The management moves the girls into a cramped, damp house in the suburbs for intensive rehearsals. Financial strain, personality clashes, and a lack of food push their patience to the absolute limit.
Space Girls - Chapter 3 - The House on the Hill
The house was not on a hill. It was squeezed between a diesel-sooted railway line and a betting shop in Woking, but Chloe insisted on calling it Wuthering Heights because the rising damp made everyone cough like Victorian orphans.
"Chris said it was a 'creative incubator'," Tasha whimpered, shivering violently as she pulled a second pair of stage-school legwarmers over her knees. She was huddled on a sagging sofa that smelled distinctly of wet spaniel. "He said artists thrive under constraint."
"Chris is sitting in a heated office in Soho eating sushi," Maya said, slamming the ancient coin-operated electric meter shut with the heel of her boot. "We just ran out of fifty-pence pieces. If someone doesn't find three quid in change in the next five minutes, the hot water dies."
It had been four weeks since they signed their developmental contracts. Those glowing, initial dreams of recording studios and sleek tour buses had evaporated the moment a white transit van dropped them off at the pebble-dash semi-detached house. Management’s weekly stipend was fifty pounds per girl. After subtracting the mandatory train fares into London for "media training," they were left with a food budget that mostly consisted of generic-brand baked beans and single carrots.
Upstairs, a door slammed with the force of an explosion.
Cassie marched down the narrow staircase, her spine rigid with classical ballet discipline, though her perfect facade was cracking. She was holding a violently stained plastic container.
"Who ate my macrobiotic yogurt?" Cassie demanded, her voice vibrating with high-class rage. "I labeled it. I used a permanent marker. It had my name and 'Do Not Touch' on the lid."
Roxie slouched into the kitchen, wearing a neon-green puffa jacket over her pajamas. A telltale smudge of pale pink dairy was smeared near her left cheekbone. "It was going off, babe. I did you a favor. Besides, my blood sugar was dropping. If I don't get glucose, I can't do Marco’s power-drops."
"It’s about respect, Roxie!" Cassie snapped, her knuckles turning white. "We are living like animals. The bathroom floor is covered in Chloe's discarded guitar strings, Eleanor’s wet towels are growing mold, and someone—I won't name names—left a half-eaten kebab in the toaster!"
"It adds flavor," Chloe shouted from the kitchen floor, where she was trying to repair a broken radiator valve with a butter knife. "And for the record, Cassie, some of us didn't have a trust-fund safety net to fall back on. If I don't eat, I don't sing. And if I don't sing, Chris replaces me with the next blonde who can actually hit a high C without checking her hair in the mirror."
"That is completely unfair!" Cassie cried, her eyes flashing with hurt. "My parents didn't give me a penny for this! They think I'm ruining my life!"
"Alright, ladies, wrap it up," Eleanor interrupted, stepping into the hallway with a heavy wool blanket draped over her shoulders like a medieval warlord. At twenty-two, she had automatically inherited the role of house matriarch, a job she clearly despised. "Arguing won't generate electricity. We have a five-hour vocal rehearsal tomorrow morning, and Tasha is already sounding like a broken foghorn."
Everyone looked over at Tasha. The eighteen-year-old was clutching a mug of boiled tap water, her throat wrapped in a thick wool scarf. She tried to clear her throat, but it came out as a dry, painful rasp.
"I'm fine," Tasha croaked, though her eyes were wide with panic. "Just a bit of a chill from the draft in the bedroom."
Maya stepped closer, her brow furrowing. She knew that sound. Her dad had lost his pub-singing residency for six months after pushing through nodes. "You’ve been clearing your throat for three days, Tash. Have you been practicing those high harmonies on your own?"
Tasha looked down at her slippers, nodding miserably. "Chris said my top register sounded 'airy' on Friday. He said if I can't anchor the hook, he'll give the lead line to Cassie."
The kitchen fell dead silent, save for the rhythmic, icy drip-drip of the leaky tap. The underlying cruelty of their situation hung in the air. Management hadn't just given them a miserable house; they had intentionally structured their contracts to keep them insecure, hungry, and entirely dependent on the scraps Chris threw them.
Chloe dropped the butter knife. It hit the linoleum with a dull clatter. She looked at Cassie's rigid posture, Roxie's defensive scowl, and Tasha's trembling hands.
"Right," Chloe muttered, pulling a crumpled ten-pound note from the secret lining of her boot—her emergency stash. "Forget the electric meter. Eleanor, grab your coat. We’re going to the corner shop. We're buying cheap white bread, a block of cheddar, and a jar of honey for Tasha’s throat."
Cassie blinked, her anger deflating into exhaustion. She reached into her designer handbag and pulled out a five-pound coin. "Get the generic honey. It has fewer preservatives."
Maya laughed, a sharp, barking sound that broke the tension. "Look at us. The future faces of British pop music, pooling pennies for a loaf of Hovis."
"We’ll make it a lyric," Roxie said, cracking a small, genuine smile as she wiped the yogurt from her face. "Space Girls live on toast and spite."
They gathered around the kitchen table an hour later, the room lit only by the blue flame of the gas stove because the main fuses had finally blown. As they shared the makeshift sandwiches in the dark, huddled together for warmth, the petty arguments vanished. They were cold, hungry, and terrified of the future, but as Chloe struck a quiet chord on her acoustic guitar and Maya began to hum a low, comforting harmony, the damp house felt a little less like a prison and more like a fortress.
