The Alphabet Sisters (4 page)

“He was, actually.”

Jessica put the folder on the desk beside her. “It’s this new band from West London he’s signed. He wants you to whip up a quick article for the in-store mags.”

“But I can’t write about them. I haven’t seen them play live yet.”

“That’s because they haven’t played live yet. Probably never will play live. Don’t even know if they can play live. Here, have a look.”

Bett took the biogs and photo. Five children in heavy eye makeup sneered at her. If they were hers, she’d tell them to wash that muck off their faces and go and do their homework. “What are they called?”

“Dogs from Hell. Except Karl calls them Puppies from Hammersmith.”

Five Go Mad in Mummy’s Makeup, more like it, Bett thought. “What on earth’s Karl thinking this time?”

“He’s hoping it’ll revive punk. He bought the back catalogue of all these old punk bands, and he wants to give them a kick-along.”

Bett looked at the photo again. “So they’re angry young musicians?”

“Oh, very angry,” Jessica laughed. “They’re furious. Cross as two sticks. Haven’t stopped stamping their feet since we signed them.”

Bett turned the sample tape over, then rattled it, as if that would give her a taste of their music. The tape machine was broken and the CD player was currently propping up a bookshelf. “What do they sound like?”

Jessica emitted a high-pitched screech, shook her head so her hair flew around, then sang in a guttural voice. “ ‘Ravens in the night, kill the beast, anarchy rules,’ that kind of thing. Except on the first demo they sang an-Archie. As in the man’s name. Isn’t that sweet? They can’t even read.”

Bett pretended to weep as she opened a new document on her computer screen. As she wrote she started speaking the words aloud in a dull monotone, silently saying good-bye to any final shred of journalistic credibility.

They’re young, they’re angry, and they’re here. London’s newest music sensation, Dogs from Hell, has arrived with a bang and a wallop.…

She stopped there, finding it hard to concentrate. More to the point, finding it hard to care about the sulky-faced brats whom she knew had been chosen for their looks rather than any musical talent. She stared out the window instead, suddenly filled with gloom.

She’d been working in the press office of this small but very successful record company for two and a half years, writing media releases and puff pieces for record-store magazines, as well as training their artists in interview techniques. At the start it had been a dream job, a combination of her love for music and for writing. But lately it had started to wear her down. She’d been feeling the same way about London, even though she had loved it when she first arrived. Little things seemed to be getting to her.

The night before she’d been working late, coaching a new rap singer in radio interview techniques. It had been past nine o’clock when she left the studio, caught the tube home, and started the fifteen-minute walk from the station to her basement flat, one of eight in a large three-story Camden Town terrace house. She was tired, hungry, and cold by the time her street was finally in sight. She was five steps from her door when she remembered taking her keys out of her bag that afternoon when she searched for her diary. Four steps away when she remembered seeing them on her desk and thinking, Don’t forget those. And two steps away when she realized she’d left them at work.

“In you go, then, love.” The locksmith had taken less than ten seconds to open her door. It had, however, taken him nearly two hours to arrive. Bett was frozen.

“Thanks,” she’d said, through icy-cold lips, handing over nearly fifty pounds. It was easy to see why he was so cheerful.

“Now, love, far be it from me to put myself out of a job, but have you thought about leaving a spare key with friends or family? In case this happens again?”

She’d nodded, smiled politely. She’d spent the time waiting for him thinking just that, before realizing with a dull aching feeling that not only did she have no family here, but no friends close by either. Jessica lived on the other side of London. There were several other people, journalists and a band booker in one of the live music pubs, whom she met occasionally for a drink, but she could hardly call them close friends. She couldn’t really leave a key with them either.

She blinked now and dragged her attention back to the computer in front of her, trying to concentrate again. Cheer up, Bett, she told herself firmly. She gazed around the office, taking in all the band posters, the piles of CDs, the overflowing files of press clippings. Everything was peachy, wasn’t it? She was living in the epicenter of the music industry, she had a great job, she’d never been happier. Not only that, she was about to fly home to Australia, to see Lola and her parents for a week. And yes, all right, Anna and Glenn and Carrie and Matthew would be there, and yes, it would be awkward and uncomfortable, but she was a grown woman and she’d cope. And it would be great to see her niece, Ellen, again, too, wouldn’t it? Yes. Exactly. She shut her eyes tight, then opened them again, stared intently at the computer screen, and started typing.

Lead singer Mutt Dagger says it’s time that real music took over from the manufactured bands. “Enough of this candy crap. People want truth and energy in their music, and that’s what we’re giving them. This is us telling our stories with our music. And the difference is we’re telling it as it is.”

Bett pressed Save, then glanced down at the folder of plane tickets beside her coffee cup. She’d spent her lunch hour with her travel agent, running through all the flight details, paying the final installment. It was only afterward she noticed she’d conducted the entire conversation with a piece of spinach from her lunchtime salad on her front tooth, covering it so completely, in fact, it looked like she had lost a tooth, in pure witch fashion. On the way back to the office she’d had an overwhelming urge to ring her sister Anna in Sydney, to tell her about it and hear Anna’s laugh. Except she didn’t make those sorts of calls to her sisters anymore, did she? Calls about disastrous days or wild nights, work trials or love lives or friends or recipes or hangovers or … anything.

The band combines a youthful energy with pure adrenaline, producing a raw, rocky sound, guitar-edged and bass-driven.

No, they don’t, she thought. She typed quickly.
The band do what they’re told by a middle-aged man who is living out his own musical fantasies and making a lot of money along the way out of kids reared on reality TV programs.

She started to growl, a constant, satisfying kind of noise from the back of her throat.

Jessica peered over her own computer screen. “Bett, are you okay?”

She stopped midgrowl to nod, then started it up again as she kept writing.

The band’s drummer, Raven Deathmask, is a self-described anarchist and spotty-faced little tosshead who looks like he may still wear nappies.

Bett pressed Delete and tried again.

The band’s first album is a remarkable feat of hideous guitar squeals and nonsense lyrics about rebellion when the most any of the spoiled kids in this manufactured band have had to rebel against is—

Stop it, Bett. She pressed Delete once more.

Dogs from Hell are a force to be reckoned with, combining youth, anger, and bad haircuts—

Bett stopped writing altogether. A new, frightening thought had appeared in large letters in her head.

She didn’t want to do this anymore. It wasn’t about music; it was about packaging. Karl had said as much to her a month ago, on one of his fleeting visits to the office. “Just a license to print money, Bett. Stop taking it so seriously. Pop singers, disposable music, remember?”

She looked out the window at the rain, the sky dark at four
P.M
. She thought of her flat. Small and cold, about as homely as a bus shelter. She thought of the Christmas just past. She had celebrated with Jessica and her family at their home in Suffolk, keeping her voice bright and cheery on the phone to her parents and Lola in South Australia. She’d felt miserable inside.

She pictured the travel agent earlier that day. “It’s such a long way to travel for seven days. You’ll have only just recovered and you’ll be on your way back. Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”

Her words to Lola the day she’d received her fax flashed into her mind. What had she said? That she couldn’t come back to Australia because she had a life here in London? What she had here wasn’t a life. Not the sort of life she wanted anymore, anyway.

The letters in her head were now in flashing neon. There were shadows and doubts underneath—what she would do for work and where she would live, not to mention the idea of her sisters—but she batted them away. She stared over at Jessica, amazed at what she was about to say, and even more amazed by how sure she felt about it. Do it, Bett, she thought. Quickly. Before you change your mind.

“Jessica, can you give me Karl’s mobile number?”

The other woman glanced up from her computer. “You’re going to ring him? That’s taking your life in your hands. Why would you want to do that?”

Do it, Bett. Be brave. Go home for good. Bett swallowed. “I think I’m about to resign.”

I
n Sydney, Anna Quinlan was finishing her packing. She looked up as her daughter came into the room holding a framed photograph.

“Should I bring this, Mum?”

Anna took the photo. It was the two of them, taken twelve months previously, both smiling at the camera, Ellen’s perfect six-year-old face upturned. “Why do you want to take it, Ellie?”

“So I can show Really-Great-Gran what I used to look like. In case she’s forgotten. In case she decides she doesn’t like me like this either.”

“Ellie, Lola doesn’t need to see that. She loves you whatever you look like.”

Ellen’s voice became small. “What if she calls me names, though? Like everyone else does?”

“Oh, Ellie, she won’t. Don’t think things like that.” Anna tried to keep her voice steady. How was she supposed to handle this? Ask Ellen to hold on a moment while she ran and checked the self-help books? It kept happening—just when Anna thought she had things running smoothly, out of the blue there’d be a question like this. Or a loud child’s voice in the supermarket like yesterday.

“Mummy, what’s wrong with that girl’s face?”

“Shh, don’t stare.”

Anna had at least had experience of that situation and knew the best thing to do. She had coolly answered the child. “It’s a scar. My daughter was attacked by a dog last year.” She was half tempted to carry a photo album with her. “See,” she’d say at times like that, “she was perfect when she was born. But then I foolishly took her to the park one afternoon and someone had a Rottweiler on the loose and the dog thought my little girl was a toy. And by the time I could drag her away from him, his teeth had torn half her face.”

Anna smoothed back her daughter’s hair. “Ellie, your dad and I and your Really-Great-Gran and your gran and your grandpa love you no matter what you look like.”

“My aunties, too?”

Anna’s voice didn’t change. “Your aunties, too. All of us, no matter what you look like, what you’re wearing, how messy your hair is, and how bad you smell, okay?”

That brought a glimmer of a smile. “Even if I smell really bad and haven’t brushed my hair for a year?”

“Two years even. Now, put that away and let’s finish your proper packing.”

Ellen put her hands on her hips. “I have finished. Can we run through our checklist?”

Our checklist? Anna had been hearing phrase after phrase of her own coming out of Ellen’s mouth lately. She bit back another smile, not wanting Ellen to think she was laughing at her. Ellen had answered the phone ahead of the babysitter when Anna rang home several nights earlier. “May I help you?” Ellen had said. They had spoken for a few minutes before Ellen had asked, in all seriousness, “And were you ringing about anything in particular?” There was something about these pronouncements, and that solemn little voice and face of hers, that always went straight to Anna’s core. She barely noticed Ellen’s scar anymore. She was aware of it—how could she not be?—but it didn’t change the essence of Ellen. The body was … what was it? Her casing. The wrapping. Everything else was normal.

Except Glenn hadn’t been able to see it that way. In his eyes, things had changed forever, and it was all Anna’s fault.

“I’m not the first man to feel like this, Anna. This happens to lots of marriages after a child trauma like this. I read it on the Web.”

Her voice had grown icy. “You’ve been researching reasons to back up why you’re having an affair? Why you’re walking out on us?”

“I’m not walking out on you.”

“Shall we look up the Web for other ways to put it, then? Key ‘selfish’ and ‘immature’ into a search engine and see what websites turn up?”

“Anna, you’re not making this easy.”

She had lost her temper then, hardly knowing what she was saying. “Glenn, I don’t want to make it easy. I want to make it as excruciatingly hard for you as I can.”

Ellen had heard them fighting, Anna knew that. Ellen also knew Anna and Glenn were sleeping in separate rooms. And that her father wasn’t home every night. Anna wanted to tell Ellen it wasn’t her fault. He still loves you, Ellie; I know he does, she thought. It’s me he doesn’t love anymore. It’s me he blames.

Perhaps things would have been different if they’d been on steady ground before Ellen was attacked. But the foundations had been eroding for years, gaps and holes slowly appearing. Fights about his work taking up too much time. Snide remarks about her great acting career ending up in sound-recording booths. Even digs about her appearance. She’d put on a few kilos a year or two after they married, nothing too serious, so she’d thought. It had been nice to stop the endless weight watching and calorie counting that came hand in hand with a career as an actress. Until Glenn had brought home gym brochures, made pointed remarks about people letting themselves go.

“Me?” she’d said, good-humored at first. “Glenn, are you joking? All my clothes still fit, don’t they?” Size ten at that. “I thought you’d like to see me a bit more curvy.”