The Reunion

Chapter 10

PRESENT

'And you were certainly right there,' I said. 'Were there any other times you played together? As a threesome?'

'You make it sound dirty,' Gillian said, laughing, and everyone joined in with her. 'Samantha, Graham and myself played at my wedding to Robert. But I think that was it,' she continued, looking at the others to confirm this.

'Yep. That was it,' Samantha confirmed for her. 'I don't think we even talked about getting back together again until last year, did we?'

'No,' said Tony. 'I think we just sent birthday and Christmas cards.'

'I sent more to you than you did to me,' said Gillian.

'There was a good reason for that,' Tony replied.

'You hated my guts,' said Gillian.

'That may have had something to do with it,' joked Tony.

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It was good to hear the light-hearted banter. 'And are you two getting along better now? Or is there still a friction there?' I asked.

'I think the friction has definitely gone,' said Tony. 'As we mentioned earlier, we're writing together and our families are meeting up.'

'And, everyone, if it wasn't for Tony magnanimously accepting my apology, then we wouldn't be sitting here now,' said Gillian.

'Correction, if Gillian hadn't had the guts to apologise then we wouldn't be sitting here now,' said Tony.

'I wanted to ask you, Tony...' I began.

'My twin as we were called at school,' he smiled.

'Yes, we were,' I reminisced. 'It was uncanny how much alike we looked. Most people thought we were brothers, didn't they? If only we could get photographs up of us in our school days...' A voice came through my ear pierce telling me that this was being arranged. 'It appears that we are going to show a photograph.'

A picture of me and Tony appeared on the wall behind us. The audience gasped at how much we did look alike. You could hear the word 'twins' being mentioned from all areas of the audience.

'I'd forgotten how much you two did look alike,' said Graham. 'What went wrong?'

'I aged much better,' said Tony.

'And I went on to interview politicians,' I laughed. 'But as I was saying,

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Tony. What reaction did you receive after the fake news had been reported?'

'It wasn't very pleasant,' said Tony. 'When it broke back in two thousand and twenty-four, I thought we were living in a modern environment where people were accepted of gender, race, religion, etc. However, I had graffiti on my house – suffice to say that homosexuality was not accepted. Friends, or people I thought of as friends, shunned me. The thing that hurt me the most was that people I thought knew me, believed Gillian. They didn't question it. Except for Graham and Samantha, who I had sworn to secrecy, it seemed that everyone thought I was capable of what Gill had said. And that hurt. The snide comments dwindled over the years but every now and again people would say something thinking I had never heard it before. What these people, at the time, didn't realise, was that it was affecting those closest to me. My first wife took her own life because she couldn't stand the hurt and ferocity the comments were said with. They targeted her, sent her things which were not very nice. Although the verdict was suicide, I blame those people who hounded her. They murdered my wife and the mother of my first two children.'

It had gone very quiet in the studio. As a journalist, this part had been dynamite. This would be talked about for days, weeks and years to come. However, what happened at the end of the show would make this pale into insignificance. But, for the moment, my adrenaline was running deep. I didn't want to lose the audience so had to stay on this topic but had to choose my next question carefully.

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'I'm sorry to hear that, Tony. It obviously must have been a horrible time for you. I would have thought that you would have wanted your version of the story told? To finally clear you?'

'I think as far as Tony was concerned,' said Graham, 'it was still down to Gillian to admit that she had lied. When we heard the tragic news that Tony has just revealed, Samantha and I offered to go to the press and give the truth about what happened.'

'But I turned them down,' said Tony. 'As far as I was concerned, it was my word against Gillian's. Graham and Samantha were not there so the press would have just laughed at their statements. The only person who could put it right was Gill.'

'Well, there was one other. I'm surprised the male involved didn't come forward,' I said. 'He would have made quite a bit of money giving his story.'

'I'm ashamed to say he was well paid to keep quiet,' said Gillian, who lowered her head and did look quite upset. 'Unfortunately he was also killed in a car crash a few months later.'

'How did you learn about that?'

'The hotel informed us,' Gillian replied.

This was going better than I could have ever imagined. We had gone off script but the group were being open and honest. It was pure gold for me. And I could tell that the audience were engrossed in the subject. But by being a good interviewer, sometimes you have to leave them wanting more. Of course the book deal was swaying in the back of my mind.

'So you mentioned the tour earlier. When does it kick off and where are you playing?' I asked.

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'It will start at Newton Abbot Racecourse on June the fourth. That's our hometown so we thought, why not?' Samantha began. 'Then we move onto Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and London. Then we move into Europe: Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy. We will also perform in the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Africa, South America, the USA – starting in Washington where it all went wrong twenty-five years ago. And it's going to end where it started in Newton Abbot.'

'And is this the goodbye tour?' I asked.

'No,' said Graham. 'This is the reunion tour. Depending how it goes, and judging by the reaction tonight it looks pretty good, we may decide to stay together to record and perform in the future.'

This brought loud cheers from the audience. I looked at the band members' reactions. They were buzzing. It seemed a long time ago when they were sat in the green room waiting to come on and they were looking as nervous as hell. But I knew time was against us. I had a couple of questions left. One was quite a benign one.

'Take us back to when Ladies and Gentlemen first began. Describe how it all began,' I said.

'Auditions were being held for the end-of-year school concert,' Gillian explained. 'Well, you should know as you were holding them, Chris.'

I just smiled. I remembered the moment very well indeed.

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