Page 63 of Going Solo

“Barking at the great postman in the sky.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Cole’s phone beeped. “That’s Mitch, asking if we’re OK.” Cole texted something back. “I’ve asked him to send the chopper for me. You’ll be OK if I bail, won’t you?”

“Are you serious?”

Cole laughed. “Of course not. But I find it reassuring that apparently youdon’twant me to leave. Because, honestly, you were giving off some pretty frosty vibes.”

“You don’t say?” Cole was buried in his phone. I reached over and turned on the radio. It was a Jocasta Rose track. “Oh, it’s your ex-girlfriend,” I said. “Is this too painful for you? Do you want me to turn it off?”

“She was never my girlfriend. We’re mates.” Cole pointed at his face. “Big homo, remember?”

How could I forget?

“You know we had the paparazzi camped out in our street for a month when you came out,” I said. “Outside both the house and the salon. I couldn’t open a door without reporters asking me if we were getting together.”

Cole didn’t look up but stayed buried in his phone. “Sorry about that. It’s the price of fame, I’m afraid.”

“I wasn’t famous. I was a hairstylist who’d said something stupid on the telly once.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked up. I glanced down, caught his eye, and looked away again.

“To be honest with you, it was the first time I truly understood I couldn’t control my fame. That I would never escape it.”

“You finally decided to leverage it, like you always said you would,” Cole said, his eyes finally meeting and holding mine.

“You know what, I bloody did. And I ain’t sorry about it.”

“Yeah, I was dead proud of you for that.”

Cole smiled, returning to his phone. His head was hot on my thigh, and I could feel sweat soaking into my jeans. Jocasta started singing the chorus, and Cole joined her. His voice was deep and mellow and beautiful, and it vibrated through my leg like he was trying to rouse me. I was transported back a decade, to moments like this—lying on each other’s laps at thePop Starhotel, debating which nineties boy band had the most cultural impact, or singing along with the radio, harmonising with each other, playing with our musicality. As Cole sang, I started to sing, too—playing with the harmony, as I’d always done, while Cole sang the lyrics. It had been a long ten years since we’d heard our voices together. His baritone was richer, more mellow. My tenor was rusty, out of practice. Our voices weren’t the same anymore, but then, we weren’t the same boys we’d been back then either. There was too much water under the bridge for whatever this was. I stopped singing.

“Whydidyou come out, in the end?” I asked, when the song finished.

Cole paused. “It was when Mum got sick.” He moved his phone to look up at me. “She told me life was short and I had to live my truth.”

I met his eyes. “And Felicity let you do it?”

“Oh, not for ages, and she didn’t want to,” Cole said, disappearing back behind his phone. “Things might have turned out very different if she had. But eventually it was contract renewal time. And I’d been so, so unhappy. I said I’d leave the band unless I was allowed to come out.”

“That was ballsy.”

“Thank you. I also told them I wanted to write a song for the next album.”

“How’d you swing that? I thought everything was focus-grouped by the sausage factory.”

“Fiona,” he said. It was all the answer I needed. “It still got sausage-factoried, though.”

I thought about hearing Cole sing “Genevieve” “the way I wrote it.”

“I prefer your version,” I said.

“Thank you.”

The driver of the lorry in front of us got out of his cab and went for a piss in the bushes. The busload of girls whooped, hollered, and catcalled.

“So, Jocasta was never your girlfriend,” I said. “But did you ever have any boyfriends?”

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