Page 64 of When We Were Young

Will woke up in a strange bed in a room that smelled of disinfectant, with a bandage wrapped neatly around his left arm and a red bag dangling above him. He felt the cool sensation of someone else’s blood entering his system.

Had he dreamt it, or had Emily been there earlier? He thought she had lain on the bed beside him, the coconut smell of her hair. Soft kisses, tears dripping onto his face, her arms gently encircling him.

After breakfast, the police came asking questions, but he couldn’t remember much of what had happened.

The last thing he recalled was climbing up the balcony, but he didn’t tell them that.

They said they wouldn’t press charges, but Emily’s parents were asking about a restraining order.

They advised him to steer clear of her, otherwise he’d be in serious trouble.

When he was discharged later that afternoon, his mum barely gave him a choice – she insisted he stay with them, fussing over him as though he were a child.

He tried to be patient, grateful even, but after two days of her mollycoddling and his dad’s silent, steely glares, the walls of his childhood home began to close in on him. He had to get out of there.

Back at the record company house in Notting Hill, Matty and Reu tiptoed around him at first. They took turns to babysit him until he went back down to the studio at the end of the garden, and they returned to their video games as though nothing had happened.

Will didn’t even notice Reu had been gone for a couple of days until Matty mentioned it. They went looking for him and asked around, but no one had seen him. By then, they were worried enough to call around the hospitals.

They found him at St George’s, the same hospital where Will had been treated less than two weeks before.

The taxi ride was the most agonising forty-five minutes of Will’s life.

When they arrived, the nurse told them Reu had been found in a squat in Tooting, overdosed on heroin.

Luckily, someone had called an ambulance, but by the time it arrived, he was all alone.

That was four days ago, and he’d been in a coma since then.

The nurse only allowed them in the room one at a time, so Matty waited outside.

Dread settled like a cold stone in the pit of Will’s stomach as he entered the room.

The slender figure lying in the bed didn’t look like Reu at all.

If it weren’t for the black ringlets fanned across the pillow, he wouldn’t have believed it was him.

He looked like a frail old man and a helpless child all at once.

The nurse said Reu might be able to hear him. She said to talk to him normally, but he couldn’t think of anything normal to say.

‘Reu, it’s Will.’

He sat in the chair beside the bed. He picked up Reu’s hand and cradled it in his own. The wrist was so thin he thought it might snap.

You fucking idiot! he screamed silently. What were you doing? For Christ’s sake, Reu, heroin? What were you thinking?

But he didn’t say any of that out loud; instead he said, ‘We’ll get you better. The doctors and nurses are all looking after you. You’re not in trouble. It wasn’t your fault. We love you and we need you to come back now.’

Reu lay motionless.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, man. I messed up. I was too wrapped up in my own problems to realise…’ Will exhaled. ‘To realise you needed me.’

The machines beeped to a steady rhythm.

‘Let’s get you home. We’ll jam in Mum’s garage. And we’ll go busking again with the buckets. You loved that… I loved that.’

His voice failed him then, so he sat in silence for a while. It was hard to look at Reu’s face with that tube in his nose, so he looked at his hand instead. He studied the rivers of greenish veins on the back of it and the pale half-moons on his nails.

By the time he left, he knew every detail of that hand, the hand that could tap the most intricate rhythm on any inanimate object.