passed.
‘God – who’d think they were eighteen and not eight?’ Millie said.
‘What, Carly and friends or my parents?’ Sorrel spluttered. ‘Because sometimes, Mills, when it comes to my family, I do wonder.’
* * *
Mac’s studio was the one bit of Holbrook House that was truly up to twenty-first-century standards. Separate from the house and alongside the back terrace, it had once been a barn then was later converted to a five-car garage until Mac had concluded that he wasn’t the type to collect cars, especially the kind that needed indoor pampering. What was the point of having a Cadillac under a tarpaulin? Or a Ferrari that simply begged some envious waster to run a key along its body-work every time you parked it in a street? Toys like that drew attention. Mac had had plenty of that onstage – you didn’t want people gawping at you twenty-four/seven. Even at Charisma’s peak, he preferred, when not actually performing, to be Joe Normal. The garage had been rebuilt and fitted out as every rock musician’s must-have accessory: a fully equipped recording studio. Most of his original kit had been sold off several years before. The days of needing a full-scale mixing desk and ninety-six track recorder together with a selection of wardrobe-sized synthesizers were long gone and he could produce all the sounds he wanted using a simple Macintosh computer, a Yamaha Clavinova, his beaten-up Steinway grand and a couple of old favourite guitars. All the same, the studio room still smelled authentically businesslike – a mixture of new wood, warmed-up electronics and the faint, ingrained scent of old coffee and cigarettes. If he closed his eyes he could easily conjure up a memory of studio two at Olympic and Eric Clapton playing table football in the studio kitchen. In here he kept the gold discs, the framed
Billboard
listing from the time the band topped both the US singles and album charts, his Ivor Novello songwriting awards and various other bits of Charisma memorabilia that Lottie considered far too naff to have in the house.
‘I’m not having that lot in the downstairs loo like some kind of shrine to the glory days,’ she’d declared when Mac had had the builders in to update the studio and he had jokingly suggested, after being impressed by a visit to the Long Room in the Lord’s pavilion, having a trophy cabinet built. And so Mac’s past successes were displayed on the studio shelves, reminding him uncomfortably that such a lot of time (and an awful lot of money) had vanished since he’d last achieved anything of note – either musical or otherwise. He was pretty glad now about Lottie’s loo-ban. He could quite easily face the evidence of how decidedly the best part of his career was over in the once or twice a week he ventured into the studio: being reminded every time he went for a pee would be just too much.
Mac would not, if he was honest, be able to claim these days that he could still put down ‘songwriter’ under the heading ‘Occupation’, even though his work still turned up on the world’s radio playlists often enough to provide a good (if alarmingly dwindling) income. He’d still have put it on his passport, if it had been required, for old times’ sake and for the small, rare ego-stroke of having immigration officials ask him if he’d written anything famous. He had never admitted to it for car insurance, as he knew from bitter experience that it would draw only a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the phone and either an eye-watering quote or a swift refusal on grounds of unacceptable risk. He’d always wondered exactly what it was about musicians that gave them such a reputation among insurers. It didn’t seem to matter whether you played a disciplined double bass in a symphony orchestra or were Keith Richards – apparently anyone who strung a few notes together for a living was tarred with the same wayward brush. Was it a simple matter of a collective
‘God – who’d think they were eighteen and not eight?’ Millie said.
‘What, Carly and friends or my parents?’ Sorrel spluttered. ‘Because sometimes, Mills, when it comes to my family, I do wonder.’
* * *
Mac’s studio was the one bit of Holbrook House that was truly up to twenty-first-century standards. Separate from the house and alongside the back terrace, it had once been a barn then was later converted to a five-car garage until Mac had concluded that he wasn’t the type to collect cars, especially the kind that needed indoor pampering. What was the point of having a Cadillac under a tarpaulin? Or a Ferrari that simply begged some envious waster to run a key along its body-work every time you parked it in a street? Toys like that drew attention. Mac had had plenty of that onstage – you didn’t want people gawping at you twenty-four/seven. Even at Charisma’s peak, he preferred, when not actually performing, to be Joe Normal. The garage had been rebuilt and fitted out as every rock musician’s must-have accessory: a fully equipped recording studio. Most of his original kit had been sold off several years before. The days of needing a full-scale mixing desk and ninety-six track recorder together with a selection of wardrobe-sized synthesizers were long gone and he could produce all the sounds he wanted using a simple Macintosh computer, a Yamaha Clavinova, his beaten-up Steinway grand and a couple of old favourite guitars. All the same, the studio room still smelled authentically businesslike – a mixture of new wood, warmed-up electronics and the faint, ingrained scent of old coffee and cigarettes. If he closed his eyes he could easily conjure up a memory of studio two at Olympic and Eric Clapton playing table football in the studio kitchen. In here he kept the gold discs, the framed
Billboard
listing from the time the band topped both the US singles and album charts, his Ivor Novello songwriting awards and various other bits of Charisma memorabilia that Lottie considered far too naff to have in the house.
‘I’m not having that lot in the downstairs loo like some kind of shrine to the glory days,’ she’d declared when Mac had had the builders in to update the studio and he had jokingly suggested, after being impressed by a visit to the Long Room in the Lord’s pavilion, having a trophy cabinet built. And so Mac’s past successes were displayed on the studio shelves, reminding him uncomfortably that such a lot of time (and an awful lot of money) had vanished since he’d last achieved anything of note – either musical or otherwise. He was pretty glad now about Lottie’s loo-ban. He could quite easily face the evidence of how decidedly the best part of his career was over in the once or twice a week he ventured into the studio: being reminded every time he went for a pee would be just too much.
Mac would not, if he was honest, be able to claim these days that he could still put down ‘songwriter’ under the heading ‘Occupation’, even though his work still turned up on the world’s radio playlists often enough to provide a good (if alarmingly dwindling) income. He’d still have put it on his passport, if it had been required, for old times’ sake and for the small, rare ego-stroke of having immigration officials ask him if he’d written anything famous. He had never admitted to it for car insurance, as he knew from bitter experience that it would draw only a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the phone and either an eye-watering quote or a swift refusal on grounds of unacceptable risk. He’d always wondered exactly what it was about musicians that gave them such a reputation among insurers. It didn’t seem to matter whether you played a disciplined double bass in a symphony orchestra or were Keith Richards – apparently anyone who strung a few notes together for a living was tarred with the same wayward brush. Was it a simple matter of a collective
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