The Turning Point: A gripping emotional page-turner with a breathtaking twist

‘Travel safe, Pops.’

‘Night sweetheart.’

‘Dad – it’s the day.’

‘So save it for later.’

His phone rang.

‘You here?’ he asked.

‘I’m here,’ Frankie said.

Stock-still he stood in the control room while outside, Frankie fidgeted from foot to foot. They thought: any moment now any moment now. Out into the gentle light of early evening, Scott realized how he must have missed a lovely day in London if the warmth and clear sky were anything to go by.

And there she is. There she is.

‘You look disappointed.’

‘I was anticipating something less high-tech, more bohemian – more sixties.’

‘You wanted Paul and John sitting in a corner jamming.’

‘Yes – Ringo and George too.’

‘If you’d have come earlier in the week, I could’ve done you George Clooney – he’s producing a movie and the music was recorded here in Studio One.’

‘I didn’t know you earlier in the week.’

Scott stopped. Really? ‘Next time, I’ll make sure it’s more rock and roll for you.’

‘There will be a next time?’

Thoughts of Jenna weaved through his mind but he halted them, as if he was saying to her hang on honey, I’m just busy here. He looked at Frankie intently for a moment before nodding. ‘Oh I’ll be back for sure,’ he said.

‘Not just for work?’

‘No – not just for work.’

They were standing in a corridor crammed with trolleys heaped high with all manner of gear and gadgetry. People with mugs of coffee, preoccupied expressions and heads full of music had to negotiate Scott and Frankie standing in their way. On the walls, framed photographs looked down on them benevolently, from the Beatles to an Oasis of calm while music filtered out when thick doors opened and muffled away again when they closed, like reveals of other people’s thoughts.

‘Come,’ said Scott, leading on to the control room of Studio Two. ‘I have around twenty minutes of work left to do.’

The control room had a stillness with its soft lighting and dark red soundproofing in long padded runs along the walls. But there was a busyness too; the vast mixing desk, screens running a cut of the film, speakers so huge they reminded Frankie of props for Star Wars, compressors, distressors, amps and limiters, a coffee table with a scatter of cups and a platter of fruit, discarded headphones and sheaves of music marked up in luminous highlighter pen. And people – for some reason she hadn’t expected anyone else to be there. From the leather sofa, a woman and a man turned and nodded; at a desk by the interior window looking down on the studio itself, another woman was leafing through pages of music; at a table next to her a young man was working at a computer.

‘So this is Frankie,’ Scott said introducing her to the director, the producer, the music editor, the music supervisor and a chap called Paul Broucek from Warner Bros. who was working in Studio One but knew Scott well. Jeff Bridges was as good as there too, dominating the three large monitors running scenes from the movie.

‘Scott – we’re ready for you.’

He touched her arm and told her ten, twenty minutes, then he walked to the door at the end of the room and through to the studio itself.

‘Frankie,’ said Paul, motioning her to the table and chair by the interior window that looked down on the studio. ‘Come sit here.’

Below, she saw what looked more like a school gym, a little shabby in comparison with the control room. There were chairs and music stands for at least fifty, but there was only Scott down there, settling himself, putting on headphones, tuning his guitar. She’d only heard him play down the phone at her, just a couple of bars.

‘You see that?’ Paul was pointing to a nondescript upright piano. ‘Circa 1905 Steinway Vertegrand piano,’ he told her. ‘Or – in layman’s terms, the “Lady Madonna” piano that McCartney played.’

And Frankie thought, I really love this place.

‘Ready for you, Scott,’ someone was saying.

‘Sure.’ His voice came through on the speakers.

And then he started to play. Though Paul encouraged her to watch the screens, to see how the cue fitted the scene, her eyes were constantly drawn to Scott, a solitary figure down there in that historic room, playing the music he’d written. A world of his own.

‘He plays so so beautifully,’ Paul said to no one in particular.

‘One of the great guitarists,’ someone else responded.

‘When he plays acoustic, it’s just so complete,’ said Paul. ‘Like four or five voices simultaneously. Just beautiful.’

Watching Scott, hearing him play, something swept through Frankie just then. It wasn’t that he had added another string to his bow in her eyes; it was more profound than that. Another layer, extra depth in a world which, though different from hers in many ways, was a world she understood. To be lost in one’s craft, the need to create, whether with words or music, using a language for expression which was simultaneously intensely personal and yet generous and universal. Writing for yourself yet giving it to an audience. A kindred soul, for sure.