Chapter 9

When we went to school on the Sunday, we took both cars. Now that I was independent, I wanted to visit my own parents when I could. Our room was now totally redecorated, with neutral walls and a red, white, and blue cornice at the ceiling join.

The framed photo with the Princess was between the beds, and above our beds was a picture of each of us in full serving mode, with hair and skirts flying. They had been taken at the club, while we were training. On one wall, however, there was a large picture of us with Babs and Mel, taken at the end of our match, waving at the crowd. Under the picture and within the frame, was a cutting from a newspaper headline that read, ‘Teenagers from Benenden School lose, but not beaten.’

Over the first weeks, we were back in harness with the Alice Band two evenings, gym and exercises two evenings, and dance, our new co-curriculum subject for one evening. The first exeat was late in September, and I left the school as soon as I could on Friday afternoon to drive to Deal and a couple of nights with my family. It was a pleasant time, even if I was taken to meet all of their new circle of friends as their clever and talented youngest daughter. Sunday afternoon, I went back to school.

Towards the half-term, I was torn between staying with Geraldine or going home, with the decision made for me. Mum rang me to say that Teresa had got a good job at the Waterfront Spa and Health Club in Dover as the receptionist. She was now sleeping in what had been my room with Enid on a bed in what had been Dads’ office. They had bought her a better car and were very happy to have their eldest back in their lives. I told her that I was happy for her and asked if she could organise a room in the nearest hotel for me over the Christmas and New Year period.

That October half-term was mild, so we both stayed at Godalming and played on the tennis court behind the house most of the week. Towards the middle of November, there was a social with Alice Band playing again. At the next exeat a week later, we were in a recording studio in Tunbridge, laying down tracks for an album to be sold through the school. It was ninety percent covers, with a couple of new songs that the other girls had developed with Lucy as the driving force. The two of us had funded it for them as a thanks for the experience.

When we had completed our exams, we were allowed to leave. I drove to Deal and checked into the Sutherland House Hotel, where I was treated like royalty as a genuine local celebrity, perhaps the ‘Real Deal’. I was there a couple of days before my old school finished in Sandwich, so rang Mister Brown and arranged to visit.

It was almost embarrassing to have so many students wanting selfies with me, a former student who was famous. I was shown the plaque that had once been in the reception, in memory of Alec McConnell. There was a new one there, a picture of me from a magazine with a list of my achievements with space for more underneath. As far as the school was concerned, Alec never existed and Alice had been a good student. They gave me the old plaque when I left, which I left with Mum as something to keep with her earlier pictures of me.

It was a good holiday, with Enid getting lots of presents. She was, however, happier to drag me around to the homes of all her new friends to show me off as her Auntie Alice. I took her into Canterbury one day to see the cathedral, and we had a lovely time together. There was a shop in the streets near the cathedral which was a sports outlet of the company that sponsored us, so we had to stand next to the cut-out of me with Enid holding a racquet for photos. They were really happy to see me there and gave Enid an outfit, the same as our post-Wimbledon one, in her size. She was almost bouncing out of the car on the way back to Deal.

All too soon I was heading back to school. The second term was good, the study was hard, the Alice Band CD had sold well through the school shop and more through the website. The cover picture was the five of us in our performance dresses, with Geraldine and me with our tennis racquets held like guitars. Well, we did have a reputation, and it gave the band a sense of fun.

Being a school which catered for the well-heeled and the well connected, it was only weeks later that all five of us were called in for a talk with the head. It seems that one of our fellow students had posted a copy to her father, an executive in a recording company, and he had given it to his boss to listen to.

There was money offered to make another recording in their studio, with all the songs to be originals. The two that we had already recorded and another ten that they would get songwriters to create for our sound. The money, as far as Geraldine and I were concerned, was nice. To the other girls, it was like the end of a rainbow had come true. It would give them a chance to be independent while still at school.

When the March exeat came around, Geraldine and I had the other three in our cars on the way to London on Friday afternoon. It was a bit cramped with the three guitars and our overnight bags, but the enthusiasm was palpable. We got to the hotel that we were staying in by use of GPS and were welcomed in and given room cards. Geraldine and I were sharing a twin, Martina and Christina were in another, while Lucy had a single.

We had all listened to the CD that we had been sent, with a few songs that had been written, and had practised them with the lyric sheets supplied. The others were keen, and the two of us didn’t want to dampen their excitement. We were still following our exercise and dance regimes, so weren’t falling behind on those or our classwork.

We were having breakfast when the executive father joined us. He was fully aware of our limitations regarding the need to stay at school and told us that the new CD would be issued around the end of the third term. He had a minibus and a driver out the front, so, after we had finished eating and freshened up, we went to the studio.

That Saturday morning, Lucy signed an agreement on our behalf. We would be paid a reasonable sum up front, on completion of the recording and a photo session Our use of Alice Bands was mandatory as it defined us. Future income would start once all costs incurred had been recouped. As far as I could see, if the company lost money, it was no fault of ours.

Later that morning, we were in the studio with the other equipment supplied, bigger and better than we normally used. We were there until after six with a light lunch, then were taken back to the hotel for dinner and bed, all satisfied with what we had done and happy with the sound that we had achieved.

Sunday, we were back in the studio and finishing the rest of the tracks. Our working with some songs before we had arrived had made it easier and the others followed a similar pattern. After that, and a lunch, we spent much of the afternoon posing in various outfits, all with Alice Bands prominent.

We collected our luggage from the hotel and loaded the cars for the trip back to Benenden. For me, it had been a very interesting experience. The studio had been several steps higher than the one in Tunbridge, the people we had been dealing with had all been professional and certain that there was money to be made. I had Lucy with me on the way back, the guitar cases on the seat behind us. As we drove away from the hotel, she put her hand on my arm.

“Thank you for this, Alice. If you and Geraldine hadn’t funded that earlier recording session, this would never have happened.”

“It’s all good, Lucy. We’ve been lucky being good at tennis and have knowledgeable people who helped us progress. Everyone we’ve met this weekend seem to be good at what they do. Hopefully, the album will be properly produced and carefully managed. If it does start to earn us money, I expect that we’ll be asked to play to the public somewhere. We can do that easily after doing the socials.”

“What about your playing?”

“We were asked if we want to play Tunbridge over Easter but told them that we needed to study. That’s half true. The other half is that we did it last year as unknowns. The only thing that it would give us would be ranking points, and we don’t play enough for that to be meaningful. We played well above our weight last year, but anybody who is serious will have watched a recording of our last game at Wimbledon to work out how to beat us. I doubt that we would do as well this year.”

“That’s hard-nosed.”

“You have to be. Once upon a time, our school provided well educated brood mares for the upper crust. These days it produces exceptional women who move into positions of power in all sorts of endeavours. We have to be aware that we’re expected to go out into the world as poster girls for the school. If we don’t, all the money spent for us to be here is wasted. If we can’t live up to it, we may as well bail out.”

“I suppose you’re right. Clementine was full of herself and believed that beauty would be better than brain. She thought that she would be the next big thing and what has she done?”

“I don’t know, what has she done?”

“She was the face of an advert for sanitary wear for sportswomen, after a four-page article about you and Geraldine. Don’t you read the magazines?”

“Don’t have time. Mum collects everything. She would let me know if there’s anything I need to do something about.”

“You really are classic. Have you sent her the CD?”

“I did send one to my niece, Enid. We get along well. I left my parents a copy of that DVD we had getting ready for the first social.”

“That was crap compared to what we laid down this weekend.”

“Ninety percent of what we did this weekend will be crap compared to what you and the Tina’s write for us between now and the summer. I can’t see us staying with too much of what was supplied. I know they were originals and sounded commercial, but if we want to be considered as serious contenders, we need to be singing something with meaning. Look at the world as it stands; nothing we recorded about young love and dancing on a beach has any relationship with real life.”

“You really are a psychic. I have four or five songs that I’ve finished, and a few more in my mind that I thought were too real and dark for a school dance band. If we get to record another album, we can show the world that we are the real thing, with everything written by the band.”

“By that time, we’ll be well into summer or beyond. We’ll be into third year and the hard work to pass the exams. We won’t have a lot of chances to play on stage or on a court. We can’t let short-term fame swamp our long-term goals. We owe it to the school, to our parents, and most of all, to ourselves if we want to live productive and fulfilling lives.”

“Are you planning on being a psychiatrist or something?”

“I haven’t made up my mind on anything yet. I may go on the tour as a middle ranking player, earning enough to be satisfied if not happy. We may all be rock legends, flying around the world bringing joy to our fans. Although I think that Geraldine is keen to follow her father into law. I heard them talking about it. He already has her name down for university and a law degree.”

“We’ll just have to get another drummer. There are plenty around. What was it that Paul McCartney said when asked if Ringo was the best drummer in the world. He told them that Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer in the band.”

“And you call me hard-nosed!”

We put the raw disc that we had been given into the player and sang along to ourselves as we drove. We all stopped at Painshill at a pizza place that Martina knew before continuing to the school, this time singing along to the original CD of ours.

In the Easter Break, I stayed with Geraldine at her house and we spent a lot of time at the club. Both June and Tony commented how our dance lessons had improved our poise and balance as we played. We were in the running for Eastbourne again, as the reigning doubles champions, which would then be a step up to Wimbledon again. Of course, that would also mean that our third term would be foreshortened again to give us time to play, which we were told was all right for this year but not for the proper exam year.

With the start of the Summer Term, I was another year older, the studies got harder, and we dropped the dance evenings for class work, telling our teacher that we would be back after the summer holidays. I was beginning to enjoy the dancing and we were starting to work more movement into the band performance. Lucy had brought along her new songs with just her singing on CD, and they had enough punch to work well with exaggerated moves. Those other students who had started to watch us in the evenings told us that the new material had transformed us from a fun band to one with a message.

For the half-term holiday in May, I did something so out of character I surprised myself. Geraldine and I had been playing on the school courts every weekend, so we both decided that we would have the time off. She went to stay in the family apartment in London to sample the high life. I went down to Dover to spend a week at the spa where Teresa worked, to be immersed in soothing massages, aroma therapy, the steam rooms and on the last day, a full salon service.

I had left the school as a typical teen and arrived back feeling and looking like a young woman. It altered the way that others treated me, with more deference and inclusion. I made friends with some in the year above me, most of whom were now ready for life beyond school. We still worked hard at all the things we had done before, with Geraldine and I getting the advance class notes and studying in the library.

Once again, we revised at her home during the weekend of the June exeat and took the exams the week after. We loaded up both our cars for the drive to Eastbourne, picking up June along the way, who had gone back onto casual wages two weeks earlier to set up our hotels and get the tournament details. She didn’t work, being a wife and mother, but was keen to still be part of the tennis world. She was riding with me, and we heard one of our album tracks on the radio as we went south. That was a very strange experience.

With our fitness, agility, and new poise, both Geraldine and I got through the early rounds. Then we started playing more experienced players. Our sponsors were there again and looking after us with fresh outfits and racquets, with a new pair of racquets with our signatures on that were selling well. I would like to say that we swept the board, but we didn’t. We were runners up in the doubles to a totally professional team. I beat my nemesis from last year but went down in the semi to a top twenty player. Geraldine got into the final and had a good game but lost in three sets.

We were in Wimbledon again though. Again we were better, but so were the others. I managed to get to the semi in the singles, beating my nemesis again, so evening the score. Geraldine was knocked out in the quarters by Mel, and we were knocked out of the doubles by some Spaniards that we had never seen before.

Neither of us were too worried. We had been shooting stars and still had a lot of fans. We weren’t on a payment from the sponsors, just the gear, and they were selling enough to be happy. We had earned enough over the few weeks to be content and please our accountant, seeing that we were both now taxpayers.

We went back to Godalming, telling June that we wouldn’t be playing any more this or next year. When I dropped her at her home, she invited me in and I met her husband and youngest. In her home office, she showed me the bank total. I told her to transfer enough from the total to give her and her family a couple of weeks in Spain, or some other place if she wanted. She had a running total of what each of us had in the account. She transferred our allocated amounts into mine and Geraldines’ banks. She would finish the transfers when our Eastbourne and Wimbledon money came through and empty the account. While I was in the area, I went to see my accountant to tell them what may be happening and giving him the codes to look at my bank statements. I told him that I would be using my card to pay for everything in future.

We had school to finish, and we also had a tour, starting in later July, with the band. It wasn’t a huge thing, just us opening a show for a K-pop boys band, who were already big names. We would be with them on the UK part of their world tour.

We were back in the school with a few days to spare, without any trophies. Lucy had called us when she saw that we would be earlier than last year and had organised an end-of-year dance for the students. The school had organised the boys who wanted to come from the other school, which turned out to be almost all of them. Alice Band was in the lower half of the charts and they wanted to see us, and the other girls, before going home.

We had clubbed together and donated better amplifiers to the school and the drama group had set up better lighting. That night, we hit them with both barrels. Our covers, our tracks off the current album, and our new songs played in public for the first time. The school had been sent some boxes of the CD and they sold out that evening.

The two of us were given our results before we left, along with hugs from the head and a thank you for the show. We went to stay with Sandra for a while, before taking Geraldines’ car to the record company in London, where it would stay while we were in a luxury coach with the rest of the band and our gear. Moving from city to city for six weeks, before three nights in Wembley Stadium to end this leg of the tour. The Korean boys had two coaches of their own and we didn’t mingle a lot.

The tour was fun. We would arrive, go to our hotel, get taken to the venue for a sound check and go back to the hotel to relax before the show in the evening. We had new outfits, a better variation on our original ones, with more ornate Alice Bands. We had time in a salon every few cities, and we played our songs to a lot of new teens at every show, trying out our new songs one or two at a time.

In a short break in Manchester, the recording company got us into a studio where we recorded our third CD. The first had been called ‘One’, the second was ‘Fun with’ and this one was ‘Get Serious with’. It went on the market the day after our last show in London, in front of the biggest crowds we’d ever played for

We had been on a salary for the tour, with all expenses paid, and that had added up to a tidy sum. The thing that made it all different was our income from the second CD, which had recouped costs and was now selling well. The other three were happy at that, and it wasn’t bad for me and Geraldine either.

When we started our last year at the school, we were all considered to be girls to know. The two of us cut back on the gym work, taking dance twice a week, and helping the rest of the band with new material. Geraldine told us that she wouldn’t be with us after the finals, as she would be starting as a junior in her fathers’ Chambers before going for her law degree. Lucy asked around, and we spent a lot of our term getting a new girl drummer up to scratch.

In the end, it was all for naught, as the two Tina’s came back after the Easter break pregnant. Lucy had been asked by an established girl group to join them, so we disbanded Alice Band. She would go straight from the finals to join them on tour.

I had gone to Deal again for Christmas, and it had been very pleasant. I spent a bit of my time looking around the area for a decent flat. I found a two bedroom one in Ramsgate and went to the bank about a loan. It was two hundred thousand, and I could have just about paid for it outright, so they gave me a loan and I put forty thousand down.

It gave me a base that I could call my own. Close to the family but not too close. It was in a small block and had secure parking. In the half-term break I got it furnished with the basics, over the Easter break I filled it out with nice extras and decorated it with some good pottery. That year, I only stayed with Geraldine during the exeats, and we backed off on our tennis to study.

At the start of the last term, the end of the band gave us all more time to study. I had turned nineteen with a home and a car. As far as I was concerned, I had a stable base to continue with my life after the exams.

We sat our exams, with all of us getting good passes. I was offered a place at Oxford but didn’t take it up. I had another idea. That summer, I went to a few of the tennis tournaments and spoke to the players that I knew. I took a list of all the managers that they had and went to see the one with the best reputation. With my own history, she was glad to sign me on after we had discussed things.

Back in Ramsgate, I joined the Montefiore Games Centre and started going there to play on their courts, joining a group of fitness fanatics. I also joined the Leisure Centre Gym and Pool, working out on the machines and swimming. They also had badminton courts which was a lot of fun. Visitors to my flat were all intrigued by my collection of photos on the wall, the one with the Princess getting most attention, along with my small collection of trophies.

I spent the rest of that year working hard to increase my fitness and stamina. I also spent a lot of time with my family, with them asking what I was going to do. Before Christmas, I flew to Australia, with my entries to tournaments mapped out by my manager, now earning her money.

I started out as an almost unknown in a minor tournament in Adelaide, leaving the country as a runner up in the Australian Open singles, with twenty-five hundred points to my name. With the rankings all reset to zero at the beginning of the year, that had me as number two in the world. It was crucial to my plan to do the whole year. Previously, our rankings had never mattered, now it was my entry into subsequent tournaments.

Marianne Gregory © 2026