‘What? No.’ Johnny was horrified. ‘Christ.’ He brushed her hands away, scrubbed at his face with his fingers. ‘Where is Erica? Is she okay?’
‘She’ll be fine. She’s with Tom.’ Avril planted a kiss on his nose and climbed off him. ‘Thanks, Johnny, that was great. Just what I needed.’ She slipped the dress back over her head, took in his expression and frowned. ‘There’s no need to look like that, it’s not as if you didn’t enjoy yourself.’ She ran her fingers through his hair. ‘We both did, didn’t we? We were good together. We could do it again, keep on seeing each other … the others don’t need to know.’
Johnny pushed her away from him and fastened his clothes, then sat with his head in his hands. He felt sick. Used and humiliated. Avril stared at him for a long moment. Johnny didn’t move. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said finally, and stalked off.
Erica turned up in tears almost immediately Avril left.
‘Why?’ she asked him. ‘Just tell me why.’ Johnny had no idea what to tell her. ‘Avril’s really upset. What did you do to her?’
Johnny found his voice. ‘Nothing. She … I … I thought she was you …’
‘Just like Tom thought I was Avril?’
‘He must’ve—’
‘Liar.’ She wiped tears from her face with both hands. ‘He knew it was me, but he still tried it on. Did you? With Avril?’ She took his silence as an admission of guilt. ‘You’re sick, the pair of you.’
‘Erica, I swear I didn’t know. It’s dark in here …’ He was grateful for the sickly sweet incense; it masked the musky scent of sex hanging in the air.
‘I’d know if someone other than you kissed me, even if he looked like you and wore your shirt, even if it was dark. It would be obvious, it would feel wrong.’
‘I didn’t know.’ Johnny was desperate. ‘Please, love.’ He stood up, put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I thought it was you in here. You’ve got to believe me.’
‘You’re a liar.’ She twisted out of his grasp, turned her back on him. ‘Avril told me this would happen. She saw it in my tea leaves. She said you were just using me.’
‘No. I wouldn’t. I’m not.’
Erica sobbed, then got her voice under control. ‘We’re finished, Johnny. I don’t ever want to see you again.’ Turning her back on him, she went out to where Avril was waiting for her and they slammed out of the flat.
Chapter 13
‘The band was my saviour,’ Johnny told Alex. ‘I poured all my energies into it, writing, practising, performing. I made it my life until I could think of what had happened, think of Erica, without feeling like I’d had my heart ripped out.
‘Tom was in bits about it, he really had thought it was all just a bit of a laugh. He told me that Avril had been going on about how she and Erica used to swap clothes and fool people by pretending to be each other when they were kids, so when Erica turned up in Avril’s dress and sat herself on his knee, he just went along with it. It was only when he tried necking on with her that she bailed out. I didn’t know whether to wish he’d tried it on a lot sooner or be grateful he waited so long. If Erica had walked in just a few minutes earlier …’
He ran his hands through his hair. ‘I think she knew I was serious about her. I think she was starting to feel the same. But when that happened … She just thought that Tom and I had fancied a quick grope of each other’s girl. Although I don’t know how she believed it could be my and Tom’s doing when it was Avril who’d suggested it to her.’
‘Why did she do it?’
‘God knows. To split me and Erica up? Because she could? She and Tom weren’t serious, it took her less than a week to hook up with another guy, a singer this time. I saw her a couple of times at gigs. She acted like nothing had happened.’ Johnny looked at Alex. ‘With a bloke, it’s easy. You lamp him one if he does the dirty on you. But with a woman … Avril used me. Then afterwards, she was just there, laughing at me, and I was powerless to do anything about it.’
Johnny stared off into the middle distance, lost in thought.
‘But life went on. Things got back to normal.’ He looked at her and smiled, if a little thinly. ‘And like most of the things that happened to us, I got some songs out of it.’
Alex nodded. A couple of heartbreakingly bleak numbers in the band’s repertoire sprang to mind as possibles, songs that could reduce her to tears if she was down or drunk. And that was without knowing the misery that lay behind them.
***
Back at the pub that evening, Alex took a phone call from her sister Isabel.
Alex’s little sister was in a state of high excitement. ‘Thank God you answered, I’ve been dying to speak to you. Guess what?’ Isabel didn’t give Alex the chance to guess. ‘I’m pregnant. Actually pregnant.’
Tears pricked Alex’s eyes. ‘How far on are you?’
‘About three months, I reckon. I waited before I said anything to anyone. I think it’s going to be okay this time.’
Alex fervently hoped so. Isabel had been pregnant twice previously, but both times it had ended in miscarriage. Both had also been well before the three-month mark, so that was hopefully a good sign.
As Isabel told Alex about her progress so far, how she was feeling, how Robert and his family were coping, Alex yearned to be there, to hug her sister and share properly in her news. Taking a normal approach to the job would have meant being home by now. As it was, she still had several weeks ahead of her. It had seemed like an advantage previously, but now she began to wonder.
***
Next day at Johnny’s house, he continued with his story.
‘We all got on really well, so when Andy’s eighteenth birthday finally came around that November, we all got together for a night out to celebrate. There was a big crowd of us in this pub near where he lived, it was quite a party.’
Chapter 14
Andy’s 18
th
birthday, 12
th
November 1972
Johnny despaired of Tom. He chased after Andy and Tiffany’s school friends endlessly, reckoned he needed a woman in uniform to get his mojo working.
‘It’s not your mojo I’m worried about,’ Andy told him. ‘They’re too young for you, leave them alone.’
‘You don’t, you go out with Tiff.’
‘I’m the same age, for Christ’s sake. I go to school with them.’
That didn’t stop Tom trying, though, and he had short relationships with a few of them. Andy reckoned the girls who went out with Tom were experimenting with older men. ‘Older men?’ Tom had exclaimed. ‘Older men? I’m twenty-fucking-two.’ Andy’s expression gave him away. To him, twenty-fucking-two was pretty fucking old.
On the night of the party, Tom’s date was a girl called Penny, who was seventeen. Johnny’s girlfriend at the time was a posh bird named Portia; she saw Johnny as her bit of rough, with his long hair and his Yorkshire accent. He knew and didn’t care, it was nothing serious; they were just having fun.
Cormac Boyd preferred drinks to dates: ‘Bloody women,’ he said. ‘They’re all the same, they get a fucking face on, mouth like a cat’s arse. I used to get grief all the time from Trisha. “Haven’t you had enough, Cormac. Why do you drink so much, Cormac.” It’s enough to turn a pint.’
The evening was in full swing and taxis had been ordered to take everyone to a club when the pub shut. Johnny swallowed the last of his pint and headed into the gents before they moved on.
‘It’s okay, Andy, I’ve got your hair.’
‘Tiff? Is that you?’
‘Johnny?’ The cubicle door swung open and Tiffany peered out.
‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s Andy. I think his drinks have been spiked.’ Johnny heard Andy groan. Tiff turned back to him. ‘It’s okay, throw it all up. You’ll feel better for it.’
Johnny went over and looked into the cubicle. Andy was kneeling in front of the toilet, looking very much the worse for wear. Tiffany had his hair pulled back so that he wasn’t sick in it. She stroked his brow and shot Johnny a desperate look.
‘Who would do this to him? They’ve ruined his night, whoever it was. I don’t know what to do. We can’t go on to a club, but I can’t take him home in this state. He’s on a knife-edge with his parents anyway, what with the time he spends with the band. They think he should be studying more. He hasn’t told them yet that he’s not going to uni.’
‘Here,’ said Johnny, fishing his keys out of the pocket of his jeans. ‘Get a cab to the flat, stay there until he’s in better shape. You’ll not be expected back until the early hours so you’ve got a bit of time to sort him out.’ He dug in his wallet for some money. ‘Here’s the cab fare. Get some coffee and some food inside him if he can stand it, that should help.’
Tiff took the keys and the money. ‘Thanks, Johnny, you’re a good friend.’ She let go of Andy’s hair and reached up to kiss Johnny’s cheek. Andy chose that moment to throw up again.
‘Best rinse his hair before you try to get into a cab,’ said Johnny. ‘See you later.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll sort this.’
Johnny had a pretty good idea who was responsible for the state Andy was in. When they got to the club he sought out Cormac Boyd. Cormac grinned when he saw Johnny. ‘Seen the big kid, Johnny? He seems to be missing out on his own party.’
‘Why do you think that is, Cormac? Any ideas?’
Cormac laughed. ‘Can’t take his drink, that’s his problem.’
‘He knows that, that’s why he stuck with beer and took it slowly. And yet despite that, he seems somehow to have ended up in one hell of a state. Do you know how that happened?’
Cormac cackled. ‘Couldn’t rightly say.’
‘You spiked his drinks, didn’t you, you evil cunt?’
‘It was just a prank. Bit of fun, you know?’
‘No, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me. Eh?’ Johnny pushed Cormac in the chest. ‘How much fun was it to make the kid ill on his birthday?’ Johnny pushed him again, kept on until his back was up against the wall. Cormac was worried; he was pissed and unsteady on his feet, and Johnny was both angry and very much in control of himself. Tom saw them and strode over.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Brains here decided it was funny to spike Andy’s drinks.’ Johnny spat the words out. ‘Kid’s in a right state. Isn’t he?’ This last he directed at Cormac, giving him a dig in the ribs as he spoke.
‘Oh, Christ, tell me you didn’t.’ Tom looked disgusted.
‘It was just for a laugh,’ Cormac wailed. ‘No harm meant, just a bit of fun. I slipped voddies into his beer—’
‘You’d better sort yourself out, or you’re out of the band.’ Cormac looked shocked. ‘In fact, if Andy wants you out, you are out. It’s his call. Is that enough fun for you?’ Johnny turned on his heel and walked off.
‘You fucking fool.’ Tom followed him, leaving Cormac Boyd propped up against the wall, bewildered, wondering why no one but him could see the funny side.
Chapter 15
‘Next time I saw Andy, I asked him if he wanted Cormac out of the band. He said no, in a funny way Cormac had done him a favour. He and Tiff never had any privacy, their parents were always around, so when he’d been feeling a bit better they’d made the most of having the flat to themselves. We all just assumed they’d been at it for ages, they’d been going out for years, but it turns out that was their first time. It seems quaint now to think of people waiting so long, but that was Andy and Tiff all over. They were made for each other.
‘Anyway, despite stunts like that, we kept that line-up until February ’73. By then Cormac’s drinking had got totally out of hand. It had been getting gradually more of a problem for some time, but he started turning up pissed for gigs and then drinking even more while we were playing. In fairness, we all usually had a pint standing, but he kicked the arse out of it. A couple of times he fell off his drum stool. It was embarrassing and it was damaging our reputation. It had to stop.’
Johnny rubbed his eyes. ‘At least with Helix, though, Tom and I felt we were heading more in the right direction. We were starting to put some half decent songs together, too. A couple of the ones on Heartbreaker’s first album were written by Tom and me during the Helix period. And Andy was fantastic. Even in those early days, he had something special.
‘We replaced Boydy with Paul Scott. We couldn’t understand a word he said for the first month. He had a broad Geordie accent and he’d not long since moved down to London. Paul had already teamed up with Colin Carson, you know he plays keyboards and guitar, but they weren’t very happy with the band they were in. We all got together in the back room of the pub we practised in just to see what would happen.’ Johnny smiled. ‘It was amazing when we all played together that first time, pure magic. Paul and Colin got what we were trying to do immediately. We jammed some songs and the sound we made was incredible. We just grinned like idiots and turned up the volume. The difficult bit was coming up with a name we all liked.’
***
Tom was building a joint, layering Rizlas on the Faces flexi-disc that had come free with the previous issue of the
New Musical Express
. ‘What about …’ he squinted at the track listing. ‘What about The Borstal Boys? Then we’ll have Rod Stewart singing about us every time the Faces play a gig.’ He took out a pouch of tobacco.
‘Don’t be fucking daft, man.’ Paul Scott was less than impressed. ‘If we’re going to use somebody else’s song titles, we should use something by Free.’
‘Like what? Go on, smart arse, give it your best shot.’ Tom tore a strip from the flap on the Rizla packet and rolled it up.
‘How about Hunter?’
‘Lame.’ Tom flicked his Zippo into life and lit the paper twist, then drew smoke into his lungs and held it there.
Paul took the joint from his fingers. ‘The Brother Jakes. Soldier Boys.’ He took a drag.
‘Why not Catfish?’ suggested Colin. ‘You know, Rory Gallagher, Taste.’
‘I know,’ said Tom, through a haze of smoke. ‘I’ve got the perfect name for us.’ The joint continued its rounds as everyone turned to look at him. ‘Rivendell,’ he said, with a theatrical flourish of his arm.