The Fall of the Fainthearts

Track Eight: I Didn't Forget You

Axel: I had tons of spare time in rehab and I used it to write songs but they all came out quite... bleak. When you've only got one thing on your mind it's hard to be inspired by anything else. When I was in my room I had four walls, a hard bed, and a bookcase full of self-help books I'd never even dream of picking up. They weren't exactly the top charting content I was looking for.

Nothing I wrote was coming out right. I thought about getting out and I thought about Flo. Maybe she'd write with me again sometime. The way we bounced back and forth and riffed ideas off of each other - I'd never had that before. Dahlia would try to give me pointers on my stuff but I always took it as criticism and either started again from scratch or told her to do one. The boys would just hold their hands up and say they weren't getting involved.

Florence: I didn't see Axel for a very, very long time. In my mind, we kissed that night we wrote 'Escape Me', he left and then didn't come back for months. I spent weeks of my life going over in my head what I'd done, whether I was too forward, whether I was stupid for even thinking that he might like me in the first place.

After way too much time had passed I finally got myself together to a point where I told myself I didn't need him and it was his loss. So when he finally turned back up at the bar, happy to see me, I could've knocked him flat on his ass.

Axel: It goes without saying that she was not as happy to see me as I was to see her. Call it being big-headed, but I genuinely did not think for a moment that she'd think I'd just used her for that song and left. I guess so much had happened and I spent so long consumed by trying to get sober that I forgot what was going on in the world around me.

Florence: He was so oblivious to how he came across to other people. He didn't think about me once, never thought about passing on a message. I just wasn't that important to him, clearly.

Axel: I should've gone to see Flo sooner but I was scared about being in the bar. If that makes me weak, then that's what I am. But I'd just gotten myself sober and it was a daily struggle keeping myself there. The booze didn't bother me too much but the idea of messing up everything I'd done in a heartbeat was what scared me. One bad decision and I knew I'd spiral out of control.

As well as that, I liked Flo. A lot. And the nerves and doubt and lack of confidence would've been fixed with a couple of pills, but I didn't have that anymore. I wanted to be ready to face her as myself. Just plain old sober Axel.

Florence: Looking back, I'm glad I didn't hold a grudge for long. I just decided it wasn't worth the fight. I offered him a drink and he refused it quicker than his brain could catch up with him. That's when I knew something was wrong.

I may not have known him very well, but I like to consider myself a good judge of character. And he looked like a broken man. Something about the subtle panic in his eyes had me lowering every wall I'd put up over the past month or so in an instant.

Axel: She took me out back to the tiny little dressing room where we got ready to play for Kian that night, perched on the old red sofa that poked you with springs no matter how you sat on it and held out a hand.

She looked me in the eyes and said, "Axel, you can tell me if you're not okay." And...

Florence: He cried. He really, really cried. It wasn't something I ever thought I'd see, he seemed so super-human and untouchable it was hard to imagine that inside he was crumbling down. When we first met he had such bravado, wit, over-confidence. And now he looked a ghost of what he once was.

Axel: I told her everything right then and there. About my childhood, about Figgy, about my overdose. I told her what the doctor had told me, how shaken I still was from that.

I told her that I didn't think I was strong enough to not give in. That I felt too human and I wasn't used to it, I didn't trust myself. I don't know why I opened up the way I did and I still don't know what made me feel so secure in that moment, but I just felt this sense of trust between us. I felt like she cared. And she did.

Florence: When he was telling me about what he'd been through, the name 'Figgy' rang alarm bells, but I didn't interrupt him. I just held him and listened. It wasn't the right time to bring it up.

Figgy had come into the bar about a month earlier. The name was too strange to forget. I didn't think much of it, when she asked whether I'd seen him. Honestly? I thought 'There's my replacement. That's why he hasn't come back.'

She left her name and number and told me that if he did happen to wander back, she was looking for him and to pass it on. I screwed up that little piece of paper with her number and a red love heart scribbled next to it so tightly into my hand my knuckles turned white. There was no way I'd help her. I threw it in the bin and tossed an open bottle into it so the beer leaked and blurred the numbers. He was dead to me.

But he wasn't. He was right here, pouring his heart out.

Axel: I'm not too ashamed to admit that I was really struggling. The reality of it all just hit me when I left, that I wasn't going to be in the safety of that rehab building forever. I had to make my own choices, live in the present, and most importantly; live with myself.

Florence: I decided I wouldn't tell him until he seemed more stable. I didn't want to add the straw that broke the camel's back and by the sounds of it, he had a pretty rich history with Figgy that went much deeper than just what we used for material in 'Escape Me'. It would've brought back too many memories he'd rather forget.

Axel: I left the bar that day feeling embarrassed but lighter. They say a problem shared is a problem halved, and I definitely felt it that day.

We finally had our recording session the next morning. I was nervous, but I was ready. It was time to do what I'd waited to do for months - it was time to make Kian proud.