Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Saffron

The weeks dragged out slowly, everything did after I found that letter on the floor.

Fliss left for Llandudno first and then a couple days later Katie left too and before they went both of them stopped to ask me to join them but I wasn't stupid and I knew they were only asking out of pity. I didn't want to be their third wheel but I would have been if I'd accepted their offer.

I hadn't told anyone about what had happened between me and Johnny that night in paris but they weren't stupid either and they could tell something had happened to leave me so strangely happy. Like my fizz was forced, and it was.

I'd exhausted myself those last two days of the tour with Noel, exhausted myself forcing my smiles, laughing at all those jokes I would have found funny once but couldn't quite bring myself to laugh at anymore.

Id exhausted myself trying to concentrate on anything other than not crying. Not crying my eyes out 24/7.

Not crying when Fliss threw her arms around me, not crying when she dragged me off to the bathroom deciding I needed the same drugs she was taking so that I might feel the same buzz her and Kitty and Jazz were on.

Not crying when Johnny had sat down beside me, cracked open a beer for me and tried to act like we were still best mates. Tried to act like I hadn't broken his head. Not crying when I tried to pretend that I hadn't broken my own heart.

And now I was back home, alone, slowly smoking my way through the last of my hash, listening to the same King Crimson album Bondy had recommended to me months ago when we'd come back from America and I'd thought I'd be bored without him and his mates to keep us all entertained.

I'd taken them all forgranted, that was what I was realising now.
Id taken it all forgranted, all those distractions, all those late nights surrounded by people I loved.
I'd forgotten to take any moments to breath, forgotten to take a single second amid all the chaos to revel in those moments of madness. The way we'd all felt like everything was falling into place.

It was funny how it had taken me until the whole world was falling apart to realise that really, I'd had everything for a month or two last summer, before everything had taken off. Before we'd started taking off.

Now we were about to lose the house, now I'd lost my best friend, now I was losing Fliss and Kitty, I'd already lost Alice. And Jazz didn't come round that often anymore.
Now Johnny and I only spoke via text and late night telephone calls when he was preoccupied and I was so stoned I could hardly hear what he was saying anyway. Now I felt as though he was far far away and probably gone forever. We'd probably never go back to what we'd almost been. We'd probably never really feel close again and it was my fault.

And Rhys was getting released because they didn't have enough evidence, and I had several pieces of overdue coursework I couldn't puece together, and the council tax was fucked and the mirror in the bathroom was smashed and all those stupid things on the inventory list that we'd always thought we had another three years to think about were starring me in the face, taunting me. Because everything was out of control and I was struggling to hold it together.

All those small things were building up and I was all alone.

I'd pushed everyone away and why?

Because i was scared, because I'd read the post.

Perhaps I shouldn't have opened those letters, perhaps I should have allowed myself to remain blissfully unaware the way Id let Kitty and Fliss leave.

I hadn't told anyone about Rhys see, I'd taken that letter and hidden it in the ceiling where I hid everything else Rhys related that I didn't want to think about because it scared me. And until that first morning when I'd heard footsteps on the gravel outside I had thought he was going to let me leave him tucked away up there, confined to the sheets of a torn up letter, but no.