Page 77 of Days You Were Mine

‘I really hope you’re getting the magnitude of this. Should I spell it out for you? I want that woman out of my life.’

Then

Alice

Jake’s deterioration is easily measured through his phone calls: the ones he makes, then the ones he doesn’t. I can always pick out the alcohol in his voice, even if I don’t hear it at first. At the start of the tour he seems mildly drunk, high after his shows and a late dinner with the band. But within a week the drinking has accelerated into something else. Night after night, his voice is so slurred and indistinct it’s hard to understand at times. He tells me he loves me, that he misses me, that it’s so hard being away. I lie awake long into the night after these calls, while our baby wriggles and shifts inside me, heels and elbows erupting alien-like from my stretched stomach, and I worry. Is this it, the start of his decline? Is he going to become ill again? I am counting down the days until the tour finishes.

When Jake calls, I often ask him to put Eddie on the line, but he never does.

‘You’re not looking after yourself,’ I say one night when I’ve woken up at three to take the call. ‘You’re drinking too much. You need a break. Remember how depressed it made you last time? You have to stop.’

But Jake rarely listens on these phone calls.

‘Love you,’ he says, his voice thick with booze. ‘No need to worry ’bout me.’

He hangs up without saying goodbye, too drunk, it seems, to remember he’s in the middle of a phone call. My demons are at their peak in the middle of the night, my brain a cinematic projection of all the things that might go wrong. Jake staggering into the middle of the road, where he is mowed down by a truck. Jake overdosing on sleeping pills like Jimi Hendrix. Jake choking on his own vomit while he sleeps.

Eddie sounds the alarm just a few days before the band are due back.

‘Alice, it’s Eddie.’

My heart freezes over.

‘Oh God, please tell me he’s OK.’

‘He’s a mess. We’ve had to cancel tonight’s show. He’s been off his face for the past two weeks. We’ve been telling him to cut it out, but he won’t listen. He’s ruining the tour. But it’s his mental health I’m worried about. He’s a bloody fool.’

‘Come back, Eddie. Cut the rest of the shows. Please. Do it for me. Do it for the baby. We need to get him home.’ I realise I am crying, but it’s painless, unconnected, just a wetting of my cheeks.

‘I think you’re probably right. I’ll talk to Tom.’

Jake’s call comes in much later the same night. It’s three in the morning, but that doesn’t matter, I’m instantly awake on the second ring, waddling into the sitting room and snatching up the phone by the fourth.

‘Hey.’

How can one short syllable contain such profundity? I know from this greeting just how far Jake has fallen.

‘I’ve been so worried about you.’

‘Alice …’ He breaks off; is he crying?

‘Jake? Are you there?’

Nothing.

‘Please talk to me. I’ve missed you so much.’

There’s a gasp, that’s all, and then his voice, so weak and stilted I find I am crying myself.

‘I’m fucked, I think. So scared. Scared of everything.’

‘What things? Try to tell me.’

‘The trip home. Talking. Thinking. Going to sleep. Waking up. Having a shower. None of it seems … possible.’

‘Are you on your own? Where are the others?’ My voice sounds frantic even though I’m trying to stay calm.

‘In the hotel.’

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