This Beats Perfect

by Rebecca Denton

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Dee sighed. ‘Because as your friend I’ll do whatever I can to help you.’

  ‘Okay,’ he conceded.

  ‘So what can I do?’

  There was a long silence before Maxx sighed. ‘I feel like a dick.’

  She brightened up and her eyes widened in excitement. ‘I’ve got a BRILLIANT idea. Why don’t we collaborate? Just you and me? A song together?’

  Maxx looked at her, surprised but strangely intrigued by the idea.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she continued, ‘that’s totally what we should do. A duet. It will be amazing!’

  ‘Would you be into that?’ Maxx was slightly wary, since Dee was known to get wrapped up in things and then quickly drop them, like a bored child.

  ‘Of course! My god, you’d be helping me. Anything that helps raise my profile. What do you think?’

  ‘What do you think Geoff would say?’

  ‘Let’s talk to him together. He won’t hate the idea. I don’t see why they can’t accommodate at least ONE of my ideas into something I do!’

  ‘What? You write all your songs!’

  ‘Well, yeah, just – but that’s where the freedom ends, my friend. I can’t tell you how much I want my red hair back. Not to mention to get out of those ridiculous white dresses!’

  ‘Hey, I’d love to do that.’ Maxx allowed himself to feel a little excited. ‘I’d just love to. I hope Geoff goes for it.’

  ‘We don’t actually have to tell him yet. Let’s come up with some ideas, and have a few jams first. See if it fits. Before we, you know, tell anyone.’

  Maxx knew exactly what she was getting at. The rest of the guys would be a little miffed by a collaboration with Dee. It would be the first major project that one of them had taken on outside the sacred five-piece. But it was something he felt sure he could handle.

  ‘Oh, I’m really excited about this. Let’s find some down time this tour and just get on with it.’ Maxx fingered the phone number in his jean pocket. ‘Hey, you know Mike Church. Tonight’s sound engineer?’

  ‘Oh yeah, wow! Wasn’t the sound great tonight!?’

  ‘Yeah, unbelievable. He’s definitely as good as they say. I had a quick talk with him after the show and he was trying to persuade me to do some recording of my own.’

  ‘Really? Looks like the stars are aligning.’ She winked.

  ‘You think we should work with him?’

  ‘Yes. That’s EXACTLY what we should do,’ Dee said wistfully. ‘Text him now and tell him!’

  Maxx looked at the number again. Was this right? Doing it with Dee? Or was he still just too scared to go it alone. It felt like a good step, it gave him confidence. He decided to throw caution to the wind and began to write Mike a message.

  ‘That girl was nice. The guy – his daughter, did you meet her?’ she said, as the car pulled up to the hotel.

  ‘Mike’s daughter? No, well yes, briefly.’

  ‘She was sweet. Yeah, sounds like she’s taking after her dad.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not surprised. Did I see Charlie hitting on her?’ Maxx asked.

  Dee scoffed and curled her lip. ‘Um, maybe. I don’t think so. You know what he’s like. Ridiculous flirt. I guess she’s a diversion.’

  ‘From what?’ Maxx said as he hit send, just as an old Dee single came on the radio.

  TO MIKE: Hi, this is Maxx. Nice to talk earlier. I’d like to go for it, but will have to keep things quiet until I speak to management, if that’s okay? It’s tricky. Also, will start with a duet. Will explain later. Can we email? maxxedout95@gmail.com

  FROM MIKE: Sure. I’m in.

  ‘Oooh I love this song!’ Dee tapped the driver. ‘Can you turn it up?’

  CHAPTER 6

  Before I Sleep

  Amelie snuggled up to her dad in the back seat of their car home, the night’s performances like a whirlwind in her head.

  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. Do you think I can come again? Or to your studio maybe? To watch a session this time?’ she pleaded.

  ‘Well,’ he laughed, ‘maybe we can look at the bookings and see if there’s some assisting you can do. Oh my god, I almost forgot.’

  Her dad pulled out a small box with a ribbon.

  ‘I hope you like it.’

  Amelie looked down at the beautiful little jewellery box, and tugged on the soft black ribbon. Inside sat a pair of tiny, gold bass clef stud earrings, with a little diamond inside.

  ‘Dad, I love them! Wow. Thank you so much. Are these diamonds?’

  ‘They are. So look after them, okay?’ He stroked her head. ‘So, how’s the practice going?’

  ‘Oh good, good.’ She tried to brush him off, staring down at the beautiful gift and avoiding his eyes. She knew what was coming.

  ‘When am I going see you play then? Or record you? Or at least hear some of your new songs?’

  ‘Soon, soon.’ Amelie closed the box and looked up at him. ‘I just want to do this audition first, and if I get chosen I get a place on stage at Music in the Park. If you play there, it’s really a big deal.’

  ‘Amelie, I admire you for not wanting help, but remember, there’s no harm at all in leaning on the people you know.’

  ‘I know, I know. I just want to do this first. Okay? Without help,’ Amelie said.

  ‘You don’t even want me to help?’

  ‘Mum says you can’t count your success unless you’ve earned it all yourself. I want you both to see me do this on my own.’

  Her dad looked at her wearily. ‘Well, your mum is ridiculously stubborn. Lord knows, I’d have liked her to accept some help from me over the years.’ He sighed. ‘At least come and spend some time at the studio this summer.’

  ‘Okay, Dad. Let’s see,’ she said cheerfully.

  They pulled up to the house as Amelie tucked her birthday present into her bag.

  ‘Dad, I love my earrings. Looks like Mum’s gone to bed already, I’d better get in.’

  ‘Amelie, think about it, okay? Ella called me after the, um, setback last year. Everyone gets overwhelmed when they’re performing. You needn’t worry, it’ll come.’

  ‘I wasn’t ready,’ she whispered. ‘It will be different this time. It’s so silly, I love to play but I totally freak out at the attention.’

  ‘Well, it’s scary performing, but there are other options. Getting a publishing deal is one. Producing is another. You don’t need to stand on stage to be an artist.’

  ‘But I want to perform. Isn’t it cruel how all I want to do is stand on stage and perform my own songs and I can’t actually do it?’

  ‘You can. And you will.’

  ‘Yes.’ She kissed him on the cheek and felt a hot rush of inspiration and a desperate need to pick up her guitar. ‘I will. Thanks again, Dad.’

  As she crept into her bedroom, she flicked on her tacky, microphone-shaped reading lamp. Another one of her mother’s ‘incredible flea market finds’.

  The corner of her little sanctuary was in dire need of sorting. She had, over the years, acquired myriad pieces of recording gear – some of it was her father’s castaways, while others bits she had scrimped and saved for. It was patched together and connected to her laptop and created a surprisingly excellent sound for such cobbled-together kit. It was a health and safety nightmare – constantly buzzing and hot to touch – but it was her special little place. Her own teeny, tiny home recording studio, and she loved it.

  She switched it on, and the computer whirred louder than their precious three-footed washing machine as it struggled to come to life.

  ‘Come on, little buddy,’ Amelie whispered, stroking the side of the machine as it powered up. ‘Two minutes today? That’s fast!’

  She opened Pro Tools and dug around to find where she’d got to on her last song. Slipping her huge headphones onto her head, she hit play and sat back.

  ‘Two Tuesday Blues’ was a track she’d been working on for weeks now. It was almost finished and it was going to be her auditi
on song – it needed to be perfect.

  She logged onto SoundCloud and checked her profile.

  Her last track, ‘Bare’, had been liked 737 times, and reposted eighty-nine times. She felt a surge of pride and the giddy thrill of the safe place she called insta-fame.

  She checked her comments – So beautiful! Exquisite melody! When could I buy an album? Why is she not signed to a record label? Heartbreaking lyrics! When will you play live? Are you playing By the Sea in Margate this year? Do you have a Facebook? Where’s your website?

  Then she looked through her favourite artists to check for updates – the guitar singer/songwriters she admired most: Marika Hackman, Laura Marling, SZA, Aldous Harding. And then she went over to YouTube and watched some of the huge artists the girls in her music class loved: Alessia Cara, Melanie Martinez, Tove Lo. They looked so confident with their brightly lit videos, outrageous make-up and polished performances.

  She opened her own account. In the last month she had taken her best friend Maisie’s advice and branched out to YouTube, although the videos were not exactly what she’d had in mind.

  There were just four so far, but she had already accumulated 700 subscribers, most of them followed her there from SoundCloud.

  On YouTube, the commenters were, unsurprisingly, rather less supportive. She must be ugly, said one commenter. Does she think she’s SIA? asked another. Good song, boring video, said a third. But between the protestations at her lack of visuals, there was plenty to be proud of.

  She pulled out her dad’s old Canon 5D and rested it on top of the shelf above her laptop. She tipped the lens downward and took a test shot holding her guitar. In shot was her guitar only, the frame cropped at the chin. Behind her the yellowy light of her lamp created an even more darkened image in the foreground. She was happy with the result.

  She aligned her microphone to right in front of her mouth, so close she could taste the cold metal on her lips. The second mic was propped up to the sound-hole of her guitar, positioned exactly as it had been so many hundreds of times before. She sang a few lines, and quickly listened back. There was very little echo thanks to the foam boards she’d glued to the back of an Ikea bedroom divider the week before.

  She hit record. Three minutes and four seconds later she was done. The song was hastily uploaded after an even quicker mix and a thrill coursed through her veins as it appeared online. She played it back and was mostly satisfied with the result. For now, this would have to do. Especially at 3.29 a.m. She yawned and flicked off her machine, suddenly desperately tired.

  Amelie thought back to the stage, filled with glitter and pyrotechnics and the boyband bouncing about like a bunch of half-wits – and was appalled by how jealous she felt.

  All she wanted was to feel that buzz. That thrill of performing live. It was easy to be one of the most popular London artists online when you were completely anonymous.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Masses Are Asses

  The next morning, Amelie mooched through into the lounge where her mum had made her slowly warmed stovetop hot chocolate for breakfast, using a whole block of real chocolate and a hint of spice. It really was a treat having a proper cook for a mother.

  Her double chocolate birthday cake was on the counter. It had said ‘Happy Birthday Amelie’ in bright pink icing when she had left for the Apollo, but now only said ‘Amelie’ – more than half had been eaten.

  ‘Oh my god, Mum!’ laughed Amelie. ‘Where did it go?’

  ‘I ended up having it for dinner!’ Her mum groaned and rubbed her non-existent tummy. ‘And also dessert. And an evening snack! Do you fancy it for breakfast?’

  ‘Oh, go on then!’ Amelie realised she had hardly eaten in the end, and cut herself a huge slice of double chocolate to go with her hot chocolate.

  Her mum’s kitchen was as eclectic as she was. Nothing went together, but somehow everything did. Each mismatched plate had a story – a cake stand from a flea market in Provence, a teapot from a car boot sale in Birmingham, silver cutlery ‘borrowed’ from a French restaurant she was working at for less than four pounds an hour. The kitchen itself was a perfectly preserved 1970s avocado green and teeny tiny, with a pint-sized fridge to match.

  Growing up meant moving a LOT, including to rural France, coastal France, Paris, the outskirts of the outskirts of Monte Carlo and … Bolton. But they’d finally settled here in Hackney for what was, for Amelie Ayres, an eternity – three whole years!

  Ella had taken them to France when Amelie was six so that she could study cheese making, which she quit six months and two dress sizes later because of the calories involved. She then tried her hand at wine making, which included an extravagant number of ‘tasting sessions’, and quit because of the hangovers involved. Then – after three years – she’d settled on French cookery. ‘Anything as long as it’s French,’ her mother, born and raised in rural Devon, had insisted.

  Ella finally flunked out of the cookery course just a few weeks before it finished, after a surprise fail grade on an apricot-almond clafouti. A strange turn of events, especially after all the extra after-hours tutelage head chef Monsieur Calliat had kindly offered.

  When they left, Amelie remembered a lot of hurried packing late in the evening before an overnight train to Calais – they’d managed to fill four suitcases with French farmhouse ‘trinkets’ and stuffed a couple of large black plastic rubbish bags with their clothes.

  ‘Rapide!’ Her mother had shouted at their taxi driver. ‘RAAAAAPIIIIIIIIID-AY-MMEEENNT!’

  ‘But why do we have to leave now?’ Amelie had whined, still half asleep.

  As the taxi had sped away they’d passed a very large, very angry woman in a dressing gown marching up their driveway, brandishing a rolling pin in one hand and a shotgun in the other.

  The fact that her Mum could never settle on one thing meant they were always on the move, and always just scraping by financially, but Amelie didn’t care. Wherever they were together was home, and right now that was Hackney.

  ‘Oh my god! What a cool night.’ Amelie beamed.

  The lounge was more shabby than chic, but it was cosy and clean and in every corner collectables were carefully displayed – from the stack of Vogue magazines in an old wire stand to the pile of blankets, carefully folded on a Georgian foot stool that her mum had refurbished.

  Her mum was dressed so beautifully, with a huge, multicoloured vintage silk kimono and satin slippers. Her face was glowing and moist from a facemask and her long, elegant hands were examining the earrings from Amelie’s dad.

  ‘Oh, they are sweet,’ she said. ‘He’s a good, good man, your father, in so many ways.’

  Amelie smiled and then, as she always did, steered towards a new subject so that her mum never felt inadequate. She was nowhere near as well-off as her dad, but Amelie knew she always did what she could. After all, this year her mum had taken her shopping – to a place that sold actual new clothes – which was a vast improvement on last year’s wonderful but slightly strange birthday gift of three beautiful matching porcelain cats, doing ballet.

  ‘They’re a delightful little keepsake, don’t you think? Look after them, okay,’ her mum had enthused as Amelie had tried to hide her disappointment at not getting a new microphone.

  Her mum wanted every single detail from the last night’s gig, but as usual, all the wrong details. ‘How was the tube, did you change at Holborn?’ and ‘What was the decor like?’ and ‘Did you get one of those plastic things for round your neck? Were the staff nice to you?’

  Amelie talked about Dee and how lovely but very aloof and professional she was.

  ‘Oh, really? And did you meet any nice boys?’

  Amelie quickly skimmed over her interactions with Charlie – ‘What is a Twitter name, Amelie? It sounds like a children’s toy.’ – and then spoke excitedly about her dad and how everyone wanted to talk to him, and how they asked him to do the European tour but he said no. ‘Sounds like your father!’ her mum smirked.

>   Amelie’s mum and dad had met in Paris while he was on tour. He had been in a Parisian bistro trying to order a steak and fries (which, as Amelie learned, is pretty much the easiest thing to order on the menu at a French bistro). They both told the story a little differently – in Mum’s version she had to swoop in and ‘save him’ and in Dad’s version she had ‘stuck her nose in’ where it wasn’t required.

  In both versions, however, they had got talking and then ended up spending two glorious weeks together, visiting museums and art galleries, brunching on small outdoor tables along the boulevards and drinking cheap wine in pokey French jazz clubs. When the two weeks were over, they went their separate ways, both agreeing that they wanted different things from life and that they should remember their special time for what it was. Amelie didn’t understand exactly why they didn’t try to make a go of it. Her dad told her that one day she would understand that love sometimes isn’t quite enough to make a life together, and her mum would just say, ‘I’ll always love your father for giving you to me.’

  Nine months after they had met, Amelie arrived, and they had both very easily and amicably worked out how to be separated parents together.

  Amelie yawned.

  ‘Well, Mum. I’d better get on with my practice. Only a couple of weeks to go!’ She grinned.

  ‘Happy birthday, my darling.’ Her mum kissed her forehead. ‘My darling, darling girl. I love you so.’

  Amelie pulled off the second-hand or, rather, ‘vintage’ Spider-Man PJs her mum had given her for her birthday and tucked her beautiful new earrings into her top drawer. Then she took a long, deserved shower and washed her hair.

  It was too late to call Maisie, who would already be at yoga, but she realised she’d not messaged her since before The Keep went on and she would be dying for an update. She fished her phone out of her jacket and switched it on, and almost immediately it started beeping with notifications.

  She smiled, awaiting the usual influx of comments and messages she received after uploading a new track. But they were from Twitter. She hardly used Twitter. And they kept coming.