Page 68 of Summer at Harbour View House
‘Let’s hope it’ll be enough to get Eddie to sing,’ Ben said. ‘You know, for once.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Natasha said. ‘When we first moved in, he wouldn’t shut up. Now he won’t sing a note.’
‘Talking of which,’ Ben said, glancing at his watch. ‘We’d better get to rehearsal.’
With the concert coming together nicely, and with ticket sales rising over an astonishing five thousand after the story of Cowslip’s stumbling reunion was spread among several national tabloids, everything was going well except for one thing.
The band.
As the song came to a calamitous end, Mandy pulled her mic out of its stand and threw it down on the stand, sending a loud pop through the PA system.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘I quit.’
Natasha jumped up from the chair in front of the stage from where she had been attempting to keep a smile as the band rattled through one stumbling instrumental after another.
‘No, no, please don’t.’
She pointed at Eddie, who was sitting in in armchair by the side of the stage, reading a newspaper.
‘There’s one week left until this disaster and he hasn’t got up here and sung a single note. I can’t take this anymore.’
Eddie looked up. ‘I’ll sing when you’re ready.’
‘You’re just as big a pig now as you were in the eighties,’ Mandy snapped.
‘At least I’m not an actual pig,’ Eddie said.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Guys, please!’ Natasha said. ‘Can we keep this civil? Don’t forget it’s for a good cause.’
‘It’s for his ego more than anything else,’ Mandy said. ‘I bet he can’t even sing. That’s why he won’t get up here with us. He’s scared.’
‘The only thing I’m scared of is you eating me.’
‘How dare you!’
Natasha flapped her hands, trying to calm everyone down. It didn’t help that Ben was grinning like a kid watching a playground dust up, nor that Ryan, Mikey, and Carly were paying no attention, as though this were par for the course. As Eddie started making pig-like squeals, Mandy picked up her mic and threw it at his head. He ducked just in time and it bounced off the back of the chair, rolling away to land just in front of the door, just as it flew open and a shopping-bag-laden figure stepped inside.
‘I’m back!’ Hannah cried, arms wide, duty free bags hanging down like ripe fruit, a string of paper flowers around her neck, her face and legs tanned, hair braided and strung with colourful beads. ‘How’s everything going?’
The room was stunned into silence. As Davey stumbled in behind her, laden with even more bags and looking exhausted, Hannah glanced down at the microphone lying at her feet.
‘Oh, you got me one? No! I couldn’t.’
Defying all laws of gravity and physics, Hannah somehow managed to lean over and pick up the microphone without dropping a single item. Then, putting it to her lips, she smiled and let out a dramatic, ‘Laaaaaaaaaa!’
Unsurprisingly, it turned out that Hannah could sing like an angel. They added a microphone for her between Carly and a scowling Mandy, and after a couple of songs the band was already starting to sound better. With the Curve’s guitar parts playing out of a speaker, Ben starting to get the hang of things, and with Mikey and Ryan as solid as ever, the band began to sound like a band.
Eddie even did so much as get to his feet.
‘It’s better,’ Eddie said to Natasha. ‘But there’s still something missing, isn’t there?’
‘We’ve got five thousand people about to descend on Penkoe next week to watch you sing,’ Natasha said. ‘Are you going to do it?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘If they can get it right.’
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