Read It Started With a Kiss Online
Authors: Miranda Dickinson
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary
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.