When We're Together (Damon Albarn)

Chapter Forty-One

The nearer towards the show we got, the more chaotic things seemed to get. It was late afternoon now and Jamie had joined us, along with his kids, Jessica, her kids and Damon's parents, as well as Alex's wife Claire and their children Geronimo, Artemis, Galileo and Sable.

The kids had taken the football, which seemed to come to every show with us, out to the grass in front of our trailer. Sitting on the grass, watching the chaos play out felt too surreal. Every so often I did feel the need to pinch myself, how Damon and I had been blessed with this life was beyond me.

"For fucks sake!" Missy shouted as the football rolled passed Damon's feet and into the goal "You're rubbish, Dad!"

"Missy!" I exclaimed, furrowing my eyebrows and shaking my head as she looked at me "Less of the language please"

"Sorry" She mumbled, a sheepish grin coming over her face before she pointed an accusatory finger in Jamie's direction "He said it first!"

Jamie glanced at me, shrugging his shoulders as a grin came over his lips, his actions were mirroring Missy's perfectly "Sorry Lyla!"

I just rolled my eyes, letting myself laugh once Missy wasn't looking at me. Damon and I used to be really strict on the kids swearing, but the older they got and the more they repeated from people around them, the harder it became. Whilst we certainly didn't condone it, we didn't discipline it either. We knew they would never swear at school or anywhere where it really mattered and, at the end of the day, they were only words.

The sun was shining on my legs as I stretched them out, and the music was faint enough to let me forget about the reality of the performance we were doing very soon. It all just felt too good, though as I watched Damon kick the ball towards Graham, a bit too aggressively, I knew that something bad was going to happen. A civil game of football could never happen when there were that many different egos clashing.

Almost on cue, I watched as the ball left Foxton's foot and flew directly into Primrose, who was far too distracted to move out of the way from the fall flying towards her face. As the ball collided with her face, there was a collective silence as everyone held their breath, in those few seconds everyone was completely frozen as we all waited to see what her reaction was about to be.

I got myself up, walking as quickly as I could towards her when I realised she wasn't reacting. Over the years, I had learnt that silence was always worse than a scream when something happened. By the time I got to her she was covering her mouth with her hand, her eyes flashing me a worried look.

"Are you okay darling?" I asked, cringing slightly as she moved her hand to show me her bloody mouth, the crimson liquid decorating her hand.

Before I could respond, she had opened out her hand in front of me, a tooth in the palm of it. I sighed slightly, of course my baby had lost her first tooth by being hit in the face with a football.

"My tooth came out!" She exclaimed, I looked up to her to realise that her worried look had turned into glee, she was seemingly unbothered about the blood dripping out of her mouth "I finally lost a tooth Mum!"

I took the small tooth from her hand, before wrapping my arm around her shoulders. It was only when I turned around from the primrose bubble I was in that I realised everyone had crowed around us. Everyone apart from Damon and Graham, who were comforting a distraught Fox. It was clearly a complete accident, but I knew how hurt he was going to be at the thought of hurting his sister. I flashed Damon a thumbs up to let him know she was, sort of, okay before having to practically drag Primrose inside. She seemed to be in no rush to get the blood cleaned up and rinsed out of her mouth and was, instead, taking great pleasure in all the concerned attention she was suddenly getting.