The Sisters (27 page)

‘But I liked it. The Euterpe stuff. I wasn’t really into that manufactured, sweaty R’n’B stuff.’

‘Hold on a second. Number one, we were never manufactured and number two, Euterpe was never sweaty R’n’B. Who were you into?’ Lucinda took a look at his blue t-shirt with the logo for a karate club that had closed down eight years ago and his loose fitting jeans with the frayed hems. ‘Don’t tell me, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Onyx, Radiohead a bit of Bowie and Wu Tang Clan.’

Carter grinned at her over his cup of tea. ‘Something like that.’

‘I bet you’ve got a Boys II Men album in your collection though. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a special Take That, Eternal and All Saints mixtape hiding in the back.’

‘Alright, alright you can stop there. So Sal said you’re planning a comeback. I usually work with new artists or established artists, not someone who hasn’t had a hit for nearly twenty years.’

‘Are you always this rude?’

‘No, just honest. Maybe if someone had been honest with you then you wouldn’t have made that last pile of shit.’

‘I hope you don’t talk to your mother or your girlfriend like that,’ Lucinda said.

‘Of course not. My mum would just tell me to shut up and I’m single.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘So what do you want me to do for you, Lucinda LeSoeur formally of Euterpe, Lucinda of my solo career didn’t go to well. How do you want me to help you?’

‘I want to perform, I need to perform. I’ve been working on some songs but I need some help. It can’t sound like anything I did before…’

‘You don’t have to worry about that with me…’

‘I didn’t think that I’d have to. Look, I’ve done this before, I know how this game works and I’ve done my fair share of acting like I’ve lost a brain cell, being dressed so that I’d fit in, arguing with record executives who simply have no clue. I need to be me. I’ve got no intention of doing what I did before but then again I don’t want to compete with everyone who has appeared on X-Factor.’

‘And you don’t want to sound like every generic sound on the radio,’ Carter said as he sipped his cup of tea.

‘Exactly. Look, despite what you think, when my sisters and I started out we had our own unique sound. We weren’t pretending to be a British version of En-Vogue and we definitely didn’t feel the need to compete with anyone who came after us.’

‘You definitely had your own unique sound. I lied earlier on, I saw you and your sisters perform at a roadshow in Great Yarmouth. My dad always said that I had the most random taste in music. Your song Electrify could sum up the summer of 93. I know it sounds like a cliché but me, my brother Adrian, and his best mate Ben travelled down to Devon the summer after I finished my GCSEs in our grandad’s battered Volkswagen camper and that was our theme tune for eight bloody hours.’

‘GCSEs…God. How old are you – 37? Don’t look at me like that. I have a brain for figures. Surprisingly. Well, you held up well.’

‘The secret is plenty of water and running. So what are you looking for? What sort of sound?’

‘I don’t want to sound like I’ve been auto-tuned!’

‘I don’t do auto-tuned. Look around you. Do I look like I do auto-tuned?’

Lucinda smiled and glanced around the room before focusing her attention on the wooden floorboards with the numerous scratch marks, the peeling varnish, and the boards that had been replaced and fitted smoothly amongst the familiarity of the old.

‘I want my sound to be stripped back. I want it to sound raw but mature like whiskey that’s been soaking in an oak barrel for fifty years. I want people to have that same feeling that I get when I listen to Nina but when we’re done I don’t want ITunes to put me in a box. That is what I want.’

There was no mistaking the excitement that flashed across Carter’s deep brown eyes as he put down his cup of tea on the battered wooden crate that functioned as a coffee table.

‘You know what, I’ve got the best idea. I know exactly what you need. Come on, let’s get you in the booth.’

‘I THINK you should take some time off,’ Christopher said as he closed the living room door. Jessica looked at her ex-husband, as she stood barefoot in her work clothes. The house had been quiet again when she’d returned home that evening. Even though Lena had finally returned home after spending almost two weeks with Lucinda. It was as if the gods were playing a cruel joke when Lena had told her that staying with her aunt felt like a real home. Jessica had refused to look at her and simply told her that she’d prefer it if she stayed with her dad.

‘You’re going through a hell of a time at the moment, Jess. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody but you’re not coping at all. It’s going to kill you if you carry on like this.’

‘Who are you to tell me that I’m not coping? I’m managing things perfectly well.’

‘Come on, Jessica. This is me you’re talking to. I was married to you, remember. I know when you’re not coping.’

‘I am coping,’ Jessica said defiantly as she sat down on the sofa.

‘Knocking back a bottle of red every night and letting your daughter do what she wants isn’t coping.’

‘Don’t you dare accuse me of being a bad mother!’

‘I’m not saying that you’re a bad mother. I’d never say that,’ Christopher said as he sat down on the sofa next to her suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the situation. His new girlfriend, Patricia had told him that he shouldn’t be getting involved and that he should just leave Jessica to work out her problems on her own but he couldn’t do that. He’d lost count of the amount of times that Patricia had told him he wasn’t responsible for his ex-wife. But he wasn’t that type of man. Yes, they were divorced, but she was the mother of his child and also his friend.

‘You’re not a bad mother,’ he said softly. ‘No one in their right mind would ever accuse you of that. But you’re not the being the best you can be whilst you’re in this state. Look at yourself, Jess. The last time that you were like this was…’

‘That was different. Entirely different, Christopher.’

‘I know it was different last time…’

‘I didn’t have the business for starters and I definitely didn’t have a husband who was trying to strip me of everything I owned. I think I more than deserve to have a drink now and again.’

‘But it’s not just now and again, is it? You know you can’t just have a drink now and again, which is why you stopped drinking in the first place.’

‘It’s not that much. You’re just overreacting.’

‘It is when our daughter is finding the empty bottles and picking up broken wine glasses and having to cover you up with a blanket because you’ve passed out on the sofa again. You’re drinking during the day and from the look of things I wouldn’t be surprised if you were drinking in the morning also.’

Jessica looked away at Christopher as shame and embarrassment burned through her. She couldn’t even remember any of that happening. The last time that she’d spoken to her daughter was after she’d peeled the luminous pink sticky note from the fridge covered in Lena’s handwriting saying she was staying at her grandparents for a couple of days and taking the dog with her. And then she’d received the text message that she was with Lucinda.

‘I’m not an alcoholic, you know,’ Jessica said, with no conviction at all.

Christopher didn’t say anything as he watched Lena’s baby photograph on the wall. He had the same one sitting on his hallway table. He wanted it to be the only one as he tried to ignore Patricia’s not so subtle hints about wanting a baby.

‘I’m not Christopher,’ she said more forcefully. More for her own benefit than for his.

‘I heard you.’

‘The timing is just so wrong with everything. I know they say that bad things come in threes but this is ridiculous.’

‘Lucinda coming home isn’t a bad thing and before you open your mouth and say anything, I’m not taking sides but one thing I know about your sister is that she’d do anything for any of you.’

‘Please, she just thinks about herself.’

‘Jess, no one is a bloody saint. You can’t sit there and tell me that you’re not being selfish. Not everything is about you. You’re on the verge of losing clients. Good ones.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jessica said as stood up a little bit straighter.

‘Don’t get me wrong, people are fickle and there’s no such thing as bad publicity but not everyone likes the idea of the person who’s supposed to manage their publicity taking up more column inches then they are. Mary Temperly has been bending Wendy’s ear about moving across to The Visum Agency.’

‘She wouldn’t do that. She’s been with me since the beginning,’ Jessica said as she stood up and began to pace around the room.

‘She wouldn’t go…’

‘She’s not the only one. Evan Caine called Emma this morning and told her that he’d heard the agency was going under and that he may have to look elsewhere unless Emma wanted to work for him exclusively.’

‘This isn’t right. It’s not fair. It’s all Andrew’s fucking fault. I’ve got to do something.’

Christopher got up, took hold of Jessica’s shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. Despite the tough exterior that she put up, he knew she was vulnerable. He’d always wondered why people whose interior resembled a crème egg put themselves in positions where they were at risk of being attacked and criticised. He wasn’t surprised that Jessica had hidden behind the shields of her agency. When he’d met her she was still brittle after the sudden split of Euterpe. They’d met at a birthday party for Kelvin Spring White who’d just signed for West Ham almost three months after Lucinda had left for New York. Jessica had arrived at the party with a friend and had proceeded to do what she did best, party and loudly proclaim that everything was fine.

‘You can’t control everything, Jess. Sometimes you have to stand back and let things take care of themselves.’

‘But I’ll lose everything and I’ll be a laughing stock.’

‘No one is laughing at you. You’ve got to let people help you and you’ve got to know when to let go.’

Emma breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the office door behind her. To say that the last few weeks had been crazy was an understatement. It made her wonder more than once how her sisters had ever coped with the consequences of fame. Social media wasn’t even a concept when they made their first appearance on Top of the Pops. There was no such thing as instant fame, no one re-tweeting everything you said or did or selling a napkin that you were supposed to have used on eBay. The most that Emma had ever had to put up with was catching a fan obsessed with Beatrice rifling through their dustbin when she was 11-years-old. She’d breathed a second sigh of relief when she saw the email from Jessica as she walked towards Tottenham Court Road station. Emma had known that she might as well have been talking in the wind and that Jessica wouldn’t listen to her younger sister telling her to take a break so the task had befallen on Christopher. She was taking 10 days off work and from the text that followed from Christopher; Jessica would be spending the entire time at the Bellevue clinic in Brighton, one of the most exclusive rehabilitation clinics in the country. It was the only clinic that had a waiting list despite the exorbitant fees they charged. Celebrities who revealed that they’d gone to
rest
at the Bellevue was the equivalent of confirming that you’d just received the latest bag from Hermes and that Aston Martin had just named a car after you. It was almost eight o’clock when Emma took a deep breath and stepped onto the sweltering Central line train still packed with a combination of lost tourists and people wearily making their way home. As she got off at Notting Hill Gate it occurred to her how much her life had changed in such a short space of time. Six months ago she was living in her parent’s house in her childhood bedroom, Jessica was
happily
married, Beatrice was about to drop and talking about being stay at home mum and Lucinda was the sister she never saw but always received a birthday present from. Now here she was, knocking on her front door.

‘How much,’ Lucinda said as she sat at the kitchen counter with her laptop opened in front of her. ‘I only want to hire it for one night, not buy the place.’

‘It may sound a lot but it’s the going rate love.’

‘And I have to use the house band?’

‘Yep’

‘And you only have capacity for 300 and you want eight grand?’

‘Yep, can you fill it with 300 people?’

‘Please, I sold out Wembley Arena,’ Lucinda said as she put the phone down. She closed down the document with the lists of clubs that she’d spent most of the afternoon calling. There was no way she could afford the West End prices that they were asking of it. She opened her online bank statement and looked at it again. Well, she could afford it but she also needed to feed and clothe her children and in reality her funds were evaporating fast. When she’d left New York she’d had what most people would call a small fortune in her pocket. She’d arrived in London with £300,000 and change but now she was looking at a balance of £214,876.92. As she looked at the balance Lucinda had no idea how she’d managed to spend nearly a hundred grand in a few months. The Chanel ballet pumps that were on her feet should have given her a clue but she’d hardly done anything except pay the rent and made sure that the kitchen cupboards and fridge were full. She hadn’t been on one shopping trip and had been living as frugally as she could. As she scrolled down the page every arrow was red and showed a debit. There was nothing coming in and that scared her. It was all very well and good having nearly a quarter of a million pounds in the bank but when you had no income and no safety net it might as well have been twenty pounds in the bank. Eventually the money was going to run out.

‘That’s so loud. I could hear it going off as soon as I came through the door. How could you sit here with all that noise?’ Emma said as she walked into the kitchen trying in vain to ignore the repetitive beeps of the oven timer signalling her arrival

‘Oh shit,’ Lucinda said as she jumped off her chair and ran towards the oven to turn off the timer and pick up the oven gloves. She pulled out the terracotta tagine from the oven and lifted the lid. Immediately the kitchen was filled with the warm smell of lamb, cinnamon, tomatoes and apricots.