My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend (31 page)

‘I know I probably shouldn’t admit this, but it really is, isn’t it?’ agrees my mum.

I could never have predicted their reactions, but it’s the song that Jackson wrote about me: ‘The Last Tuesday’. I felt a bit silly putting it on the mix in the first place,
but I couldn’t leave it off either. It wouldn’t have felt right.

Maybe it’s the champagne that’s done it, but we’re all singing along. I swear there’s even a tear in Nishi’s eye by the time we get to the final chorus. I’m
sure it’s nothing to do with Jackson Griffith, or me – that’s the beauty of a great song. You can project yourself on to it.

It’s a novelty for me not to have to, for once. It’s about me. It’s mine and it always will be. What a gift.

In fact, I’ve long suspected it, but now I know: if there are two things I’d hang my hat on in this life, it’s true friendship and the power of a perfect two-minute pop
song.

Acknowledgements

Huge gratitude to my brilliant agent Caroline Hardman and my brilliant editor Rachel Petty – thank you both so much. Thank you also to Joanna Swainson and to the amazingly
lovely team at Macmillan. You have all made this such a joy I cannot ever thank you enough!

Predictable but heartfelt thanks to all my family and friends who have helped me so much – too many of you to name (sorry), but especially Mum, Dad, Katy, Nan, Ali, Tom, Ruth and Jimmy.
Thank you to Ann Pitts for early encouragement and ongoing friendship.

Thank you to Alexis for taking my photograph (and sh*t).

Very modern thanks to all my Twitter and Facebook friends for support, comedy and distraction – and special thanks to Evan for giving me a tiny spark of an idea (and the soundtrack to the
writing of this book).

Author Note

I have always wanted to write a book set at a music festival. Writing and music have always been my great loves in life, so this was probably the logical conclusion.

When I was eighteen, I celebrated the end of my A levels with a trip to Reading Festival. I had found the ideal outfit for the occasion: a ridiculous charity shop wedding dress (fetchingly
paired with Adidas Gazelles). So my friend Russell (in a three-piece suit) and I told everyone that we had got married and were at the festival for our honeymoon. We even had fake bridesmaids!
Hilarity ensued and we loved all the attention – we happily posed for photos and answered people’s questions with increasingly ridiculous answers (‘Yes, we are planning to come
back every year for our wedding anniversary and bring our future children!’).

I staggered home on Monday morning still in my mud-caked wedding dress. At first I thought my parents’ horrified faces were due to my haggard appearance, but in fact they had read about my
festival ‘wedding’ in the
Telegraph
and the
News of the World
– and had spent the whole weekend worrying that the reports were true!

The story stuck in my memory (and my dad’s – who still likes to bring it up whenever possible as proof of my ‘difficult’ teen years!). Fast-forward a decade and it was
the first thing that sprang to mind when I was writing this book.

The world has changed a lot since I used to run off to festivals for the weekend without so much as a mobile phone. In the interim, I was an early adopter of blogging and turned into a total
Twitter addict. One day last year, wasting time on Twitter when I should have been writing, I somehow got into a Tweet-conversation with a popstar from my teenage days – one who I had seen at
all those long-ago festivals and even had a poster of on my bedroom wall. When he started replying to my Tweets – and followed me back – I couldn’t believe it!

Amazingly, we carried on chatting and sort of became friends. We talked about music and films and stuff, and planned to meet up when he came over to the UK to play at Glastonbury.

In the end, we didn’t. But it was so exciting to me that I could talk to this person – who was not only thousands of miles away, but a genuine (gorgeous, talented, famous, etc.)
rockstar
. When I was a teenager, it just wouldn’t have been possible.

I suddenly realized that this might complete the idea for the romantic festival adventure I had always dreamed of writing. The pieces instantly fell into place and I wrote the whole book really
quickly – in about two months. It was one of those brilliant things where the real-life sparks of inspiration – as if by magic – turned into a fully formed fictional story with
its own dramas and characters. I loved every single minute of writing it, and I fell in love with Tuesday and Jackson along the way.

After that, it was a whirlwind. A couple of months later, I found myself at the Macmillan offices eating cupcakes decorated with miniature vinyl records while I signed a contract for two
books.

Since then, all the behind-the-scenes hard work has been going on, while I have been counting down the agonizing wait to finally have the finished book in my hands. The whole experience has been
such a total joy, I can’t even tell you. I am so grateful to everyone who has supported me, and thank you so much for buying this book! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I adored writing
it.

Combining my love of books and music has always been my dream and there’s so much more to write about – my days of playing bass in a (terrible and very short-lived!) band is the next
spark of inspiration . . .

I wish I could go back to Reading Festival 1999 and tell my teenage self all about it. If I had told her that I would one day be writing books inspired by the music I love, I don’t think
she would have believed me.

Ellie x

Endnotes

1
i.e. Unintentionally yellow/bleached-blonde mess that I cut myself with the kitchen scissors.

2
This may not be MY generation, but I still get a say. I am a spiritual child of the nineties, so humour me. Please?

3
No, you’re not seeing said photographic evidence.

4
Alongside Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and My Aforementioned Geriatric Fantasy Husband. HOT.

5
Full disclosure: I would be going to their gig tonight even if Seymour Brown was not my boyfriend. Honest.

6
Ruby Tuesday, in case you didn’t work it out yourself.

7
Hi, Jackson! Don’t worry, reader, he gave me his permission to write about him. I offered to send this to him first – for
‘copy approval’, as the stars call it – but he said he trusted me and would be happy with whatever I wanted to write. I don’t think anyone has ever paid me a nicer
compliment actually.

8
I say ‘lucky’, but maybe what I actually mean is ‘prepared to work hard and be proactive’.

Eleanor Wood lives in Brighton, where she can mostly be found hanging around in cafes and record shops, running on the beach, pretending to be French and/or that it’s the
1960s and writing deep into the night. She used to make a photocopied fanzine, moved on to embarrassingly personal blogging and has written for magazines like
Elle
,
Time Out
and
The Face
. She has a fringe, is fond of eyeliner and wishes she had a dog.

http://eleanor-wood.blogspot.co.uk

or chat to her on Twitter at @eleanor_wood

First published 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-7788-0

Copyright © Eleanor Wood 2015

Cover photography by Colin Thomas

The right of Eleanor Wood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

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