Page 94 of Going Solo

“If they can, yes.” Ludo glanced at the crowds disappearing inside. “Must dash, dear fellow.”

I thanked them both, and we said our goodbyes.

As I jogged towards Piccadilly Circus, weaving through crowds of pedestrians with the book buried safely under my arm to keep it dry, it started to speak to me, to tempt me. Like Gollum with the One Ring inLord of the Rings, now that I possessed it, I couldn’t give it up. Ihadto know what was in it. I abandoned the Tube and turned up Regent Street to find a bus stop. The bus would give me a lot more reading time.

From Dirty Little Secret, by Jasper Horner

New York might be the city that never sleeps, but Cole physically could not sleep. He had been on a four-day cocaine bender. He was jittery, and his eyes were so dark and bloodshot, he looked like a corpse. I was sleepless, too, terrified that if this continued, a corpse was exactly what I’d wake up next to.

Cole couldn’t perform. He was useless onstage. Chase and Joey were carrying his parts. The management team travelling with us had confiscated and flushed his drugs at least five times on the US tour up to this point. The thing about addicts is, they’re resourceful and they’re sneaky. They always seem to know where to get more gear. Cole never went without. No sooner had one lot been flushed than another little baggie would appear out of a pocket or a satchel or a pair of socks. For illegal drugs, it was mostly coke. For the legal (but illegally obtained) it was a predictable cocktail of uppers and downers. Adderall. Dexedrine. Xanax. Ambien. Except for the night we went to Punk, the infamous New York club, well known for its free-for-all orgies. That night, someone sold, or gave, Cole a tab of Ecstasy.

“I’m going to Punk,” he’d announced, standing in the bathroom door of our hotel room, in his pants.

“You’re not going to Punk,” I said, patiently. He’d come offstage two hours earlier, skipped the meet-and-greet, and because it was a Friday night, wanted to go blow off some steam in a club. That’s a normal thing for a guy in his twenties to want to do, and we had security with us, but Cole was in no fit state to go out in public—and Punk is no ordinary club.

“A guy on GayHoller is picking me up,” Cole said. “He’s going to be downstairs in five minutes. I need to get ready.”

He held up his phone and showed me a picture of a blond beefcake with shoulders like motorcycle helmets. He looked like a Viking.

Needless to say, I was not having Cole go clubbing with a random from a hook-up app. We argued about it for five, ten, fifteen minutes—I have no idea. What I remember is, he was so belligerent I finally agreed to let him go, as long as I went with him and Totally Records’ security drove us there. In truth, I doubted the venue would let him in. He was way too out of it. I thought we’d be back at the hotel inside half an hour.

“We need to think about the paps,” I said. “You can’t be seen going into a sex dungeon. It’d be the end of the band.”

“You do costumes, make me a disguise!” he said, waving his arms in the air like I could magic up an outfit out of nothing. In the end, that’s exactly what I did. Punk is avant-garde and post-gender—I could dress him up in almost anything. The key was he couldn’t be recognisably Cole. I borrowed a blond wig and a silver sequined dress from the backup singers’ wardrobe, put him in false eyelashes and some heavy make-up to disguise his face, and away we went.

Forty minutes later, we were in a grimy warehouse nightclub. Two storeys were dance floors, but the basement was strewn with mattresses and filled with groups of naked, sweaty men indulging in the kinds of sex I’d only heard about in theory. Our security detail—Anton, Dexter, and Michelle, all ex-military—waited outside. A chain of communication had been arranged with the club’s bouncers. If we got into trouble, our security team would be inside in a flash. For our guys, it was as much as their union would let them do—and more than they should have had to put up with. While I went to the bar and got us both some water, Cole took a pill. MDMA always made Cole incredibly horny. I returned to see him disappearing into the crowded dance floor. I lost him for maybe five or ten minutes. When I found him again, he was in a toilet cubicle with a broken door, the dress hitched up around his waist, with a huge Viking bent over him—and a queue of half-naked men lined up to take their turn. My heart was broken. I loved Cole. I had given him everything of me. I was torn between fury and eviscerating pain. But I had to protect him.

“That’s my boyfriend,” I shouted. “Get away from him.”

The men laughed. The Viking roared and spent himself, and I screamed for security. But two of the other men grabbed me, covered my mouth, and held me back. I was forced to watch, helpless, as the Viking pulled his jockstrap back up, and the next man took his place. And Cole? When he finally looked back and I caught his eye, all I got was a stupid gurning smile, and a thumbs up.

ChapterThirty-Eight

An hour later, I got off the bus at Golders Green in shock from the claims in Jasper’s book. I found Mitch waiting for me. When we got to the house, the SUV pulled into the garage, and I waited for the door to come down completely before I got out of the car, making absolutely sure none of the paparazzi gathered outside Cole’s Hampstead compound got a photo. My whole body was shaking.

“Have you got it?” Fiona said, as I walked into the large open-plan kitchen and living room. Cole was dressed in slouchy pyjamas and was buried so deep in the brown leather couch it looked like a gigantic fungus was swallowing him.

“Hello to you, too, babes,” I said, my head still spinning. I handed her the book. It looked decidedly well-thumbed from where I had skimmed through it with all the forensic precision of a panicked squirrel.

“Sorry,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. “Thank you.” Fiona dropped the book into her bag and shovelled in assorted notepads and scraps of paper. “Cole, I’m taking this back to mine. If Winslow, Carmel, Angie, and I pull an all-nighter, we might have something by morning. Stay by your phone, please.” She swung her bag over her shoulder. “Love you,” she said to her brother. “Don’t let him leave the house!” she said to me, before bouncing out the door, keys jangling.

“Hey,” Cole said. He looked childlike, broken, swamped by his couch, surrounded by empty crisp packets, water bottles, and disintegrating balls of tissue. He stood, put his arms around me, and pulled me into a hug. “I missed you. I’m glad you’re here.” His eyes were puffy and red. I returned the hug, but I could feel myself holding back. If even half of what I’d read in Jasper’s book was true—the drug taking, the sex parties, the violence, the infidelities, the self-entitled douchebagginess—I wasn’t sure I knew who Cole was at all.

* * *

“You read it,” Cole said as I sat down beside him with a freshly made pot of peppermint tea. I paused, unsure whether to admit it. “I can tell. You’re looking at me differently now.”

I shook my head. “Don’t be silly.”

“I knew you would.”

I poured the tea, grateful to have something to do. “Has there been any news?”

“Fiona spoke with someone from Totally Records this afternoon. They deny they’re behind the book.”

“So, they’ll be suing him for breaching his NDA, then?” I handed Cole a mug of tea.

“You’d think that. But no, it’s ‘not in their interests to invest capital in protecting an asset they no longer own.’ That’s a direct quote, by the way. If you ever wondered how they viewed us, there’s your answer.”

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