The Eminem-wannabe
Miranda’s note:
I wrote this scene to show Jack and Romily working on someone else’s song at his studio. It shows their friendship and how they work together. While I love this scene as a set piece, it was cut because it slowed the action of the book. I’ve included it here to give you a giggle – watch out Jay-Z!
Jack called the following week with an offer of some session singing work at the studio – a welcome event considering the tightness of my finances this month. My car had unexpectedly failed its MOT and only passed it £300 later, thus devastating my carefully saved holiday fund, so the opportunity to earn some extra cash was not something I was going to ignore. Plus, the chance to get paid for doing something I love, regardless of the song, was too good to miss.
The track in question this time was a quasi rap-rock-dance number of dubious lyrical prowess, written by Leonard Dixon, a twenty-five year old accountant from well-to-do Henley-in-Arden – the kind of prohibitively expensive picturesque English village my mother dreams of retiring to. Convinced this song was the one that would propel him into the limelight, Leonard – or ‘Lenny D’ as he preferred to be called, wanted a suitably wailing female voice to complement his highly questionable rhyming skills:
I’m in da club and it’s so eeeee-seee
Spittin’ my stuff like Jay-Zeee
All da laydeez watchin’ me
Cos I have da edge here
And I’m right up in your ear
Doin’ my thang for all to see
Laydeez dis is Lenny Deee
Ya’ll hear me – uh
Jack couldn’t quite bring himself to make eye contact with me as Lenny D’s track played while we listened, maintaining his professional objectivity against serious odds. I resisted the temptation to laugh out loud, nodding my head in what I hoped passed for an appreciative gesture. It’s times like these when I feel like Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire screaming down the phone to Cuba Gooding Jr: ‘Show me the money!’
Lenny D, meanwhile, was miming the words to his track, eyes closed, obviously imagining himself surrounded by half-naked, writhing girls in his multi-million dollar music video. Quite how he believed he would actually get into one of these videos was beyond comprehension; especially given that his idea of ‘Gangsta-style’ consisted of a long white t-shirt, skinny jeans, a pair of gold framed thick lens glasses and a sensible haircut made only a little less sensible by the gelling-up of his fringe (which made him appear mildly alarmed rather than darkly threatening). Still, as Jack has said many times, if his customers have the money to realise their dreams, who is he to stamp on them?
‘So, what do you think?’ Lenny D asked me in a clipped private-school accent, when the track had finished. ‘Is it totally hot, or what?’
‘It’s – ’ Words escaped me. Think of the money, Romily…‘– banging.’
‘Alri-i-i-ght.’ Visibly impressed, Lenny D sat back and nodded appreciatively at me, his eyes moving up and down in an alarmingly lascivious survey. ‘So you gonna lay down some massive wails for me, girl?’
Help!
‘Absolutely.’ I made a point of looking at Jack. ‘What did you have in mind?’
Jack was gritting his teeth, valiantly fighting the urge to laugh. ‘Improv,’ he said, his voice too high with the effort. ‘Just sing your way round the – er – rap.’
I have been asked to provide vocals for some dubious songs over the years and, compared with some of them, Lenny D’s track was tame in the extreme. When, like me, you have performed on a Nigerian gospel-reggae album (singing backing vocals in a perfect Nigerian accent to match the lead singer’s intonation); a series of teeth-gratingly awful advert jingles for a double-glazing firm; a mock-opera epic orchestral ballad for a songwriter who believed Katherine Jenkins would snap his hand off to record it (she didn’t); a Pussycat Girls-type raunchy dance number that I sang all the parts of for a manufactured girl group to mime to (all the members of which were pushing forty and seemingly held together with excellent control undergarments and whole cow’s-worth of Botox) and countless dance tracks composed by geeky civil servants in the depths of their bedrooms (most of them more ‘Morbid’ than Moby), nothing much surprises you.
After thirty minutes of vocal acrobatics and improvised stabs, I rejoined Jack and his wannabe rapper client in the studio’s control room. From Lenny D’s incredibly red face, I could see that my efforts had hit the spot.
‘How did I do?’
He nodded wildly. ‘That was… like… totally amazing…’
‘Excellent.’
Jack shook his head when he walked me to the exit, later. ‘You do realise he’s going to be imagining you as his ‘bitch’ now, don’t you?’
I grinned. ‘It’s a small price to pay. Sixty quid, was it?’
He handed me the money. ‘It’s a good job neither of us values our dignity.’
Quiet, Please…
Miranda’s note:
I originally set the scene where we first discover about Tom and Anya’s breakup at a 50th Birthday party with guests who complain about the noise of the band (you’d be surprised how often this happens!) In this scene, you also get to see Elliot, who was another band member (the bass player before I made Wren the bassist) eventually cut to streamline The Pinstripes. Jack’s girlfriend Sophie is also here – she was ‘retired’ from the regular line-up of the band in a later edit (although she demanded to be able to play at the Millionaire Gig!)
‘I’m sorry, you’re still too loud. People want to talk and they can’t hear themselves over the music.’
Elliot smiled his most convincing smile as he crouched down at the edge of the stage, talking to the balding wiry organiser of the 50th Birthday party in the primary school hall. ‘My apologies, Mr. Simpson. We’ll sort that out right away.’
Pleased, Mr. Simpson tripped away, straightening his bow tie and clearly feeling like Rambo for thus subduing the troublesome musicians. Tom turned back to us, all universally irritated at being interrupted for the third time during the first set, and grimaced.
‘We’ve got to turn down again, guys. They want to “talk”.’
‘But we’ve gone down twice already,’ Jack protested from behind the keyboards. ‘If they wanted to talk, why did they book a band? They could’ve just played CDs all night.’
Wren and I continued to smile reassuringly at the front of the stage, aware that all eyes were on us. Sometimes, being the front-person in the band with no instrument to hide behind can feel like you’re naked.
‘We can hardly hear the foldback as it is,’ Wren hissed through her smile. ‘If we lose any more sound on stage I’m not going to be able to pitch harmonies.’
I nodded. ‘I was singing ‘Love Train’ blind. No idea if the tuning was any good.’
‘You both would have been fine if someone had remembered to pack the in-ear monitors tonight,’ Elliot remarked.
Tom groaned. ‘Whatever.’
‘Look, it’s fine,’ Sophie interjected. ‘Turn down front of house to a bare minimum and we’ll keep foldback at the same level. It’ll sound pants but at least the punters will be happy.’
Charlie said nothing from behind the drums, his expression thunderous. Leaning over, he moved the faders on our sound desk, picked up his sticks and stared back at Jack.
‘OK dudes. Motown medley – count us in, Chas.’
Twenty minutes later, when the buffet was opened and the partygoers were tucking into vol-au-vents, chicken legs and thick slices of pork pie in their posh frocks and DJs, The Pinstripes gathered in a far corner for a half-time analysis.
‘The first set was utter crap. I don’t know why we even bother sometimes.’
‘We couldn’t help the audience, Charlie,’ I countered. ‘How were we to know they wanted a quiet set?’
‘Well perhaps we would have had more of an idea if our manager had deigned to inform us of the clients’ wishes,’ Jack scoffed. ‘Or bothered to show up, even.’
Sophie raised her glass. ‘I vote we sack him.’
‘I vote we sack this gig off now and go home,’ Tom said, making everyone jump. He had been noticeably quiet since we arrived at the venue four hours ago and had barely spoken two words until now.
‘Oh, it speaks! Welcome back, mate, we though we’d lost you,’ Wren laughed, her smile disappearing when Tom mumbled something unintelligible and walked away. ‘What did I say?’
Sophie shook her head. ‘Ignore it, hun. He’s been like it all day. I don’t know what’s got into him.’
Elliot, who had been conspicuous by his absence, appeared with a plate so stuffed with buffet food it resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Munching on a sausage roll, he stopped when he saw our amused faces. ‘What? It’s free, isn’t it?’
I left my friends ripping the heck out of our bass player and made my way over to the stage, where Tom was slumped over his guitar retuning the strings.
‘Hey.’
He didn’t look up. ‘Hey.’
‘You OK?’
‘Peachy, Rom.’
I folded my arms. ‘Don’t ever go into acting, will you. That was woeful.’
He gave a hollow laugh as he raised his head, and immediately I could see sadness paling his face. ‘Loser.’
‘What’s going on, mate? You haven’t been yourself all day.’
It was some time before he answered. I’ve known Tom since college and we’ve always had this understanding between us. I used to work on Saturdays with him at his granddad’s pub in the centre of Birmingham all through college and university and during that time we developed a close friendship, talking about everything from music to relationships to random topics we happened to fall upon. He likes to think that he’s elusive and able to shield his feelings from other people, but he’s about as mysterious as a glass box. So when he tells the rest of the band that his day job at an insurance brokers doesn’t bother him, I know he’s lying; or when he insists he doesn’t mind that one of his best friends chucked him out of a band just before they landed a huge recording contract and became global stars, I don’t believe a word of it. This latest attempt to avoid the truth was doomed and he knew it.
‘It’s Anya and me. We’re over.’
Why Marquees Aren’t Always a Great Idea
Miranda’s note:
This scene was cut because it slowed the action, but I thought you might like to see it because it shows the not-so-glamorous side of being in a wedding band! It’s actually based on a gig I sang at where people ended up sliding down a muddy hill to get to their cars afterwards. We didn’t get stuck in the field (that’s the beauty of artistic license!) but it was just as miserable as this gig for The Pinstripes!
Marquees are a fantastic idea on hot summer days when guests can mill around inside and out, enjoying the relaxed atmosphere and sense of timelessness within the canvas space. However, in the middle of one of the worst storms in living memory, leaking water and only accessible via a steep farm track, marquees tend to lose their appeal. The sustained heavy rain had turned the field into a boggy quagmire, trapping cars and ruining the shoes of the wedding guests. Five songs into the second set (after a first set played exclusively to an empty dance floor and a glum-faced crowd who looked more like Armageddon survivors than wedding guests), Tom realised too late that a leak in the side of the canvas was dripping into the spare plug socket on one of our four-way extension leads – just as half of our speakers fell silent. Unable to restore power, we resorted to connecting Charlie’s iPod to the sound desk, treating the guests to the best of Steely Dan and Jamiroquai.
After the wedding party and guests had admitted defeat, we reloaded the van – only to discover that it had sunk considerably into the muddy field and was now stuck fast. The only way to get it to the bottom of the hill was when the groom’s father enlisted the help of his neighbour to tow it out with a tractor.
An hour later, cold, muddy and thoroughly fed up, the bedraggled Pinstripes gathered in Jack and Soph’s living room, consoling ourselves with mugs of tea and large slices of wedding cake donated by the apologetic bride and groom.
‘At least we have one consolation,’ Tom offered.
‘What’s that?’
‘We have a brand new gig story to add to our repertoire.’
Charlie raised his mug. ‘That we do.’
‘And at least we’re all here together,’ Sophie reminded us. ‘I think we’re going to be OK.’
‘Hear hear,’ I agreed. There had been far too much doom and gloom lately. What we needed was to keep positive. As the conversation began to perk up and Tom’s jokes made a welcome comeback, I snuggled down in Jack’s old armchair and let the banter and laughter wash over me. Sophie was right: we had so much when we were together and that, at the end of the day, was all that mattered.
The Cute Teacher and the Article from Hell
Miranda’s note:
In the original draft of It Started With a Kiss, Romily worked as a photographer at a local portrait studio. As part of her job she was sent to photograph an Easter Bonnet competition at a local primary school and met a cute male teacher called Jon. They had a date together where he revealed that his mum was a big fan of Romily’s blog (as a way of showing readers how the support for her quest was growing) – and later, Jon was the one who revealed Cayte’s article to Romily. Madison Avenue was a New York-themed coffee shop near to Romily’s workplace.
The photo studio job was cut because these scenes detracted from Romily’s quest and I subsequently changed her job to Jingle Writer at Brum FM – which was more in keeping with the music theme of the book.
Jon was cut because again his scenes slowed the action – something my friend (and faithful reader of my novel drafts), Kim, was quite upset about. Watch out in future novels because I have a feeling I’ll have to bring Jon the cute teacher back just for her!
In the later edit, I reassigned the task of telling Rom about Cayte’s article to D’Wayne, which actually worked better because this gave me the opportunity to show D’Wayne’s caring side.
The week after the soggy marquee gig, I was taking my lunch break in Madison Avenue when, to my surprise, the cute teacher from the primary school knocked on the window, waved and entered the café when I beckoned him to join me.
‘Hey, Jon, how’s it going?’ I asked as he sat down on the sofa opposite mine.
His face was flushed. ‘Good, thanks. I haven’t got long, I’m afraid. I’m due back at St. Benedict’s in half an hour. I just – erm – I came to see you.’
‘Oh.’ Unsure of what this meant, I bit into my sandwich and waited for him to explain further.
‘I didn’t know if you’d seen this, and after our conversation in the pub about your quest, I thought it was important you did.’
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Intrigued, I reached out for it, but he held it back for a moment, fixing his soft grey eyes on me. ‘I just want to say, Romily, I think this is unwarranted and you should ignore it.’
What an odd thing to say. If he thought I should ignore it, why had he travelled across Moseley in his lunch break especially to show me? I took it from him and unfolded it to reveal a print out of a news article. Looking closer, I recognised, with utter horror, my photo from the Pinstripes’ website at the centre of it:
DESPERATELY SEEKING… ANYONE
How far should you go to find love?
They say that The One is out there, somewhere, for everyone. But how far is too far to look for them? CAYTE BROGAN thinks she’s found the answer.
Like many women, I believe in true love. I cry as much as the next girl when Elizabeth marries Darcy, or Bridget snogs Mark in a snowy London street; I listen to songs about the pursuit of love and use them to soothe my broken heart when love goes wrong for me; and I will admit, in the past, I’ve accepted the odd blind date, on the off-chance that the stranger I’m about to meet is the man of my dreams.
But would you spend an entire year of your life searching for a stranger you only met once?
Romily Parker is doing just that. Following a chance meeting with a handsome stranger in Birmingham’s Bull Ring last Christmas, she is convinced he is The One and has embarked on a desperate quest to locate him again. And ‘quest’ is exactly the word she chooses to explain it.
‘I know people will think my Quest is mad, but I’m determined to find him,’ she told me. ‘When something like this happens in your life, I believe you shouldn’t let it go.’
Ms. Parker, 23, is not undertaking this mission alone, however. She has enlisted the help of family to set up a Facebook campaign – which, to date, has attracted almost a thousand followers, keen to see if her real-life fairytale gets its happy ending. So far, the mystery man remains at large, but Ms. Parker – who hasn’t been in a relationship for over three years – is undeterred. ‘Love doesn’t come along every day. This may be my only chance of happiness,’ she said.
However, not all of her friends and family share her enthusiasm. ‘Romily seems to have latched onto this “quest” on a bit of a whim,’ a close friend confided. ‘One minute she was declaring undying love for a mate of ours, the next she was starting this search for a random stranger. If you ask me, she’s desperate.’
Alice Parker, 49, Ms. Parker’s mother, expressed horror at her daughter’s year-long search. ‘She’s done some preposterous things in her time, but this takes the biscuit. It’s a real embarrassment to the family. I’m ashamed of her.’
Die-hard romantics might argue that Ms. Parker is simply following her heart and that all’s fair in love. But I believe her ‘quest’ carries a darker, more sinister undertone for women today.
While womankind has progressed so far in terms of career choice, civil liberties and recognition, what of our personal lives and relationships? Have we been reduced to this? Wasting our lives searching for some outdated, utopian ideal forced down our throats by society and the media?
Whether Romily Parker succeeds in her ‘quest’ or not, the picture this kind of desperate act paints of today’s young women is not a pretty one. Happy-ever-after? I don’t think so.
I couldn’t breathe. My eyes scanned the scathing article over and over, as if this would eventually wear it away completely. Insult piled upon offending words as Cayte’s damning verdict of my life screamed out at me from every line. A sickening cold rush gripped my stomach and my head was giddy. Hands, that didn’t look like mine any more, were shaking as they held the paper.
‘This is – a disaster…’ I spluttered. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this!’
Jon watched me impotently, his face full of concern. ‘I’m just so sorry.’
‘She told my mother,’ I shuddered as the full force of the implications of this hit me like a landslide. ‘And one of my friends called me desperate…’ Closing my eyes as tears flooded in, I realised that the only person she could have talked to was Tom. How could he have said that – and told her how long I’d been single, too?
My mind switched into damage limitation mode. I needed to stop panicking and try to think clearly: this was a local article in a local paper that only a relatively few people would see. Granted, I might encounter some problems with people who knew me and the inevitable conversation with my parents that loomed ominously on the near horizon was going to be hell – but once the initial interest had died down, surely it would pass?
‘Where did you get this?’ I asked him, wiping my eyes.
‘Mum’s friend Maggie saw it on the Edgevale Gazette’swebsite this morning and when I checked the local paper it was on their website, too.’
I took a gulp of tea. ‘Right. Well, that’s not too bad. Cayte said to me that the articles she wrote were often syndicated locally. Edgevale –that’s Stone Yardley way, isn’t it?’
‘I think so. But…’
Taking a breath to steady myself, I collected my thoughts. ‘OK, good…’
‘Romily,’ Jon’s hand reached across the table and closed over mine. I stopped speaking and stared at him, suddenly chilled by the tone of his voice. ‘It gets worse, I’m afraid.’
‘Define ‘worse’.’
‘I think – no, I know – it’s gone viral.’
I blinked. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I Googled the article to see which papers it was in after mum called me this morning. It’s everywhere. Websites, newspapers, blogs… It turns out some columnist at the Daily Mail picked up on it and wrote her own opinion this morning. I didn’t bother to print that one, but you can imagine how bad it was. The worst thing is, they’ve obviously ripped your image from the band’s website, so it’s in every article. There are hundreds of links already.’
When Cayte said her article would achieve the most exposure possible for my Quest, she wasn’t kidding. ‘I can’t believe it. I didn’t say any of what she quoted me as saying.’
‘To be honest, I’m a bit surprised you spoke to her in the first place,’ Jon admitted, his hand leaving mine, as the merest hint of a blush coloured his cheeks.
‘She said she could help me. She said I was an inspiration to other women,’ I replied, even though in the light of what she wrote in the article, my protestations carried about as much weight as a feather in the wind.
Jon shook his head in disbelief. ‘She’s a journalist. She’ll say anything to get the story she wants. I can’t believe you trusted her.’
‘She’s dating one of my closest friends and she offered to help. What was I supposed to do?’ I stared back at her article, feeling like the biggest fool in the world. ‘Do you think I’m desperate?’
‘No.’ His kind smile brought the cute dimples back to his face. ‘Not at all.’
The Antenatal Advisor
Miranda’s note:
Just before the Millionaire gig, when Mick has given Romily the Pros list to help her choose between P.K. and Charlie, I wanted to show that she was in a real quandary about the decision, so I wrote this scene in the first edit of the book. It amused me to think that she had reached the stage where she would consider anything to help her decide – even consulting an unborn baby! The scene was cut during a later edit when I changed it to Romily deciding by herself - but the scene still makes me smile so I’ve included it here for you to see.
As an extra note, this scene is set in my favourite coffee shop in my hometown of Stourbridge, where I wrote quite a few scenes of this novel.
One thing that seventeen-year-old Romily Parker never expected was that her twenty-nine year old self would be caught in an impossible choice between two men. To be honest, it was a surprise to me. A year ago I wouldn’t have been sitting in the corner of the coffee shop in Stourbridge High Street, agonising over a growing list on a sheet of crumpled radio station notepaper. I would have been in Charlie’s arms feeling I was the luckiest woman alive. What a difference a year made…
‘Hey, lovely. Fancy another coffee?’ The friendly barista smiled at me over her baby bump. ‘You look like you could do with one.’
I smiled back. ‘That’ll be your pregnancy ESP at work again, Livvi. Flat white, please.’
‘Coming right up.’ She craned her head to look at the list spread out on the table. ‘Big decision, huh?’
‘You could say that.’
‘Pros and cons not working for you?’
‘Not very well.’
‘Eek. I have to say, lists and me don’t get on. You should hear the arguments Ted and I’ve had over names for this one,’ she patted her bump and winced. ‘I swear it’s a kangaroo I’m carrying, the way it’s kicking me. It certainly has a strong mind. Yesterday we couldn’t decide whether to watch Eastenders or a wildlife programme on BBC2. Little ‘un kicked like a donkey until we put the soap on.’
‘Perhaps we should ask it which one of these I should choose,’ I laughed.
Livvi’s face lit up. ‘It’s worth a shot. What names do we have?’
‘Charlie – and that one should be P.K.’
Livvi lowered herself onto the chair next to mine and placed her hands on her stomach. ‘OK, junior, Mummy’s got a question for you. Get this right and we’ll take the act to Britain’s Got Talent.’ She winked at me. ‘Should Romily choose Charlie? Or P.K?’ She waited for a moment. ‘Probably having a rest now it’s spent all afternoon kicking its poor mum black and blue on the inside. Let’s try again. Charlie. P.K… Charlie… ooh! That was one. Right. P.K… ow!’ She held her hands up. ‘Sorry, hun. That’s one-all.’
I laughed. ‘Never mind. At least I know it isn’t just me who’s incapable of making a decision today.’
Livvi struggled back up to her feet. ‘I’ll get you that coffee. Whatever you decide, just make sure you’re happy. That’s the most important thing.’