What She Wants (32 page)

They both laughed. ‘I’ve certainly got the big tits,’ joked Sharon, ‘but it was you Darius was looking at.’ ‘Well, he can keep looking,’ Nicole said as they reached the bus shelter. ‘Ah Nic,’ Sharon pointed out. ‘He was nice.’ ‘You think everyone is nice,’ Nicole said sharply. ‘Yeah, and you’re suspicious of everyone,’ her friend retorted. ‘The whole world isn’t out to get you.’ ‘It’s better to think that way when it comes to guys like him,’ Nicole insisted. ‘He’s probably screwed half the female singers he knows and he’s not going to have me as another notch on his bedpost.’ Sharon eyed her. ‘If you ever hear that he screws singers’ best friends, can you put in a word for me, then?’ Nicole grinned. ‘OK, but we’ll wait until he actually comes up with a meeting with someone in his office before I give him the combination to your chastity belt, milady.’

There was a chain of command at Titus and Zak, the Titus A &C R director, was the person to whom Darius reported directly. In theory, at least. In reality, Zak had done his brain cells too much damage in his distant drug-taking years to be capable of directing anything and only the fact that he was Steve Parris’s best mate saved him from joining an exclusive dole queue which was full of washed-up record company execs who’d been too busy doing a line of coke in the loo to realize that the music industry was now a giant corporate business and vehemently anti-drugs. Steve and Zak went way back and if Zak wanted to sign up two tramps playing the harmonica outside Piccadilly tube station, Steve would hand him the company cheque book and let him add as many noughts as he liked. Which should have meant that Zak was exactly the right person to go to with the demo of Nicole Taylor’s fabulous voice. Should have being the important words. Because Darius knew that Zak’s music of choice was heavy, eardrum bursting rock. It was no accident

that Zak had developed tinnitus, the constant ringing in the ears from years of over exposure to loud music. His idea of gentle, romantic music was Aerosmith so Nicole Taylor, with her rich, throaty voice, would not be his thing at all. He’d throw her demo in the bin and some other record company would end up signing her. Darius couldn’t let that happen. He wanted Nicole for the LGBK label. And for himself, he admitted wistfully. There had to be a way around things. If he went over Zak’s head, Zak would go mental. But what if somebody else heard Nicole’s demo by mistake… somebody with power who didn’t care who the hell Zak was and who’d stand up to Steve Parris? There was one person who fitted that description: Sam Smith. The new MD of the LGBK label, she was supposed to be a total bitch with steel caps in her toes for kicking people, or so they said. But Darius had met her at the Density gig and she’d seemed nice enough. Not a pushover or anything, but not the hard-edged uberbitch she was made out to be. Rumour had it that she didn’t take any crap from Steve. She was the person he needed to see. Lydia, Sam’s assistant, was chirpy and said that Sam was free after lunch. ‘What shall I say it’s about?’ inquired Lydia, who, with an eye to being made permanent, was making an effort to be businesslike. Sam got really pissed off when she doled out appointments without finding out why the person wanted to see her. ‘Just business,’ muttered Darius. ‘Lydia, what do you mean by writing “just business”?’ Sam asked crossly an hour later when she looked at her appointments book and saw Darius’s name in it. She had been anxious and bad-tempered these last few days and she knew it. ‘What sort of business exactly?’ ‘Don’t fly into a huff,’ said Lydia, a bit huffy herself. ‘I did ask him but that’s what he said.’ Sam’s eyes went heavenwards. ‘Fine, Lydia. He can’t have long whatever he wants. I’ve got the Ceci girls and their mother in at two forty-five. And remember, if Mrs Ceci

comes in and demands champagne, do not get her any. This is an office, not the Met bar.’ ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Lydia sniffed. ‘Coffee’s my limit. I’m not a bloody waitress.’

Darius was outside Sam’s office at two-fifteen on the dot. He’d been planning how to approach the situation and was still in two minds. He could go for honesty and tell Sam he was worried that if Zak got the demo, he’d bin it. Or, he could pretend he was there to discuss something entirely different, casually mention a new singer he was keen on, and then seem reluctant to let Sam listen to the demo. That would be sure to pique her interest. Yeah, that was probably the best bet. But he hadn’t reckoned on Sam. After one minute sitting in front of her desk, Darius found himself feeling uncomfortable. She was gazing at him with a clear, honest gaze and Darius felt that she wasn’t the person to lie to. Even if he did lie, he reckoned that she’d chisel the truth out of him efficiently. Those candid tawny eyes may have been beautiful, but they were shrewd too. He knew that a woman didn’t get to run a record label by being stupid. ‘What do you want to talk about, Darius?’ Sam asked pleasantly. Darius’s mind ran through his options and he gulped. ‘Well … er, you see …’ he stammered. He decided to go for the honest approach. Taking a big breath he started: ‘I’ve found this girl with an amazing voice,’ he said.

It was Friday evening and Nicole and Pammy were watching Bob The Builder. Or at least, Pammy was in her Barbie nightie watching it and Nicole was staring blindly at the screen and thinking about Titus Records. And Darius. It had been over a week since she’d met him and since then, she hadn’t heard a thing. Not a phone call, nothing. Even Sharon, the only other person who knew about Darius and the sort of woman who could remain upbeat in

the most depressing circumstances, was beginning to suspect that Nicole’s musical career might be over before it had begun. ‘Come out with me and Elaine tonight,’ she’d begged earlier. ‘It’s Friday after all, you need to go mad and get pissed to cheer yourself up.’ ‘Can’t.’ Nicole was looking after Pammy that night as her mother had a hot date with a fireman who’d been phoning her for months asking for a date before she’d given in. ‘Mum’s out tonight.’ ‘Oh.’ Sharon said nothing else. She’d often thought it was wrong the way Nicole had to take on so much of the responsibility of looking after her little sister but then, Sharon’s own family was big - there had always been an older brother or sister to babysit so Mum and Dad could go out. But with Nicole’s family, there were really only the three of them. ‘Shall I come round? We could watch a video and have a take away?’ suggested Sharon. An evening in with Nicole compared favourably to an evening out with Elaine, who got drunk very easily and had to be looked after thereafter. Sharon spent more time minding Elaine’s handbag than she did minding her own. ‘Nah, I’m going to bed early,’ lied Nicole. There was no need to mention that she hadn’t slept all week with misery and going to bed early tonight wasn’t going to help. ‘Phone me tomorrow and tell me all about it.’ The Bob the Builder video ended and Pammy looked hopefully at her big sister, huge blue eyes pleading to be allowed to stay up later than usual. ‘No silly billy,’ said Nicole, ruffling Pammy’s soft hair gently. ‘It’s ballet tomorrow and you’ll be too tired if you go to bed any later. It’s half seven as it is.’ Nicole strictly enforced Pammy’s bedtimes even at weekends. She remembered when she was a kid, when they’d lived with Gran, and Gran had always insisted that early bed was important for kids. Nicole used to grumble about

not being allowed to stay up late like other girls at school but Gran had been firm. ‘Little girls need their sleep,’ she used to say, packing Nicole off up the stairs after she’d had her hot milk and special bedtime biscuit. When Sandra had got her own home and they’d moved out, Nicole had been allowed to stay up until God knows when. Sandra wasn’t a rules person. It had been strange how Nicole had felt nostalgic for those nights when she’d been tucked up in her bed in Gran’s house, looking at the gleam of the streetlights from beyond the flowery pale pink curtains and telling stories to send herself to sleep, knowing that she was safe with Gran firmly in charge. Consequently, Pammy’s bedtime routine was straight out of her grandmother’s textbook: a hot milky drink and a biscuit as a treat followed by a story. Pammy was currently going through a princess phase and tonight she wanted to hear the story of the princess and the pea. Reluctantly, Nicole found the book and started to read. Not that she minded reading to Pammy: she’d have read War and Peace from cover to cover if her darling sister wanted it. But she couldn’t help but feel that all the fairytale princess books were a bad influence on small girls. All that carry on about how the prince would appear on his white horse, save the swooning princess, and everything would work out - it was plain old dangerous, Nicole thought crossly. There were no princes and the only way an intelligent princess was going to get on in life was if she got a job and could afford to tell the prince where to stuff his proposal of marriage. However, it was hard getting this message across to a five-year-old for whom Barbie in a sparkly wedding dress with a tiara on her head was the ultimate fantasy. With Pammy settled down to sleep, Nicole made some coffee and plonked herself down in front of the fire to see what was on the box. She flicked through the channels rapidly, bored with everything until she came across a show on cable that featured a group of young women in what

looked like a school hall singing an old chart hit as if their lives depended upon it. Nicole knew that the singers weren’t the original band and she watched for a moment, interested to see who they were because they looked so young and inexperienced. The story was made clear a few minutes later. The show was about the search for a pop band. Five talent scouts were auditioning eager young people for a four-member female pop band and, via subtitles because the show was in French, she realized she’d tuned into the segment where the scouts were in Paris and had pared down the competition until only twenty girls were left. Fascinated, she turned the sound up and watched, engrossed. Her fascination soon turned to horror, though, as she watched the contenders being put through their paces. It was like watching a beauty contest where it wasn’t enough to be ravishingly beautiful: the girls had to be talented too, and conform to whatever notion of a superband the judges had in their minds. Nicole winced at the comments from the scouts, comments that thankfully, the girls auditioning couldn’t hear: ‘Her hair’s terrible. With short blonde hair, maybe, but we’ve got enough girls with long dark hair to fill a swimming pool.’ Nicole wanted to switch over there and then but she was hooked. Three of the girls were fantastic singers, gorgeous looking and could dance into the bargain. All three were interviewed and spoke of a lifetime of stage schools and working towards this moment. Being in a band was their lifelong dream. Nicole felt sick just watching them. How could she have thought she had a career in the music industry when compared to these girls, she was a novice? They’d tap danced their way through their teens, acting, singing and dancing in an attempt to make it. She’d spent her teens having fun, only ever dancing round her handbag in nightclubs and doing her best to avoid any kind of job that could be termed a career. She’d sort of fallen into the

job at Copperplate Insurance and to be honest, it wouldn’t bother her if she lost it tomorrow, apart from the difficulty that would create when it came to the Turner family finances. She hadn’t been focussed on anything much, while these girls were determined to succeed in a way that bordered on the obsessive. She’d toyed with writing a few songs and she could play her acoustic guitar a bit, but she wasn’t Eric Clapton by any means. In the commercial break, Nicole miserably examined her hair for split ends. She was a fraud. That was why Darius from Titus hadn’t phoned her. He’d seen right through her and realized she wasn’t in it for the long haul. He’d been able to tell that being a singer wasn’t her lifelong dream. The show came back on and Nicole watched gloomily. She didn’t even look like any of the would-be pop stars. They all had funky hair styles. Blonde hair styles. She fiddled with her long jet black hair some more. She wanted to be a singer, honestly she did. Maybe she hadn’t longed for it with all her heart when she was a kid but she’d grown up now and she’d changed her mind. She loved singing and she’d do anything to succeed. She could take dancing lessons, she could change her hair … That was it. She’d change her hair. That would show everyone how serious she was. To give her some Dutch courage, she went to the cupboard where her mother kept the booze. Nobody in 12a Belton Gardens drank very much but there was always some bottle or other stashed behind the biscuits in case of emergency or guests. Nicole pulled out a bottle of whisky. She didn’t like whisky much but that was all there was. She poured some out, mixed it with orange juice and took a sip. Ugh. Horrible but necessary. Upstairs, Nicole drank some more whisky and rummaged through her mother’s top drawer. Old lipsticks, tampons with the plastic unravelling and crumpled up scraps of paper mingled with empty deodorant bottles and odd earrings. She shoved that drawer closed and opened the next one. Hair removers and an ancient looking leg waxing kit lay abandoned

alongside what Nicole was looking for: a home dying kit. Sandra Turner had been mousy haired until she’d discovered bleach at the age of fourteen, although Nicole had often wondered exactly how her mother had drummed up the courage to dye her hair seeing as how Gran thought dye was the first step on the path to eternal damnation. Her mum got her highlights done in the hairdressers these days but there had been many cash-strapped times in the past when she’d dyed it herself. Nicole examined the instructions on how to turn herself into a Nordic blonde. It sounded simple enough, she thought, not for a moment considering that her luxuriant black hair might be harder to dye than her mother’s mousy curls. Three quarters of an hour later, she peered in the bathroom mirror at the froth on her head and wondered if she was cooked. She gingerly rubbed a strand of long hair. Still not Nordic blonde. It was a bit orangey, actually. She’d leave it on for another ten minutes just to be sure. Busily imagining herself looking like an exotic Amazon with dark skin and striking blonde hair, Nicole didn’t notice the time rushing by. When she did glance at her watch again, seventeen minutes had passed. Shit! She bent over the bath and let the shower attachment wash all the foamy bleach away. The box had recommended shampooing twice to get rid of any last traces of colour, so with her eyes still closed, Nicole groped around for the shampoo, washed twice and then rinsed. It was odd but her hair felt different, coarser and stringy somehow. She groped for the small tub of expensive conditioner. That would help. Except that it didn’t. The more she rubbed, the more her hair felt like the consistency of old rope. Finally, Nicole chanced Opening her eyes a bit to see what her hair looked like and the sight made her drop to her knees like a stone. The lustrous black skeins had been replaced by hanks of straw-like hair that was the colour of gone off apricots. Nicole mopped up her dripping hair and looked at it in