I Was Born for This(56)

Leave me alone.

Rowan has a gauze on the side of his forehead. You can kind of see the blood starting to seep through, just like the cut on my hand from yesterday.

‘Is it okay?’ I say, not answering any of his questions. I point at his head.

‘Fucking hell, yes, I’m fine, but –’ He starts to repeat his questions, but I just walk over to the sofa and sit down next to Lister, who is downing a bottle of water.

He looks at me as I sit next to him.

‘You okay?’ he asks.

I just laugh at him.

‘What happened?’ he asks.

‘Someone called Angel helped me.’

‘An angel helped you?’ Lister raises his eyebrows. ‘Wow. Maybe I should become religious after all.’

‘We’re doing the show,’ says Rowan. Everyone – me and Lister and Bliss, Cecily and the tour management, the O2 staff and our bodyguards – is silent.

Then Cecily says, ‘Rowan, babe, I really think you should get to A & E—’

‘It’s literally just a cut. It doesn’t even hurt any more.’

I can tell he’s lying. His voice goes all high-pitched when he’s lying.

‘It’s not safe,’ says Cecily, sounding desperate. ‘This is a serious breach of security. Who knows what else they could let through the bag checks!’

This is actually a good point and makes me immediately paranoid.

But it only seems to increase Rowan’s rage.

‘Look,’ he says, his eyes wild. ‘The fans? They have taken everything from me. They have taken my privacy. They have taken my girlfriend. They’ve taken the fucking world from me. Do you understand that? I can’t even fucking go outside any more.’

Cecily and the tour management just stare at him.

‘The last thing I have is this band,’ Rowan continues. ‘The music. They’re not having that as well.’

Cecily lets out a heavy sigh, and then turns to the rest of the crew.

‘We’re doing the show,’ she says.

‘Who was this girl who helped you?’ asks Lister. We’re still sitting on the sofa, though someone is doing Lister’s make-up while we’re talking.

‘Angel,’ I say.

‘Yeah. The angel.’

‘She wasn’t a real angel.’

‘Yeah, okay, I got that.’

We both laugh. It feels weird. I must not have laughed for a while.

‘She was just some fan who came to the meet-up. She just wanted to help me calm down, but I was … I was acting weird.’

I don’t really feel like going into detail. Like how I got Grandad’s knife out (which Lister still doesn’t know I carry around) and she helped me calm down while I was having a panic attack.

I shouldn’t carry the knife around. I should just leave it at home. It’s stupid. I’m stupid.

Lister frowns. ‘She didn’t just … ask for a selfie, or whatever?’

‘No, she didn’t ask for anything. She seemed like she genuinely wanted to help.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah.’

It’s rare. The fans always want something from us.

‘Lots of them were trying to help, actually,’ I admit.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Like, I mean, there were some who just wanted to touch me, but, like, lots of them were trying to kind of … protect me.’

Lister snorts. ‘Protect you? Why?’

‘I don’t know. But they were trying to push away the people who were trying to get near me. Saying stuff like “Jimmy, don’t worry, we’ll help you.”’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah. Has … has anything like that happened to you before?’

‘No. They usually just want a selfie and to touch my hand or something.’

‘Yeah. Same.’

We both stay silent for a moment. Rowan is having a heated conversation with Cecily in the corner of the dressing room; they’re both making big hand gestures. I’m not sure what they’re arguing about.

‘I don’t think Rowan would believe you if you told him,’ says Lister.

‘I don’t think so either,’ I say.

The make-up person finishes and leaves, and then me and Lister are alone again.

‘By the way,’ Lister begins, but it takes him a moment to say anything else. I turn to him. He looks down, and then up at me. ‘Sorry about earlier. I … don’t want you to think … erm … I expect anything from you …’

I’m taken aback. I’d mostly thought that we were both going to pretend that it never happened.

‘It’s fine.’

‘No, hang on, just listen,’ he says, turning his whole body towards me. ‘I don’t want to make our relationship weird.’

‘It’s not weird.’

‘Jimmy—’

‘No one can do anything to surprise me any more,’ I say, and start to laugh at him. It’s funny because it’s true. ‘No one can do anything to surprise me any more.’

He frowns. ‘What-what d’you mean?’

‘I’m not in here any more,’ I say, pointing at my chest. ‘This is all happening to someone else.’