That was the last night of the Beauregard Festival near Caen. The night the cheese heated up enough to slide completely off Kev’s cracker and he halted the band’s final encore. Fucking ruined my guest solo and announced he was leaving Five Ways.

Then the junkie fool snapped for real and he booted my microKORG into my shins, sucker-punched Tony behind the ear. Charged Brady with his bass guitar held high, a boy-band berserker pushing forty in a hundred-dollar blazer, thousand-dollar sneakers. They went to the boards with a mike stand and Brady’s feedback-shrieking Gibson tangled between them.

The audience hive-mind entered a state of supreme disturbance and went promptly into meltdown.

Dirty cotton clouds rolled in off the Channel earlier when Vincent and I wrapped our opening act. The rain fell in sharp darts and drove the crowd from a swaying singularity into pathetic clumps and huddles, screens glowing blue under plastic ponchos when Five Ways took the stage at sunset. Then the rain was coming down like something out of the Bible, and the moment Kev flipped out those general-admission animals started throwing shit.

Water bottles tumbled in from the blackness, penetrated the halo of hot lights overhead and they crackled and snapped against the stacks, burst open onstage and popped underfoot when Patrick ran to aid Tony.

Maxim pitched his sticks, jumped from the drum riser and he circled Brady and Kev, penalty-kicking Kev’s kidneys and ribs with flawless rhythm and savage follow-through.

Gabe and his security team dropped back from the crowd and they bear-hugged Maxim out of the equation, clamped Kev in a root-mass of tattooed arms and hairy tarantula hands. Brady spun free with a bloody nose, crewneck of his vintage Atari T-shirt pulled ragged down his chest, pink throat sawed raw under his hemp guitar strap.

Brady’s heap of dreadlocks now tilted far beyond the jaunty dip I perfected that afternoon before sound check. I pulled some cotton string over the tip of a purple Sharpie to disguise six inches of sail-repair stitches supporting the whole post-modern mess.

He dodged a salvo of incoming bottles and rolled the back of one hand under his dripping nose. I watched him consider that runny red blaze on his skin in a moment of detached fascination and some weak-sauce reflex buried inside me tried to push its old agenda to the surface. An automated emotional prompt meant to guilt or goad me into feeling something soft for Brady. Trick me into trying to make this mess better by waving a wand, singing a song.

Nope.

No fucking way.

That bitch didn’t live here anymore.

Holding borders with Vincent taught me to let empathy die cold at the end of a cut wire. These weeks on the road only strengthened my new position, standing solo at the center of my own priorities. Nobody on this tour got here by putting someone else first.

More bottles fell from the dark at high angles, came whipping end over end spraying fantails of water piss and spit and they flashed and bobbled across the stage, a haul of strange fish dumped on the deck of a trawler in a sea of freaks.

Kev gnashed at fingers and wrists, flutter-kicked his alpaca-fleece Yeezys off his feet as security pinned his limbs. They counted three before lifting him up and he threw his spine into high arches, wailing like a witch on fire.

I watched as they carted Kev away and that’s when I saw it for the first time, for real in another human face. The arrival of something immense. Pressurized and toxic. A horrible force folded back over itself in infinite layers made hard, then hammered harder. Heated and beaten to a cruel edge.

Three days later the French magistrate who would rule Kev’s overdose a death by misadventure would reference this onstage assault in her summation, citing it as indisputable evidence that Kev hadn’t merely unraveled a bit but had in fact cracked. Officially shit his couture tangerine jeans, suspended trading in any social-animal currency and plugged into the cold-blooded circuits glowing deep inside his reptile brain.

A muddy bottle smacked my shoulder, flung from the blubbering mob of Five Ways superfans pressed against the galvanized crowd barrier. This dedicated lunatic fringe of every age and gender identity wore wild coils of purple-dyed hair entwined with colored extensions, strips of fabric or yarn piled high and twisted to one side in a style the 1990s press had dubbed The Bradybun. Five Ways’ reunion tour brought that ridiculous look back like a disease everyone believed science had conquered, a repulsive oddity once found only in the appendix of a medical text.

Gabe saw they were targeting me again and he shook Maxim loose. Came and stood directly in the line of fire with his back to the audience. Held his furry arms out like that giant concrete Jesus in Rio and that’s when I heard them chanting, a screaming pack of twenty or thirty little bitches wearing plastic bags over their Bradybuns filming everything with their phones, flipping me the bird and jabbing the air with forked British fuck-you fingers as I packed up and scuttled behind the stacks:

Yo-ko. Yo-ko ...

Gabe tucked my microKORG under one arm and broke a trail through the wild Fellini crush of performers and groupies backstage. I followed him past multiple outbreaks of starfuckers and entourage. Shrank behind his soggy Maltese bulk to duck a couple of cut-and-paste music journalists in motorcycle jackets with seatbelt scuffs.

Maxim’s impossibly tall industrially bitchy and flawlessly overdressed girlfriend Ce’Hara came clumping through the mix in muddy Wellies, ruby Louboutins slung over one shoulder like a brace of exotic game from another planet.

She refused to make eye contact and I was thrilled to reciprocate.

All the Five Ways wives and girlfriends ghosted me cold the moment Brady’s pregnant partner back in Halifax, along with the rest of the world, read the article in The Mirror that accurately surmised I’d been fucking Brady.

We hooked up for the first time back in Warsaw, the night Brady invited me to join Five Ways onstage to sing “Owen” as an encore. Those debut collaborations became a regular thing but the sex remained a secret until yesterday, when the tabloid journalists who set Kev up and staked out his tour coach with night-vision gear also got shots of me sneaking away from Brady’s wagon. By that point I’d taken up smoking again and now everyone knew absolutely fucking everything.

The news broke immediately in pixels and print. Then Five Ways’ hardcore PentaFans declared a social-media fatwa on Citizen Samurai.

Like nervous birds, Melanie’s texts flocked to my phone in buzzing increments of panic as our online following fell from five to four million. Tumbled to three and then hovered near two until the East Coast woke up to a fetid brunch of bottom-feeding news. Mel stopped texting when we lost a comma and slipped below one million.

Hours before Kev’s show-stopping freakout the band’s manager Mike flew in to attempt damage control. He brought a stack of tabloids from Heathrow and summoned four-fifths of Five Ways to meet aboard Brady’s chrome-whale tour bus for a serious congress over lunch, monitored by the band’s lawyer on speakerphone.

Brady boosted me into a bunk up front before the others came. I curled into a ball behind a guitar case and some pillows. Muted my phone, poked it around the corner like a periscope and spied while Mike and the boys plotted Kev’s ambush-intervention.

Mike held up a copy of The Mirror.

“This nonsense? It’s crippling our comeback and killing the brand,” he said.

He slapped the newspapers down in front of Brady.

“Your girl’s at home with a baby on the way and you’re shackin’ up with your supportin’ act? And you three. Where the fuck were you muppets while our Kev was turnin’ into Tony Montana?”

I pinched and spread to zoom in on Mike’s face as he outlined the band’s plan of attack. They would write letters loaded heavy with shame, laced with guilt and leveraged over sentiment to create a united front and underwrite a single nuclear demand: If Kev refused to seek treatment, he’d be forced to leave Five Ways.

“I want him seated here, okay? Right where I am now," Mike said. "Pat and Maxy, let’s have you two on this side. We’ll put Tony and Brady there and I’ll park myself at the end. Box him in. Make it tough for him to do a runner before we’ve had our say, yeah?”

Mike shooed the band from the cramped dinette booth. He grunted, hauled himself from behind the table, struggled to his feet and sighed. Tucked his shirttail into his trousers and asked the boys to consider how the thoughtless actions of two fools had interrupted his Lake District holiday, jeopardized the reunion tour and put the band’s collective dick in a bees’ nest.

“I follow you boys online,” Mike said. “You’re all viper-quick to take the piss outa Lily Allen every time she twerps. Chirps? Tweetsncries? I’ll agree she puts her foot in it often enough but that ain’t bad publicity. The bird’s controversial. Controversy sells papers, gets folks clickin’ and Googlin’ but this type of press? This shit only makes the public hate you. And before you ask me again Patrick I’ll say yeah, with this sum of money at stake you are most definitely your brother’s fuckin’ keeper.”

Everyone agreed to return to Brady’s coach with letters in hand to confront Kev over a catered dinner at six.

When we were alone Brady pulled the curtains shut and helped me down from my roost. I scooted behind the dinette table and pawed through the tabloids Mike left behind.

My breath bottled up tight inside me when I saw Kev and I had split the front page of The Mirror

On the left, a murky but identifiable frame grab from sneaky cell-phone footage of Kev snorting Si-3-PO off the cracked screen of his own device. At right, a greenish sequence of me kissing Brady in the doorway of his coach. Me hunching to light a cigarette in the rain, fully illuminating my face for the camera and making my nose look massive. A final shot caught me turning to disappear into the night like Bigfoot in a kagool waving goodbye.

Motherfucking technology. You can’t lie when millions of megapixels say it was you. It was Kev, sure as shit that was him holding one nostril shut with his thumb, showcasing the stupid tattoos across his knuckles that spelled PIMP. And it was unmistakably me sneaking away from Brady’s bus with a lime-green nicotine chakra smoldering in my chin.

The media combined and conflated our stories into a shocking exposé of rock-and-roll excess in the golden age of information and the lethal second coming of Pakistani synthetic super-opiates:

CAUGHT ON CAMERA Kev’s Drugs Shame

Love Rat Brady Cheats With “Owen” Hitmaker Mags

An odd effect followed me backstage as I followed Gabe. Audible conversations faded to whispers at five paces. Familiar faces fell to lowered gazes, turned to cold shoulders when I came near.

I cut the slack from my spine and channeled Melanie. Stuck out my chin and descended further with Gabe into a Middle Earth coven of audio-tech wizards. We pushed through the whipped-mule labor pool of sonic-mercenary road crew and joined a crowd gathered at the load-out watching two French medics dressed in coveralls with reflective stripes examining Brady.

One of them probed his skinned cheekbone, cocked her head to compare different views of his nose. Her Playmobil partner watched Brady’s reddened eyes track the movement of a tiny sapphire light gripped in her rubber glove.

Vincent and his clean-and-sober cohort perched on stacked trusses, drummed their heels against the sides of stenciled road cases and they hooted and laughed, excitable primates lounging and strutting among the toppled columns of a ruined temple. Vincent had found his tribe on tour. Returned to the trees as the spiritual leader of this species of Lesser Roadie.

He clapped and made an ugly noise that came from somewhere on the moose-call spectrum. I hadn’t heard Vincent’s laughter in months and he was belligerent now, bright-eyed and taunting Brady:

“That was absolutely vicious! God damn Brady you move like a cat!”

Brady aimed a beam of pure laser hate over the medic’s head at Vincent. She took his chin in her gloved fingers and gently reclaimed his attention, mimed with one Smurf-blue hand for him to lift a white wad of gauze to his nose and when Brady obeyed, a sick starving part of me heated up and burned black with rage.

Where the fuck was this coming from?

More French medics worked alongside security to prep Kev for transport and he howled. Huffed through gritted teeth and kicked like a roped goat as they strapped him to a gurney. He made detailed threats of tantric-length sexual assault against everyone involved in his restraint. Lamented the birth of his tormentors’ ancestors in a formal freestyle curse, wishing fatal car crashes and pediatric cancer on all descendants yet to come.

A thin ruffle of applause rose from our curious assembly as the ambulance flashed its overhead lights and carved tracks through the mud to take Kev wherever you take somebody who goes around the corner like that.

I stole a hooded raincoat, found rubber boots that didn’t fit. Stowed my microKORG and buckled the case shut. Went up on my toes to hug Gabe in the tent-covered mud room, thanked him for everything and he said:

“See you in Norwich.”

He was wet and sweaty, furnace-warm against my cheek but he would never make it to Norwich. The next time anyone took a good look at my sweet friend Gabe he would be cold to the touch, blue in the face. Flat on his back and done breathing forever alongside Kev and a pair of handsome high-rigger stagehands everyone called the Mario Brothers, all four of them overdosed on Si-3-PO in the back of a utility trailer.

I went out in the rain with my instrument case over my head, a cartoon ant carrying a Kit Kat home from a really shitty picnic. Looked over my shoulder for photographers, ducked between ranks of chattering generators. Held my case tight against my chest and side-stepped through a muddy maze of vandalized portable toilets faced door to door in double rows to prevent entry.

At the heart of this unicursal labyrinth stood a wheelchair-accessible unit damaged by fire, tagged up one side with the name TARDIS.

On the first day of the festival I came creeping around back here looking for a private place to sneak a smoke. The melted front panel of the TARDIS curved inward, a baby-blue plastic wave big enough for me to wriggle sideways and squeeze through the deformed door.

I stepped inside and stretched my arms until my fingertips quivered. Took ten deep breaths of corrupted air and tasted a signature clash of chemical disinfectant and diesel exhaust striped with a high note of human waste warmed by the summer sun. I shut off my phone and for the first time in a long time, I was untraceable. Truly alone.

That night I returned with a roll of trash bags, a canister of chlorine wipes and some scented candles pilfered from Brady’s coach.

I sacked the toilet pedestal and trapped the nasty miasma brewing below. Double-bagged the seat to make it safe for sitting, sanitized the handrails and the fold-down baby-changing table. Stashed a few packs of Marlboros and a backup lighter inside the soap-dispenser housing.

Thoughtfully appointed and thoroughly equipped, the TARDIS would serve as a discreet and comfortable hideaway for the duration of the Beauregard Festival.

Pre-scandal I avoided Brady’s bus until sundown but it was impossible for me to kill those daylight hours aboard the mildewed six-sleeper trailer I shared with Vincent and two supporting acts, the comedian Dayglo Dave and a Norwegian death-metal band called Sarah Jessica Dracula.

Even if I possessed enough humanity and grace to forgive that creepy panda-faced trio for fouling the bathroom daily with black and white corpse paint, I could never tolerate Vincent and his dried-out disciples comparing triggers, working the steps, chanting affirmations and hatching grand plans to make amends. The whole place reeked like wet dog, old car floormats and discount cigarettes and it was worse than the cots and tents we were offered in Cologne.

We’re all walking unique paths through this world, but if yours should ever diverge to present you with a choice between sitting alone in a stifling portable toilet that’s been targeted by arson, or hanging out in an air-conditioned trailer while your ex and a half-dozen roadies in recovery debate the individual concept of a Higher Power? Do not hesitate to pick the toilet, fucking trust me.

I lost four long afternoons hiding out in the TARDIS doing Sudoku, tying knots. Texting Melanie and struggling to follow a crash-course curriculum of Zen meditation taught by Dayglo Dave. The road flare that penetrated the TARDIS pulled its white plastic roof downward in a stringy taffy stalactite and burned a shoe-sized hole through the floor, like a corrosive drop of blood in that movie “Alien”.

Each day when the sun climbed high enough I stubbed out my postmeridian smoke. Drew dozens of deep breaths, cracked one eye open and tracked a warm spot of light creeping down the wall of the TARDIS.

When that ragged patch of gold flattened out on the changing table I gave it my full focus. Concentrated on the percussive tempo of the generators and did my best to follow Dave’s instructions. He suspected everything was getting to me because my filter was way too tight. Said I’d lowered my spirit, degraded its potential as a vessel and now it was a gutter collecting nothing but poison.

Dave coached me to elevate my sacred center. Told me to imagine a frameless scene of short green grass under wide blue skies and visualize my anger as clouds approaching from a distance.

“You just let those clouds come,” he said. “Let them come. Allow them to be and let them go.”

So I tried, alright? I committed myself to doing some heavy spiritual lifting in the confines of that stinky safe space and I really fucking tried.

The first image I found in my mind’s blue sky was a close-up of my hands, broken nails sunk to the quick in bloody skin. Fingers wrapped tight like Turk’s head knots around the soapy throats of those Norwegian freaks for clogging the sink and shower with a wig’s worth of stray blonde hairs.

There were other times when Dave’s simple tips actually worked. I would come up for air like something newborn to find I’d lost track of two hours and my blaze of light had crawled off the changing table, floated to the far side of the filthy toilet floor.

Those were the days when I saw the lotus unfold, open up and show its slip just a little bit, and I walked away from the TARDIS feeling a hint of the serenity Dave described. Those moments made me less of a doubter. A little more of a believer and if you were there? If you’d been me? Then you’d know for sure, and I wouldn’t have to say this shit out loud, and none of it would sound like the snake oil wellness bullshit Gwyneth Paltrow sells by the pound, okay?

Okay.

A crackling canopy of fireworks smeared sulfur color across the wet sky, signaling the end of the Beauregard Festival. I shoved myself through the slick concavity and entered the TARDIS for the last time. Dragged my microKORG through the gap in the door behind me and threw it on the changing table. Lit my vanilla candle and sat down to cry under the boiling roar of the rain.

After a painful period of personal accounting and critical self-review I slowly got my shit together. Dug forty folded Euros from the crevice behind the soap dispenser and smoothed the bills, counted them twice. Plugged the same half-inch niche with a foil-wrapped wad from my pocket and blew out the candle. A final volley of fireworks illuminated the rain coming down the hole in the roof. The drops flashed silver and red, falling through the TARDIS like sparks.

I shoved my microKORG case ahead of me through the door gap and slogged off through the mud in farty sucking steps toward Trailer Town, the swampy festival-furnished ghetto of rolling accommodation for event staff and supporting acts. I found my trailer, stepped out of my heavy boots and climbed inside.

Dayglo Dave slouched alone on the couch in the lounge watching “Project Runway”, shoveling something steamy from an eco-friendly container into the furry hole between his handlebar mustache and his devil’s Van Dyke.

I collapsed beside him, wiggled my fingers in his face until he surrendered his food. I waved off his chopsticks and lifted the waxy brown box up to my face. Tipped the contents in and made a genuine American pig of myself.

Dave sat up and squinted. He studied my face like a farsighted man looking for a small town on a large map.

“Robert Pattinson’s been standing up for you on Twitter,” he said.

“Fuck him,” I said. I sniffled and picked a stuck water chestnut from the side of the carton with my fingers.

Dave handed me a napkin.

“He won’t take my calls,” he said.

I wiped my mouth, flipped the box to the floor and pushed Dave to the end of the couch. Threw a pillow in his lap, dropped my head on top of it and released a fatal exhale as he pulled my curls apart, combing swirls and circles across my scalp, behind my ear.

My locked jaw tempered, unscrewed and relaxed. I hadn’t slept four consecutive hours since the media spanked Brady for being a bad boy and branded me with a flaming scarlet letter but now I was slipping under, drooling into a cushion smelling of ass and armpit as Dave carded my hair like wool, drawing bits and blots of mud from the strands.

He muted the TV. Twisted the debris from his fingertips and asked me:

“So what’s it like being famous?”

I was fresh out of smart-ass remarks, incapable of producing one more fucking tear but no attitude or emotions were needed now as Dayglo Dave cradled my head. Though my eyes were shut tight I could feel him looking down at me, a tender technician planning the repair of something precious and broken, assessing damage and wiping the dirt away.

He was riding this tour making slave wages as a warm-up comedian for other supporting acts, pulling down 80 Euros per show plus travel and lodging, feeding himself from food carts on a per-diem pittance.

I’d never met a man like him, never found another person who was anything like Dave. A deep thinker. A genuine listener unafraid of silence. A living breathing backyard Buddha telling your-momma jokes and making obscene balloon animals onstage, then advocating veganism and Marxism after the show. Midwifing me through panic attacks with breathing exercises, a strong joint and too many beers.

Dave was the only person I trusted to confide in about my dislike for the new and improved Vincent.

Vincent adored collecting broken toys and by the third stop on tour he had a devoted flock of fuck-ups tamed and tuned in to his straight-edge tales of trauma. They met each morning at our trailer for coffee and “spiritual fellowship”, shooting group selfies at sunrise and posting them with hashtags like #humility and #gratitude. Huddling up for group hugs, sipping smoothies from eco-friendly flasks and reciting the Serenity Prayer in Polish or French or German.

Vincent Lite was a single-spaced motherfucking bore and it made me sick to see how those losers revered him, fell in step and sang his song. Baloo the Bear with a yoga mat and a thirty-day chip.

“I heard Kev quit the band,” Dave said.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “You missed it. Dude’s done on both sides. They took him away in an ambulance.”

“Did you see the tabloids?" Dave asked. "Some human-trafficking foundation called him out for his PIMP tattoos, you can’t say that word for fun anymore. So Kev’s publicist claimed the tattoo is an acronym.”

“For what?”

“Supposedly it stands for “Peckham Is My Playground”, like Kev came up hard and he’s just reppin’ the hood but a bunch of his classmates dug up school photos that prove Kev went to a private academy in Wimbledon,” Dave said.

“The tennis town? Jesus.”

“Exactly,” Dave said. “I think Kev should have taken that misogynist hit on the chin and apologized, but he doubled down in a statement yesterday. Says he’s “on the road with Peckham for life”. It’s fucking hysterical.”

“Why is that funny?”

Dave shrugged.

“I guess because Peckham’s fucking rough, it’s like, to London what the South Bronx is to New York City, you know? That’s where John Boyega’s from, the first black Stormtrooper? But Kev can’t back that up. I mean, Jaime T’s from Wimbledon and he’s not ashamed of it. The guy’s a sweetheart, I’ve opened for Jaime T. Kev makes Jaime T look like Ice-T and Body Count.”

The tops of my feet throbbed, toes strained from the unnatural effort of arching upward to keep those stupid boots from coming off in the mud.

I stretched my neck to look up at Dave.

“I miss this," I said.

“You’re welcome to stay. Sarah Jessica etcetera went home today.”

“Really? Yes. Thank fucking god, will you please clean the shower for me? I know there’s a hairy mogwai in the drain and I don’t want to touch it. Please Dave?”

“I don’t want to touch it either, but I’ll make up a bed for you. The girls ate and smoked in their bunks every day but Vincent left his tidy.”

Dave squirmed to get out from under me and I stopped him.

“Wait. Where’s Vincent?”

“He’s staying with that Hungarian vendor.”

“With who?”

“He’s with Aliz. She runs the vegan food truck with pink panda bears on it. Vincent helps her out sometimes before your shows. Works the grill, takes orders and stuff.”

“Oh. Alright. Wow. Is her food worth a damn?” I asked.

Dave picked up the take-out box, turned it to show me the logo of two grinning pandas riding double on a moped.

“Sarah Jessica Dracula ate there every day and I think it’s fantastic," he said. "That’s why I stood in the rain for half an hour to get these spicy soba noodles with braised tofu, the stuff you just ate without chewing? So yeah, the woman can cook.”

My stomach hopped from trough to trough over steep waves of nausea. I swatted the oily box to the floor.

“Breathe,” Dave said. “Grant yourself the freedom to be happy for Vincent and Aliz. Don’t spend your energy harboring grudges and anger. Open up. Let those clouds go. Breathe.”

I rolled over, turned my face down into the pillow and sent a scream straight to the planet’s core.

Dave’s phone growled back at me from his pocket and I startled, stood up and staggered to the bathroom. Fished two fingers down my throat and threw up into the plastic shower pan. Tofu chunks and tan soba noodles oozed over blossoms of mold surrounding a wet sprout of hair stuck in the drain.

I returned to the lounge scrubbing my gums with a fingerful of toothpaste, careful not to trigger another upset. Dave looked up from his phone.

“That was the Mario Brothers,” he said. “Did you drop off?”

I nodded, gave Dave the forty Euros from my raincoat. He stabbed a reply into his caveman phone with a single finger and snapped it shut.

“Cash or trash?” he asked.

I tapped my nose like I was testing a microphone.

Dave pocketed the bills without counting them and rummaged through his shiny paisley fanny pack.

I sat down, turned up the volume and watched Tim Gunn assess the dubious progress of a doomed team challenge.

Make it work, Tim said.

I love Tim Gunn. Those two designers were clearly fucked and folded but they ignored Tim’s warning and smirked like they knew better. Always classy and forever a gentleman, Tim simply wished them well. With two hands on the tiller those contestants would cross the bar and survive the challenge or run aground, get wrecked on the rocks. Ignorance sounds off-key like an alarm but pride sings like a siren.

Dave zipped his sparkly man-bag shut and looked me in the eye.

“You’re not blending, right?”

I nodded, spit minty froth into the take-out container, swabbed my tongue over my teeth. Smacked my lips, smiled at Dave and assured him:

“I would never do that without you. I promise.”

He nodded and placed a thumb-sized twist of foil on the coffee table. It was a fat packet, far larger than my usual cut.

“I’ll make this one a BOGO if you clean the shower before we get high,” Dave said. “And please throw that box away.”

There were no cleaning products in the trailer, no bristly brushes or rubber gloves. I removed a sock and pulled it over my hand. Rolled up my sleeves, held my breath and made it work.

When the job was complete I undressed and stepped into the shower.

The Norwegian girls left behind a wealth of hair-care products and the cramped bathroom filled with steam scented like mango, strawberry and tea tree oil. I worked sandy apricot exfoliant into every plugged pore I could reach and massaged myself into a stupor, then blasted my back and shoulders with scalding water until the temperature dropped and I turned around to rinse out.

I used Dave’s last clean T-shirt as a towel, wrung it out and wrapped it around my head in a sloppy turban. In the lounge I found Dave’s neat crop of chopped-up lines ripe for harvest, narrow furrows arrayed on a clean corner of the glass coffee table.

His hazel eyes were dark now, brown like the bottoms of burnt copper pots.

"I waited for you like one pig waits for another," Dave said.

He put the cut-off straw in my hand.

I took a knee on the funky carpet and I got mine. Stood tall and felt the velvet delivery wash through me. Closed my eyes and let the Si-3-PO illustrate everything Dave wanted me to see.

Green grass. Blue sky. Not a fucking cloud in sight.

Dave took the straw, softly caught me when I fell back to the couch. The room lost a dimension, collapsed flat and I saw myself from five miles above, crumpled and useless in an invisible silent space, sealed off from the world like a toothpick ship somebody built inside a bottle.

"Are you ready?" Dave asked.

I couldn’t imagine improving this perfect high by blending but Dave swore it was worth it, if you did it right and you survived.

He told me it was like the difference between falling to your death and falling faster and when I could hold the straw again we buckled up and went after it.

In the dark I reached for Brady.

My arms balked against the sides of a coffin-tight tunnel and I panicked. Slammed my head into the berth above me and clawed at the wall of Vincent’s bunk. Pushed and kicked and fell through the privacy curtain and tumbled into the sleeper trailer’s narrow passage.

Dave snored behind the blinds in his bunk as I crawled over the cold carpet to the bathroom, heart bouncing heavy and sore, pulse surging behind my eyes and through my ears.

My insides twisted like a dry dishrag and I retched and spat, panting on hands and knees over the spotless shower basin. Sweet and earthy scents blended with soap scum and mildew wafted up from the drain.

I took the sharpest knife from the galley and pulled my clammy raincoat over my shoulders. The rain had stopped now and a low cluster of clouds floated between me and Orion as I toddled under the stars past the generators, beyond the tilted toilet graveyard and infiltrated the pod of shuttered vendor wagons.

My toes ached inside those oversize rubber ducky boots as I crouched in the mud, pulled up my hood and worked the tip of the knife into the sidewalls of the Magyar Panda Kitchen truck’s tires. Not big slashes, just little slits releasing a sibilant four-part chorus sung in the round. The frigid hissing air numbed my cramped fingers as I traded the knife from hand to hand.

Then I crept over the slick duckboard walkway and selected another cart at random, some kind of sugared pastry on a stick.

Pro tip #1: If you’re going to cut someone’s tires, target the sidewalls. Most tread punctures can be patched, but a tire sidewall is structural and once that’s compromised, any proper shop won’t attempt repair for fear of liability.

Pro tip #2: Whenever possible, repeat your act of vandalism on at least one innocent, unrelated target. Neither victim can be sure they were specifically chosen, and each will likely assume the damage done was a random act.

I dropped the knife in a trash barrel and made my way to Brady’s coach, wringing my hands and hoping my fingers wouldn’t be too stiff to play our next date, if there was to be a next date.

I thought of Kev and remembered how I liked him the first time I met him.

I’d always admired Kev, damn near loved him ever since Five Ways were skinny kids with an album that topped the charts in the States and I became a PentaFan in my 20s. Kev played bass and keyboard, sang flawless harmony and he authored most of the songs on their first album.

Vincent and I were invited to dine with the band before the reunion tour debuted in Lisbon. Brady and Vincent met in the green room and they bonded effortlessly the way boys do. The rest of the band caught a whiff of Brady’s alpha approval and Vincent shuffled into the deck like any other joker, but I was starstruck at the sight of Kev, positively unable to behave normally when we met.

My head whirled in shock and delight when Maxim introduced me to Ce’Hara. She was bulletproof, one hundred percent goddess-gorgeous and I wanted to be her so badly I could barely breathe.

She hugged me, kissed my cheeks in a continental welcome. The other wives and girlfriends mirrored the dance of their queen bee, setting fire to that acceptance I seldom feel, pretend not to want but secretly crave as a woman who doesn’t easily make friends with other women. When I met Brady’s partner Suzannah said she liked my earrings and I melted. She was just starting to show.

Five Ways and Citizen Samurai crowded together for photos. We crushed closer, arms over shoulders as Brady led us in a canned mantra of break-a-leg solidarity, some kind of “best show ever” speech and when he finished we threw our hands in the air and cheered.

When dinner was over Kev and I were alone at the table and he praised my harmony on “Owen”. I took the compliment without blushing or gushing and asked him about his inspiration for “My River Blue”, the only number-one to feature Kev singing lead. Its chart performance rivaled any of the hits produced with Brady up front and I told Kev how that track turned me into a Five Ways fan on the spot, woke me up to the simple power of a less-is-more arrangement.

A caterer cleared our table. Kev disconnected from our conversation and he cooled. Coiled up and started tracking that girl. She hustled empty cans and bottles from the ironed linen to some bins in the corner of the band’s green room and Kev’s eyes cut through me to follow her.

He tipped a tall can of Carling’s Black Label up to his face and drained it. Belched, pressed the empty can between my tits and said:

“File this, bitch.”

And fuck me if I didn’t take that from him.

I held it, smelled the sour odor inside. Kev pushed his chair from the table with a screech. Wobbled across the room, snared that girl under the arm of his tweed jacket and the poor thing froze. I read the telemetry of her discomfort, felt her cringe as he ran his hand over her pockets, rubbed the small of her back.

For many nights afterward on tour I replayed that scene and remembered what he did. Recalled how I didn’t do shit and sat clutching that fucking can to my chest like a delicate Southern lady in a movie, too weak to stand up for that girl, too shocked to speak.

Kev did that, and I let it happen.

And that’s on me.

So that was the moment Kev made my murder list.

When I hired Dave to film Kev getting high I only wanted to embarrass that asshole, document his hypocrisy. Leaking the video to the press on an anonymous burner phone seemed a flawless plan of attack with limited fallout, but my hot news tip attracted a ruthless school of tabloid sharks to the scent of scandal. Created a frenzy that blew up in my face when they rumbled me and Brady.

If Five Ways were finished, there’d be no need for Citizen Samurai to open their first U.K. show next week in Norwich and I’d be double-fucked, twice hoisted with my own petard.

The lights were off in Brady’s coach. I keyed in the push-button combination without bothering to hide from lurking journalists and climbed aboard. Undressed and slipped into bed beside him.

“You’re freezing,” he said.

I put my hands on his face and felt bristles behind his ears.

I snapped on the overhead light. Brady’s crazy purple hair was gone.

“What happened?”

He stretched and smiled, tired eyes buried in the bruised wings of a Rorschach butterfly saddled over his swollen nose.

“Cut it off, didn’t I?” Brady said. “Got bored waiting for you to come home. I couldn’t get the extensions picked out so I went for the clippers.”

I couldn’t stop touching his face, rubbing the stubble on his scalp. He took my wrists and gently brought my hands in front of me.

“You look ... Brady, what the fuck did you do?”

“Don’t want to look like a twat when we bring the tour home, he said.”

I reached for him but he flinched, held my hands between us and patty-caked them together like he was playing with a baby.

“Kev quit the band,” I said.

Brady yawned.

“Kev’s fine,” he said. “We had a FaceTime meeting with Mike and our attorney, Kev’s sedated but he’s thinking rationally. The boy’s broken, Margaret. He’s made genuine apologies and I’m not seriously hurt. Tony’s had a scan, he’s fine so tomorrow we’re all going into town to pick up Kev. Mike said we need to make a show for the press, reinforce that this is a medical issue. Let the fans see we’re still together. Mike hired a sober companion to keep the mad bastard in check and we’ll use what’s left of these travel days to bury the hatchet. Get on with the tour.”

My warming hands tingled and hardened into fists. Brady kissed them, one then the other.

“You’re like ice,” he said.

I marveled at the unfamiliar face in front of me.

“You don’t ... look like you.”

Brady laughed, kissed my forehead. Said:

“So let’s get married, yeah?”

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

“I am,” Brady said.

“Well. When I’m asked properly? Directly? Maybe I’ll have a proper direct answer.”

We were close. Brady switched off the light and held me closer, tucked my hands against his warm chest and we fell asleep.

At six in the morning while we were still in bed Kev signed himself out of the hospital. Caught a cab back to the festival and met up with Gabe and the Mario Brothers.

They blended Si-3-PO with cocaine and Ketamine but they got the mixture wrong and two hours later as the tour prepared to pack up those idiots were found wide-eyed and paralyzed, choked to death on bloody foam.

Kev left the grounds in an ambulance for the second and final time. There was no need for flashing lights on this trip and by noon the entire festival was cordoned off, locked down tight.

Have you ever seen France’s national police react to a well-founded suspicion that a low-budget music festival is actually a global front for the distribution of synthetic super-opiates?

Forget about those Clouseau cops from the “Pink Panther” movies, I’m not talking about postcard gendarmes with canvas kepis. These goons came wrapped and capped in Kevlar with barking dogs and great big guns, kicking in doors and laying on hands. They dragged me and Brady naked to the lounge of his coach for interrogation while they tossed the place like bingo balls from stem to stern.

Nobody can demote your self-esteem and make it belly-crawl like two snotty French detectives in tailored suits, chain-smoking Gauloises and asking crafty questions in better English than the MTV trash-patois I grew up speaking. When they smell blood, those cats can be proper fascist cunts with hospital corners.

So that’s how we spent our last weekend in Normandy and on Monday, with no credible evidence of organized trafficking, the deaths of Kev and company were officially chalked up under “shit happens” and the tour operators and talent, the vendors and support staff were cleared of culpability.

The detectives returned our passports and politely invited our travelling show to pack up and get the fuck out of France.

After the hearing Brady and I split from the exonerated herd, walked down the corridor to the civil office and put ink under our new arrangement. We stepped out of the courthouse holding hands and waded through a sunny mob of reporters and photographers crowding the stairs.

The press went wild when they saw he’d lost the Bradybun.

Dave had done me a solid and leaked news of our wedding to the media. He never told me how he knew the raid was coming down but he assured me nothing incriminating was discovered in our trailer.

I smiled, stood proudly beside Brady. Fanned my fingers like a typical stooge bride and showed off his grandmother’s ring.

The news broke within thirty minutes and Melanie texted links to every story she could find.

I read them all. I wished my nails weren’t chipped but I loved how I looked at that moment, in those pictures.

I looked happy. I was so fucking sure.