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“I want to see that paper.”
“Claire, and I think Jake too, have copies. But honestly, it’s not worth it. Those damn papers are filled with all kinds of shit and lies every bloody day. Just shrug it off. It’ll all die down soon enough.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, forcing a look of indifference onto my face. He was right about one thing – I couldn’t afford to get worked up about it. If it’d been a woman I wouldn’t have given a damn, so I needed to act the same right now – especially in front of the guys.
As planned, we quickly swapped cars and waited back for a few minutes until the original car had passed the photographers. As expected, some of them quickly jumped in their own cars to follow, then Jim radioed Pete to come and distract the others by asking them to leave. We knew they wouldn’t of course, but while they were listening to him we had our opportunity to leave unseen.
The familiar balloon of dread inflated in the pit of my stomach when we pulled up onto my mother’s estate. I detest the place. Everything about it reminds me of a time I wish I could forget – the mass of flats all cramped together in tall blocks, the metal railings surrounding the brick walls that are filled with graffiti (and not the artistic kind, more like ‘Kev fucked Kerry 2012’). Not to mention the fact you can smell the stench of stagnant piss coming from the stairwells before you even get out of the car.
The place is a dump – always has been, always will be. I’ve tried to talk my mother into letting me buy her a nice detached house, wherever she wants in the world, over the years, but she refuses to have anything to do with money earned from my ‘sinful’ career filled with vile music and starstruck whores.
Jim and Neil accompanied me to my mother’s door while Sayid waited in the car with the driver, whose name I still hadn’t leaned. Opening the door, she greeted me with the same surprised gasp followed by a look of disappointment as she always does when she sees me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, ushering me inside before anyone saw me. “Can’t they go somewhere else?” she whispered, referring to my security team.
“No, Mum. They can’t.”
“So why are you here? You never come home. Is everything alright?”
She was right. I never come home because I hate the damn place. Usually, I arrange for her to be picked up and brought to wherever I’m staying.
“It’s been, what… ten, eleven months since we saw each other? I just wanted to see you.”
After an awkward, one-armed hug, I headed into the tiny living room while my mum made up a pot of tea in the kitchen. The flat hadn’t changed at all since I was a little boy. An involuntarily look of disgust crept across my face as I weighed up the peeling floral wallpaper, the stained brown carpet and the electric fire with metal bars across the front.
“So,” Mum began, joining me in the living room with a tray holding a pot of tea and two cups and saucers. “What do I owe the pleasure?”
“We’ll be heading to Manchester after tomorrow’s show. Just wanted to check in before I left.”
“Well it’s always good to see you, darling.” She said it with such disinterest I knew it was a lie. “How have you been?”
“Busy,” I replied robotically. Conversation between my mum and I has always been a little formal.
“I don’t suppose you’ve thought about finding a nice young woman and settling down yet have you? I see Elle around here quite often,” she said with a raised eyebrow. Mum was elated when I started hanging around with Elle. I think in her head she had me calmed down and married off to her within a few months of us becoming friends.
“Elle is my friend, Mum. You know that.”
“A mother can still hope,” she said, sounding a little dejected. “She’s a lovely girl. The things she has to put up with from that mother of hers is despicable.”
Yeah, Elle’s mum is a bitch of the highest order – you won’t find me disagreeing with that one. She spent Elle’s childhood drunk most of the time, offering them a new stepdad every two weeks and leaving Elle to practically raise her much younger sister, Kylie, by herself. She’s sponged money off Elle ever since she got her first job as a Saturday girl in a salon. Now, the more money she earns, the more her mother takes. She won’t refuse her because Kylie is only fifteen and still living at home. That’s the excuse she uses anyway – I still think she’d keep bailing her out even if Kylie were out of the equation. She’s her mother, and Elle feels some bizarre sense of loyalty towards her based purely on the fact she gave birth to her.
Then again, who I am to talk? I never leave my mother without passing her quite a hefty cheque.
“You look different,” my mum continued, eyeing me up curiously.
“I have a few new tattoos since you last saw me,” I said, shrugging. Possibly the skulls and roses added to my left arm a few months ago.
“It’s not that,” she dismissed, shaking her head. “You’ve met someone haven’t you? A mother can tell these things.”
I hesitated for a moment before deciding to be honest. Hell knew I needed advice from somewhere because all I was succeeding in doing was driving myself fucking insane.
“Yeah. Yeah I have.”
“And what’s she like?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her.” Okay, so when I said I was going to be honest, that wasn’t entirely true. “I mean, all the time. She never leaves my head, and everywhere I go she seems to be there.”
“That’s great!” she beamed, her eyes full of hope. “So why are you unsure? Does she not feel the same?”
“Yes. At least she says she does. I’m just worried about people’s reaction I guess.”
