Page 17 of Two Hit Wonder

Her life was being upended whether she liked it or not.

Above her, clouds gathered. Rain was coming. Eejit, finally free, trotted past her prone body with sheep-ish contempt.

"I hate everything," Maeve announced to no one in particular.

"That's the spirit," said Glinna.

Chapter Seven

The train back to London gave Iona five hours to think, which was approximately four hours and fifty-nine minutes more than she wanted.

She'd texted the group chat from Inverness. No luck. She said no. Then she'd turned her phone to silent and stared out the window at the countryside rolling past, green and endless, trying very hard not to think about anything at all.

It didn't work.

She kept seeing Maeve's face. The way her eyes had widened, just for a second, when she'd opened the door. The careful blankness that had followed. So many years, and Iona could still read her like a song she'd memorized, even when Maeve was trying her hardest to be unreadable.

The sheep bite on her hand throbbed. She'd cleaned it properly at a service station, bought plasters and antiseptic from a tiny Boots, but it still stung. A fitting souvenir, really. She'd come all this way and all she had to show for it was a wounded hand and a heart that felt like it had been scraped raw.

By the time she got home, it was nearly ten at night. Mo was asleep, or at least pretending to be. Iona stood outside her daughter's bedroom door for a long moment, listening to the silence, then went to bed herself without eating.

The next morning, she met Cam and Ellie at a café in Soho that Cam had chosen because she knew the owner. The table was fine. The coffee was fine. Everything was fine, except for the part where Iona had to look at her two oldest friends and admit that she'd failed.

"She said no," Iona said, wrapping both hands around her latte. "Very clearly. Multiple times."

Cam slumped back in her chair. "Did you try begging?"

"I tried everything short of begging. And some light begging."

"What about crying? Did you cry?"

"A sheep bit me and I bled on her kitchen floor. I think that's close enough."

Ellie, who had been quiet, reached across the table and touched Iona's arm. "Are you alright?"

The question was so gentle, so Ellie, that Iona felt her throat tighten. "Fine," she said. "Bit embarrassed. A lot rejected. But fine."

"We shouldn't have asked you to go," Ellie said. She had shadows under her eyes that her concealer wasn't quite hiding, and she pressed her fingers to her temple like she was fighting off a headache. "It wasn't fair to put you in that position."

"Someone had to go. And it was always going to be me." Iona shrugged, aiming for casual. "We all knew that. Besides, you didn’t make me. I offered."

They all knew. That was the problem. Whatever had happened between Iona and Maeve, whatever almost-thing they'd never quite named, it meant something. It meant that if anyone could get through to Maeve, it would be Iona. And of course Cam and Ellie knew about it. As close as Iona and Maeve had been, Cam and Ellie weren’t far behind. Quieter, less… central, perhaps, but always steadfastly there.

Except she hadn't got through. She'd traveled all the way to Scotland, and Maeve had looked at her like she was a ghost, and then she'd said no.

"Right," Cam said, sitting up straight with the air of someone who was about to make everything worse. "Right, okay, so Plan A didn't work. That's fine. We move on to Plan B."

"What's Plan B?" Iona asked, not sure she wanted to know.

"I know a guy who knows the guy who manages a tribute band. The Stage Girls Experience, or something like that. They're based in Leeds. I reckon we could poach their singer."

Ellie and Iona exchanged a look.

"A tribute band," Ellie said flatly.

"Their lead singer is apparently brilliant. Does all the classics. I Wanna Be a Star, that other one we did, the B-side nobody remembers."

"Cam," Iona said. "We can't steal a singer from our own tribute band."