Castles Made of Sand Read Free Page B

careful.’
    ‘Calm down, there is no terrible wave. Maybe you better come and hold my hand.’
    The party was being thrown by Allie Marlowe, the Dictator’s Queenpin administrator; a Brighton native. There was quite a crowd: core members of the Rock and Roll Reich mingling graciously with South Coast Countercultural luminaries, favoured media-folk, non-Few rockstars; other useful people. Ax and Sage caused a satisfying stir. They presented themselves to their hostess (an ill woman to cross, Allie: better make sure and be polite), who congratulated them for turning up. They then forgot about being the coolest dudes and stood at the bar, forgetting to drink and ignoring everyone, talking about Fiorinda.
    In Dissolution Summer she’d been the Indie babystar with a past: recruited off the streets by DARK, infamous Teesside dike-rockers: outed by the music press as the daughter of Rufus O’Niall, veteran Irish megastar. Ax had known the ugly story about Fiorinda and her father, and admired the kid’s courage: but he’d never been inspired to check out the music, until she was his girlfriend.
    ‘I knew what DARK were like, and I knew you’d taken her under your wing, which I’m afraid did not give me confidence. I had to get hold of No Reason and listen to it when she wasn’t around, to find out whether she was total crap—’
    ‘Hahaha. Then you got a surprise.’
    ‘Yeah.’ Ax shook his head fondly. ‘Blew me away. Fantastic. But you knew.’
    No Reason , the debut album DARK had made with Fiorinda, had transformed the band’s fortunes. Without her they’d been a disaster with flashes of genius. With her, they became extraordinary: though still fully as volatile.
    ‘I knew,’ agreed Sage, the skull grinning sweet and rueful. ‘Oh yes, I knew the first time I saw her on stage. Fourteen years old, screaming like a banshee, having severe difficulty singing and playing a guitar at the same time—’
    Ax grinned. ‘Well, it’s a situation I try to avoid, myself.’
    ‘But she was the business —’
    ‘Dunno why I bothered, looking back. It was about a year before she condescended to turn up at a Chosen Few gig.’
    The Chosen Few, now generally known as the Chosen, because the Few meant something else, was Ax’s band: comprising two of his brothers, and his ex-girlfriend Milly Kettle on drums. They didn’t play a big part in the Reich.
    Fiorinda stories from long ago, some of them new to Ax even now. Her epic fights with Charm Dudley, DARK’s rabid-tempered front woman. Her cut-crystal management style with the government suits. Her secrets. (Have you ever caught her writing a song? Nah. Nor me. Always happens when I’m off the premises.) The shock of her intelligence. How much they missed the arrogant, oblivious, cruelly damaged teenager they had known. How much they loved the person she had become. The party chattered on. Across the room, above a frieze of heads, a big screen dsiplayed the Armada concert, finalé of the Boat People tour last summer. They watched Fiorinda and DARK, with Ax Preston as emergency stand-in guitarist: quite a change in demeanour for the Chosen’s sober, reserved virtuoso.
    ‘Did you plan to carry on like that?’ asked Sage, who’d been elsewhere that night.
    ‘No! I planned to blend in with the wallpaper, so that Charm would not hate me—’
    ‘Nyah. Not worth worrying about. Charm hates everyone, regardless.’
    ‘But with DARK, blending-in means—’
    ‘Go for it ’til you fall down bleeding at the nose and ears.’
    ‘Yeah. So it just happened.’
    Their girl simply standing there, in the tight-waisted red and gold Elizabeth dress, red curls falling around her face. No can-can kicks, no cartwheels. This they didn’t like so much, as they knew what a feat of alcohol and raw courage was keeping her upright. But how the cameras loved her—
    The scene changed, Fiorinda no more in sight, and they turned away at once.
    ‘You know,’ remarked Sage, ‘I really