Idol. Carrie Duffy

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СКАЧАТЬ was the lead singer with Phoenix and three days ago he’d quit the band. Rumours had been bubbling away in the press for months, with leaked reports that it had turned pretty nasty towards the end. Jenna was devastated.

      ‘You’re not splitting up, are you?’ she asked in alarm.

      ‘Hell, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I hope not anyway,’ finished Nick, his tone suddenly despondent. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the flurry of conversations around them. ‘We’ve talked about carrying on for a while – at least for another album – but with guest artists. A kinda collaborations project, I guess. But nothing’s official yet – it’s just an idea we’ve been throwing around.’

      A thought suddenly occurred to Nick, and he began to speak before he could stop himself. ‘Why don’t you work with us on a track? It’d be awesome.’

      ‘Work with Phoenix?’ Jenna exclaimed, hardly able to believe what he was saying. It was her childhood dream come true! The opportunity to record with her heroes, to see the masters at work – and, of course, to spend an insane amount of time with Nick Taylor …

      ‘Are you sure? I mean, would the other guys want me?’

      A sly grin spread across Nick’s face. ‘Yeah,’ he drawled. ‘We all want you.’ She looked so cute standing there, those huge, green, baby-doll eyes full of insecurity. On the one hand, she was a ball of energy, bristling with confidence and a mesmerizing sexuality, yet there was an air of vulnerability that couldn’t be hidden. He felt a strong urge to take her in his arms and protect her, and an equally strong urge to take her in his arms and fuck her brains out. Don’t think about that now, he warned himself, feeling himself start to get hard. He would come back to that later, when he was banging some groupie.

      Jenna blushed, glancing away in embarrassment. He was ridiculously handsome, able to make her dizzy with a single look. ‘I’m such a huge fan,’ she rambled. ‘I’ve always loved your music, right since the beginning. This would just be a dream. I mean, I’d cancel everything to work with Phoenix.’

      ‘So is that a yes?’ Nick laughed.

      ‘Yes!’ Jenna exclaimed, her excitement impossible to hide as they clinked their champagne glasses to symbolically seal the deal. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

      2

      Sadie Laine was curled up on her sagging single bed, in the boxroom of the East London house share she rented for an extortionate fee. The walls were damp, the paint was flaking, and the mattress she was sitting on smelt faintly of mould. It was not, Sadie thought with a growing sense of frustration, the kind of place she had dreamed of living when she was a child.

      The old-fashioned TV blared in the corner. No swanky flat-screen for her, just an enormous monster of a thing that was a hand-me-down from her parents and took up all the room on her tiny dressing table. Sadie squinted at the screen as she wrapped her duvet tightly around her and snuggled into it. Her long, slim legs poked out of the end, and her feet were swathed in thick, pink socks. The radiator was on the blink again, and the landlord hadn’t yet made good on his promise to fix it.

      Sadie let out a sigh as she pushed a few stray tendrils of hair away from her beautiful face. Her dark, glossy hair was roughly pulled back in a messy ponytail, perfectly framing her fine, angular features, but the crease between her eyebrows gave away her anxiety.

      It’s not fair, she thought miserably, as she watched the glamorous scene play out on the TV screen in front of her. Breaking off another piece of chocolate from the slab beside her, she popped it into her mouth, not caring that she’d already tripled her daily calorie allowance.

      Sadie was watching the highlights of the MTV Europe Awards, where at this moment Jenna Jonsson was speaking into the camera. She looked incredible as she chattered excitedly to the interviewer about how thrilled she was to have won. She threw out some inane cliché about how all of her dreams were coming true. Sadie pursed her lips and pressed mute on the remote.

      All of Jenna’s dreams might have been coming true – life wasn’t working out quite so well for Sadie.

      For as long as she could remember, all Sadie had ever wanted to do with her life was dance. From the moment she had slipped on the obligatory pink leotard for her first lesson in the local church hall, she knew she had found her passion. Growing up in the London suburb of Streatham with her younger brother and sister, there wasn’t a lot of money to spare, but her parents scrimped and saved, working extra shifts to ensure their beautiful, gifted daughter could pursue her dream.

      It soon became clear that she was seriously talented, and by the time she hit her teens she was already competing on the national circuit, winning prizes in every category. Jazz, Latin, hip-hop – Sadie was a natural at every style she tried. She loved the way she could get lost in the music, relishing the grind of learning the routine and putting her own interpretation on it to make it truly individual – a hair flick here, a sashay of the hips there. Most of all, she adored the adulation of being up on stage, addicted to the adrenaline rush that came with performing. It was the ultimate buzz.

      Then came the big one – the National Championships, held in Manchester. The prize was life-changing: an all-expenses-paid trip to LA, to spend four weeks working with street-dance stars Ghetto Angels. Rumour had it that, if your work was good enough, you’d be invited to perform with them at their next gig.

      It was an amazing opportunity. Sadie didn’t think she’d ever wanted anything so badly in all her life. Ghetto Angels were incredible, the hippest things in the dance world right now, and she knew that this could catapult her into the big league. She worked on her routine day and night, rehearsing the steps obsessively until she could do them in her sleep. She was the one to beat, the dead cert to take the prize. That was, until Jenna Jonsson and her pushy mother had shown up …

      ‘Knock knock,’ came a voice at the door.

      ‘Yeah,’ Sadie responded lazily, recognizing it as her housemate Carla.

      Carla poked her head round the bedroom door. She was a petite brunette with an English rose complexion and a body she could contort into positions that made men salivate. A fellow dancer, the pair had worked together one summer at a holiday camp. The show had been terrible – they’d got through it with good humour and a lot of alcohol – but by the end of the season each knew they’d made a friend for life.

      ‘How’re you doing?’ Carla crossed the room and plonked herself down, cross-legged, on the corner of Sadie’s bed.

      ‘Shit,’ Sadie replied succinctly.

      ‘Well I brought something to cheer you up,’ said Carla, brandishing a bottle of Smirnoff and two glasses filled with ice. Sadie’s eyes lit up. ‘But you have to share it with me,’ Carla warned her.

      Sadie poured them each a generous amount and mixed it with Diet Coke. ‘One Skinny Bitch, on the rocks,’ she grinned, passing it to Carla. She settled back against the flattened pillows and the two of them turned their attention to the television, where the EMAs were in full swing.

      ‘Makes you sick, doesn’t it,’ Carla observed, as they watched yet another superstar receive a gong from a fawning presenter.

      ‘Uh huh. All those happy, smiling, Botoxed-to-the-hilt, nauseatingly rich people,’ ranted Sadie, warming to her theme. ‘They’re just hypocritical, self-congratulatory, sycophantic wankers,’ she finished triumphantly.

      ‘Wish СКАЧАТЬ