TWO TRIBES

  FEARNE HILL

  Copyright © 2022 by Fearne Hill

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To Matt L. Those were the days, my friend.

  CONTENTS

  Trigger Warnings

  Author’s Note

  I. 1995

  Smells Like Teen Spirit

  That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

  Welcome to The Cheap Seats

  Mis-Shapes

  Add It Up

  Bittersweet Symphony

  Shiny Happy People

  You Stole the Sun from My Heart

  Step On

  Fiesta

  Boys Don’t Cry

  The Passenger

  Near Wild Heaven

  Fool’s Gold

  Unfinished Sympathy

  Boulevard of Broken Dreams

  II. 2005

  Mr Brightside

  International Bright Young Thing

  Can’t Stand Me Now

  A Little Soul

  Fuck Forever

  III. Now

  These Days

  Say Something

  Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

  This Is How It Feels

  Standing Here

  Tender

  Lenny Valentino

  Simple As This

  The Only One I Know

  I Feel Love

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Fearne Hill

  TRIGGER WARNINGS

  I write with a light touch but please be kind to yourselves and observe trigger warnings for:

  Death of a secondary character

  Depression

  Domestic abuse (off page)

  Self-harm (off page)

  Attempted suicide (off page)

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Section 28 was a piece of UK legislation banning local authorities and schools from ‘promoting homosexuality’. In effect in England and Wales from 1988 to 2003, it deprived generations of LGBTQ pupils the chance of seeing people like them in the books, plays, leaflets or films their schools could stock or show. Teachers weren’t allowed to teach about same-sex relationships; anyone who broke the law faced disciplinary action.

  Stourbridge is a market town in the industrial West Midlands. It is…um…a much nicer place than in Matt’s head.

  Thank you very much to my editor, Sue Laybourn, for her invaluable input. Cover design by Garrett Leigh.

  PART ONE

  1995

  SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

  (NIRVANA)

  “Why don’t they bloody shift Remembrance Day to July?”

  Since we’d formed shuffling, scruffy lines around the cenotaph, Brenner had bitched non-stop. “It would make a hell of a lot more sense than holding it in November. I’m freezing my fucking nads off here.”

  Drizzling rain, of the old-fashioned, relentless, British variety, poured insult onto injury. Brenner, Phil, and I hunched our shoulders, pulling frayed cuffs over icy hands stuffed into trouser pockets. We endeavoured to look cool. Cool in the he-could-be-the-bass-player-from-Blur sort of way, not cool in the it’s-bitterly-cold-I-wish-I’d-brought-my-anorak sort of way. Coats were for losers, like the smart posh kids lined up in the row in front of us. None of whom shivered.

  “Yeah, Brenner. Couldn’t agree more.”

  In my experience, sarcasm was lost on him, but I tried anyhow. “They should have shown more consideration when they ended World War One on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, shouldn’t they?”

  Shit, that wind was fucking cold. Siberian. “They should have carried on annihilating each other for another six months, so future namby-pamby generations didn’t have to freeze in a school playground for half an hour, once every year. I mean, compared to this, trench warfare must have been a piece of piss.”

  Brenner had been one of my best mates since playschool, but, bloody hell, he was thick sometimes.

  “The Second World War ended in the summer though,” pointed out Phil, my other best mate, obviously feeling pretty pleased with himself. “Brenner’s right. We could mark that date instead.”

  Christ, he was a fucking retard, too. “Maybe the reason we don’t,” I enunciated, as if explaining to a pair of three-year-olds, “Is because Remembrance Day was a thing since before the Second World War actually, y’know, happened?”

  “Oh.” Phil’s head jerked in a quick nod. Or perhaps it was a shiver. He gave me a sharp nudge, followed by a snigger. “Nips alert at three o’clock. Looks like Claire Evans is fucking freezing too.”

  The message passed down the line, and it wasn’t long before almost all the sixth form boys had completed their daily assessment of Claire Evans’ tits. They didn’t do much for me, to be honest, but no one else needed to know that. So I sniggered along with the rest until Mr Cresswell told us to pack it in because the vicar had begun the service. Instead, I stared at the back of the neck of the tall, well-built kid obstructing my view of the cenotaph. Thick blond curls flopped over the collar of his sensible grey woollen coat, clean and silky. Nice, even if his hairstyle was from a boy band circa 1985. Remarkable for a kid our age.

  The vicar had reached the part about how ‘they shall not grow old as we that are left grow old’. In the vicar’s case, he’d grown very old indeed. As he warbled on, I pondered the meaning of life; how some blokes like him lived forever, whereas others, like Brenner’s dad, didn’t. That poor sod had dropped dead of a heart attack at his mum’s fortieth birthday knees-up three years ago. Which had put a damper not only on the party, but on the remainder of Brenner’s fucking childhood.

  I’d stick pins in my eyes before I confessed to my mates, but I kind of enjoyed all this remembrance, churchy shit. I liked the familiar rhythm of it; the tragic, floppy-haired young war poets with their rows of crosses and fields of poppies. Their corners of an evergreen England tucked away in some godforsaken hell hole. On crisp, frosty mornings, the poignant, drawn-out melody of The Last Post reverberating around our decrepit school buildings could usually make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  But not this crisp, frosty morning.

  The poor kid dragged kicking and screaming out of the ranks to perform the honour this year looked like he was shitting himself. Somewhere in his house hung a framed certificate showing he’d passed Grade Two trumpet, which made him the most qualified pupil in the school to attempt the solo. One hundred and fifty of his teenaged peers fell silent, praying he’d fuck it up. You could have heard a pin drop.

  And fuck it up he did. Fucking splendidly. As he stepped up to the mic, raised the shiny brass bugle to his quivering lips and gave it a blow, the wonderful wet phbbbbt of an explosive diarrhoeal fart echoed in stereo around the quad.

  And all the sixth form boys pissed themselves laughing.

  The kid stumbled through it, God knows how. With an urgent snap of his fingers, Mr Cresswell deployed reinforcements to restore order in the form of the PE teacher, Mr Tucker, and a fucking evil geography teacher called Miss Simpson. It helped that we were old hands at Remembrance services; everyone knew The Last Post invariably preceded the two minutes silence. And even a bunch of teenage toerags like us understood the necessity of respecting that. But pulling ourselves together in time? Bloody difficult. Especially when Richie Tanner on the back row mimicked the echoing fart with another drawn-out ripper of his own.

  That two minutes silence lasted longer than a morning of double French with Mme Tripot. Phil’s shoulders jerked up and down like he was having an epileptic seizure. Fuck knows what Richie Tanner had eaten for dinner last night, but his fart was a corker. Three-day-old dead cat, from the stink of it. Brenner snorted and failed to disguise it as a cough, earning him a wicked glare from one of the posh lads farther down the line. Brenner reciprocated, accompanied by enough hand gestures worthy of the deaf woman who stood behind the newsreader on the telly, not that she’d have recognised any of my best mate’s inventive sign language.

  As the seconds wound down at a fucking leisurely pace, I did my best to block them all out by focusing on the lush hair of the guy in front of me, because the alternative was to vent the bubble of hysterical laughter welling inside and earn myself another bloody detention.

  I lay the blame for what came next squarely at the door of the nameless stonemason who’d engraved our school cenotaph. Oh, and the inbred population of Stourbridge, too, for having such fucking idiotic names. And also, the British military in general, for adopting the word seaman when sailor or marine or fucking naval soldier would have done the job just as well. Because if you repeat the word seaman often enough in front of a bunch of hormonal, hyped, sweaty teenagers, it’s only going to end in tears.

  “We remember with thanksgiving and sorrow those whose lives, in world wars and conflicts past and present, have been given and taken away.”

  It was about time we traded this vicar in for a new model, I decided, as he babbled on. I loved my wartime history, and I was all for helping the aged, but there must have been younger guys out there desperate for the gig, possibly with less monotonous voices too.

  “And from our own parish, let us remember Ordinary Seaman Johnson….”

  A giggle in the ranks to my left. From the depths of the rows behind, an anonymous tosspot cackled, “Oi! There’s no
thing ordinary about my semen!”

  Decorum hurtled on a downwards slope after that. Phil’s shoulders started up again, and Brenner shuffled his feet. I stared so hard at the back of the blond head in front of me, I could have drawn it from memory.

  “Ordinary Seaman Smallbone.”

  A strangled guffaw from two rows back, and Mr Cresswell began squeezing his way down the line.

  “Ordinary Seaman Twizzledrizzle,”

  I mean, for fucks sake, they were making these up to torture us, weren’t they? A high-pitched squeak left my lips and Brenner lost it completely, snorting like a pig. From the opposite end of the row to Mr Cresswell, Mr Tucker started a nimble pincer movement. In blissful ignorance of the utter havoc he had created, the vicar burbled on.

  “Ordinary Seaman Cummings, Ordinary Seaman Goodhead.”

  Goodhead? I was crying, I was actually fucking crying.

  “And finally, we remember MC Connor, for his services to…”

  “Rave music!”

  Increasingly, I was of the opinion that teachers didn’t care whom they punished, as long as someone was seen to be getting their comeuppance. Even better if that someone was a regular pain in the proverbial arse anyway. Handing that someone yet another detention no doubt gave them a sense of a job well done on the car journey home.

  Thus, in short, despite the whole fucking year group comprehensively annihilating that year’s Remembrance Service, it was Brenner and yours truly who found themselves strong-armed out of the line by Mr Tucker and Mr Cresswell. Phil, with his sodding angelic face and innocent baby-blues, got away with it, as per usual. From the row in front of us, the blameless tall posh lad with the blond curls wasn’t so lucky. When Mr Tucker hauled him out alongside me and Brenner, he looked set to puke.

  “You three. Detention. Mr Cartwright’s office at five this afternoon.”

  Fucking teachers, how they loved lording it over you. Failed coppers, my dad called them. Failed humans, my brother Simon said. Couldn’t hack it in the adult world, so they took it out on a bunch of kids. Needless to say, Simon had a less than stellar academic record.

  “Sir,” Brenner began urgently. “My mum needs me to pick up my sister Louise from the childminder. She’ll fucking kill me if I’m not there.”

  Okay, so to be fair, Mr Cresswell was one of the better ones. I think that every now and again he felt the need to remind us of who was boss, that was all. Phil’s mum had told him that their neighbour had whispered that his wife was having an affair, so Cresswell’s occasional bad temper was probably down to him being sexually frustrated.

  Join the fucking club.

  In a nutshell, Brenner’s life was rubbish. He was a free school meals kid, which was supposed to be a secret, but everyone knew. Trotting out the time-honoured got-to-look-after-my-sister line worked like a dream, as the teachers shat themselves social services would become involved. That the school would be found to have been remiss in its duty of care or other such bullshit, and find itself headlining the front page of the Stourbridge Star.

  “Okay, Brenner. You can complete your detention at lunchtime. In my classroom.”

  He turned to me. “Matt Leeson. No excuses. Bring a pen and don’t be late.”

  The blond kid quivered next to me. I’d say it was fifty-fifty whether he puked. He’d earned himself a few Brownie points for keeping his mouth shut and not pointing out it wasn’t him though, cos Brenner and me wouldn’t have come to his aid. If I had to stay behind and miss the last direct bus, then this fucker could too, even if he hadn’t done anything wrong except stand in front of me tossing his fucking fabulous hair.

  “You. Alex Valentine, isn’t it? I’m frankly astonished to find you mixed up with this lot. I expected better than that. See you at five.”

  THAT JOKE ISN’T FUNNY ANYMORE

  (THE SMITHS)

  “Leeson. You know the drill. I have a staff meeting starting three minutes ago. And this time, no funny business.”

  After thrusting yesterday’s copy of The Times at me, Cartwright, head of the history department, strode off, endeavouring to look important. A considerable challenge when you stood only five-feet-two and were as camp as Christmas. Raising my chin at the blond kid to follow, I shouldered open the door to his office.

  “Is it okay being in here without him?” the kid asked, still green about the gills. They were the first words he’d spoken, and his unaccented voice sounded jerky and hoarse, as though it had only just broken. Maybe it had.

  “He told us to, didn’t he?” I threw him a careless shrug. “There’s nothing interesting in here anyway—I’ve already had a scout around. The important stuff he keeps locked away over there.”

  I indicated the institutional grey filing cabinet next to Mr Cartwright’s equally institutional chunky pine desk, piled high with history marking. Old Cartwright wasn’t a bad sort. As a regular guest at his detentions over the last year or so, me and him had enjoyed some decent chinwags. Rumours abounded he was a homosexual, but if it were true, I could say with absolute confidence he kept nothing in his office to suggest it. Unless homos had a thing for gin miniatures (alas, all empty) and wine gums. A bumper stash had permanent residence in the top drawer of his desk. In a nonchalant fashion, I helped myself to a couple before sauntering over to the corner table to slouch in my usual plastic seat.

  The blond kid watched me, eyes wide and glancing furtively back at the door. As if, any second, Mr Cartwright would walk through and call the police on me for thieving his fucking sweets. I regarded his anxious twitching coolly, narrowing my eyes and channelling my inner Keanu. I’d been practicing ever since my aunt had told me I looked a bit like him. Granted, she’d had half a bottle of Mateus Rosé inside her, but I’d take what I could get. After hesitating a second, the blond kid took the seat across from me, drew out his tin pencil case from his rucksack and placed it with precision on the table beside him. I fished a Bic biro from my back pocket and pushed the newspaper in his direction.

  “What’s that for?”

  A detention virgin. Cute. And probably the other kind of virgin, too. I smirked. If he’d been wetting himself all afternoon, in fearful anticipation of a jolly good caning across his arse, or being ordered to stand on one leg in the corner facing a wall for half an hour, then reality would be a horrible disappointment.

  “Pick an article and copy it out.” I tapped on the paper with my biro. “And when you’ve done that, pick another. Until Mr Cartwright says you can go.”

  Suspicious blue eyes flicked from the newspaper and back up to me. “Is that it? Is that all I have to do?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Welcome to detention, King George’s style.”

  In a posh, pretentious voice, I parodied the school prospectus. “We’re a progressive establishment. The educational ethos of the King George’s community is one of creativity. Teaching young adults of the future the importance of thinking differently, flexibly, and imaginatively. Giving them breadth of ambition. Discovering and realising the passions of every individual wherever they may lie. And if they find the term Ordinary Seaman funny, then our pupils waste hours of their time writing out pointless newspaper articles until their wanking hands drop off.”

  Blond kid blushed and busied himself with the newspaper to cover his discomfort. “This is absolutely ridiculous,” he chuntered as he selected one out of a selection of stylish pens from his pencil case. “Surely they could have found a more productive use of my time. I could be finishing an assignment or an exam practice paper. Not this.”