What She Wants (18 page)

She ignored her grandmother’s snort of disapproval. Despite being mother and daughter Sandra and Reenie Turner were like chalk and cheese. Keeping the peace between them was a full time job. Reenie disapproved of Sandra’s part-time job as a manicurist and the way that Nicole took care of Pammy as though she were her mother. And Sandra hated Reenie’s comments about her occasional men friends.

‘Once in a blue moon I meet a nice man for a drink, once in a blue moon, that’s all. Just because I’ve got kids doesn’t mean I have to live like a nun, you know,’ she’d snap.

‘Fat chance of that,’ Reenie would sniff unfairly.

Nicole hated her grandmother criticizing Sandra. For all that her mother was dizzy, she’d worked hard to bring her and Pammy up and hadn’t so much as dated a man when

Nicole was a kid. It was only when Nicole was a bit of a teenage tearaway that Sandra had met Pammy’s father. Pammy danced along the wet footpath with Nicole, singing tunelessly to herself. She’d settled incredibly well at St Matthews, for which Nicole was grateful. Apart from the first day when her lower lip had wobbled when Nicole finally left her in the capable hands of Miss Vishnu, she’d run happily into school ever since. Miss Vishnu was very young and sweet and the children appeared to love her. Once Pammy was dispatched into school with her Pokemon lunchbox, Nicole had to rush to the bus stop to catch the five to eight. She had to stand for nine stops but finally got a seat on the top deck where she could sit and listen to her CD Walkman as West London rolled by. She enjoyed those moments to herself on the bus or tube, even if she was surrounded by people. There was still a solitariness to it that she liked: listening to music and not having to talk to anybody.

Copperplate buzzed with the usual Friday morning excitement of ‘only a few more hours and it’s the weekend!’ In the canteen, plans were being made for lunchtime shopping expeditions for new clothes and discussions were going on about what everyone was doing that night. Top Shop had a sale and there was great enthusiasm for butterfly tops like one Jennifer Lopez wore which were reduced to twenty quid. Nicole bought a cup of tea and sat in the smoking section of the canteen. She flicked through a paper that someone had left on the seat beside her, scanning the news rapidly before reaching the horoscopes. Leos were in for a good day, she read. Be prepared for breathtaking news to hit you. How you react could be very important but remember not to do anything rash. Breathtaking news could mean she got the sack, Nicole thought, lighting up another fag even though she didn’t really want it. Sharon appeared at the canteen door, face lit up with excitement.

‘You’ll never guess!’ she yelled at Nicole as she ran over to the table.

‘We’ve been given a day off?’ Nicole suggested. ‘Ms Sinclair Bitch has been run over by a truck? You’re engaged to Leonardo DiCaprio?’

Sharon slid into the seat beside her friend and passed a small, rather grubby card over to her. ‘Better than that,’ she smirked.

‘Dickie Vernon, manager,’ Nicole read. ‘What’s this mean?’

Sharon beamed. ‘He heard you sing last night in the Parrot. He’s a top class band manager. He told me about some huge band he managed but I can’t remember which one. Anyway, he wants you!’ Sharon could barely contain herself. ‘He thinks you’ve a wonderful voice and you could be a pop star! Imagine it.’

Nicole laughed. ‘This is mad, this is. Just have a look at my horoscope. It says I better not do anything rash.’

‘Rash?’ demanded Sharon looking up from what the day foretold for Geminis. ‘They’ll never let you on Top of the Pops with a rash.’

Nicole had never felt so nervous in her whole life. Her hands were actually shaking as she peeled the cellophane from the cigarette packet. She’d better get a grip or she’d sound like one of those dolls who stutter ‘Mama’ when their string is pulled. Taking a huge drag of Rothmans, she let the nicotine enter her system and give her the hit. The drug did its thing. Great. She sagged a little in her new high leather boots and leaned against the wall as her body relaxed. Then she jerked away: this place was such a dump. Who knew when it had last been cleaned. You’d probably get rabies from just leaning against the scummy wall.

From the way Dickie had spoken about the small recording studio owned by a friend, Nicole had been under the impression that she was practically going to Abbey Road. Instead, she was in a dingy old premises in Guildford with

a warren of rooms and a studio that looked as if it hadn’t been used since the sixties. And the equipment looked even older, like stuff from the Antiques Roadshow.

The man who owned it seemed nice enough, though: a skinny old guy who wasn’t exactly threatening, which was good. Nicole had been a bit nervous about going there on her own with Dickie.

‘What if they’re rapists who just use this “you could be a singer” line to get you on your own?’ Sharon had protested. ‘I’ll go with you; you need moral support.’

But Nicole had insisted she went to the studio on her own. ‘If we both take a sickie on Tuesday, Sinclair is going to figure something’s going on. She’s not that stupid,’ Nicole pointed out. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll take my army penknife just in case.’

‘I thought the actual knife fell off,’ Sharon said suspiciously. ‘I’ll stab them to death with the bottle-opener bit,’ Nicole retorted.

She had the penknife in her bag but she didn’t think she was going to need it. Dickie may have looked like a total sleazoid but he seemed genuinely only interested in her singing ability.

‘You shouldn’t be smoking,’ he’d said, scandalized, the first time he’d seen Nicole light up, the seventh of her twenty a day.

‘Who the hell are you? My bleedin’ mother?’ she demanded. ‘It’s bad for your voice. No top singer would ever smoke,’ Dickie said.

Tough bananas, Nicole thought, stubbing out one cigarette and extracting another from the packet. She needed to smoke. She’d never be able to sing otherwise. She had the words and music to one Whitney Houston song ready not that she could read music, but it looked good.

Dickie came back into the studio. ‘Everything’s ready to go,’ he said breezily. ‘Just one more thing.’ He casually held

a piece of paper out to Nicole. ‘You just need to sign this, love. To make it all legal and formal, you know.’ He held out a pen with the other hand.

The corner of Nicole’s mouth twitched. Did this guy really think she was that dumb? Just because she’d taken a chance by going to a studio with him, he couldn’t honestly think she would blindly sign a bit of paper that would undoubtedly give him rights over her and her unborn children for the rest of her life?

She gave him her Bambi look, the one where she widened her eyes and blinked slowly, as if blinking quickly was too much of a mental strain. ‘Sign this?’ she repeated.

Dickie nodded, more confident now.

‘I don’t know,’ Nicole said, still in Bambi mode.

‘It’s legal stuff, nothing to worry about,’ Dickie urged.

Nicole took the paper and skimmed over it. What did Dickie think she did at Copperplate Insurance: make the tea? She may have been on the bottom rung of the office ladder but she still spent enough time dealing with insurance claims to know about the law. Plus, she could probably work out percentages more quickly than Dickie could and fifty per cent was a bit steep in her opinion. All at once, she decided that it had been a mistake to come here. If she wanted to be a singer, she’d have to approach it another way. She folded the piece of paper up and stuck it in her handbag, while Dickie stared at her openmouthed.

‘Wha … ?’ he started to say.

‘I’d never sign anything without getting a lawyer to look at it,’ Nicole said with an impish grin. ‘And I think that asking someone to sign something without explaining what they’re signing, is described as “sharp practice”.’

She waved at the skinny guy behind the glass plate. ‘Thanks but no thanks.’

‘You can’t do this!’ roared Dickie as the penny dropped. ‘You can’t walk out like this. I’ve invested time and money in you, I’ve talked you up.’

Nicole gave him a wry look and headed for the door.

‘I’ve got people interested in you, you stupid little black bitch,’ he shouted. That did it. He’d been fine until he’d called her that. How dare he? She was proud of her Indian heritage and her colour, not that she knew much about India really, but she was proud of it anyway. Rage coursing in every vein, Nicole whirled round. She wanted to hit him but pride stopped her. He could behave like scum from the gutter but she wouldn’t. ‘When I’m famous, Dickie, I hope you’ll remember that you could have been a part of it.’ She gazed at him superciliously. ‘Except you got too greedy. And I will be famous, I promise you.’ With that, she left, her long silky hair flying as she strode out of the building. She would be famous. She knew it in her bones. Dickie had done one good thing for her: he’d shown her that she wanted to make it as a singer. She’d been hiding from it for years but he’d helped her see that she could do it - and that she wanted to. She owed him that. Maybe she’d send him a ticket for her first gig.

Sharon was furious. ‘The scumbag,’ she raged. ‘I knew he was trouble. I’ll go round and kill him meself. No, I’ll get my brother to do it.’ ‘Don’t waste your time,’ Nicole said. ‘No, what I need you to do is help me with some research. I need to make a demo tape and I want to know where I can do it cheaply. Secondly, I’ve got to find out who to send it to. Put your thinking cap on, Shazz. Between the pair of us, we must know somebody who can help.’

Sharon’s second cousin’s flatmate knew a studio engineer who wouldn’t mind a bit of moonlighting as a one-off. He knew who to send demos to but warned Sharon that record companies got zillions of tapes every year. ‘They probably file them in the black plastic filing cabinet,’ he said. Nicole shrugged. ‘I’ll take that chance.’ The cheapest studio time for recording sessions was in

the middle of the night, so at two a.m. two weeks later, Nicole, Sharon and Sharon’s second cousin, Elaine, lined up in Si-borg Studios. The engineer had drummed up four musicians to play along with her and, to hide her nerves, Nicole whispered to Sharon that the musicians mustn’t be much good if they were prepared to play in the middle of the night for damn all money. The money was from Nicole’s building society account and she still felt anxious every time she thought of spending it on something so ephemeral.

‘Shut up,’ hissed Tommy, the engineer, ‘or they’ll all go home. They’re not that desperate.’

Embarrassed, Nicole lit up. Nobody looked askance at her. At Si-borg, it was the people who didn’t smoke who looked out of place. The musicians, engineer and even the receptionist all puffed madly so the entire premises was fuggy with smoke and the walls were stained a cloudy vanilla thanks to years of late-night Marlboro sessions.

The first hour was hell for Nicole. Used to launching into a song as soon as the karaoke machine played it or singing her own compositions alone in her bedroom, she found it impossible to stop and start as the real musicians warmed up by snapping strings, getting riffs wrong and grumbling about unfamiliar songs.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ she whispered to Tommy as they took a break, mindful of keeping her voice down in case the musicians walked out.

‘Whitney Houston and Sade are not their thing,’ he grinned. ‘If you wanted to launch into something by the Manic Street Preachers, these would be your men.’

‘Charming.’ Nicole stomped off to the loo. She leaned her head against the mirror and closed her eyes wearily. This wasn’t working out as planned. She’d taken Tommy’s advice and had gone for covering other people’s songs instead of her own ones because he said her voice was the main thing and the demo would have greater impact that way.

She’d been so excited at the thought of working with real musicians and had had visions of herself belting out flawless

hit after hit with everyone in the studio watching her in admiration. Instead, all she had was a sore throat from the combination of singing and smoking too much, and she really wished she hadn’t worn those ultra tight pink snakeskin jeans and high-heeled boots. She felt bloated because she was premenstrual and the waistband of the jeans was cutting into her flesh like cheese wire. Why was she doing this? She must have been mad. Just because she could hold a note didn’t make her Mariah Carey. Would it be awful if she told them all to go home because she couldn’t keep going? ‘Nicole!’ said Sharon, dancing into the grimy loo clutching a can of beer and a roll-up that Nicole would swear was filled with more than just tobacco. ‘Isn’t it exciting? God, they love you. I just overheard the bass player telling Tommy that you had a fantastic voice and wondering if you needed a band?’ Nicole stood up straight and blinked tiredly. The harsh fluorescent light hurt her eyes: they were red-rimmed with tiredness, no matter how much kohl she’d painted around them. ‘They said what?’ ‘That you’re marvellous! That you’ve got “star quality”,’ Sharon said happily. ‘Well, I could have told them that but it’s good that they think so, don’t you think?’ She prattled away about the bass player and how he’d said that Nicole was ‘mega’. Nicole half listened and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Underneath the tired face and the weary eyes, there was a certain radiance. She smiled and the radiance shone out at her, bypassing the tiredness instantly. Star quality, huh? ‘Have you got any of that bright red lipstick on you, Sharon?’ she asked. ‘I left my bag downstairs and I look like death warmed up.’ Sharon rummaged around in a handbag the size of Santa’s toy sack and found the lipstick in question.

With a slightly shaking hand, Nicole applied a thick buttery layer. On her dark little face with her eyes glowing like jet, the rich crimson looked incredible. Sexy and mysterious at the same time. Nicole pouted theatrically at herself. ‘Let’s go get ‘em,’ she said with a huge grin.

CHAPTER SIX

Millie’s roars could be heard in three counties at least. ‘Don’t want to be in the car!’ she bellowed, her small face screwed up with anger and rage. ‘Neither do I,’ muttered Hope tightlipped as she negotiated the hire car along the winding road, oblivious to the wind and rain swept scenery they were passing by. When the plane had banked before it arrived in Kerry’s airport, Hope had done her best to peer out the window and see what sort of fabled, emerald isle she was landing on, but Toby had chosen that moment to grizzle miserably at the jerking motion of the aircraft, so she’d dragged her eyes away from the slightly bleak looking patchwork fields and comforted him. Now the rain was lashing down, giving the whole place a dismal air that was at odds with Matt’s description of it. ‘I remember sitting with Gearoid on the steps in the sun, him with a bottle of Guinness, the sound of the bees droning around us and the smell of hay being cut in the fields nearby. Everything was rich greens and soft golds …’ They must both have been drinking Guinness, Hope reflected, because there was nothing sunny or golden about the modern version of Kerry, even allowing for the fact that it was a blisteringly cold November day. Any bees buzzing around would have been drowned in the downpour. This was not what she’d hoped for. Definitely not. ‘It’s going to be fabulous,’ Dan had said enthusiastically at the Parkers’ leaving do in the Three Carpenters two days before Matt’s departure. ‘The way Matt has described Ireland to me makes it sound magical.’