Page 116 of Kiss Heaven Goodbye

‘Ah, so the best reason you can think of not to do it is because you’re comfortable?’

‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ he said quietly. Grace’s heart jumped as she realised there were tears in his eyes. She had been sitting here being a cheerleader, saying ‘Come on Alex, you can do it!’ without realising how defeated and broken he really was.

‘You are too brilliant to hide all that talent,’ she said. ‘And you are too bloody gorgeous not to be out there centre stage.’ She blushed as she said it, but she had to do something to help him crawl out of the hole he had fallen into. That was what friends did, wasn’t it?

‘I know it’s hard,’ she said softly, ‘but you have to try. Because I think that what you’re doing, making music that touches people, makes them happy and sad, I think that’s more important than any of your problems with Jez or Emma.’

Alex looked touched. ‘I will,’ he said.

Their eyes met and Grace felt a crackle of electricity between them, like the old spark, leaping across the space between them.

‘Listen, I should get back,’ said Alex suddenly, standing up.

‘Alex Doyle,’ she scolded, ‘don’t even think about it. You’ve had way too much to drink and I’m not going to let you kill yourself. There’s plenty of room here.’

‘Grace . . .’

‘Alex, please. I’ll make up the spare room. Stay in bed as long as you like, but I warn you, the kids get up at the crack of dawn.’

She showed him the way and gave him towels and blankets and a spare toothbrush. He reached over and touched her cheek.

‘Thanks, Grace,’ he said softly. ‘You know I’ve missed you.’

Her heart jumped.

‘You were always so sensible,’ he continued. ‘You always make things make sense.’

She nodded, fighting down the feeling of disappointment. Creamy moonlight streamed through the window and for a split second they were both back there on West Point Beach. She flinched and then knew he’d felt it too.

‘That’s what friends are for, Alex.’ She smiled. And friends is all we’ll ever be, she thought sadly.

38

June 1996

Alex stepped off stage at LA’s House of Blues, propped his guitar against the wall and sank down to his haunches. He was exhausted. He couldn’t remember when he’d worked as hard. And where had twelve months of soul-searching, discipline and back-breaking graft got him? A measly acoustic gig on a dead Tuesday evening. OK, so it was one of LA’s top rock venues, right on the Sunset Strip, and yes, he’d got a pretty good reaction considering, but he was playing as the first warm-up act to some local hair metal band. Headlining at the Hollywood Bowl it wasn’t.

Hauling himself to his feet, he stripped off his T-shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his face, smiling at the thought that when he was in Year Zero, their live contracts had stipulated that each band member ‘must be supplied with four brand-new forest-green towels’. He had always wondered why they had to be forest green. One of Jez’s demands, no doubt. At least he hadn’t had to listen to that cock for the last year, he thought with a grim smile.

Alex had quit the band the moment he got back from Ibiza; he had been more than a little annoyed that no one had begged him to stay and that the label had issued a statement saying that while his departure was ‘regrettable’, it would be ‘business as usual’ for Year Zero. In the usual scheme of things, this would have been the perfect excuse for Alex to drink himself into a coma, but that was the old Alex. The new Alex went back to the Notting Hill flat, packed a backpack, grabbed his guitar and flew straight to Ireland. He rented a tumbledown crofter’s cottage on a tuft of windswept headland in Connemara, grew a beard and slept in his clothes. He’d wake with the dawn, go for brisk walks and drink nothing but strong Irish tea. It was the ultimate in cold turkey, but he was also writing tunes that felt better than anything he’d ever written. On long hikes over the purple heather, the lyrics had come too. Verses of love and loss, romance and regret. Even memories, emotions he hadn’t allowed himself to think about were revisited and rechannelled into the music. He knew it sounded wanky, but in that little cottage he felt reborn.

And then he’d come out here, to LA. From the sublime to the vacuous, the home of the silicone breast and the coke spoon, the last place he wanted to be but the one place he needed to be if he was going to crack America. Some bloody hope, he thought, pulling on his one clean T-shirt. He snapped his guitar case closed and headed out on to the Strip. He had wanted to see the main act – he had a secret affection for spandex and drum solos – but it would have meant hanging around the bar. After almost one year sober, he couldn’t take that sort of risk.

‘Alex, Alex! Wait!’

He turned to see two pretty teenage girls, one blonde, one brunette, running towards him.

‘Can we have your autograph?’ said the blonde, handing him a black marker pen.

‘You sure?’ he said, bemused.

‘Hell, yeah,’ said the brunette, opening her denim jacket and thrusting her breasts towards him. ‘Can you sign my T-shirt?’

‘You were amazing,’ said the blonde.

‘Was I?’ he said.

‘Hell, yes. Those songs, they were so personal, so sensitive. I melted, man – I fucking melted.’