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“Fuck off with the therapist spiel, Tommo.”
“Man, seriously.”
“Forget it. Have fun fucking Barbie’s brains out!” I say as I stand, ignoring the strained look on my friend’s face.
“Max…” he pleads with me as I stand, all the blood in my body feels like it’s at boiling point, I can’t fucking do this anymore. I glance once more at the whimpering look on my friends face before I turn and walk out of the fucking door, down the stairs to the exit. Liquor in my veins, a bag of Charlie in my pocket.
Pissed off doesn’t even come close.
* * *
After that the weeks dragged,the hours ticked by so slowly, but it gave me enough time to really get into my own head. To realise the piece of shit I actually am. I stopped seeing Donna by week eight. Knowing I was past help of a therapist or anyone. Fucked up beyond any redemption. By week nine I knew my new normal: Fucked and broken.
Max Baines isn’t back in the capacity he should be but by now—week ten or is it eleven? Fuck knows. But he’s in a place where he doesn’t give a fuck anymore about what anyone else says or thinks because it doesn’t matter either way. I’m frustrated and fucked off as I tap my pen hard onto Titch’s desk. To say I’m bored would be an understatement. My plane to New York is tomorrow and I can’t wait to get away from London for a while. My only constant contact seems to be Preston Miller and the more he talks the more sense he makes. My blood’s boiling with excitement. This is exactly what I need.
“Is there anything else, Titch? I need to get packing,” I ask stifling a yawn. He squirms in his seat slightly like the awkward little rat he is.
“Yeah, there is one more thing…” he pauses, looking like whatever he is about to say is hard for him.
“Does the name Imogen Nether mean anything to you, Max?”
I shake my head.
“No?” He shakes his head in apparent frustration before his eyes draw back to me. Serious this time.
“Well at first, I just had her down as a bit of a crazy fan, you know you get them from time to time.” I nod, already bored by this conversation “But this one’s relentless. She’s got my email and she’s desperate to get hold of you.”
“Okay. Why are you telling me this? What do you need me to do, sign a t-shirt for her or something?” I run my knuckles along his hard-wood desk.
“Well, I’m starting to think I’ve got the fan thing wrong. She’s been asking about Cassy too?” Titch looks to me, his eyes searching.
“Cassy?” Suddenly I’m paying more attention than before. We get crazy fans all the time. Ninety-nine percent of our fans are literally the best people on the planet, supportive, happy, music loving crazy bastards. But occasionally we do get someone who takes it a little too far. But bringing my sister into it? I suppose it’s inevitable with her and Finch being an item. She’s as much tabloid fodder as I am now.
“Well yeah. I know since hers and Kyles’s relationship has gone public, they haven’t been offering interviews and they like to stay private, but it doesn’t mean they don’t get papped on the regular.”
Right, yeah. Don’t I know it. I can’t even go on Twitter without the world going crazy to see him claiming his territory by kissing my sister in the street.
“Well apparently, this Imogen, she’s followed you for a long time. She wondered and now she’s seen Cassy, it confirmed all of her thoughts.”
“What thoughts?”
“She says her name was changed a few years ago after she was in an abusive relationship, witness protection or something. Max, she said her name has been changed from Imogen Baines. She’s claiming she’s your birth mother.”
My heartbeat stops for a minute. I stop tapping the pencil and I hold my breath.
I stand up. “Don’t let that fucking vindictive bitch anywhere near my sister,” I say to Titch.
“She is your mum then?”
“No,” I snap at him with venom in my voice. “My mum’s name was Sarah Thomas-Baines. She was killed in a car accident. That fucking bitch is not my mother, she’s not Cassy’s either.”
“What do you want me to tell her?”
“Tell her what I just said. Tell her that Max Baines is nothing to her. Absolutely fucking nothing and if she persists, I’ll get the band’s legal team on her and they’ll come down on her like a tonne of fucking bricks. If that bitch dares to get in contact with me or Cassy again I’ll take her down with everything I fucking can.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Titch. Listen to me. That bitch is less than dead to me.” I slam my hand down on his desk and stand up, heading to the door.
“Is there anything else?” I ask with my hand on the door handle, and he shakes his head.
“We’re done here then.” I open the door and walk out slamming it hard behind me. I run out of the office, down the corridor and although I should jump into the waiting car I just keep running. I need to get what Titch has just said out of my head.
I always told Cassy I couldn’t remember our birth mum.
But I remember all right. Remember how she screamed, how she shouted and left me. How when Cassy was born, she wrapped her up in a blanket and handed her to me. How she rang the doorbell of that children’s home and when I looked up to see what she was doing, she ran. She didn’t look back. The only thing she left us with was the ragged clothes on our backs and a note with our names. Memories like that shouldn’t be the first ones your children have.
What the fuck can she want with us now?
