“Brandon.” I call into the empty house.
No one answers.
“Brand!” Really sobbing, now. “Brand!”
Gradually I become aware that my phone is ringing from upstairs where I left it on my desk. He’s calling me. I wipe my tears and get up and despite heavy legs and stiff ankles, I rush up the steps. Halfway, I stumble, because my eyes are blurry; my legs wobble and my feet miss the step. I grapple for the banister but can’t catch myself in time. I fall on my side and continue to thump, thump, thump down to the bottom stair. Not a bad fall, but painful.
Actually, very painful, something grips my insides and twists and literally takes my breath away.
The phone rings and rings then stops.
Later it rings again.
It’s ten agonising minutes before I can get up on my knees to crawl up the stairs. At the top, I collapse again and this time I can’t make myself move again. I wait. And wait. But my strength doesn’t come back, and my pain gets worse.
When I feel a wetness between my legs, I honestly don’t know if I’ve just weed myself. I push a hand under my knickers to check, and my fingers come away red.
Chapter Thirty-two
Brandon
Amsterdam is the same as remember it. The little streets, the canals, the thousands of bikes chained to railings. Everything takes me back to the man I used to be a few short months ago; I even go back to using the word ‘weed’ to mean cannabis. My garden on La Canette feels like a million miles away. Everything here, the cafés where I used to go with friends still smell the same, and this small intimate bistro hasn’t even changed its dinner menu.
My first audition this morning went well, as far as I can tell.
“They must want you,” Janey says across the small candle in the round table.
“We don’t know that yet.” I push my deconstructed black forest dessert around the plate.
“Half the management committee were in the listening booth behind you, and they looked really impressed.” She insists.
“It’ll be a bad show if I can’t impress them even a little. So will any decent musician applying to such an orchestra. We still have the second auditions tomorrow. If I’m shortlisted after that, I’ll allow myself to hope.”
“Oh, you should do more than hope. You’d have to really mess up tomorrow not to be shortlisted.” Janey raises a glass and toasts a success I haven’t yet achieved. “You’re going to be famous.”
“Famous as in recording contracts, first class airline travel and seven-star hotels?”
“Speaking of hotels, I don’t even know why you’re staying at the Hilton when you could be staying with me,” Janey says for the third time tonight. She’s being rather generous with the invitation; after all, I’m just a casual, no strings attached, on-off fling.
“They booked me a room.” I don’t want to go into the entire celibacy thing with Janey. She wouldn’t understand. Janey doesn’t like sad stories, it’s what always attracted me to her. So instead, I raise my wine glass and grin at her. “Rude to refuse such a nice room, and as you know, I’m not rude.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I like it when you’re rude.” She gives me a suggestive look.
To avoid answering, I knock back the rest of my drink. This is my fourth large glass tonight; it’s been so long since I had this much wine in one evening. Back on the island, Lessa didn’t drink, and I’ve never been a man who drinks alone. But one evening with Janey, and I feel myself slipping easily into ordering a second bottle of wine.
Although I seem to have become a lightweight. “I should slow down. This is going to my head a bit.”
“Have you been on the waggon?”
I try to tell her about La Canette, but she reacts with horror. “My God, it’s like they’re savages.”
My immediate reaction is to defend the island. But isn’t her opinion, in fact, similar to mine when I first arrived? “I have a friend who used to call it things like, the smudge on a map that thinks it’s an island, or the footpath that thinks it’s a high street.”
Janey doesn’t get the joke.
“It’s not so bad, it grows on you. And they have a lot of interesting festivals. For example, there is this medieval night festival called the Nutting where they celebrate autumn with donkey races and dancing, piles of candied pumpkin, casks of cider and glazed nuts.”
Janey does a little shiver. “That’s not a festival, that’s just a country dance.”
