The Fame Factor

‘Okay,’ said Zoë, thinking for a moment. ‘You’re right. How did you leave it with this guy?’

Shannon cleared her throat melodramatically. ‘He wants to see our demo DVD.’

‘Our what?’ chimed Zoë and Kate in unison.

‘I know. He said it needs to be visual.’

Zoë pulled a face, wondering what ‘visual’ meant, and whether Shannon might have got the wrong end of the stick.

‘Not like that,’ the drummer clarified. ‘And don’t worry, I know a guy who’ll do it.’

Zoë looked at the others and laughed. Shannon always knew a guy. Whatever the challenge, there was always a man from Shannon’s past who would fit the bill.

‘Can your guy come and film our next gig?’

Shannon smiled coyly. ‘I’m sure he could be persuaded.’

Zoë rolled her eyes and switched on Ellie’s amp, nodding for her to play. After a quick tweak of strings, they were ready.

‘Shall we?’ said Shannon, holding her sticks in midair, ready to launch into their first song.

Over the years, the band had built up a repertoire of about thirty decent songs. Two albums’ worth and five extra songs, to be precise. Not that any had been officially released. The tracks, having been recorded in a studio belonging to a sleazy millionaire acquaintance of Shannon’s, had been uploaded to various places on the internet, but never released. It was a deliberate move. The girls had considered the idea of self-releasing – burning the tracks to CD and flogging them to friends and fans – but had rejected it on the grounds that no proper label would want to release a rehash of an album that had photocopied sleeves and handwritten inserts. Dirty Money were waiting for the real thing.

Most of the tracks on their first unreleased album were either cheeky reflections on events or incidents in their lives, like ‘Run Boy Run’, a song about Shannon’s man-eating attributes, or flippant takes on the world around them, such as ‘Man Made’, a song about an increasingly materialistic society.

Over the years, their lives had changed and so had their music. Recent tracks included ‘Sensible Lies’, a frank exposé on the double life Zoë found herself leading, and ‘Clap Now Turn Around’, a song that hit back at the endless stream of identikit girl-bands who stripped their way into the charts, only to be pushed back to obscurity when the next set of grinning dolls came along.

They bashed through a few of their old favourites, experimenting. They never needed to tell one another what worked or what didn’t. If Ellie discovered a new set of chords that improved the sound, there might be a nod or a smile, but if the new bass line was off, nobody would bother to point it out.

It wasn’t always like this in a band. As a teenager, Zoë had sung, or rather, shouted, in a head-banging metal group that consisted of two tone-deaf guitarists and a drummer with a limited sense of rhythm. Being in Dead Canvas had been the exact opposite of Zoë’s experiences in Dirty Money. With the boys, their rehearsal time had been spent alternately yelling at one another and passing round joints. The girls were different. They had an understanding. Perhaps because they’d been friends for over half a decade, ever since their early Goldsmiths days, they never needed to state the obvious.

Six years ago, Zoë had been lugging a battered old suitcase up the concrete steps of her first-year halls of residence: a drab, flat-roofed monstrosity that filled the gap between the A20 and the ugly sprawl of New Cross Gate. She had two guitars slung over one shoulder and a rucksack over the other – a consequence of her own stubbornness, having declined her parents’ offer of a lift, following a row over her A-level grades.

Ironically, Zoë’s ‘shockingly poor results’ (her mother’s words) were both the product and the cause of her unrelenting passion for music. Looking back, her memories of sixth form involved jamming, songwriting and lying around hatching plans to become a big-time musician. With the benefit of hindsight, her grades shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. But they had done.

Expectations had been running high, following Tamsin’s straight-A performance. There was a sense that Zoë would follow in her sister’s footsteps. She was bright enough; in previous exams she had matched Tamsin’s results, sometimes even beating her older sibling. But the motivation hadn’t been there. Maths and history and economics had slipped down in her priorities, while music had climbed to the top.

Even with her father pulling strings from his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, there was no way Durham would accept her into their hallowed law department. Which, as it turned out, was a blessing in disguise. Had Zoë never set foot on those concrete steps that led to the Goldsmiths first-year halls of residence, she would never have made friends with Ellie, and consequently would never have come into contact with Shannon or Kate.

Ellie had offered to help carry her belongings up the steps, which, of course, had led to a conversation about how they both played the guitar. It turned out that the girls’ box-like rooms were on the same floor, so in the first few weeks, while everyone else was making spurious friendships and trying to find their way, Zoë and Ellie were hiding away in their poky student bedrooms, trying to find their sound. By the end of the first term at Goldsmiths, they had become inseparable.

Ellie probably would have been happy to go on like that: Jamming, singing, chatting and jamming. But by the second term, they had written some songs of their own – songs that were too good to keep hidden amongst the chocolate digestive crumbs of Rooms 5a and 5d.

Zoë put up ads around college for a bass guitarist and a drummer. The intention had never been to form an all-girl quartet. It was only when, during the informal audition in Ellie’s bedroom, Kate had quietly introduced herself – she was studying Finance, the same as Zoë – that the idea of a female ensemble had presented itself.

Finding a drummer had been the problem. Decent female drummers were rarities. They did get a call from one girl, but then when they’d all met up, having chatted at length about the prospect of forming an all-girl group, it had transpired that the drummer’s repertoire consisted solely of the thumping beat to ‘We Will Rock You’. It just wasn’t going to work.

Eventually, they had taken on a young man called Hans, a sweet-tempered foreign exchange student from Denmark. He was only around for the remainder of the year but he sufficed as a stopgap. Zoë had arranged for them to play at the Goldsmiths spring ball and it was there, in the middle of the beer tent, that Shannon had made herself known. Making use of her low-cut silk dress, she had talked Hans into stepping down for one song and shimmied her way into his seat. Three minutes later, it was obvious that they had found their drummer.

‘Hold on!’ cried Shannon, stopping midway through their newest song and poking her drumsticks behind her ears. ‘I heard something.’

The other parts trailed off and for a moment, there was quiet.

Then they all heard it. Thud, thud, thud.

‘Mrs Costello,’ they all said, in unison.

Mrs Costello was the downstairs neighbour. For someone who lived beneath a bunch of noisy Irish girls that included a drummer and a DJ, she was a tolerant woman. But when the broom handle started banging, the girls knew it was time to stop. It was a small price to pay in comparison to the studio fee.

Waiting for Ellie and Kate by the door, Zoë checked her phone. One missed call from her mum. She dialled to hear the inevitable voicemail.

‘Hello dear, only me. Lovely to see you tonight. Pity we didn’t get a chance to chat. You seemed to arrive late and then you, er, disappeared…Anyway. I wanted to ask, I’m having a bit of a clear out. You didn’t want your old guitar, did you? I’m taking a carload to the charity shop.’ Zoë let out an involuntary squeal. ‘There’s a…speaker-thing, too. You know the one I mean? Black…sort of square, lots of holes in the front…I’m not sure whether it’d be any use to anyone. Perhaps I’ll get Daddy to take it to the tip. Oh and that jar of old plectrums – can I throw that away? We’re trying to make the spare bedroom look a bit more presentable. Let me know. I’ll see you soon. Byeee.’

Zoë growled angrily and deleted the message.

‘Your mum?’

Zoë looked up. James was standing in the doorway. He must have driven round to give her a lift home.

‘Hello.’ Zoë tried to match his smile. ‘Yeah, my mum. She’s trying to throw out my old guitar.’

Shannon and Ellie poked their heads round from the front room.

‘What?’

‘What?’

‘And my old practice amp. And you know that little pot of plectrums I collected at uni?’

‘Sacrilege,’ hissed Shannon, shaking her head.

James was frowning. ‘Um…Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but if you haven’t used these things in the last two years, do you really need them?’

There was a collective gasp. Zoë drew a breath to explain, but Shannon got in first.

‘It’s not a question of need, James. It’s a sentimental thing. You can’t throw out your first guitar.’

‘Oh. Right.’ James nodded, nonplussed. ‘And…the amp?’

‘Okay,’ Zoë nodded reluctantly. ‘Maybe that can go.’ The connections had always been a bit loose anyway. ‘But the plectrums…’

Kate raised a hand and slipped out. ‘Sorry – gotta go.’

James looked into the darkness and quietly called out to her. ‘Chin up, eh. I’m sure it’ll work out.’

The girls looked at one another; presumably Kate had been telling James all about her latest rejection by Henry or Hugo – the names blurred into one.

‘You gotta have words with your mum,’ Shannon said firmly. ‘Make her change her mind.’