Heartbreaker by Julie Morrigan

went to show how wrong you could be about people.
    ‘So, what are you looking for?’ Colin asked Alex. ‘Excessive spending on ephemera? Taking helicopters to parties that were only a few miles away? Scandalous tales of drink, drugs and women? Using hundred dollar bills to snort mountains of coke? Fountains filled with champagne?’ He laughed. ‘Because if you are, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve done it all, believe me. Mind you, compared to the crew, we were choirboys.’ He scratched his head. ‘Do you remember when there was all that stuff in the papers about us? Back in’79, that would have been. We were touring in the States, promoting Icarus , that was the fifth album, and things went crazy back here . ’
    Alex nodded.
    ‘There was a load of shit about the drink and drugs we were all supposed to be taking, and women being “procured” for us. That was the word they used; “procured”. Like we couldn’t get girls for ourselves. Jesus, we were beating them off with sticks. If we’d had two dicks each we couldn’t have got through them all, there were so many hanging around. They used to scam their way onto our floor in whatever hotel we were at and sleep in the corridor. I’d get up to go and see Johnny or whoever and be stepping over teenagers all the way to his room. Talk about trampled underfoot. And it seemed like they were all steeped in hippy juice.’ He laughed. ‘We figured if the band crashed, we could go into business selling patchouli oil, there was clearly a massive demand for it. Anyway, all this tacky stuff got printed in the tabloids back home while we were over there touring, and the shit hit the fan. Next thing I know, my mother’s on the phone asking me what the hell I think I’m doing, dragging the family’s name through the mud. She said she’d never be able to hold her head up in church again. She’s deeply religious, my old mum. It was bad enough that I was in a band, without this. It took a lot of time to sort things out with the family, I can tell you.
    ‘Still, at least Tom and I weren’t married. Johnny, Andy and Paul got no end of shit from their wives. Tiff said she would have left Andy but there’d be no point, because he was so smacked out he wouldn’t have noticed. It all calmed down, but that kind of thing does so much damage.’
    Alex nodded. ‘It must have been rough when things like that happened.’
    ‘Yeah, especially since we thought we’d dodged that particular bullet.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘Six months before, this journo …’ Colin paused then shook his head. ‘Never mind. Old news. Do you know, we used to wonder what people expected of us. I mean, we’d go out there and whip a stadium full of people into a frenzy, have them in the palm of our hand, take them high, bring them down again and then bam! The big finish. We’d get so hyped up we could barely sit still, and some people seemed to think after all that we should go back to a hotel room and play Scrabble. People should realise they can’t have it all ways; if you want bands that can create that sort of energy, then there has to be a way for them to release it again afterwards.’
    Alex nodded. ‘Are you saying that the families had no idea how you behaved on tour?’
    Colin picked at the grass. ‘Of course they knew. Not every last detail, but the gist of it.’ He met Alex’s eyes. ‘They understood the sheer fucking tedium of touring; the travelling, the hotels, the bars. Performing was brilliant, we lived for it. It was the rest that would grind. The arrangement, unspoken, admittedly, was that if we were out of the country, we could cut loose, just so long as we were careful. Discreet, if that’s the right word for some of the shenanigans we got up to.
    ‘The problem with this was, it was public. It broke the arrangement, they felt humiliated.’ He paused. ‘And public humiliation is difficult to swallow. Come on,’ he said, scrambling to his feet, ‘let’s go and