Whatever Happened to Birdy Troy?

by Rachael English

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

In the early 1980s, The Diamonds - Ireland's trailblazing all-woman rock band - were on the brink of international success. Their debut single 'Too Much Not Enough' was soaring the British charts. Then, as suddenly as they'd arrived, they vanished. It was the last anyone would hear of songwriter, guitarist and legend-in-the-making Birdy Troy.

Stacey Nash, host of the popular podcast 'Whatever Happened To...?', becomes fascinated with the band that broke up before she was born. How could four young women with so much promise just disappear?

As problems mount in her own life, Stacey is drawn deeper into unravelling the mystery. But, after forty years, and with the band's members reluctant to cooperate, is it too late for the truth to emerge?

Whatever Happened to Birdy Troy? is a rollercoaster journey through the rise and fall of four unforgettable friends and bandmates, in a music scene where darkness lurks beneath a veneer of glamour.

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 400

Sample

Stacey edged towards the top of the queue, reminding herself that when she got there, she would need some small-talk. Nothing too adventurous. A bland observation about the weather would do. She didn’t want rudeness added to her list of failings.

The Pear Tree Café was humming, conversations overlapping as customers bought their morning fix. Two women sat at a nearby table, dressed in neck-to-calf black Lycra, heads bent together in a conspiracy of laughter. A man in a striped shirt held a one-sided phone conversation. ‘If you ask me,’ he said, ‘things can’t get any worse.’ The coffee machine hissed and whirred.

The line shuffled forward until Stacey was beside the silver-fronted machine. She twisted to avoid her reflection. A glance in the mirror before leaving the apartment had been a mistake. What she’d seen ‒ swollen eyes, sunken cheeks, skin like cold porridge ‒ had reminded her of a mugshot on one of those American police websites where people went to revel in the chaotic lives of others. Her dark brown hair was calling out for a wash, and her pale grey T-shirt needed ironing.

The day had begun with the arrival of a stiff cream envelope. Good news rarely came in expensive envelopes, and this was doubly true when the back was embossed with the words ‘Silver Eagle Property’. The rent must be going up. Again.

Making the payments had been hard enough when two of them had lived in the apartment. On her own, it was almost impossible. Another increase and … No, she wouldn’t think about it. When the caffeine was chugging through her system, and she was feeling sufficiently brave, she would open the letter and face the bad news.

One more shuffle, and she was at the front of the queue.

‘We haven’t seen much of you lately,’ said Detta, the Pear Tree’s owner, as she took Stacey’s order for a skinny cappuccino. ‘Will you be having the coffee here?’

‘Eh … yes. Yes, please.’

‘You’ve been busy, I’d say.’

‘Well … busy enough. You know the way.’

‘Anyone interesting on your radar?’

‘Not especially. No one who stands out, anyway.’

Detta gave up and turned to make the coffee. Stacey had told herself that this was the day she would return to doing real work. But if swapping chit-chat with a regular acquaintance was such a struggle, she couldn’t imagine how she would cope with strangers.

Hello there, I’d like you to tell me about your life. Please excuse the fact that I’m an incoherent mess.

With the cappuccino in front of her, she tapped her debit card to pay. Up popped a red circle containing a large white X.

‘Not to worry.’ Detta pressed a button. ‘That machine’s forever acting up. Give your card another tap there, like a good woman.’

She did, and again the X appeared.

‘Third time lucky,’ said Detta. ‘Do you want to put your card into the machine?’

Transaction declined, read the screen.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Stacey. Her immediate impulse was to tell a face-saving lie. To blame a computer malfunction or to question the reliability of the card reader. In truth, there was every danger her bank account was bare. For the past few days, she’d been afraid to look. ‘Let me see if I have the cash.’

She dug into the pocket of her jeans while adopting what she hoped was an endearingly goofy expression. An expression that said, ‘disorganised but basically sound’. All she could produce was a tattered bus ticket, a green button and a fifty-cent coin. Oh, and her customer loyalty card.

A shiver of second-hand embarrassment passed along the queue. The woman directly behind her muttered about not having all day to fritter away. A baby began to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ Stacey said again, heat spreading up from her throat. ‘I shouldn’t have come out without cash.’

‘Here, give me that,’ said Detta, taking the loyalty card and giving it three extra stamps. ‘It’s full now, so you’re entitled to a free cup.’

The woman behind her gave a performative sigh.

The temptation to turn around and say something sharp was strong. Stacey resisted. She dropped the fifty-cent piece into the tips mug. ‘I owe you,’ she said to Detta. ‘Thanks.’

She walked to a small stripped-pine table on the far side of the café, the eyes of other customers sweeping over her. She knew this was a minor incident. Detta probably dealt with something similar every day. Yet Stacey was close to tears. The old political saying was right. It was the little things that tripped you up.

For several minutes, she drank her coffee, only looking up when someone new entered the café. Each time the door opened, warm air wafted in. There was a heaviness to the day, a sluggishness, that was unusual for Dublin in early June.

She considered checking her bank balance, then decided it could wait. She looked at the letter from Silver Eagle but stopped short of opening it. The company name was unfamiliar. Ronan had always taken care of the forms and contracts. Unlike Stacey, he was good with bureaucracy.

She opened her email. Her personal account contained nothing she felt like reading. Companies clamoured to sell her clothes and holidays she couldn’t afford. In her work inbox, there were thirteen new messages. Most looked like complaints.

For eighteen months, Stacey had been presenting and producing a podcast called ‘Whatever Happened To …?’ It had started as her hobby, her passion, but had quickly taken over her life. At the end of the second lockdown, when it had become possible to do interviews in person again, she’d quit her job in PR. Back then, she’d believed that following your heart was a viable route through life. Now she saw how naïve she’d been.

The idea behind the series was simple. She spoke to people who had once been famous. Or, if not fully famous, moderately well-known. She’d talked to footballers who’d been hailed as the next Pelé/Maradona/Messi before dropping to the wastelands of the lower leagues. She’d heard from politicians who’d been tipped for greatness only to end up on the wrong side of a long-forgotten scandal. She’d tracked down singers and writers, actors and athletes.

And then there were the television presenters. Legions of television presenters. She’d learnt that children’s TV was particularly savage and that light entertainment was exceptionally dark.

Not all of her subjects were conventional celebrities. Some of the most popular episodes featured the accidentally well-known: a teenager who’d foiled an armed robbery, a man who’d led a long and rancorous strike, a woman whose childhood illness had been chronicled by the media but who now regretted this.

Stacey hadn’t been surprised by the interest of the listening public. Schadenfreude was a powerful emotion. In other cases, listeners were genuinely curious about the fate of her guests. Had they walked away from fame ‒ or had they been pushed?

What did surprise her was how many people were willing to talk. A few did so because they wanted to relive their glory days, others because they hoped that renewed exposure would deliver fresh opportunities. Most had scores to settle.

There were episodes where the listening was bleak. She had broadcast tales of backstabbing record executives, indifferent publishers and rapacious managers. She’d heard about crushed dreams, unanswered phone calls and festering resentments. Sometimes, she found people, then decided against telling their story. The once-beloved DJ who had spent much of the year in a psychiatric hospital? The feted young author who’d blown her large advance, realised she had no more to say and passed her days watching trash TV? The public didn’t need to know about their troubles.

The most challenging stories were the ones in which a potential subject wouldn’t accept that the circus had moved on. What do you mean, after I was famous?

Stacey had worried that the ideas would run dry. In a small country, the list of the previously famous was finite. And yet the emails continued to flow. You know who I was wondering about? they’d say. Or I’m not sure if you remember, but in the late nineties, there was a fellow who …

Given this engagement, it was strange to find herself sitting in the Pear Tree without the price of a coffee. The last two weeks had been rough. Not only had a relationship she’d believed in fallen asunder, ‘Whatever Happened To …?’ had tumbled out of the podcast Top Ten.

The public had no time for the bitter journalist who’d featured in the most recent pod. There’d been even less enthusiasm for the petulant influencer who’d appeared the week before. In her heyday, Ella Fox had been the queen of the #sponcon circuit. She’d been a #brandambassador for everything from lip fillers to concrete blocks. Had the fee been high enough and the photos cute enough, she would probably have endorsed weapons of mass destruction. Then, a phone conversation in which she’d made cruel comments about her fellow influencers had been leaked to a gossip website. Overnight, Ella had been banished to #paidpromotion Siberia. Or, as she put it herself, she had ‘pivoted to a more fulfilling role’. She now worked in the civil service.

What an entitled bore, one email had read. Where have all the interesting people gone? Stacey had lost two lucrative advertisers, and a prospective sponsor had backed out.

‘You’ve got to adapt,’ the man who ran the studio where she occasionally worked had said. ‘Do you know anything about mental health or reality TV? They never go out of fashion. Or how about talking to successful people? You must have interviewed every loser in the country.’

She opened the emails. As she’d feared, the majority were complaints about the fact that an episode hadn’t appeared the previous week. Stacey picked at the skin around her left thumbnail, peeling it away until she drew blood. She didn’t know how to reply. Saying she hadn’t been in the right frame of mind would sound frivolous, and the listeners weren’t keen on frivolity.

The final email was different. It was from a man called Senan O’Reilly who asked what had happened to an all-woman rock group called The Diamonds. They’d been from Steelstown in County Clare, he said. Stacey knew Steelstown. It was only twenty kilometres from Limerick where she’d grown up. Despite this, she couldn’t recall having spent much time there. Steelstown wasn’t the sort of place that prompted visiting Dubliners to post ‘And breathe’ on their Instagram. Nor did it tally with the media’s preferred version of the west of Ireland. There were no turf fires, cliff walks or wellness retreats.

A quick search brought up a website about Irish bands of the 1980s. It told her that The Diamonds had formed in 1979 and broken up in 1982. Rock critics had labelled them ‘U2 for girls’. Because they’d been on the cusp of international success, the split had been unexpected and had never been properly explained.

The paragraph was accompanied by a black-and-white photo of four women, their hair unruly, their eye makeup heavy. So fuzzy was the image that it might have been taken in the 1880s. The only other thing Stacey could say for sure was that The Diamonds had been very young, possibly no more than teenagers.

She looked at their names. Vocals: Loretta Saunders. Guitar and Backing Vocals: Birdy Troy. Bass Guitar: Gail McGeehan. Drums: Yvonne Hayes. None meant anything to her.

She did the sums. 1982. Forty years ago. Ten years before she was born. She rarely tunnelled back that far. Experience had taught her that the 1980s was the last decade in which it had been possible to disappear.

She swallowed the dregs of her coffee and turned her attention to the letter from Silver Eagle. Like the envelope, the paper was thick, expensive. She began to read.

Oh.

Dear Ms Nash,

I’m writing to you about the property you currently rent at 12, Whitethorn House, Briarstown, County Dublin.

As you may be aware, Silver Eagle has purchased the apartments in this development. It is our intention to renovate and refurbish these residences.

Our records show that your lease expires on 5 September next. You are hereby notified that it will be terminated at that point. You will have the whole of the 24 hours of the termination date to give up possession of the dwelling. It would, however, be preferable if you could vacate the premises prior to this date.

This notice is fully in accordance with the law. Please be aware that failure to comply with its terms will result in legal proceedings. Yours,

George Sheffield

Stacey considered the letter. It was, she assumed, designed to intimidate. To make people feel smaller than they already were. She was caught in one of those moments when, even though she understood what was happening, she didn’t want to acknowledge it. A cold feeling, like being dunked in seawater, passed over her. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could be evicted.

She placed her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. The man in the striped shirt had been wrong. Things could always get worse.

Birdy was busy with her pricing gun, attaching labels to tins of grapefruit segments and mandarin oranges, when the Tannoy crackled to life.

‘Miss Troy to the office, please. Miss Troy to the office.’

She decided to finish what she was doing. No doubt her supervisor, a wasp of a woman called Vera Cheevers, wanted to complain about her timekeeping. That morning, Birdy had clocked in at four minutes past the hour, something Vera viewed as a mortal sin.

After less than a minute, the supervisor’s voice returned. This time, it had an extra layer of frost. ‘Phone call for Miss Birdy Troy. Miss Troy to the office now, please.’

‘Ah, hell,’ said Birdy, to no one in particular. She shoved the gun into the pocket of her sludge-brown polyester uniform and made her way past Canned Vegetables and Baking Supplies before rounding the corner into Cleaning Products.

At eleven thirty on Friday morning, Save-A-Lot teemed with women doing their weekly shop. Many had babies or toddlers in tow. The fluorescent lights gave them all a jaundiced, hollow-eyed look. They snapped at their kids and fretted about the prices.

In Jams and Spreads, someone had dropped a pot of marmalade, and its contents were oozing across the floor, like nuclear waste. Birdy would have to clean it up when she got back, by which time the sticky mess would have been trampled into the next aisle.

In the year since she’d left school, she’d been working full-time at Save-A-Lot. For two years before that, she’d had a Saturday job. She knew every shelf and fridge, every line and price. No matter what a customer wanted – crispy pancakes or candied peel, fish fingers or furniture polish ‒ she was their woman.

As she clattered up the metal stairs to the office, she tried to imagine why someone had phoned her. Even harder to imagine was why Vera Cheevers had passed on the message. Vera didn’t approve of personal lives.

The office was laden with files and folders and smelt of dust and corned-beef sandwiches. Vera was standing in the far corner, her blonde bouffant ‒ part Bond girl, part Margaret Thatcher ‒ starched into place. She gestured towards the shiny black phone, her expression as rigid as her hair. ‘Your mother wants you.’

Birdy’s heart speeded up. On the one hand, her mam wouldn’t ring unless something was wrong. On the other, and this was a tantalising thought, the call might be enough to free her from work. She picked up the receiver. ‘Mam? Is everything all right?’

‘It’s me,’ came the muffled reply, ‘only you’re to pretend I’m your mother and I’m phoning to say your aunt has died. Have you got that?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m in the callbox around the corner. Yvonne’s here too. We’re after getting a great gig. In Limerick.’

Birdy took a moment to realise that the voice at the end of the line belonged to her friend and bandmate Gail McGeehan. With Yvonne Hayes and Loretta Saunders, they were The Diamonds, the best rock band in Steelstown. (And, yes, it was possible they were the only rock band in Steelstown.) Birdy played guitar.

‘Oh, that’s fa—’ She quickly corrected herself. ‘That’s desperate, Mam. When?’

‘There’s the snag. It’s this evening. We’re playing support to A Nest of Vipers in the Old Mill.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘The original support band broke up yesterday. That’s why the notice is so short.’

‘I see.’ Birdy turned around. Vera was watching. She would have to ham it up a bit. She pressed the phone more tightly to her ear. ‘That’s awful news. Yourself and Angela were very close. What are the arrangements, do you know?’

‘I’m beside myself with grief, pet,’ said Gail, voice splintered with laughter. ‘You’ve got to tell Mrs Cheevers you’re needed at home because of the tragic news. Then you’re to meet us at my house.’

Birdy risked another glance in the supervisor’s direction. ‘It mightn’t be that easy. We’re really busy this morning.’

‘Now, Birdy Troy, are you going to let down your poor old mother in her hour of need?’

Birdy pictured her friend’s brown eyes crinkling with laughter. A giggle climbed up her own throat. Just in time, she managed to suppress it. A squeak escaped. She hoped Vera would mistake it for a mewl of sorrow. She paused and rearranged her face. ‘Of course not.’

‘Good girl. As quickly as you can, get out of there and head over to my place. Loretta’s meeting us in ten minutes. Are you with me?’

‘Yes, only—’

‘We’ll be waiting.’

After Gail had hung up, Birdy stopped to think. Her brain fizzed with the news. When you were in an all-girl rock band, support slots weren’t always welcome. Gig-goers, impatient for the main act, had been known to send a hail of cans in The Diamonds’ direction. A couple of months back, a great gob of spit had landed on Birdy’s face and slithered down, like frog spawn.

This was different. A Nest of Vipers were massive. Well, okay, not massive. But they were popular and would attract a good crowd. The Diamonds couldn’t afford to say no.

‘So,’ said Vera, ‘a dead aunt, I believe. Was she sick for long?’

‘No. It was sudden. Mam says she needs me at home.’

The supervisor gave a look that suggested anything short of Birdy’s own death wouldn’t be sufficient to secure her early release. ‘I’m sorry for your troubles. I don’t see why you have to leave straight away, though. You’ll probably want time off for the funeral, am I right?’

For five minutes, they argued. All the while, Birdy’s thoughts were with everything she needed to do before the gig. Eventually, Vera agreed to let her go, but only on condition she worked extra hours the following week. Birdy wasn’t listening. Next week could take care of itself.

She’d left the office and was back on the stairs when Vera called after her.

‘Birdy?’

Damn. ‘Eh … Yeah?’ she said, heart gathering pace again.

‘Don’t forget to clock out.’

It was as she stepped into the midday glare that Birdy remembered Declan. Her sixteen-year-old brother had a summer job in Save-A-Lot. For fifty pence an hour, he roamed the streets and estates rounding up stray trolleys. She would have to alert him to their family tragedy.

When she spotted him, he was at the edge of the car park, wrangling with a trolley.

‘Dodgy wheel?’

‘Isn’t there always?’ He squinted through his fringe. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’

‘I’m in mourning,’ she said, before explaining the true reason for her early departure.

‘What’ll I say if anyone enquires after Aunt …?’

‘Angela. God rest her soul, her name was Angela.’

‘We don’t have an Aunt Angela.’

‘Vera doesn’t know that. If anyone says anything, you’re to play along. Tell them Mam needed consoling.’

‘That’s a lot to ask.’ Declan pulled a face. ‘What if I make a mistake?’

Birdy dipped into the pocket of her denim skirt and took out a wrinkled pound note. ‘Here you go. This should help.’

‘You can do better than that.’

‘Ah, Dec, I haven’t any more to give.’

‘You’ll get paid tonight, won’t you?’

‘We’re not exactly headlining Madison Square Garden. It’s a support gig in a glorified pub.’ She returned to her pocket and removed a fifty-pence piece. ‘That’s as much as I’ve got.’

‘All right,’ he said, taking the cash. ‘It’ll be money well spent. If Cheevers says anything, I’ll lay it on thick. She’ll be praying for the late Angela’s soul by the time I’m finished.’

‘Fair play to you. Loretta will be grateful.’

There was no point in mentioning Gail or Yvonne. In common with half of the boys in town, Declan’s fantasies were of The Diamonds’ lead singer. With her thick golden hair, high cheekbones and thigh-skimming skirts, Loretta looked as if she’d stepped out of a magazine. Not a knitting-patterns-and-soup-recipes magazine, but something cool, something American or French. She wore anklets and diamanté earrings, and ringed her round eyes with navy kohl.

Declan pushed the money into the front pocket of his jeans. ‘If the lovely Loretta would like to show her gratitude, she knows where to find me.’

The thought of Loretta hanging out in the Save-A-Lot car park made Birdy smile.

‘Dream on,’ she said.

If Birdy had to describe Steelstown in one word, it would be ‘loud’. Most of the noise came from children. At times, it seemed as if every spare inch had been taken over by skipping games and makeshift football pitches. They whooped and chattered and sang, like exotic birds.

Older kids hung in small groups, the boys exchanging insults, the girls reciting the latest chart hits. Right then, they were crazy for Shakin’ Stevens and Adam Ant. ‘Seriously, girls,’ Birdy would say, as she passed by, ‘you’ve got to get some better tunes.’

Although Birdy was fond of Steelstown’s sharp edges, she doubted anyone would make their fortune selling postcards there. The town centre’s narrow streets quickly gave way to a sprawl of housing estates. Gail lived in the largest estate, All Saints Park. To reach All Saints, Birdy walked along a ribbon of pockmarked tarmac. The lane was bordered on one side by a thicket of spruce trees, where children built dens and fourteen-year-olds played kissing games. Depending on who you believed, visiting the lane after dark meant meeting either a ghost or a flasher.

That summer, black flags hung from the lampposts, marking the deaths of the hunger strikers in the North. In the last week, the flags had been joined by election posters. Birdy felt as if the dour faces, almost all of them men’s, were watching her. Her father said he wouldn’t be voting because the politicians were vermin who’d sold the country down the river. Her mother said this was no example to be setting, and that anyone with enough courage to put their name forward deserved respect. For the first time, Birdy would be able to vote. She didn’t think she’d bother.

She walked with a gathering sense of freedom, her shoulders relaxing, her brown suede bag slapping against her hip.

When she got to the McGeehans’ house, the others were already there. It was easier for them. Loretta was on her summer holidays from university. Gail, The Diamonds’ bass player, had been let go from her factory job two months before, and Yvonne, their drummer, rarely had a problem taking breaks from the office. She claimed this was because she sometimes slept with one of her managers. Birdy thought she was joking but wasn’t completely sure.

They were in the kitchen, drinking mugs of coffee and smoking. Everybody smoked in Gail’s house and, apart from the occasional eye-roll, her mother didn’t mind. Birdy was convinced none of the family had a sense of smell. Gail’s sister, Donna, had once smoked a joint, or ‘a bamboozler’ as she called it, in the front room while their parents watched Dallas. Neither had noticed.

‘Here she is, the bereaved niece,’ said Gail, scraping her fingers through her cloud of dark hair. ‘Have you made the funeral arrangements yet?’

Birdy removed her combat jacket and joined them at the table. ‘You’re a terrible woman. We’ll all go to Hell, you know that?’

‘Listen, it was either a dead relation or a bomb scare, and I didn’t want to shut down the entire town when all we needed was you.’

‘Is that a confession?’

Gail tapped the side of her nose and smiled.

During their Leaving Cert year, classes in St John’s Community School had repeatedly been disrupted by hoax bomb warnings. While suspicion had fallen on Gail, no one had been able to prove her involvement.

Birdy and Gail had first bonded during school music lessons when they’d sung ‘O Sacred Head Surrounded’ and ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ with gusto. In a class where everybody else had mumbled or mouthed the words, that had felt subversive. At the time, Birdy had been playing acoustic guitar with the parish youth group. Gail had been teaching herself to play an elder brother’s bass.

For them, music wasn’t a hobby, it was life. They were the girls who obsessed about new sounds; the girls who spent twenty minutes twisting their old transistors one way then the other to hear John Peel; the girls who bought as many records as they could afford and went to the library to read the NME and Melody Maker. In the way that some of their classmates liked reading about boarding schools they would never attend or glamorous lives they would never lead, Birdy and Gail dreamt of venues they’d never play and musicians they’d never meet.

Through a friend of a friend, they’d found Yvonne, who’d been introduced to the drums by her father. He’d been a drummer in a showband and was keen for one of the family to follow his lead. If The Diamonds weren’t to his taste, he hid it well.

Finding a vocalist had been more challenging. The threesome were competent and able to hold a tune, but they didn’t have it. If they were going to form a band, they needed it.

They placed an audition notice in the window of Save-A-Lot. When Loretta turned up, Birdy was surprised. The would-be vocalist went to the convent, and there was a strong, often caustic, rivalry between her school and theirs. According to Loretta, her classmates believed that St John’s pupils were given special lessons in how to claim the dole. They also maintained that a third year had given birth at the back of the woodwork room. ‘Nah, you’ve got it wrong there,’ Gail replied, in her most matter-of-fact voice. ‘It was the chemistry lab.’

Immediately, the first three Diamonds knew that Loretta was the one. It wasn’t just that she looked like a frontwoman, she could sing. Really sing. Her voice had depth and range. It could be tough, it could shimmer, it could soar.

Birdy stirred her coffee and took a sip. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s our plan for tonight?’

‘Our plan,’ replied Gail, ‘is to storm out the gate and keep on storming.’

Yvonne pulled on her cigarette and blew a curl of smoke. ‘We might put together a set list too. I always enjoy the night more when we’re not a total shambles.’

Yvonne had taken the booking. At twenty, she was two years older than the others and tended to handle the practicalities. Although capable of hammering the drums like a maniac, her personality was steady. Methodical. She had bobbed auburn hair, milk-pale skin and four piercings in her left ear. She was also blessed with a long fuse. When they fell out, she was the peacemaker.

‘How long will we get on stage?’ asked Loretta.

‘Half an hour.’

‘Not much time, so.’

‘Well, the way I look at it, it’s short enough not to annoy the lads who’re only there for A Nest of Vipers. And long enough …’ Yvonne took another drag of her cigarette ‘… to impress Kieran Mitchell.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Birdy. ‘As in the Kieran Mitchell?’

‘The very man. According to the guy who runs the place, he’s going to be there tonight.’

Kieran Mitchell was a Dublin-based manager. He had a small roster of bands, all of them successful. His main group, Future Heroes, were just back from an American tour. Their last single had received a rave review in the NME. The Diamonds had sent Mitchell a demo tape but hadn’t received a reply.

‘Dead on,’ said Gail. ‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’

‘I’m telling you now, aren’t I? Anyway, it’s A Nest of Vipers he’s interested in. He doesn’t know we’ll be playing.’

‘The Vipers are no better than us,’ said Birdy.

Gail slapped the table. ‘Too right they’re not.’

The prospect of performing in front of Kieran Mitchell focused their thoughts. In the two years they’d been together, they had honed their act in bars and parish halls, at parties and in community centres. They’d played in places where the night ended with the national anthem ‒ and where it ended with a brawl. Along the way, they’d accumulated a solid collection of songs: ‘Away From Me’, ‘The Fire Inside’, ‘Ordinary Girl’, and Birdy’s favourite, ‘Too Much Not Enough’. If they had an anthem, that was it.

Mostly, the band wrote together, combining scraps of ideas then rehearsing the music and lyrics until they were satisfied. As much as Birdy loved performing, writing songs was her favourite part of being a Diamond. She’d had no idea how exhilarating it would be to create something. To call it hers. She couldn’t hear anyone el