Page 29 of Revive
“Not fastening them?”
“Probably gonna take them off again the minute we get over there. Hardly seems worth it.”
They found Spook in the airy break-out space, a coffee sat on the table before him, and a cup of tea waiting for her exactly as she liked it. Ronnie dug a carton of strawberry milk out of the fridge and filled a glass. It was only a couple of minutes until Xane came in, Luthor and Rock Giant following him with boxes full of continental breakfast items.
“Just Ash we’re waiting on?” Xane asked, as they all settled and began unwrapping croissants and Belgian waffles, bread and various tubedpâtés and spreads. Paul, she noted, claimed one of the tubes for himself, and squeezed most of it straight into his mouth.
Ash arrived in a fluster only a few minutes later. “Sorry, Mrs Gore insisted on—”
“TMI,” came the collective response from everyone beside Ronnie. Whatever Ash had been about to say evidently meant Ginny wouldn’t be joining them, but merch was her remit, not music making. Alle briefly mourned the lack of female company. She’d fought her way to her current position in the music industry. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t encountered scores of rockers, ninety per cent of whom were men. Big, tattooed, scary-looking bastards. Sure, once you got past the appearances, most of them were sweethearts, but working with Black Halo was still daunting. Remastering one single for them was a whole different game to mixing, mastering, and producing their next album, especially when everyone knew the stakes were high. Xane might have ensured that Spook and the Black Halo brand were no longer trash, but that didn’t mean the world wouldn’t be its normal judgy overcritical self. Whatever they released would need to be stellar.
Pretty soon, she realised they were all throwing anticipatory glances in her direction. In response, she took a final swig of tea, and cleared her throat. “So, where in the process are you at? Has anything been recorded yet? Is there a confirmed track list?”
“I think we’re settled on the listing,” Xane replied. He and Spook exchanged nods. “The bigwigs might say otherwise, but they can swivel. Like they know anything. We’ve done rough cuts of all the songs.”
“It’s a double album,” Ash piped up, and she noted the track listing was well into double figures.
“Oh! Okay.” No one had mentioned that before.
“And we’ve started recording polished versions of some of the tracks, mostly getting the guitars and vocals done.”
“It’s quite far along, then?” Maybe that wasn’t such a surprise; they’d been holed up here since December, and a decade and five albums into their recording career, they had plenty of experience between them.
“I guess we should start with me listening to what you have. Then we can talk about the specifics.”
-10-
Allegra
That first day in the studio slipped past in a rush, followed by the next few in succession. Before she knew it, a week had come and gone. The album was shaping up to be Black Halo’s best yet, and in the running to be the definitive album of their career. It flirted with their past work, while establishing itself as something new and distinct. Spook’s influence was evident. She’d been surprised to find she could pick it out so easily, given that it was woven so seamlessly with Xane’s. Their words and music intertwined and layered into something greater than their separate parts.
Things were good. The band were easy to work with. The soul of the album drilled into every nuance of it, which made what she had to do so much easier. They’d done such a good job, there were times she felt like a spare part, but that only spurred her on to work harder, filling in the gaps and ensuring the glazing was evenly spread.
Still, as glorious as it was to embed herself in her job and enjoy it, what made life truly joyous was the opportunity to retire at the end of the day, back to the strange abode on the far side of the island, with Spook. To be a couple—two people with eyes for little more than each other. He was a generous man, intelligent, creative, witty in his own way, and a visionary in others. Nor was their relationship all sex. Though there was plenty of exploration. They pottered about on the beach of an evening and went for strolls. Built sandcastles and read books. Took baths in the strange, rock pool bathtub, and talked. Though not about the really important stuff, and a lot of the times about nothing much at all. It was like they’d extracted their texting relationship and taken it into the real world. It was what she’d wanted all along. Companionship, friendship meshed with that fiery attunement of their physical desires.
Xane only checked up on them the once, after a particularly long day, and then he only stayed two minutes.
To suppose such idyll could last indefinitely was perhaps foolish. Life always found a way to intrude. It did it in the form of phone calls from her brothers and music execs and middle management, but the biggest reality check…it tiptoed in through a half-open door completely unseen and struck unexpectedly.
Although really, it oughtn’t to have been unexpected at all.
***
“Fuck, what time is it?” Alle asked, raising her arm over her eyes to shield them. Even on the gloomiest of February days, the upper room of the Pepperpot resembled the insides of a daffodil. Said flowers were beginning to raise their shoots. Alle scrambled for her phone off the nightstand when Spook didn’t respond.
He wasn’t one of those people who hopped out of bed the moment his eyes opened. Rather, he liked to come to slowly over a stretch of ten to twenty minutes. He’d be awake, but drowsy and he’d get prickly if she prompted him into action before he was ready. He was not like her, the sort to set an alarm at the last possible minute, then dress at speed and race to the day’s destination at full tilt, scoffing breakfast on the move, while trying to juggle a mug of English Breakfast tea and blinking at everyone like a sloth.
No, Spook believed in civilised breakfasts, eaten at a table and composed of the right sort of food stuffs, not things you could swallow in two bites, and didn’t stave off hunger pangs for more than forty minutes. Probably why she always ate biscuits during a tea break, and why he was all wiry muscle, and she was curvy as hell. Of course, the fact he frequently skipped meals might factor in too. He was an absolute bugger for it. He’d especially do it when he was lost in the music, but other times his appetite seemed to take off on an extended road trip, and then he’d treat the notion of eating like he would the suggestion that he snort cocaine or skin rabbits and dance around in their entrails. Some nights, she ate with Ronnie and Paul to ensure she didn’t end up having to slope over to Blackwater’s for something on her own or attempt to heat baked beans over the open fire in their cottage-cave.
The numbers on her phone screen alerted her to the fact she was due in the studio to record the lead guitar for three tracks with Ash in twenty minutes. It’d take her at least ten to get there if she ran.
And Alle didn’t run unless she was being chased.
“Spook, we need to move. Gonna be late.”
She rolled out of bed and started fishing around for clothes. Her suitcase had made it over here a while back, but it was high time she did some laundry. Nearly everything had been worn. “If you’re not coming now,” —he’d promised to sit in the session with Ash— “if I stuff my washing in a bag, will you bring it over with you?” She could nip into Ronnie and Rock Giant’s cottage and put it in the washer-dryer during one of her tea breaks. “Okay if I borrow a shirt?”
Alle pulled one of his collection of black band T-shirts out of a drawer, and tugged it over her head, then pinched one of his shirts too, also black, and only a good fit if she left it unbuttoned and rolled up the sleeves.
