The Fame Factor. Polly Courtney
It was typical of Ellie to suggest that they do nothing, that they put their faith in fate. That was her mantra for life. See what happens. It wasn’t apathy; it was more of an unwavering belief that good things would come to them in the end. Ellie wasn’t one for setting herself ambitious targets.
Glancing across at Kate, Zoë felt her smile fading. The bassist Kate was staring at the floor, unblinking, expressionless. She was clearly upset, but Zoë suspected that it wasn’t down to the argument. Kate was well versed in dealing with Shannon; she could hold her own in a row. Apart from anything else, Kate had the advantage of being right, most of the time. No, the pursed lips and watery blue eyes could mean only one thing: She had been dumped. Again. Zoë laid down her guitar and crossed the room, catching her eye. Then the door burst open.
‘Evening all!’ cried the short, wiry man with spiky ginger hair. It was Jake, their overzealous and underachieving manager. ‘How’s me girls?’
Zoë switched on a mechanical smile and allowed their eyes to meet. ‘Fine, thanks.’
‘Ready to rock the joint?’
She grunted. Jake Gordon-Spencer was one of those people who lived in blissful ignorance of the irritating effect he had on others. His accent, which had been cultivated through years of expensive schooling and then years of half-hearted rebellion at Daddy’s expense, was presumably supposed to appeal to the geezers of the industry. In fact, it had the opposite effect; Jake was known as The Mockney Dickhead across the London scene. However, he had one saving grace: his cousin, Dan, who came as part of the package and who was one of the city’s best booking agents. Without Dan, Dirty Money would never have made it this far. He was diligent, well connected and commercially savvy. He was also unfathomably loyal to his cousin.
‘Record number of fans ‘ere to see you,’ Jake reported as they trooped along the damp corridor towards the stage. ‘All my hard work paying off…’ He tilted his head to one side, like a market stall holder clinching a deal.
Zoë glanced at him, wondering whether the manager really was deluded enough to believe that he had been responsible for the audience numbers tonight. She had gone round with a clipboard, collecting email addresses at their last umpteen gigs. She was the reason they had twelve thousand friends on MySpace, the reason they’d been nominated for the Indie Awards tonight.
The girls assembled themselves in the wings while the compère rallied the crowds. Zoë leaned forwards, catching a glimpse of the curly blond locks of their most loyal fan, Crazy Jeff, just in front of the stage. Whooping and catcalling, his skinny arms were flailing like wind turbines in a gale. Jake had been right. Tonight was a record for the band. There were probably four or five hundred bodies crammed into the sweaty pit, a good proportion of them rooting for Dirty Money. With a bit of luck, thought Zoë, they’d have this award in the bag.
‘It was only seventy-five pounds each,’ Shannon whispered loudly.
‘They’re loud, they’re dirty, they’re sexy…’
‘Seventy-five pounds we could’ve spent elsewhere,’ Kate hissed back.
Zoë glared at each of them in turn. Now was not the time to be bickering. They needed to focus. They needed to win an award tonight.
‘…our final act of the night, please welcome…Dirty Money!’
Zoë kicked off her office shoes and dumped her bag on the doormat. The mouthwatering smell of roast chicken was wafting through the flat.
‘Hey,’ James called out, holding out a glass of red wine, like a carrot for a donkey.
Zoë smiled, kissing him and then sipping the wine as she tugged playfully at her boyfriend’s untucked shirt.
‘Good day?’ he asked.
She rolled her eyes, taking a sip of wine and not bothering to reply. Good days at Chase Waterman were few and far between. ‘How was the trip?’
James shrugged and stooped down in front of the oven, peering through the layer of grime to see what was going on inside. ‘So-so.’
He never complained. Zoë couldn’t remember a single time in the three years since they’d graduated that he’d really had to let off steam. James worked in the marketing department of one of the UK’s leading home insurers. His work was mundane, often involving last-minute assignments, late nights and tedious trips to the Norfolk headquarters, but he never seemed to have cause for the explosive rants to which Zoë was prone.
‘Another ten minutes, I reckon.’ He nodded in the direction of the lounge, grabbing both drinks as he went.
It was impressive, how easily James seemed to have made the transition from student to young professional. Six years ago, he’d been the tall, lanky stranger with the piercing blue eyes and dirty blond, messy hair, loitering at the back of the sticky-floored hangout where Dirty Money had first performed, drinking pints with all the other Goldsmiths undergrads. It was his scruffy, rebellious streak that had drawn her to him. He was as devoted now as he had been then – work permitting. But now, with his military crop and slick Moss Bros suit, he looked like a different man.
‘So.’ He topped up her glass as she drew her laptop towards her and logged onto MySpace. ‘Did you win, the other night?’
Zoë took a large sip and groaned quietly. She had been trying to block the Indie Awards from her mind.
James raised an eyebrow.
‘Shannon got drunk before we went on and Kate wouldn’t let up about the dirty money campaign…then it all kicked off on stage. Shannon messed up one of the songs, Kate tried to correct her, then next thing you know, Shannon’s chucking her bass pedal at Kate. It knocked out the power for the whole venue.’
James drew back his head, eyes wide. He was clearly impressed by the new level of absurdity achieved.
‘So, no, we didn’t win.’
Zoë sank into her wine, trying to dispel the image of the angry woman with the headset, sweeping them off the stage. ‘Shannon stayed ‘til the end and said some bunch of drunk, teenage boys took the award. We came third. She reckoned we were penalised because we were girls.’
‘Not because she smashed up the stage and tried to decapitate her bass player?’
Zoë managed a meek smile. ‘Oh, and then Jake walked out on us.’
James expelled a jet of air from his mouth. ‘He walked out on you?’
Zoë nodded. She needed to have a proper word with the girls. Shannon had called, as she always did, muttering a vague apology and then quickly moving on to her next harebrained scheme. She remained happily ignorant of the trouble she’d landed them in, even after Zoë relayed her conversation with the promoter about the damage to the stage equipment. Kate had called, too, admitting that she had been partly to blame. The storm had blown over, as it always did, but the consequences remained very real; Dirty Money no longer had a manager.
James watched over her shoulder as she edited the details of their upcoming gigs. Then he sat up and looked around the room. He had a very low boredom threshold.
‘I was wondering,’ he said, staring up at the ceiling. ‘D’you reckon Axl Rose spent his evenings fine-tuning the details of his promotional packs, in the early days?’
Zoë smiled. ‘Oh, I’m sure he did. You know, Slash and the other guys were like, “Come on Ax, let’s get fucked and smash up some hotel lobbies,” and he’d say, “I’ll catch you up, I’ve just got to change the font on this title track.”’
James laughed and reached for the TV remote control.
They’d had similar conversations before. James knew how much things had changed since the