Trust Me (Beggar's Choice #2) Read Free Page B

who acknowledges that the person
who takes care of both of you is just me, all alone as ever ? Instead I
speak in a very calm voice. “I don’t want the fame mum. I’ve learnt my lesson
about that, but we do need the money. Your redundancy pay is almost gone.” She
has the grace to look ashamed at this because we all know that the money went
on a car for Molly, who is apparently too weak to use public transport. “The
rent needs to be paid and the next gas and electricity bill is the winter one
so it’s the big one. The music lessons and the session singing are fine but we
need more money. Backing singers on tour can earn up to £500 a night depending
on how big the band are. Just think what we could do with that money.”
    Finally my mum stirs and not
looking at me she says in a low voice. “How did it go?”
    I sigh. “I don’t know,” I say
finally. “I’m not sure it went too well.”
    “Why not?” she asks sharply.
Apparently her objections have been overruled by the mention of the cash, and
we’re back to where we usually are, in that I’m in the wrong.
    “Never mind,” I say firmly. “It
probably won’t pan out but if I put the word out I can probably get another job
like this quite quickly if I’m prepared to travel and stay away.”
    Molly looks at me with the first
sign of animation I’ve seen in her in years. “Who was the band?” she asks in
her husky voice.
    I stare at her for a second,
looking at her well cut hair and the new clothes that my mum had paid for out
of my money, and for a second I remember the desperate junkie that we’d
welcomed into the family years ago. Now, she looks like a model and I reflect
bitterly that all my hard work gets for me is home cut hair and second hand
clothes while it gets her everything, but I’ve learnt that this sort of
thinking gets me nothing but an imminent ulcer.
    “Beggar’s Choice,” I say finally
and she smiles flat out, her cheeks reddening.
    “Wow, they’re really hot Nell,
you’re a lucky girl.”
     I smile at her slightly
thinking once a groupie always a groupie. “Not really,” I finally say. The
audition has faded so far from my mind it’s like an event that happened twenty
years ago. I know I felt alive for the first time in years, but it’s like an
old person looking back on their youth. “I don’t think anything will happen
from this. I don’t think Sid Hudson was impressed.”
    Her smile holds the faintest hint
of the malice that it always does. “That’s a shame Nell,” she says happily.
“Nothing happens in that band unless they all agree, and Sid and his brother
are very much the driving forces. I’ve heard that the new music is very much
under Sid’s direction. Apparently it’s brilliant but he’s changed since the
overdose, and now people are saying how focused he is and how he expects the
same from everyone. If he’s that demanding then he’s only going to want the
best, so I wouldn’t feel too bad babe that it’s not you.”
    I flatten my lips against the
retort that needs to come out. If we get into an argument I know from bitter
experience whose side my mum will come down on. Instead I smile but it’s a
pathetic attempt and she knows it. She’s opening her mouth again, probably to
drown me in Sid Hudson facts gleaned from Heat magazine, when as if on cue my
phone rings and the screen lights up with an unknown number. Swallowing hard I
punch the button and mutter a hello only to hear the unmistakable deep tones of
Sid Hudson, the man himself.
    “Good afternoon Nelly,” he
drawls. “If you’re still interested we’d like to offer you the backing singer
job. That’s if you haven’t had a much better offer since we saw you last.”
Sarcastic twat.
    For a few seconds silence reigns
as I look at my mum and Molly. One wears a disapproving sour face, the other a
mask of disinterest. I know that if I take the job I’ll be away from them for
months on end, unable to come home to see them at all. I