Never Gonna Give

The Great Hall is a cathedral of noise: glass clinking, synth stabs from the house band, the throb of a thousand conversations. Spotlights sweep the ceiling like searchlights. Everyone is lacquered, glittering, drunk.

Danny sits at a small table at the periphery, surrounded by people he barely knows. His date —this month’s wannabe— leans into him, all legs and perfume and brittle laughter. She keeps touching his arm as if she’s reminding the cameras who she belongs to. He tries to smile back, but his face feels stiff, like it’s been shellacked.

He’s up for Music Video of the Year. The video cost more than his house in Buckhurst Hill. It had a famous film producer, surrealist imagery, a CGI phoenix and a rotating mirrored cube. The song itself barely scraped the Top 40. He can’t even remember the chorus.

These days he just turns up at the studio, sings whatever words they put in front of him and lets the engineers smooth his voice until it sounds like a stranger. He’s been trying to write his own songs again, but they come out clumsy, sentimental and embarrassing. Like him.

Across the room, Spud is at a table full of indie lads; guitar bands with names like The Shakes or The Dead Leaves. They’re loud, messy, alive. Spud looks older but sharper, laughing with his whole body. He’s up for Director of the Year again. He’ll win. Of course he will.

Danny downs another glass of champagne. He feels old, irrelevant and paranoid. He can’t even get an erection with the latest hanger-on and he’s terrified someone will find out.

When the presenter announces the winner of his category, Danny doesn’t catch the name. He knows it isn’t him. But something in him —some old, stupid punk reflex— makes him stand anyway. He pushes back his chair. His date gasps. The room titters. He starts walking toward the stage, swaggering like it’s 1977 and he’s about to spit on the mic.

Laughter ripples across the hall. He hears Spud’s laugh most clearly.

Danny veers toward Spud’s table. He doesn’t think. He just moves. He reaches the table and takes a swing at Spud. A wild, sloppy blow that mostly misses. Spud falls anyway, tipping his chair, knocking over glasses. Someone shouts. Someone else shrieks.

Security arrives to hustle him toward the exit, but he slips away in the confusion while they’re trying to locate his limo. He ducks down a service corridor and out of a fire door. The cold air hits him like a slap.

He stumbles towards the boating lake behind Alexandra Palace. The night is quiet here. The constellations glow like a lighter-waving crowd.

And then he sees her. Julie.

She’s sitting on a bench by the water, coat wrapped around her, hair loose under a blue hood. Her son —is he five now?— sits beside her, small and solemn, his hands tucked into his sleeves. The boy looks up at Danny with wide, unblinking eyes.

Julie smiles. The shape of her face is soft, familiar, impossible.

“You know,” she says, “for what that video cost, you could’ve bought us a mansion. We could’ve lived together in it. You, me and the phoenix.”

Danny laughs, startled. “It wasn’t even my idea.”

“I know,” she says. “But you looked very pretty in it.”

He sits beside her. The bench feels warm, somehow. The lake is still, reflecting the moon like a perfect mirror.

Julie nudges him with her shoulder. “You’re not happy, are you?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“You’re still in there,” she says. “Under all the hair spray.”

He laughs again, but it catches in his throat. “I’ve been trying to write songs. Real ones. But they’re rubbish.”

“They’re not rubbish,” she says gently. “They’re just... ashamed.”

He looks at her. Really looks. “I think… I think I started making dance music because I liked imagining you dancing to it. Back then. When you were… you.”

She tilts her head. “And who do you think I am now?”

He looks at her clothes, her tired eyes, the boy leaning against her side. Not for the first time, he feels something twist inside him. Grief, maybe, or recognition.

“You’re still you,” he says. “Just… further away.”

Julie reaches for his hand. Her fingers are warm. The boy watches them silently, like he understands everything.

Danny feels a swell in his chest: hope, longing, something bright and terrifying. He opens his arms. She leans toward him.

The moment is perfect. Too perfect.

The lake flickers. Julie’s smile blurs at the edges. The boy dissolves like smoke.

Danny gasps. The world shatters... and re-assembles... Sound, light and cold concrete rush into focus. He’s suddenly alone, sprawled on the kerbside at the foot of the steps to the venue. His hand is bleeding. His jacket is torn. Security is shouting somewhere nearby.

The lake is gone. Julie is gone. He presses his palms to his eyes. They come away wet.