Page 12 of The Reboot
‘Drink?’ Charlie asked from the kitchen area. ‘I mean, I’ve got Coke or Sprite,’ he added quickly.
‘Coke, please. Diet if you have it?’
He nodded and opened a big American-style fridge.
‘But you have whatever you want,’ Roly added as Charlie pulled out two bottles of Coke. ‘I’m cool with it.’
‘Nah, I don’t drink much these days anyway,’ Charlie said, as Roly turned back to the view. ‘I might have a beer later.’
He joined Roly at the window and handed him a bottle. ‘Well, cheers!’ He crashed his bottle against Roly’s and took a long slug. ‘It’s hard to believe we were on stage there, isn’t it?’ He nodded to the Aviva.
‘I was thinking the same thing. It seems like another life.’
‘Itwasanother life.’ They were both silent for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. ‘Listen to us,’ Charlie said then with a laugh. ‘We sound like old men.’
Roly smiled.
‘Chilli will be ready in about ten minutes,’ Charlie said, nodding towards the kitchen as Roly followed him to the sofa. A bowl of tortilla chips and a tray of dips were laid out on the low glass coffee table in front of it.
‘You cooked?’
Charlie grinned. ‘Yeah, I’m a bit of a domestic goddess these days. I made that too,’ he said as Roly scooped up guacamole on a tortilla chip.
‘It’s really good.’
‘I’ve even started making my own bread.’
‘Bread? Seriously? You know you can buy that in the shops now?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘It’s something to do. I was kind of at a loss after the band finished.’ He shifted awkwardly. ‘You know what it’s like.’
‘You had your solo career, though.’
‘So did you.’
‘Hardly the same thing,’ he said wryly. Charlie’s couple of solo albums hadn’t exactly set the world on fire, but they hadn’t bombed as comprehensively as Roly’s. ‘You didn’t get shat on from a height and laughed out of town.’
‘Maybe not, but it took me a long time to get my act together. Too long, really. I kind of screwed that up.’
‘Your first album did well, didn’t it?’
‘Not as well as it should have done. When Oh Boy! finished everyone was telling me I had to move quickly, get something out as soon as possible, not let the grass grow under my feet. They were right. If I’d done it straight away, I’d have been flying. Look at Zack.’
‘Yeah.’ Zack had got his solo career off the ground with almost indecent haste after the band split up. He was the least-talented member of the group musically, but he really excelled at showing off and his self-promotion was second to none. His debut solo album had gone straight to number one and the supporting tour was a sell-out. ‘You don’t want to be like him, though, do you? His stuff is shite.’
‘Ah, it’s not that bad,’ Charlie said with typical grace. ‘Fair play to him. He did what I should have been doing. But I just couldn’t get on with it. Getting over the band was tough. I kind of lost the plot there for a while.’
‘In what way?’
‘Drinking, doing too much drugs, partying too hard. It was a strange time. It took me a while to pull myself together. It was like I was paralysed. I couldn’t shift myself to do anything. I felt kind of … lost. Was it like that for you?’
‘Well, no. It was a bit different for me. I mean, I got kicked out. And I went straight from the band into rehab, so it’s not like I was left to my own devices.’
‘Yeah. You were lucky.’
‘Seriously?’ Roly screwed up his face. That was such bullshit!
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do with myself. One minute I was in the band, and I was being told where to go and what to do every second of the day – what to say, how to dress, even who I should be going out with. And then the next thing, I was on my own, and there was just … nothing. I could do whatever I wanted, but I had no idea what that was. I hadn’t even had to think about it in years. So I just sort of … drifted.’ He sighed. ‘At least in rehab you had a structure. You knew what you were doing.’
