The garage was silent and dark. Nothing moved. There were large dark shapes against the wall. There were boxes on the concrete floor. And in the middle of the garage, there was a weird round object. What was it? A huge ball? A small trampoline? An ancient shield?

Then from outside, there were footsteps. A family of spiders, understanding what was going to happen next, hurried into a hole. Somebody laughed. The metal door banged open and for a moment daylight poured in. Then the door banged shut again. There was a second of darkness until a hand pressed a switch and a long fluorescent light flickered into life. The artificial light showed all the usual things that get left in a garage. There was a wardrobe with a broken door, boxes of magazines and old school books, two tennis racquets with no strings, and a bicycle with only one wheel. There were old posters stuck on the walls of 70s and '80s bands like Kiss, The Sex Pistols and The Pretenders. But there were also electric guitars, microphones, amplifiers and loud speakers. And in the middle of the floor, there was a drum kit. Three girls moved into position. Two of them picked up guitars, the third turned on the amplifiers then sat down at the drums. She held the drumsticks thoughtfully in her hands. They looked at each other. 'Are you ready?' the drummer asked. 'Oh no, wait a minute,' said one of the guitarists.

She took a DVCAM out of her bag and put it on a cardboard box in front of them. She looked through the viewfinder, then turned it on. 'OK,' she said, and picked up her bass guitar. The drummer leaned towards her microphone and said: 'One, Two, One, Two!'

And there was an explosion of sound. KRAAAAAANNNNNNGGGGGG!!!! An hour and a half later, one of the girls cycled quickly up the drive of her family's huge detached house, jumped off her bike, and ran towards the front door. In her bag she was carrying her DVCAM, T-shirt and jeans. The door opened before she could find her keys. 'Grace, you're late again,' her mum said. Her mum could look nice and friendly. She didn't look that way today. 'Only a bit,' Grace replied. 'You're fifteen minutes late. That isn't only a bit,' her mum corrected her. She often corrected Grace. 'I know, I'm sorry, but...' 'But what? Your piano teacher is waiting for you in the living room.' 'Well, if we stop talking, I can go and have my lesson,' Grace said. She ran into the house. 'Grace!' her mum called out. 'What?' 'I want to talk to you as soon as your lesson's over.' 'OK, OK, keep your hair on,' Grace said quietly to herself. 'Sorry I'm late,' said Grace to her piano teacher. 'That's all right,' said Stephen. He was tall and good-looking with long brown hair.

He tried to look serious but he wasn't very good at it. Not like her mum! So Grace sat down at the piano, looked at the music, and started playing. She could play all the classical composers - Bach, Beethoven, Bartok, Brahms. She found it easy. Unfortunately, this wasn't the music she wanted to play. Maybe in the past. Maybe in the future. But not NOW. At the end of the lesson, Stephen said, 'Well, I don't think you've practised enough...

' Grace nodded. It was true. 'But,' he continued, T think you're ready for your exam.' 'Cool,' Grace said. So now it was time for Grace to see her mum. Harriet, Grace's mum, worked from home. She was a freelance editor. That meant she worked on dictionaries and grammar books and things like that. She had a great eye for detail. She could find spelling mistakes and missing commas and she even knew how to use semi-colons. So when she looked at Grace, and studied her closely, Grace felt very uncomfortable.