Page 63 of Love Unlocked

‘Why did you stop playing the guitar?’

Okay, she gets it now, they’re getting into the fact she’s a quitter. He always had a thing about this, while Belinda saw it as her trying new things, or at least that’s how her mother justified the constant ending of things Melody was good at.

‘Because there was a girl in the class who was much better than me and I knew I’d never be as good as her.’ She laughs. ‘And before you read into it too much, which you’re already doing, I left the podcast because Prunella stole my story. She put the subject of my story on her TV show.’

He frowns. ‘Isn’t it both your story?’

‘It’s both our podcast but the story was my idea, I mean, it was …’ she trails off, realising how irrational it sounds. ‘And yes, New Day promoted our podcast but she was twisting it to make it look like …’ she trails off again. She sighs and sits back. ‘Yeah. I really quit because we’re a month away from signing a new contract and I saw a way out. But I’ve never had that with music.’

‘Neither has your dad,’ he says gently.

He picks up their empty plates and carries them to the sink. He pulls out a drawer and retrieves a glossy magazine and places it down on the table, on top of the jigsaw pieces.

Melody looks up at him in surprise.

‘This just came out today. One of the perks of living beside the shop, the girls in there bring them out to me to read, think they feel sorry for me. Have you read this?’

She shakes her head.

Her dad, Freddie Yates, is on the front cover of a glossy magazine. An at-home interview and photoshoot with his daughter Cressida, a nineteen-year-old model of sorts who appeared in the last season of Love Island. He looks craggy and ancient beside her smooth youthful complexion. She looks as many young women do now, luscious glossy lips, a smooth shiny forehead, plumped cheeks; like the perfect sex doll. Freddie Yates’s hair is coiffed and dyed black, he still has lots of it, his old drug-rotten teeth have been replaced with new impressive veneers. He was always skinny and wore tight clothing but he looks a little more human now out of his tight trousers. They have both been primped and preened by a crew off shot but as cynical as Melody tries to be there’s no denying that it’s a sweet photograph.

The headline reads, ‘It took me five children to become a good dad, but I am now – Cressida and Freddie Yates at home in their Cotswolds farm’.

Usually Melody would ignore it. She’s no stranger to seeing her dad appear in magazines and newspapers, though less so in recent years, but she stares at the image of the two of them for so long Derek returns to the sink and starts washing the dishes. The sound of the water is relaxing. Derek, his Porgy and Bess music, his humming and little sounds are a relaxing background. She opens the magazine, flicks through some party photos of high society in which Prunella and Jasper feature prominently, and stops at the article about her dad.

Q&A with Cressida and Freddie

Tell us about your new life in the Cotswolds.

Freddie: We bought it just after Cressida was born. I was bad with drink and drugs at that time and Cressida’s mum was about to leave me, and I deserved it. I thought here I go again, a fifth mother of my child I’m about to lose, and another kid who will hate me so I changed my life. I cleaned up my act. Told the boys in the band I needed a break and the rest is history. But I’m glad. I couldn’t keep going the way I was going, I lost my kids, I hurt a lot of people. I was always afraid to commit. I told myself that it was being on the road, and the music, that kept me away but really it was the fear. The fear of failure. I didn’t think I could make it work with any of them. They’d figure out I was no good as a husband or dad. Music was always easy to me. It didn’t want anything from me. I stopped trying at the rest. It took me thirty years to realise it but I got there.

Cressida, your skin is amazing, tell us about your new skin range.

Melody rolls her eyes and skips ahead.

Freddie, you spent forty years on the road, do you miss touring?

Freddie: No, I still do it but not as much as before. Tommy had his heart surgery so we’re waiting for him to get rest and recuperate. He’s the best drummer in the world, and we’re not going on tour without him. We approach it differently now, we realise it’s a job, and a business, whereas when we were younger it was a lifestyle. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, it wasn’t Monday to Friday like my dad’s job in the mines. He was miserable and he made us all miserable because of it. I realise a lot of my problems came from my dad. Which is why I want to be a better one. I never wanted to be anything like him so I did everything differently and then ended up like him in a way. He never changed before he died, but I have so at least I’ve got that. One of my sons is a guitarist in the rock band Rabbit Stew, my other son is a film producer, then I’ve a daughter Melody, my eldest, who’s a very famous DJ in Ireland and around Europe. My other son is a dentist but we don’t talk about him, he’s the only one of us with a proper job, and of course there’s Cressida, now famous in her own right. A lot of my kids are in music, so I suppose even though I wasn’t with them all the time, I influenced them in some way. That makes me feel proud.

Cressida, you won Love Island, tell us about how you felt when Joey kissed Charlotte behind your back.

Melody skips that part too.

Freddie, now that you’ve changed your life around, do you see your other children? Do you feel you’ve broken the chain?

Freddie: I think the only tour I can really embark on now is the apology tour. I hurt a lot of people. I was selfish, but I was scared. I was all talk, you know that’s the way it is in rock and roll, it’s kind of like being a boxer, with all the talk, but inside I was a mess. The drugs were covering for a lot of my problems, it was only when I came off them I realised what I was trying to cover up. I had to have an entire personality character X-ray. I wish I’d have realised it earlier, that family life suits me. Dinner in the evening and eggs from the hens in the morning. We spend a lot of time out on the horses and tending to them. I find myself writing songs in my head when I’m cleaning out the stables and riding. If I’d known this in my twenties I could have saved a lot of broken hearts but I suppose it’s never too late. The world apology tour begins this year, I’m sure there’ll be quite the queue, but as ever, I’m ready to take centre stage and sing for my forgiveness.

Melody reads it again. Then again. Then she closes the magazine, the two staring up at her from the cover. She never expected an apology, wonders why it came through a magazine instead of in person, again not that she cares, but if she’s splitting hairs. She doesn’t think she has lived her life believing she deserved an apology, but an earlier enlightening on his behalf could have changed her thinking that his behaviour was a genetic cycle that she couldn’t break.

When Melody turned sixteen, a few months after Belinda and Derek were married, she moved to London to live with Freddie. She hated school, her one love was music. DJing was firmly in her sights and she was already DJing wherever and whenever she could at parties for kids at school and at High Jinx, the video bar at the back of an old man’s pub. It was more like a barn but it was popular for teens. But it wasn’t enough for her, she was crawling out of her skin waiting to get started on life when everyone else was still taking their sweet time trying to decide what they wanted to do.

The arguments with her mother were intense and often. Belinda pleaded with her to stay in school, then when they broke for the summer Melody walked out of the gates of the school with the biggest smile on her face knowing that her future was starting now. Melody had no idea what Belinda said to Freddie Yates to convince him to let her stay with him and she didn’t care. She didn’t care how awkward it was for her mother, nor cared if she had to beg, she didn’t even care if she wasn’t wanted. London was where she wanted to be and if she had to put people out to get it, she would. And she did. Twenty-two years ago was 2003 and pop music was having its moment. Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, a new girl band called Girls Aloud. Talent show winners were replacing the next talent show winner, pop music was everywhere, Beyoncé was Crazy in Love, Robbie Williams was at his height. Westlife, Blue and Will Young were at the top of the charts. Though there was still rock and roll, pop reigned supreme and there was less space for The Downers. Even their name wasn’t in line with the energy. They were still successfully filling arenas but their new music wasn’t charting as well as it had before.

Freddie lived in Primrose Hill, home to many celebrities, with a small-town feel in a big city with its pastel-coloured Victorian terraces. At the time Melody moved over Freddie was living with a French model named Muriel. Freddie and Muriel were photographed a lot getting in and out of taxis, going in and out of clubs and restaurants, fashion shows and art exhibitions. While the photographs were still they were always caught in movement and, before she met them, Melody couldn’t imagine them not moving. They were always entering and exiting, Melody wondered if they ever stayed anywhere. She doubted they ever had a night in on the couch watching television, which proved to be correct. What Melody learned when she arrived was that the house in Primrose Hill was painted yellow, for madness, next to the pastel pink and blue, and it was more like a train station than a home. It was a hub for all kinds of creatures: record company people, music and film producers, music video directors, songwriters, artists, music journalists, even DJs. It was vibrant and exciting and it was exactly what Melody hoped for.

Freddie was more of a welcoming host than a dad. He opened the doors to her but he also did that for absolutely everybody else too. He was as generous to her as he was the struggling songwriter. He got to know her in the way that he did everybody else, he was interested in her because he was interested in people, and then she realised he was interested in people because he wanted to know what he could get from them, what they could do for him. Were they useful? Was Melody useful? She supposes she wasn’t in the end. He liked her because he liked that she liked music, even if he didn’t care for her choice of music. He liked that music defined her, and her life. He was all about instruments, a proper band. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was a religion to him, he seemed to cling to it like a lifeboat even if the lifeboat was sinking. He introduced her to DJs, club and bar owners, singers, everybody she needed to find her feet in London and to learn and get working.

Melody learned a lot in the first two weeks of her trip: that her dad was intensely interested in people for approximately fifteen minutes after meeting them, when he questioned them and made them feel like the most interesting person in the world, until his concentration lapsed and he rudely wandered off, sometimes when they were mid-sentence. He’d leave it up to the other people in the room to finish the conversation. And that was if he liked someone. Melody learned that when Muriel was angry she yelled in French, and she also liked to fling objects. Sometimes it was a grumpy, irritated fling of a cushion or whatever was closest to hand, but sometimes it was a glass, or a cigarette, or whatever was in her hand. Both the yells and the objects were always and only aimed at Freddie, but nothing ever hit him, including the words. Melody learned that Freddie did not like confrontation. He didn’t like to have difficult or hard conversations. He went silent or left the room, he would drive Muriel crazy by simply becoming mute and dazed. As an adult she can see he reverted to reacting to conflict in the family home in the same way he did when he was a child. Which is sad now, to think that the grown man, wild at heart, was reduced to that.