, worse was to come. I landed badly on one of the jumps and twisted my ankle, but I had to bravely hobble on until the bitter end, red-faced and trying to ignore the sniggers of the Year Sevens in the front row.
Little shits.
Simon was there once I got home to help me laugh it off, and he even had a look at my foot. It was an awkward few minutes as I stripped off my sock, rolled up my jeans-leg and he gently prodded the sensitive skin.
Please God, don’t let my foot stink, I remember thinking. Closely followed by,please God, don’t let that random hair that sometimes sprouts on my big toe be there.Being Greek and hitting puberty was a tough combination.
How could I not have fallen head over heels for him? He made me laugh, he made me forget my humiliations, and he tended to my swollen ankle with the thoughtful sexiness of Doctor Ross fromER.
I’d love to report that it all culminated in Simon reciprocating my feelings and eventually falling in love with me while gazing into my eyes as we listened to Eddie Vedder’s baritone on ‘Alive’, but fate rudely interrupted. His dad got a promotion, his parents divorced – the two were possibly linked – and a few days before his sixteenth birthday, Simon told me they were going back to America to live closer to his grandparents now that he was being brought up by a ‘single mom’.
So he left, and I descended into a type of heartbreak that coloured every relationship of my twenties.
No one could live up to the image of Simon. Or Saint Simon, as my best friend Georgia used to call him.
Maybe none of that should still affect me now that I’m thirty-four, but those early years mark you.
First love is brutal.
Even the morning rush hour on the Central Line didn’t drain the zip out of me. I emerged from Oxford Circus tube at 9.30 a.m. feeling virtuous, so I eschewed my usual Starbucks Americano and instead bought fresh orange juice from the café next to my office.
I swiped my key-card to get into our building. Jody was already behind her desk at reception. She always looked pristine – perfectly straight blonde hair that never wilted, no matter how humid the weather. I only had to look at a storm cloud for my hair to go frizzy.
‘Did you have a good night?’ I asked her.
Her cheeks reddened. ‘Stu wants to take me to Paris for the weekend.’
I grinned. ‘Ooh la la.’
Jody didn’t have the best of luck with relationships, but thankfully her new guy, Stu, sounded like a keeper.
I ducked into the stairwell and started taking the steps two at a time.
We were on the fourth floor, but I avoided the lift because it broke down so much. However tired I was, it wasn’t worth the risk.
The office needed a good paint, the carpet was threadbare and the air-conditioning was patchy. Hard to imagine thatRe:Sound, established 1966 in Carnaby Street, had ended up like this. Back then, Jimmy Page used to play at the Christmas parties, and Keith Richards was introduced to his first dealer by the founding editor. In some versions of the story, hewasKeith’s first dealer.
But since the rise of the internet, print media had been a tough industry to navigate.Re:Soundwas one of the biggest music monthlies in the business and we had a loyal readership, but each year our numbers were being slowly eroded by free online content and last year’s circulation figures hit an all-time low. We had to cut costs and staff numbers, so new carpets and reliable air-conditioning were luxuries we couldn’t afford. As was triple-ply toilet paper, but I still managed to sneak it into the budget – Zoë Frixos: protector of bum cheeks.
The tune playing when I walked in was by a band that Gavin, my deputy, had discovered in Brighton on Saturday. It was Friday today, and he still hadn’t let anyone change the album. His monitor was on, but he wasn’t at his desk.
Lucy, the reviews editor, was also absent.
Still, it was barely ten o’clock and today was the most relaxed day of the month. Yesterday, the magazine had gone to press, which meant today we got to sort out our desks, reply to non-urgent emails and generally relax, safe in the knowledge that the next deadline was four blissful weeks away.
I sat down at my desk and powered up my Mac. I unpeeled the sticky notes attached to the side of my monitor – all stuff from the issue we’d just put to bed – and threw them into the bin, just as Lucy barged into the office.
‘Morning, boss,’ she said, flinging her canvas bag onto the floor by her desk. Lucy was twenty-three and a bit of a prodigy. To be the reviews editor so young was testament to her amazing talent.
She was Caitlin Moran but with pink hair.
She started writing for us at twenty, sending in reviews of gigs, and after we published the fifth one I offered her a job. Her well-to-do parents had been horrified that she’d chosen a career in music journalism over university and had promptly kicked her out.
‘How was Patrick’s retirement do last night?’
