Inside the booth, Rush hits a button. “Where’s mine?”
“You can eat when the album’s done,” Wes calls around a mouthful of roasted pumpkin.
Rush rolls his shoulders and flexes his head to either side. “It’s all right for you. I can’t even have a smoke and a whiskey in here.”
“You gave up smokes three years ago, remember? Now get back to work.”
Rush swipes his pick down the strings, and a chord blasts from his guitar. “Yeah, yeah.”
I find myself smiling at their banter as I eat. The salad is loaded with avocado, hummus and roasted sweetcorn. While working with Palatine, the guys usually ordered pizza and beer if it was lunchtime and chicken and beer if it was dinner.
Rush listens to a few of the takes and nods slowly, seeming to like them but still isn’t satisfied. He switches to a different track and the process starts all over again. No wonder recording an album takes so long.
Wes yawns and stretches his arms over his head. “You can head off if you’ve had enough, Dree. We’ll be here till doomsday before he’s happy.”
When I check my phone, I see that it’s going on for eight in the evening. The long train journey and windowless room must have confused me into thinking it was earlier. I wave goodbye to Wes, Rush and the sound engineer and head upstairs.
What a strange day, and I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here. I feel a prickle of irritation toward Rush that he invited me down here and then pretty much ignored me all day. Or ignored my purpose here, at least.
As the dusk blackens to night, my anxiety mounts. The trains will probably stop soon and I’ll be trapped here until morning. The thought of asking someone for a lift or walking through the dark laneways to the train is vastly unappealing.
I’ll stay tonight, but if no one’s tried talking work with me by midday tomorrow, I’m getting the hell back to London.
I do a long flexibility session in my room, and then shower and get into bed and read on my phone. I haven’t reactivated most of my social media accounts since the incident, but Instagram is fairly safe and there are texts from friends to catch up on. I scroll through the #dancegoals and #dancerlife tags for a while, enjoying what everyone else has been up to, and then turn the lights out and close my eyes. It’s not even ten, but I’m exhausted.
What a weird ass day. I hope tomorrow things start making sense.
I wake up to a softly sunny morning, and open my window and lean out into the cool, damp air. The garden is ornate and full of flowers, with lawns beyond and trees dotted through the park. I pull on leggings, a t-shirt and runners and head downstairs.
There’s breakfast set out in the dining room, but at half-past seven in the morning, there’s no one else around. I drink a cup of coffee and gaze out the window, enjoying the sensation of my mind being too foggy to think very clearly. Once my brain wakes up, I’ll start remembering things.
It usually starts small. Dumb things I’ve said. Mistakes I’ve made all the way back to my high school years. Not knowing who Wes was yesterday will probably slice me with embarrassment for at least the next week, and probably longer.
The worst memories are of that last day with Palatine, and the next one when my work and my name were torpedoed online. Those are what really cripple me and have me crouched on the floor of the shower with my head between my knees while the water roars in my ears. Or I could be in the middle of doing something innocuous, like folding laundry, and I think of Striker Jones and all the vitriol that rained down on me and I can’t move, can’t think, I can only bury my head in my hands and whisper no no no over and over until it passes.
I should be over this by now. I keep telling myself, Why are you so pathetic? Nothing that bad even happened! You weren’t attacked. You weren’t raped. Fucking grow UP.
Palatine hazed me like I’d joined their frat. Played with me like a toy. They’d each take turns, trying to psych me out, and then laugh when I got upset. One of them accused me of stealing his lucky pick and had a meltdown in front of me, screaming and raging about how I was a thieving bitch. I just stood there frozen, on the verge of tears. Then they all started laughing.
Raising a hand to you, even metaphorically, and then laughing when you flinch, it’s a kind of psychological torture. I’m always searching for that next raised hand.
Before Striker and Palatine, my head was a happy place. A meadow of flowers and happily chirping birds. I liked it there. Now, it’s been churned up by heavy equipment and had load after load of trash dumped into it, the flowers are all crushed and the birds are dead.