Out of Time [Brian Jones]

The Singer Not The Song

  It's not the way you give in willingly
Others do it without thrilling me
Giving me that same old feeling inside that I
Know I must be right 
* 

I had no idea how to break the news to Mrs Reed or even Edgar, whom I rather preferred to ignore anyway. Even if things with Brian were somewhat back to normal, I caught myself starring at Edgar occasionally and even he did a few times as did the others. Mrs Reed saw this as an opportunity to send him and me of to work together, which made everything even worse. I felt awkward because he reminded me off Brian and he acted awkward, because I kept starring at him, but somehow this made my decision to leave easier.

I wanted to stay out of duty to Edgar, but in my current state I was hardly a help and using my distress as an excuse seemed fair enough. Strangely I wasn't scared or sad about the thought that I would lose my job, even though it had mattered so much to me in the past. I mostly only felt bad about Edgar. I could always try to find a new job in 3 or 4 months, but he would be all alone in only a few weeks' time. Then again I would be too in a few months and I wondered if that was the reason why I bothered so much with Edgar. He and I shared something. We both would lose somebody important in our life in the near future.

And that's were Brian was right. If we only had so little time left, why shouldn't we at least spend it together? I wanted him to enjoy every minute he still had left if that was all I could offer him. My strange attraction to Edgar would then surely disappear as well and maybe I finally had time to get Mary to talk to Ben. I couldn't do everything at once, but I could set priorities and my job and Edgar weren't.

I wanted to wait until the last moment to tell them I would leave, so that I had enough time to prepare everything for my departure without having anyone after me. I hadn't said anything to Mary yet, but she was the next project I was going to tackle when I had left my job and after that it would just be Brian and I.

Well there still was another thing on my mind, I probably needed to take a decision on as well. My father. After Mary had forced me into opening the letter, I had put it back into its hiding place and tried to ignore it, even if I knew I couldn't do that forever. As long as it was laying there I would think about it and wonder.

I had to get rid of it one way or another. I either read it or threw it away, there was no in between solution, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do... That's why I thought making a spontaneous decision might be the best option.

Neither Mary nor Brian were home and it was the perfect opportunity to ponder my thoughts alone without anyone interfering or it would have been if I could have found what I was looking for.

The letter was gone.

Brian was the only one who could have looked through my things without appearing suspicious. Mary wouldn't have gone that far. She might have been curious, but she rather would have pushed me around until I read it to her than stealing it. It had to be Brian, even if I had no idea why he had taken it. However, I knew one thing I needed to get it back, even if that meant I'd have to look through his things.

Brian didn't exactly have a study, but he had a mess of a room that came close to it. I had only been inside here on very few occasions, either when I had been looking for Brian or if he needed me for something. It seemed wrong to go through his things, but he had done the same, hadn't he? And I wanted my letter back.

I took a deep breath and started to go through his mess of notes of all different kinds, pieces of songs, song lyrics, photographs, letters and a lot of other different kinds of personal things. I tried not to look too much at everything, because it really wasn't my business what he did in his free time, but the curiosity was too big. There were so many tries at things and some sounded lovely to my ears, that I just wondered why he thought he couldn't write songs.