Chapter Four

Jake half-woke to feel sunshine on his back, and floated on the warmth, lost briefly in time and space. He was an impatient, uneasy child again, crammed into the box room of a caravan with Simon, hoping to be allowed to run free on the beaches. Then he was a teenager skiving from school, asleep in the afternoon with the radiators on, tricked for a moment into thinking that the summer was back. Or he was out on the veranda in Ibiza, finally waking after finally sleeping; a whole lifetime with nothing to do ahead of him. He thought for a moment that he might get back to sleep, but his knee started to throb. He shifted slightly, hoping to ease the pressure on it, but pain shot through him and properly woke him.

He actually slept better when there were shows to do: then his body registered at some level that it was going to be in deep trouble if it didn’t sleep properly, at a proper sort of time and it was more or less OK. But during the breaks – even short breaks like this one - he always found himself wandering around in the middle of the night, thoughts playing over in his head. It could be anything. Football scores. Dance moves. Books he’d read. Things he’d said. Things other people had said. Last night it had been Marty. His head had suddenly been full of stuff that Marty had said years and years ago, and it just wouldn’t shut up. It wasn’t even important stuff; just everyday Marty conversations. Marty trying to get his Mam to leave him alone in the early days. Marty trying to explain to a waiter in a hotel in Singapore how to make a proper chip butty. Marty explaining why he didn’t like wearing PVC. Marty being chippy behind Jeff’s back. Marty saying sorry for not keeping up the day before he went: that pointless, hopeful “sorry lads, I’ll crack it tomorrow” was on a particularly short repeat loop that just wouldn’t stop.

Jake had tried reading, but had ended up watching old Steve Martin films on one of the channels on the TV in his room, having hit a number of Martys of various ages as he flipped through the channels. It didn’t quite drown the Marty in his head out, but it did at least provide a distraction; and he was glad when it was properly morning, and there was properly stuff to do again. A photo shoot for the next year’s calendar, which was thankfully short as they already had material from the shows, and another Jeff discussion about whether they needed to change the stadium shows which had been concluded with Bob being sent to dig out the old photos they had used as a backdrop for the reunion tour. Jake had gone back to his room intending to order up some lunch, and only then had sleep finally found him.

He gingerly stretched his leg out, and the pain got worse. It was only a week or so since the last injection, and it had already worn off. They hadn’t been wrong when they had said that it would get worse: he knew he could get to the end of this tour, but it was hard to see much further ahead than that. He blocked the thought again, knowing that he would soon have to face up to it. It was a fabulously sunny day, and the sunlight was glittering on the water in the marina and out on the river. He needed to be out there, not stuck inside tying his head in knots.

He almost got as far as the lift before remembered that he needed some sort of disguise. He’d done no more than down some painkillers, grab an apple, and put some old sneakers on. He kept forgetting that he was famous again, which at that particular moment meant that he was likely to regret it if he didn’t go back for a hat and/ or sunglasses and his phone. Jeff kept telling him that the phone was so he could call for help: that was still one of the weirdest bits.

Down by the river, Jake didn’t feel as stupid as he expected to in baseball cap and shades: the sun would have been shining straight in his eyes. He walked along uneasily at first. There weren’t many people about, and he watched carefully to see if they were watching him. He was only a short way down the path when a woman who had been standing looking out over the river walked towards him with a camera. He could feel his heart beat speed up, as he very pointedly ignored her. She sped up. He sped up too, although his knee didn’t help. The woman was clearly a bit taken aback, and tried to explain in slightly broken English than she wanted a photo of herself and her friend with the picture. Jake hesitated, confused, and she gestured to the man who had been standing with her, and then at a large cartoon of a knight with a dragon on one of the hoardings around some building work which was going on along the river bank. As he took the camera, praying that he was going to manage to hit the right buttons, he could feel himself blushing. The poor girl just wanted a holiday snap with her bloke. Thank God Duncan wasn’t there: he would never have heard the last of it, especially as it took three or four attempts to produce a picture that was actually in focus.

At least the three of them were laughing together by the time he finally got the shot that they wanted, though, and after that his mood lifted. At the point where the Thames Path signs sent him across a supermarket car park, and then round the back of a number of builders’ merchants, he wished that he had thought to pick up a map. But it was good to feel the sun on his face, and although the aches and pains never quite went away he enjoyed the feeling of the ground beneath his feet, and the beat of one foot in front of the other. He had no idea what the time was, but the evenings were almost at their longest, so he just carried on going until his head was properly empty and all he knew was the physical movement of walking and the sunlight which was by then heavily filtered by the trees over the path. He could have been anyone, and he could have been anywhere, but he was happy where he was. At one point his phone beeped: it was set too loud and made him jump. A text from Jeff. He wasn’t in a Jeff mood, so he turned off the phone without reading it, and carried on along the path. There was a slight breeze, constantly shifting the shapes of the shadows and light pools almost like running water.

Eventually he came to a pub: after that it looked as if the path ran along by a factory and there were no more trees. Jake had never been a great drinker, and officially he didn’t now drink at all. But his knee was beginning to be more of a nuisance again, and the idea of a pint of very cold lager was suddenly a very attractive one, especially if he could bring it back out and drink watching the sun on the water. He’d been concentrating so much on the trees, he had almost forgotten about the river.

As he sat down on a ledge near the river bank, with a beer and a glass of ice cubes to crunch, he reflected on how he only knew tiny parts of London. He’d had a base of one kind or other in London for over a decade, but he had never really lived there. He had no idea where he was in map terms, but this wasn’t what he thought of as London. He was wondering just how many other little havens were hidden away in the city, when he was called away from his thoughts by a very ordinary looking, slightly chubby man who sat down beside him. He started to make a “nice weather” comment, before the glimmer of recognition:

“Oh. You’re Jake McDonald, aren’t you?”

Jake felt for his phone in his pocket and wished that he had kept his hat on, but couldn’t really deny it.

“Saw one of your shows last week with the Missus. Wasn’t looking forward to it that much, to tell the truth, but those screens you had with the computer graphics, they were incredible…”

Once Jake had got over his instinct to flee, it was one of those situations in which it was fine to be famous. They talked until their beers were done, and then until the next lot of beers were done, with Jake repeatedly apologising for not knowing much about the technical side of the shows - but enjoying talking about it anyway. Most of the ice cubes melted before he got round to crunching them, but the water was still ice cold when he drank it down. He autographed the back of a menu which the chubby guy fetched, slightly embarrassed, from the bar, before leaving just as it started to get dark with instructions on bus routes and likely taxi pick-up spots to get him back to the hotel.

It was only after he got out of the taxi that he sensed, too late, that something else must have happened. The taxi driver had been listening to Classic FM and had given him no warning, and the hotel entrance wasn’t fully visible from the road, so the scrum of photographers saw him before he saw them. Jake had no choice but to try to keep on walking, as he quite literally had nowhere else to go. It felt like trying to force your way through a hostile mob while being pursued by a firing squad. There were flashes everywhere, questions everywhere. Marty. Abducted. Police. Band. Marty. Tour. Marty. Marty. Abducted. Police. Marty. Marty. Marty.

Jake could feel himself starting to panic, however hard he tried not to: he was shielding his eyes with his hand, repeating “please let me through” although nobody seemed to hear. It was as if he was trapped in a very small space, which was getting smaller by the second. He was no longer even sure where the front door of the hotel was, and when he eventually pushed his way through he found it shut in his face with stony-faced hotel staff standing behind it. He stood there, trying to stay blank, trying to stay in control, staring at the door. It was only seconds before they recognised him, and hurried to let him in, but it felt like it was never going to end.

Two of the hotel staff rushed to his side once he was inside, but he pulled away from them as if they had been part of the general assault on his personal space, and hurried over towards the lifts.