Page 59 of Second Verse

‘When things end—things you’ve invested a lot in—it takes time. Give it that. It’ll be better eventually. You’ll come back to yourself,’ Poppy vowed to her.

Norah raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you have a marriage end?’

‘No, but I did have a pop career that ended. Sorry, that’s a bloody stupid comparison, isn’t it?’ Poppy said, rolling her eyes at herself.

‘I don’t know, is it?’ Norah asked.

Poppy steeled herself to get very real. She had to. Norah needed it.

‘I wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted, but I went all in anyway because what else was I going to do? And when it ended, I was relieved but also scared to death because it was all I’d known for years, and I didn’t know what the fuck was going to come next. Who was I without it?’ She stopped, scared that she’d said too much. ‘Am I warm?’

‘Boiling,’ Norah said with a smile.

Poppy was glad to know that Norah felt understood. She badly wanted to be there for her once again. But this time, she wasn’t going to screw it up.

‘You ever get recognised these days?’ Norah asked.

Poppy smiled. ‘Never.’

‘How?’ Norah asked, stunned.

‘That was the great thing about the way they dressed me in the band. As soon as it was over, I went back to dressing like me, and I was incognito,’ Poppy explained.

‘Smart.’

‘I think Dolly Parton patented the system. If you look like a painted clown on stage, real life doesn’t have to change that much off it.’

Norah laughed. Poppy was glad to see her friend look happy again. She would help her find that laugh every chance she got.

Twenty Years Ago

Poppy couldn’t understand how she’d gotten here. Stuck in a drafty rehearsal space, practising with two other girls she didn’t know well, dressed likethis: belly top, high heels, and a skirt that was more in line with the definition of a belt. She felt almost naked. All she had to protect her was her guitar. It was all that stood between her bare midriff and the rest of the world.

The other two girls, Rebecca and Annalise, didn’t seem unhappy. They both seemed fucking jazzed, actually. Annalise was on lead guitar, Rebecca on drums. Everyone sang. Though Poppy didn’t think Rebecca had been playing for very long. Poppy was pretty sure she’d been hired based on her looks and not bad singing, and the drums had been thrown at her quite recently. Rebecca was decent on guitar, though her singing voice was a little weak. Again, her looks probably went a long way to making up for that lack.

And then there was Poppy. She didn’t think she matched the prettiness of the other girls, but she could play better, sing better, and she wrote the songs that weren’t covers. It was important that they had their own songwriter. It was part of the ethos of the band that Jeff had designed. The band built the music in every way—music, vocals, lyrics.

Jeff said a certain kind of demographic would be into this corn-fed organic pop. They needed to seem raw and real. Peoplewere getting a bit tired of bands slapped together by cynical labels, he said. So the members of Velvet Smack were supposed to have found each other without any kind of label interference. The band had been formed as a result of friendship and a shared feeling that they wanted to sing slightly angry yetcatchymusic about how they were going to live on their terms, and boys could get on board with that or get out of the way.

Poppy had been working on some stuff for them with Jeff’s direction. He wanted ‘love songs with attitude.’ He suggested that the influence for these songs should be in the vein of Sugar Babes, All Saints, The Pussycat Dolls, and Girls Aloud.

Those bands were not Poppy’s cup of tea at all, but she’d tried to write stuff in their vein. She’d composed three songs for Velvet Smack (she hated that fucking name so much), and Jeff said they were good, but they were only album songs. They didn’t have their debut single yet. Poppy didn’t know if she was going to be able to produce what he was asking for. Was she gonna get kicked out before they’d even released the first album?

In a way, that might have been better. Poppy wasn’t happy. She wanted to throw it in. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. The same thoughts kept bouncing around her brain.This is your start. And if you leave now, nothing else will come your way. Take the gift.

But it didn’t feel like a gift. Poppy wanted to be home with her mum, playing in her bedroom, rehearsing with the band who no longer talked to her. And more than anything, she wanted to see Norah. That fever had yet to break.

As the rehearsal ended and everyone began packing up, Poppy grabbed her guitar case and headed towards the door, ready to escape for the day.

‘Hey, Poppy! Wait up!’ Jeff called out from behind her.

She turned back, trying to hide her annoyance with a fake smile.

‘Just wanted to say, great job today,’ he said with a pat on her shoulder. ‘I know it's not exactly your style, but you're killing it. Could we have a quick chat about something?’

‘Umm, what about?’ Poppy asked.

‘I wanted to ask about something,’ Jeff said with a grin.

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