Page 40

Then

Alice

Disciples are playing a showcase gig at the St Moritz on Wardour Street. Twenty music journalists plus Robin’s elite guest list of beautiful people, guaranteed to make me, at seven months pregnant, feel fat and insecure. Rick is my plus-one, resplendent in mulberry velvet loons and a patchwork jacket of emerald green and gold; it’s a reality check for us both that in an hour’s time our lovers will be appearing on stage.

This is the first show Disciples have played in a while, and it sold out instantly. They have been rehearsing the new songs for weeks, and even though the first single went straight into the Top 10, I know Jake is anxious. He is preoccupied almost all of the time. We’ll spend a whole night together and he might only speak a few words to me. I’ll be glad when the gig is over, except that then I am counting down the days until the band’s three-week European tour.

At the St Moritz, Rick and I are checked off the guest list and allowed backstage to the dressing room, a tiny, smoke-filled pit, ashtrays brimming with butts, an unhoovered carpet and nowhere to sit. They are all smoking, and passing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from one to the other, and I watch, alarmed, as Jake takes a sip.

‘You’re drinking,’ I say in as measured a tone as I can manage through the panic that throbs in my veins.

‘Just a little bit. I always drink before a show. I can’t do it completely sober. I’m nervous. What if the new songs bomb?’

‘You’ll be brilliant,’ I say, wrapping my arms around him, but only briefly. I can tell he needs the freedom to pace.

‘See you on the other side,’ he says, and I hear the instruction to leave.

‘He’s drinking,’ I say to Rick the moment we’re outside the door.

‘Jake is in a good place now, you don’t need to worry. Like he said, it’s just a bit of Dutch courage.’

The St Moritz is a dark, subterranean, cellar-like space, so thick with smoke my eyes sting. We find Robin at the bar ordering wine, looking at the bottle in distaste when it arrives.

‘Utter plonk. I’ll have to hold my nose to force it down. Want some?’

The three of us push our way through the tightly packed crowd until we’re almost in front of the stage, bodies pressing in all around us. I feel a little panicky here, that sense of not being able to fight my way out.

‘I’m a bit claustrophobic,’ I whisper to Rick, and he takes my hand and says, ‘Only for half an hour. I’ll look after you.’

Robin points out the editor of NME , a reporter from Sounds magazine, the music critic from the Evening Standard , someone else from Time Out .

‘Jake’s nervous,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve never seen him like that before. He’s always so confident about his music.’

‘There’s a lot of pressure from the record company. They need album two to go well. But don’t worry. They were brilliant in rehearsal.’

A surreal, out-of-body experience, seeing my lover walk onto the stage, standing just metres away from us. He is an exceptionally beautiful man; I know this, of course, but seeing him raised up on stage like this emphasises it even more. It takes me back to that first gig at the Marquee, to the feeling of being vacuumed towards him. He raises one hand in salute and the audience cheers its welcome.

‘Tonight we’re playing the new songs from our album Apparition for the first time. We hope you like them.’

And with that, they’re straight into ‘Sinister’, the rockiest number on the record. Jake is instantly at ease as he powers through the lyrics, mouth just centimetres away from the mic, his voice that addictive (for me, anyway) combination of purity and rawness.

I should know by now how assured he becomes on stage, no hint of self-consciousness as he struts from one side to the other and dances with his head thrown back, oblivious to everything except the music.

The audience is loving it, as far as I can tell, completely engrossed, eyes trained on the stage, no one talking.

We are four songs in, just two more to go, and the mood shifts as the opening chords of ‘Cassiopeia’ strike up. I’m looking at Rick when Jake begins singing, his rant against homophobia concealed as an ambiguous love song. I wonder what Rick is thinking as he listens to the story of our night in Southwold, his face is unreadable. But when the song finishes, he puts his mouth to my ear.

‘He sees more than the rest of us, doesn’t he?’ Rick says.

And I think, that’s exactly it. Jake’s childhood may have damaged him irrevocably but it also gave him more insight than most people have in a lifetime.

For the final song Jake sits on the edge of the stage, long legs dangling, just as he did the first time we saw him.

‘We don’t normally do covers,’ he says, ‘but hey, for this song, we can make an exception.’

From the first chord, I know it’s ‘The Man in Me’ by Dylan. The room shrinks as Jake seeks out my face and holds my gaze. And this song, which has broken my heart at times, becomes joyful in Jake’s rendition. I understand why he’s chosen to play it tonight: it’s his way of reassuring me that he’s going to be fine, we are going to be fine. Better than that. We are going to be golden.

At the end of the set, the audience roars its approval with cheers and catcalls and stamping of feet. Rick turns to me and says: ‘Prepare yourself, my love. They are going to be massive.’