Polly Courtney - The Fame Factor

‘Are you going outside?’ Eric, her annoying neighbour, asked loudly. Several heads turned. ‘Can you get me a Coke?’

‘Ooh, Zoë, can you buy me a sandwich?’

‘Will you be going anywhere near a newsagent?’

Zoë pulled an apologetic face. She didn’t want to admit that she’d be gone for a full hour. Hour-long lunch breaks were frowned upon, especially during January.

‘I’m, er…I’ve got to run a few errands,’ she explained. ‘Sorry.’

‘Is that a guitar?’ asked Eric, even louder, as though wanting his colleagues to appreciate his powers of perception. There was something about the pointy-faced auditor that Zoë found exasperating. He managed to turn every conversation into a competition.

‘Oh, er, yes.’ Zoë looked down at the case. ‘That’s the, um, the errand. Gotta drop it off somewhere.’

A minute later, the revolving glass doors spat her onto the pavement and Zoë fled north, towards the barren wasteland of Shoreditch.

Ellie, it turned out, was running late. Ellie was usually running late. Her whole routine, if you could call it that, was set in a fluid version of time: one that was infinitely stretchable and infinitely compressible. Sometimes, she was early. Very occasionally, her clock coincided with Greenwich Mean Time and she arrived at a place exactly when she was supposed to. Most of the time though, Ellie was late. The only other person on the planet who inhabited the same time zone was Ellie’s boyfriend, Sam.

Sam and Ellie lived in a caravan by one of the Thames’s tributaries that ran through Hackney. Purchased five years ago from a group of travellers, the shack had initially served as a summer stopgap; a place to stay during the two months between first-year halls and their second-year student house. As it turned out, neither Ellie nor Sam made it as far as second year. Sam had been offered a choice by the college: to repeat his first year or to relinquish his place on the design course – which, truth be told, hadn’t taught him much other than how to design the ultimate spliff – so he took the easy option and walked out. Ellie decided that she liked the vibe in the music shop on Denmark Street, where she had found herself working that summer, and dropped out as well. Five years later, Ellie was still at the shop, still living in the caravan with Sam, still smoking weed for breakfast.

‘Hi!’ cried Ellie, skipping across the road in front of a car, seemingly oblivious to its screeching emergency stop. ‘Sorry I’m late!’

The car zoomed off, its driver glaring angrily at their embrace.

Zoë checked the time on her phone as Ellie let them in. ‘I’ve got about forty-five minutes. I had to tell work I was running an errand.’ She pulled a face.

Ellie smiled placidly. She had no idea about the pressures of corporate life. Fortunately for her, at Desmond’s Strings there was no sneaking around behind colleagues’ backs, no faking enthusiasm for mind-numbingly dull tasks, no bullshit. Ellie enjoyed stringing guitars and chatting to the Led Zeppelin enthusiasts who passed through the doors of the shop. In fact, it was thanks to Desmond that they had this pseudo-rehearsal studio at their disposal.

They messed around with the fragments of vocals that had been floating around Zoë’s head for the last few days. We say we will, we say one day / There’s never time, it runs away / The beat, it’s here, but do we care / We’re out of time, we’re out of air …

Zoë felt herself loosening up, drifting away. Ellie’s chords changed the whole sound of the song. After a week of hearing her own imaginary backing parts, it felt as though the melody was finally coming alive.

‘This sounds great,’ she said excitedly. ‘D’you reckon we could get this polished in time for The Mad Cow gig?’

Ellie lifted her slender shoulders. ‘Sure.’

The Mad Cow was Shannon’s local pub. Run by an Irishman, staffed by Irishmen and frequented by an eclectic mix of Irish, Caribbean, Polish, Russian, Indian and probably others; it was difficult to make out the accents above the din of the high-wattage amps. In fact, that was probably why everybody got along so well; nobody had the faintest idea what anybody else was saying.

‘It’d be good if we could get this on the DVD. Maybe this one and the six on our main set list.’ She was thinking out loud. ‘I wonder whether we can ask Eamonn for a longer slot…’

‘Good idea.’ Ellie nodded, trying out an alternative riff.

Zoë trailed off, smiling. Ellie never got involved in the planning. Brilliant harmonies and guitar solos were her fortes; turning up on time and helping with logistics were not.

‘Oh,’ she said, remembering something else. ‘I looked up that band Shannon mentioned – Tepid what’s-it. It looks like they’re really big in the States.’

‘Really?’ Ellie looked up, finally pulling herself away from the strings. ‘How big?’

‘ Big. Google them.’

‘Wow.’ Ellie’s eyes were wild with hope and unfulfilled dreams. She didn’t care about the details; details were for somebody else to deal with – usually Zoë. She only cared about the dream. For Ellie, it was just a matter of time before a major record deal landed in their lap.

Zoë watched as she began to pluck at the strings, improvising. They had so much in common, in a musical sense. They both loved to play, to sing, to listen, to get swept up in its powerful, intricate harmonies…But what they took from it was very different.

Ellie’s world was filled with a select group of people, namely Zoë, Shannon, Kate and Sam. She only welcomed those privileged few, not caring what anybody else heard or didn’t hear. Zoë, on the other hand, felt claustrophobic in that world; she needed an outlet. Having created the music, she had to share it. The more people it reached, the quicker it flowed from her and the better she felt.

Zoë knew she had changed since the early days. She couldn’t pretend that the dainty office shoes and starched suit jacket were the only consequences of her lifestyle. Her choice of career path had had an impact on who she was and she resented that impact. She didn’t like having to answer to Brian, having to fit in with the other po-faced clones, having to skulk around pretending to run errands…She didn’t like living a lie. But at the same time, she knew that the changes had made her stronger.

Every day, the resentment inside Zoë piled up a little more. The day job, her parents and even some of her closest friends seemed to be doing their utmost to bring her in line. But Zoë was determined to escape. And the exit route, which seemed to be looking clearer every time she gazed at it, was the success of the band.

‘Awesome,’ she said, as they found themselves back on the chorus. ‘That works. We’ll try that next week.’

‘Let’s.’ Ellie nodded, still playing. She got so wrapped up in the music; sometimes it was hard to pull her out.

Zoë looked at the clock on the wall and felt something plummet inside her. ‘Shit! Is that right?’

Ellie glanced at her bare wrist as though half-hoping to find a watch there. ‘Um…’

‘Bollocks,’ Zoë muttered, having found her phone and confirmed that the time was indeed nearly half-past two.

She rammed her guitar into its case, yanked her coat on and stuffed her notebook and pencil into one of the pockets. Ellie watched her with a perplexed expression.

‘Gotta go!’ Zoë said, flinging herself at her friend in a hasty farewell gesture. ‘See ya!’

Ellie was shaking her head as she leapt towards the door. ‘Honestly, Zoë…You’ll give yourself a hernia.’

Zoë laughed and rushed out.

Brian was standing at her desk when she got back, rubbing a palm over the top of his shiny head.