The Fame Factor

Zoë nodded, handing her guitar to James and stepping outside. The truth was, she had to change her mother’s mind about a lot more than the fate of her old guitar.

‘Oh and Shannon?’ she said, poking her head back into the warmth of Shannon’s flat. ‘Nice one on the Louis Castle thing.’

Shannon grinned back at her. ‘Tepid Foot Hold, I’m tellin’ ya. Go check ‘em out.’

4 (#ulink_480b3dc5-a839-5cbf-ba40-97b416e987bf)

‘I think that covers everything,’ Brian Aldridge concluded, much to Zoë’s relief. Her balding boss was blessed with a gift for all things numerical, but he was also an incredible bore.

‘Don’t forget,’ he called out as people morosely filed out of the meeting room. ‘Rigorous Accounting Practices. RAP!’

The most irritating thing about Brian, thought Zoë, was that he genuinely believed he was interesting. His way of spicing up a presentation was to pepper it with his own acronyms, which just made you want to throw something at his shiny head.

Zoë found herself nodding as she passed through the door. It was a reflex she had developed at university for dealing with tedious lecturers.

‘…this afternoon, Zoë?’

Zoë faltered. She had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Or have you already done it?’

‘Uh…’ Zoë thought about answering, but decided against it. ‘Sorry, have I done what?’

He looked at her, brow deeply furrowed. ‘The British Trust audit.’

Zoë masked her mild panic with another smile. The British Trust was turning out to be something of a can of worms, largely because the charity was run by a bunch of sweet, well-meaning grandmothers who were incapable of using an abacus, let alone a spreadsheet.

‘I’ve done the first run,’ she replied.

‘Could I see a copy, please?’

Zoë didn’t like his patronising tone. ‘I’ll email it to you now,’ she replied, leaving the meeting room and striding back to her desk.

Hoping she hadn’t left any gaping holes, Zoë dispatched the email and looked at her watch. Twelve forty-three. She was meeting Ellie at one. It didn’t seem sensible to get stuck into a spreadsheet with such little time. She opened a browser and typed three words into Google.

Results 1-10 of about 2,400,000 for ‘tepid foot hold’ returned the search engine. Zoë stared at the hits: The official TFH site, a couple of YouTube videos of live performances, a Last.fm profile, a MySpace page…even Q had a page for the band.

Zoë clicked on a couple of links. The country-rock fusion act had had seven top-ten singles in America and two platinum-selling albums, both making the top forty over here. Their lead singer, a guy called Toby Fox, was originally from London but now lived in LA with his model-actress girlfriend. Through Tepid Foot Hold he had won two Mercury awards, an NME award, a Grammy…Zoë squinted and reread the line. He had won an Ivor Novello award. An Ivor Novello. That was the ultimate achievement. It was more impressive than filling Wembley Arena or headlining on a bill that included the Eagles and Sheryl Crow – which, according to the articles, Fox had also managed to accomplish. Ivor Novellos were the musical equivalent of the Oscars. They were for real songwriters.

She was about to search for ‘Louis Castle’ when her survival instinct kicked in, telling her to revert to her spreadsheet.

‘Getting through it?’ asked Brian as his middle-aged paunch drew level with her desk.

‘Mmm…’ Zoë squinted hard at a formula, following her manager’s progress through the office. It was ten to one. She set her screensaver to ‘Never come on’ and stood up, draping her coat over her guitar as she eased it out from under the desk.

‘Are you going outside?’ Eric, her annoying neighbour, asked loudly. Several heads turned. ‘Can you get me a Coke?’

‘Ooh, Zoë, can you buy me a sandwich?’

‘Will you be going anywhere near a newsagent?’

Zoë pulled an apologetic face. She didn’t want to admit that she’d be gone for a full hour. Hour-long lunch breaks were frowned upon, especially during January.

‘I’m, er…I’ve got to run a few errands,’ she explained. ‘Sorry.’

‘Is that a guitar?’ asked Eric, even louder, as though wanting his colleagues to appreciate his powers of perception. There was something about the pointy-faced auditor that Zoë found exasperating. He managed to turn every conversation into a competition.

‘Oh, er, yes.’ Zoë looked down at the case. ‘That’s the, um, the errand. Gotta drop it off somewhere.’

A minute later, the revolving glass doors spat her onto the pavement and Zoë fled north, towards the barren wasteland of Shoreditch.

Ellie, it turned out, was running late. Ellie was usually running late. Her whole routine, if you could call it that, was set in a fluid version of time: one that was infinitely stretchable and infinitely compressible. Sometimes, she was early. Very occasionally, her clock coincided with Greenwich Mean Time and she arrived at a place exactly when she was supposed to. Most of the time though, Ellie was late. The only other person on the planet who inhabited the same time zone was Ellie’s boyfriend, Sam.

Sam and Ellie lived in a caravan by one of the Thames’s tributaries that ran through Hackney. Purchased five years ago from a group of travellers, the shack had initially served as a summer stopgap; a place to stay during the two months between first-year halls and their second-year student house. As it turned out, neither Ellie nor Sam made it as far as second year. Sam had been offered a choice by the college: to repeat his first year or to relinquish his place on the design course – which, truth be told, hadn’t taught him much other than how to design the ultimate spliff – so he took the easy option and walked out. Ellie decided that she liked the vibe in the music shop on Denmark Street, where she had found herself working that summer, and dropped out as well. Five years later, Ellie was still at the shop, still living in the caravan with Sam, still smoking weed for breakfast.

‘Hi!’ cried Ellie, skipping across the road in front of a car, seemingly oblivious to its screeching emergency stop. ‘Sorry I’m late!’

The car zoomed off, its driver glaring angrily at their embrace.

Zoë checked the time on her phone as Ellie let them in. ‘I’ve got about forty-five minutes. I had to tell work I was running an errand.’ She pulled a face.

Ellie smiled placidly. She had no idea about the pressures of corporate life. Fortunately for her, at Desmond’s Strings there was no sneaking around behind colleagues’ backs, no faking enthusiasm for mind-numbingly dull tasks, no bullshit. Ellie enjoyed stringing guitars and chatting to the Led Zeppelin enthusiasts who passed through the doors of the shop. In fact, it was thanks to Desmond that they had this pseudo-rehearsal studio at their disposal.

They messed around with the fragments of vocals that had been floating around Zoë’s head for the last few days. We say we will, we say one day / There’s never time, it runs away / The beat, it’s here, but do we care / We’re out of time, we’re out of air…

Zoë felt herself loosening up, drifting away. Ellie’s chords changed the whole sound of the song. After a week of hearing her own imaginary backing parts, it felt as though the melody was finally coming alive.

‘This sounds great,’ she said excitedly. ‘D’you reckon we could get this polished in time for The Mad Cow gig?’

Ellie lifted her slender shoulders. ‘Sure.’

The Mad Cow was Shannon’s local pub. Run by an Irishman, staffed by Irishmen and frequented by an eclectic mix of Irish, Caribbean, Polish, Russian, Indian and probably others; it was difficult to make out the accents above the din of the high-wattage amps. In fact, that was probably why everybody got along so well; nobody had the faintest idea what anybody else was saying.

‘It’d be good if we could get this on the DVD. Maybe this one and the six on our main set list.’ She was thinking out loud. ‘I wonder whether we can ask Eamonn for a longer slot…’

‘Good idea.’ Ellie nodded, trying out an alternative riff.

Zoë trailed off, smiling. Ellie never got involved in the planning. Brilliant harmonies and guitar solos were her fortes; turning up on time and helping with logistics were not.

‘Oh,’ she said, remembering something else. ‘I looked up that band Shannon mentioned – Tepid what’s-it. It looks like they’re really big in the States.’

‘Really?’ Ellie looked up, finally pulling herself away from the strings. ‘How big?’

‘Big. Google them.’

‘Wow.’ Ellie’s eyes were wild with hope and unfulfilled dreams. She didn’t care about the details; details were for somebody else to deal with – usually Zoë. She only cared about the dream. For Ellie, it was just a matter of time before a major record deal landed in their lap.

Zoë watched as she began to pluck at the strings, improvising. They had so much in common, in a musical sense. They both loved to play, to sing, to listen, to get swept up in its powerful, intricate harmonies…But what they took from it was very different.