Tangled In Strings

With a click of a button, her bank balance drained before her eyes. Madison felt like the moment should have been punctuated by something. An orchestra perhaps. Or maybe a flock of pigeons winging their way out of the cash machine in front of her. That much money vacating her account should have been celebrated or mourned. Something should have happened.

This was the moment she knew she had arrived. She was on her own. And the bright lights and freedom of London came at a heavy price.

Shoving the wad of bank notes into her purse, Madison couldn’t recall the last time she had felt this nervous. It might have been when she was twelve and competing in her very first violin contest. Or it might have been when she was chosen to perform with the Berkshire Youth Orchestra, aged fifteen. That was the year she realised that her life was no longer her own. She could barely take a breath without her mother hiring yet another music teacher, entering her into every competition in the country and imposing on her the importance of practicing until her arms were stiff. Madison hadn’t slowed down enough to wonder if it was all worth it.

Standing outside the main entrance of the student’s union at St Jude’s College, Madison gazed around, amazed at how she had ended up at this place. She watched the other students flocking around her, laughing and chattering and hurrying, and prayed that this wasn’t one of those times when her impulsive mind ended up backfiring on her.

Madison clutched the strap of her Chanel bag and sighed. Convincing her parents to let her transfer to a university in central London after only one term had been a battle that she thought she wouldn’t win. But the reason for that move had been even harder to process – the realisation that the guy she thought had cared about her for so long had had an entirely different agenda. There was no way she could have stayed in Berkshire, attending Lane’s Academy with Victor and his friends after discovering what she had about him. No way she could have ever faced looking into the eyes that she’d loved for four years without the fear of the duplicity in them shining back at her.

So here she was, in a place she didn’t know, friendless and alone but prepared to start over. She knew that she had angered her mother by changing her degree to something she actually wanted to study but she was past caring. After what had happened with Victor, she had made up her mind to start living her life the way she wanted, veering off the path that her parents had planned for her. If she never picked up that violin again, she knew she would still be happy. She would survive.

The halls of residence were all full for the year so her only option was off-campus housing. Her mother was going to have a cardiac arrest when she found out that she wasn’t going to be living on campus. Luckily, Madison had located a room listed on the student website, and she was waiting to meet one of the other tenants of the flat now. The girl would likely want cash for a deposit and Madison had plenty of that now. She would figure out the long-term cost side of things later after her mum had gotten over the shock of her eldest daughter slumming it on the streets of London.

Her phone buzzed and she switched her Styrofoam coffee cup to her other hand while rooting around in her bag with the other. Once she’d located her phone and saw who was calling, Madison’s heart sank. Speak of the devil. Oh well, she thought. It was now or never.

‘Hey, Mum,’ she said.

‘I take it you’ve arrived,’ Natalie said, without preamble.

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘Who are you with? Did you sign up to a hall yet?’

Madison sighed into the phone. ‘Listen, Mum, there was no space left in halls. I’m starting here a term late, remember?’

‘How could I forget? All that money your dad and I forked out to send you to Lane’s Academy. Now you want to give all that up to study Psychology of all things.’ She spat out the word like it was dirty.

‘I know, Mum, but...’ How could she ever explain this to her mother? How could she explain that Lane’s Academy had never been the problem? The problem had been Victor.

‘When I was your age, I would have given anything to be able to study classical music at Lane’s Academy,’ Natalie went on as if Madison hadn’t spoken. ‘If you are going to pursue a career as a violinist, you need to learn with the best. What opportunities does St Jude’s offer for someone as gifted as you? What use is studying Psychology going to be in ten years?’

They had been over and over this conversation and Madison wished she could cut off her mother’s whining voice and toss her phone back into her bag. But Natalie would only end up calling her back, inundating her phone with texts and voicemails until she finally answered.

She had to stand her ground.

‘Look, Mum,’ she said. ‘Just because you found fame as a violinist, it doesn’t mean I want that life for myself too. All that pushing and striving to be better than everyone else, all the lessons, the competitions, the stress. I want to live like a normal teenager. I want to go out on weekends, see my friends, stay up all night if I want to. I don’t want to worry about having to get up early to travel to another city for yet another music convention, yet another talent show. I’m eighteen and I’m old enough to make my own choices whether you and Dad agree with them or not. And if that means living in London in a rented flat and studying Psychology, which I happen to enjoy, then that’s what I’ll do.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone and Madison wondered if her mother had hung up during her rant. It wouldn’t be the first time. But then she heard a loud huff, like a steam train in her ear.

‘You haven’t appreciated anything, have you? You’re just as bad as that brother of yours, coaching teenage girls to run laps around a field. Coaching your sister to run laps around a field.’

‘This has nothing to do with Scott,’ Madison snapped. ‘He chose that career and I should be allowed to do the same. As should Serena.’

‘Very well,’ her mother said. ‘But you listen to me, young lady. You’d better make damn sure that you pass this degree with first-class honours...’

‘Fine,’ Madison interrupted. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’ Nothing whatsoever to do with Victor, she thought bitterly. But try telling that to her mother.

‘It had better be. At least tell me you have your Stradivarius with you.’

‘Yes, I have it.’ Not that she intended on even taking the violin out of its case but if her mother thought she was at least going to practice, it might get her off Madison’s back for a while.

‘Well, I suppose that’s something.’ A loud sniff came down the phone. Madison could just imagine her mother pacing along the patio beside the pool, not a hair out of place, while she spat vitriol at her daughter. ‘You’d better not disappoint your father and I anymore, Madison. You come home with a first-class degree from that place or you don’t come home at all.’

The line went dead, and Madison stared at her phone for a few seconds before shoving it back in her bag. Conversations like this one were par for the course in the Jeffries household. It was bad enough that her brother and sister had opted for careers in sport. But now that her mother’s last vision of nurturing another famous musician in the family had all but sailed, Madison was glad that she had escaped home for the first time in her life.

A waft of musky perfume invaded her nostrils. She turned to see a girl with raven-black hair cut into a blunt fringe at the front and dark red lipstick. She stood out immediately as she wasn’t dressed in the obligatory female student uniform of skinny jeans and Ugg boots. Instead, she wore a short black dress with red hearts all over it, teamed with a distressed biker jacket and boots laced right up to her knees. She crushed a stubbed-out cigarette under her heel and looked around for a moment before homing in on Madison.

‘You’re Madison Jeffries, right?’

‘Yeah. How did you know?’

‘I stalked you on Instagram. We didn’t want to invite a serial killer into our flat.’

Madison wasn’t sure how her holiday pictures from last summer cleared her of having an affinity for murder, but she appreciated the fact that this other girl cared about who lived with them. That had to be a good sign.

‘I’m Elizabeth Grey, by the way. But everyone calls me Eliza.’ She held out her hand and Madison took it, noticing Eliza’s black nail polish and all the silver rings decorated with skulls and dragons that adorned her fingers. She had limited experience of goths. At school she had given their type a wide berth, neither needing nor wanting to associate herself with that social circle. All that moodiness and death metal was as far removed as you could get from the type of sheltered upbringing she had received.

‘You can follow me to the house, and we’ll help you unload your stuff,’ Eliza went on. ‘You do have a car, don’t you?’

Madison nodded, thinking of her precious red Mini Convertible, which had been a gift from her father on her eighteenth birthday back in May.

‘Great,’ Eliza said. ‘The guys want to throw a party tonight to welcome you.’

Madison raised an eyebrow. ‘Guys? I thought this was a girls-only flat.’

‘Oh, it is, it will just be me, you and Paige in the flat itself. I’m talking about the guys that live in the flat downstairs from ours.’ A smile curled on her lips. ‘They are part of the student metal band, Ricochet. You heard of them? They’re kind of a big deal around campus.’

‘Nope.’ Madison hoped the apprehension didn’t show on her face. She had intended to keep a low profile, blend into the background as much as possible. But, with some local celebrities living downstairs, that might turn out to be trickier than she’d anticipated. Hopefully, this so-called band would be too busy practicing and playing gigs to be around much anyway.

Eliza must have seen the look on her face. ‘Don’t worry, they don’t have band practice in the flat. They rent a warehouse down by the river. It’s soundproof.’

That was just as well.

‘Anyway, I forgot you’d just transferred here,’ Eliza continued, her brown eyes sliding over Madison, giving her the once over. ‘There’s got to be an epic reason why you switched universities after only a couple of months.’

Madison’s stomach clenched. She knew she couldn’t talk about the disaster she’d left back home yet, especially as she’d only just met Eliza. The other girl was regarding her with one raised eyebrow as if she expected Madison to blurt out some juicy piece of gossip straight away.

Still, she had to say something.

‘I had my heart broken,’ she deadpanned. ‘It was a lot to deal with. I had to get away.’

‘I hear you,’ Eliza said. ‘And I’m sorry. I hope we can help you forget about it, Mads.’

Eliza’s use of her pet name made Madison smile. ‘I hope so.’

‘Come on. I’ll show you to the flat. Then you can meet Paige.’