Please Don't Stop The Music

Please Don’t Stop the
Music

Jane
Lovering

How much can
you hide?

Jemima
Hutton is determined to build a successful new life and keep
her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks
set to fail - until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her
handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking
up, on all fronts.

But Ben has
secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to be the front man of
hugely successful Indie rock band Willow Down, she wants to know
more. Why did he desert the band on their US tour? Why
is he now a semi-recluse?

And the
curiosity is mutual - which means that her own secret is no longer
safe …

… Darker than most chick-lit offerings,
Please Don’t Stop the Music
proves a
compelling story featuring two complex but likeable
characters.
Emotionally charged but also full of humour, this is an
accomplished debut from a promising new
author.
Emma, Reviewer, News of the
World. Jan 2011

…This is a good book but I suspect that there will be better
to come from this author as she develops her craft and allows full
rein to her glorious sense of humour. She’s got a very good plot
here and some characters you really warm to. It’s a couple of days
since I finished the book and I’ve been
wondering
about them, as though
they’re people that I know. There’s a sensitive hand with
disabilities and problems; you can understand why people hate them,
but they don’t diminish the characters in your eyes. More
please!
Sue, The Bookbag

Copyright ©
2011 Jane Lovering

Published 2011 by Choc Lit Limited

Penrose House,
Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey GU15 2AB. UK

Smashwords
Edition

www.choclitpublishing.co.uk

The right of
Jane Lovering to be identified as the Author of this Work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988

All characters
and events in this publication, other than those clearly in
the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence
permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued
by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road,
London, W1P 9HE

A CIP
catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

PRINT ISBN
978-1-906931-27-8

EPUB ISBN
978-1-906931-52-0

MOBI ISBN
978-1-906931-46-9

PDF ISBN
978-1-906931-07-0

In
memory of Peggy Thomson, 1922–2010

Acknowledgements

To everyone who has so patiently encouraged
me, laid trails of chocolate to encourage me to my laptop and
listened to me whinge about how
haaaard
writing is; everyone at LLS,
especially Fran and Heather for spending hours plotholing. For Lyn
and Linsey for being so long term, the rest of my kids,
Vienna, Fern, William and Riyadh for … umm … give me a minute, I’ll
think of something … My husband, Kit, for putting up with me, as
always. Not that he always puts up with me, sometimes he just
leaves the room with a tense smile.

To Sarah Williams, wonderfully talented
owner and creator of
www.butterflybuckles.com
,
for all the information on jewellery making and for letting me
rummage around among her crystals for inspiration. For all
guitar-related stuff, for the Metal Hammer tip-off, and also for
an
incredible
amount of posing, my eldest son, Tom.

And,
because I’ve been told that people mentioned feel obliged to buy
the book, I dedicate this novel to everyone whose name appears in
the York District Telephone Directory.

Chapter One

You
know you’re in for a bad day when the Devil eats your last
HobNob.

All
right, it was Saskia, not Old Nick, and any hoofed tendencies were
well-disguised in sling-back Manolos, but from there on the
resemblance was remarkable, down to the slightly reddish-tinged
eyes and the air of immoral superiority.

‘
Bad news I’m afraid, Jemima. Well, bad
for
you
,
obviously, not for me!’ She tinkled a laugh that I wanted
to hit with a brick. ‘I’ve decided to start sourcing
elsewhere.’

Her tight little lips mouthed another few
crumbs, nibbling slowly around the biscuit’s edge until I wanted to
scream, ‘Just
eat it
!’ but I didn’t dare. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘
Your jewellery is very – well, it’s quite
lovely of course, very
intricate
, but it is rather
expensive you know.’ It takes weeks to build each piece. That’s why
Saskia started stocking them in her shop – because they were
exclusive. ‘I’ve been talking to one or two people in the States
who make very similar pieces, and they can supply me at roughly
half what you charge.’

Half?
What are
they using, I wanted to ask, plastic and polyfilla? I’d already got
my overheads down as low as I could by renting a room in Rosie’s
little house and sharing workshop space in Jason’s barn. ‘I could,
maybe, give you discount … use less expensive materials …’ I tried,
but Saskia was already standing up.

‘
Anyway, I’ve decided to give the shop a more cosmopolitan
look, buy things in from all over the world. That’s what this
darling little rural corner could do with, right? A touch of World
Culture? All right, better trot now, busy, busy!’ She dropped the
remains of the biscuit casually onto the edge of the table, paused
for a moment as if waiting for the butler to sweep it off, and then
with a quick shrug, was gone through the door in a waft of Arpège
tinged with brimstone.

‘
Coast clear?’ Rosie snuck half a shoulder round the bottom of
the narrow stairway. ‘Thought I’d stay out of the way until she’d
gone, she doesn’t need any more ammunition in the great
Unpleasantness War. Sssh, lovey, Cruella’s gone now.’

This
was addressed to her baby son, Harry, who lay in her arms like a
damp rucksack, grouching slightly.

‘
She
… she’s just dropped me.’

‘
Dropped you?’ I tried not to look as Rosie pulled down the
front of her pyjama top and fastened Harry to a boob as though
buttoning him on. ‘From how high? Ow! Yes, go on, Jem, I’m
listening, breast-feeding doesn’t leach away your brain you
know.’

‘
Yes, I know, it’s just … distracting, you sitting there with
your chest hanging out and Harry grabbing you, farting and
squelching.’

‘
Sounds like a really good party,’ Rosie said wistfully.
‘Remind me again, Jem, what parties are?’

‘
Excuse me, I’m just about to become penniless thanks to the
Diamante Demon and you’re smiling indulgently at me whilst having a
head full of fluffy mummy-moments! You might want to throw me out
into the snow when I can’t pay my bills. And – and this is the
clincher – she ate the last HobNob.’

Rosie sighed. ‘She really is evil, isn’t she?’

Rosie supplied the shop with her handmade greetings cards so
she was well up on the Awfulness of Saskia. She, however, had long
since branched out and now also supplied most of the card shops in
this part of North Yorkshire. We’d first met at Saskia’s one
afternoon when I was delivering a series of belt buckles, each a
bejewelled representation of the Seven Deadly Sins, and discovered
that we both loathed Saskia with a passion bordering on unhealthy
fixation. Which came in handy six months ago when Rosie’s pregnancy
meant that she’d had to ease up on the work front and the
short-term lease on my flat in York had begun to seem restrictive.
It was a near-perfect situation, except that the result of the
pregnancy now had to sleep in a carry-cot jammed in beside Rosie’s
wardrobe; when he needed to move into a proper bed we were probably
going to have to fence-in the bath.

‘
You’ll find another outlet.’ Rosie tucked herself away and
hoiked Harry up to her shoulder where he belched like a lager-lout.
‘You’re twenty-eight. Blonde and gorgeous. You make the most
exquisite jewellery I’ve ever seen, and you’re thin, you bitch.
Honestly, people will be eating their own knees to have a chance to
buy your stuff. Anyway, Saskia never marketed you properly, you
should have worldwide recognition for your designs, not a cramped
corner of a jumped-up knick-knack shop!’ She pondered for a moment,
flicking her chicane of black curls out of her eyes. ‘And I can’t
throw you out into the snow. It’s not winter.’

‘
I was being figurative. Honestly, Rosie,
what am I going to do for money? What am I saying, it can’t get
much worse, I already share workspace with a guy who reads
Shunters’ Weekly
, and
not in an ironic way.’ Jason is an artiste (his ‘e’) who lives in a
beautiful flat in the roof-space of the barn, like a materially
successful pigeon, and he builds things out of scrap locomotives.
Thicker than a bed sandwich, his chief saving grace is looking like
a mixture of Johnny Depp and Jack Davenport. ‘And we both know she
only stocked my things in Le Petit Lapin because I’d got friendly
with Jason and he put in a word for me. Saskia fancies him so much
she’d buy Liverpool FC if he asked her to. I mean, yeah, everyone
loved my stuff but they didn’t like the prices.’

‘
Le
Petit Lapin.’ Rosie sniggered, ignoring my tirade. ‘Honest to God,
Jem, I can’t hear that name without thinking that it sounds like a
strip club. I’m surprised the York Board of Trade didn’t make her
change it.’

‘
With a husband as rich as Alex is she could call it “Rub Me
With Your Willy” if she wanted to.’ I stared at the walls. ‘I
really thought I was making a go of it,’ I said quietly.

Rosie touched my arm. ‘You
are
making a go of it,’
she said gently. ‘People love your pieces, you only need to read
your e-mails to know that. Don’t let Saskia get you down, other
shops will take you on, don’t worry. Anyway, what’s she so uptight
about money for?’

Saskia’s husband Alex ‘did something’ in property. They lived
in the same village as us in a much, much larger house. Saskia
regarded living twelve miles outside York as the class equivalent
to just-off-Knightsbridge, while Rosie and I privately agreed that
she put the ‘colic’ into bucolic and couldn’t wait until she was
driven back to town by the pitchfork-wielding locals. Sadly
improbable, with the money that she and Alex threw at village
institutions, but we still found ourselves backing away slowly
whenever she complained about the 5 a.m. cockerel chorus, or the
smell of cows.

‘
Maybe her marriage is on the rocks?’

Rosie snorted. ‘Yeah, right! She’d take Alex to the cleaners!
Anyway, what did she pay you for the last lot? Two grand? Two
thousand pounds is the kind of loose change she’d give to a beggar
in the street, if she ever gave anything to beggars apart from a
sneer and a kick in the ankle.’