Page 77 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)

Chapter Forty-Three

A Friday morning found Tarneesha, Nick, and me sitting around the table in our production office, planning the last ever episode of Pop Review . Well, Neesh and Nick and were planning it while I watched Instagram videos of Cole rehearsing for that night’s big gig—the first of his three final shows at Wembley Stadium.

Tarneesha threw a highlighter at my head. It glanced off my temple and hit the wall.

“I said we’ve got Jocasta Rose as our final guest in the two thirty-five slot.”

“Good, I like Jocasta,” I said, not taking my eyes off my phone.

Instead of using a backing track, a live philharmonic orchestra would be joining Cole onstage for the stadium shows. It must have cost a bomb. But, even on Instagram, the sound was incredible.

“We’ve got her for twenty-five minutes, so I’ll make a couple of packages—one looking back at her early career and one about the last couple of years,” Tarneesha said.

Nick tapped his finger on the desk. “What if we made the second one clips from her interviews in the studio over the years? Not just with this deaf bawbag, but with Raluca as well?”

“Sounds great,” Tarneesha said. “What do you think, Tobes?”

I was only vaguely aware of this conversation going on. I’d scrolled to another video. Cole was in a costume I hadn’t seen before. Apparently, he’d switched up his outfits for his stadium shows. He wore black leather boots, black leather trousers that looked remarkably like they were designed for Turkish oil wrestling, and a billowing puffy shirt laced up with rope in the front. He looked like a pirate. A sexy pirate. Stunning.

“This is a song about hope,” Cole said on the video, and my heart twinged. Great balls of orange-and-golden flame burst high into the air, swirling into the sky in boiling mushroom clouds. The orchestra struck up the opening notes of “The Flame.” I was shaking like Aunty Cheryl that time she tried to cure her hangover with two unmarked white well-they-look-like-paracetamol-to-me tablets she found on the pavement outside Sticky Vicky’s in Benidorm.

“Tobes!” A pocket calculator glanced off the side of my head.

“Ouch!” I checked my face for blood. “Where did you even get that from, babes?”

“I have a fax machine down here as well. I’ll throw that next.”

Nick looked exasperated. “Neesh was saying we’ll open the phone lines for the last hour and give the show over to the fans to share their memories and stories about what Pop Review means to them. What do you reckon?”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Unless…” Nick said. I waited for him to finish, but the words didn’t come.

“Unless?”

Nick hesitated. “Unless, maybe, you wanted to do something about the fact Cole’s stadium sho?—”

“No, not that. It’s in my contract. No Cole.”

“But it’s all anyone is talking about,” Tarneesha said. “You’ve been ignoring to watch rehearsal clips. You’re as obsessed as everyone else.”

“No,” Nick said. “Toby is obsessed with his ex. And he’s been watching clips of his shows and endlessly cyberstalking him like a desperate mooning saddo for the past eight months. Because…” Nick slapped me across the back of the head. “He…” He slapped me again. “Should never…” Slap . “Have broken up with him.” Slap .

Denzil popped his head through the door, and we all sat upright like naughty schoolkids caught misbehaving.

“Guys, let me introduce you to the new owners,” Denzil said. “This is Harland, from YMC.”

A guy who looked like the baddie in every single Muppets movie stepped into the room, followed by three other men who looked like they were assembled in the same factory. They all had names straight from The Dukes of Hazzard . Denzil introduced us, and we nodded politely. We’d been sacked by email three weeks earlier. From Monday morning, PureFM would be a Christian rock music station. The signage for Hallelujah Radio had already gone up outside. It’s the sort of thing that happens in the media. It’s a brutal industry. We had accepted our fates. But they hadn’t even kept Tarneesha on staff, and her mother was a Pentecostal minister, so our goodwill for these arseholes was non-existent.

“Nice to meet y’all,” Harland the cartoon villain said. All he was missing was a big hat and a horse. His existence was undoing the hardwiring in my brain. Hollywood had mistakenly led me to believe Texans were all hot as hell.

“Orright?” I said, trying to give these gentlemen the right amount of sneer.

The men were all Southern politeness but dead behind the eyes. Being stuck in a room making small chat with a Black woman, a homosexual, and a homosexual in a wheelchair had clearly tripped the diversity switch in their brains, and they’d powered down for safety reasons.

“I hear one of you is off to the BBC,” Harland said.

Nick raised his hand. “Guilty as charged.”

“I’ve never met a commie in a wheelchair before,” he said.

My jaw was on the floor. Nick opened his mouth to speak.

Harland burst into laughter. “I’m just messin’ with ya. Everyone in merry old England seems so quick to believe we’re all rednecks, it’s hard not to have fun with it. No, I’m glad to hear you’ve landed on your feet.”

I looked at Nick, fizzing with anticipation for his reply. But he smiled and said nothing.

“Shall I take you through to see the studio?” Denzil said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“Why, I’d like that, Den zeel .” He turned to the three of us. “Nice to meet y’all. God bless you—and good luck with whatever comes next in life’s journey.”

With that, they left. “Sorry,” Denzil mouthed as he closed the door behind him. It was Nick who broke the silence.

“Do you think it’s the circumcision that makes them such insensitive pricks?”

Tarneesha laughed. “Honestly, thought you was gonna shiv him for a sec.”

“Not like you to hold your tongue, babes,” I said.

Nick smiled. “Always be gracious in victory.”

“Victory?” Tarneesha said. “He’s sacked us.”

“Not sacked, Neesh,” Nick said. “Made redundant. It’s an important difference. I’ve got twenty-five grand of that arsehole’s money landing in my bank account on Monday. All because he has made me redundant. What he doesn’t know, and I have no intention of telling him, is that I’d lined up the gig at the BBC two months ago, and I’ve only been hanging around for my payout.”

“Sneaky bastard!” Tarneesha offered her fist, and Nick bumped it. “And the BBC was happy to wait two months?”

“Neesh, I’m a gay man in a wheelchair with a Sikh husband. The BBC would have given me David Attenborough’s pelt to wear as a raincoat if I’d asked for it.”

“You’re the best in the business,” I said. “They’re lucky to have you. And they know it.”

It was Tarneesha who got our meeting back on track.

“So, to be clear, despite this show’s deep involvement in the Flame Tour and Cole Kennedy being the biggest pop star in the world, we’re not including him in Pop Review ’s final ever show?”

“Correct,” I said.

I unlocked my phone, and the tinny sound of Cole singing “The Flame” filled the room.

“OK. Good decision,” she said.

“Super healthy,” Nick added.

I turned up the volume and felt my heart vibrate to the sounds of Cole’s voice singing our song, backed by a full orchestra. My whole body ached to hold him, though I knew I never would again.