Head in the clouds

Thirty - Theo

She closed the car door, waiting at the front of the car for me and I immediately grabbed for her hand, trying to give her any sense of comfort I possibly could right now. We started walking through the treeline and she took in a deep breath.

"We were twins. He used to really use that 'he was older line' But I said it didn't count because he had his cord wrapped around his neck so he was the reason we were born early anyway. He'd do this thing every year on his birthday. He'd wrap mums dressing gown tie around his neck, loosely obviously, like a scarf and he'd shout 'AHH FEELS LIKE HOME'." She chuckled. "They say twins are like a guaranteed best friend right? Like you have this intuition about things because you were literally together from day one. That was Jake for me. But we were polar opposites so I'd sit quietly reading and he'd be running around like he was on crack. 24 7. It never fucking stopped honestly. Like Noah's 7am runs but from 5am until 11pm. He was the party boy, the popular one and everything. When we were young, we spent a lot of time with our Uncle Mike. Mike is who taught us everything music. He teaches at the music college in town and has since the year we were born. We'd be with him and my nan on weekends when mum and dad were working and me and Jake would sit and learn piano or guitar or whatever else we wanted to, singing lessons, the whole thing. Anyway, the one thing Mike always said was don't tell mum because she wanted us to go after her or be doctors or accountants. You know some super fancy high paying easy job that was always the same."

"Mum doesn't like that Mike's a teacher. She doesn't think it's a fulfilling career or that he hasn't reached his potential or whatever but he's happy right? So, we never told anyone. And then one day she found out and all hell broke loose. We must have been 12 or something because we were in high school but it was early on. Anyway, me and Jake were acing all our classes and mum decided that we shouldn't be doing music as a way to kind of stop us pursuing it. We did anyway. Just me and him teaching ourselves stuff at lunch and before school and everything and we had plans to be doing this together. The tours and albums and everything. We did school performances and Sarah, who's getting married, she used to cover for us say we had an exam so late revision sessions or that she'd dropped us at a friend's house. I don't know. Anyway, after we finished school, when we were in college studying music, mum used to complain and everything but at that point neither of us cared and we'd started building a little local fan base so we were at college with Uncle Mike again and it was brilliant. Best 2 years of my life. We finished college, got our grades and we wanted to get as far away from mum as possible so decided on Bournemouth. We were supposed to leave mid-July. Drive down get comfortable for the month before classes." I nodded, listening to her telling me about her brother. This is the most Morgan has spoken about how she ended up where she did and about her family so I wasn't going to interrupt and break it off. Especially not right now as she sat down at her brothers grave, tidying it up and adding new flowers into the pot in front.

"So, one night like the week before we were supposed to go, I was packing and Jake was begging me to go out with him and his friends from school and I refused and refused and refused and then gave in when he said he'd drive down to Bournemouth, obviously I couldn't refuse that so I got ready and we went out. His friends weren't exactly the most morally sound people to say the least. But they were fine. Never hurt anyone, kept to themselves. The worst it ever got was minor graffiti on a wall about paying artists and small businesses. So, nothing major. This night was a little different, we were all going off to uni and one of the guys got some stuff they shouldn't have. Jake was never one to turn new things down but it made me feel uneasy so I didn't. I still don't know what he took but they all started reacting to it and it all kind of blurred out to me. I called an ambulance and they were all rushed to A&E. He was in ICU for weeks and never recovered. I was in one mind to go down to Bournemouth or not. To skip the year and just find somewhere new, go into law like mum wanted. But I decided it was the best thing I could do for him. So, I went and I met Ava pretty much straight away and then Noah and I just kept going. Mum blames me for it. Says I shouldn't have let him take it. I held that for a while you know? It got a little deep rooted, messed with my head. So, I went through therapy and everything but that kind of guilt doesn't really go away. You just tell yourself it's not true. I know it's not but it's in there."

"So, I came back that summer when I had a few shows in his memory and stuff. Candle lit things from friends and kids we went to school with. Ava and Noah came to them and I brought them here and I told them about it all properly for the first time and I think I decided then that I was doing this for him. I wasn't the confident person he was so when I'm on stage, I'm that for him. And I know for a fact he'd be going mad at me for saying that because he hated the thought of living for someone else but what else are you supposed to do? I don't blame myself for it all. He had the choice to take it and it wasn't his fault it was a dodgy batch and my quick action to call 999 meant the others all made it out, some of them are in like wheelchairs and things but he was the one who lost his life and it could have been so much worse if I wasn't there."

"There's a lot of clouds on his stone." She chuckled.

"Mike used to call us daydreamers and mum would tell us to get our heads out of the clouds. All the damn time. That it was a stupid dream we'd never achieve, we weren't good enough and everything. He used to just shrug and say yeah well life's better in the clouds anyway. We used to lay cloud watching for hours, that's why they got his plot here so we still could. Clear view and everything. He loved the clouds. No idea why, he just always did."

"Your last tour was called Daydreamer." She laughed quickly.

"Yeah, a quiet little homage to him. We knew when we named it about the nominations for everything and I wanted my nominated tour to be for him too. When people used to tell us we couldn't do it. Kind of like an in your face thing. And then it won 4 Grammy's so I guess we did it." She reached over running her thumb over his name, another tear sliding down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away. "My uncle Mike only just made the release of the first album. That was the last time I came up here. He'd have loved it all. He got super sick my last year of uni but swore he'd hold on until it was released so he could hear it. My head and my heart was his favourite, which was the first single so he saw that go huge and I came up when it started getting bad and they knew it was coming to the end and he held my hand and just kept saying how proud he was of it all. We were listening to the demos of the second album when he passed. I'd rushed them on the train up just so he could hear something. I'm glad I did. I watched him smiling as he passed and I knew I'd done him right." She was breaking my heart right now. "It was a shit 3 years."

"It sounds it babe."