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.
Ellie’s world was filled with a select group of people, namely Zoë, Shannon, Kate and Sam. She only welcomed those privileged few, not caring what anybody else heard or didn’t hear. Zoë, on the other hand, felt claustrophobic in that world; she needed an outlet. Having created the music, she had to share it. The more people it reached, the quicker it flowed from her and the better she felt.
Zoë knew she had changed since the early days. She couldn’t pretend that the dainty office shoes and starched suit jacket were the only consequences of her lifestyle. Her choice of career path had had an impact on who she was and she resented that impact. She didn’t like having to answer to Brian, having to fit in with the other po-faced clones, having to skulk around pretending to run errands…She didn’t like living a lie. But at the same time, she knew that the changes had made her stronger.
Every day, the resentment inside Zoë piled up a little more. The day job, her parents and even some of her closest friends seemed to be doing their utmost to bring her in line. But Zoë was determined to escape. And the exit route, which seemed to be looking clearer every time she gazed at it, was the success of the band.
‘Awesome,’ she said, as they found themselves back on the chorus. ‘That works. We’ll try that next week.’
‘Let’s.’ Ellie nodded, still playing. She got so wrapped up in the music; sometimes it was hard to pull her out.
Zoë looked at the clock on the wall and felt something plummet inside her. ‘Shit! Is that right?’
Ellie glanced at her bare wrist as though half-hoping to find a watch there. ‘Um…’
‘Bollocks,’ Zoë muttered, having found her phone and confirmed that the time was indeed nearly half-past two.
She rammed her guitar into its case, yanked her coat on and stuffed her notebook and pencil into one of the pockets. Ellie watched her with a perplexed expression.
‘Gotta go!’ Zoë said, flinging herself at her friend in a hasty farewell gesture. ‘See ya!’
Ellie was shaking her head as she leapt towards the door. ‘Honestly, Zoë…You’ll give yourself a hernia.’
Zoë laughed and rushed out.
Brian was standing at her desk when she got back, rubbing a palm over the top of his shiny head.
‘Ah, there you are.’ He caught her eye, glancing down at her heaving chest and the guitar-shaped coat in her hand.
Zoë eased herself into her seat and waited for the inevitable reprimand. Her boss looked very serious.
‘I’ve been looking through your British Trust figures,’ he said, placing a print-out of her summary on the desk and wheezing a little. ‘Now, what do you see here?’
Zoë frowned. ‘Er, my summary?’
He pointed a stubby finger at the revenue line. ‘Here,’ he said, looking at her.
‘Um…Four million, one hundred and sixty-two thousand, two hundred and eighty-five pounds, fifty-five pence?’
Brian cleared his throat. ‘Anything…strike you as odd?’
Zoë shrugged as politely as she could. ‘Is it a prime number?’
Brian closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. ‘It ends in five, Zoë, so no.’
She nodded slowly, pretending to give a shit. There was nothing odd about the figure, as far as she could tell, but then Brian had evidently spent longer thinking about the matter than she had.
Finally, he enlightened her.
‘Decimal points, Zoë! Pennies! We don’t need two d.p. in the summary, do we?’
Decimal points, she thought, pointing a trigger-finger at her boss and faking a smile as he started to bang on about RAP and obvious mistakes. Decimal points. This was what her life had come to.
‘Okay, so red for record, black for stop, and this slider thing does the zoom. Got it.’
‘No, you don’t need to press the black at all. Just use the red for record, then it’s the same button for stop.’
Zoë glanced warily at Shannon as they ran her friend through the
