Girls Who Play Guitars

•six months later (1995)•

~STEVE SOUL RECORDING STUDIOS~

~WEST LONDON~

Ellie pushed herself back in the plush leather studio chair. The speakers didn't seem big enough to hold their sound. It needed space. Air. It needed a stadium. She couldn't believe only the three of them could make that vast sound.

"Turn it up," she grinned at Steve, their bulging, bearded producer from Manchester, who sat next to her. "Loud. Really loud."

Steve pushed a slider in front of him

The song sounded rich; meaty. Like a jar of angry wasps, constant and full and humming.

It wasn't how Ellie had imagined it. But it worked. More than worked because of the genius of Steve Soul. His pudgy fingers had worked wonders over the last four months, crafting and shaping everything in Ellie's head into carefully moulded masterpieces for Slider's second album. They had a hard task topping their previous album, which had both gone to number one in the U.K. and Australia. And their most recent single 'North' had been sitting in the top ten for three months straight. Steve had brought Meg and Kim's ideas along for the ride and sculpted thirteen works of art from Ellie's rough ideas scrawled on bits of paper; in notebooks; on serviettes, she'd collected on their Australian tour.

Ellie's vocals were thick and deathly over the top of her guitar on the last track. There was no layering or over-production. This was pure Slider, but better than Slider had ever sounded. As the song came to an abrupt end, Ellie swivelled in her chair to where Kim and Meg gawped from the couch at the back of the studio.

"It's fuckin' epic!" Meg cried. She jumped up and waved her arms in the air. Because that's what Meg did. She had on a weird bright blue sack dress with cartoon clouds all over it. Ellie couldn't work out if it was a dress, or a recycled curtain from some poor kid's bedroom Meg had taken a fancy to on her travels.

Kim shrugged from over on the couch. "I like it." She curled her short dark hair behind her ears and sipped on her cup of tea.

Ellie rolled her eyes. "Is that all you've got?"

"What else do you want from me? It's already going to win awards. Isn't that enough?"

Ellie chuckled. "I guess."

"It gives me the shivers," Meg bounced over to Ellie and hugged her. "It's so exciting. Just so bloody exciting. I can't wait to see Daniel's reaction."

"Why Daniel specifically?" Ellie said, the thrill of him coming home today after a month on the road, filling her with a smooth guitar riff at the thought that tonight, they could be together after for so long.

"No reason. Just that half the songs are about him and his sexy rooster-ness," Meg cackled evilly.

Ellie rolled her eyes at Meg even though it was true and turned back to Steve and the mixing desk. "Can you give me a copy? I want to listen to it at home. On a normal stereo. See how it sounds before we release it on the world."

Steve nodded and started pressing buttons, rolling sliders and loading CDs into his machines just as a face appeared at the studio door window. It was Brenin Owen's assistant. Steve waved her in.

"Ellie, sorry." Adriana's face was flushed pink under reams of dark, flowing hair. "Brenin asked me to talk to you again." She glanced around at the others in the studio and back at Ellie. "About the thing." She dragged a magazine from the folder she clutched to her chest and held it out to Ellie. "And now it's in Tattler."

Ellie took a second to work out what Adriana was trying to tell her as she took the magazine and saw the cover - a picture of Daniel, James, Gav and Will wrapped up together in a gigantic British flag with goofy expressions on their faces, with the headline, 'Super Glue'.