Sami's Silver Lining Read online

  There was a lot of error, to start with at any rate.

  Sometimes, when I was waiting for my cue or hanging about while Marley coached the others, I’d take a little notebook from the pocket of the threadbare overcoat and draw. Ben the social worker had given me the book, with the idea that I could write down thoughts and memories in it, things that were too difficult or painful to say out loud. I did that sometimes, but other times I just drew, because it was easier and less upsetting, and the notebook had blank, creamy white pages that were just begging to be doodled on.

  After a while I stopped worrying whether the kids in the band would think I was weird. The notebook was something to hide behind, something that helped me to make sense of my new band mates and maybe helped them to make sense of me.

  And then there was me, the quiet kid with the tatty overcoat and the bird’s-nest hair, the boy who hadn’t had a crush since he was eight years old and a whole world away … until I met Lexie Lawlor.

  I thought that my heart had turned to stone, but I guess it was actually ice, because when I met Lexie, the tiniest corner of my frozen feelings began to thaw. It was like one of those documentaries about the Arctic tundra when the ice starts to melt, one drip at a time. Something about Lexie got under my skin – when she was around, the world looked brighter, somehow. She wore her feelings on her sleeve, with a rawness, a vulnerability I’d never seen before.

  Lexie was thirteen years old, with big, sad eyes that gazed out from beneath one of those shrunk-in-the-wash fringes. When she wasn’t in school uniform she mooched about in little flippy skirts and T-shirts with cartoon characters or clever slogans on them. She couldn’t have been more different from Rania, but every time I looked at her I felt my world slip sideways.

  I was out of practice at feeling that way. Shyly handing over a boiled sweet might pass for true love when you’re eight years old, but I was pretty sure that more would be required now.

  No girl in her right mind would want to get involved with me, anyway. I was a mess – part iceberg, part human wreckage – but that wasn’t my only problem. Marley and Lexie ran the Lost & Found between them, and together they wrote the kind of songs that made you shiver. They were a good team, but the teamwork didn’t stop at songwriting. Lexie and Marley were dating – she was someone else’s girl, and that someone else was supposed to be my friend.

  A little bit of my frozen heart died all over again once I worked that out, but it was too late by then. I’d fallen for Lexie, hard.

  By then I’d worked out that Lexie and Bex weren’t just friends but foster sisters.

  ‘How come Lexie and Bex are in foster care?’ I asked Marley, trying to be casual. It probably didn’t seem all that casual, seeing as I was the kid who hardly ever spoke, but I wanted to know and Marley was the only one I felt I could ask.

  ‘Bex’s parents were a bit messed up and couldn’t look after her,’ Marley explained. ‘As for Lexie … well, her mum went missing when she was nine years old. Nobody’s ever found out what happened to her – Lexie was found alone in an empty flat, hungry and abandoned. So, yeah – she ended up in foster too.’

  I just nodded, non-committal, but my iceberg heart was thumping.

  Marley narrowed his eyes.

  ‘You like her, don’t you?’ he wanted to know. ‘Lexie. You have for a while.’

  I said nothing, pretended I hadn’t even heard. The skin on my cheekbones burned a little, but if I stayed calm I was pretty sure that Marley would move on to a different topic. He didn’t.

  ‘You do know we’re not together any more, don’t you?’ he told me. ‘Me and Lexie. We split up a couple of weeks back. We’re just friends now … Well, that’s all we ever were, really. Just in case you didn’t know. Just in case you do like her.’

  I shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to me one way or another, but my stomach flipped over. I learned a whole lot about Lexie that day.

  I understood now why she had such sadness in her eyes, why she wrote the kind of lyrics that made you catch your breath. Lexie knew what it was like to be lost. Maybe a part of her heart was in the deep freeze too. Maybe she woke up in the darkness trembling, afraid, trapped in nightmares of the past. Maybe.

  I understood then why I felt so drawn to Lexie, why out of all the girls I’d met since coming to Britain, she was the one I’d fallen for.

  Lexie Lawlor was damaged, just like me.

  4

  Auditions

  ‘Sami, isn’t it time to stop wearing the coat?’ Aunt Zenna says as I get ready to head out to the auditions. ‘It’s much too hot today – you’ll melt! Perhaps it’s time to think about putting it away, storing it safely before it falls apart at the seams?’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Aunt Zenna,’ I reply, although I know she has a point.

  My bird’s-nest hair is still damp from the shower and falling around my face in snake-like strands and I’m wearing a clean black T-shirt and dark skinny jeans, but I know the coat probably cancels out any attempt to look cool. It really is falling apart – the cuffs are in shreds and the hem is frayed and faded, but I am not ready to let go of it just yet.

  I’m not sure if I ever will be.

  ‘Will you be in for tea?’ Aunt Zenna asks. ‘You said there was no band practice today, so I’m making chickpea stew with baklava for afters. Your favourite!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘No worries … I’ll be here!’

  My aunt and uncle are trying hard to help me settle in, but sometimes it feels like we are three strangers sharing a space. Sometimes I just want to shout and yell and slam doors, and sometimes I want to hide away from the world. Instead, I have to smile and make small talk and pretend that baklava is my favourite. I am doing my best, anyhow – I think we all are.

  I sling my flute case over one shoulder and I’m out of there, pulling the door shut behind me, running down the stairs that lead past the workroom. As I pass the glass door that leads through to the dry-cleaning shop, I catch a glimpse of Uncle Dara, whistling as he fills out an order form for a wedding dress that has been brought in for alteration. I wave at him in passing and he stops whistling to smile, a big, joyful grin that reminds me so much of my mother that my eyes blur briefly, and I have to wipe one frayed sleeve across my face before I head out to the street.

  The posters have been up all over town for ten days now. They’re on the wall in the Leaping Llama, the hipster cafe Marley likes to hang out at, and also a whole lot of other local cafes and shops. The music shop has given us pride of place on their noticeboard, and when I call into the newsagent on the corner to buy a fineliner pen for my drawings there’s one on the door. It gives me a little buzz of pride to see my artwork in poster form, helping us in our quest to find a new keyboard player.

  At the end of term, we played at a big music festival in the park to try to save five local libraries that had been threatened with closure. It was a great gig with loads of publicity, and it had turned the tide for the libraries, because the council changed their tune and decided that they could stay open after all. Sadly, the publicity backfired on us a bit. It turned out that Soumia, our keyboardist, had told her parents she’d quit the band to focus on her GCSEs. When they saw their daughter on the local TV news channel, on a floodlit stage, playing to a crowd of thousands, the cat was out of the bag.

  Soumia’s parents made her quit the band for real the next day. ‘Exams come first,’ she’d explained sadly. ‘The GCSEs are done, but it’s A levels next. Mum and Dad don’t think music is a proper career. Sorry.’

  We were down a band member, and although Sasha, our lead singer, had been filling in for her, we really needed a proper replacement.

  ‘Make us a poster, Sami?’ Marley had said, and I had.

  The auditions are being held this afternoon at the old railway carriage where we practise.

  The practice space is an awesome vintage railway carriage in the grounds of a big mansion house called Greystones, which belongs to an eccentric elderly artist and
ex model called Louisa Winter. Jake helped to arrange for us to use it – his family live in part of the house, along with a few other arty, alternative types, so it was just a case of asking Louisa Winter for permission.

  As I walk across the grass towards the old railway carriage, I see Marley Hayes standing on the steps, drinking orange juice straight from the carton, with Dylan, Jake, Lexie, Bex and Happi lounging on the grass nearby.

  ‘Hey, Sami!’ Marley greets me. ‘Let’s hope we find someone today. We can’t keep expecting Sasha to multitask, especially now that we’re on the brink of stardom …’

  ‘Stardom?’ echoes Bex, whose hair has turned a startling shade of sea green since our last band practice. ‘We’re doing OK, Marley, but I think stardom might be pushing it just a little bit!’

  ‘That’s the difference between us, Bex,’ Marley says. ‘I have vision. You do not.’

  ‘I have vision,’ Bex argues. ‘I just think we need a lot more practice, a lot more songs and some of that mentoring Ked Wilder offered us. It’s a pity he’s away in France all summer.’

  Ked Wilder is a sixties pop legend, and a great friend of Louisa Winter. Ked headlined the music festival we were part of a few weeks back, and he’d liked our stuff so much he’d offered to help us get a foot on the ladder to success. The trouble is, he’s been at his villa in France ever since, and although Marley Hayes is a boy of many talents, being patient is not one of them.

  ‘I want to make sure we keep moving forward,’ Marley says. ‘With or without Ked Wilder. That’s what this is about! We’ve had a few applicants, thanks to Sami’s posters. I’ve made a shortlist, and the first candidate’s due any minute, so I guess we should get going. The plan is to talk to them and let them play a piece, and then, if they’re good enough, see how they go with one of our songs.’

  Marley turns back into the railway carriage, the six of us trailing after him.

  Two hours later, we are no nearer to finding our new band member. First comes Bernard, a classically trained pianist who plays some Beethoven for us but can’t be a day over nine years old; then Sid, who taught himself to play by listening to Disney soundtracks and plays us a tear-jerking version of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’, though he keeps stopping to nibble at the badly chipped black nail varnish on his bitten nails.

  I start sketching the candidates in the back of my notebook while the others clown around with secret scoresheets and scribbled messages passed between them. So far, the highest score – a six – goes to Manda, who plays a passable version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and tells us all about the ballet, tap, jazz, voice and acting classes she has every night after school. On the way out she tells us she doesn’t really have time for anything else and was just curious to see what the audition would be like.

  Great.

  Next comes Rick, a kid who got expelled from Millford Park Academy last year for hacking into the computer system and posting dodgy photoshopped pictures of his most hated teachers on the school website. He’s in a band called Zombie Massacre but says he wants to go more mainstream, and has composed a complex heavy metal/techno-beat keyboard piece that goes on for forty minutes and almost makes my ears bleed. Marley smiles his most charming smile (in case Rick decides to take some warped online revenge) and says he’ll be in touch.

  ‘What a bunch of weirdos!’ Dylan grumbles. ‘Isn’t there anyone … well, normal?’

  ‘Why would someone normal want to get mixed up with us lot?’ Bex asks, and Dylan shrugs and says it’s a fair point.

  Marley checks his watch. ‘One more candidate,’ he says. ‘Guys, it’s not looking good – and this was the shortlist. I’d already weeded out the really awful ones. What if we take Bernard and give him a big hat and make him stand on a box?’

  ‘I know you’re joking,’ Bex says. ‘I’m just not seeing the funny side right now.’

  There’s a sharp rap on the open door of the railway carriage, and the last candidate appears in the doorway.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ she says, her fingers fluttering at us. ‘I’m Bobbi-Jo Bright, and I am so excited to meet you! I watched you play at the festival in the park a couple of weeks back, and now … well, here I am!’

  I’ve never seen Bobbi-Jo before, and one glance at the others tells me they don’t know her either. She’s the kind of girl you’d remember. She’s wearing a lot of make-up and a retro style minidress with shiny black ankle boots – she looks cool and confident and a little bit bizarre, like she’s just stepped off the set of a 1960s TV show.

  ‘OK,’ Marley says. ‘Welcome, Bobbi-Jo! Can you tell us anything about yourself? Why are you interested in being our new keyboardist?’

  Bobbi-Jo perches on a high stool in the middle of the railway carriage, just behind the borrowed keyboard that nobody bothered to take back to Millford Park Academy after Soumia’s departure. She smiles, displaying very white teeth. It’s an unsettling sort of smile – it reminds me of a small animal that might growl or bite at any moment.

  Bobbi-Jo tells us that she lives in a village called Brookleigh, halfway between here and Birmingham, and goes to St Winifrid’s Girls’ School on the edge of Millford. I’ve seen the St Winifrid’s girls in town, immaculate in their bottle-green blazers and below-the-knee green kilts, their white ankle socks and shiny black lace-up brogues. Bobbi-Jo doesn’t seem to fit the picture, but what do I know?

  ‘My passion is music, obviously,’ Bobbi-Jo tells us. ‘I live for music – it’s my way of expressing myself. I’ve played several instruments in the past. Playing keyboards is quite new for me, but I am a quick learner, and I’d love to be part of the Lost & Found. I think you have something special. I think you could go all the way to the top, and I want to be a part of that!’

  Marley looks over at us, his mouth twitching into a grin.

  ‘Why music?’ he asks. ‘What makes music so special?’

  ‘I guess it’s in my blood,’ Bobbi-Jo explains with a shrug. ‘My dad is Barney Bright, the star DJ on Millford Sounds Radio. You’ve probably heard of him. He used to manage a famous pop band, the Bright Boys.’

  The rest of us exchange glances, and I can tell that it’s not just me who’s never heard of the Bright Boys.

  ‘That was back in the nineties,’ Bobbi-Jo admits. ‘They haven’t done much lately, but I know Dad’s always looking for the next big thing. Mum used to be a stylist for photo shoots and music videos, so I’ve grown up with the music world all around me, really. They know I’m auditioning today, and they’re rooting for me. They saw the news coverage of the festival and they think you’re a band with shedloads of potential. My dad would just love to get you all on his radio show!’

  Marley looks like he might explode with joy.

  ‘Really? That’s brilliant to hear!’ he says. ‘We’ve had quite a few applicants today, Bobbi-Jo, as you can imagine, but I think I speak for us all when I say that you seem like a perfect fit for the Lost & Found. We’re rehearsing every day throughout the summer, from six until eight. I see you don’t live in Millford itself – would that be a problem?’

  ‘I’ll just get the train in,’ Bobbi-Jo says. ‘I do that most days anyway. No hassle.’

  ‘In that case,’ Marley declares, ‘welcome to the band!’

  ‘Hang on,’ Lexie cuts in. ‘I mean – you seem like a great candidate, Bobbi-Jo, but before we make a final decision could we see you play? Did you prepare a piece?’

  ‘Oh! Yes, sure! I am quite new to keyboards, but …’

  ‘No worries, Bobbi-Jo,’ Marley says. ‘Just do what you can!’

  Sadly, what Bobbi-Jo can do is not good.

  We’re not expecting miracles, but she can barely play at all and it’s hard to work out what the tune is supposed to be. Over and over, she bashes out the wrong notes, plays in the wrong key. She stops abruptly, starts in the wrong places, accidentally switches to booming church-organ mode and almost deafens us all. By the time she crashes to a standstill, we’re all staring, speechless. Bobbi-
Jo may have all the right connections, but she doesn’t have a musical bone in her body.

  ‘I don’t actually have a keyboard at home,’ she says, aware that we’re not convinced. ‘I’ve been learning on the school one, but – well, maybe I’m a bit rusty now that it’s the holidays. I’m usually much better, promise!’

  There’s an awkward silence, and everyone looks at Marley. This is his chance to tell Bobbi-Jo he’s made a mistake, been too hasty, that he’ll have to think again. Marley loves the Lost & Found. There’s no way he’d let the sound we’ve worked so hard to perfect be wrecked.

  It turns out I am wrong about that.

  ‘Great,’ Marley says. ‘Like you say, it just needs practice and perseverance. We can help you!’

  Bex rolls her eyes and steps up alongside Marley. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘We need to make sure we get the right person. We’ll have a band meeting and let you know, Bobbi-Jo, OK?’

  Bobbi-Jo frowns. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Do that! Just don’t leave it too long, because another band want me too, and I won’t be able to fob them off for long. They’re an up-and-coming local rap band called Pretty Street – you’ve probably heard of them. They’re tipped for great things. I’d much rather be with the Lost & Found, but if you’re not sure …’

  ‘We’re sure,’ Marley says. ‘Absolutely certain. Bobbi-Jo, welcome to the Lost & Found!’

  ‘Wow, wow, wow!’ Bobbi-Jo squeals, flinging her arms around Marley and blowing air kisses to the rest of us. ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Bex mutters darkly.

  I don’t think any of us can.

  5

  The Leaping Llama

  An hour later, a gang of us are installed in a corner booth at the Leaping Llama, Marley’s favourite hipster cafe – we all pitched in our spare cash and Lexie took it to the counter to order.

  ‘I’ve got us all lemonades and a slice of chocolate fudge cake with seven spoons so we can share,’ she says, sliding into the seat beside me. ‘Like, maybe one bite each? Is that OK?’