Chapter 95

Shawna settled into the black leather seat with a little trepidation, crossing her legs at the ankle as a woman leant over her shoulder to clip a microphone on to her lapel.

"Is that alright there?" she asked, and Shawna nodded distractedly, reaching for the glass of water at her side.

"Thirty seconds, people!" someone shouted from the studio floor, and the audience began to settle as the host jogged back out to his seat, settling comfortably into place as the clock ticked round.

"Welcome back," he said, turning his chair from one camera to the next. "Tonight I'm joined by Shawna Lewis, lead singer with 'Catharsis' who, despite being the highest earning album artists in six of the last eight years, have only this year released their first commercial single.

"Shawna, thank you for coming."

"Thank you," Shawna nodded.

"Now, as I understand it, despite the time you've spent at the top of the album charts, you've been together as a band for just ten years now?"

"That's right. We started at university."

"And you all dropped out to follow a career in music?"

"Well, Elspeth decided to stay and finish, but she joined back up with the band when she had her degree. The rest of us ... Well, I think of it as putting my studies on hold. I'm still intending to go back when we're finished and get a degree in Journalism."

"And the others?"

"Marcus has finished two degrees from the Open University since we started. Yvonne and Hope, I think, have given up. I'm not sure about Lorraine."

"You've been described in the Daily Mail this week as 'the best band never to have had a number one.' How do you respond to that?"

"How does anyone respond to that? I mean, publicly, we're very serious and acknowledge the tremendous honour and talk about our idols and heroes that led us to it, and how all we want is to be mentioned in the same breath as them. Privately we agree completely, of course."

The audience laughed, the host relaxed, and Shawna began to settle a little.

"Your path through the music industry was certainly an unusual one. For the first, what, six years, you didn't have a contract as such at all."

"Well, it's never easy to be successful as a start-up band, but if you are then it's really easy early on to make a bucket-load of money for someone else. It's hard enough to keep creative control when you're actually creative, writing your own stuff, but we don't. We cover other people's work, and we'd never have had any choices if we'd signed up with a serious label.

"And if you do sign up with a label and release stuff, you get your hard work undermined by pirate music trading. So we decided to try something a little different."

"You spent a year and a half touring the student circuits, performing live and building up a reputation. Then what's generally regarded as your big break, you headlined Glastonbury."

"Well, we didn't sign up to headline. We were there to be a support act, but ... Glastonbury's tickets had been down for three or four years. They weren't getting the acts they once had, and the only people turning up were our fan base — students. We did the first day at one of the side-stages, and then when one of the main acts dropped out we got promoted on the strength of that show."

"So you don't believe you earned the chance?"

"God, no. We put in damned hard work to get there. But then so did a lot of other bands that no-one remembers. Our second drummer, Ian Mason, he was with a band called Dreams of Eidolons who were doing pretty much the same tour circuits as us for the nine months before Glastonbury that year. They were a good band, wrote their own stuff, but they didn't get the lucky break, and we did. We put the work in to get in the position to have the lucky break, but it was a lucky break."

"You've mentioned drummers there, and you've become known for having a number of drummers in the past decade, despite the rest of the band remaining reasonably consistent."

"It started off as something of a joke. Paul, our first drummer ... Well, actually, our first drummer was Aiden, but he didn't make it to the first show. He'd never really been that enthusiastic, he was just going through the motions to be a friend. Then Paul joined on the afternoon of the first show, at which time we still didn't even have a name. He left after about a year, and..."

"Sorry, what happened there?"

"Paul? He ... I guess it's not a secret. He started dating Yvonne, and he was adamant about not dating someone in the band. I think he was worried about money, too. He went back to university, finished his degree, and then came back to be, well, everything in the band that isn't playing or singing really. He works arrangements, sound engineering, bookings. He still organises a lot of that. I guess he's our manager now."

"And after him?"

"Well, after him we had Ian who stepped in at short notice. His band had broken up, and he was looking for somewhere to play. So we put up banners saying that we were on the 'Introducing Ian Mason Tour, ' and it kind of built on that."

"Ian left after two years when Paul came back, so we had the 'Paul Kirke Tour.' And then when Paul and Yvonne got serious and Paul took over backstage work, we had synthesised a drum-track, and changed the posters to read 'Seeking Phil Collins Tour.' And, bless him, he actually came. Joined us on stage for three nights at Hammersmith.

"After that we got some notoriety, and we arranged to have some session drummers stand in, and ran a series of 'Seeking so-and-so' tours."

"The list is quite impressive," the host said, interrupting her. "Roger Taylor, Lars Ulrich, Freeman Torbay, I could go on. Why do you think that is?"

"Because we're genuine. We play for fun and take money because it means we don't have to get real jobs. We were never in it for the money, and if we weren't getting paid we'd still get together and play. We've called people who haven't made it, of course. You're listing people that did agree, but the other list is longer."

"Because you wouldn't pay?"

"No, we were offering to pay. You don't call Roger Taylor up, ask him to play and expect him to do it for free. The guy played with Freddie Mercury, for God's sake!"

"So why do you think some people have turned your invitation down?"

"Various reasons. Other commitments for some of them. Dennis Eliot wrote us a very nice letter explaining that he's left the music business and doesn't want to come back to it, but that he was flattered we'd thought of him. I don't think anyone's been malicious about it or turned us down out of jealousy or spite or anything."

"I see. You mentioned that you don't write your own pieces, that you're a cover band essentially, and yet your single that's released next month is a new piece written exclusively for you, as I understand it."

"That's right. The single's out next month and our first studio album in a few months time."

"All your albums to date have been live recordings. What made you change now?"

"We've changed. We've spent ten years on the road, recording, travelling, working. We've earned all this money, bought houses, and then paid people to come in twice a week and clean them while we toured. It's time to come home. Hope's pregnant, so she doesn't want to tour any more. Yvonne and Paul have been thinking about starting a family, too."

"And that brings us to what could be the most controversial aspect of the band..."

"Paul and Yvonne thinking about a family?" Shawna quipped, and the host smiled and shook his head.

"Hope's pregnancy. She's been seen publicly with your guitarist, Marcus, on many occasions as have you. Rumour has been rife throughout your career that he's dating one or both of you, but you've always maintained a veil of secrecy about the issue."

"A veil of secrecy? You make it sound like a spy novel."

"Perhaps, but the announcement of Lorraine's marriage, for instance, was very public. Likewise there's been little secret around Yvonne's relationship with Paul Kirke, but for the three of you, nothing."

"Well, it has been a conscious decision for a number of reasons. Marcus has been very open with his Asperger's syndrome, but it means that he rarely gives interviews. That's not 'secrecy' as such. It's just how he deals with his condition.

"Hope and I, we've both been of the opinion that what we choose to do outside of music is private. We don't wave banners in the street. We don't carry on our private lives in public. So we think it's fair to keep the public out of our private lives."

"It's become obvious though that Hope's having some sort of private life. The evidence is due in the next week or so, I understand."

"She's due a week tomorrow. Twins."

"You've been a charming guest, I don't want to upset you, but as a journalism student I'm sure you understand I'd be remiss if I didn't ask. Is there anything there to talk about?"

Shawna braced herself. She'd known the question would come, and they spoken at length about what they should do. Marcus was tired of pretending, and Hope had pointed out that they would be living together in a house soon. News was going to get out.

"I don't think so," she replied. "Hope and Marcus and I have been together from the start. I love both of them, and they love me and each other. It's between us, and we've never really seen it as something to talk about.

"But people do nonetheless. We did keep it under wraps, for a number of reasons — mainly to do with privacy when we're on the road, and integrity. We wanted to have people coming to listen to us play, to share in the music with us. Not to put us up on websites as some sort of sex fetish ideal. That hasn't stopped them doing that, by the way," she observed, and the host and audience giggled again, breaking the hushed silence that had greeted her admission.

"So why admit it now?"

"Now? We're releasing music from a studio now. This isn't about the music of the moment. People are looking to us as a band, wondering what we stand for. We can't stand for having a good time playing live, so much. If we're going to sell music based on us, then people need to know what constitutes us. This is a big part of our lives.

"Now we're going back to live those lives, and we don't want to have to hide that any more. People used to have to hide their sexuality, but that's not supposed to be the case any more."

"So this is, what, a blow for equality?"

"No, nothing that dramatic. This is ... This is us. Take it or leave it."

"Shawna Lewis, thank you for coming."

"She did it," Hope's tear-stained face broke into a smile for a moment before another contraction cut in. "She really did it."

"She did point out that you weren't due until next week, as well," Marcus said and smiled when she relaxed. His thumbs gently worked across the instep of her foot. "You should listen to her. She's been on TV and everything."

"We've all been on TV, honey," Hope pointed out. "Doesn't make any of us ... oOOOHHHH!"

"I'm going to have to ask you to move," the nurse tapped Marcus on the shoulder, and he dutifully stepped out of the way, cracking his stiff knuckles as he did.

"Oh, don't do that!" The midwife shuddered. "That makes me feel ill."

"But," Marcus stammered, stepping a bit further away, "the things you see ... the places..."

"Leave it, honey," Hope chuckled, but she looked tired and drained, and there wasn't much energy to it. At first Marcus had been glad that the labour was slow — although he winced every time Hope grimaced with the pain — as it meant another few minutes for Shawna to get back before the event.

Now, though, the nurses were beginning to worry even if they wouldn't say as much.

"I need you to push through the next contraction, Hope," the midwife said, and Marcus wiped his hands clean before reaching down to take Hope's hand.

"But Shawna's not here yet," Hope whined.

"Your baby is," the midwife pointed out, not unsympathetically.

"Baby comes first," Marcus pointed out. "That's what Shawna said on the phone."

"I know, but..."

"I'M HERE!" Shawna yelled, barrelling through the door, flinging her coat on the chair in the corner where Marcus' book lay. "You brought a book?"

"I thought it'd be calming if I got edgy," Marcus admitted. "I've not had time to read anything."