Page 26 of Two Hit Wonder

The words weren’t cruel, just honest. Glinna had always been honest.

"Mmm," was all Maeve said.

Silence stretched between them. Maeve watched the depressed plant sway slightly in some unseen draft.

"I'm scared," she admitted finally. The words came out rusty.

"I know." Glinna's voice was warm. "But you agreed to this. You said yes. So give it a real chance, yeah? Not a half-arsed chance where you've already decided to fail."

"I don't do things half-arsed."

"No, you do them completely arsed or not at all. Which is why I'm telling you: commit to this. Really try. And then, if it doesn't work, you can come home and complain about it for the rest of your life. I'll even listen."

Maeve almost smiled. "You're a good friend."

"I'm your sponsor. Friends would let you wallow."

They talked for a few more minutes about nothing important. Charity's new obsession with snails, the sheep's ongoing vendetta against Maeve's garden, the plumber who'd shown up ill to the cottage and had to be sent away. Normal things. Safe things. By the time Maeve hung up, she felt marginally more capable of facing the day. Which was, even she had to admit, an improvement.

THIS WAS… WEIRD. It was all weird. For a long time, Cam and Ellie and Iona had been her life. They’d all revolved around each other like crazy little teenaged planets. Coming back was… weird.

The rehearsal space had a carpet that smelled funny and suspicious stains on the ceiling. Maeve arrived early, because being early meant she could stake out a position and pretend to be busy so as not have to make awkward small talk as people filtered in. She'd brought a folder of songs she'd been working on. Real songs. Proper songs that she'd spent years perfecting in the quiet of her cottage.

Ellie arrived next, bass case slung over her shoulder. She nodded at Maeve with the comfortable acknowledgment of someone who also didn't want to make small talk. They existed in companionable silence, and Maeve thought that she’d always liked Ellie best. Ellie who looked older now, more sensible, like she should be driving a Land Rover rather than playing a bass.

Cam burst through the door, somehow already in the middle of a sentence. "—and I told him, mate, that's not how electricity works, but did he listen? He did not." She was wearing something that appeared to be made entirely of buckles. "Morning, everyone. Who's ready to make magic?"

"Magic?" Maeve said. "No worries about sounding pretentious then?"

"Sod off," Cam said cheerfully, dropping onto her drum stool and twirling a stick between her fingers. "Where's Iona?"

The door opened, and Maeve steeled herself, and then berated herself for steeling herself. It was just Iona. The same Iona who had once peed in a field with a bull. The same Iona that had once cut her hair herself and ended up looking like Iggy Pop.

"Here," Iona said, slightly breathless. "Sorry, the Tube was a nightmare. Someone fainted at King's Cross and everything went sideways." She was carrying two cups of coffee and handed one to Ellie without being asked.

Maeve noticed this. She didn't know why she noticed it. She decided to stop noticing things.

"Right," she said, standing up and opening her folder. "I've got some material. Songs I've been working on. I thought we could start with—"

"You brought songs?" Cam peered at the sheets. "As in, finished songs?"

"As in, songs that need a band to perform them. Yes."

"That's… I mean, that's great. I just thought we'd be working on things together. Collaborating." Cam glanced at Ellie for backup. "That’s how we always worked."

Ellie shrugged noncommittally. "Let's hear them first."

Maeve distributed the sheets. The song was called "Aftermath," and she'd written it during a particularly brutal winter two years ago when the pipes had frozen and she'd had nothing to do but sit by the fire and pick at her guitar. It was good. She knew it was good.

They played through it once. Then again.

It sounded wrong.

Not wrong in the way that meant it needed adjustments. Wrong in the way that meant the soul of the thing wasn't translating. The bass line was technically correct but felt leaden. The drums were too busy, then too sparse. And somehow, impossibly, Maeve's own voice sounded disconnected from the rest of it.

"Maybe if we—" Cam started.

"It's fine," Maeve said flatly. "We just need to get it tighter. Again."