Before Read online

  “Well then Ed’s an idiot.” Alex raised an eyebrow and pulled a face, bringing a smile to my lips. “Trust me, it was good enough.”

  Before I could answer her or thank her, she walked away. I watched her amble back over to Ed, feeling pleased that she at least was on my side.

  For the time being, anyway.

  Chapter Three

  “Tally. Quick word.”

  I was summoned to see Ed. Like being summoned to see the Head at school. Or my parents.

  Alex was deep in conversation with Ed, who waved me over while she still spoke to him. I was on cloud nine. What should have been a stupidly long day was increasingly turning into a far quicker one than I’d envisaged on my Tube ride over to the studio that morning, mainly thanks to the fact Alex had recorded all her solos without a hitch. Now all we had to do was record a few more vocals and we were free for the day; I could be back in Oxford Street shopping with Robyn and Brooke before the shops closed at this rate.

  I quit fiddling with a button on the mixing desk and went over to him. “You’re ready to go with Brooke’s vocals for ‘After the Rain’?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” Ed put down the iPad he’d been using and nodded briefly to Alex, who moved away. “I think it’d be better for you to record your part first.”

  “Sure.” I unzipped my hoodie and shrugged it off. The sound booth was usually set to a hundred degrees. “You got the lyrics there?” I flung my hoodie onto a chair and held my hand out to Ed.

  “We’re going for another take on ‘Crush.’”

  I stopped. “Crush” was going to be the third song on the new album; I’d recorded my solo to it two weeks before and had totally nailed it in one take.

  “We already did ‘Crush.’”

  “Now we’re doing it again,” Ed said. “Well, you are.”

  “Because?”

  “Because Alex has recorded her part for it,” Ed said, “and now I think your part needs a small change.” He handed me the lyrics, stapled together and attached to a clipboard. “You’ll be singing lines four, six, nine, and twelve.”

  I slid my glance past Ed towards Alex. She gave me a faint smile, then turned her back, choosing instead to talk to Grant rather than acknowledge me.

  “My solos come in”—I ran my finger down the clipboard, seeing for the first time the scribbles across the lyrics—“lines two, five, eight, and ten. Then there’s the chorus,” I said, “then I continue at lines thirteen and fifteen in harmony with Robyn.”

  “Can you just try?” Ed asked. I was sure I detected a hint of a sigh.

  “Problem?” Robyn appeared at my side.

  “No problem.” Ed smiled. “Just some minor adjustments.”

  “Major adjustments, he means.” I held up the clipboard for Robyn to see. “Like, total change of my solos.”

  “When Tally wrote ‘Crush’ with me,” Robyn said, taking the clipboard from me, “she wrote her own solos knowing how she wanted to sing them.”

  “Alex suggested—”

  “Alex?” Robyn and I spoke at the same time.

  “She suggested a little more light and shade,” Ed said. “I agree. Rather than belting it out.”

  “My parts need to be belted out,” I said. “That’s how I wrote them.”

  “Your new lines don’t.” Ed, infuriatingly, looked away. “We’re changing the balance, so you’ll now sing more harmony parts. I think it’ll work better that way,” he said. “Fewer pitching issues.”

  “Pitching issues?” I looked at him incredulously.

  “It’s a little…pitchy in places,” he said, waving a hand. “We can Auto-Tune it, but if you could—”

  “I’m pitchy?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  Ed sighed. “All I’m saying is I think Alex is right,” he said, “and it’s just not working the way it is at the moment.”

  “So now she gets to sing my original parts?” I asked. “Having just recorded some of Nic’s too?”

  Anger prickled at my scalp. I looked for Alex but couldn’t see her. She’d obviously gone. Smart move.

  “Is that what you mean?” I pressed.

  “It’s just testing the waters,” Ed said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Just give it a go. See where it leads.”

  “Let me get this right,” I said, taking the clipboard back from Robyn. “Alex gets to replace both Nic’s vocals and mine? Would you just prefer it if Alex sang everyone’s parts?”

  “Just try it, Tally,” Ed said. “For me?” He gesticulated to Nate. “We ready to roll?”

  That, apparently, was that.

  Like the patronizing bastard he can be, Ed put his hands on my shoulder, swivelled me round, and steered me in the direction of the sound booth before I could complain any more. Resigned to it, I wandered up to the door of the booth, kicked it open, and stomped inside, hoping that my stomps would perfectly indicate my anger. Turning round, I could see Ed, the sound guys, Robyn, Brooke…and Alex—who had magically reappeared now I was about to sing—all staring back at me. Great. So Alex had smashed her solos in one go, and now, rather than going home like anyone else would, she’d chosen to hang around and listen to me sing my solos.

  I’d show her.

  I snatched up my headphones and placed them on my ears, hearing in them voices and sounds coming from the studio floor. At Ed’s thumbs up, Nate pressed a button and kicked the drum machine into life, swiftly followed by Brooke’s previously recorded vocals, signalling the intro to my first line. With a quick glance to the floor again, I closed my eyes and sang my part, then waited briefly as I heard Robyn’s vocals kick in, and sang my next line.

  The music in my ears stopped, to be replaced by Ed’s voice. I opened my eyes, dismayed to see him with his hand up in the air.

  “From when you went away, please. Remember the balance.”

  Of course I remembered the balance. I wrote the fucking song in the first place.

  I smiled my best sarcastic smile, raised an eyebrow to Robyn who was staring expressionless at me through the glass, then cleared my throat.

  Robyn’s vocals sounded in my ears again, fading to allow me to sing my line. This time the music continued, the prerecorded drums and guitars that I always loved so much sustaining the rocky edge that I’d envisaged when I wrote them into it. Brooke’s vocals entered my ears, quickly followed by Alex’s, much louder than I’d expected, completely throwing me. I missed my cue.

  “Sorry, sorry.” I waved a hand. “Can we take it from Brooke’s vocals first?” I shook my head. “The balance has completely changed. Alex’s part is much louder than Nicole’s was.”

  I looked at Alex. She stared back.

  “From Brooke.” Ed.

  I looked away, adjusted my headphones, and waited.

  Again, Brooke’s vocals sounded, quickly followed by Alex’s. This time I sang my line, looking out across the studio floor just in time to see a look shadow across Alex’s face. A sort of a pursing of lips. A glance away. And, I was sure, a roll of the eyes.

  Bitch.

  I stopped singing, wishing I hadn’t when I saw Ed raise his hands out to his side.

  “What’s the problem?” he mouthed to me.

  I slid my gaze to Alex, annoyed to see her looking down at the mixing desk, rather than directly at me. I wanted her to see I was pissed off with her. Wanted her to see the annoyance in my eyes.

  “Nothing’s the problem.” I kept my eyes on Alex while I spoke. “Can we go from Brooke’s vocals again?” I turned my attention back to Ed, nodding to him when I saw his nod.

  The music filtered into my ears again, and this time I was ready. I sang, ignoring Alex, who was looking at me again, focusing instead on Brooke, who was as smiley as ever. When I’d finished, both she and Ed gave me the thumbs up. Alex, I noticed, still held a look of disapproval. The girl was halfway through her first day with us, and she was giving me looks.

  I yanked my headphones from my ears and left the booth.

  “Hey, Alex
,” I said as I sauntered over to Alex, “what was with all the looks?”

  Alex slowly lifted her eyes to mine. “I’m sorry?”

  “You,” I said. “Looks. Totally unprofessional.”

  “What looks?” she asked.

  Robyn appeared beside me. Her presence emboldened me.

  “Disdain,” I said. “Contempt.”

  “What?” Alex laughed, and I hated the sound of it. “You imagined it.”

  “I saw the looks.” I stood my ground. “When I was singing.”

  “All imagined.” Alex turned away.

  “You know,” I called out as she walked away, “it’s not very professional to be standing there pulling faces at me while I’m singing.”

  Alex stopped dead.

  “And it’s not very professional you having three takes to get it right,” she said, without even bothering to turn round to look at me.

  I felt Robyn’s hand on my arm.

  “Maybe if you’d not gone sneaking to Ed and messed with everything,” I said to her back, “I’d have had more time to rehearse.”

  “Rehearse a song you wrote?” Finally Alex spoke to me over her shoulder. “You for real?”

  That threw me. I swallowed. Damned if I could answer that one.

  “Tally knows her lines inside out.” Fortunately Robyn was more on the ball. “She focuses on her lines while we focus on ours.”

  “Well,” Alex said, taking her headphones back off Grant, “how about she focuses on something else right now?” She slung her headphones round her neck. “How about she focuses on being an adult for five minutes?” Alex gave a nod to Ed and shouldered past me, scooping her headphones back up onto her ears as she did so, then tipped the hood of her hoodie up over her head. She put her hands in her pockets and sauntered from the studio, shoving the door open with her shoulder and letting it swing back closed with a bang.

  I stared at the door she’d just walked through, hardly believing what she’d just said. The silence in the studio was deafening, no one wanting to speak. Awkward glances scuttled between those still there, suddenly people became busy in what they were doing, and all the while my face burned with embarrassment and anger.

  Seemed as though Alex Brody wasn’t on my side after all.

  Chapter Four

  My fury refused to abate. I went straight home after our recording session, declining Brooke and Robyn’s offer to go into the West End for a little retail therapy and to have a right royal grumble about Alex and her comments while we did it. I wasn’t in the mood. In fact, I wasn’t in the mood for much more than going home and replaying the evaluation mixes of the songs that Ed had given us all, knowing the only reason I wanted to do it was to satisfy myself that I was right and Alex was wrong.

  I wasn’t bloody pitchy and “Crush” hadn’t needed any changes to it.

  As I sank down into my sofa and slipped my headphones on, my thoughts strayed to Nicole. I glanced down at my phone next to me and, out of habit, picked it up and found her number.

  But I couldn’t ring her. The one person who I knew would be able to tell me everything was okay was gone, hidden away in the countryside, probably with no thoughts about Be4, London…or me. I let my hand, phone still clutched in it, flop down next to my leg.

  Nicole had been my rock. My shoulder to cry on. My friend.

  She would never think to sneak to Ed about my solos, that’s for sure.

  At that moment, I missed her more than I’d ever missed anyone. I wanted to see her so she could tell me everything was going to be all right. I wanted to feel the familiarity of her presence again, gain the comfort I always used to gain from being around her, but I knew I couldn’t, and the frustration of knowing that made tears film against my eyes. Annoyed, I wiped them away with my sleeve. Memories from earlier in the year started to creep back into my mind, memories which I’d done my best to ignore, but which now refused to stay tucked away. Since she’d gone into rehab and all contact with her had been severed, Nicole had never left me.

  Could I have done more to stop her sliding into her drug habit? I laid my head back and stared up at the pattern on my ceiling. Could I have been kinder to her after what had happened between us? I blinked as a snapshot from the previous summer quite unexpectedly returned to me, an image that I’d managed to keep buried away in the back of my mind for months.

  Nicole and I, alone. Walking through a meadow, a warm breeze on our faces, the grass so high it tickled my bare legs and made my skin itch. Our fingers touched, then parted, then touched again, finally linking as we walked side by side through the grass. A palpable shift in our friendship, one that had excited and terrified me in equal measures. Something new and daring—and away from Brooke and Robyn—the looks that had passed between Nicole and me earlier that day in the studio, looks that had become more frequent in the weeks before, had returned with a new intensity.

  Annoyed at the intrusion of this unwanted memory, I closed my eyes, cranked up the music in my ears, and tried to chase the image away, frowning as it repeatedly returned to me.

  We were sixteen and experimenting. That’s what I’d told myself when we’d kissed that day. The kiss had been threatening for ages, I’d guessed that. Nicole had changed in the months leading up to it; her looks to me had been loaded with meaning, her mood swings unfathomable. One minute all over me, so tactile and friendly, the next acting like she didn’t give a damn, and apparently terrified to be anywhere near me.

  I’d been so confused. My best friend seeming as though she hated me, and I didn’t have a clue what I’d done or said to warrant it, or what I could do to make her like me again. So I asked her. She didn’t give me a satisfactory answer, though. She’d just said, “Hang out with me today.” That was it. And, “Just me and you. Not the others. It’ll be fun.”

  So we did. That’s how we got to be walking in the meadow and how I got to have itchy legs. I hadn’t cared though; Nicole wanted to hang out with me, like we’d done before she’d gone all weird on me, and I couldn’t have been happier. Just an afternoon, me and her, like it used to be.

  Then we’d kissed. Okay, the kiss had come much later in the afternoon, after all the walking and the hand-holding and the finding somewhere to sit where we wouldn’t be swamped with long grass.

  It had been weird. The kiss. It had taken me by surprise too. One minute me and Nicole had been talking about something we’d been planning to write together, then that conversation had led to another one about feelings, and before I knew it, Nicole was saying things to me that my brain wasn’t taking in and looking at me in a way she’d never looked at me before. Then leaning over, brushing the hair from my eyes, and looking straight at me for the longest time, until I started to get a bit embarrassed.

  The kiss had taken me by surprise and was over before I’d barely registered what had happened. Nicole’s soft lips grazing mine. I remember that I hadn’t wanted it to be over so soon, so I’d kissed her again and it had lasted longer that time. I think maybe we would have kissed a third time if Nicole’s phone hadn’t gone off. That seemed to break the mood. Bring us back to planet Earth.

  Shake me into realizing what I’d done.

  Nicole had carried on staring at me, biting at her lip, then answered her phone. I’d flopped back onto the grass, wondering what I’d done and how it had all happened, while Nicole spoke to whoever it was that had called her. I remember staring up at a blue sky happily unhampered by any clouds, and tasting my lips.

  I know I’d felt a total mess then. I’d liked it, but I knew it had felt wrong, and maybe that was because I knew I’d just kissed my BFF and nothing could ever come of it. How could it? We were best friends and, more importantly, bandmates.

  Bad move.

  So I told Nicole that I’d really loved kissing her but that the truth was, I didn’t want it to mean that it had changed anything between us. I didn’t tell her that there and then, of course. Not in the grass. I hadn’t wanted to spoil what had been an awesome day,
so—being stupid and cowardly—I’d waited a few days, had given myself time to really think about it. Days turned into a week and I still didn’t say anything to her. I liked her, I knew that, but I was never sure if I liked her in that way, and I knew whoever I was with, I had to really like them. Nicole was…Nicole. Mad, unpredictable Nicole who I’d known practically all my life and knew everything there was to know about. After the kiss, everything felt different, and when I finally made up my mind about what it was I wanted, the conclusion I came to with absolute certainty was that I didn’t want everything to feel different any more, and I wanted us to go back to how we’d been.

  She cried when I told her that. She actually cried, and that made me feel like the biggest cow ever. Like I’d failed her. Like I’d led her on and then crushed her. But instead of being the supportive friend I should have been, I took the coward’s way out and I concentrated on my music instead. Refused to talk to her about it any more than I already had and, instead, poured my guilt over my blurred lines into my writing until the remorse I felt about rejecting her had faded. Nicole would find someone else, I knew. Someone better than me. Someone more worthy of her.

  The music I wrote stayed hidden in a secret portfolio marked Shitty Stuff and got crammed into the back of a cupboard in my apartment, never to see the light of day again. It’s still there now.

  Shitty stuff in the cupboard, Nicole in rehab.

  Me carrying on as normal.

  I pressed play on my phone again and the memories of me and Nicole fled. The music from that afternoon flooded my ears, the familiar pounding drums of “Crush” bringing me some comfort, even though the reappearance of Nicole in my mind had unsettled me so much. I rested my head against the back of my sofa and waited for my singing to start.

  When it did I closed my eyes and concentrated hard, listening out for my tuning.

  I frowned.

  I wasn’t pitchy.

  *

  It was official. “After the Rain” was to be Be4’s fourth single, our first off our new album, and our first with Alex. It seemed Ed was finally satisfied with our recording of it, and now we could leave it to the mixing engineer to clean up the audio and add some effects, and then it would be ready to be burned to disk. When I heard that, I was beyond excited, and all my resentful thoughts about Alex magically disappeared. I think I was so excited because the song was mine, Brooke’s, and Robyn’s first attempt at writing something a little more experimental, and I was desperate for the public to know that Be4 could still exist without Nicole. Despite popular press opinion, constantly speculating about why she’d left—the theories ranged from Nicole wanting to go solo to her being pregnant—and stating that Nicole’s departure inevitably meant the end of Be4, listening to the cut of “After the Rain” for the umpteenth time convinced me that this could be just the beginning for us all rather than the end.