Chapter 1
Two Hit Wonder
Chapter One
It's not every day that you get asked to join a famous band.
If being a one-hit wonder fifteen years ago counted as famous.
And re-join was probably slightly more accurate.
But then, Iona thought, it's also not every day that your fourteen-year-old daughter tells you to eff off for the first time. So, swings and roundabouts.
She was still rattled when she arrived at the restaurant, a trendy little place in Soho that Cam had chosen because she "knew a guy" who could get them a good table.
The good table turned out to be wedged between the kitchen doors and a party of eight celebrating someone's divorce, but Iona didn't have the energy to complain.
Ellie was already there, tall and composed as ever, nursing a sparkling water. She stood to hug Iona, and for a moment Iona felt fifteen years melt away. The same Ellie. Still the calm one, the sensible one, the one who'd talked them all down from a thousand teenage crises.
"You look exhausted," Ellie said.
"Thank you, darling. You look like you haven't aged a day, which I find personally offensive."
Ellie smiled, but there was tiredness around her eyes that wasn’t really like her. "Sit. Cam's running late, as usual. Apparently there's some crisis with her… Actually, I've already forgotten what she said. Something as implausible as usual."
"Sounds about right." Iona slid into her chair and reached for the wine menu before remembering she was driving. She put it back down with a sigh that came from somewhere around her toes. She really could use the wine.
"That bad?"
"Mo told me to eff off this morning." Iona kept her voice light, but the words still stung coming out of her mouth.
"First time. I mean, I knew it was coming.
Fourteen. Hormones. All of that. But I wasn't quite prepared for how much it would…
" She made a vague gesture at her chest. "You know. Not that any of your three would ever say anything like that, I’m sure. "
Ellie's face softened. "Oh, Iona."
"I'm fine. I'm fine. I just need to not think about it for approximately two hours while we do whatever this is." She waved a hand at the restaurant. "Which, by the way, you still haven't properly explained."
"Cam wanted to tell you herself."
"That's ominous."
Ellie pulled a face that made Iona grin.
Then, the kitchen doors beside them swung open with a crash, and Cam Knight exploded out of them.
She was wearing something that looked like it had been designed by someone who had a thorough knowledge of ropes and bondage, and very much less thorough knowledge of how clothing was supposed to work, and she was laughing already.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" Cam threw herself into the remaining chair, kissed Iona on both cheeks without asking, and immediately started rearranging everyone's cutlery. "Traffic was mental. Also I had a thing. Don't ask about the thing."
"What thing?" Iona asked.
"I said don't ask!" But Cam was grinning, and her phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced at it, and something flickered across her face, a private smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Ellie raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to tell us why we're here?"
"Yes. Right. Okay. Might as well just jump straight in, I suppose." Cam set her phone face-down on the table with visible reluctance. "So. Here's the thing. I'm broke."
Iona waited for the punchline.
"No, actually broke," Cam continued, and her voice had shifted into something almost serious.
Almost. "Like, properly skint. Remember that investment thing I did with the cryptocurrency?
Turns out that was a bad idea. And the club in Ibiza.
Also a bad idea. And the…well, there was a horse involved at one point, but I don't want to get into that. "
"A horse," Ellie said flatly.
"I said I don't want to get into it." Cam picked up a breadstick and pointed it at her. "The point is, I need money. Real money. And the only thing I've ever been any good at, besides party planning and knowing a guy, is drumming."
The word settled over the table like a held breath. Iona felt something twist in her chest. Not quite hope. Not quite dread. Something in between. She could see where this was going. "You want to get the band back together," she said slowly.
"Yes. Exactly. The Stage Girls, back from the dead, bigger and better than ever.
" Cam's enthusiasm was already running away with her.
"Think about it, nostalgia is massive right now.
Everyone wants their childhood back. We could do a reunion tour, maybe a new album, definitely some kind of Netflix documentary… "
"Cam." Ellie's voice was gentle but firm. "One thing at a time."
"Right, yes. Album first. Tour later. I've already talked to Shepherd—"
"You talked to my ex-husband before you talked to me?" Iona wasn't sure whether to be offended or not.
"He's still the best agent in the business," Cam protested. "And he said he'd consider it. If we could prove we're serious. If we could actually make music again." She leaned forward, and for once in her chaotic life, she looked almost earnest. "Come on, Iona. Don't you miss it? Even a little bit?"
Did she miss it?
Iona thought about her flat, the small spare room that she'd converted into a pottery studio where she made wobbly vases that nobody bought.
The kiln she'd saved up for that now mainly served as an expensive shelf.
She thought about the watercolor phase before that, and the jewelry-making phase before that, and the brief, disastrous attempt at a lifestyle blog that Mo still teased her about.
She thought about her guitar gathering dust in the corner of her bedroom, the strings probably corroded by now.
The last time she'd picked it up had been…
when? Mo's tenth birthday, maybe? She'd played "Happy Birthday" and her fingers had felt clumsy and wrong on the frets, like they belonged to someone else.
Two marriages. Two divorces. No career to speak of, unless you counted being a mother, which Iona absolutely did, but which didn't exactly pay the bills.
Shepherd sent child support, generous and reliable as always, because Shepherd was a good man who'd looked at Iona and somehow known, even before she did, that she wasn't in love with him. Not the way he deserved.
And then Calinda, well, Calinda had been a rebound, and they'd both known it, even as they'd walked down the aisle.
That marriage had lasted barely a year before they'd sat across from each other at their kitchen table and admitted, with something like relief, that this wasn't working.
Calinda was long gone. Mo was still upset about that too.
Mostly because Calinda had been a fashion editor at a magazine and therefore dressed like the supermodel she probably could have been and frequently gave Mo clothes.
Iona thought about the brief, brilliant years when she'd felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be, doing exactly what she was supposed to do. When she'd had a purpose. A place. A sound that was hers.
Before it all fell apart. They’d been barely nineteen when it had all imploded. And they had been more than just the three of them sitting around the table. Which was a whole other problem. "There were four of us," she said quietly. "In the band. There were four of us."
The name hung unspoken in the air between them. Cam's smile faltered. Ellie looked down at her water glass and didn't meet anyone's eyes.
"We don't need her," Cam said, but some of the brightness had gone out of her voice. "We can find another singer. I know a guy who knows—"
"Cam."
"Alright, I know a woman, actually, who used to be in this tribute band, and she's got a great voice, really distinctive…"
"Cam." Ellie reached across the table and put her hand over Cam's restless fingers. "We all know it wouldn't be the same."
It wouldn't. Iona knew that with a certainty that ached.
Maeve had been the heart of them. The voice.
The one who'd written songs that made you feel like she was reading your diary and somehow didn't hate you for what she found there.
The one who'd looked at Iona across a crowded stage and made her believe, just for a moment, that anything was possible.
The one who'd kissed her just once, fifteen years ago, backstage at some dive bar in Camden, tasting of vodka and sugared flowers. And then disappeared without a word.
"I haven't spoken to her since, um, since." Iona stopped. The sentence had too many possible endings, all of them painful.
Since the night the band imploded. Since Maeve's drinking had spiraled so far out of control that management had quietly suggested she "take some time.
" Since they'd all stood in that dressing room and watched her shake apart, watched her pick up a bottle with hands that couldn't stay steady, watched her become someone none of them recognized.
Since… the thing that Iona wouldn′t put into words even in her mind.
Since Iona had stood in a doorway and thought, desperately, say something, ask her to stay, tell her how you feel.
And hadn't.
Because what would have been the point? Maeve had been drowning, and Iona hadn't known how to swim.
"Neither has anyone," Ellie said. "She's basically a hermit now. Lives in Scotland, I think. Writes songs for other people."
"So we do it without her." Cam's jaw was set, stubborn. "The three of us. We can make it work."
Could they? Iona wasn't sure. But looking at Cam's determined face, at the quiet hope in Ellie's eyes…
Ellie, who'd dropped her fork twice during the conversation, whose hands seemed to fumble with her water glass before she caught it. "Just tired," she'd said when Iona noticed, waving it off. "The kids are running me ragged."
Something was going on there. Iona couldn't put her finger on what, but she knew Ellie well enough to know when she was deflecting. Mind you, Mo was exhausting enough, having three boys like Ellie did must be like being steamrolled every day.
Cam's phone buzzed again. She glanced at it, and that secret smile flickered across her face once more.
"Hot date tonight?" Iona asked, grateful for the distraction.
"What? No. Maybe. It's… it's a work thing."
"You don't have a job. You’re broke, remember?"
"I have many jobs! I'm very employable!" Cam shoved the phone into her bag with suspicious haste. "Anyway, we're not talking about me. We're talking about the band. We're talking about getting back out there and showing everyone that we're not just a one-hit wonder from fifteen years ago."
Iona thought about Mo, slamming her bedroom door this morning, the words still ringing in the air between them.
She thought about her divorces. She thought about all the things she'd tried to be, wife, mother, artist, housewife, and how none of them had ever quite felt like enough. "It's a terrible idea," she said.
Cam's face fell.
"But," Iona continued, "I suppose I don't have anything better to do."
Cam's shriek of joy caused the waiter to eye them suspiciously, and even the divorce party next to them lapsed into concerned silence for a second.
Then Ellie was smiling, really smiling, and Cam was laughing, and Iona was too, and for a moment they could have been nineteen again, young and stupid and convinced they were going to conquer the world.
They stayed another hour, talking logistics, making plans that would probably fall apart within a week. Cam checked her phone eleven more times and wouldn’t spill who she was messaging with. Ellie excused herself to call Jake and check on the kids, and came back looking tired but content.
And Iona sat there, surrounded by her oldest friends, and tried to remember the last time she'd felt this terrified about anything.
They parted outside the restaurant with hugs and promises to call tomorrow, to meet next week, to actually do this mad thing they'd agreed to do. The evening air was cool on Iona's face as she walked back to her car.
She was ten years too old and three dress sizes too big to be in a band. But Iona couldn't stop the faint flutter of a thrill in her heart when she thought about getting to play again.