by Fiona Foden
Maybe we will sound like a real band by then. Riley’s voice is strong and pulls you right into a song. We all sort of work together: Jess is the beauty, Lily’s our novelty for being so young yet bashing the hell out of her kit, and Riley’s our token boy who’ll get all the attention from girls. And me? Well, I guess I’m just me. I’m just ordinary Clover.
“I’d better head home,” Jess says finally. “Mum’ll go mad if I’m late on a school night.”
I’ve lost track of time. Through the tiny window, the evening sky is streaked with purple. “Ugh, school,” Lily huffs. “I’m going to see Fuzz.” My sister adores that cat. I’ve tried to get on his good side and coax him over with leftover tinned tuna I found in our fridge, but he stalked off in disgust.
I hear Lily calling him, and her squeal of delight when he runs to her.
Now it’s just Riley and me. He looks tired, and his voice is hoarse from hours of singing. “Shall we run through that last song again?” I suggest.
He shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m all done.”
“So … what d’you want to do now?” I’m still shy around him when the others aren’t here. When will I ever act like a proper thirteen-year-old?
Grinning, he comes over and takes off my guitar, zipping it into its faded case. He touches my face, starting those tiny fish up again. His kiss is light as a feather on my lips.
“This,” Riley says. “Let’s do this.”
Dear Jupe,
It’s over a year since you died. I can hardly believe it. I wanted to say thank you for the guitar and for forgiving me for breaking it.
I also wanted to tell you I play it all the time, and Lily’s doing great stuff with your drums. We’re playing at Dad and Bernice’s wedding in a couple of months, which we’re all excited about. Who knows – maybe we’ll play at Mum and Ed’s one day too. Of course Ed will insist that we’re very, very loud and to play from the heart and all that!
I should mention she and Dad split up (it all seems a long time ago now). Mum’s in love with a man called Ed, who’s a huge fan of yours. D’you know, he once paid hundreds of pounds for an old handwritten songbook of yours? He showed it to me recently. It had the lyrics and chords for “Clover’s Song” in it – the one you wrote for me! I’d never seen it written down before. I didn’t even know you had a book like that. The first time Ed played it, I nearly fainted with shock because I couldn’t understand when he could have possibly heard it. It was almost as if you were in the room, controlling his voice and fingers.
Now, of course, I know he just learnt it from your little book. He still plays it sometimes. Well, murders it, really. But he’s OK. In fact, we’re all more than OK. I feel a lot better knowing you did write back to me. When I confronted Mum about your letters, she said she hadn’t wanted me to read anything scary or angry from you. She didn’t want me to have those memories. She still cared about you, though, because she’d never been able to bring herself to throw them away. She showed me where she’d hidden them – in a little wooden box on the shelf in the porch where we keep Cedric’s food. I’d almost touched them, Jupe! And they weren’t angry at all. They were friendly and chatty (at least, I think they were – have to say your writing’s terrible).
As for Lily, she’s looking very grown up. Keeps nagging me to put her hair in an updo the way Bernice did once. She had to make a collage of our family for her Brownie art badge and it’s taken her for ever because she couldn’t figure out who should be in it. Of course she put me, Mum and Cedric in it. Then she decided you should be there, and Dad – and if Dad was in it, then Bernice should be too, and Ed … plus Fuzz was a last-minute addition. So we’re all there, and it’s pretty crowded, so I guess she’s fine about the new shape of things.
So now Ed’s living here and your songs fill our house all the time. When you died I made a promise that I’d get a band together and make it one day. Now I think I was really promising myself. And we’re getting there. We’re going to make it.
D’you know that, Jupe? I think you do. Every time I play it’s like you’re here with us again.
Love,
Clover xxx
P.S. I have your gold leather trousers. Haven’t dared to wear them yet.
P.P.S. You’ll be pleased to hear that Fuzz, who now lives with Betty next door, is the most pampered cat in Copper Beach.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to my super-agent, Caroline Sheldon, and to Clare Argar, Alice Swan, Polly Nolan and all at Scholastic for bringing this book to life. Further back, this idea formed when my friends Kevin and Fliss formed a band (hello Teignmouth!) so thanks for such great times. I’d be lost without my writing group, especially Tania, Vicky, Amanda and Margaret, and my lovely friends Cathy, Jenny, Kath, Riggsy and Wendy V. Big thanks also to former avid-teen readers Hannah Currie and Becky Varley-Winter (who nudged me in the right direction all those years ago) and to Sam, Dex and Erin for tons of ideas. Above all, thanks to Jimmy, for helping this story to form and for putting up with me tapping away late into the night.
Life Death and Gold Leather Trousers is your first book for teens – what were you like as a teenager?
I loved music, drawing, reading and writing stories and decided at around fourteen that I either wanted to work on a teenage magazine or be an illustrator. I started drawing little comic strips and sending them off to comics, and occasionally a cheque for all of £5 would arrive in the post, which seemed like SO much money. As an only child, I lived in my own imaginary world a lot – it was good training for being a writer. I wasn’t really a fashion or make-uppy kind of girl until I reached about sixteen, when I became obsessed with the 1960s and started backcombing my hair, wearing ski pants and white lipstick and tons of black eyeliner. Until then, I’d just liked messing about on my bike, writing, or doing art.
In the book, Clover is very into her music – did you ever play an instrument or want to be in a band?
I played a bit of guitar and flute at school, then saxophone. I was in a couple of very short-lived bands in Dundee, playing in grimy pubs, when I first left home.
And who were your favourite band when you were a teenager?
I loved The Jam, Echo & the Bunnymen and also sixties bands like The Beatles, The Kinks and The Rolling Stones.
We never meet Jupe in the book, but he comes across as quite an eccentric character – is he based on anyone you know?
He’s a mixture of various rock stars from the ’70s, little bits from lots of different people.
What was the last CD/music download you bought?
I haven’t bought music for ages as my family buys so much. Jimmy, my husband, bought Fleet Foxes yesterday, which I love. I tend to listen to the radio while I’m writing – I hate writing in silence.
Where is your favourite place to write?
In my tiny boxroom – it’s warm, cosy and crammed with notebooks with Post-it notes stuck all over the place. I also like writing in cafés or on trains – I’d go mad, being stuck at home all the time.
Do you ever test out your stories and ideas on your friends and family?
My daughter Erin read parts of Gold Leather Trousers, and a writer friend read the whole book at a very early stage, and gave me the confidence to polish it up and keep working on it.
What tips would you give for young writers?
It’s harder to write a story than to have an idea for a story – so it’s vital to get the words down, even if you don’t feel very confident or want to show your story to anyone at that stage. You can always work on it, improve it, go back to it weeks or months later. It usually gets better and better and eventually you know it’s the best you can make it. That’s when you should give it to people to read.
LDAGLT is absolutely hilarious, but it also has some really poignant moments – particularly between Clover and her parents. What inspires you to w
rite in this way?
I wanted Clover and her family to feel real, and real people have all sorts of things happening to them – funny and sad. It was important to have funny parts as I absolutely didn’t want this to be a gloomy book. I did think, though, that it needed some real drama and sadness to be a compelling story.
Which book (that has already been written) do you wish you could have written and why? Or are there any that you would like to rewrite?
I loved How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff, and Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls – beautiful, touching books with unforgettable characters. One holiday in France, my three children and I all read Ways to Live Forever, with each person impatiently waiting for their turn. And I love Cathy Cassidy’s books too – Dizzy is my favourite. My kids and I all read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – absolutely brilliant. I read as much teen fiction as adult books.
Tell us a strange fact about yourself.
I used to live on a narrowboat on the canal in North London.
Have you ever owned a pair of gold leather trousers?
No, in fact no leather trousers at all – too shiny. And jeans are better for walking my dog.
Scholastic Children’s Books
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SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2011
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014
Text copyright © Fiona Foden, 2011
The right of Fiona Foden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her.
eISBN 978 1407 14672 0
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