The Fame Factor

‘That was great,’ said Clive as she finished the first take. ‘Hold on one sec.’ He fiddled about for a while, twisting knobs, pushing sliders and pressing buttons. ‘OK, it’s in the can.’

Zoë grinned at the girls as she returned to the cramped, overheated room. It was pitch black outside now and there was a strange sense of…well, perhaps comradeship wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t a bond, but there was definitely a closeness between them: the band, their manager and the producer. Even Clive and his greasy-haired assistant seemed to be warming to the girls now that they’d laid down their tracks so efficiently.

‘So!’ cried Louis, leaning back in the chair and making it creak rather ominously. ‘Shall we press play?’

Obediently, the producer did exactly that.

Zoë looked at the other girls, her mouth slightly open with wonder. Everything about the track was pristine: the beat, the bass, the harmonies and her vocals. It sounded as though somebody else was singing her part. Pure and perfectly in tune, there was no shouting to be heard over drunken revellers, no missing words where she’d had to duck to avoid a flying pint glass, no white noise between the notes. The whole song was…utterly clean.

Afterwards, nobody said anything. The girls were too stunned and the men were looking at one another with narrowed eyes, as though subliminally discussing what could be done to make it sound even more perfect.

‘Strings?’ said Louis.

Clive frowned slightly but didn’t disagree.

‘Maybe just in the chorus,’ Louis added, backtracking a little.

After a period of twiddling, pushing and pressing, the song came back on, this time with a sweeping string section beneath Zoë’s chorus.

‘Um…’ Zoë wasn’t sure what to say. The song sounded good; there was no doubt about that. But it didn’t sound anything like it was supposed to. The whole point about ‘Sensible Lies’ was that it was angry, with caustic lyrics that talked of the burning frustrations of living a double life. They were turning it into a happy singalong ditty.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said Louis, shaking his head at the wonders of the mixing desk.

Zoë glanced at the other girls, wondering whether they were thinking the same thing. Shannon just looked wildly excited, her earlier snub clearly forgotten. Kate was frowning, either in concentration or doubt, and Ellie seemed miles away.

‘Maybe some sort of…’ Louis looked at the producer and rubbed his fingers together. ‘Tchyka-tchyka-tchyka-tchyka?’

Zoë’s expression turned to one of alarm. The noise coming from Louis’s mouth was like the backing track of some boy-band ballad.

Again, there was some activity on the keyboard-like part of the mixing desk. Moments later, the song came back on, slightly slower than it had been before and complete with tchyka-tchyka beat. Shannon’s part was almost inaudible beneath the electronics.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Zoë, rather louder than she had anticipated. She lowered her tone. ‘But I think it sounded better before all the strings and everything.’

Louis looked at her, tilted his head, then turned to Clive.

Clive raised his brow, a look which Zoë interpreted as I’m not going to say anything, but which Louis clearly read differently.

‘Let’s go with what the producer thinks.’ He smiled as though Zoë didn’t really understand. ‘We can fiddle about ‘til the cows come home, later. No need to worry about it now. We got plenny of time!’

There was a brief silence in which Zoë nearly argued but then caught Shannon’s eye and stopped herself. The drummer was clearly concerned about falling out with their manager on day one.

‘Of course,’ she said softly. ‘Plenty of time.’

‘The other two numbers?’

With her excitement only mildly marred by her frustration, Zoë sank back into her chair as Shannon prepared to lay down the beat for tracks two and three. After the recording of ‘Delirious’, an argument broke out that ran along very similar lines to the first one, so by the time they played back ‘Run Boy Run’, Louis and Clive had clearly forged some sort of alliance that meant they weren’t going to meddle with the track – at least, not in the presence of the girls.

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time the four musicians fitted themselves around the cymbals, amps and drum stands for the journey home. The combination of hunger and exhaustion meant that emotions were running high.

‘I see what you’re saying,’ said Shannon, shooting out at high speed from the parking space. ‘But you can’t diss the guy who’s just taken us on as manager.’

‘I can if he’s wrecking our tunes,’ replied Zoë. She couldn’t believe the drummer was willing to sacrifice their musical integrity in favour of some bolshy hot-shot’s ideas.

‘I agree,’ said Kate, her neck bent at an unnatural angle to avoid the snare drum that was occupying the space where her head should have been. ‘That last version sounded like an early Boyzone number.’

‘Boyzone sold a lot of records,’ yelled Shannon, swerving frighteningly close to the kerb.

‘But not our type of records,’ argued Zoë, concerned that Shannon was focusing on the row and not the road.

‘He’s a decent manager! Look what he’s achieved with other bands.’

‘Decent managers leave the producers to do the producing,’ Kate pointed out as Shannon embarked on an ambitious overtaking manoeuvre.

‘He seems to know what he’s talking about,’ Ellie pointed out, blissfully unaware.

‘Exactly!’ cried Shannon, buoyed by the support. ‘I don’t think it would be a disaster if we ended up releasing something like—’

‘I am not in a boy-band,’ Zoë growled. Then she realised they were outside her flat. ‘Oh, right.’ She thought about making a final point, then decided it could wait. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

‘No bother. I’m sure Louis will run it past us before he sends the demo to the label guys, anyway. Right?’

Zoë eased herself out of the car. ‘I’m sure.’

She slammed the door shut, patting the roof as it lurched off, trying to cleanse her mind before she entered the flat. She would worry about the CD another time. Burdening James with her Dirty Money issues was something she’d done too much of lately.

The place was in darkness. It was only as Zoë crossed the threshold that she realised that something was wrong. Not wrong, exactly. Just…amiss. It felt as though she’d forgotten to do something, or left something behind. She just couldn’t work out what it was.

James, when she finally tracked him down, was sitting on the sofa in the glow of the small table lamp. His short hair was lightly gelled and glinting. As he turned, Zoë noticed something else shining out. Something on his wrists. Cufflinks.

‘Why—’ Zoë stopped and closed her eyes, suddenly realising what it was. ‘Oh God,’ she said, crumpling at his feet. ‘I’m so sorry.’

It was Saturday the eleventh of February. She had forgotten about their date.

10

‘You must be joking!’ cried the brunette, visibly gagging. ‘I mean, no disrespect to him or anything, but it’s a singing contest. You can’t win if you can’t sing.’

‘That’s discrimination.’

‘She’s got a point though,’ said the girl next to Zoë – someone she vaguely recognised from previous events James had brought her along to. ‘JJ was a terrible singer.’

‘Not true,’ claimed another. ‘He had a good voice; he just wasn’t always in tune.’ She downed the remains of her wine and readjusted the fashionable sack-like top that hung from her shoulders.

Zoë let the argument wash over her as she mashed the cheesecake crumbs into the plate with her fork. They were, as far as she could make out, discussing the controversy surrounding the Talent Tout final, an event that had taken place more than two months ago. Over the main course they had dissected no fewer than six contestants’ performances, ranging from Maureen, the cleaner from Norwich, to 4U, the boy-band from Salford that featured in its ranks an albino and a midget gymnast.

‘Well, call me un-PC,’ said the brunette, ‘but I say the boy deserved to lose. Denzel White was by far the best act.’

‘You’re un-PC,’ declared the girl at the end of the table. ‘Denzel White is a dick.’

Zoë tried to recall something from the times Shannon had sat her down to watch the acts in their final rounds of auditions. She remembered Denzel White; it was impossible not to. In the last few months of the previous year, the whole nation had gone crazy for the North London rapper – his pearly teeth shining out from billboards, his lyrical voice pumping out from the internet, his cheeky smile winking from magazine centrefolds. But the other finalists…Nope. Zoë drew a blank.

That, in a nutshell, was why she didn’t believe in the merits of Talent Tout. It made great television, but it didn’t make rock stars. She had never entertained the idea of subjecting Dirty Money to the ordeal. Her band deserved more than five minutes of fame. They deserved longevity and musical respect. They wanted their songs to mean something. They wanted to make their own decisions about what to wear and when to smile. Nobody got that from appearing on Talent Tout.

Denzel White was a prime example. He had been hyped to superstar status within the space of about three weeks, his background spun in a way that spectacularly endeared him to the UK public, and now what? He hadn’t even released an album. He had enjoyed his brief accolade and then he had plummeted back into obscurity.

Kate was with Zoë on this; she understood that the show wasn’t right for the girls. Shannon disagreed. She bought into the Talent Tout dream, swallowing it hook, line and sinker, seeing the show as the obvious route to stardom. In her eyes, the twelve million weekly viewers spoke for themselves. Ellie, when pushed, agreed with the drummer, which made for an ongoing rift between the two halves of the band.

Zoë glanced longingly at the other end of the table, where James and all the boyfriends of the marketing girls were engaged in a drinking game that involved a burned cork and a piece of cheese. Zoë wished she’d been smarter and manoeuvred herself into a better position when they’d all sat down. In fact, she wished she hadn’t agreed to come out at all. If it hadn’t been for her hideous Valentine blunder then she might have let James come alone, but that wouldn’t have been fair. She owed it to him to be here tonight.

James had been quiet for the two days that followed their supposed date, making it difficult for Zoë to know how to react. For her, when something was troubling her, she let it all out, exploding with rage or misery or angst. But James wasn’t one for confrontation. He just stewed, keeping his feelings locked up inside. She had apologised, of course, trying everything she could think of to make it up to him. She hated the fact that occasionally, her relationship ended up taking a back seat to her music, but she wasn’t sure James understood that. She needed him to understand.

Tonight, as they’d set off for the restaurant, Zoë had seen the first sign that her message was getting through. James had slipped an arm around her waist and asked, quietly, whether she had heard any news from Louis Castle. Now, looking down the table at his merry, cork-charred face, it looked as though his sulk had been long forgotten.

‘How d’you think that poor guy felt?’ the first girl went on, like a dog with a bone. ‘Being kicked out because he was deaf?’

‘Deaf?’ Zoë spluttered.

The girls whipped round, all staring at her.

‘How could you not know JJ was deaf?’ asked one.

‘Well…’

There were gasps of astonishment and wary looks.

‘I…I must’ve missed that episode,’ she said sheepishly. It was as though she had confessed to not knowing of Barack Obama. She felt her phone vibrate in her lap and pushed the thick linen tablecloth aside.

Oh God. Just played it.

Boy-band-tastic. He’s

taking it 2 Universal

this wk :-( Kx

Zoë closed her eyes momentarily and took in the news. Louis must have sent them all copies of the demo CD. He had got the tracks edited and without even telling them, set up a meeting with Universal. She felt deflated. How could he do that? Why? They’d written the songs; they knew how it should sound. If Louis was putting tchyka-tchyka versions of their songs in front of record labels, he wasn’t showing them the real Dirty Money.

He was doing what he thought was best for the band, of course. He only made money if they made money – Louis took twenty per cent of whatever they got; that was the agreement – but Zoë felt he was making a mistake. She was worried that he would turn them into another homogeneous, straight-off-the-conveyor-belt pop act. They were better than that.

She sighed, just as the phone buzzed again in her hands.

Wow! Have u heard

CD? It rocks! + I had

gr8 idea 4 celeb

endorsement: I can

get us on Irish TV

with a star! Shan x

Her frown melted into a smile. Shannon always had a great idea. You couldn’t fault her enthusiasm. Zoë wondered how the tracks actually sounded. Deep down, she had been half-expecting something like this. Louis Castle didn’t consult his unsigned protégés when it came to dealing with big-time labels. He called the shots. And maybe, given what he had achieved in America, the girls should just put their trust in his judgement.

After several attempts to catch James’s attention, she made contact with his sleepy blue eyes. He and the others around him had reached the hitting-wine-glasses-with-forks stage of the evening, which suggested that it might be time to go.

‘Bus?’ suggested Zoë as they wandered into the damp, night air.

James grinned hazily at her, trying to focus. ‘Little…black bus?’

Zoë smiled. When James got drunk, he turned into a chilled-out caricature of himself. He became more…well, more like the old James. He always maintained a grip on reality, just a skewwhiff version of reality. So when he pushed open the door of their flat and found, behind it, a small brown parcel marked SOHO STUDIOS, he seemed to know exactly what it was.

‘D’you think this is for you?’ he asked, holding the package just out of Zoë’s reach.

‘James, please…’ She grabbed at his long, muscular arm, stepping on a pile of junk mail and skidding to the floor.

‘You want this?’ he goaded, waving the brown box around as she crawled onto all fours.

Using the parcel, he led her onto the sofa where she collapsed on top of him, dizzy and panting.

‘Will you put it on?’ Zoë pleaded, as James unwrapped the disc, at arm’s length. The note enclosed, which he eventually relinquished, was written in neat, female handwriting – presumably belonging to Louis’s PA.

Hope you like. Will be meeting the Universal boys this week. Fingers crossed.

Louis

James reached back and switched on the hi-fi system. Stretching, he inserted the CD, raised an eyebrow seductively at Zoë and, with excruciating slowness, moved his finger across to the Play button.

Zoë sat up, straddling her boyfriend and starting to undo the buttons of his shirt. She wanted to hear the tracks but she also wanted a piece of James. His eyes were filled with mischief and she could feel his hand – the hand that wasn’t controlling the stereo – working its way up her thigh.

The introduction to ‘Delirious’ started blasting out of the numerous speakers and she suddenly stopped. She could feel the colour drain from her cheeks.

‘Oh my God,’ she said, feeling instantly sober.

Fleetingly, she wondered why he’d put that track first, when ‘Sensible Lies’ was so much better, but there were bigger things to worry about.

It was like being punched in the stomach. She couldn’t think about anything – couldn’t articulate a response. All she could do was listen to this…this sound that was filling the lounge.

‘It’s fucking disco,’ she spat, when the song got into its groove.

If James replied, she didn’t hear him. Her ears were focusing on the clinical beat. She waited for Ellie’s chords to come in, then the vocals. It was unrecognisable. Like listening to somebody else’s music.

‘Fuck!’ she yelled, as her own voice sang back at her above the sanitised riff. She wanted to cry. ‘What’ve they done?!’

The song finished and, transfixed, Zoë waited mutely to hear the next butchered track.

‘Zoë?’

Zoë listened to the mutilated rendition of ‘Sensible Lies’.

‘Zoë,’ James said again, propping himself up on the sofa and pulling her firmly towards him.

‘What?’ she asked, distracted by a cheesy key-change that had been inserted just before the second chorus. It was unbelievable what they’d done.

‘I said, this is amazing.’

Zoë looked at him and frowned. They both seemed to have sobered up now but James wasn’t making any sense. ‘What, amazingly bad?’

‘No,’ he said, pushing himself up on the sofa so that she was sitting in his lap. ‘Listen to it.’

In silence, they listened to the instrumental that preceded the final verse – ordinarily, Zoë’s favourite part of the song.

‘Seriously,’ said James, wrapping his arms round her waist and squeezing her against his body. ‘Imagine you’ve never heard of this band.’

Zoë closed her eyes in anguish, letting her head roll back on James’s shoulder. She had never heard of this band. It wasn’t hers. This was not the sound of Dirty Money.

Enveloped in James’s arms, swaying gently to the unfamiliar music, Zoë tried to force herself to hear it afresh. She heard the pulsing beat and the harmonies and the catchy tune…

The song finished and the final track came on. ‘Run Boy Run’ was one of their most uplifting numbers. Zoë tilted her face upwards to tell James that he was right, that she was too obsessed with the band, that she was sorry for sometimes neglecting her commitment to him, that she really was grateful for his unwavering support. But she didn’t get a chance, as James’s lips were pressing against hers.

11

The phone rang for the second time in as many minutes.

‘It’s Brian again.’

Zoë’s typing became even more frantic.

‘The email still hasn’t come through.’

‘Uh…Really? That’s weird.’

She scanned the main paragraph, trying to stem her internal panic. In fact, there was nothing weird about the situation at all. It was simply that Zoë had failed to complete the audit in time and was now shifting the blame onto the mysterious workings of the client email server.

‘You did cc me this time, didn’t you?’

‘Yep,’ she replied, quickly typing Brian’s name in the cc box. She hadn’t wanted to lie, but the client had called her this morning and launched into a long story about firewall issues at their end and it had slowly dawned on Zoë that they were assuming she’d sent the audit the previous week, and…well, it had just seemed simpler not to make the correction.

Brian grunted. ‘Very strange. I’ll get onto IT.’

‘No,’ she said quickly, knowing that even the cretins employed by the Chase Waterman IT department would spot that no email had been sent from her machine. ‘I’ll do it. I think it might be something to do with my computer anyway.’ She checked the message one last time and pressed Send. ‘Oh, it seems to be doing something now.’

‘I’ll leave it with you,’ he barked.

Zoë slumped back in her seat and let out a heavy sigh. She didn’t like disappointing clients, but it seemed to be happening more and more these days. Perhaps it was because of her workload. Nobody else seemed to have so many projects on the go at once – or at least, nobody else seemed to struggle with the volume of work. But then…She leaned forward again and squinted to check that the email had been sent. Nobody else spent hours every week taking calls from promoters, liaising with venues, updating websites or slipping out to write songs. Nobody else came in to work with a raging headache, their eyes bloodshot from the late nights in sweat-filled bars.

Maybe it wasn’t possible to combine the two careers, Zoë conceded. Not that the band was a career, exactly. She didn’t know the exact definition, but she had a feeling that ‘career’ had something to do with making money. So far, if you added everything up over the years, Dirty Money had probably lost them a few thousand pounds.

Her mobile phone started buzzing its way along the desk, flashing Unknown number. She snatched it up, preparing to explain to the client, yet again, that the email was on its way.

‘Hiiiiii.’

‘Louis?’ she checked. This was surely the call they’d been waiting for.

‘Yeah! How you doin’? What’re you up to?’

Zoë pushed back her chair and sloped off towards the lift lobby. Good news or bad news, this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have in front of her colleagues.

‘I’m…I’m at work,’ she replied, not entirely sure whether Louis expected an answer or whether it was simply one of those rhetorical Americanisms.

‘Oh yeah.’ Either Louis hadn’t wanted an answer or he had simply forgotten that most people, at half past eleven on a Wednesday morning, were at work. ‘Where’s that then?’

‘Near Liverpool Street.’ Zoë stepped backwards as a pair of suited men strode out of the lifts, resisting her urge to scream for an update on the Universal meeting.

‘Great! I’m in Shoreditch. Not far at all. Can you meet me in half an hour?’

‘Wh—’ Zoë faltered. She wanted to know now, not in half an hour. Why couldn’t he just tell her by phone? And how on earth was she going to round up the others at such short notice? Kate would be stuck in some important meeting about pension funds, Shannon was probably sweet-talking some media client over an early lunch and Ellie needed at least twenty-four hours to get anywhere. ‘I can try and get everyone along,’ she offered half-heartedly.

‘No, just you for now.’ Louis cleared his throat.

‘R-right,’ she replied hesitantly. If Louis had bad news then she didn’t see why it was her job to deliver it to the rest of the band. She wasn’t a spokesperson.

‘Meet you in The Bathhouse at noon?’ It was an instruction, not a question.

Zoë dropped the phone from her ear to check the time. As she took a breath to respond, she realised that the line was dead.

The following twenty-five minutes were not very productive. She couldn’t concentrate on intangible assets when there were so many questions vying for attention in her head. Why did he want to meet her alone? What did he have to say that couldn’t have been said on the phone? Was it bad news? Had Zoë’s phone call the other night somehow damaged their relationship with the manager? Was he going to cancel their contract? Zoë stopped pretending to work and walked out. Honestly, she was getting like Kate with her worrying. There was no point in fretting over things that hadn’t even happened.

From the outside, The Bathhouse looked like a miniature Russian church, complete with coloured tiles, dome roof and painted dovecote. Inside, it was a hip, candlelit wine bar with carpeted walls and sparsely-placed chandeliers. Zoë entered with caution, alarm bells ringing. Was it normal for managers to meet with their acts in such dark venues? She barely knew Louis Castle. Perhaps it was all a sham – perhaps he wasn’t the Louis Castle she’d read about on the internet.

A waiter ushered her over to the alcove nearest the grand piano, where Louis could be seen, reclined in an armchair, his large, chunky hands clasped around a tumbler of amber liquid. Zoë’s anxieties began to lift. It was obvious that for the manager, there was nothing unusual about this at all. Whereas auditing conversations were conducted under the harsh strip lights of seventh-floor meeting rooms with small cups of water, in the world of rock and roll, candles, sofas and whisky were still par for the course.