Page 42 of Saving Mr. Bell

“Good job I’m not a comedian, then.” I sliced the sausages and shared them out equally between the two slices of bread. “Sauce?”

Arlo shook his head. “Just pepper.”

I added a generous amount of pepper to both and then shoved one in his direction. After pouring myself a coffee, I joined him at the small dining table. The curtains were open, sunlight streaming in through the window. No fresh snowfall. Sun. The snow felt like an hourglass ticking away the days and hours. Or maybe it was hours and minutes.

“Germany?” Arlo asked after a few minutes. “I kept my side of the bargain.”

I blew out a breath. “I don’t think the story starts in Germany. I think it starts months before that. Maybe as much as a year before.”

“Go on,” Arlo urged.

“It’s simple. Somewhere along the line, I lost the love for playing.” I might have said it was simple, but my increased heart rate as I admitted the truth, and the slight sweatiness ofmy palms, showed that for the lie it was. “It was fine at first. I could go through the motions and nobody seemed any the wiser. I guess when you’ve been playing as long as I have, muscle memory takes over.” I took a bite of my sandwich, Arlo waiting patiently for me to continue while I chewed and swallowed. “After all, what does it matter if I’m not feeling it?”

“It matters,” Arlo said quietly. “It’s like any job. If you start hating it, then it becomes torture.”

“I didn’t hate it. I wouldn’t go that far. It just didn’t feel the same as it once had. Maybe that’s inevitable, and it happens to everyone.”

“Your schedule was too busy. Your management should have known that.”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

“How many documentaries do I make a year?” Arlo asked.

I hid a smirk behind the rim of my mug. “You don’t know?”

“Two or three. I made four one year, and it made me want to go and live in a cave for six months. It was too much. It made me hate the process. Just like you playing too much robbed you of the joy of it. I vowed to have a better work/life balance after that. Luckily, I can do that because there isn’t anyone to tell me what to do. No one I listen to, anyway.”

I contemplated his words while I made inroads into my sandwich. Was it that simple? “I don’t know what happened in Germany,” I admitted. “I’d been out the night before, but it wasn’t what I’d call a wild night. I’d had a few drinks, but no drugs. I’m not an angel, but I don’t do drugs nearly as much as the media make out. I hadn’t picked anyone up. I’m not a complete idiot. I knew I had a concert the next night.” My fingers curled around the table edge while I did what I’d avoided doing ever since that night: recalling it in vivid technicolor. “I didn’t want to go on stage, so I guess I already knew something was amiss. Jade told me not to be so stupid, that I couldn’t letthe audience down, that it would be a logistical nightmare she wasn’t willing to deal with in terms of ticket refunds and media attention.”

Arlo snorted. “I’m rapidly coming round to your way of thinking that she’s a bitch. And I haven’t even met her.”

“I guess if I was being kind, I’d say she thought I was throwing a tantrum, that she was doing her job and reminding me of the consequences of my actions. It wasn’t like she could have forced me to go on stage if I’d really dug my heels in.” Arlo’s facial expression said he didn’t agree, that there was more than one way to force someone to do something they didn’t want to do.

“Anyway, I went on. And it was fine at first. There’s always an energy that comes from the audience that helps no matter how tired or rundown you are.” I took another bite of my sandwich. I hadn’t cooked it to let it go cold while I rambled about Germany. “I did a show once in… I think it was Portugal. Or maybe it was Spain. Definitely a Mediterranean country. I had flu and I was running a temperature. I felt like absolute shit and just wanted to stay in bed. Yet, I played better with the flu than I did in Germany. I just couldn’t seem to find my groove. And the harder I tried, the worse it got. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. I could have kept playing, but the audience deserved better. And the next piece I had coming up was Chopin’s Ballade No. 4, which in case you don’t know is challenging at the best of times. God knows what I would have done to that piece of music. So I bailed and left the stage.”

“Have you played since?”

I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell Arlo that of course I had, that I wasn’t a child scared of my own mind. Knowing he’d see straight through it, I shook my head.

Arlo took a sip of his coffee. “You’re burned out. You know that, right? All the alcohol, the drugs, the”—his lip curled slightly—“one-night stands are about you self-medicating. It was yourway of trying to relax when what you really needed was a break from everything.”

“Maybe. But how pathetic is that? I sit on my arse and play the piano, for God’s sake. I’m not negotiating multi-million pound deals or running into burning buildings to save lives.”

Arlo was already shaking his head before I got halfway through my speech. “I’ve seen the way you play and you give everything. Heart and soul. It’s physically and emotionally draining. You can’t do that night after night for years on end and not expect it to take its toll. How many concerts did you do last year?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“You averaged three a week,” Arlo informed me. “I worked it out. And that doesn’t include all the personal appearances or charity events, or—”

“I get it,” I said, worried that listening to a long list of things I did would make me exhausted just from hearing it. “I need to do less.”

“That, and you need to find the joy in it again. You need to remember why you did it in the first place.”

When Arlo stood and held his hand out, I knew exactly where he was taking me, a pit opening up in my stomach. I took his hand anyway because I trusted him.

Chapter Sixteen

Arlo

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