1989
Finally – finally! – it all comes to a head, and Robert and Grant, both desperate to escape, decide that they will break up the band in the most brutally symbolic manner possible. They arrange that on the day after Boxing Day each of them will confront their lover, or ex-lover, and sack them. At the exact same moment, but in separate locations, Robert will sack Lindy, and Grant will sack Amanda. The thinking is hard to fathom, impenetrable even. The weird symmetry; the ex-couple and the current couple; the men telling the women; the brutal display of where the power lies. There is a glaring absence of band democracy, any sense that this could be a discussion in which all voices might be heard. The act itself seems designed to humiliate and to hurt. A childish, unnecessarily theatrical scheme, it is no wonder that it ends in catastrophe.
The hour arrives, the news is delivered, like a telephoned warning of a planted bomb. And the explosion is immediate. The two women, in separate rooms, in separate houses, can’t see each other, which seems deliberate. Like blindfolded hostages, they are powerless. Lindy catches a glimpse of her reflection in the window, but she has to imagine Amanda’s face. She wonders if it is as desolate, as furious, as her own.
Robert describes Lindy’s reaction in these terms: ‘Her bitter laugh almost held a touch of admiration. How had two guys she’d always regarded as being weak-kneed suddenly found the balls to do something like this? . . . Lindy walked to the phone. She looked back at me after dialling and then turned in profile to talk. Her first words: “Leave him.”’
For Lindy, on hearing the shocking news, has immediately called Amanda, asking whether she has just been handed the same information. She has, and her response echoes Lindy’s. She is packing her stuff and leaving Grant, and as she says now, ‘Listen, I didn’t need telling.’ Indeed, she is resentful of any suggestion that it was Lindy who dictated her reaction.
