Chapter Text
Chris drops a bombshell during our cake break.
'I'm off to Monaco next Friday.'
I was just about to scoop up a piece of my chocolate cake but I stop my hand and look up. It is not so much what he said but rather the way he is fiddling with the coffee cup handle which puts me on guard.
'What have you got on in Monaco?' I ask as casually as possible.
'I've been invited to the Monaco GP.'
'GP? As in...'
'Grand Prix.'
Invited, he said. Interesting. Not that it is unusual. We are Pet Shop Boys, after all. People invite us, or one of us, to flashy events now and then, even though right now we are sitting in a small café in Berlin and no one seems to have noticed us. I just didn't know Chris knew someone who was into Formula One.
Come to think of it, he watched a couple of races on TV a few days after we arrived in Berlin. The first one was on just before we went out for dinner on a Saturday. I was in the same room as him but didn't pay much attention because I was replying to an email from our manager Angela. It was raining where the race was being held, which delayed the start so we ended up leaving for dinner a bit later than planned. The second race was on quite late in the evening on the following day. He said a good-night to me, saying he was going to his bedroom to watch it.
I guess Chris has a new friend who has got him interested in F1. An important new friend, judging from the way he is now looking out of the window, at nothing but strangers walking by, in an obvious attempt to appear nonchalant.
I want to ask him who has invited him. Instead I ask, 'How long will you be away for?'
'Ah, I'll be back on Monday. ...Don't worry, Neil.'
Did I sound worried?
Not wanting to overthink, I resume eating my cake. After about three spoonfuls though, I realise I am not enjoying the cake and have to admit that I am feeling a familiar pang of jealousy.
It is not what people may think. It is just that I had thought, now that summer was here and Chris and I were back in Berlin, we would get to spend a few weeks writing new songs, uninterrupted by people and unbothered by commitments. Now we will be interrupted.
It is just a weekend away, I suppose.
-----
We are quieter than usual as we walk back to our apartment. However, within an hour of sitting in our home studio and working together, we are back to normal.
The second one of our new songs is coming along nicely. It is not really brand new; I had most of the lyrics written before our last album "Nonetheless" and then Chris set them to music last summer. My suggestion to slow down the tempo has just inspired him to come up with a gorgeous piano riff.
I do like watching him play the piano. He is an excellent pianist and also, when he is concentrating, his lips part and the tip of his tongue sticks out.
'Well, Neil,' he says, 'this could be a single.'
I cannot help but grin.
-----
I have just got out of the bath and am heading to the refrigerator to get myself a drink when I hear Chris playing an unfamiliar tune on the piano. It sounds nice. It sounds different.
I walk over to him but he stops playing.
'Let's hear it. It sounded good,' I say as I pull up a chair.
'Ah, it's not mine.'
'Oh? Who is it by? Do we want to cover it?'
'It's...well, I dunno.'
The earlier conversation in the café comes back to me. After all these years, Chris and I have developed ways to stay close without making each other feel confined. That is why I did not ask him who had invited him on a weekend away. He tells me everything he wants to tell me. Right now, he doesn't want to tell me what this song is.
So I shrug and start walking back to the kitchen to get the cold drink I had wanted before talking to him. He doesn't say anything.
-----
I go to my room and settle down on the bed, propping myself up on pillows. I pick up my book and start reading. About three paragraphs in though, I realise I am not really reading but just following the words with my eyes.
It is not unusual for Chris to avoid talking about some things. It is, however, unusual for him to look so nervous about it.
It is, I fear, because he can sense my uneasiness...or, well, jealousy.
It is not that I don't want Chris to have a new friend – or a boyfriend, for that matter. I sometimes make new friends too and have had boyfriends. However, I seem to have a certain level of expectation to have Chris to myself. After over four decades of close partnership, one would be forgiven to expect priority and loyalty. Having said that, there is a thin line between that and an unhealthy state where one's peace of mind relies on their partner's actions and whereabouts.
-----
I am sat on my bed after breakfast working on my German on Duolingo when Chris knocks on the door and asks if he can come in. It is only 8am and I am surprised he is already up. I reply with a yes.
He comes in and says, 'Neil, I need to talk to you about something.'
Here it is: the moment of truth. I am glad that our overnight awkwardness is ending but at the same time I am scared of what he may say.
'What's up?' I say calmly but my heart has started beating faster and I am worried he may be able to sense that.
He sits on the end of my bed.
'You know I said I'd been invited to the Monaco GP?'
'Yeah?'
'It's Lewis Hamilton who invited me.'
'Lewis Hamilton. ...Isn't that an F1 driver?'
'Yes.'
I am dumbfounded. When he said he'd been invited, I assumed someone had asked him to go and see the Monaco GP with them, as in, see it together. I didn't think the inviter would be IN the Monaco GP.
'Since when do you know Lewis Hamilton?'
'For about three months. We've been chatting...and recently I've been helping him a bit with his songwriting.'
'Songwriting?!'
I didn't expect this.
'Yes. Look, I didn't know either but he writes songs. He also sings and has been on one of Christina Aguilera's records. You've probably heard him but he was under a pseudonym.'
'How did you meet him?'
'In KOKO. Remember I went to see Dimitri from Paris?'
I do remember. It was the day after Valentine's Day. Chris and I had spent Valentine's Day together in my house in London because we were working on our "Hymn" demo and, although I had hardly anything in the fridge, we didn't eat out because we would totally look like a couple if we did.
I nod and he continues, 'He was there. We got talking and...well, we went from there.'
All of this is totally unexpected. Then again, Chris wrote a song with Ian Wright in the 1990s. This is not so different, right?
'That tune you were playing last night... Is it his?' I ask.
'Yes. ...Is that OK?'
Is he asking for my permission? Well, this is strangely flattering.
'Of course it is – as long as he doesn't replace me in Pet Shop Boys,' I joke.
He doesn't laugh. Am I missing something?
-----
I am at the dining table laying out the deli items we bought at Lindner on our way home from the café yesterday when Chris gets a call. He answers it, saying, 'Hello, mate. Hold on,' and disappears towards his bedroom.
Once I've got our lunch dished up, I sit and wait for him to come back, picking up my mobile phone to check emails.
I finish reading all the new emails and start browsing Instagram. Wolfgang Tillmans has made a long post. Great; this will kill some time.
I finish reading it and add a like. Chris is not back yet. I consider starting to eat by myself but decide not to. I like having lunch with Chris.
We like having lunch together.
It is becoming difficult to ignore feeling ignored when he walks back into the room. He is suppressing a smile, like he does when he is happy during our live performance but tries to keep himself in the stoic character.
'Oh, thanks, Neil,' he says, pointing at the deli food on plates and the sliced bread on a board. 'Sorry the call took a bit long.'
'It's all right,' I reply.
We start eating. I am hoping he starts telling me what the call was about.
He doesn't.
It must have been Lewis Hamilton who called. I can tell. Well, I may be wrong. I am probably right though because I know Chris well.
'Do we want to eat out tonight?' I ask, wanting to start a conversation.
'Nah. I think I'll get an early night. Got up too early this morning,' he says, looks at me and smiles.
His eyes catch the early-afternoon sunlight coming in from the window and twinkle. Not many people get to see his eyes very often. I do. I cannot help smiling back.
-----
On the next morning I find Chris already up and fiddling with something on his laptop in our studio when I come out of my bedroom. I am about to ask him if he wants tea when I notice he has FaceTime open on his mobile phone.
'I'll send this to you in a bit,' he says to the person on the phone screen.
'Great, man. I really appreciate it,' the person says.
I am too far to see the face on the screen clearly but it does look like Lewis Hamilton.
Chris says bye to him and hangs up. He then turns around to me and chirps, 'Morning!'
'You're up early,' I say flatly, regretting afterwards that I did not greet him back.
'Ah, it was Lewis. He has training to do so wanted to talk early,' he says, turns back onto his computer and restarts working.
It is 7am. He made an effort to get up early for Lewis. He probably didn't want to eat out with me last night so that he could get up early. I also realise that he had neither his sunglasses nor reading glasses on when he was talking to Lewis. Lewis could see Chris's eyes.
I walk over to the kitchen to make tea. I have to calm down. I am feeling shaken and, frankly, I am surprised by the strength of my emotions.
I switch on the kettle and place just one mug onto the worktop. Rethinking, I take out another mug from the dishwasher. While the water is coming to a boil, I inhale and exhale deeply and slowly.
I am totally overreacting. He only got up a bit early. He only talked to him on FaceTime. When Chris and I started writing songs together, he would come over to my flat every weekend. Even after he moved back to Liverpool in order to continue studying for his qualification in architecture, he would get on the train and come to London almost every weekend to see me. When he likes the music he is making, he loves it passionately. This is totally normal Chris Lowe behaviour.
I bring two mugs of steaming tea into the studio and place one in front of him. I take the chance to peep into his computer screen but he is actually just reading news. No sign of Lewis.
He is grateful for the tea. He looks fresh. I, on the other hand, feel like going back to bed.
Reminding myself that I am overreacting, I start telling him about the sample I want to add to the song we've been working on this week – the would-be single.
His phone starts vibrating and "LH44" flashes on its screen. He answers it and I can hear the muffled voice of the caller thanking him for the file transfer link he had emailed. The call ends just seconds later.
The voice inside me is screaming, 'Did you have to call just to say that, Sir Lewis Hamilton? You could have just emailed back!' but outwardly I am silent.
'Sorry, Neil, you were saying...?' Chris says as he looks up at me.
'You know what, I have a headache coming on. I'm going back to bed for a bit,' I make my excuses and leave.
-----
I didn't set out to actually fall asleep but I do. When I wake up, the sun is quite high outside the window. Not that I really had a headache when I said so but I do feel a lot better now. I don't know why I was so angry earlier. Maybe I was tired.
After freshening myself up, I leave the bedroom and immediately smell something nice. Is Chris baking again? I enter the kitchen and indeed I find him carefully adjusting the top layer of a Victoria sponge.
He looks up and says, 'You're up! How're you feeling?'
'Better now. You baked again.'
'Well, I fancied a cake but didn't suppose you'd be up for a stroll down to Sinless Cakes. I didn't have cream so it's just jam though.'
'It smells very nice.'
'You must be feeling better then!' he says and flashes a grin at me.
Most people in the world probably don't know that the "grump" in Pet Shop Boys actually smiles a lot, talks a lot, dances a lot and even bakes quite a bit. He does them all very well.
-----
The sample I want to add does work well in our song. Chris likes it. We are tweaking the song as we sit in the studio, eating the second serving of Chris's homemade Victoria sponge. The initial demo is almost done. I am feeling relaxed and accomplished.
Chris's phone starts vibrating and I see "LH44" again on its screen. My mood drops drastically.
I am disappointed to find that my mood can change like this. I was under the illusion that the anger I felt this morning had been caused by my tiredness. It was not. It was caused by Lewis. ...Actually, no – not by him but by my own expectations. But is it really too much to ask not to be disturbed like this? There is no way he needs to call Chris so often. I don't call him so often when we are apart.
Chris answers the call. Will he leave the studio now to talk to Lewis?
'Hi, Lewis. Sorry, can't talk now; I'm working with Neil. ...No worries. OK. Bye.'
The tension I was feeling melts away and warmth spreads inside me to replace it. Of course Chris wouldn't leave our songwriting session to attend to the needs of his new friend. What was I thinking?
-----
I find Chris FaceTiming Lewis again on the following morning but I am not unsettled by it. I even listen in on what they are working on and I like it. It is quite different from Pet Shop Boys' music, which is a good thing.
Later in the morning, we decide to ride our bicycles to the Tiergarten. It may be our last chance for a few days as some rain is forecast for the rest of the week. As of now, sunshine is showering us from between the green leaves of tall trees and every bird in the sky is a performer. The air is fresh and I can feel the sunshine warmer. After a leisurely ride, we have a little two-lap race with each other and then stop at a lakeside bench. I am out of breath and so is he. We are both sweaty and spread out on the bench but it doesn't matter because no one is looking at us. I do love the summer in Berlin.
-----
FaceTiming doesn't take place the next day and in fact Chris has a lie-in. It is nearly noon when he emerges.
'Not talking to Lewis today?' I ask.
He yawns before replying, 'He has a race in Imola this weekend.'
Oh, right. His day job.
We start working on a new song after brunch. Not that the two songs we have been working on are finished but it is good to leave them for a while and go back to them later. It keeps us relatively objective.
The way we work is that sometimes Chris or the both of us write melodies or chords first and at other times I write lyrics first and he sets them to music. This latest song is the latter case and he starts playing to me the music he has written so far.
It sounds good. It is quite different from anything we wrote for "Nonetheless" or the trilogy of albums we made with producer Stuart Price. When Chris is about three verses in though, the realisation hits me that it sounds like Lewis Hamilton's music.
I feel as if someone had poured a bucket of water on me.
-----
Chris has gone out to the pharmacy. He said he'd run out of hand cream. I don't know whether he was telling the truth or he just wanted to be away from me for a while. He does use a lot of hand cream. He wants his hands to look good when cameras are on them during our live performances. So it is possible he has indeed run out of hand cream. It is equally possible that he has had enough of my ever-changing mood.
I could tell that he could tell I was upset. I tried hard to look unaffected but, after all these years together, he can read me like a book.
I am beginning to feel exhausted by my own expectations and disappointments. I have not felt like this for many years. When I was young, I was admittedly a possessive man and my relationships wouldn't last for longer than three years. It is horrible when you want someone so much and that very feeling drives them away. I gradually learnt to relax and expect less from partners and friends and it led to the realisation that people actually value me more when I don't chase after them.
Right now, however, it just feels like Chris is steadily drifting away from me.
I don't see why I should feel this way. He is evidently writing a new album with me and it is not the first time he has taken inspiration from other people's music – far from it. We welcome fresh ideas and in fact often seek out producers and collaborators who enable us to explore unfamiliar genres and methods. We are just two people after all and we need all the external stimulation we can get. There is no logical reason why I should be alarmed by how Chris has been acting lately.
However, logics and a gut feeling are two separate things and I know from experience that the latter sometimes overrides the former.
-----
When Chris comes home, he does have a paper bag with "Apotheke" printed on it. For all I know, he may have a bottle of lube in it to use next weekend.
Oh, bloody hell.
He disappears towards his bedroom and comes back without the bag. He then walks over and sits down in front of me.
'Do you fancy seeing a film?' he asks out of the blue.
I am taken aback. After a few seconds I say, 'But what about the song?'
'You don't like what I've written. I need to rewrite it. I could do with getting some ideas from a film or something.'
I do want to go and see a film with Chris. Who wouldn't?
On the other hand, it feels as though he is just trying to keep me sweet. I fell for his charm multiple times during the past week – the piano riff, the Victoria sponge, the bicycle ride...not to mention his smiles and grins and twinkling eyes. Distracted by them all, I let him disturb our songwriting sessions with his new collaboration with Lewis...except, well, he hasn't.
He clearly turned down Lewis's call the other day. None of his morning FaceTiming sessions with Lewis overlapped our working hours. He even just said that he would scrap the music he'd written because I don't like it – because I don't like the Lewis-ness of it.
I must have been overreacting.
-----
We go out to Mitte to see a film. We consider seeing a classic European film but instead choose a recent musical biopic "A Complete Unknown".
I like how Bob Dylan's emotions are understated in this film. You are given the room to feel them, by tapping into your own experiences, rather than watch them being spelt out to you.
Afterwards we go round the corner to a bar Chris knows. We laugh at some mistranslation on the menu and order drinks and snacks. After two glasses of wine, I somehow feel like I have more energy than I did earlier in the day. We hadn't had an evening out all week; maybe it is exactly what I needed. A small band comes out at just after 10pm and starts playing. They sing about love and liberation.
-----
I wake up, find the room too bright and close my eyes again. What time is it? Maybe we shouldn't have gone to that second bar. We were trying to find a taxi when we heard an unfamiliar remix of "Blue Monday" drifting out of the bar and we had to check it out. It was past 1am when we got home.
I force myself up and find my mobile phone on the bedside table but it has switched off due to no battery. I take a good 20 minutes to brush my teeth, wash my face and get dressed.
I enter the sitting room to find Chris who is, interestingly, watching Lewis Hamilton on his laptop.
I only know it is Lewis Hamilton because it says so on the screen. He has a yellow helmet on and is sitting in a red car with mechanics surrounding it.
'Is the race coming up?' I ask Chris as I sit next to him on the sofa.
'No; this is a practice session. There is qualifying later today.'
'Then the race?'
'No race today; it's on tomorrow.'
I watch it with him for several minutes. The cameras show cars in various colours, some in garages and the others on the track. I quite like the green one – not the bright green one but the emerald-coloured one.
By the time I have had a cup of tea and brunch, it is well past 1pm and soon Chris closes the F1 livestream. We restart working on our third song. I told him last night that he didn't have to rewrite the music. I told him I wanted to give it a go.
On the second listen, it doesn't sound so Lewis Hamilton after all. It sounds much more Chris Lowe, actually.