The Spotlight – read the first 10 chapters for free

Chapter 1

As we approached the record company’s HQ, Bandit was quaking worse than I was. I’d thought my lumbering grey dog would enjoy the excitement of London town, but he’d been whining intermittently since we’d got off the train from Bristol. I, too, tensed every time a siren screamed past me in the street.

I was late. Extremely late. I’d almost turned back twice.

On the pavement outside the chrome-and-glass building lay a dead bird. The black and white of a magpie. Bandit sniffed it. I dragged my amateur crime-scene investigator away, through the revolving glass doors and inside.

A security guard, stout and bearded, fixed me with a dubious look.

‘Sorry, we’ll be good,’ I said, even as my dog zigged and zagged, pulling at his lead. I’d been hoping to sneak him inside as part of a crowd, but there were no crowds, and Bandit was too much of a showman to stay incognito.

‘Didn’t see him.’ The security guard shook his head. ‘Did not see him.’

‘Cheers.’ I hurried towards the reception desk.

This was an industrial-looking space, with polished concrete floors and exposed pipework in the ceiling. There was no colour anywhere except for on the screens, three metres tall, where giant-sized superstars smirked and twirled. I caught a flick of silver-blonde hair and looked away.

‘Kirby Turner? I had you down for three o’clock.’ The woman frowned behind pink cat-eye glasses when I introduced myself.

I pulled a hand through my tangled brown hair and produced a shit-happens-right smile. The last five years had taught me: no excuses. I burbled some anyway: train delays and getting lost and yes I’m an idiot and no I don’t belong here.

‘Try and fit you in.’ She gestured to the waiting area. ‘Can’t promise anything.’

The appointment for this audition had only come through yesterday. I didn’t have a manager anymore, so God knows how they’d got my number. An assistant to an assistant to an assistant had messaged me: Arena tour. Had a last-minute dropout. Want a girl drummer. Feminist thing or something.

For my last audition, I’d met the band in a pub. The frontman said ‘you can play the drums, right?’ and I said ‘yeah’, and just like that I booked five shows playing to an audience of dozens. This was different.

I had to sign an NDA before I could even know the name of the band I was auditioning for. That would happen when – if – I booked the gig. However, the words ‘arena tour’ had been sparking in my brain for the last twenty-four hours. Despite my nerves, a smile sprang to my lips. Me, on an arena tour. It was a dream I thought I’d lost forever, but maybe… maybe.

I took a seat on a scratched wooden bench (terribly chic, terribly uncomfortable). The lobby of the record company smelled, incongruously, like popcorn. It took me a minute to locate the source: there was an old-timey, red-and-white-striped machine by the door, inscribed with the words, Step right up to the circus.

Bandit pushed his long nose into my lap, liquid brown eyes imploring. My rescue mongrel resembled a lurcher but with more oddities. No, it hadn’t been a good idea to bring him with me, but his presence kept me grounded. Thank God for you, my stinky buddy. I stroked his head with one shaky hand. Without you, I might actually lose my mind.

People rushed past, up and down the floating staircase, a parade of hair-dye and vintage fashion. I thought I recognised someone, but it turned out to be a different man with a mohawk. It was like the music biz had regenerated in the five years I’d been away, new musicians replacing the old. Not surprising – in the entertainment industry, you could go from wunderkind to has-been overnight.

I wiped my palms on my jeans, noticing too late that there was dirt wedged deep under my fingernails from where I’d spent the morning digging the veg patch. My T-shirt was green-faded-to-grey and bore the legend FRACAS! (the name of a friend’s band, long since disbanded). My ripped leather jacket was now a size too small, turning my arms into squeezed sausage filling.

When you were a teenager, or a perky twenty-something, following your dreams was admirable. When you were thirty-two, it was lunacy. Settle for what you have, stop fooling yourself. Yet a tiny flame of hope burned inside me. Maybe I wasn’t a has-been. Maybe this was my big break.

I knew instinctively that everyone who passed by – every fashionista snapping selfies, every beard bro who’d tooth-brushed his white trainers this morning – harboured the same delusional hope. In one of my lyric notebooks, I’d once scrawled: FAME IS A PYRAMID SCHEME. It was, admittedly, more profound when you were drunk, but there was truth to it. In the music business, the top was rarefied air. Few made it. Many more bankrupted themselves failing to get there. Yet there would always be a queue of people waiting at the bottom of the pyramid for their shot, paying in hopes and prayers and dreams.

You’d kill for it.

My bench rocked as someone shoved past. ‘Ready?’

It was the receptionist, beckoning me to follow. I stood up and Bandit darted away, pulling on his lead, back towards the revolving doors. Yes, we should go. Back to our little life in the country. Coming here had been a mistake. Obviously, I wasn’t booking a big-time gig.

‘Kirby?’ The receptionist’s expression turned to annoyance. ‘We can fit you in if you hurry, room twelve upstairs.’

I bit my lip. Stay or go?

After all these years, hope still sparked in me.

Heading to the stairs, with Bandit in tow, I mustered a smile. Showtime.

*

‘Is this you?’

The guy in the audition room shoved his phone under my nose. The screen was greasy, but the picture was clear. The other Kirby was younger, skinnier, bolshier, with engine-red hair where mine was brown.

I kept my voice even: ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Really.’ The man, with eyebrows raised, pulled the word apart into two long syllables. He was big-framed, bursting out of an (ironic?) Hawaiian shirt.

‘Yep.’ I moved to the drum kit. ‘Should I get started?’

He shrugged, returning his gaze to his phone.

If you’ve heard of me, it’s probably for one of three reasons:

One, you know the song ‘Snide Baby’ by The Deads. My ex, Frankie Carmelli, sang ‘Fuck you, Kirby’ during the bridge and it became a rallying cry at gigs, a whole room screaming fuck you, Kirby. It used to bother me – hell, it still does bother me – but now I can laugh at the absurdity.

Two, I was in a minor girl band called Jitterboo, who had one hit, ‘Crazy Daze’, seven years ago. Technically, we were not a one-hit-wonder, because two of our other songs charted at an inauspicious twelve and thirty-one respectively, but that was muso trivia for you. Jitterboo had been gaining cult status over the last year, since the meteoric rise of their erstwhile keyboard player, Alice Taffer, better known now as Silver.

The third and likeliest reason you’ll see my ugly mug cross your phone screen is because people on the internet think I murdered Hailey Cross, lead singer of Jitterboo, better known now as ‘that dead girl’. According to the online consensus, I’m Killer Kirby. For the record, I didn’t kill her, but what does the truth matter?

*

The best part of the audition was when Bandit went berserk.

In a tiny, soundproofed rehearsal space, I’d gone through my repertoire. I was a fraction off the beat, which – you’ll be shocked to hear – is not ideal if you are the drummer.

The tension was broken when Bandit hurtled into the room. I’d told him to sit-and-stay outside the door, but obviously his abandonment issues had kicked in. When someone cracked open the door, Bandit saw his opportunity. My dog who never barked chose today to find his voice. He jumped into my lap, upset the drum kit and sent the crash cymbal flying.

I definitely wasn’t booking this gig.

As I traipsed down the stairs, back to reception, with the dog’s lead wrapped tight around my wrist, I was already reframing the afternoon as a funny anecdote for Terrance. He was my boss at the Seedlings, where I lived and worked, and I conjured up his laughter in my mind to make myself feel better.

The lobby was deserted now. It was pint o’clock. I felt an automatic craving to be sinking into a pub chair and downing the first of ten or twelve drinks. Bandit was a good distraction, though. He was spinning in circles, a clear sign he needed to do his business. ‘Let’s go home,’ I said.

I tried, I failed, it’s not the end of the world, I imagined saying to Terrance. Yet there was a hollow feeling in my stomach. Outside, Bandit christened one of the potted yew trees beside the doors. Someone had cleared away the dead bird in the last hour.

‘Kirby?’

The late-afternoon sun was in my eyes. A woman flowed out of the revolving doors, bleached white by glare. I assumed it was the receptionist to tell me don’t call us we’ll call you.

‘Thanks for seeing me anyway,’ I blurted, desperate to be on a train home.

‘Kirby…’

I shielded my eyes. This time, I recognised her voice. Soft Welsh vowels, a girlish lilt. It was a billion-pound voice.

‘They’re drawing up the NDA now, but…’ She laughed, a single musical note. ‘I wanted to say hi.’

She wrapped her arms around me. Her frame was petite. There wasn’t much of her except bones, but she smelled like ripe berries and the musty-sweet essence of brambles.

I didn’t say anything – I didn’t know how to react – so she let me go.

‘When we needed a drummer, I thought of you,’ she said.

‘Alice,’ I said at last. God, there were tears in my eyes. I wiped them away with my knuckles.

‘You’ll have to get used to calling me Silver.’ Her smile was fractionally sad, if you knew her well. Which I did.

She crouched down to scritch Bandit under the chin and he fell in love with her instantly. Woozy from exhaust fumes and the heat of the day, I found it difficult to hold the two images of her in my mind simultaneously. There was shy birdlike Alice, shoulders bent inwards. My former songwriting partner. My one-time best friend. Overlaying this picture there was Britain’s newest pop princess, her silvery hair shimmering in the sunlight.

Chapter 2 

‘It’s too hard.’ The little girl thrust the guitar away. She pouted, showing rabbity front teeth.

I didn’t want to push her, so I gave a smiling shrug. ‘It is hard.’ I picked up the guitar and strummed a G chord before falling silent. Birdsong rushed in to take the place of the pop song we’d been playing.

The July weather was sticky, even within the shade of the woods. We were seated in wooden recliners on the deck outside the pod affectionately known as the mud hut, constructed using earth and hemp straw. Further along the trail, there was a party going on, one of Terrance’s (allegedly) world-famous Sunday soirees. Laughter and the smell of barbecue drifted towards us, although the people, twenty or so of them, swilling fizzy elderflower, were hidden from view.

‘Try one more time for me?’ I asked the girl, Jaz, after a few more seconds had elapsed. She was perhaps seven. Her hair was in Bantu knots, secured with pink plastic bobbles.

Jaz hesitated and I could see her internal battle (just give up, why not give up?), but she accepted the guitar and fitted her tiny fingers over the fretboard. She twanged a G.

I applauded. ‘That was good!’

She glowed and it made me glow, too. Teaching music was a new thing for me. Due to a youth spent filling in for flaky band members, I could play guitar, drums and (at a push) keys. When Terrance had prompted me to pin a flyer to the village noticeboard, I hadn’t thought anyone would be interested, but a couple of teenagers from Coombe Charlton now came weekly. I also ran impromptu workshops for the kids who stayed with their parents at the Seedlings.

Terrance insisted on calling his property an eco-village, although in plainer terms, it was a glamping site. Within the woods there were six pods, ranging from treehouses to roundhouses to glorified shacks. They were all wired up with electricity, but when nature called, you had to visit the composting toilets in the shower block. It was accessed via a rope bridge over ground that sloped precipitously downwards into thick underbrush. Occasionally, we got complaints about Health and Safety, but Terrance cheerfully pointed out that no one had plummeted to their death at 3 a.m. while desperate for the loo. Not yet anyway.

The site extended out of the woodland, to a pond (we referred to it as a lake to visitors, disingenuously) and a meadow, where two horses grazed. ‘We’re raking it in,’ Terrance had said to me last week, so apparently the rustic experience was popular with city-dwellers who wanted to unplug.

I was not one for excesses of emotion, but the Seedlings saved my life. Three years ago, I cut ties with my family, so I didn’t have much in the way of a support system. When I came into the world as a (surprise! mistake!) baby, my mum was too young to be a mother and my gran was too old to do it all over again. Growing up, I wriggled between their two homes, never belonging in either. I last saw Mum at Gran’s funeral. The two of us had a long, circuitous argument outside the ugly brick crematorium. With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, she said, ‘I can’t deal with you anymore.’ I took her at her word. In general, I assume people are better off without me.

Terrance alone had managed to pierce my protective bubble. I’d been bumping around from job to job, town to town, trying to stay clean and sober (and often failing), when I ended up in Bristol, working as a waitress in a hipster café that had swings instead of seats. At an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I hit it off with a sixty-something fellow member. He was tall and wiry, with warm-brown skin and a wardrobe of eccentric suits and hats. Terrance became my immediate confidant. A year ago, he offered me a job, helping to manage the Seedlings.

Here, every plank of wood creaked. Every floor sloped. Every railing bore a knot in the wood. The site turned into a mudslide when it rained, and you could hear the nearby A-road if you listened closely. But, to me, it was Eden. I couldn’t imagine leaving and yet…

This time next week, I’d be in a Paris arena, playing in front of 20,000 people. Every time I thought of it, my stomach did a somersault. My audition had been two months ago, but it felt like yesterday. Time was speeding forwards.

‘You want to try that chord change again?’ I asked Jaz. ‘Then we’ll be all set to play “Crush”.’

‘Yeah!’ She paddled her legs and sang the song’s hook: ‘Crush you like sugar and spice…’

*

The edge of the newspaper blackened and curled as the fire caught. I blew on it and the flame popped bright orange. Hunched over the fire bowl, I contented myself with feeding it sticks, watching it grow.

Nurturing a fire was one of my favourite things to do at the Seedlings. There was no TV, and phone signal was intermittent, which meant I had to occupy myself in other ways. I’d recently taken up wood carving (don’t laugh).

Terrance approached, his stiff gait showing his refusal to countenance a walking stick. ‘You’re missing the chorus to “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” We need an alto.’

‘Maybe later.’

The party was winding down, but a few stalwarts remained, mostly those from Terrance’s am-dram society. I could hear the singing and I imagined them stamping their feet in the living room of Terrance’s higgledy-piggledy log cabin.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. Today, his bald head was concealed by a Fedora adorned with an ostrich feather.

‘Nothing.’

He dropped onto a stump beside me. Bandit, who’d been asleep in his favourite spot under the table in the outdoor kitchen, close at hand for any scraps, was awake and sniffing around.

‘What are we going to do without her, old chap?’ Terrance said to the dog. He took one of the sticks meant for the fire and taunted Bandit with it. ‘Might have to do some work myself. Quelle horreur.’

Bandit mock-growled, pulling on the stick. Terrance was soft and gave it up immediately; Bandit scampered away, triumphant.

‘What if I stayed?’ I tried my best to pose the question casually, but Terrance saw right through it.

His eyes were solemn. ‘I’d kick you out.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘I’d pack your things and drive you to the station against your will. It would be quite dramatic. I’d make a scene.’

His eyes took on a dreamy quality; he was picturing it, the climax of a movie with him in the starring role. During forty years as a budding actor, Terrance had amassed a long IMDb page and little success. The Seedlings was his retirement plan, although he still retained a flair for the dramatic.

‘I’m serious,’ I said.

It was the height of the tourist season and all the pods were booked solidly until the end of August. During quieter times, I commandeered the treehouse, but for now I was on a fold-out bed in Terrance’s lean-to. My summer had been divided between two worlds: rehearsals in London, and busy days at the Seedlings dealing with broken taps and dirty linens and flaky yoga instructors.

‘I’m serious.’ Terrance blinked rapidly and he looked older, the furrows in his face growing deeper. ‘Stay here, stagnate. You belong out there, setting the world on fire.’

Rehearsals for Silver’s tour had been gruelling, although I liked my new bandmates, a trio of women. Lead guitar, bass, keys; Katy, Martha, Rina. I could now play every hit in Silver’s repertoire, although I hadn’t seen Alice herself since our brief encounter at the audition. The woman of the hour was on a press tour (my phone’s algorithm had offered up a snapshot of her on a talk-show couch sitting next to Leonardo DiCaprio). Her latest single, ‘Crush’, was ubiquitous, playing in shops and restaurants and blaring from people’s phones as they strode the London streets.

In an idle moment, I’d run an online search about her and the results had been dizzying:

Diva: Silver throws tantrum outside London club         

You won’t believe the insane skincare routine Silver uses to stay young

Heartbreak: SilJo’s secret marital strife

Revealed! Silver’s sexts to her Latin lover

Secret boob job? Fans scrutinise Silver’s new look

SilJo: Jeopardy Jones reveals sexy treat Silver can’t get enough of

Watch: Shock moment as sexy dancer grabs Silver’s ass

Silver unrecognisable as she relaxes at luxury Greek villa

Pregnant? Silver shows off her body in scandalous crop top

Whoever the tabloids were talking about, it wasn’t my Alice. One morning at the rehearsal space, I’d received a handwritten card from her (It’ll be like old times!), along with a tissue-paper-lined box of millionaire’s shortbread, strawberry fondants, and biscuits decorated to look like garden birds. She’d even sent a dinosaur-shaped chew toy for Bandit. I wanted to be scornful – she’d got ‘her people’ to pick it out – but, no, this was Alice building a bridge.

She’d also sent me a matchbox. When I slid it open, there was a miniature world inside. A crescent moon, silver-foiled, dangled in a sky of rippled navy satin. It was studded with crystal stars. From the first moment we’d met, Alice had always been knitting or making her own pom-poms or sewing herself a new dress. She’d made her living as a seamstress for a time, her bedroom filled with voluminous wedding dresses. She’d also gone through a phase of crafting what she called ‘matchbox worlds’ and had given me one many years ago. It had been lost to an eviction or a breakdown.

In this new iteration, beneath the foil moon, there was a felted grey dog, smaller than my pinkie fingernail. The dog’s head was cocked; I could almost hear its howl. It was touching that she’d bothered to make this, in between being a worldwide pop sensation.

Alice was fundamentally a much nicer person than I was. After the Jitterboo implosion, she’d tried to keep in touch with letters and cards. I recalled a postcard featuring a smiling sun and the words Sending you sunshine that had been forwarded on and on again. I’d never known how to reply.

Earlier this summer, for reasons unknown, she’d cared enough to track me down for the audition. Now Alice and I would be sardined together on tour for five weeks around Europe and the UK. Last time I’d been on tour, in the Jitterboo days, I’d had the advantage of being drunk the whole time. How was I going to cope sober?

I didn’t want to leave Bandit.

I didn’t want to leave Terrance.

I didn’t want to leave my veg patch.

My first pea pods ripened last week. When I shelled them, the peas inside were tiny and sweet. How could I abandon them?

‘What if everyone starts talking about Hailey again?’ I muttered.

‘Only small minds speculating.’ Terrance took on an opening-night, packed-house tone, swooshing his arms wide. ‘You are a towering sixty-foot goddess and they are ants.’

‘Noisy ants.’

‘Ant-like ants.’

Smoke from the fire bowl curled upwards. The day was dimming, shadows growing long. Bandit returned, licking his chops like he’d stolen a snack from one of the guests.

I met Terrance’s gaze. What if I relapse? What if I fail? What if everyone hates me? What if the crowd shouts fuck you, Kirby every night? I didn’t have to voice these worries; he already knew.

He put a knotty hand on mine. Bandit nosed in close.

At the beginning of the year, I’d begun going on the odd music audition (emphasis on the word ‘odd’), telling everyone who’d listen that I was doing it for fun. A hobby. A bit of an earner. Terrance alone intuited the truth. I wanted my songs to be ubiquitous. I wanted the white-hot fever of performing every night. I wanted everyone to know my name.

Being at the Seedlings brought me contentment in an uncomplicated way. But, deep down, I knew I wanted more. Not a small life. Not anymore.

‘It’s worth the risk, my dear,’ Terrance said.

Yes, it was worth the risk. And, for better or worse, I would always chase risk.

Chapter 3   

In the darkness of the arena, a thousand quivering lights from phone screens created a blanket of stars. Onstage, alone with her acoustic guitar, Silver was draped in a pearly spotlight that emphasised her silvery-blonde curtain of hair.

‘Honey…’ she sang. Despite the size of the crowd, each and every one of us was her honey. ‘What happened to sunrise?’

Rigging towered over the stage, a triptych of colossal screens at her back. She was singing ‘Summermore’, the words echoing back to her from the rapt crowd. I’d once read a critic’s review that called it a paean to lost innocence. I knew what the song was really about. The day she described had in truth been idyllic. Hailey’s final birthday, her last day on earth.

I stood in the wings. It was the fifth night of the tour, our first in Italy, and I was getting used to the show’s rhythms. Silver’s acoustic set in the middle of her show was supposed to be my chance for a break. The other members of the touring band were backstage, chugging vodka-Cokes and scoffing chocolate bars, to make it through the second half. Yet, with this song in particular, I struggled to drag myself away.

Quietly, my voice blotted out by the noise of the arena, I sang along.

Honey, what happened to sunrise?            

Picnic with flies and a smile in your eyes

Honey, come sit for a while

It’ll be the Sunday that never ends

Wish this day would last an hour more

Last a summer more, a summer more

Don’t go, just stay, just stay

For an hour more, for a summer more

Honey, pull down the sky now

Deep water like wine, you haven’t the time

Honey, what happened to sundown?

Stolen by moonlight but never quite gone

*

When I’d first met Silver, aka Alice, she’d been twenty-two, hair limp and brown, glasses slipping down her nose. After exchanging names, she’d offered me a bright green boiled sweet, wrapped in rustling cellophane, from her pocket. Alice always had sweets, I learned later, and never ate them herself. She also carried sunflower seeds for birds and treats for stray cats. There was a desperation to her need to be liked, by everyone and everything.

I slumped into the corner of a hipster studio space in Shoreditch, next to her. The floor was sticky and painted black, the walls plastered with vintage gig posters. A parade of girls, all of them prettier than me, shuffled past.

A girl band? How embarrassing. I was a tough bitch in a ripped leather jacket, singing about drugs and heartbreak. I was also twenty-four; not exactly a girl anymore.

‘What a racket,’ I mumbled.

Alice gave me a startled look. She hesitated, like she wasn’t sure whether to reply. Then she said, ‘It’s Jeopardy Jones, mind. He’s producing the whole thing.’

‘I thought he killed himself.’

‘What? No.’

I didn’t care enough to puzzle that one out – was it a different one of those rock orphans who took a dive off a bridge? – so I pulled a pack of cards from my pocket. ‘Wanna play?’ I figured that if I kept my hands and my mind busy, I was less likely to obsessively calculate how many hours since I’d had a line. (It was eleven hours. Shit. This wasn’t working at all.) I shuffled aggressively.

We played Pontoon, then Crazy Eights. Alice was either distracted or she was letting me win. Her eyes kept sliding to the door. A reedy voice singing ‘Rolling in the Deep’ drifted through it. The nerves were getting to me, too. How would I compare, when it was my turn to sing?

I always claimed I went to the Jitterboo audition as a joke, but the sad fact was: I wanted it. I really wanted it. I’d spent six years in London, rotating through bands that never went anywhere. I was so sick of it, I could scream. Jitterboo was manufactured plastic pop, but I didn’t care. Manufacture me! Make me into something worthwhile. Something, anything, was better than nothing.

‘I DM-ed him once and he DM-ed me back,’ Alice said. ‘He goes by Jones, not Jeopardy now. Said he liked my songs.’

I snorted. ‘Says that to all the girls.’ When her face froze, I regretted my comment. ‘You’ll do great,’ I said.

Jeopardy Jones – and, yes, that was the name on his birth certificate – was the only child of eighties punk-rocker Don Jones and wife Shaz. Little Boy Lost, the newspapers dubbed him, because of the world-famous photograph of him standing outside the Clement New York. Six years old, he was clutching his teddy bear and surrounded by police officers. His parents had been found dead in their hotel room, a double overdose. The press loved a ghoulish backstory. As an adult, Jeopardy Jones had ridden that fame into a string of hit records as a music Svengali.

‘Who is this man?’ Alice laid down a card. Pensive, she sucked her necklace into her mouth, the bright blue stone of the pendant caught between her teeth.

I thought she was referencing Jones, but her eyes were on the playing cards. Each one featured a serial killer. I’d got them as a gag gift last Christmas from my flatmate.

‘John Wayne Gacy,’ I said.

A girl with yellow-blonde hair and dark roots plonked herself down next to me, her elbow in my ribs. She was almost certainly queue-jumping. ‘You playing for money?’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Got any money?’

Her laugh was throaty. Her lips were bright red. Her accent was Scottish. ‘Naw, but I was hoping to hustle ye.’

Alice spat out her necklace. ‘Why would a hustler say she’s a hustler?’

‘Shit, you’re right. Deal me in anyway.’

Hailey won every hand.

*

Maybe it was fate that I ended up in Jitterboo. Maybe it was the universe’s sick joke.

A month later, Alice, Hailey and I were living in a multi-million-pound house that belonged to Jeopardy Jones, recording a raft of candy-floss songs written by ageing Swedish songwriters we’d never met. Between the three of us, we couldn’t cook a single meal. We played vintage Madonna (‘Borderline’, always ‘Borderline’) at top volume and ignored the noise complaints. We dyed our clothes in the bath once and it never lost the orange tinge.

I have never, before or since, laughed so much in my life. I was on a rocket ship to stardom and the only way was up, up, up.

*

Perfect days and mercy      

God give me mercy

Wish this day would last an hour more

Last a summer more, a summer more

Don’t go, just stay, just stay

For an hour more, for a summer more

There was a big drop and the lights went pow as Silver hit the final note.

She ended the song to rapturous screams. For a fraction of a second, I imagined it was me out there onstage, in the spotlight. Then the image fuzzed out. My jealousy fuelled a dozen possible put-downs.

Cheesy. White girl whining. Overrated. Not pretty enough. Still can’t dance. Remember Hailey Cross? Now that was a popstar.

None of it mattered. She’d done it. She’d fucking done it.

After Jitterboo imploded five years ago, I spent a long time at the bottom of the well, clawing my way out. Even down there, I couldn’t escape hearing about Alice’s rise to fame. When she went solo, Jones became her producer. She’d first hit the charts with atmospheric ballads, her high girlish voice sweetening the sadness, but her newer songs were electropop confectionary like ‘Crush’.

The papers couldn’t resist a Pygmalion love story, either: the guru falling for his own creation. Two years ago, pictures of Silver and Jones’s wedding made their way onto my social media feed. She piled a cascade of her white dress’s train into a hot air balloon. He was grinning beside her, wearing a collarless jacket, like a lost Beatle. Together, they ascended.

SilJo, fans called them. They had it all.

In the arena, I joined in with the applause, a tear escaping my eye. Yes, I was jealous – Terrance, in therapist mode, would tell me it was normal – but those feelings were overwhelmed by awe at what she’d achieved.

So far: five days, four shows, three countries. However, the fact that we were in Rome tonight seemed immaterial. We were at the centre of Silver’s universe. The crowd’s stamping feet created an earthquake. A woman in the front row was convulsing with sobs. Silver looked on, beatific. ‘I love you all so much. You make everything worthwhile.’

Her first album had sold half a million copies. The second had sold double that. She’d swept the board at the Grammys. No one here except me remembered that her name used to be Alice. She was Silver, turning platinum.

Chapter 4 

When the show was over, I stumbled off stage. Moments earlier, a puff of silver-foil confetti had dropped from the ceiling. Glitter remained seared on my vision. My ears were ringing, despite the earplugs, and my arms ached from drumming. But I could’ve sworn I was floating. There was nothing like the energy of a crowd; it was pure love.

I drifted without noticing where I was going. Every corridor of the arena’s backstage warren looked the same. Breeze-block walls washed white, speckled green floors. I wanted to pee, I wanted to sleep, I wanted pizza, and I wanted to float forever.

The corridor was packed with people. Silver, fresh from her final ovation, was at the centre, although only her feathered carnival-style headpiece was visible. There was a security guard beside her, a costume fitter unfastening the headpiece, a couple of guys in button-down shirts who had to be management types, and a woman clicking in high heels (publicist). Everyone was talking at once.

Someone handed Silver a bottle of coconut water with a metal straw. She took a sip. The crowd dispersed enough that, for a moment, I caught her eye. Her smile was tired. She opened her mouth to say something, but the high-heeled woman swooped in, blocking my view. She needed a comment because a tabloid story about Silver was going to press in a matter of minutes. The headlines I’d seen about her seemed so obviously made-up that any comment from Silver herself surely had to be irrelevant, but what did I know?

I’d thought, foolishly, that being on tour with Alice would mean I’d get to spend time with Alice. But I was a tiny cog in a great big machine. Every moment of Silver’s life was scheduled. When she wasn’t on stage, she was promoting her brand collabs or her new fragrance (Summermist by Silver). She was giving interviews to her fans around the world (Konnichiwa!). She was filming an ad for a leukaemia charity (I lost my childhood sweetheart to cancer and that’s why I want you to pledge just…). Her every need was being catered to by staff: a chef to cook her nutritious meals, a personal trainer who was famous in Brazil.

I flattened myself to the wall and let Silver’s entourage flow away down the corridor.

‘Need anything, Kiki?’ It was the coconut-water girl, with a darting gait and hunched shoulders. She was juggling two phones, her black fringe falling in her eyes as she scrolled at speed on dual screens. I’d been introduced to her earlier. It was Silver’s assistant (one of them, anyway) and her name was… Bee? Vee? Probably Bee.

What I wanted was to speak to Silver alone, but obviously that wasn’t happening.

‘Uh, know where I can find some food?’ I asked instead.

‘That way.’ She had a soft Scottish accent. When she pointed down yet another hall lined with doors, I murmured my thanks.

It was nearing midnight, but I was wide awake. The nocturnal lifestyle was just one more thing I needed to get used to. Being on tour was the modern equivalent of running away to join the circus.

In my pocket, my phone buzzed. I smiled. It was another photo from Terrance of our dear boy. During my absence, he’d already sent me pictures of Bandit sniffing a flower, Bandit in flight as he chased a squirrel, and Bandit taking a shit. Not sure why that last one needed to be immortalised. He followed the pic with am-dram gossip:

Terrance: They cast the pipsqueak as Captain Von Trapp! Fuming. My big break, thwarted again. ;) Have you talked to Silver yet?

Terrance kept goading me to ask her for advice, beg her to mentor me to success, as if it were as simple as sitting down next to her and saying: Hey, pal. I know we haven’t talked in five years, and in that time I picked up a tiny little conviction, but if you’re not too busy, could you make me famous just like you? Cheersthanksbye.

I dashed off a message to Terrance (This calls for sabotage! Laxatives in the pipsqueak’s hot chocolate?) and followed Bee’s directions. People were spilling out of a large room, juggling paper plates and beer bottles. There was a ping-pong table set up in the centre of the room, and Rina, the pink-haired keyboard player, was seated on it, cross-legged.

Once upon a time, Hailey, Alice and I had brainstormed ridiculous things we could ask for on our rider: M&Ms with every colour except green removed; twelves vases filled with red flowers; a framed picture of the Chuckle Brothers. Although we demanded table tennis as a joke, it became a recurring feature backstage at every Jitterboo show. It was funny – perhaps sad – that Alice would keep this request on her rider.

Nearby, a man flounced into a somersault. Someone else did the worm. (Dancers, man. Show-offs. That much hadn’t changed.) To my relief, I didn’t recognise anyone around me. I’d been particularly apprehensive about running into Jones, but he was apparently too busy to socialise with us mortals.

This crowd skewed young. Most of them had been at the school disco while I’d been salting and burning the scene. I grabbed a slice from one of the open pizza boxes. Rina was in full flow, telling a tour story. I didn’t need to listen to hear it. Every tour story was basically the same. There was:

Booze.

Late night.

Confusion.

Flirting/fucking/fighting.

An abundance of bodily fluids; tears, snot, cum, shit, blood.

And, in the morning, a slap-up breakfast in a greasy spoon.

A memory flashed through my mind: Hailey, in sound check at a festival, had swung her microphone on its cord so extravagantly that it hit me in the face. My nose was gushing blood, but I was crying laughing. Someone wanted to call an ambulance, but I gambolled around for an hour, popping my head through flaps in tents, surprising people with my grinning bloody face.

‘Fuck you, Kirby!’ The words wrenched me back to the present as a lolloping man in a blue baseball cap slapped me on the back.

I tensed, but he was grinning. Both his sideburns and his belly had grown bigger since the last time I saw him, but I remembered his name. ‘Pete!’

He’d been Jitterboo’s go-to sound engineer. Since then, he must have climbed the ranks. I’d heard his name mentioned a few times, seen him from afar, but not yet said hello. Pete was practically running the show now.

He seized me in a bear hug. ‘Good to see you winning the fight.’

‘What?’ I pulled away.

‘Fight against your demons.’

Was I? Winning?

I changed the subject – ‘Production manager, eh? All the stress, no glory?’ – and it was nice actually to fall back into shop talk and the easy ribbing of old colleagues. Pete had struck me as a little weird back in the day. Alice and I used to refer to him as Pervy Pete, which was either a joke or a reference to something I couldn’t remember. Still, I’d changed in the last few years; hopefully Pete had, too.

I ate another slice of pizza, followed by a piece of fried chicken. I knew from experience that I’d get sick of road food soon enough, but for now it tasted good. The head of pyrotechnics joined the conversation. He was slouching in all black, with thinning shoulder-length hair.

‘Any fatalities yet?’ I asked sardonically.

He laughed. ‘Careful, or I’ll set you on fire.’

After a year of living off-grid, mostly only speaking to Terrance and Bandit, it was overwhelming how many people I could meet on a daily basis here. As much as I loved life at the Seedlings, on tour, I was rediscovering the old Kirby. (The real Kirby?) Last night, with the help of Rina, I’d dyed my hair in a teeny-tiny backstage sink. My T-shirt had ended up splattered with red like a crime scene, but I was thrilled with the result: engine-red hair just like in the old days.

‘God, Kirby.’ Pete chomped on a chicken wing, his voice thick. ‘Like seeing a ghost.’ He swallowed. ‘It’s been, what? Three years?’

‘Five.’

‘How d’you two know each other?’ the pyro guy asked.

‘We were stuck together in a house one summer, barely made it out alive.’ Pete released a big gust of laughter. Then stopped, abruptly. ‘Well. Long time ago.’ He went back to attacking his chicken.

My mouth had gone dry. I’d spent years deliberately not remembering the summer Jitterboo had spent in a house in Perthshire, but when I was asleep, my dreams didn’t cooperate with my desire to forget. Every night on tour so far, I’d revisited the loch, moonlight glinting off its surface. I pushed the image away, recovered my smile.

‘Pete here was a maniac, used to do Gregorian chanting,’ I said to the head of pyro.

‘It’s spiritual! You should try it.’

‘No, thanks.’

The pyromaniac twisted around to grab a bottle, sloshing tequila into a shot glass. He handed it to me and poured another for himself.

I froze. He was telling an anecdote, you’ll-never-guess-what-Pete-did-in-Beijing, but my hearing had fritzed out. I muttered, ‘Excuse me,’ and pushed away through the throng. At the door, I realised I was still holding the shot, like it was nectar and I couldn’t spill it. I hesitated, then tossed it, glass and all, into a waist-high bin.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I wasn’t floating anymore but sinking. The ground was sucking at my feet, threatening to pull me under.

I’d been clean and sober for more than a year, but the cravings never went away. Nor did the feeling that my entire life might collapse if I gave in. Without noticing where I was going, I turned left, then right, then right again, looking for a place to be alone. The arena complex was enormous. I ended up in the VIP area. Following the show, there were always important people milling around. Most were money-men of some description, although some were famous, keen to bathe in Silver’s reflected glow. I brushed past an ageing movie actor, a Premier League footballer and his tiny daughter.

Head down, I turned a corner and almost collided with a scurrying figure. Bee was muttering, ‘Oh, my goodness, not again.’ When she recognised me, she said, ‘Have you seen Monty?’

I shook my head. The name was vaguely familiar, but I didn’t get her meaning. She dialled a number on one of her phones and lifted it to her ear. ‘Get Monty here. It’s happened again…’

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

Still on the phone, she didn’t reply.

Behind Bee, there was an open door. She didn’t stop me when I gravitated to it. It was dark inside the room and my first thought was there was an injured animal inside. Stupidly, I imagined I’d find Bandit mewling in the corner.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Silver was curled in a ball on the love seat, crying.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked again.

‘I’m fine.’ Her voice was barely audible.

I crouched beside the love seat. ‘OK, you’re completely fine, I can see that.’ I rubbed a circle against her hunched back. ‘Nothing wrong at all. Get this girl in an advert for multi-vitamins, she’s the picture of health.’

She snuffled a laugh. I fumbled to turn on the table lamp, which gave off a pink glow. The dressing room I shared with the rest of the band had a locker-room feel, but this space had been carefully softened with sofas and coffee tables, a pair of potted plants.

‘You can talk to me.’ When she didn’t react, I added, ‘You can trust me.’

Silver raised her eyes to look at me, her pale face flushed puce by the lamp’s glow. She didn’t say anything, but I heard the rejoinder. Can I?

The overhead light flipped on. I blinked, blinded for a second.

‘Same thing again?’ The man who strode into the room, brown-skinned, grey-bearded and bald-headed, was a rockface in human form. His flinty gaze skimmed past me like we’d never met before, when in fact we had.

Jesus, Pete was right. There were ghosts everywhere. This man, Monty, was another one.

He snapped on a pair of surgical gloves. ‘Clothes?’

In the blue-white light, I saw what I’d missed before. There was satin and lace and silk draped over the love seat, but each piece of fabric had a ragged edge. The security guard sifted through them with gloved hands. These must be Silver’s clothes. They’d been cut to ribbons.

‘Another picture?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Silver whispered.

I straightened. She was clutching a Polaroid photo. When she handed it to the security guard, I caught a glimpse of an oversized bed, replete with blush-coloured cushions.

‘This is the hotel.’ She aimed her voice at me. ‘I slept there last night.’

 ‘And the picture was tacked to the mirror?’ Monty indicated the makeup area in the dressing room.

Yes. This time, Silver mouthed the word rather than said it. A tear slid down the side of her nose.

With gloved hands, he examined the Polaroid. There was spidery green handwriting on the white strip underneath the picture, but I wasn’t close enough to read what it said.

Monty furrowed his brow. ‘We’ll put a stop to this.’

Silver released a sucking sound, visibly struggling to breathe. ‘You said that last time.’ She stood up, fast enough that she was unsteady on her feet.

My hand shot out to support her.

‘JJ? Is JJ here?’ she asked.

Bee, who’d reappeared in the doorway, spoke up. ‘The jet got in an hour ago, but we’re not sure of his location.’

Silver leaned against me, her eyelids fluttering. ‘I’d really… I’d like to see my husband.’

‘He’ll be here any second, I’m sure,’ Bee said. ‘And we’ll find you a new hotel. You’ll be safe there.’

Silver laughed, a cadence I hadn’t heard from her before: low and sarcastic. ‘Right.’

Chapter 5     

Five years ago

Hailey was the only person I’d ever known who had a true horror-movie scream. She screamed at the slightest provocation: if her sleeve got wet, if a squirrel crossed her path, if her soup was too hot. Five years ago, on the day of her death, I woke up to her screams.

There was a tiny bird trapped in the house. It was small and brown, cheeping and chattering at high speed and top volume. Hailey, Alice and I spent two full minutes running around the living room like we were in a sitcom. Don’t panic, don’t panic. Every time we opened a window or a door, birdie zig-zagged away from it.

Hailey’s hysterics turned to laughter. Soon we were all dying, collapsing on the floor. The bird flapped and fluttered above our heads, a feathered drunkard, while we laughed and laughed.

Birdie stilled for a second. I could’ve sworn it stopped to give us a scornful look before it ruffled its feathers and flew out the glass doors, gliding across the loch into the bright blue sky.

Jones appeared. His dark hair, slicked back, looked wet, like he’d just come from a swim, but he was wearing a Mod-style get-up of a slim-fit suit with Chelsea boots in black leather. He bestowed a wintry smile. ‘Mended fences?’

Our laughter curdled. I shot a look at Hailey, whose face hardened. No, we hadn’t.

The minimalist-chic living room, with its shades of white, was a mess after our bird-chase. Cushions scattered the blond-wood floor and an umbrella was splayed incongruously across the coffee table (Alice’s attempt at shooing the bird). Beyond the glass doors, on the deck that jutted out over the water, there was a collection of dirty mugs and dishes, attracting flies. This world-class recording studio, decked out like a spread in Architectural Digest, was looking more and more like student digs by the day.

Secluded in Scotland’s Rob Roy country, we were supposed to be writing and recording Jitterboo’s second album. None of the cookie-cutter pop sound of our first album; this record was going to be soulful and authentic. The three of us in harmony. Except for the tiny fact that we hated each other.

‘Ceasefire?’ Alice said, clapping the umbrella closed.

I shrugged, rubbed my nose. Jones remained in the doorway. His exaggerated widow’s peak and angular face had always reminded me of a TV vampire. ‘Ceasefire,’ I said, partly for his benefit, partly because I wanted it to be true.

‘Hey, I survived the twenty-seven club,’ Hailey said. She didn’t say it to me directly, but she gave my elbow a casual knock and it was almost like old times. When she flicked her hair, it shone gold in the morning sun.

Unlike Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and all the others, she’d made it to twenty-eight. ‘I’m a survivor,’ she said. ‘Today, I’m a god.’

‘Happy birthday,’ I said and caught her gaze for a second, hoping she’d hear the apology hidden inside my comment.

God, Hailey, I’m really fucking sorry.

*

I dangled one foot in the water, sending ripples across its mirror surface. My jaw ached from grinding my teeth, but I made an effort to relax. When I closed my eyes, the sun seared my vision red.

Beside me, Alice hummed a couple of notes and then sang, ‘It’ll be the Sunday that never ends… something something…’

‘Yeah, nice,’ I said, without opening my eyes. My guitar lay discarded on the deck.

It was actually Tuesday (or, wait, was it Wednesday?), but every day felt like Sunday here. I’d spent the entirety of July thinking it was June. August, when it arrived last week, felt like a blindside. My brown roots were growing in so aggressively that I figured I may as well return to my natural hair colour. I wasn’t eating much either, so my clothes hung off me. I didn’t quite recognise the girl in the mirror anymore.

Being here was a gorgeous form of purgatory. Surrounded by woodland, the house had a sculptural appearance, its strange undulating roof jutting out eaves like angular wings. I’m sure the architect loved it and the locals hated it. There was living space for ten people and a capacious recording studio in the basement. Sometimes it was a hive of activity – session musicians rotating through; record label execs checking up on progress – but more often, like today, it was aggravatingly quiet.

‘Sound less enthusiastic,’ Alice said.

I opened my eyes. ‘Sorry.’ Stretching out in front of me, the loch was blue-green. The water’s edge shimmered fifty metres away, the grass verge yellowing in the heat.

We were supposed to be writing songs, but I was becoming disillusioned. Anything we wrote, Jones would inevitably rip it to shreds later. (‘Were you going for an ironical naivety?’ Yes. Yes, we were.) I was about ready to shelve the idea of being authentic, in favour of singing something catchy about a Lolita fetish from the mind of a hired songwriter with a porn addiction.

The only thing that stopped me giving up was an inkling that – Jones’s opinion aside – what Alice and I were writing was good. The process might be taking forever, but this album was going to be fucking amazing.

I just had to keep it together.

‘Let’s make today nice for Hailey,’ Alice said. When she looked out across the loch, she squinted. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. There was a sweetly rumpled look to her, still in grey silk shorty pyjamas, her brown hair unbrushed.

Her comment, however, felt like a jab. ‘Look, I’m not the one with the vendetta.’

I sniffed. When I wiped my nose, there was a dot of blood on the tissue. From inside the house, I could hear the indistinct rise-and-fall of Hailey’s voice; she must be on the phone.

‘That’s a good line,’ Alice said. She sang, ‘I’m not the one with the vendetta.’

‘Better if you take out the negative.’ It was the kind of comment Jones would make. I sang, ‘I’m the one with the vendetta.’

Alice diligently wrote it down in the notebook, but the silence stretched and neither of us supplied another lyric.

‘I’ll go into town,’ she said at last. ‘Get supplies. All Hailey’s favourite things.’

Town was in fact a village, three miles away. Alice was the only one of us who went there on a regular basis, bicycling along country roads. She’d made friends with the battle-axe of a woman who ran the newsagent’s. Alice loved to be loved.

‘I could make a cake,’ I said grudgingly. ‘We have eggs, right?’

‘I’ll buy some.’ She stood up, making the boards of the deck bounce.

We were all atrocious cooks, but I was the least-worst. The cake would be a peace offering. Did it make up for everything I’d done? What if I added chocolate buttercream?

I sighed. I really did want to make things right with Hailey. Today would be a good opportunity. For that matter, today could be a new start. I could pour my last bottle of vodka down the drain; flush my coke. In a fit last week, I’d borrowed-slash-stolen Jones’s car to drive to Glasgow and see a dealer, but that was the last time. It had to be the last time.

The glass door fell shut behind Alice.

I kicked my foot in the water, tapping a beat against my bare thigh. My fingernails were glossy-black. Alice had given me a manicure yesterday, pulling loose a hangnail I’d been agitating, and shaping my nails into perfect half-moons. Yet I couldn’t resist scratching at the polish. If Alice would be gone for an hour or more, that meant I could do a line without getting caught. A couple of lines. A whole fucking bunch of lines.

I pulled my foot from the loch, splattering water as I stood up. ‘I’m the one with the vendetta,’ I sang idly, and went to find my stash.

*

From upstairs, Hailey screamed again. I didn’t react immediately, partly because it was Hailey, partly because I was woozy from the heat (and the vodka, and the coke, and the comedown). I slammed shut the oven door, leaving the cake on the top shelf to bake.

‘Hails?’ I called up the stairs.

No answer.

I yanked my T-shirt up over my face for a second to staunch the sweat. Then I dragged myself upstairs.

‘Hailey?’

Her door was open. Hailey was dressed in bike shorts, with a lime-green sports bra, but she stood like a statue in the middle of her room.

‘We need to lock everything,’ she said, without looking at me.

‘What?’

‘He’s done it again.’

Her voice was low enough that I said ‘What?’ again reflexively.

She reached for the window and pulled it closed with a bang. ‘Fucking done it again.’

The room looked like it had been ransacked, but that was the usual Hailey Cross aesthetic: drifts of clothes, dumb bells scattered in candy colours, an explosion of makeup on every surface. When I made a Huh? face at Hailey, she fumbled a pair of hot-pink knickers from the open drawer, tossing them in my direction. I didn’t particularly want to be handling someone else’s pants, so I almost dropped them, but then my fingers found a ragged edge.

Lengthways, down the material of the gusset, the underwear had been sliced open.

Hailey picked through more pairs from the drawer, examining them then casting them aside. Black, turquoise, red. All of them had been knifed.

I was still holding the pink pair, but returned it to the drawer in a hurry. Fingerprints, right? There might be evidence. ‘Leave that.’ I reached out to Hailey, but she shrugged away.

‘I liked these ones,’ she said, still sorting through her drawer. ‘But these ones was always itchy.’

‘Hailey, stop.’

She didn’t stop.

‘I’m calling the police,’ I said.

This, at last, snapped her out of her fugue.

‘What, so they can do nothing? Act like I’m making it up?’ There was venom in her voice. ‘Tell me to keep a wee diary and come back once he’s actually attacked me?’

Without any breeze from the window, the room was stiflingly hot. I sucked in a breath, but it was sticky in my throat. Not for the first time, I wished my brain provided solutions beyond ‘go get a drink’.

Over the last year, Hailey had mostly used her stalker as a funny anecdote to tell at parties. ‘So my stalker’s at it again…’ She’d arch her pencilled eyebrows, flashing a coquettish smile. First, a piece of her lingerie was stolen. Then a sex toy. She came home to find her bedroom window wide open (‘Even though I closed it’) and everything in her room pawed over. She swore someone had slept in her bed while we’d been away on tour last winter.

There was so little evidence – Sure you didn’t misplace your vibrator, babe? – and Hailey seemed so determined to milk every incident for laughter and sympathy, I was sceptical.

Yet there was no disguising the fear frozen on her face today.

‘When did this happen?’ My gaze darted to the door. A man with a knife had been here. He’d followed us all the way to Scotland. Was he gone? Could he be hiding nearby?

‘I don’t know.’ Hailey sifted a handful of knickers. ‘Top layer’s all fine, it’s just the ones underneath. So I didn’t notice right away. He could have been here a week ago or two minutes ago.’

‘Shit.’

‘Feel like my skin is crawling.’ Hailey scratched at her arms, hard enough that her fake nails left long pink lines. I felt itchy, too, my clothes chafing.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

To be a woman in the spotlight was to accept a certain amount of weirdness. Last week, two people, with matching long hair and tie-dye, had knocked on the door of the house. They wanted a selfie with the band. We were all so baffled – how had they discovered we were here? Where had they come from? – that we acquiesced. Click, click, fake smiles for the camera. They shuffled away on foot, into the woods, and we giggled about it, our laughter edging into mania, as we locked the doors and windows. It was a nice encounter – they were fans! – as long as they didn’t come back.

A knife to your crotch was way beyond a weird fan encounter, though. God, what if the tie-dye couple was dangerous after all? What if they’d upped the ante?

‘Talk to Monty, at least,’ I said.

‘Ugh, that guy. Tosser.’

Jones’s solution to the tie-dye couple’s visit was to bring a security guard up from London. He looked the part – muscles on top of muscles – but he’d made it clear he was working for Jones and not for us. Monty had given the women of the house (but not the men) a curfew and he would scrutinise us with hard eyes whenever we entered his sightline.

‘We should call the police, then,’ I said. ‘Seriously.’

Hailey turned on me, her eyes narrowing. ‘Not phoning the polis. Not over this.’

I wilted backwards a step. Hailey had been threatening to call the police on me for a couple of months now.

Chirrup.

It was her phone, loud in the airless room.

She answered the call, her voice turning babyish and whining. ‘Hi, Lewis, I’m having the worst day…’

I slunk downstairs, realising too late that the wafting smell that greeted me was the birthday cake burning.

*

When I threw the purple ball, it sailed through the air. Hailey hit it with her bat – a thwack of plastic-on-plastic – and then she rocked back on her heels, watching it fly. ‘Am I supposed to run?’

‘Yes!’ Alice and I said as one.

Hailey started with a dainty little jog, but seeing Alice fumble with the ball, she increased her pace to a sprint.

I was not privy to the coaxing on Alice’s part that had gone into persuading Hailey to come outside, eat a picnic and play rounders. Alice, though soft-spoken, was difficult to refuse. (Would you say no to Bambi?) She wanted today to be a perfect day and who were we to argue?

We were a motley crew, but everyone had assembled on the lawn beside the loch for the game. Pervy Pete, the sound engineer, was beating his chest like Tarzan. It was unusual to see him; he spent most of his time chanting in his room, a new recruit to some New-Agey religion. Jones’s assistant, Madeline, who had a shiny brown ponytail and a stompy little way of walking, was taking photos, much to the big man’s chagrin. ‘That contract from Tokyo arrive?’ Jones asked her, twice. Eventually, she scurried away, back to the basement where he kept her chained to a desk.

‘I was in!’ Hailey said.

‘Out,’ Jones said.

‘In.’ She crossed her arms. ‘Get your eyes tested, old man.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, fine,’ Jones muttered, which Hailey took for victory. She broke into a dance move from our last music video, which we’d nicknamed the thrust-and-hop. She was the only one who’d sass Jones and get away with it. Alice and I treated him like the lord of the manor. Like our careers were in his hands, which they were.

‘I made you, I can un-make you,’ Jones had once said. He was berating the three of us after we were late to a poxy radio interview – radio! Who listened to the radio anymore? – but his eyes had sparked on Hailey in particular. While Alice and I had gabbled sorrys, Hailey had shrugged, fearless.

Jones stepped up to throw the next pitch. The bat, part of a children’s rounders set from the village shop, was bright purple and comically undersized in his grip. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, his expression sardonic. ‘Get ready.’

                                                      *

After the exertion of rounders, I was feeling drowsy. Idly, I plucked a few blades of yellowed grass and let them drift away like confetti.

‘Bet I could find a league to join,’ Hailey was saying, spinning the plastic bat on the palm of her hand.

‘You should do it.’ Alice was sitting with her chin resting in the nook between her knees.

I angled myself away from the two of them, wondering if they’d notice if I slipped away. The heat had turned the sunlight smoky in the late afternoon. Our game of rounders had ended abruptly when Hailey had hit the ball so hard it went into the trees. There’d been a half-hearted search for it, then we all agreed that she’d won, which worked out, because she was the only one of us who cared.

Hailey was our Sporty Spice. Of the three members of Jitterboo, Alice and I kept our weight at the record-label-mandated level (half a stone above anorexia) in the time-honoured manner, by skipping meals. Hailey, on the other hand, was a gym fiend. She’d done MMA for six months, got bored and tried Crossfit, got bored and started weight training. Though she’d contemplated training for a triathlon, she’d decided she didn’t like getting her hair wet swimming. It was obvious her newest fad was going to be baseball.

‘You having a great day, my lovely?’ Alice asked.

Hailey’s phone beeped. She dashed off a message. ‘The best, hen,’ she said absently.

There was a chemical taint in my throat from the cocaine, but I grabbed a sliver of cake to banish the taste. Jones had gone inside, so he couldn’t give me that look that said: fat fucking pig. The cake hadn’t come out too badly, once I’d cut away the burned crust and slathered on a thick layer of chocolate frosting, drowning it in glitter sprinkles.

‘I want you to have a great day.’ Alice toyed with her necklace. ‘We could watch a movie later. You pick.’

Hailey harrumphed a laugh. ‘I pick and you have to pretend to like it. Ha. Even you.’ Her voice, directed at me, turned prickly.

I was too tired for a spat. ‘Even me.’

My gaze slid away from her, scanning the treeline. There could be a knife-wielding stalker out there. Maybe… maybe not. My old suspicions were creeping back in: it was Hailey’s birthday, she wanted attention; could she have shredded the underwear herself? It certainly seemed to have tugged on the heartstrings of her boyfriend-of-the-month. Her phone kept pinging with calls and messages from what’s-his-name. Lewis? Apparently he was on his way north for a visit.

‘This cake’s all right, isn’t it?’ Hailey dug out a hunk of it with her fingers.

I grunted, waiting for the stinger, but it didn’t come. We drifted into silence. Hailey lay down on her back while Alice busied herself tidying the remains of the picnic. There was a dead fly floating in the jug of lemonade, and a line of ants were beginning their conquest of the cheese-and-pickle sandwiches.

I waited till Alice had gone inside before I said, ‘Hailey, I’m sorry, OK?’ When she didn’t reply, I curled my fingers into the grass, unearthing a big dry lump. ‘I’d give you the money if I had it. I swear.’

She snorted. ‘Got enough money to blow it on blow, don’t ye?’

My head dropped. Alice knew about my trip to Glasgow last week, but I’d thought I’d hidden it from Hailey, Jones and the others. The official story was that I was clean.

I muttered another sorry, but Hailey broke in with: ‘My maw went to the polis yesterday.’

‘What?’

‘They’ll come knocking. On your door. You wait.’

It was one thing for Hailey to make idle threats, but if her mother had given my name to the police? Shit. This was bad.

‘Hails, please. You said we’d sort it out between the two of us.’ My hand had turned into a fist, nails biting into my palm.

‘And what’s to stop you doing it again?’

‘I’m clean. I’m… I’m getting clean.’

Harsh laughter. ‘You’re a fucken liar. A thieving bitch.’

There was the chirrup of another call and she stood up, pressing her phone to her ear.

‘Hey, babe, you still coming to see me?’ she said into the phone as she walked away. The backs of her thighs were tiger-striped with indentations from where she’d lain on the grass.

I’d thought I could fix everything. I’d thought I could make amends with Hailey. We could be a proper band again, not the cliché of three sniping bitches.

Now that seemed hopelessly naïve. I gnawed on my black-polished thumbnail. How much jail time was I looking at? If I went to prison, I’d be out of the band. Jitterboo was supposed to be family-friendly.

The water shimmered gold as the sun sank low in the sky. I needed a fucking drink.

*

Sitting on the grass was the last clear memory I had of that day. A bottle of vodka reduced my memories of the rest to flashes in the darkness.

Alice decorated the house with streamers and we gorged ourselves on the rest of the birthday cake. (Wait, did we? Girls who didn’t eat, eating a cake?)

Madeline sneaked out of her basement cell and we all piled into the house’s screening room and watched Beauty and the Beast, because Hailey was a secret Disney fanatic. (Did I remember that night in particular, or just watching Beauty and the Beast in the past?)

Later that night, I recalled looking for my remaining stash of coke, which I’d hidden for safekeeping. Gone. Where was it? I wasn’t searching for it but physically tearing my room apart. I wrenched wooden drawers from my dresser, bam, bam, bam, as they hit the floor. Who fucking stole my drugs? Hailey? How dare she?

I stormed into her bedroom, a banshee scream loaded in my throat, ready to fucking throttle her, and then—

What?

I couldn’t remember. Anger and blackness. That was all that remained in my mind of that night.

Yet, in the last few days, another memory has returned to me in dreams. It was dark, the moon a spotlight. I looked out across the water and I saw a figure standing on the far bank of the loch. Was this a memory or an invention?

As for how the day ended, here are the facts, as recounted in a hundred newspaper articles: Hailey Cross went for a late-night swim, lost her bearings, and drowned. It was her twenty-eighth birthday.

Chapter 6  

‘How long’s this been going on?’ I sank into the hotel room’s mustard-gold sofa.

Silver was flitting around the room, taking off her makeup. I was still in the outfit the stylist had given me for tonight (an orange jumpsuit; a bit too ‘prison chic’ for my taste), but Silver had swapped her stage clothes for dusky-rose sweats.

‘Since April, maybe?’ She pushed her feet into a pair of hotel slippers. ‘At first, it was just letters, but then it got…’ her voice wobbled ‘… w-worse.’

‘Worse?’

‘Shredding my clothes. Leaving Polaroids of places I’d been. Creepy little notes. Like… I can get you, anytime I like.’ She twisted her wedding ring, eyes drifting out of focus. ‘I’m restraining myself. That’s what he always says. What happens when he stops restraining himself?’

Jesus.

She shuddered, dropped into the seat beside mine on the sofa, looking out at Rome’s city lights. On the eighth floor, we were high above the big scary world, as if orbiting in a spaceship. The hotel room – actually, the suite – was painted midnight blue. Beside the red blooms of fresh flowers on the coffee table, there was a welcome basket filled with Italian goodies: biscotti, waffle-patterned pizzelle, chocolate-stuffed baci di dama.

Ordinarily, I would have savoured being surrounded by such luxury. On tour life was glamorous only for The Talent. While Silver had spent the first week travelling by private jet, the rest of us shuttled from city to city, country to country, on tour buses, kipping down in bunks. However, I’d never worried for my safety when I was cocooned in my bunk, with its hard mattress and stench of other people’s feet.

I looked around the room, unable to stop my imagination running away with me. The well of darkness within the en-suite bathroom could conceal an intruder; the glare that slanted in through the windows was red like a warning.

This was a new hotel – not the one Silver had stayed in the night before; therefore, unknown to the stalker – and Monty was in the neighbouring room. He’d been overbearing when we’d arrived, dismissing three different suite options. ‘Snipers could have sightlines,’ he’d said, in full James Bond mode.

We were safe. So why didn’t I feel safe?

‘It’s amazing what you can get used to,’ Silver said.

‘Sure you don’t want me to call the police?’ When I moved a cushion on the sofa, there was a round drop of what looked like dried blood. Probably just ketchup.

‘We have done in the past. Nice guys, but they didn’t get to the bottom of it, and then, oh, what do you know? It ends up splashed all over the tabloids.’ She winced. ‘I can’t stand the faux-sympathy. Poor little popstar. The papers make out like everything I do is so important. I’ve failed the whole nation if I gain weight or don’t say please and thank you.’

‘Never known you not to say please and thank you.’

‘When ten paps are chasing me down the road at midnight, I lose my manners.’

I nodded. I’d been a woman in the spotlight, however briefly. I’d experienced the avalanche of other people’s feelings that came with it. LoveLoveLove! Everyone wanted to be your friend! But also the downsides: a social media inbox crammed with unsolicited dick pics, hey baby turning to fuck you bitch in an instant; the threats of violence that formed an undercurrent to everyday life.

When I studied Silver, I noticed for the first time that the slight hook to her nose had been erased, not by contouring, but permanently, through rhinoplasty. Apparently, her short-sightedness had been fixed; no more glasses. Without makeup, though, she looked exhausted. Not bad-night’s-sleep exhausted but bad-year’s-sleep exhausted.

‘At least the stalker thinks he loves me,’ she said. ‘Paparazzi are in it for the money.’

She arched an eyebrow and I could see her straining to make a joke of it. Her expression collapsed. She was crying. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she murmured, swiping at her face.

I wasn’t a hugger in normal circumstances, but on instinct, I scooted closer and wrapped my arms around her. She was skinny, even by the demanding standards of women-in-showbiz. I felt like I might break her. Her usual blackberry scent – Summermist by Silver – was soured with sweat.

Letting go of her, I reached to grab the box of tissues from the table.

‘Let’s order room service. Truffle fries and M&Ms, but only the green ones.’ I was halfway kidding, halfway not. ‘A steak dinner, and a… a ping-pong table.’

‘Another time.’ Silver pressed a balled tissue into her eye socket.

I’d wanted to make her smile and I’d failed miserably. I pulled one leg up under me. This beautiful room felt airless. I guessed it was the type of place where none of the windows opened, for fear of jumpers.

‘Alice, are you OK?’

I’d been trying to mentally adjust and refer to her as Silver. Everyone else did. But, honestly, it was the sort of name you’d choose for yourself aged five. Or someone else would focus-group and choose it for you.

‘You’re catching me at a bad time,’ she said.

‘But there are good times, right?’

‘Of course. Dreamed of this since I was a little girl.’

Alice’s childhood, like mine, had been chaotic. Growing up in the Welsh Valleys, in a small town where poverty was the norm, she’d lost her father young. Her mam coped, but only just. There were other everyday tragedies, like the fate of the boyfriend Alice had nursed through a cancer battle when they were not yet twenty. The positive was that she’d begun turning her pain into music. The two of us were alike; we’d crawled into a fantasy of music stardom to escape the real world.

For the first time, I wondered if she wouldn’t be happier back in the Valleys. There might not be much money around, but she could have found someone to love her. A normal life.

Silver’s eyes were on the spaceship’s windows. ‘When you live a life like this, you accept that everything’s magnified. The good things are spectacular, the bad things are…’ She trailed off, toying with the cuff of her sweatshirt and mouthed the final word: bad.

Knock-knock-knock.

I jumped. The knock on the door had the weight of a heavy fist behind it. Silver rose, drifted to open it – not the door to the corridor but to the neighbouring room.

‘I heard something.’ Monty barrelled into the room. His eyes scanned left and right, a vein in his cheek pumping.

‘We’re fine…’

‘I’ll check.’ He swept through the suite again, room by room, the ripple of his back muscles visible through his white shirt.

When he’d finished his search, Silver pecked a kiss on the granite of his cheek. ‘Thanks for checking. Don’t forget to call your wife.’ When he grunted, she said, ‘Mel will want to know you’re OK.’

Monty’s face cracked into a brief smile. Then it was gone and so was he, back into his own room.

Silver returned to the sofa. ‘Told him he should do crafting for mindfulness,’ she said to me. ‘Monty said he preferred hitting things.’

I forced a laugh. ‘Fair enough.’

Monty didn’t seem to have changed much in the last five years, but I supposed his hard exterior was a good thing. Paranoid or not, I couldn’t stop imagining an attacker creeping through this beautiful room.

The fact of the matter was: a stalker who shredded clothing was nothing new.

‘Does it remind you of…’ I began and then stopped. ‘I’ve been thinking about Hailey.’

‘Me too.’ Silver stood up and crossed to the suite’s bedroom, disappearing inside the walk-in wardrobe. Her bags had arrived with her, but nothing was unpacked. I heard a zip, the sound of rummaging hands. When she returned, she placed a matchbox on the coffee table in front of me.

I slid it open. Curling paper leaves formed a tree and, beneath it, the diorama showed a black-and-white checked picnic blanket. The sandwiches were tiny triangles, spilling felt cheese. My heart squeezed.

‘I think about her all the time,’ Silver said. ‘She was in my dreams a few nights ago. Didn’t even know I’d fallen asleep, but I woke up and I could hear her laughing, like she was in the next room. I got up and started working on this.’

I pictured Silver at 3 a.m., under the spotlight of a table lamp, hunched over as she created tiny little worlds that were more palatable than this big bad one. I shut the matchbox in a hurry, fearing I might lose my shit.

‘I miss her,’ I blurted out.

‘Me too.’

‘Is taking a knife to someone’s clothes just a thing they all do? Or. Is it… could it be the same guy?’

‘No.’

‘What if—’

‘No.’ There were tears in Silver’s eyes. ‘It’s a coincidence. Has to be.’ Jerkily, she stood up. ‘I need to take a shower.’

I pressed my lips together. They were dry and so was my throat. I wanted to say more – what if the stalker killed Hailey and he’s back? – but Silver obviously didn’t want to hear it.

‘Still feel all itchy,’ she muttered and went into the bathroom. Moments later, I heard the rushing of water.

Chapter 7

Maybe Silver wanted me to leave, but I wasn’t going to do that. I chugged a rose lemonade from the mini-fridge (there was no booze; Silver was a good girl) and ordered truffle fries from room service. Beyond that, my knowledge of parenting was restricted to Bandit, and I didn’t think Silver would appreciate walkies or a game of fetch to make her feel better.

By the time she emerged from the bathroom, the truffle fries were cooling on the table and I was snoozing in the armchair. The TV was blaring Italian. I muted the set. Silver was in a robe, her wet hair dark, appearing closer to its natural shade.

She smiled. ‘You stayed.’

‘Can’t get rid of me.’

‘I think maybe I could sleep.’ There was a childish apprehension to the way she stood, one foot balanced on top of the other, like she was begging Daddy for one more bedtime story.

‘That’s good.’

Silver got into the enormous bed and curled up under the covers. Decorative cushions in powder blue were scattered around her and she hugged one to her chest. I flicked off the room’s overhead lights, turned off the TV, and took a seat cross-legged at the end of the bed, sinking into the dim glow of the table lamp.

‘Did I tell you I’m proud of you?’ she said with a sigh.

The compliment hit me like a punch. ‘Proud of what?’

‘You’re clean. You’re… you again.’

Oh. That. ‘Took me long enough, right?’

People meant well, but it became condescending to be praised for getting clean. Congratulations, well done, you made it to a baseline normal. I wanted to be known for creating something, not just surviving.

‘I remember that night.’ Her voice was muffled as she shifted onto her side. ‘Camden Lock.’

‘Shit, I try to forget.’

Less than a month after my audition for Jitterboo, I had a really, really bad night. I ended up at a party near Camden Lock, invited by a stranger, surrounded by strangers, our only link that we were all drunk and high. Every room in the flat had torn wallpaper and poetry scrawled on the plaster in marker pen. I’d locked myself in the bathroom, howling at the top of my lungs.

I called three different people – the guy I was seeing, a friend from the scene, my dealer – but either they didn’t answer or I couldn’t make them understand. This was it. I was dying.

I was crying so hard, there was snot in my mouth. I could taste blood, too. I’d shattered the bathroom mirror and cut myself on the glass.

I scrabbled for my phone one more time and there was her name, right at the top. Alice? Alice, help me. Please.

She came straight away, to help this girl she barely knew – a girl who wasn’t dying, who’d just snorted a bad batch of coke and was melting down. She coaxed me out of the bathroom, out of the flat. As she guided me through the crowd, I recalled her as a soldier, unaffected in the fray. She looked the same way on stage every night.

In the hotel room, Silver’s voice came out stern. Stern as a Disney princess could get, anyway. ‘You came out the other side,’ she said.

‘Yeah, I did,’ I said with difficulty. ‘I owe you a debt, an apology. I lied a lot back in those days… Wasn’t a good friend.’

She reached out, groping a hand through the darkness. She was far enough away that her fingertips only grazed mine. ‘You’re forgiven,’ she murmured.

We drifted into silence, for long enough that I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she asked, her voice drowsy, ‘Do you still write?’

‘A little.’

‘Do you?’

I cleared my throat, summoning a joke. ‘Shopping lists? Yep. Text messages? When I remember. Wrote a sign last month. Asking people to stop leaving fires unattended.’

‘That could be a song.’ Silver rolled over onto her back. ‘Unattended fires.’

‘Unattended liars,’ I said.

‘Unattended criers.’

‘Unattended desires… Damn, this is gold.’ I made a pfft sound and Silver laughed.

‘“Crush” is a crappy song, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘What? No.’

Of course it was a crappy song. The epitome of dumb pop music, with the same three lines repeated over and over again until it felt like your brain was melting. It was also a worldwide smash, so what the hell did I know?

‘Jones brings people in, you know, surefire commercial stuff. He says my songs always come out sad.’

I picked at a cuticle. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Sad doesn’t sell.’

‘Then I’m screwed.’ I puffed out a laugh.

God, Jones was an arsehole. Silver had plenty of good songs she’d written herself. What about ‘Summermore’? It was sad, but it was an anthem. Teenage girls had good reason to be jaded, and they were just now realising it. Silver’s sad-girl aesthetic was bang on, as far as I was concerned.

‘We should write a song together.’ Her voice was soft; I almost didn’t hear it. Her eyes were closed.

‘Anytime.’

I meant it. I didn’t want Silver as my mentor. I wanted her as my friend. I wanted what we’d had before.

It was only in the last few months that I’d allowed my ambition to return. This past February, that ambition had led me to book time in a studio, where I’d recorded an EP of six songs. The whole debacle had put me in debt, since I didn’t have a record label to stump up the cash. As I had no distributor, all I’d been able to do was upload the songs to one of those pay-what-you-think websites. Last time I checked, I’d received sixty-two downloads and £9.50 total revenue. The whole process had been depressing and I hadn’t written anything new since then.

Alice was right, though. I should start writing again. Even if the words didn’t come easily, it was worth the strain.

‘Tell me something good,’ she murmured. ‘Tell me about the best day. The perfect day.’

In the Jitterboo days, Alice and I used to have these types of conversations a lot, usually when we were in the car, being chauffeured long distances for a gig or an interview. Imagine we’re in another country, tell me where you’d go. Imagine it’s the last day on Earth, tell me what you’d do. Imagine you’re a ghost and you can go anywhere. Hailey hated these what-ifs and would make a big deal of putting in her earphones.

‘The perfect day? Well, it’s not doing a bunch of coke. Not anymore.’

Alice smiled faintly. ‘Good.’

I’d never had much in the way of good days while I’d been in addiction. I’d started doing lines as a way to drink all night and not fall asleep. The combo got old, quickly. Yet, sometimes, when I’d do a line, I’d get that white-hot, God-like sensation. I was still trying to find another way to achieve that top-of-the-world feeling. But, no, I didn’t miss cocaine.

‘The best day, I would… I’d wake up late. Sunshine. Find a new tomato on the vine, perfectly ripe.

‘I’m quite the gardener these days, you know. Terrance – that’s my sponsor – he runs this eco-village and it’s gorgeous. I can tramp around for hours with Bandit, through the woods. But this is my perfect day, right? Perfect. So I’ll go somewhere…

‘I don’t know… the seaside. Play on the bumper cars, go paddling. Fish and chips for tea…’

I’d grown up near Weymouth. Only tourists worried about the temperature of the sea. Even on a cold day, I loved the feel of the swell between my toes, the scratch of the sand underfoot.

‘Then, in the evening… a show.’ My imagination was growing greedy. ‘A crowd singing my words back to me. That energy. The pop, like when a fire catches. Happiness so bright, it hurts.’

‘Beautiful,’ Alice sighed.

‘What’s your perfect day?’ I asked.

Her eyes were closed. When I pressed a thumb to her cheek in a brief caress, she stirred but didn’t say anything.

The door to the suite swung open, a voice talking loud and fast.

‘We’ll hire a new investigator. That doesn’t work, I will hunt this guy down myself. Kick him in the fucking head.’

He turned on the lights. Bam, blinding. He clocked me and stopped talking. Still tall, still lean, with sharp cheekbones and that distinctive widow’s peak. Now there was grey at his temples, the furrow between his eyes cut deeper.

‘Kirby,’ he said.

Jones dressed like he’d time-travelled back to the 1960s. Slim-fit suits, paisley-print shirts, stone-coloured Harrington jackets. In pictures of him as a wunderkind music producer aged nineteen, his grandpa affect looked ridiculous. Even in his thirties, when I’d first met him, it had felt poseur-ish. But either his stylist was getting paid more or he’d aged into his chosen look, because I had to grudgingly admit that he looked good.

‘I’m going.’ I wavered to a standing position.

‘Please stay.’ Silver’s voice was reedy. I glanced sideways to see her struggling out of bed.

She ghosted across the room, pressing herself into Jones. He put his arms around her, his tall frame hunched around her tiny one as he pressed kisses to her temple.

‘She should go,’ he said.

Silver hesitated but didn’t argue.

I cut a wide arc around them, fumbling to find my trainers near the door.

‘Sleep well,’ I said, a fraction too loud.

Jones jerked his head sideways. ‘I’ll walk you out.’ His voice dropped, his lip curling. ‘Have a little chat with Kiki.’

Chapter 8      

Terrance once said to me: ‘You have complicated feelings about Jeopardy Jones.’

In fact, my feelings were simple: he was a prick.

Jones pulled the door shut behind him. The hallway was overlit, burgundy carpet on the floor and framed photos of Italy’s wineries lining the walls.

‘So you’re back.’ He over-enunciated the words. ‘Jitterboo rides again.’

‘I have to get home,’ I muttered, turning away. I said it automatically, even though my current home was a six-foot-by-three-foot bunk on a tour bus parked across town and I’d need to navigate Rome at 2 a.m. to get back there.

He ignored me. ‘For the record, I was against this from the start. You may be fooling Silver with this new-leaf act, but not me. You shouldn’t be here.’

I rounded on him. ‘Your wife’s in there scared to death and somehow I’m to blame?’

I didn’t care about the volume of my voice. Didn’t care we were in a hotel corridor. Didn’t care that it was the middle of the night. Being around Jonesy had a way of concentrating the mind.

‘I’m taking care of it,’ he said.

Sarcasm spilled out of me: ‘Sure, sure. Just like you took care of Hailey?’

‘Don’t bring her up.’

‘Feel like I’m the only one who remembers she even existed.’

‘You’re still the same troublemaker, that right, Kiki?’

Kiki was a nickname some publicist came up with in the Jitterboo days, because it was ‘cuter’ than Kirby. Cute like a lobotomy was cute. He knew it riled me.

‘I see right through you,’ he said.

We were squared up against each other and I bounced on the balls of my feet to get a little more height. Up close, I could smell him: familiar sweat and new cologne, acidic and citrusy. There was a tiny nick on his jaw where he must have cut himself shaving. A line of red. I wanted to reach out and scratch it, draw blood.

‘You don’t see me at all,’ I said. ‘Never did.’

‘You think you can ride Silver’s coattails? That’s not happening.’

‘I’m here because I care about Alice. Remember Alice? She still exist or did you squeeze her away to nothing when you gave her a makeover and a new name?’

A door opened. Alice stood in silhouette, unsteady, one foot balanced on top of the other.

‘Please stop.’ Her voice strained. ‘Please.’

He went to her, his tread heavy as he crossed the corridor. Bile burned the back of my throat. I couldn’t even get out the words to say goodnight to Alice. Instead, I stalked away.

Jones called after me, ‘Get a room, Kirby. Charge it to my account. Don’t want you martyring yourself by wandering around Rome all alone.’

When I glanced back at them, Jones was holding Silver’s face, gazing at her intently. There was something lizard-like about it; his tongue was going to flick out. She was a fly and he was going to consume her.

At the end of the hall, my hands were shaking as I hit the button to call the lift.

Jesus Christ. I couldn’t stand him.

When I recall my own relationship with Jones, it’s hard to believe it ever existed at all. It was breakfasts and breakfasts and breakfasts and sex and then a screeching halt. He was never my Prince Charming.

*

It was perhaps three months after the first audition with Alice and Hailey that Jones arrived on the doorstep of the Jitterboo house. It was Sunday, 8 a.m. He was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt under a rumpled grey suit jacket. He obviously hadn’t slept. Neither had I. Scarcely before I could say hello, he was chuntering about us being six weeks behind schedule. (For what? What schedule? And who cared? And what did it matter?)

I stretched, vaguely aware I wasn’t wearing a bra under my FRACAS! T-shirt. ‘It’s Sunday,’ I said through a yawn. ‘You want to buy me breakfast?’

‘Fine,’ he said, with a trace of a sneer.

The only hint it was anything more than breakfast was the fact that neither of us considered waking up Hailey or Alice, plus the way Jones’s gaze kept dipping in the direction of my nipples.

‘Why don’t you sleep.’ At the café, I was too tired to insert a question mark. When I lifted my coffee to my lips, it burned my tongue.

‘Rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.’ He raised an eyebrow, then his whole face drooped. ‘I work too hard. That’s the reason I’m getting divorced.’

I vaguely recalled from tabloid gossip that Jones’s wife was named Zoe and she was a model (of course).

‘Shit, I’m sorry.’

The chatter of other early birds around us bounced off the exposed brick behind me.

‘Ha. Spoken by someone who’s never been divorced. A divorce is always a relief.’

‘Always? How many times have you done it?’

‘Feels like a dozen. But you’re right. I should reserve judgement till I rack up wives two and three.’

‘Have you thought about polygamy? Just for time efficiency.’

He laughed and it hit me like a beam of sunlight; hearing his real laugh, not the condescending snigger he’d force out on a usual day. He’d shrugged off his jacket and he looked more normal than usual, less ‘styled’. More handsome, too.

‘Having one wife just about killed me. Never doing that again.’

‘Oh, spare me. The lone wolf.’ I fluttered my fingers, eyes rolling. ‘Can’t pin him down.’

I could smell bacon frying. My hangover was easing, the itch to drink again not yet creeping in.

‘Ouch,’ he said, ‘I’m that much of a cliché?’

‘Don’t worry, Jonesy, women love clichés.’

He reached for the menu but ended up brushing my bare arm. We lingered like that for a second too long. Skin on skin. A pulse of electricity.

He swallowed. Flicked open the menu. ‘Do you want to share a breakfast feast platter?’

‘Oh, we’re there already, are we?’

‘Maybe.’

I licked my lips. ‘If we share, you need to actually share.’

‘I’m a sharing, caring person. You should see how much money I’m giving my ex-wife.’

I laughed. God, we were flirting, weren’t we? Or was I his therapist? So hard to tell sometimes. Either way, I was enjoying it.

A bloke in a bucket hat stomped towards the counter, making our table shudder. I scarcely noticed, because I was in a bubble. One of those bubbles that appear like magic when you like someone, everything outside its membrane fading to a pleasant blur. Inside the bubble, the world is bright and saturated and filled with laughter.

A few months ago, I’d broken up with Frankie, my sometime boyfriend: slight-framed, needy, a tender dove (tender, and cheating on me). Jones, by contrast, oozed self-possession. Was pursuing the boss ever a good idea? No, but when had I let that stop me?

‘This is fun, isn’t it?’ he said to me later, in his bed, which was built up on a podium so it seemed to float. He meant it in a don’t-get-attached way, but in that moment I didn’t care, because it was fun. I sank into the bed, into a kiss, into him.

For a while, Sundays were our day: meandering down the road to the café that opened early, his hand on my hip, on my waist, the casual ownership of intimacy. We didn’t hide our relationship from Hailey and Alice, but we didn’t flaunt it either.

It’s embarrassing, but I looked forward to those breakfasts. I enjoyed trying to shock Jones: dark musings, dirty jokes. I enjoyed even more the fact that he was never shocked. We played footsy under the table and ate off the same plate. I leaned in and kissed the nick on his jaw where he’d cut himself shaving. It was just the two of us, together, in a bubble.

What do bubbles do? They pop.

The final Sunday, I actually slept instead of staying up all night, so I wasn’t awake when Jones arrived to take me to breakfast.

I heard the creak on the stairs that led up to my attic room. I sat up in bed, naked and disoriented. There was a weight on me. This man-boy curled beside me had a mop of brown curls, a lean torso, a mole beneath his eye like a comma. What was his name? A nickname – Bingo? ‘I’m not fucking someone named Bingo,’ I’d said, but I’d done it anyway.

The bedroom carpet was littered with M&Ms. As Saturday’s party had wound down, Bingo and I had retreated upstairs, pelting each other with sweets as part of a game I no longer remembered how to win. Jones crunched one as he stepped over the threshold.

I love you, I thought, still half asleep, still half insane.

I stumbled out of bed and crossed the room. ‘Hi!’ When I kissed him, he recoiled. The room smelled like sweat and sex and other people.

‘What’s this,’ he said. Not a question. He knew what it was.

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I said.

‘Just a bit of fun, right.’ One of his eyebrows quirked, but again, there was no question mark. We were over. Dead and buried.

‘Yeah, just fun,’ I muttered, curling my toes against the carpet, confectionery glued to my arch.

Chapter 9

On an average day, walking through the set-up for one of Silver’s shows was more akin to visiting a construction site than an arena. The soundtrack was the beep-beep-beep of a cherry picker manoeuvring. People in hard hats scaled the rigging, dangling twenty metres overhead.

The stage show was an engineering marvel, torn down and rebuilt each day in a new city. The pyrotechnics, the fly wires, the space for a somersaulting band of ten dancers – none of it happened by accident. Ten lorries and eight tour buses ferried almost a hundred people, plus a metric fuck-tonne of trusses, lights, sound systems, video screens, wardrobe and more. Jitterboo’s stage shows had been modest, shambling affairs compared to this.

‘Clear!’ someone yelled. Monty, who seemed to reserve a special glower just for me.

‘Yeah, that means get out the fucking way.’ He advanced, pushing me aside as a group of burly blokes in hi-vis unloaded steel trusses.

The force of his shove – unnecessary, surely? – reverberated through my shoulder as I flattened myself against the rough wall of the arena. Without another word to me, Monty swaggered away.

Rubbing my shoulder, I mooched through the double doors into the maze of backstage corridors, wondering if it was too early for catering to have prepared dinner. Today, we were in Berlin, although I really only knew that because there was a handwritten sign taped to the green-room door that read, We are in Berlin!!! Once you reached week two and the fugue state of tour set in, every arena looked the same.

‘Kiki!’ Bee was racing towards me, with fairy lights draped over her shoulders.

I tensed at the nickname but saw no malice in her expression.

‘Talk to you a minute, Kiki?’

 ‘Sure, just… stop calling me Kiki.’ I smiled to soften the statement. ‘Gives me hives.’

Bee’s eyes widened into the type of stricken look that only exists in people with an ultra-sensitive dial on their did-I-do-something-wrong meter. ‘Sorry, in my fan groups, we always called you Kiki.’

She slipped through an open door and I followed her inside. The room was windowless, with cinder-block walls, but incongruously, it boasted a billowing ceiling of purple silk. Floor cushions in pastel colours covered up the cheap tile floor.

‘Jitterboo fan, huh?’ I asked.

Bee nodded eagerly.

‘Well, I go by Kirby.’

‘Sorry.’

I waved away her apology. ‘What’s up?’

 ‘I don’t mean to bug you, but you need to wear your lanyard. At all times.’ She pulled from her pocket a laminated badge, which dangled on the end of a bright pink loop.

I slipped it over my head. ‘Right, OK.’

Security had been tightened in the last few days, but I was prone to leaving my lanyard in my bunk. Silver’s travel plans were now cloaked in secrecy for her own safety. The record company had forced every venue on the tour to hire additional security guards, many of them in plain clothes. At each arena, there were more checkpoints, more bag searches, a confusing zoning system that required the correct lanyard if you wanted to get into certain backstage areas. (Some security guards just waved me through; others pretended not to recognise me, just to be dicks.) I’d even glimpsed sniffer dogs on patrol around the arena perimeter. Disappointingly, you weren’t allowed to make a fuss of them.

‘Don’t let this get out, but…’ Bee’s brown skin looked sticky with sweat, fringe swept off her face. She was coiling the lights in her hands. ‘Silver received another letter. It’s from the same guy. It’s pretty dark.’

‘How dark?’

‘Threat to life.’

Despite the jargon, my insides clenched. This maniac wanted her dead.

‘The investigator’s doing an analysis,’ Bee was saying, ‘see if they can get fingerprints off the paper, but… well, everyone needs to stick to security protocol.’

‘Got it.’

With all these new security measures, Silver had to be safe, right? The last time I’d spoken to her was at the hotel in Rome. Every time I’d seen her since then, she’d either been performing or mobbed by an entourage. This wasn’t the same as Hailey in a remote house. Silver was surrounded by people at all times. Nothing to worry about.

I stood awkwardly next to an arch of fake flowers which framed a pink neon sign spelling out Silver’s Sirens. ‘Need help with anything?’ I asked Bee.

‘An hour and it’ll be chaos in here,’ she said, mopping her brow.

Before every show, I knew there was a meet-and-greet, although I’d never attended one. For an eye-watering fee, it was your chance to eat stale cake and take a selfie with Silver.

‘Tell me what to do,’ I said.

While my job involved a lot of downtime, I’d never seen Bee in anything except whirling-dervish mode. I’d wondered if her nickname was a bad joke, like busy-bee, but I’d found out from one of the roadies that her full name was Bijali.

On the trestle table, a hundred laminated snapshots of Silver sat in a pile. Holy shit – I glanced at the top one – here was Silver with Madonna. Sure, that was no big deal.

I picked up Madonna. ‘These go on the walls?’

Bee relaxed into a smile. ‘Cheers, hen.’

Her Scottish accent was soothing. Hailey always spoke with a broader, dinnae-give-a-fuck inflection, but I still heard an echo of her in Bee. It made me miss her.

*

Forty minutes later, I slumped onto one of the floor cushions for a rest. ‘I’m feeling bad, because you obviously work ten times harder than the rest of us.’

‘Oh, I love it,’ Bee said.

I bit back the urge to say, yeah, but not really? Unlike me, she had not stopped for a break. She was lighting scented candles, which wafted a vanilla cupcake smell.

‘How long have you been Silver’s assistant?’

‘I left home in May, sooo, three months?’

I nodded.

‘Y’know…’ Bee hesitated, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, and continued in a rush, ‘“Crazy Daze” was my favourite song when I was sixteen. Played it every day. Played it so much, my music app sent me a wee message, like, “Are you OK? Try listening to a different song, ye freak.”’

I chuckled. ‘It didn’t say that.’

‘Something similar.’ Bee ducked her head.

For the record, I always hated Jitterboo’s one and only hit, ‘Crazy Daze’, which Jones wrote and produced. It was truly a new level of inane. I heard it playing in Greggs a couple of months ago and I had to leave without getting my sausage roll.

‘I know people think meet-and-greets are daft, but when you see how much it matters to the fans… Best part of the job.’ Bee was unboxing a range of sweet treats: blondies and macarons and smooth chocolate teacakes speckled with colourful stars.

She checked her watch. ‘Twenty minutes. Then it’s pure bedlam.’

‘So sit down and take a break.’ I patted the cushion next to mine. ‘Have some cake.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I shouldn’t.’

Bee was plump, but it made her prettier. I wished I’d known – how old was Bee? – in my early twenties that skinny was not the only way to be beautiful.

‘Come on. They won’t miss it.’ I was already reaching up to grab a salted fudge brownie.

She hesitated but picked out a red velvet cookie and folded herself into a sitting position across from me.

‘Which part of Scotland are you from?’ I asked between bites.

‘A wee town near Glasgow.’

‘Family live there?’

‘Uh-huh, aye.’

‘And what were you doing before this?’

Bee put a hand over her mouth as she chewed and swallowed. ‘Microbiology.’

I burst out laughing. ‘Not really?’

‘My papa was a scientist. He trained in India and then he had to train again when he moved here. It was very important to him, me following in his footsteps.’ She gestured to herself. ‘Only child, isn’t it? Lots of pressure. They thought me working for Silver was… frivolous.’ A cloud passed over her face. ‘I had to convince them.’

‘They’ll come around,’ I said. ‘Be proud of you. Making your own way in the world.’

Bee didn’t reply. Frowning, she finished her cookie and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag.

‘The music industry,’ I said sardonically, ‘disappointing parents since nineteen forty-seven.’

She sneaked a cigarette from the packet and then appeared to think better of it, giving me a sidelong look like I might reprimand her. It was hardly the most outrageous thing I’d seen backstage at a gig. The cigarettes disappeared back into her bag.

In halting tones, Bee told the rest of her story. She’d spent a year writing fan letters to Silver. It was a thrill and a delight when Silver wrote back, not just notes but long letters. I knew Alice well enough to know that she would have sent little gifts, cookies and cards and matchbox dioramas. That was Alice. She loved to be loved.

When Silver’s last assistant had left in May, Alice suggested Bee might be suited to the job.

‘My family didn’t like the idea of it.’ Bee released a breath, her expression faraway. ‘But it felt like… like the moment. The moment in the movie where the music swells.’

God, we were all lost in the fantasy, weren’t we? How could real life compete?

‘Dream come true.’ Bee shook her head, gave an embarrassed laugh.

‘I guess Silver was always your favourite?’ I said. ‘From Jitterboo?’

‘No, Hailey was my favourite.’

The words hit me in the gut. A piece of brownie I’d half swallowed lodged in my throat. Bee didn’t seem to notice my reaction.

‘I remember going to some local TV studio,’ she said, ‘miles from Glasgow, just ’cause Jitterboo was there. Wee dreich day. Waited outside in the freezing cold for three hours to meet you all.’ She winced, but I could tell it was a happy memory. ‘Wanted to breathe the same air as my favourite band, like that would solve all my problems.’

‘Did it?’ I too was still hoping, against all odds, that music would solve my problems.

‘No, but it was still great.’

Bee slipped her phone (one of them) from her pocket, scrolling until she found a photo. It had to be from six years ago, because I had a green streak in my hair (terrible idea). Bee was grinning in the foreground, Alice a blur over her shoulder, with droopy-eyed me looking out of frame. Hailey was the only one of us posing. Her mouth was open, her teeth gleaming. She’d got veneers sometime that winter – I remembered that, although I didn’t remember this Glasgow TV station gig, let alone meeting Bee.

It did bring back memories of my own youthful fandom, when hearing a certain song could turn my whole day around. The further you got into the music business, the more clinical everything became. A track was engineered for airplay; catchiness turned into a science. You met your idols and learned they were boring or smelly or strange or (worst of all) human just like you.

I’d lost something, when the idea of meeting my favourite musician stopped making me weak at the knees.

One of Bee’s phones rang. She jumped up. Back to work. ‘OK, go for meet-and-greet room. Bring them in.’ I clambered to my feet. While the room filled with people, I retreated to the back wall. I knew I should leave, but I lingered.

I’d assumed they’d all be teenagers or children, and many were, accompanied by bearded dads and harried mums. But I also spied a few twenty-something couples with tattoos, wearing too-cool-for-school expressions they couldn’t maintain. There was even a trio of fifty-something women, heads bowed together as they whispered exclamations, looking girlish despite the grey in their hair.

Unexpectedly, emotion welled up inside me. I was still thinking about Hailey. The music industry had caused me so much heartache. Yet, right at its beating heart, I believed music was a force for good. It meant something, to love a singer so much it sent you giddy.

Someone tugged on my arm.

Assuming I was in their way, I wriggled backwards, flattening myself against the breeze blocks.

There was another tug. ‘Are you Kirby Turner?’

I twisted to look at the woman who’d spoken. Her German accent was almost imperceptible. She had the unbrushed hair and tailored jacket of a yummy mummy. Turning to her friend, she said, ‘Heilige scheiße, es ist ihr.’

‘Kirby! I really like that one song.’ Her companion was dolled-up and tottering. ‘“Rain…”’ She snapped her fingers. ‘“Rainwashed”.’

I shuffled on the spot. I was smiling, but my teeth felt too big for my mouth. ‘Rainwashed’ was one of the solo tracks I’d put online. She must be among the sixty-odd people who’d downloaded it. Without asking, the yummy-mummy pulled me towards her and snapped a selfie.

My five minutes of fame didn’t even last that long, because a voice in the crowd broke out:

‘SIE IST HIER.’

The words echoed, as others repeated them. She’s here, she’s here, she’s here.

The crowd turned as one to see Silver, flanked by Monty and another security guard, entering through the door. People surged forward – ‘Hey, hey now,’ Monty said, ‘stay in your queue’ – and I was forgotten.

Still, a tingle remained. The white-heat of adoration. Someone had listened to my song and liked it. That was something.

Across the room, Silver was crouching down to make eye contact with a swooning six-year-old girl. ‘Oh, my goodness, look at your T-shirt!’ she said, admiring an outfit adorned with sticky gemstones and the word Silver looped in fabric paint. When the girl began to cry, Silver cradled her.

Bee appeared at my side, her expression pure heart-eyes emoji. ‘You’d hate her if she wasn’t so lovely, wouldn’t you?’

‘Mmm,’ I said. For the people in this room, today’s meet-and-greet wouldn’t solve all their problems, but the memory of it would be a talisman they’d hang onto.

I floated to the exit. In my daze, I almost ran into a man. He looked like a dad type, standing with his arms crossed, his ginger beard unkempt. I groped for the correct word from my schoolgirl German: ‘Entschuldigen.’ I slid past him.

I was out the door before I registered his parting shot, in English so that he could be sure I’d understand.

‘Fucking bitch killer.’

Chapter 10

Have you seen this? Terrance texted me.

Yes, unfortunately, I’d seen it.

The online discussion thread was titled: Killer Kirby on tour with Silver.

There were photos of me circled in red on stage behind the drum kit, plus a blurry fan pic of me standing outside the venue near Silver. I was scratching my head, but according to internet sleuths, I was ‘staring menacingly at Silver and poised to take a swing’. The ginger beard at the meet-and-greet was not the only one with something to say. Now that two-thirds of Jitterboo were touring together again, The People had theories.

To pour fuel on the fire, Hailey’s sisters, Kristy and Emma, had seized the opportunity and given yet another podcast interview, insinuating my involvement in Hailey’s death. The sisters were both younger than Hails, although with the same bleached-blonde hair. Kristy did waxing, Emma had a young son – or maybe it was the other way around. I only met them once, stumbling through a series of Glasgow bars on a night out with Hailey. I couldn’t even hate them for spreading rumours. They had good reason to resent me.

Actually, I could hate them just a little bit. I’d deleted my social media a year ago, but when I pulled up my online song catalogue, it was spammed with comments

Killer Kirby bought her way onto Silver’s tour so she could finish what she started with Hailey

Fucking psycho

Someone lock this girl up

No one ever needed a toaster in the bathtub more lmao

Kill yourself

Kill yourself

Kill yourself

On the bright side, the number of people who’d downloaded my songs had ballooned to 788. Woo-freakin’-hoo. Global superstardom was just around the corner.

It wasn’t only people online who were suspicious of me. Maybe it was my paranoia, but I’d noticed my crewmates had grown wary of me over the past two days. Usually, when we all emerged blinking from our bunks to find ourselves in a new city, we’d while away the hours grazing on junk food, playing card games, and bombing around the arena in golf carts. Today, when I proffered a pack of cards, I received only blank stares. Everyone was busy. No one wanted to chat.

I overheard Rina talking about me: ‘She loves the drama, though.’

My face burned. No, babe, I categorically do not love it.

I ended up seated alone in the back row of the arena in Amsterdam, hunched over, using the point of a knife to dig flakes of wood out of the ears of a thumb-sized rabbit. Mid-afternoon, before soundcheck, Bee approached me.

‘Are you whittling?’ she asked.

I looked up from my task. ‘Yeah.’ It was a perfectly normal thing to do when you lived in an eco-village.

‘Sharps in the arena are not a great idea,’ she said, in a tone reserved for reasoning with lunatics.

‘Oh…’ I put my knife and rabbit away.

Bee pulled down the plastic seat next to mine and lowered herself into it, surveying the empty arena. In the distance, a cherry picker went beep-beep-beep. There was the clang of rigging as roadies scurried back and forth like ants far below on the arena floor.

‘I wanted to check.’ She gave a wincing smile. ‘You’re happy to do a call with the publicist?’

My voice dropped an octave. ‘Why?’ (I knew why.)

‘The rumours.’

I didn’t reply.

‘Listen, hen,’ Bee said, ‘it’s a joke. It’s a meme. Ninety percent of the people talking about it are making fun of it.’

‘That means ten percent believe it.’

Bee puffed out a breath. ‘No one actually thinks you’re going to kill Silver.’

The statement was so absurd that I had to laugh.

Her face relaxed. ‘The publicist will put out a statement and that’ll be the end of it.’

I nodded. My hand was in the pocket of my leather jacket. I ran a finger along the plastic cover of the blade.

‘It’ll all blow over,’ Bee said in a bracing, buck-up-kid tone.

Yes, I could wait for this shitstorm to pass. It would pass. People would get bored, find something else to gossip about. Except it had been five years and still the rumours kept returning, again and again, virulent as herpes.

‘Hailey hated to get her hair wet,’ I blurted out.

‘What?’

‘She wouldn’t have gone for a lovely little night-time swim.’ My hand tightened around the handle of the knife in my pocket. ‘“Hailey Cross lost her bearings and drowned.”’ I parroted the line I’d read over and over in newspaper accounts. ‘Lost her bearings. What does that even mean?’

Seeing the results of the stalker’s activities in Rome had echoed Hailey’s final day in a disturbing way. I kept dreaming about that night at the loch house, the strange figure whose identity was just beyond reach.

‘Why was Hailey out there?’ I said. ‘She hated swimming. Why did we just accept it all?’

Bee released a few stuttering words – ‘Kirby, I don’t… I’m not’ – but I didn’t want to hear them. My eyes were hot, my heart was thudding. I didn’t want her to see me cry. I stood up, the fold-out seat whipping upwards with unexpected force, and took the concrete steps downwards two at a time.

Due to the security measures, the only open route to the tour buses was through the venue. I navigated half-blind through the backstage corridors.

‘You OK?’ Someone – Pete – asked.

I waved a hand. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

The lights overhead were too bright. There was a whoosh of air as a person on a push scooter sped past me. When I turned a corner, I ran into a security guard. He checked my lanyard and waved me through the double doors.

Blocking my way was a knot of crewmates. They appeared as blobs, rather than as people. A high-pitched laugh grated at my nerves. Ee-hee-hee! Ee-hee-hee! Laughing at me, they must be. (Fucking bitch killer, fucking bitch killer.)

I elbowed past the throng. I wanted my bunk, but more than that, I wanted peace and quiet. To my left, there was an open door. Inside, a dozen racks, a crush of clothing. Silver’s show required so many costumes – for the star herself, for her dancers, for her musicians – that a lorry was required to transport them all from arena to arena. I’d never been in the wardrobe room before, but a quick scan of its innards told me it was empty.

I ducked inside, slamming the door shut behind me so hard, my fist struck the doorframe. The old cravings came roaring back to me. All I wanted was a drink, something to make life softer at the edges. This world, this one right here, with its noise and its glare and its casual cruelty, it was too much. How did anyone stand it?

The racks of clothing pressed in close. When I dropped to my knees, it was like being swallowed by fabric. Taffeta scratched my bare arms, sequins poked through the holes in my jeans.

I howled, a puff of pink organza muffling my pain.

Five years. Five years of this shit. Five years of Killer Kirby. Five years of hiding away, hoping no one would bring up the past. Now it was laid bare and everyone had an opinion about me. Meanwhile, a stalker remained on the loose. And nothing about Hailey’s death made sense.

I wanted to punch a hole through the wall. I wanted to crack a window, to splinter the whole world into pieces. Fuck. Fuck everyone. Fuck everything.

‘Chica… hermosa chica…’

The voice made me freeze.

In my fit of rage, I’d knocked over a whole rack of clothes. Now I was drowning in feathers and velvet. I could taste blood where I’d bitten my lip and broken the skin.

A figure emerged from the racks of clothing. There were tears in my eyes, so it took me a second to place the man who stood before me.

‘What is wrong?’ he asked.

‘Shit, sorry,’ I muttered. When I scrubbed a hand across my face, my fingers came away sooty with smudged eyeliner and mascara.

Diego Riva was one of Silver’s dancers. He had a 90s boyband look: tanned skin and brown corkscrew curls shot through with highlights. We were neighbours of sorts, our lives packed into bunks on the same tour bus, but I’d never done more than exchange pleasantries with him. I certainly didn’t want him to see me having a breakdown. Standing up, I disentangled myself from a jacket that was wrapped around me like tentacles. With a clang, I pulled the rail closest to me upright again.

Why hadn’t he called out the minute I’d shut the door? It would have been good to know I wasn’t, in fact, alone. For that matter, what was he doing in the wardrobe room?

‘You are hurt.’ He had a smooth Spanish accent. Angling his body sideways, he thrust his way down the makeshift aisle between the racks.

‘I’m being stupid,’ I said.

Diego took my hand. For the first time, I noticed my knuckles were red from where I’d punched the doorframe.

My rage was congealing into embarrassment. God, I hadn’t been angry like that in years. I’d let go of old resentments when I’d got clean. I’d even written a letter – Dear Anger, I’m done with you – and thrown it into the fire at the Seedlings, watched it curl and burn.

Diego was still holding my hand, examining my wounds, his thumb making a featherlight sweep across my knuckles. The gentleness of his touch made me want to burst into tears all over again. I pulled away, breaking contact.

‘I should go,’ I said.

‘Wait. I have something.’ He slipped a hand into his pocket, making a rustling sound. ‘Pick you up.’

My heart dropped. I did, I wanted a pick-me-up, a line of coke, a chance to become someone else for a few minutes.

‘Nope, I don’t want that,’ I lied.

With a flourish, he produced a lollipop. ‘You don’t want?’ A cute little furrow appeared between his eyes.

Oh. OK. A laugh forced its way out of my mouth. ‘Go on, then.’

I grabbed the lollipop, unwrapped it. Choco-banana. The first taste was a time machine back to the school playground. It made me feel a little better.

When I reached for the door handle, Diego fussed in and opened it for me, showing either chivalry or concern I might still be injured. A barrage of noise in the corridor – someone belting out ‘Crush’, the ee-hee-hee laughter – rushed at me. It set my teeth on edge, but I sucked hard on the lollipop and tried to remain calm.

‘I have heard something about you,’ Diego said, falling into step with me as we walked the corridor.

Fucking bitch killer? My voice was flat: ‘Oh, yeah?’

‘You are professional at table tennis.’

I snorted a laugh. ‘Hardly.’

Diego fitted a lollipop into his own mouth. ‘I think you are a liar.’ His eyes, a greenish-hazel hue, were guileless. ‘A hustler.’

‘Right, I’m a hustler.’

His smile showed white teeth. ‘You want to play?’

A couple of audio guys bustled down the corridor. I could feel them rolling their eyes at me. She thinks she’s so important.

‘Another time,’ I said to Diego, brushing his arm in a goodbye.

I was still feeling shaky from my rage fit. The minutes were ticking down until I was due on stage for soundcheck. I swiped at my panda eyes. I needed to get in the zone for tonight’s show, but my mind remained full of thoughts of Hailey.

I was increasingly sure that her death wasn’t some inexplicable tragedy. She wouldn’t have gone for a swim, which meant someone must have put her in the water. Made it look like an accident.

I’d never allowed myself to consider the idea that the conspiracy theorists were correct about the strange circumstances of Hailey’s death. Obviously, the finger of suspicion had always been pointed at me. It was easier to call the online sleuths crazy than to admit they had a point. What if Hailey really was murdered?

A chill prickled up my spine. If it was true that someone killed Hailey, it could also be true that the culprit was back. Silver’s stalker – he wasn’t just a stalker. He was fully capable of going further. It was only a matter of time until he stopped restraining himself around her.