I Was Born for This(47)

‘Oh,’ says Rowan, ‘er, yeah.’

‘No, you’re not.’

He sighs and holds up his phone.

‘Bliss just won’t talk to me,’ he says, and then looks at me in the mirror. ‘Why won’t she talk to me?’

None of us have seen or heard from Bliss since the morning the news broke. Rowan told us that she refused to come to our apartment, and then she stopped answering his calls.

‘I’ve called her, like, fifty times,’ says Rowan, chuckling sadly. ‘I get that she’d be upset, but … it’s not like this is my fault … Why doesn’t she just want to talk to me about it?’ He looks down at his phone again. ‘Where is she?’

‘Maybe she just wants to lay low for a while,’ I say.

‘We’re in a relationship,’ says Rowan, and then his voice lowers to a whisper. ‘What sort of relationship is it if you can’t even talk to each other when something bad happens?’

Not a good relationship.

That’s what it is.

But I don’t want to say that to him.

‘After we sign the contract tomorrow …’ he begins, then stops.

‘What?’ I say.

He stares blankly at himself in the mirror. ‘We’re gonna have no time at all. I’m gonna have no time to see her ever.’

‘I mean … we’ll probably have some time …’

‘If it’s even less than we have now, it’s basically nothing,’ he says.

Alex stares firmly at Rowan’s hair, but the expression of pity on his face is unmissable.

‘Where’s Lister?’ asks Cecily, who is sitting with one leg crossed over the other on a sofa in the middle of the room. ‘He should be getting his hair done by now.’

No one answers her.

‘Did he go to the bathroom?’ I ask.

No one answers again.

‘He’s probably there,’ says Cecily. ‘Can you go get him, babe?’

‘Okay.’ I open the door and leave the room.

This dressing room is one of many on a long, grey corridor. I wander down to the right towards the bathroom and enter. This bathroom is just for us, and, like the dressing room, it’s fancy – all shiny marble urinals and ornate mirrors and a figurehead glaring down at us from above the hand dryers.

‘Lister, are you in here?’

A loud clunking noise sounds from the stall furthest from the door – a bottle hitting the floor – then a whispered, ‘Fuck.’

Lister.

I walk towards the stall and stand in front of it. What’s he doing in there? Why does he have a bottle?

‘Are … you okay?’ I ask. ‘You’ve been in here for a while.’

‘Can’t a man poop when he needs to, Jimmy?’ Lister laughs but it sounds horribly forced.

‘Is that definitely what you’re doing?’

He doesn’t answer me for a moment.

Then he starts to laugh.

There’s another clinking sound. Definitely a bottle.

What is he doing?

‘Can you open the door?’ I ask. Maybe I should go back and get Rowan. Something’s not right.

To my surprise, he obligingly slides open the cubicle lock and pulls the door open.

He’s sitting on the toilet – lid closed and joggers pulled up, thankfully – with his phone in one hand and a nearly empty bottle of red wine in the other.

‘What d’you want, then?’ Lister leans forward and narrows his eyes. ‘I’m in a very important meeting.’

I feel suddenly very small. He’s been here, in the bathroom, drinking.

‘Did … did you drink all of that just now?’ I ask, pointing at the bottle.

Lister looks at it as if he’d forgotten it was there. ‘Oh. Yeah. Just a little pre-show … er … just to calm the nerves.’

He’s drunk. Not obscenely drunk, not dangerously drunk, but drunk enough.

On a show day.

He’s not supposed to do this on show days.

‘You’re not supposed to drink on … on show days,’ I stammer.

Lister snorts. ‘Come on, it’s the last show of the tour.’ He leans his head against the side of the cubicle. ‘After that, I can drink every day.’

‘You can’t be drunk at the show. At the meet-and-greet. People will notice.’

‘Naah, I’m fine. Look.’ He stands up so quickly that I take a couple of steps backwards. He flicks his hair back and puts his hands on his hips. ‘Look. No one will suspect a thing.’

To be fair, he’s right. He looks perfectly normal, bar maybe a slight haziness of the eyes, the way they’re not quite focused, and the way his mouth keeps twitching into a smile.

‘Why do you do this?’ I ask.

‘Do what?’

‘Get drunk all the time.’

He steps out of the cubicle, pushing me further backwards. His smile drops.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ he says, his eyes widening and staring off somewhere over my head. ‘What’s wrong with drinking? What’s wrong with having parties and having a good time and enjoying what we have?!’ He laughs. ‘We’re rich and famous, Jimmy. Do you understand how good that feels when you grew up like me? We had nothing.’