by KE Payne
I wanted Be4 to be different. I wanted to be the one playing the guitar riffs, I wanted to hear Brooke’s grainy voice in our harmonies, I wanted our lyrics to really hit home and make a point rather than float away like fluffy, inconsequential clouds. Be4 were so much more than that, and there were times I wondered if Ed realized that as we hurtled towards making our second album, or if all he thought about was the money he was rapidly making out of us.
Whenever my thoughts drifted that way, Nicole inevitably stole back into them. I slipped another quick look to Alex, her head now bowed over her phone, and couldn’t help but wish it was Nicole I was sitting next to rather than her, wishing I didn’t feel as though everything had crumbled the day she went.
But it had. Big time.
I didn’t like it—this stranger coming in—and I didn’t like that me, Robyn, and Brooke had to instantly embrace her and accept her when all we wanted was to have Nicole back. When all I needed was to have Nicole back, for the past to have never happened, and for us all to get back to how we’d been.
Before.
Alex shifted in her seat and I looked away, but my thoughts of Nicole had already brought the familiar guilt slithering over me, snaking its way around me, tightening with every fetid memory. Squeezing me, suffocating me.
Except the guilt wasn’t the snake. I was the snake. And even though Robyn and Brooke had known everything that had happened between me and Nicole, I’d never admitted to either of them that I’d always secretly thought it was thanks to me Be4 had lost her and I’d lost my best friend and my confidante. I glanced again at Alex, still engrossed in her phone. Evidently she’d gotten bored of my company and had given up trying to have another conversation with me. I couldn’t say I blamed her, and anyway, it suited me fine. My mood had plummeted and I felt as though I had nothing to say to her, and never would.
Alex wasn’t Nicole, Be4 would never be the same again, and as the fresh realization of the situation slowly sank in, my head began to thump even more.
Chapter Two
It was a Sunday when Nicole went away. I remember that because we’d been due to meet up on the South Bank to watch the buskers and she never turned up. I was pissed off, because we hadn’t been seeing as much of each other in the months before that and I’d wanted to hang out with her for a bit. I’d waited for her, for over an hour, texting her repeatedly to ask her where she was, getting more and more exasperated when she didn’t reply.
Then I received the phone call from Ed that made my stomach feel as though it had filled with rocks.
In the weeks that followed, I often thought that Sunday had been a funny day for her to go to rehab, but then I’d figured rehab didn’t work like a doctor’s or a dentist. You didn’t just ring up and make an appointment that was convenient to you. You just went when you had to go—and Nicole really had to go. Ed had made it all go so swiftly too, because Ed was always very good at making things go away.
“It’s the best for all concerned.” I remember vividly Ed saying that. So he made Nicole go away, and then swiftly—there’s that word again—got Alex brought into the band to replace her with such indecent haste that we—me, Robyn, and Brooke—the press, or even the fans couldn’t even question why. Just like that. No fuss, no hassle.
Nicole out, Alex in.
Sure, Alex could sing. Her rapid progress through the TV talent show Sing had proved that. Until she got booted out in the quarter-finals, that is. That, conveniently for us and Ed, happened around the same time Nicole went into rehab. So Alex transitioned smoothly from being on a TV talent show straight into being in Be4, and I reckoned she had no idea just how lucky she was.
That first day with Alex in the studio was weird on so many different levels. We’d been told by Ed to come in so that we could all put down a new demo track he’d been sent and which he thought would be perfect for the forthcoming album, and also so Alex could record her parts, replacing Nicole’s vocals which had previously been recorded on the ten other tracks that were to go on the album. That’s why it weirded me out so much; it was almost as if Nicole didn’t exist any more. As if any remaining part of her was being erased indefinitely from anything to do with Be4. That’s why I was apprehensive that first day too—the thought of no more Nicole, after so many years together, and the thought of having to start over with Alex.
Nicole out, Alex in.
I hated it.
*
“Man, she sure loves herself.” Robyn was the first to speak once Alex eventually left the studio with Ed.
“I reckon she thinks she’s it.” I couldn’t help but agree with her.
“On what basis?” Brooke asked. She’s fair like that.
“Hello? Flirting with my boyfriend?” Robyn said. “It’s not like she even stopped when I came in, is it?” She threw a look of disdain to the door. “And did you see the way she looked at me when she spoke about that reality show she’s just been booted off of as well? Like it was the best thing ever.” She made a noise that was halfway between being a laugh and a snort.
“It’s a big show.” I shrugged. “Saturday night prime time.”
“All it does is offer people who are mediocre singers instant fame, because they’re in the public eye for five minutes,” Robyn countered. “And with it, instant thoughts that you’re something.” She looked at the door again. “Which, believe me, she thinks she is.”
“You think she’s mediocre?” I asked. “The bits I saw, she was okay.”
Robyn waved my question away with an airy hand.
“And you’ve got all this from what?” Brooke asked. “That five-minute conversation you had with her just now?”
“I’m talking about the whole package,” Robyn said. “She’s not a real musician. Just a wannabe.”
“Aren’t we all?” Brooke asked. “Isn’t that why we all do it? For the fame?”
“But we’ve worked at it,” Robyn argued. “Four years. How long did she last on that show? Two months?” She folded her arms. “And then thinks she can just slot in here and become the next Nicole.”
“She certainly has…attitude,” I said, Robyn’s arguments striking a chord with me, “or rather, confidence. It’s scary how self-assured one person can be.”
“Maybe being on the show gave her that.” Robyn frowned. “Maybe being thrown in at the deep end does that to a person. Sink or swim and all that.” She sank into a chair. “First week, right, they had to sing big band. First. Week.” She shook her head.
“I thought you said you’d never seen the show.” I sat next to her.
“Yeah, right.” Robyn stretched her legs out in front of her, crossing them at the ankle. “You think I’m going to let her know that?” She laid her head back. “Mind you, anyone who can sing a note without sounding like a cat being strangled could have done it. All I’m saying is making them sing big band on a first week is a bit shitty.”
“Ed wouldn’t get just anyone, you know.” Brooke, ever the voice of reason, spoke. “He knew Alex was something special.”
“But is she Be4?” I asked. “Will she get it?”
“Not like Nicole did.” Robyn shook her head. “She’ll never be Nicole.”
“I still would have preferred it if Ed had found an unknown.” I closed my eyes to my still-pounding head. “Like we were, you know?”
“Ed went through this with us though,” Brooke said. “It’s not as if he’s sprung it on us.”
She was right. He had. It was either we agreed to a new fourth member, or he’d have to rethink the whole Be4 bandwagon. None of us wanted that. Not when we’d come this far. Nicole would understand…Wouldn’t she?
“Face it, girls,” he’d said. “Do you really want this to end now it’s just starting?”
Of course we didn’t. But I guess none of us thought he’d think to replace our best friend with a reality-TV reject, though. Or so quickly.
“I agree with Tally.” Robyn spoke, derailing my train of thought. “What can Alex possib
ly know? About us, I mean? About the whole Be4 vibe? About our struggle to get where we’ve got?”
“She can’t,” I agreed. “So maybe she’ll never fit in, and then what?”
“Then once Nicole’s better, she can come back,” Robyn said, a lazy grin spreading across her face. “Nicole is Be4, not Alex.” She threw a glance to the door. “And the sooner both Ed and Alex realize that, the better.”
*
Recording tracks without Nicole sucked. Having to have her vocals replaced on some of our already-recorded songs sucked even more. After Alex finished her tour of the studios with Ed, and after me, Brooke, and Robyn finished tearing her apart in her absence, it was time to start singing together for the first time. I wasn’t looking forward to it one little bit.
“So, Alex.” Ed was treating her like the new kid in school, being so touchy-feely and saccharine with her, it made me want to hurl. “Just like when you recorded ‘Crush’ earlier, we’re going for this in a single take, okay?”
Alex nodded.
“The instruments have already been recorded separately,” Ed said, steering her towards the sound booth, “and the girls’ vocals. We’ll combine it all later in a mix.”
He was talking to her like she’d never been in a studio before, when I knew for a fact—well, Google—that she’d released a single when she was something like fourteen, which had totally bombed. Still, that was way more than I’d ever done at fourteen, so I wondered why she let him talk to her like she was an idiot, when it was clear she wasn’t one. While Ed still blathered on, I watched as Alex slowly pulled her Beats from around her neck, then handed them to Grant, one of the sound guys, saying something to him which I couldn’t catch but flashing him a smile that could charm the birds from the trees. Then when Ed finished talking, she sauntered over to the sound booth and again I watched her put some different headphones on with the same casualness, adjust them against her ears, then give Ed the thumbs up.
“Let’s hope she fluffs her first lines.” As Robyn put her own headphones on, she leant over and drolly whispered in my ear, making me laugh louder than I’d intended. “Then we’ll see what she’s made of.”
As the intro to “After the Rain”—our proposed new single—sounded through my own headphones, I felt bad for Alex then, and even though I agreed with Robyn, there was a bigger part of me that kind of knew Alex would knock those first bars out of the park.
She did.
Even Robyn shut up then.
Alex’s singing was insane. As she sang, her hands clamped tightly against her headphones, the high G she hit in the middle of the chorus sent shivers cascading down my spine. Most people I knew in the music business wouldn’t have tried to hit it; even Nicole hadn’t been able to get up to that G with the same amount of clarity, and Nicole could belt out the high notes like no one else I ever knew. Alex, though, had a different edge to her voice, a husky sweetness and purity I’d never noticed when I’d heard her on TV. Now, singing live right in front of me, her voice drifting into my ears, it was obvious Alex had a voice to die for.
I reckoned she knew it too.
Unlike Robyn, I really hadn’t seen any of Sing. Not because I was being pompous about it, and not because I thought I was above watching a TV talent show (after all, who can resist skateboarding dogs?) but because, well, I don’t really know. Perhaps at the end of a day in the studio, or at the end of a week of exhausting gigging, the last thing I need to do is turn on my TV and see people singing. Perhaps I’m not a fan of TV in general, but all I do know is that the opening credits of Sing, with the contestants group-singing on the stage and miming badly, were enough each week to send me scrabbling for the remote.
Sure I’d read some stuff about Alex. While Sing was on—as it still was—it was impossible to go onto the Internet without reading another story of another contestant doing something they probably shouldn’t be doing, or reading about the latest evictee. I knew Alex had sung an Elton John ballad the night she was eliminated. I knew she’d sung it well. And I knew the country had been in total shock that she’d been voted off.
Alex knew she was good too. I was aware only of her presence in the booth, hands clutching her headphones to her ears, eyes closed as she sang. I guess I couldn’t blame her for her confidence earlier that morning, when she knew this was what she would be pulling out of the bag. No one with a voice like Alex’s could ever have anything other than a granite assurance in their ability.
Ed, of course, was practically apoplectic, and I figured it was totally unnecessary for him to punch the air quite as many times as he did while she was singing. Moron.
“Sheesh.” Robyn turned away and pulled me with her. “’K, that girl can sing.”
“He knows it”—I jabbed my finger over my shoulder to Ed—“they know it”—another nod to the sound guys—“the whole studio knows it.” I threw a look back over to the sound booth. “But she knows it most of all.”
Truth was, Alex destroyed every song she sang that morning. While we all stood out in the studio, watching her sing alone in the sound booth, the looks of appreciation that passed between Ed and the sound guys intensified with each new song and new note that Alex sang. Annoyingly, each of her vocal parts was nailed in one take, but then, I sort of knew it would end up being like that.
Alex, apparently, could do no wrong.
*
Her vocals were recorded. As we gathered around the mixing desk listening to the recording of us all singing together for the first time, everyone was in rapt attention. Except Alex, that is. Alex had wandered away from the group, which really surprised me, bearing in mind it was her first day with us, and I would have expected her to want to make a good impression. Instead, she was standing, arms folded across her chest, looking at a noticeboard on the wall of the studio as if her life depended on it.
I walked over to her while the music was still playing.
“You’re not listening?” I tossed a look back over my shoulder.
“I am.” She didn’t take her eyes from the noticeboard. “I can hear it from here.”
“You sounded good.”
“Cheers.”
I waited.
How about a You too?
Nothing.
“Guess it’s a bit different from Sing, huh?” I asked, when it was clear she wasn’t going to return the compliment.
“Yeah.” Finally I saw the hint of a smile. “Sing was live. No mistakes. No second chances.”
“Like gigging.” I frowned. “You know that Be4 were a busking group before all this?” I said, waving a hand to the studio. “That’s how we learnt our skills. Live.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
I watched as Alex continued to study the noticeboard and waited for her to ask me something more. She didn’t. I felt disappointed. Let down, even. Knowing how much Be4 meant to me, I wanted her to ask me something about it, about how we came together, about how I came to be in the band. How I felt about it. I knew I wanted her to show an interest in…me. That was strange. I wasn’t normally egotistical. I shook the thought away.
“Have you heard much other Be4 stuff?” I asked instead.
“I have.” Finally Alex looked at me and smiled. “I heard some stuff from the first album. I liked”—she lifted her eyes and thought—“‘Serendipity’ quite a lot,” she said, “as a ballad.” She thought some more. “But I guess my absolute favourite has to be ‘Drowning in You.’”
My heart gave a shiver. “Drowning in You” was the only song that I’d ever written alone that I’d thought would be good enough to be recorded. “Serendipity” and all the others had been co-written by me, Nicole, Brooke, and Robyn, but the lyrics and music to “Drowning in You” had come to me late one night and, unable to shake them from my mind, had been played out on my guitar and then hastily scribbled down on a scrap of paper at about three in the morning.
“Why is it your favourite?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” Alex shrugged. “I suppose it�
�s because it’s faster and braver than the others. Different.” I liked that she knew what she was talking about. “It’s got a good guitar solo in the middle too.” She laughed. “I can’t resist a good guitar solo.”
“You play, don’t you?”
“I love it.” Alex nodded, and I knew I’d piqued her interest just from the look on her face. That pleased me. “It’s a shame, you know,” she continued, “but they were always reluctant to let me play my guitar on Sing, but I feel so much happier when I’ve got one in my hands. You know the feeling, right?”
“Totally.” I smiled.
Little did Alex know, she was voicing my opinions too. Playing guitar ranked a close second to singing, and I never felt happier than when I had mine cradled in my hands.
“I wrote ‘Drowning in You,’” I said, hoping Alex didn’t think I was bragging.
“For real?”
I nodded, liking the look of approval on her face.
“Well it’s very good,” she said. “I always thought it should have been released as a single, but…” She shrugged.
“Seriously?” I was stoked. “I wanted it to be released as a single too,” I said, “but Ed thought differently.” I focused on a spot on the noticeboard, remembering the disappointment when he’d told me, and the feeling of hurt when Brooke and Robyn had agreed with him. “He thought the fans wouldn’t get it. Thought it was a bit too much of a shift from our usual stuff.” I thought it was good enough, though. Good enough to reach number one too. Perhaps I was biased.
