Authors: Abbey Clancy
‘Y
ou have kebab,’ said Yusuf, thrusting a wrapped paper package at my sister’s hands. He pointed to her belly, which was now noticeably carrying a passenger, and added, ‘Make big strong baby for you.’
Becky took hold of the parcel and grinned at him, saying ‘thank you’ over her shoulder as we walked up the stairs to my flat.
‘I think I’m in love,’ she said, glancing back down the steps as Yusuf waved at her. ‘I might leave Sean and move in with you, just to be near him. He can be my new baby daddy.’
‘Yusuf is sixty-four, he’s married with seven kids, and that belly of his won’t go away in a few months’ time like yours will,’ I replied, shoving the key into the door and turning it.
‘I know. But who can resist a man who gives you free food? And he seems so nice …’
‘He is,’ I said, as I led us back inside. ‘He’s a love. If he didn’t come free with the flat, I’d pay extra for him. I always know he’s looking out for me, and it never matters if I lose my keys.’
‘Plus, you know, free kebabs?’ she said, walking to the
kitchen counter and unwrapping her food. I grabbed two plates down from the cupboard, and she sighed with contentment as she plonked her mega-meal down onto hers.
I did what I usually do when Yusuf gives me a freebie—pulled the meat off the pitta, and threw the bread in the bin, leaving just the lamb and the salad.
Becky pulled a face at me as we collapsed down onto the sofa.
‘What’s up with that?’ she said, through a mouthful of meat and lettuce. ‘Is the bread minging, or something?’
‘No … I’m just, you know, off carbs,’ I said, looking regretfully at her pitta, which was dripping with juices and sauce. I’d not eaten bread for six weeks now, and it was starting to bite. I sometimes went into a trance-like state, and when I came to, found myself standing outside the French bakery on the corner, my nose pressed up to the window, making a pig face and sniffing deliriously. One day I’d get stuck and they’d have to peel me off.
‘Off carbs?’ she said, looking confused. ‘Are you going to Marbs?’
‘I wish!’ I answered, making the most of the kebab I did have left. ‘I’m just trying to stay in shape—I have dance classes, and they’re pretty hard. The last thing I need is to be dragging a lard arse around with me.’
‘You don’t have a lard arse,’ replied Becky. ‘And you never have had, much as Luke would like you to think different. You don’t need to lose any more weight—you look fantastic. Apart from, well …’
‘What?’ I snapped, my eyes wide open. I was on a bit of
a roller coaster with my self-esteem these days, and seemed to have lost all balance and control. If someone—okay, Jack—said something nice to me about the way I looked, my confidence would sky rocket. If someone—okay, Jack—said something less nice, I’d plummet into misery.
It was kind of pathetic, but I didn’t really know what to do to change it. I mean, Jack rarely ever said anything critical—on the whole, he was lovely. He was attentive and flattering and charming and usually made me feel brilliant about myself. When he was around, at least. Which wasn’t all that often.
After we’d spent our first night together, I hadn’t seen him properly for another five days. He’d texted me, something cute and slightly rude that tided me over and stopped me taking a detour into crazy town, but we’d not actually got together again for what felt like a lifetime.
By the time we did—a walk along the river, drinks, back to his place—I’d given myself a good talking to. I was taking it all too seriously—I was clinging on to what might happen with Jack because the rest of my life was so empty and depressing. And that wasn’t fair to either of us—it put too much pressure on him, and it made me feel like a great big loser, with a capital L.
I didn’t want to be the kind of woman who sat around all day mooning over some bloke. The kind of woman who was constantly checking if her phone had run out of charge because she hadn’t heard from a man. I wanted to be the kind of woman who treated it all as fun, who was carefree and light-hearted and good to be around.
In the end, I kind of became both. When I was with him,
I managed the carefree and light-hearted—and he was such good company, he made that easy. It was hard to be miserable with Jack around, and even if I was, he could whisk me off to bed and make me forget all about it. He could even make me forget about bread, it was that good.
But when I was on my own? Trekking back from the office after a long, exhausting day, hungry and tired and lonely? After not seeing him or hearing from him and wondering what he was up to and who he was up to it with? That’s when I took out my L plate, and stuck that loser sign on my forehead, and wallowed in it.
It was one of the reasons I’d been so made up when Becky said she was coming to stay for a couple of nights—seeing her would distract me, and take my mind off everything I was worried about. Now, though, I felt suddenly self-conscious.
‘Well … you just look a bit tired, Jessy,’ she said tactfully, picking up on how sensitive I was feeling. ‘And a bit like you need to eat some doughnuts.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said quickly, standing up and throwing the rest of the kebab in the bin, where it joined its long-lost bread family.
‘I don’t think you are,’ Becky answered, looking around at the flat as I sat back down next to her. I’d spent days scrubbing and tidying before she came, and bought fresh flowers that I’d arranged around the place in old wine bottles, and one of those floral plug-ins to try to mask the eau de kebab that pretty much always wafted up from the shop downstairs. But looking at it through her eyes, I saw it for what it was: small, shabby, and a little bit sad.
‘You seem a bit lonely, love. And those cows you work with don’t seem to be helping.’
I’d taken Becky into the Starmaker offices that day to introduce her to people, hoping, I suppose, to impress her with my glamorous new life. Patty had just looked her up and down, listened to her talk, and said: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand a word you’re saying,’ before flouncing off to meet someone from the
Star
for brunch.
After that, it had just got worse—the whole PR department seemed to have chosen that day to have some communal meltdown, and Becky had to sit in reception waiting for me, while I did emergency photocopying and made vats of coffee and generally ran round like a blue-arsed fly.
The only highlight had been bumping into Vogue in the lifts. Vogue was a megastar—and came across as a total diva on stage. But in the flesh, she couldn’t be nicer. She was about six-foot tall and looked a bit like Naomi Campbell, and she should have been scary. I’d seen her in interviews, and sometimes she definitely seemed scary.
In real life, though, she was a babe. She’d remembered my name—pretty much a first at Starmaker—and asked when Becky’s baby was due, and even asked her where she’d got her shoes from (Kirkby Market, so I can’t imagine Vogue would be dashing out to get her own pair any time soon). The whole conversation lasted about two minutes, but it had made my day—and Becky’s. At least now she had a good story to tell when she got home.
Of course, one of the reasons I’d taken her into the office was the hope that Jack would be there. That he’d see us,
and come over, and I’d get to feel that thrill of having such a gorgeous boyfriend and showing him off to my big sister.
Except, you know, he wasn’t my boyfriend. He was my … well, I had no idea what he was. And he wasn’t in the office anyway—even though I’d told him Becky was coming. Apparently, according to Heidi, he was at a meeting in Brussels. He did things like that—had meetings in Brussels, or lunch in Paris, or a gig in Barcelona. He was a VIP, and his schedule was just a little bit different to mine.
It was one of the aspects of Jack’s life that made him feel like an unattainable mega-being from another planet. My reaction varied from ‘this will never work’ to ‘why is a man like that interested in a girl like me?’ to ‘I’m never letting him go, and I want to have his babies’, depending on what mood I was in. Even thinking about him then, with Becky sitting right there, I wondered if he was back yet—wondered if he’d message me, wondered when we’d meet up again.
I snapped myself back to reality, and met Becky’s probing gaze. She—unlike me, apparently—was looking great. The morning sickness had obviously passed, her fair hair was glossy, her skin was clear, and she’d obviously hit that ‘glowing’ stage that preggers women are supposed to get.
I gave her a big, bright smile, and said, ‘No, I’m good—honest. I work hard, but I always expected that. And it’s all worth it.’
‘Are you sure?’ she replied, with a look on her face that was very similar to our mum’s when she thought you were hiding something—like the fact that you’d secretly drunk her bottle of Baileys with your mates; or snuck out to go to a party
when you were grounded, or put your red T-shirt in the whites wash and made it all pink. It was frightening—Becky hadn’t even had her baby yet, and she was already developing scary Mum-like telepathic powers. It must be hereditary.
I nodded, gesturing for her to get up as I pulled the sofa-bed out into its bed form. I grabbed the pile of sheets and pillows from the chair where I’d dumped them earlier, and started making it up to sleep on. Becky was having the bed—although not the bed
room,
as there wasn’t one. We’d be kipping together again, just like when we were kids.
‘I’m sure,’ I said, ‘and I’m knackered. Let’s crash out and talk crap before we go to sleep, like we used to.’
‘Yeah,’ she answered, pulling on her pyjamas and laughing. ‘All right. As long as we can talk about boys. Because I know there’s a man on the scene, Jessy.’
I ignored her, and climbed under the covers, pulling the fleecy blanket up to my chin. Obviously, she was right. But I just couldn’t talk about it to her—because I had no idea what to tell her. It was all very hard to describe, especially to someone who didn’t know Jack, and didn’t know the music business, and didn’t know the way this weird London world worked.
When I stayed quiet, she took that as her cue to carry on. I’d hoped she’d think I was asleep—I should probably have manufactured some fake snoring.
‘I know there’s a man because you’ve checked your phone about three hundred times today. And because there are condoms in your bathroom cabinet, and—’
‘What?’ I spluttered at her, outraged, and obviously not asleep.
‘Of course I looked! Have you ever met me? It’s my sisterly duty to snoop as much as humanly possible. So, tell me all about him.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I said, reaching out and switching the lamp off. ‘It’s nothing special.’
I was so scared that that statement was actually true, I felt tears stinging the back of my eyes, and hoped Becky’s new maternal superpowers didn’t extend as far as having non-goggle night vision. Or the same eyes in the back of her head that Mum always claimed to have.
‘All right, keep your big secret, Little Miss Superstar. But look after yourself, okay? And please tell me it’s not
him.
’
‘Who?’ I asked, knowing full well who she meant.
‘That Jack Duncan one. He’s the one who brought you down here, and he’s the reason you seem to be living in a shitty flat, working with bitches, and starving yourself. I know you’re doing the other stuff as well—the singing and the dancing and the recording—and that’s all brilliant. But the rest isn’t. And I’m worried about you. So tell me it’s not him.’
‘It’s not him,’ I said quietly, fingers crossed on both hands as the lie slipped out, along with a few random tears that I’d not managed to completely squish away. I felt them trickle away down my cheeks and disappear, along with my self-respect.
I told myself the lie was for her sake. That she was pregnant, and her life was changing fast; that she’d just bought a house and was in the process of moving and that her plate was full. That the last thing she needed was to be worried about me.
I told myself that, but that was a lie, too. Or at least it
wasn’t a hundred-per-cent truthful. I was also embarrassed, and ashamed, and miserable. When I was with Jack, it all felt right. But when I was away from him, I started to feel like some dirty little secret, hidden away from the real world he lived in. And now—just when I’d thought it couldn’t get any worse—I’d fibbed to my sister. My pregnant sister—which had to be bad karma.
‘
Good
,’ she said, firmly, rolling around on the bed, trying to get comfy. ‘Now I’ve got that off my chest, I feel relaxed enough to do this …’
She paused, then let out a giant, rip-roaring fart that seemed to echo around the tiny flat, before it came to settle fragrantly in my nostrils. I tried not to inhale—I’d suffered those sisterly gifts many times over the years and knew they were lethal—but I was laughing so much I couldn’t help it.
‘Jesus, Becky! I think I need a gas mask!’
‘It’s my hormones. I can’t help it.’
‘It’s the kebab, and you are loving it!’ I said, pinching my nose together to try and block out the smell, still laughing.
‘That’s good to hear,’ she said, fidgeting around. I suppose it was hard to settle when you had an alien being growing inside your stomach. ‘You laughing again.’
She finally seemed to find a position that agreed with both her and the baby, and I made out her face in the moonlight seeping through the curtains that never seemed to quite close properly. She was smiling at me, and reached out to hold my hand.
We touched fingers, and I smiled back. Nothing was perfect
in my life—but I still had Becky, and the rest of my family. No matter what.
‘You can always come home, you know,’ she said. ‘Nobody would think any the worse of you. Nobody would think you’d failed.’
Nobody apart from me, I thought, but didn’t say it. When I didn’t respond, she carried on.
‘Because home,’ she said, screwing up her eyes in effort, warning me what was coming next, ‘is where the fart is.’
The sound of that one—along with the sound of us both giggling like the little kids we were not so very long ago—was the last thing I remembered before I fell asleep.
W
hen the text first landed, I thought I’d finally made it into the inner circle. How wrong could I have been?
‘Get to the Panache Club by 8 p.m.—urgent! Make sure you’re clean!’ it read. Typically, Patty hadn’t bothered with any internal debate about whether to add kisses or not, and was presumably labouring under the illusion that Scousers didn’t wash. I had no idea where she got that concept from, but I spent a good twenty minutes standing under the lukewarm jets of the shower before I left for the club. Just in case she checked behind my ears or something.
The Panache Club was in central London, and was currently considered the Cool Place to Be. It was the kind of club where Rihanna would go for a boogie if she was in town; the kind of club where supermodels would ignore canapés and look moody. The kind of club I was never, ever invited to.
I knew there was a big event there—Patty and her pals had been having orgasms about the tabloid opportunities for weeks now—but, as usual, I wasn’t asked along. It was a Saturday, and I was supposed to be in my broom cupboard, polishing my glass slippers and wishing for a Fairy Godmother. Instead, I
thought excitedly, I was maybe—just maybe—going to make my first public Starmaker appearance.
Maybe Jack would be there, and we’d snog on the dancefloor. Maybe Rihanna would be there, and we’d down some tequilas together. Maybe the tabloid snappers who turned up would be wowed by my awesome beauty and stunning star quality, and I’d be papped as I arrived.
Maybe, I thought, rubbing myself dry and feeling the chill of a flat that simply never warmed up until the kebab shop did, I would finally be accepted.
I heard the phone beeping again, and dashed over to check it out, hoping it would be from Jack—saying he’d pick me up, or meet me beforehand, or that we’d spend the night together after the party. Also hoping—if I was entirely honest—that he’d magically arranged for a beautiful dress to be delivered, so I could make some grand entrance in modern-day
Pretty Woman
style. Without the prostitution angle, obviously.
Shivering, I swiped on the phone to check my messages. Huh. No such luck—it was from Patty again.
‘Black skirt and white blouse. No stains.’
As the words and all that they implied slowly sunk in, I fell backwards onto the sofa, deflated and disappointed and damp. Black skirt, white blouse—I knew what that meant. It meant they needed an extra pair of hands for the waiting-on staff, and I was their very first draft pick.
So much for downing tequila with Rihanna—I’d be the one serving it to her. Not that she’d be there, of course—this was my fictional Rihanna.
I did a grumpy face for a few minutes, and considered
texting Patty back to say I couldn’t make it—that I had a hot date at a cage fight with Tom Hardy that night, or I was busy strolling down the Ramblas on a city break in Barcelona with Orlando Bloom. It would serve her right for the ‘no stains’ comment—I mean, as if! My mother was the queen of laundry, and some of it had been passed on by genetics.
I toyed with the idea of refusing for a while, and started to mentally compose the message, before I turned off the phone and placed it well out of reach on the mantelpiece. I gave myself a good talking to, recalling all of Jack’s words about playing for the Starmaker team, about learning my craft, about understanding the industry from the inside out. Starting at the bottom, soaring to the top.
I wasn’t entitled to anything—and I needed to keep my feet on the ground, and not give in to the depression.
But truth be told, since Becky had left, I’d been struggling. We’d spent her last morning here wandering around Camden Market, where she’d bought an entire set of baby clothes decorated with tiny skulls, before I saw her off at Euston. As I waved her away with tears in my eyes, part of me just wanted to jump on that train with her. To give up, to abandon it all, and head for home. Liverpool was only two hours away on the train—but a whole world away on the lifestyle scale.
At home, I could sleep in my own bed, get annoyed with my baby brother, and be fed huge plates full of bacon and eggs the next morning. Without any guilt whatsoever. Mum and Dad would welcome me back, and I could pick up right where I left off.
Except … where I left off wasn’t exactly brilliant, was it? I
was sharing a flat that was almost as crappy as the one I lived in now, with Ruby and her perverted geriatric boyfriend, singing princess songs to spoiled brats every weekend. I might not have any spare cash now—but I didn’t have any then, either.
I realised, as Becky’s face in the window dwindled to a tiny blob heading into the tunnel, that I didn’t care about the flat, or the money. Or even the bacon and eggs, that much.
What I really missed was the people. The casual conversations that could start any time and any place in Liverpool. The way you could bond with someone at the fish counter in Tesco, or in the queue at the chippie, or at a lock-in at the pub. I missed that—and I missed my family. My family, who thought I was worth something, that I was special. Who loved me and consoled me and made me laugh all the time.
That had been replaced with Patty, who clearly thought I was worth bugger all, and Jack, who thought … well, who knows what he thought? He certainly wasn’t telling. It felt perfect when I was with him—but shaky as the rope bridge in
I’m A Celebrity
… when we were separated. I was only a tiny part of his life—but he was fast becoming the most important part of mine. With Yusuf the Kebab Man as a close second, which tells you everything you need to know about my social life.
Still, I knew I had to stick with it for a little while longer—that I wouldn’t forgive myself if I packed it all in too soon, before I’d given it my very best shot. If I wussed out, and spent the rest of my life wondering about what
could
have been.
So, I’d let that train go, wiped my eyes, and fought my way through the refugee camp that Euston at rush hour always
felt like, getting my feet run over by suitcases on wheels and getting jostled as I walked towards the escalator into the Tube. It was literally all downhill from there.
And now, here I was, reaping my reward. Wet. Cold. Alone. And planning an excitingly glamorous night out as hired help who probably wouldn’t even get paid.
But, I told myself as I rooted suitable clothing out of my wardrobe, it was better than what I had had planned for the night—sitting at home watching crap telly, listening to my tummy rumble and wondering what Jack was up to. Anything, in fact, would have been better than that.
I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself—millions of people in London would be working that night. Millions of people would be getting ready for a long shift at a pub or a restaurant or driving a bus or being a cabbie, like my dad. Hard work never killed anyone—and at least I was here pursuing a dream. At least I had hopes. At least there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Admittedly, it felt more like a train about to splatter me into squelchy pieces, but it was something. I could sing. I could dance. I could make it—and I needed to view every event like this as an opportunity, not purgatory. I’d been raised with a work ethic, and now was not the time to give up on it.
I’d wear a black skirt and a white blouse. There would be no stains. I would be clean. I would be cheerful. I would smile like a clown on Ecstasy as I waltzed round the Panache Club serving appetisers. I would be the best waitress ever.