One Day Like This, page 1
One Day Like This
Scarlett Cole
Contents
One Day Like This
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
One Day Like This
by Scarlett Cole
1
“Last two walls,” Matt Palmer said, shoving his floppy black hair from his face. “Whoever decided wallpaper was back in fashion was a wanker of the finest order.”
Luke Bryson, his best friend from the age of ten, fellow Sad Fridays bandmate and drummer by night, and employee of Matt’s Uncle Allan’s decorating firm by day, shrugged. “I get paid whether I’m hanging wallpaper or painting walls. I hate matching up seams as much as I hate cutting in. Did you hear back from that guy in London?”
“Nah. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. He did some research on us. Found out that Jase bailed halfway through the show in Brighton and said he couldn’t risk a repeat.” Matt slapped more decorator’s paste onto the wallpaper on the pasting table, brushing it angrily as he tried to tamp down the frustration that always rose when he thought about his pain-in-the-arse younger brother and band’s lead singer. “It would have been nice to have a few gigs lined up down south. We should nail down the setlist for the show in Wigan next weekend.”
“What are the chances we could test out the new song you were working on?”
Matt shrugged. “Not finished yet. But I was starting to think we should give writing another full album a shot. The summer gigs have boosted the bank account enough that we can afford some studio time and production. It’s not a lot, and we’d have to do a bunch of sound engineering ourselves.”
“Can you two save your band yapper and get on with getting that paper on the walls?” Uncle Allan, his nan’s younger brother, stood with his hands on his hips, his paint-splattered polo shirt with his decorating firm’s logo on it swamped his scrawny frame.
Matt looked down at his matching polo shirt. It fit him better, but it was fucking depressing to pull it on every morning. It was like a costume that didn’t quite fit. “It’s getting done faster than you could pull it off, old man. Keep your hair on.”
This couldn’t be all there was to his life. A bucket of wallpaper paste and Uncle Allan giving him shit, while for a few blessed hours every weekend he escaped on stage at pubs and clubs all over Great Britain. The magical journey he’d imagined when they’d dropped out of school to play music hadn’t materialised.
At twenty-nine, he shivered at the thought of spending a lifetime of making other people’s houses look amazing when he could barely afford the rent on his own. Some of their clients were so far up their own arses they refused to let them take a piss in the toilets or give them so much as a glass of water during an often-ten-hour day.
His younger brother, Jase, a cracking lead singer and a totally shite human being, worked at a pub. His cousins, Ben and Alex, were great musicians. Alex worked at a big coffee chain in the Arndale Centre, and Ben worked as a mechanic. He felt their fatigue. Weekends on the road. Grabbing extra shifts here and there in careers flexible enough to grant them time off to play and record. Luke appeared to be the only one who still believed their music could become a viable full-time career.
But some days it felt as though he was the only one utterly committed to the dream.
If only Nan hadn’t made the ultimatum all those years ago. She’d only agree to let Matt leave sixth form college and start a band if he agreed to let Jase be in it. And seeing his nan raised them after their mum bailed, taking them into her tiny two-up two-down Manchester terrace, he’d been unable to say no.
“You don’t get to police what we talk about while we’re working, Uncle Allan. Especially not on a Saturday when we’re doing you a favour because your other crew fell behind.”
Allan dipped his paintbrush into the pot of white gloss paint and carried on cutting in around the skirting boards. “I’m paying you double overtime, you mercenary bastards,” he muttered.
“You know, we’re great live,” Matt continued. “We have venues repeatedly ask us back. And we have a decent following. I just don’t know how we break through. Like, fuck me, I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life. No offence, Uncle Allan.”
“None taken, lad.”
“We’re doing the work,” Luke said thoughtfully. “Putting in the hours and miles.”
“Yeah. Pubs, small concert venues. A few hundred punters. Five hundred tickets maybe. A thousand at a push for a great gig. Enough cash to stay alive as a band to fight another day. I guess I’m fed up with hand-to-mouth.”
Matt gathered up the paper and stepped up the ladder, lining the pattern up before letting the rest of the paper drop to the floor. “There’s got to be something else we can try.”
It was still on his mind as he let himself into his nan’s terraced house two hours later.
He was greeted by the scent of roasting beef and Yorkshire puddings. His favourite. He ran his hand through damp black hair in desperate need of a cut. It would dry in messy waves and get in his eyes, but it had been a rush to get from the job to his own place for a shower, before jogging to his nan’s.
“It’s only me, Nan.” He scratched Boddington, the ancient black and white cat who lazed on the sofa in between bouts of playing chicken with cars on the street outside.
“Be with you in a minute,” she yelled from the kitchen.
The tiny Manchester home was her pride and joy. Neat as a pin, with a cosy open plan living space and kitchen on the ground floor, and two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. It was beyond belief she’d managed to raise both him and his younger brother, Jase, in it without one of them killing the other. Especially when they’d both passed six feet in height before their sixteenth birthdays.
It also made him hugely grateful for his apartment ten minutes’ walk away. It was even smaller in square footage, but he was the only person in it, which made it his refuge. No one got upset if he wrote songs at three in the morning or arrived home late after a gig and slept in until lunch the day after.
Rhoda Palmer, a spry seventy-six, appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. A spotless white apron tied around her waist betrayed her rapier wit and love of the f-bomb. He dark, silver-streaked hair was perfectly styled back off her face. “Matt, my love. Come in. Thought it was your Auntie Pat. She’s been mithering me about that knitting pattern I used for Allan’s great-granddaughter’s blanket.”
Matt grinned. That’s how it always was with Nan. Someone’s cousin’s dog needed something Nana’s godchild’s uncle had. But then, that was Manchester. Family didn’t move far and were the very bedrock relationships were built on.
Speaking of which… “Jase not coming over?” Matt asked, slipping his sneakers off and leaving them by the door. Sunday dinner at Nan’s was mandatory unless they had a concert or work.
“He picked up another shift at the bar this afternoon.”
As he walked toward the kitchen, Matt glanced through the spindles on the stairs to the wall which held faded framed pictures from Nan’s fifteen minutes of fame. The cute seventeen-year-old alongside Cliff Richard and the bright red double-decker bus from the Summer Holiday movie she’d appeared in as an extra. The night she’d had drinks with The Beatles and Cilla Black, known as Liverpool’s Cinderella. The photograph with Tom Jones, where Nan’s mouth was as wide open as her eyes, never failed to make him smile.
It was a part of why he made music. The number of times they’d had shit days as kids and Nan would open the beat-up record player and play the crackling I Want to Hold Your Hand or Wishin’ and Hopin’. Or later, anything by Freddy Mercury. They’d sung at the top of their lungs in the tiny house, driving their neighbours, and his grandfather, God rest his soul, to drink.
He kissed his nan’s cool papery cheek. She’d been a looker once. Would tell anyone who’d listened about her brush with stardom which had ended five years later with an unplanned pregnancy and a shot-gun wedding to his grandad.
Now, she carried the hard edge of someone who’d rarely known a moment’s comfort.
“Speaking of which, isn’t it time you boys got a back-up plan to the band and got proper jobs, Matt? You’ll be thirty next year.”
Same old, same old. “Give it a rest, Nan. I only turned twenty-nine last month. We do okay.” Sure, they’d not had the break-out success other Manchester bands had, but Manchester had been the epicentre of music for decades, spewing out band after band. It bugged him that his nan would suggest they quit. “We’ve got a decent gig line up, we pay our way, we’ve been able to put out music independently.”
Nan stirred the gravy bubbling in a roasting pan on top of the old electric rings. “Yes, well. You’re not going to be wanting to do that when you’re in your fifties. Allan was saying he’d take you one as a full-time labourer and pay for training so—”
“In fairness, Nan, I’d rather eat dog shit than spend the rest of my days listening to Uncle Allan sing Queen songs like a neutered greyhound while papering rich people’s houses.”
“Matt, he’s not so bad.”
“Nan, he has halitosis worse than Auntie Pat’s German Shepherd.”
“Oh, remind me to tell you how it got out and chased the postman. Pat thinks they might stop bringing her mail. And the postman is that lad from your class in school. The one as dense as Christmas cake. What was his name? Fancied the pants off Denise Thornberry’s eldest. She thought she’d have to get a restraining order.”
“Jermaine O’Sullivan.”
“That’s it. O’Sullivan. Anyway, he went running down Barlow Moore Road, and the dog went after him, and Auntie Pat went after the dog wearing her nightie and slippers. Didn’t even have time to put a bra on and her double-Ds were bouncing all over the place.”
Matt laughed at the visual Nan’s words weaved.
“Fucking slugs,” he muttered, looking down at the silvery trails on the floor. “Where’s your salt?”
The back door to the small yard and rear ginnel behind the house had a gap big enough for slugs to slither beneath. Tempted by the heat and smell of cat food his nan left by the door, they came in plenty. His nan handed him the tall white container. Matt unlocked the back door, kicked the slug out, and placed a trail of salt just inside the doorstep.
“There, taken care of it for you.”
Nan patted his cheek. “You’re a good boy. Can you go change the batteries in the upstairs smoke alarm? It keeps beeping and I swear it waits until I get in bed before it starts chirping at me. The batteries are in the window bottom.”
Matt jogged up the narrow stairs with ugly white wood chip wallpaper he threw a fresh coat of paint on every couple of years. There was a missing spindle in the wooden railing, and like always, Matt vowed to fix it one day, just like he’d fix the gap under the back door. They had to catch a break eventually and be able to earn more than just enough. He was a fucking good songwriter, and for all his faults, his brother was a fantastic lead singer.
He glanced into his Nan’s room. Condensation lingered on the bottom of the window, and it looked like the black mould was back in the corners above the bed. Matt made a mental note to come to treat it again. Across the hallway was the smaller of the two rooms. The room he and Jase had shared from the ages of seven and five after their mum had almost killed them. Celebrating New Year’s wasn’t a problem. But twenty-six-year-old Michelle getting pissed off her head then deciding to tuck Matt and Jase into the back of the car and drive them home had been.
The car was a wreck, they’d all survived with forty-seven stitches, two concussions, and two plaster casts between them. He rubbed his hand along his forearm where the scar sat. Nan wouldn’t let anyone else have them after that. Matt’s dad was unknown. A one-night stand during a two-week holiday in Ibiza. Jase’s, an abusive douchebag. So, they’d become Nan’s, and nobody had argued the point.
Visits with mum had become further and further apart until the last time he could remember seeing her was his tenth birthday when she’d stopped off at the labour club for five minutes to drop off a gift for him. He didn’t even know where she was now.
Matt changed the battery just as the front door slammed open downstairs.
“Nan?” His younger brother’s voice boomed through the house. “Your favourite grandson’s here.”
Arrogant fucker.
Matt jogged down the stairs. “If you were her favourite, you’d be the one changing the batteries in her smoke alarm and fixing the mould every time it appeared in the bedroom.”
“You’re confusing favourite and most useful. Watch and learn, Matt. Watch and learn.” In Jase’s hands was a sad looking bunch of flowers from the Co-op. Carnations. Ugly looking things in pastel shades that cost two quid for ten stems, but they were his Nan’s favourite and Jase knew it.
“Oh, Jase,” his Nan said. “Such a thoughtful boy.”
Jase threw Matt a smug look over Nan’s shoulder as she hugged him.
“Yeah, he’s a regular fucking saint,” Matt said.
Jase flipped him the bird.
“The song you sent over was shit.” Jase eyed him warily.
Matt huffed. “The rest of the band loved it.”
Nan put her hands on both their chests, and Matt hadn’t even realised they were advancing on each other. “Boys. Matt, this is another reason to reconsider this band thing. You two are always at each other’s throats.”
“Perhaps if you didn’t treat him like a special squirrel, Nan, he wouldn’t be so far up his own arse.”
“Don’t speak to me like that, Matthew Samuel Palmer.”
He placed his hand over his Nan’s and patted it. She’d never acknowledged her role in Jase’s level of fucked-up-ness.
In her eyes, if Matt got a B on an exam paper, he was screwing up his life. Jase got a C and was clearly making great progress. Matt managed the band and wrote lyrics and music for every song in their back catalogue yet should consider taking a full-time position with his Uncle Allan. Jase stepped onto the stage to sing and had the voice so pure, it was a gift from God. Nan never bugged Jase about getting a full-time job. She considered the fleeting shifts at the pub enough, and Matt didn’t have the heart to tell her the shifts were nowhere near as frequent as she thought they were.
“Yeah, Matt. Don’t speak to Nan like that.”
“Fuck off, Jase.”
“Boys. Go wash your hands. Dinner is a few minutes away from being ready.”
Matt watched his nan head back into the kitchen. She was too old to be dealing with their shit.
“Truce until rehearsal tonight,” Matt offered.
Jase shrugged. “Depends. Are you going to be pissed if I tell you I’m not coming?”
Matt turned and looked at him. “You got a good reason?”
“Left the reason in the pub to wait for me. Just going to eat dinner and get out of here.”
Anger flooded him. Jase treated the band like a hobby. Using his extra couple of inches in height, he backed Jase up against the wall. “I strongly suggest you forget the reason and get your arse to rehearsal. We have a show next week in Wigan and we haven’t even sorted the setlist yet.”
Unintimidated, Jase grinned as he tapped the side of his head. “I know all the songs, mate. They’re in here.”
“But the arrangements are—”
“Matt. Get away from your brother and sit down before I spank the pair of you.”
Matt eyed his brother, but for his nan’s sake, stepped away. But the moment Jase tried to leave the house, Matt was leaving with him.
And he’d guarantee Jase was at rehearsal.
Izabel Bryson tried to quell the embarrassment she felt as let herself into her brother Luke’s flat. Five months ago, she’d lived in a spacious two-bedroom apartment in the popular Northern Quarter with her boyfriend, Harry. She’d thought they were happy, so happy she’d been able to sneak out of the homeless shelter she worked at part-time early to surprise him and found him fucking one of his financial services clients on their brand-new Natuzzi sofa.
“That’s one way to grow his portfolio,” she muttered as she clambered past the pile of Luke’s drum kit pieces in the hallway.
“Did you say something?” Luke wandered into the living room, navy blue jogging pants sitting low on his hips, rubbing his freshly washed hair with a towel.
“Just cursing Harry. Again.” She threw her bags down on the small round table.
“Should have done more than just punch the dick.” Luke grabbed a beer out of the fridge. “Want one?”
Izabel shook her head. “Nah. I’m good. And please. Don’t hit him again. Not that I care about him, but where would the band end up if you go to prison?”
Luke had always been a quick trigger and fast with his fists. Those reflexes were part of why he was such an explosive drummer. Fortunately, he’d never ended up in serious trouble, usually because Matt and Jase, and their cousins and fellow bandmates, Alex and Ben, were around to diffuse the situation.
