Conviction(16)

I look at Lawson, Dom and Gunner. “Jet’s dead,” I tell them. “He washed thirty Valium down with a bottle of vodka and then just to make sure that the job was done, he slit his wrists. He’s dead! I found him at the bottom of his bath. He’s dead, Jet’s dead!” They’re all staring at me blankly, still not saying a word. “Do you hear what I’m saying, are any of you even listening to me? He’s dead, he’s f*cking dead.” I can hear myself getting louder and louder.

Gunner steps forward and wraps his arms around me. “Shit Reed, this is f*cked. I’m so sorry you had to see all that mate.” I’m not a big fan of human contact. I usually try to avoid it. When we’re on stage or working it’s different, I can deal with it but once emotions become involved, I don’t like it. I’m always worried that I’ll lose control and start to feel, and I hate it when I feel. I’m feeling now and it hurts, it hurts so f*cking much.

I don’t know where it comes from, but Dom’s suddenly putting a whisky tumbler in my hand. I take it and go and sit on the edge of the bed and knock back the drink. It calms me down and warms my belly instantly.

“Sorry,” I say, looking up at each of them in turn. “I’m sorry boys. Fuck! What a morning. What time is it?” I don’t know how to act. I don’t know what to say. There’s always four of us, now there’s only three. I don’t know how to be three. I scratch at my stubbly chin and rake my hand through my hair, trying to get my thoughts in order and make sense of what’s happened.

Laws sits down next to me. He’s our manager, but he’s only a couple of years older than me. He’s usually composed, he’s usually wearing a suit and he’s usually got the answer to each and every problem we might encounter. Lawson and I get on well, he’s English, which is a start and he’s single. We’ve spent a few wild nights together in the company of a few willing women. Lawson has the look of a well-educated English gentleman, but I happen to know that he’s from Essex and a bit rough around the edges. Although he did go to university, so he’s better educated than me.

“It’s just gone one. What the f*ck happened, Reed?”

Dom takes the glass from my hand as I stare down at the carpet. I rub both hands over the stubble on my jaw again and look at Lawson.

“It’s my fault. He did this because I told him I was leaving the band.”

Lawson frowns. “What? Why? Why would you tell him that?”

Gunner sits down on a chair that he’s brought in from the living area of the suite and sits on it. Dom comes back with a bottle of bourbon and four clean glasses. I watch as he sets them down on the unit below the television and pours us each more than a double shot. He passes one to each of us and then sits on the unit, facing me and Lawson. My heart’s still racing and I watch as my hand shakes while I hold the glass.

Jet’s dead.

My best mate is dead and it’s all my fault.

He killed himself because of what I’d said to him.

I drain what’s in the glass and hold it out to Dom for a top up. My throat burns from the alcohol, but I like it. The sensation distracts me from the thoughts crashing through my brain.

“You know what, all these years I’ve blamed her. I thought it was her fault for not turning up, that my brother died.” Dom passes me my refilled glass and I take a sip. “But it wasn’t her. It was me. First my mum, then Miles, now Jet. They’re all dead because of me. It’s me, not her.”

“Reed, calm the f*ck down mate and just tell us what happened,” Lawson asks again.

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and look at my bandmates. They all know my story, they know my mum was murdered and that my brother was killed, the whole f*cking world knows that story. Every newspaper and magazine ran with it when we first made it big. They all jumped on the bad boy, Conner Reed bandwagon. ‘Con the Con’ being their favourite headline when they found out I’d been banged up. All the money they made reporting on other people’s misery and they couldn’t come up with a better headline than that? Fucktards, the f*cking lot of them. It had snowballed from there. Once they found out how my brother was killed and that I was in the car with him, the sympathy lasted for all of twenty seconds before they started reporting on the fact that I was locked up while the accident was investigated. Then the f*ckers found out I’d been in trouble as a kid and that’s when the ‘Conner the Convicted’ and ‘Con the Con’, headlines began.

It was the local corner shop. Me and two mates found the back doors to the local corner shop open one night and we nicked some cigarettes and some bars of f*cking galaxy. We were kids, we had the opportunity to nick some fags and make some money; it wasn’t an armed robbery. We didn’t hurt anyone. We didn’t realise we’d been caught on CCTV, and it didn’t take long for the shopkeeper to recognise us and for the police to come knocking on our door. I was fourteen, I’d never been in trouble with the police before so they gave me a caution, and my dad gave me a black eye and a split lip. I think he cracked a few of my ribs too, but I wasn’t allowed to go to the hospital to find out. My only other offence was a caution I got for fighting. Once those stories were reported, some nosey young journalist decided to dig even deeper into my past and found out the details of my mum’s murder. Then everything changed again and I was ‘Poor Reed’ or ‘Broken Bad Boy Conner Reed’s Heart Breaking Past Revealed.’ Or some other bullshit, piss poor headline.