Let's Fly

By Giles Fraser

How do you survive when a lucky break turns out to be the worst thing that ever happened to you? 
Nick Hunter is about to find out. He made a colossal mistake when he was barely out of school and now his whole world is in jeopardy as he races against the clock to save his family and his business from disaster. 
In 1979 Hunter heads to London, and a squat in Notting Hill, with dreams of musical success. With his fellow squatters he forms a band and they record four short songs before tensions and misunderstandings drive them apart. Nick lies and tells the record company the songs are all his own work. Six years later one of the songs, Let’s Fly, is picked as the soundtrack to a blockbuster movie and Nick makes a fortune in royalties. 
In 2017, Nick, his wife Sam and daughter Jen now live in the house opposite his old squat. His successful gig economy, online food business is about to go public, but someone is on his back. Nick is in massive debt and the heavies are closing in. Disasters are befalling the business just at the wrong time. Then Sam is snatched and, with a price on her head, Nick must come up with the money or lose her. With his life and family on the line – and just days to play with - Nick has to stop whoever is destroying his life and come clean with those he loves in order to hang on to everything he holds dear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: May 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800469327

Giles Fraser

Giles Fraser co-founded and runs Brands2Life, one of the world’s leading PR and communications agencies specialising in the technology and online sectors. He studied under Richard Skinner at The Faber Academy in 2015/16. He lives in Barnes, West London.

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Copyright © 2021 Giles Fraser

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1800469 327

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For Alex, Charlotte, Cesca and Arabella

Contents

Prologue

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

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Acknowledgements

Prologue

3rd May 2017

This is the story of someone who had an amazing piece of luck, the kind of luck you see in films and think: ‘That would never happen’. Well, sometimes it does. It did. To me.

And, not long afterwards, for a very long time, I wished I’d never had it.

It is eight o’clock on a very warm Saturday morning and I’m lying, exhausted, on a double bed that’s seen much better days, in a friend’s house, that’s also seen much better days, in Notting Hill. The bedroom door is shut and, because the window frame is painted shut as well, the air hangs close and stale. A mug of coffee lies spilt on the carpet beside the bed. Whenever I lie still two flies settle back down on my face until I wipe them away.

I’m a grown man, over fifty years old, and I can’t haul myself off the bed to clean up the split coffee. And I should take my shirt and trousers off if I want to cool down, but I can’t summon up the energy for that either. That’s not me. Usually I’m up early, running, exercising, tidying, checking email. Right now, I feel like I have been unplugged, a not-fit-for-purpose cyborg waiting to be recycled. For the first time since I can remember, despite fretting all night, I don’t know what to do next.

I can hear voices in the street. I strain to hear if any of them belong to Sam or Jen or maybe just a neighbour. My own house is opposite – not that I’ll be going back in there anytime soon. Every so often there is the clatter of a bicycle and a child’s yell. It makes me think of Jen as a toddler on her stabilisers. Will we ever be back in the house together again? Will my life ever be the same? If it isn’t, it’s my fault. I will myself to get up, get out, start fighting.

If I had some luck once it has run out now. In the past week I’ve lost my job and my wife. I’m broke and owe more money than I can ever hope to repay. Staring up at the damp-marked ceiling all night, I can see I deserved all of it. Anyway, I’ll leave that judgement to you.

When you hear my story, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that I already had a charmed life before I got my big piece of luck. What have I got to complain about? If anything, I am getting payback. What goes around comes around. ‘Fair point caller’, as they say on talk radio.

I didn’t want what that luck brought to me. Honestly. You’ll see. All I wanted – ever wanted in fact – is to love and be loved – and not to worry that it could be taken away. Simple as that.

I didn’t factor in my piece of luck at all. I didn’t see it coming and I didn’t know how to handle it when it came. How could I? When I tell you about it, think what you would have done if it had been you. Before you condemn me just take a few minutes to do that.

My shirt sticks to my skin as I turn over in bed. I have destroyed everything I value. Something needs to change – and fast. I can’t give up now. I know I’ve fucked up, but I need to see my wife and daughter again, explain to them, beg them to give me one final chance. But, right now, I don’t know where to start.

What I do know is that if I hadn’t, on a whim, thrown myself at London at the age of eighteen, thirty-five years later none of this would have happened.

PART 1

July 1979

Chapter 1

It all started with a scrap of paper pushed under my bedroom door on my last day at boarding school.

I’M NOT COMING. SORRY. LUCY.

My heart banged against my ribcage as I read it. And I read it again in case I had mis-read. I hadn’t. The paper zoomed large, then small, then large again as if it was the flashing neon of some sci-fi movie beamed into my vision. I staggered backwards. Was this a joke?

I pulled open the door and shouted to the disappearing back of the boy who must have delivered it.

Grant? Did you take this message? For some archaic reason, everyone called each other by their surnames at boarding school.

The boy, dressed in his suit and house tie for final prayers, scampered back up to me. He was breathing hard and blushing with nerves. His direct conversations with me, one of the house monitors, had been rare.

Yes, Hunter, she told me to take down exactly what she said and take it straight up to you.

‘Don’t shoot the messenger’, isn’t that what they say? I flicked the note against my other hand. He mustn’t notice my lip wobbling. Unable to speak I nodded thank you and turned back into my study. There was a single iron-framed bed, a desk and a wardrobe. Everything else was packed, ready for home, except my record player.

I sat down on the bed and stared at the note. I wasn’t going interrailing in Europe with my girlfriend anymore. It didn’t seem possible but maybe I didn’t have a girlfriend at all? I lay down facing the pitted wall and clenched my face up. No one could see me like this. Not on my last day. They would rip me to shreds.

*

I’d met Lucy at a friend’s barbecue two years previously and we’d bonded over a mutual love of punk rock. Sitting apart from the others, coughing from the smoke, swapping and laughing about lines in songs from The Clash, The Jam and The Damned, we annexed ourselves and, by the time the evening was over, were well on our way to becoming a couple. I couldn’t believe my luck. She had ocean blue eyes that darted with mischief as she talked; a proud nose that was very slightly too big for her face and spiky blonde hair with black roots. She never smoked but she had the throaty, infectious laugh of a chain-smoker. I fell deep and fast.

We both went to boarding schools so only saw each other at half-term and in the holidays but, at those times, we saw each other every day. When we could afford it, we went to the cinema and gigs; when we couldn’t we lay next to each other on our beds or, in the summer, in the fields sipping cheap, sweet cider. She became part of my identity. I wasn’t an individual anymore – I was one half of a couple. Some boys want to jump from girl to girl as the novelty wears off but that wasn’t for me. I couldn’t take the uncertainty of that life. For the first time in my teenage years I was happy. When at school, I counted the days to the next letter or phone call.

Things weren’t always so simple for Lucy. She had an ex-boyfriend – Matt – who lived opposite her house. He couldn’t get over the fact she had chucked him for me. Often, I would get teary phone calls where she recounted how he had been to her house begging for her to take him back. She was a caring person but begrudged the many hours she spent consoling him.

We were both looking forward to the end of ‘A’ levels when we could finally be together. We had been planning it for months: an interrailing trip to start as soon as we left school. I had never looked forward to anything so much in my life and had worked all the winter holiday from before dawn to lunchtime at the local sorting office, stuffing mailbags with post to save the money for our train tickets. I’d mapped out our route; booked the first hostel; and researched all the others. Lucy couldn’t work as she had to look after her little sister, but she said she could save us money on our train tickets by using a travel agent friend of her father’s.

Now the summer stretched out before me like a featureless desert. I had no other plan. Lucy was my plan. I tried to rub my sore eyes dry with the blanket – the sheets had been sent to the laundry. I scoured my mind for an explanation. We were so in love, weren’t we? Why would she cancel?

She hadn’t called me for several weeks as we had agreed we needed to focus on our exams. Her letters, twice a week in the previous terms, had dried up. When I called her house at school, she was in the library studying. Could she be ill? Maybe her father, who had a dodgy heart, was unwell? There would be the explanation.

*

I managed to cheer myself up with that thought, found a towel and patted my face back to some form of normality. Then I went downstairs to the cubbyhole that housed the payphone. It was free – most of the boys had already gone home. I pulled out ten pence, sat leaning against the wall and, shaking, dialled her home number.

The first time the phone went unanswered for two minutes. I put it down and tried again. This time, after a minute, someone picked up. It was her mother. I shoved in the ten pence piece.

Oh hello, Nick, I was in the garden. Is everything OK?

Where’s Lucy? There was a pause. When she spoke again her voice was higher and posher, like a BBC newsreader.

She’s travelling to Paris with you, isn’t she?

No. I’m still at school.

Ah. I see. She paused. She called me from the station. I presumed…

My most recurring nightmare jumped into my consciousness like a thunder flash.

Is she with Matt? Her mother muttered something about it being odd that she had left the house and walked over the road. She assumed it was some final plea before he let her go.

She’d left me. Not only that but she hadn’t bothered to tell me. And, given she was skint, it looked very much like she had used my money to pay for the tickets. I picked hard at the hole in the cement wall next to where the phone hung, grey dust dropped onto the white table. Grief and anger coursed through me at the same time.

She’s gone with Matt! That’s our trip, the one we’ve been planning for months. How could she do this? How could you let her do this? I can’t believe she would.

Her mother let me rant for two minutes whispering how sorry she was. When I ran out of steam, she said how contrary Lucy could be but how loyal she was to ‘old friends’. I held the phone away from my ear as she stuck up for her daughter. I’d never liked her.

I went back up to my room and lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the sound of trunks and cases being dragged along the corridor. I put on a Joni Mitchell record – ‘Both Sides Now’ – one of the albums I hid behind the punk ones and stared into space.

The whole of summer was ahead of me. I still had our spending money. I needed a new plan fast.

*

I’d been at boarding school for ten years, from eight to eighteen. It was where the upper-middle classes dumped their sons until they had had their rough edges worn off: a jungle in all but name. I had been bullied when younger and, when older, sometimes been a bully myself. I’d once been propositioned by a teacher; and had endless, pointless fights with my fellow pupils. From eight o’clock at night until breakfast time we weren’t allowed to leave our boarding houses. Lucy had been my lifeline. It was an open prison and I wanted out as much as any prisoner. It was time to escape.

My school was a Victorian Gothic extravagance set on a hill near Godalming in Surrey. It was early July and the school’s old boys had descended with their bow ties, sports cars and bronze-armed fiancées for the annual open day.

I hid on the roof of the house amongst the eight-foot high sandstone chimney stacks and smoked until it was rollcall. I looked out over the playing fields, surveyed the queues for the tea tents and heard the old boys’ hoarse laughter as they competed with their stories of early success. I would never see all this again.

In a few months’ time, all being well with my grades, I would be going to university to study history. I wanted one in a big city: Bristol was my first choice. But what about the summer? It was the next few months that concerned me now.

I could go back to my parents’ house deep in the Surrey countryside. They had liked Lucy. I would probably have to spend the first day explaining why she wasn’t there. Advantages: free meals, lodging and washing, occasional hand-outs. Disadvantages: constant behaviour monitoring in an environment of post-war morals where two pints of bitter was considered going-off-the-rails.

Then, in a flash, I decided. I would go straight up to London, find somewhere to live, sign on the dole, and start the band I had always talked about. Loads of people were doing it. Punk had kick-started thousands of bands. Why not me? That would show Lucy. By the time she got back from Europe I could be well on my way.

I had my plan. Or at least the kernel of one. And I knew who I needed to talk to next. I walked down the twisted, narrow stairs from the roof of the school. I could hear Genesis’ ‘Supper’s Ready’ seeping out of Luke Benaud’s study.

Why aren’t you packed? I asked as I walked in. He was sitting on his bed leaning against the wall as if the sound held him captive. Luke had kept himself to himself for the whole five years we’d boarded in the same house. He went to the music school every day and played piano there whenever he could. He smiled a lot more when he did that. We’d bonded over his Pink Floyd, Genesis and Eagles albums. If I played a punk record, he shut his door and turned up the volume on whatever prog rock album he was playing. Music was all we ever talked about. That’s where we both went to escape.

He leant over and turned the volume down. And why aren’t you dressed in drag like the rest of your lot? It was my friends’ idea of an end-of-term prank.

They’d run out of costumes. I was never going to do that. So, what’s up with you? He was a musical genius; I couldn’t see any reason why he’d be scared of the world after school.

Luke buried his head in his hands. It’s the summer. I just can’t face my parents if it’s just me. The silences. They should just get a divorce. David’s off on some charity trip and we normally keep each other entertained. Ginny’s off on her gap year. It’ll be a nightmare.

He was in a worse state than me. I sat down beside him on the bed. C’mon, it’s not that bad. We’re leaving school. We can do anything we want now. I’ve seen the way your parents look at you. They love you. Remember when you played that Schubert piece at the concert? They were both in pieces. Whereas my parents… I tutted and, looking at me, he forced a smile.

My band was currently a one-piece, me, so it needed three other members. Luke played piano and organ better than anyone in the school. I had often joked with him that we should do something together. He didn’t know but I often listened behind the door when he played. His preference was for those long, ethereal prog rock songs or the classics. Anything over ten minutes. I had found punk and liked choppy, loud, ugly songs; nothing longer than two minutes. I liked his better if truth be told but had no chance of learning to play those. I needed him so I had to show confidence I didn’t feel.

Something of his mood touched me. We were in the same boat. I could help myself by helping him. What did either of us have to lose?

Why don’t you come up to London with me? I’m heading to Notting Hill to form a band. Shame to waste all that talent of yours.

Aren’t you going interrailing? He didn’t need to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. Change of plan. The band’s more important. Think The-Clash-meets-The-Specials. With a bit of Blondie thrown in. It’s going to be epic. Lucky, he wasn’t too inquiring about the living accommodation.

Still sounds dreadful. Luke wiped his eyes and, with a grimace, pushed his long, straggly blond hair back off his tortoiseshell glasses. He looked how I felt. I stood up and walked back to the door.

You can write the songs if you want. I wouldn’t mind some fresh melodies. You bring the melody and I’ll bring the brevity. I didn’t remind him I could still only play three chords. He looked up at me and sighed, then leant over to his desk and grabbed a pencil.

Give me your number.

*

On Monday morning, I set off from my parents’ house in Abinger in my two-tone Triumph Herald. It had been my grandfather’s car. When he died, I bought it off my granny for a knock-down price. It still stank of the cigarettes and pipe smoke that killed him – and it only did sixty miles an hour. It drank petrol too. But none of that really mattered as parking in London was free and we’d be walking everywhere.

I hadn’t told my parents much about my plans. I had learnt that early. As soon as I’d hit adolescence, I’d realised it was better to give them as little information about my life as possible. Everything that I could keep a secret stayed that way. It kept me in control. That habit would cost me later on. I told them Lucy had some family issues to sort and that I was going to go and get some work in London for a while.

Luke was waiting for me on the grass verge outside his house in Send, dwarfed by a huge hedge. He had two plastic bags and a portable organ.

Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your parents? I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

No. He pushed the organ into the back of the car alongside my guitar. We had to lean forward with the instruments looming over our heads. It made conversation forced and we settled into silence with Radio One and Simon Bates for company. Gary Numan was enjoying his five minutes of fame. We were nearly in Kingston when he spoke again.

Is it OK if Trish visits sometimes?

What? Who’s Trish?

My girlfriend. I haven’t told her our address though. What is it?

This was all very real now. I hadn’t told him the address because I didn’t have one. My fit of bravado was a disaster waiting to happen. I had permission to stay at a friend’s flat in Brookville Road, Fulham for a night then we were on our own. If pushed, I would have said we were heading for Notting Hill, Portobello Road, home of The Clash. I had been told there were plenty of empty houses around there. The Herald swerved into the middle lane as my hands shook.

I can’t remember.

Really? I’m skint by the way.

So am I. We’ll busk until we can sign on.

Silence returned for the rest of the journey.

*

The basement flat in Fulham was damp and dark with a ‘For Sale’ sign outside. The carpet, walls, furniture, and sheets were all brown and beige. It was like being trapped in a Cadbury’s factory. An orange lava lamp, the sole source of colour, laboured away releasing oily bubbles on a table in the corner.

We heated a can of beans on the stove and I tried to talk about my plans for the band. Sitting at the two-person kitchen table, Luke didn’t seem to know any potential members and was more inclined to talk about his parents. As he moaned, he kept looking around the kitchenette in despair and I tried to distract him. If only he knew how much talent he had. I would have killed for an ounce of it.

They’re off on separate holidays this year. Neither invited me. My dad went nuts when I said I was moving up to London. I wish David was around.

Maybe that’s why Ginny went away for a year? I changed tack. Do you know any drummers? I want someone really strong and powerful to complement you. Like Rat Scabies of The Damned.

Luke stared into the middle distance and ignored the sad collection of congealed beans on his plate. Do your parents row? Everyone else’s parents look so blissfully happy when they arrive at school.

I wasn’t listening. It was time to take the leap, too late to go back. Look, let’s finish our food and go up to Notting Hill. I want to sort out our accommodation.

What do you mean? This isn’t it?

No, I told you. We’re going to find an empty house and squat. I’ve heard of someone who will sort it for us.

You didn’t tell me that! Fuckin’ hell. I would be better off at home.

"No, you wouldn’t. Stick with me – we’re going all the way, all the way to Top of the Pops." I don’t know why I said that – it made our future sound even less promising.

Luke jumped up and rushed to the bathroom. I couldn’t finish my beans. Somehow in the space of twenty-four hours I’d become his guardian. Maybe Trish wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. I thought of Lucy in Paris. I wouldn’t have had to look after her.

He came back, red-faced. Jesus. We’re going to break into someone else’s house? I don’t want a criminal record.

He had a point. Now, now. Relax. Everybody does it. It’s a rite of passage if you want to become a successful musician these days.

*

We walked to Fulham Broadway to get the District Line to Gloucester Road then took the Circle up to Notting Hill Gate. Bags of rubbish lined the streets. Margaret Thatcher had got into office promising to sort the unions out and get everyone’s standard of living up but there was no sign of it in this part of London. My heart was beating like a drum as we walked across to Ladbroke Grove and then down to The Elgin pub. I couldn’t believe I was here, the centre of the London punk and reggae scene. Something inside me had clicked on the journey up; with Luke being so hopeless I knew I had no option but to be confident and take control. I looked around me and savoured the scene. I pulled my head back and stood as tall as I could.

It