I imagine you’ll be HUGELY surprised to learn that Zoë’s firing from Judas Cradle went down really well. Detect my sarcasm. Here are some choice highlights:
1. ‘Well, I was gonna quit anyway to focus on The Gash.’
2. ‘It’s patriarchy bullshit. They obviously didn’t want a strong woman in the band.’
3. ‘They’ve been planning this for months, the scheming bastards.’
4. ‘They’re shit and I hope Etienne chokes on his own shit fumes from having his head that far up his own arse.’
‘Look,’ Polly said as we went round the school, putting up posters to advertise the prom. ‘If I come to Nico’s gig, Zoë will kill me. I just can’t.’
Don’t whine, don’t whine, don’t be a whiny bitch. ‘It’s like I never see you any more,’ I whined. That wasn’t true. What I wanted to say was ‘I never have you to myself any more,’ but I knew that was unreasonable.
‘You’re always with Nico too.’ Ah – so being whiny was OK.
‘No I’m not!’ I whined again. ‘He’s always with the band. They’re rehearsing like mad. Apparently the new keyboard guy is amazing. Please come. Just don’t tell Zoë.’
‘I can’t. I promised.’ She finished attaching the poster to the noticeboard opposite main reception. It looked PROPER. Mr Wolff had agreed to a Year 12 Prom – Year 11s weren’t allowed because of their exams and so we’d already started selling tickets to the event in June. It was going to be epic. We’d used some of the money to buy a website for the campaign, as well as flyers and posters.
By half-term, we’d learned who had bid on the Fantasyland site. It was a small chain of American-style diners called Howdy’s: a concept so awful it redefined awful. A new circle of hell Dante would have considered too heinous to commit to the page. The unseen villain now had a face – and the face was that of a chubby little cowgirl with red bunches.
‘OK.’ I admitted defeat. ‘But can we do something soon? Just us two?’
‘Don’t you like Zoë?’ Polly regarded me down her nose. With her hooded eyes, Polly sported ‘Bitchy Resting Face’ at the best of times.
‘You know I do, but I don’t wanna be a third wheel.’
‘You aren’t. She loves you hanging out with us.’
‘Really?’ I said with great scepticism. In fact, I got the distinct impression Zoë now saw me as evil Nico’s evil sidekick.
‘Well, she’ll have to accept it. But, yeah, we’ll hang out at the weekend or something.’
‘We should have a sleepover.’ It popped out of my mouth before I could think it through.
‘Hmm, Zoë might not like that.’
‘Why? I was thinking Beetlejuice and Domino’s pizza; nothing wrong with that.’
‘Just cos.’
It was so frustrating. I wanted our old camaraderie back but I didn’t seem able to manufacture it artificially. You know when you can’t think of anything funny or cool to say? I felt like a stand-up comedian with stage fright, desperately scanning a sea of blank faces for a seed of observational humour. ‘OK, but we’ll still hang?’ Needy Face.
‘Sure.’ Her tone contained a hint of, ‘Sure, let’s get a coffee sometime,’ and we all know what that means: you’re never getting that coffee.
I went along to the gig, as planned, with Daisy and Beasley. ‘We’ve already sold, like, seventy tickets at full price –’ Daisy was buzzing – ‘That’s over two thousand pounds! Renting the minigolf is only going to cost two hundred and fifty, so Alice thinks we should get, like, ice sculptures or a chocolate fountain or something.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, sipping a vodka, lime and lemonade which I thought was very classy of me. ‘But we want to keep the maximum amount aside for the campaign.’
‘I know, I know … but we do need it to be magical – people need to get something for their money. What about “Enchantment Under the Sea” from Back to the Future?’
‘“Enchantment Under the Sea With Golf?”’ Beasley asked sceptically.
Daisy would not be deterred. ‘OR, Disney theme! That would be SO cool.’
I said, ‘I like that. It could be nicely ironic – everyone loves Disney.’
‘There is NOTHING ironic about my love of Disney,’ Daisy added gravely.
The band came on and we cheered. Nico, as ever, gave me a special smile from the stage. I was a groupie and I loved it. I’d heard that other Judas Cradle fans had plotted my death and that made me strangely proud. And a little scared.
I worried sometimes, sizing up these other girls. I trusted Nico, I did, but anyone with eyes could see he was out of my league. On low days, I figured it was only a matter of time until a prettier or cooler version of me caught his eye. It was on days like that I questioned why he has a security code set up on his phone or started to wonder if I could guess his Facebook password. Dangerous thinking, and Nico had done nothing to provoke such behaviour other than be really hot.
As the first song – ‘Effulgent’ – began, it became clear that Alfie, the new keyboard player, was ten times better than Zoë. Alfie was the hippest hip Japanese guy I’d ever seen. What on earth he was doing in the culture-free abscess that was Brompton-on-Sea was anyone’s guess. In your face, Zoë, you friend stealer. The venom in the thought shocked me a little. I apparently had the hump with her, who knew. ‘She stole my friend’ – god, how preschool was I?
The band played their set and were truthfully the best I’d ever heard them. Even I fanned out a little. Etienne had bleached his eyebrows so he now looked entirely ethereal, like something from either a) a higher plane or b) Next Top Model. The band, in their new line-up, just worked. I tried to get backstage like I always did but I was stopped by a bouncer. ‘Can I get through?’ I asked. ‘I’m Nico’s girlfriend.’
‘I know, love. Sorry … can’t let anyone through tonight. Manager insisted.’
That was weird. The band’s manager, Cleo, was a local promoter who managed a few bands along the south coast. She’d always been pretty cool with me, so it was a little odd. I joined the others at the bar and waited for Nico to find me, which he did about half an hour later. The boy almost knocked me off my bar stool, such was the ferocity of his hug.
‘Hey! There you are. What took you so long?’ I asked.
‘You will never guess what just happened!’ Nico said.
‘The spaceship came back for Etienne?’ Daisy joked.
‘Almost as surreal. You know how Annie from Pitchfork loved the EP? Well, tonight she came to the gig and brought an A & R scout from Sony!’
‘What!’
Nico subtly pointed to a guy at the furthest end of the bar. He looked like a younger, hipster version of Captain Birdseye. ‘I know! He really loved us! He wants us to come up to London and meet with his team!’ I’d never seen a beam so beaming.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes!’ He threw his arms around me and swung me around, kissing my hair. Beasley and Daisy got involved too, hugging both of us into a big human sandwich. They congratulated him heartily and Beasley went to get celebratory drinks at once.
‘That’s so amazing,’ I said, smoothing my scrum-dishevelled hair back down. ‘You must all be so thrilled.’
‘I … I can’t even get my head around it.’ Nico was clearly overwhelmed; he was so high his feet were off the floor. ‘This is all I’ve ever wanted, you know what I mean?’
‘You deserve it, you really do. You guys were incredible tonight.’ He hugged me again, thanking me. He kissed me at the same time as the panic hit. I didn’t want him to go to London and be a famous pop star and leave me behind. I didn’t want that at all. I wanted him to stay here and play only for me at The Mash Tun until the end of time, and I couldn’t have hated myself more for thinking such thoughts, but they were all I could think about. They were a virus, multiplying and spreading in my mind. He’d go to London and be rich and famous and replace me with a Latvian supermodel called Anka and a coke habit.
I told my jabbering head to pipe down. Talk about getting ahead of oneself. But I did have those thoughts. They were there. I wondered if every partner of a successful person had those ideas, or if I was truly the worst girlfriend in the whole wide world.
The secret managed to stay secret for two whole days. Nico didn’t want people knowing about the band’s road to stardom because, frankly, it wasn’t a done deal. If there’s one thing more excruciating than being a never-been it’s being an almost-was. The meeting was presumably to establish the band weren’t white supremacists or holocaust deniers before they developed them any further. They’d heard the EP, they’d heard the demos, they’d seen them perform. Nico and I decided not to discuss it until after the meeting – not because of my internal breakdown at the thought of losing him, more because he was already a nervous wreck and neither of us wanted to jinx it. Having had a couple of days to think about it, of course I wanted Nico to get a record deal. How cool would that be? Supportive girlfriend mode: ON.
The other problem though was Zoë. The fact the band had been scouted by Sony three weeks after Zoë had been ousted from the band did not look great. The band agreed to see if the meeting went well before letting the world at large know.
The cover was blown by the first day back at school after the holiday. I would later learn that Etienne had told someone who had told someone who knew someone in The Gash. Polly was not happy. ‘Look. I’m not gonna ******* fall out about it, but I think it’s well shady.’ The ‘but’ in that sentence suggested we might fall out about it.
Beasley and Daisy made agreeable noises and I was silent for a moment. It would have been easy to let Polly win, but it wasn’t right. I took a stand for my boyfriend. ‘Oh come on. It’s not like they knew the A & R guy was coming, is it?’
‘Didn’t they?’ Polly looked me dead in the eye. ‘Zoë thinks they were warned and that’s why they booted her when they did.’ It was lunchtime and we were eating outside on the lawns for the first time. It was cool and crisp, the sun as white as fresh linen. The first crocuses and bluebells had popped up through the thaw on the edge of the hockey pitch.
Had she been on the conspiracy-theory websites again? ‘That’s not true. It really isn’t.’
‘It’s bull****, Tor, and you know it. Zoë is entitled to any money they make. She was in that band from the start.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘OK, you are really scary right now, so I’m not even gonna get into this –’ oh I so got into it – ‘but Zoë joined the band after Nico and Etienne put it together and she never wrote any of the songs. She didn’t even come up with her parts, Nico did.’ And then I really went there. ‘She’s not even that good.’
Polly laughed. She laughed in my face. ‘Are you that ******* stupid to think Nico can do no wrong? Wake up and smell the ****! You know what? Go **** yourself.’ She grabbed her satchel and stomped back towards the sixth-form wing.
Beasley scowled at me. ‘Oh nice one, Tor. Guess who has Sociology with her next period?’ He trailed after her, resigned to a lesson with a grizzly bear.
I was left alone with Daisy. ‘You agree, right? That she’s being ridiculous?’ I said.
Daisy smiled as sweetly as the crocuses around us. ‘Oh I’m not getting involved. I’m Princess Fence-Sitter of Switzerland.’
Frustration fizzed in my gut. Why did everyone always pander to Polly’s temper tantrums? A group of people who live in fear of a domineering leader isn’t a friendship, it’s a dictatorship. It wasn’t healthy. ‘OK,’ I said, gathering my things. ‘Watch out for splinters in your ass.’
I didn’t see Polly after school. Polly didn’t text me when I got home, before or after dinner. At dinner, even Mum noticed something was wrong and I had to fend her off sulkily. She hadn’t texted before bed. Like the metaphorical pot, a watched phone doesn’t ping.
This was stupid. It wasn’t even our beef. Why Zoë hadn’t had it out with Nico was anyone’s guess – it seemed so silly that Polly and I had been dragged into it. I truly believed the band wasn’t at fault though. If Zoë wasn’t fit for purpose then she had to go. She had a new band now anyway. More’s the point, there was no guarantee Judas Cradle would even get signed. This was thoughtcrime – the band were guilty of crimes they hadn’t yet committed!
I definitely wasn’t texting her, even if it meant we never spoke ever again. Oh, I could be stubborn when I wanted to be too. I wasn’t going to be another yes-person who flitted around her like she was sodding Titania.
(But I did want her to text me.)
I wanted her to realise that our friendship was more important than some band-rivalry nonsense. I wanted her to respect me for being the only person who stood up to her.
(But I absolutely wasn’t going to be the one to make the first move.)
It played on my mind all night. I lay awake in bed, staring at my ceiling but not seeing it. I could only think of the argument and what tomorrow would bring. At times I thought perhaps I should apologise and let it blow over, before the mule-headedness returned and I forbade myself from reaching for my phone.
Eventually I must have slumped into a reedy, deeply unsatisfying sleep because when my alarm went off it woke me up. No. It wasn’t my alarm. It was the landline. I looked at my clock and saw that it was six fifty. Kind of early for a phone call and, frustratingly, ten minutes before my actual alarm was due to go off. Hate that. I immediately wondered if it was Polly, ringing to clear the air before school. I imagined she’d had a night of fitful sleep too and wanted to make things right. I burst out onto the upstairs landing and threw myself downstairs towards the hall where the phone waited on its base.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, is that Toria? It’s Mr Wolff here.’
‘Oh … hello.’
‘I know it’s early, but could I talk to your mum or dad please?’
Dad now emerged from the kitchen in a dressing gown. ‘Who is it, Tor?’
I held out the phone. ‘It’s Mr Wolff from school.’ Dad looked worried at once, the kind of face that said What trouble have you got yourself into? I was more worried about Polly – what had she done? What had she said?
Dad said little after he took the phone, making ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and ‘uh-huhs’. It was impossible to read. ‘OK,’ he said finally. ‘Thank you for letting us know.’ He hung up the phone. ‘Victoria, I … er … I think you should sit down.’ He steered me into the lounge.
‘Dad, what is it? Is it Polly?’ I pictured her taking a pencil sharpener to pieces and slicing it into her skin. ‘Is she OK?’
He physically squashed me down by the shoulders until I was perched stiff on the couch. ‘No, Toria, it’s Daisy. God, I don’t know how to say this. I’m so sorry, Tor. She passed away in the night.’