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 open-mouthed.
‘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,
