by A. J. Crofts
Dora had bought a bottle of champagne, bless her, and some snacks from Marks & Spencer, and she had those old-fashioned, flat champagne glasses like they always used in vintage black-and-white movies. My heart was thumping like it was trying to break through my rib cage. I’d seen rushes and all the rest at work, so I sort of knew what I looked like on the screen, but it was different when it was actually out there in the real world, with the familiar voice of the continuity announcer talking about programmes coming later, and then the theme tune that I must have heard three thousand times before, and the story lines that just the night before I had been following along with the rest of the country – and suddenly there was Nikki. And it was her, not me, up on the screen. It didn’t feel like me in any way, just like the photos from the shoot. Luckily, she wasn’t on the screen that much in the first episode because I probably would have suffocated, since I didn’t seem to be able to breathe when she was there.
I didn’t dare to look at Dora until the final credits were rolling up and seeing the tears in her eyes set me off crying too. She covered her embarrassment by topping up my champagne glass. In a way it felt like a relief to have got over the hurdle. Nikki was out there now and it was up to the public whether they took to her or not.
My phone peeped that I had a text. It was from Mum. ‘I have never been so proud. You are a star!’ I was grateful to her for texting and not ringing, because I don’t know how I would have reacted to too much praise at that moment. She always did get that sort of thing right, which was why she was so good with the children in the home where she worked.
Dora and I got well plastered that night. She even broke out some hash that she must have been saving since the Sixties. She had recorded the show and insisted on playing it back, fast-forwarding through the bits where Nikki was off-screen, and giving me a few more acting tips. She didn’t lavish me with praise, which I was grateful for, just talked as if it was another day’s work, treating me like a professional. I wasn’t in any fit state to go anywhere that night, so I dossed down on her couch, which smelled a bit of old ladies and cats.
Pete seemed to be blissfully unaware that anything had changed in my life. Maybe he was pretending not to notice, but I don’t think so. I think he really was just not quite firmly enough on this planet. Very few people are able to completely avoid a media flash flood, but Pete was one of them. He didn’t watch television or listen to the radio, he never read a newspaper or a magazine, so virtually every ‘overnight sensation’ that hit the headlines passed him by. I think that was part of the attraction. He seemed to have the soul of a poet, floating above the vulgar hurly-burly of everyday life.
‘You all right, babe?’ he would enquire pleasantly when I crawled in through the broken window, falling on top of him and a couple of others as they sat on the mattress below, completely unaware that his girlfriend’s face was plastered over virtually every paper and magazine on the newsstands, or that in order to reach him I’d had to dodge through a restaurant and out through the kitchens to avoid a photographer who seemed to have decided to stalk me 24/7.
Nikki, it seemed, had struck a chord in the national affections. A journalist on one of the heavy papers wrote a whole long piece comparing her to Elsie Tanner, Melina Mercouri and Catherine Deneuve. Dora had to explain to me that Elsie Tanner was another slapper character who had been the first person to be seen by the public on Coronation Street; the other two I knew had played hookers in famous old movies because I’d watched them when Dave was trying to get a foreign-movie club going at the school. He’d decided to start with a season of hooker movies because he thought that would encourage more boys to join the club, which it did, but it also got him closed down by the headmaster after one term. Apparently, some of the parents complained. I happened to know which parents it was, and if they had actually known what their daughters were up to in the evenings they might not have been quite so up themselves about a few art-house films.
The Elle magazine fashion spread came out a short time after Nikki first appeared on-screen and the pictures went everywhere. Dora was becoming quite the ruthless businesswoman, making phone calls and holding meetings and shouting at people about me being exploited and how I deserved a slice of the money-making machine that was building up around Nikki. She had managed to get a clause into my contract that allowed me to do advertising work as long as it didn’t interfere with my filming schedule. She kept telling me about deals she had set up and the money all seemed to be fantastic, though I didn’t really have the time to follow exactly what she was up to. I kept quiet and let her get on with it, just turning up in photographers’ studios when I was told. It was all a bit of a laugh, modelling clothes and make-up and whatever, but what I really wanted to do each day was get back to the studio and develop Nikki’s character.
The biggest problem with Nikki was that she kept having love scenes. Well, not really ‘love’, since she was with punters half the time, but I still had to get my kit off and get down and dirty with a varied selection of men. I got over the embarrassment factor after a couple of weeks, but there was still the yuck factor to overcome from time to time. They weren’t all old and disgusting, but some of them were. It wasn’t so bad sliding into bed and then cavorting around, it was the kissing that was the worst. There’s no way out of it, of course, if it’s in the scripts, but I would dread hearing the director shouting, ‘Tongues, please!’ when I was writhing around with yet another bit-part actor I’d only met that morning. I can see why hookers don’t like kissing and I did question whether Nikki would be quite so keen to do that sort of thing with punters, but they told me she was confused about where the line was between her professional and personal behaviour. I didn’t want to sound like I was being difficult so I just braced myself and got on with it.
I didn’t get to see much of Mum and the rest of them because my working hours coincided with Dad’s most days and he was still adamant that he wasn’t going to have me in the house. Whenever I did have a day off, Dora crammed it full of advertising and promotional work, which was quite nice because it meant I didn’t have a chance to brood over how much I missed the family. We met up whenever we could, but if it was in a public place there was always the problem of people staring or coming over and asking for autographs and pictures. It was great to get all the attention, but embarrassing when you’re trying to have a proper conversation with your mother or your sisters. It’s bloody hard to sign an autograph without feeling like you’re ‘putting on airs and fecking graces’, as Dad would have put it. But to refuse to sign would have looked even worse. Being with them made me feel sad, especially when they had to leave. I just wanted to go back with them, back to my home, to be part of the bickering and the laughing, not be the one left on my own. But no matter how much I missed being with them, nothing would have persuaded me to give up what I was doing.
Whenever I saw them or rang them, the girls were always on at me to take them clubbing. The boys not so much so. I guess the boys didn’t think it was cool to be freeloading on their sister, but the girls weren’t worried about anything like that. We had to arrange a night when there was no danger Dad would find out where they were, so Mum waited till she knew he was going away for a weekend’s fishing with his mates. We met up in the West End and the girls had really gone to a lot of trouble, bless them. They must have been primping and pimping themselves for fucking hours. They sparkled from head to toe and they just could not keep the grins off their faces. I was so proud of them and was looking forward to showing them off around town. We had a couple of cocktails in a bar first, to get us in the mood, and then headed for the velvet ropes of a club I knew they would love. They had all got themselves kitted out with false IDs to get them past the doormen. We were having such a great time.
‘Sorry, girls.’ The doorman had his hand up behind me, clipping the rope back into place, leaving my sisters on the other side.
‘They’re with me,’ I said.
‘Sorry, Miss McBride –’ th
ese guys knew their show business ‘– club policy.’
‘They’ve got ID,’ I pleaded.
‘It’s not the age,’ he said, ‘it’s the look.’
There was some sniggering rising among the queue, people happy to see potential queue-bargers brought down to size. The girls’ little faces broke my heart. People were starting to take pictures with their phones and I knew that if I made a fuss this could be a big story and their humiliation would be a hundred times worse.
‘OK, girls,’ I said, as breezily as I could, ‘let’s go somewhere else. This place ain’t so fucking great anyway.’
We stalked off into the night, feeling a hundred pairs of eyes on our backs. None of us felt like chancing a second rejection, so we parted in a bit of a chilly atmosphere and they headed home. The story made it into enough papers for them to be well and truly humiliated at school the following week and they never asked me for anything after that. In fact, they hardly ever called me at all – it always had to be me calling them – and then they would act all off-hand, like I was bothering them all the time. I could understand that, after what had happened, but it still didn’t feel nice.
‘They’ll come round,’ Mum assured me when I told her what had happened. ‘They’re young and they’ve had their pride dented. Just give them a little time.’
I knew she was right, but I was frightened that with my increasingly hectic schedule I might not have the necessary time to keep our relationships going without a bit of help from them. It felt like I was drifting further and further from the family and the tone of the press stories about the rejection outside the club made me nervous. It was as if the journalists were pleased to see me and my family being taken down a peg or two. It was nothing terrible in the great scheme of things, just gentle teasing really, but it seemed like a warning of what might be to come if anything went seriously wrong. It was like I was sailing out to sea in a little dinghy, having no idea what sort of storms might lie ahead and not having my family there for back-up if I got into trouble. I stepped up the work schedule to stop myself from brooding on it.
Chapter Four
‘OK,’ Dora said, ‘here’s the deal. You need to buy yourself a house. I’ve been on to OK! and they’re willing to pay two hundred thousand for the exclusive rights to photograph you moving in, and they’ll furnish it for you and do it up.’
‘You’re joking me, aren’t you?’ I was trying to take it all in. ‘A magazine is basically willing to pay me enough to buy a house, just for the rights to photograph me in it?’
‘Well, you may have to get a mortgage for a bit more than that, but nothing that we can’t manage from your salary.’
‘I don’t know, Dora, do I want the responsibility of a house? I’m not very good at all the paperwork and stuff.’
‘You just leave all that to me. You can’t go on sleeping on other people’s sofas and God knows where else forever. I’m sure your career will keep going now, but if it doesn’t you don’t want to have wasted this opportunity to get a roof over your head. If The Towers was axed tomorrow, you might not work again for years.’
‘Shit, really?’ When she put it like that, I could see what she was getting at.
‘Think of the advantages. You could have your mum and the rest of them round to visit whenever you wanted. You could get some privacy after a hard day’s work. You might even get yourself a proper boyfriend.’
I let that one pass. I was well aware that Dora was not a big fan of Pete’s, but she had only met him once and she had never seen how sweet he could be when we were alone together; well, alone apart from the others in the squat. The one time they’d met he’d wandered into an interview I was doing in a hotel. I’d told him I’d meet him afterwards in the pub next door, but he got impatient and came looking for me. He was being a bit lairy, feeling out of his depth I guess, and had obviously had a few drinks, which never brought out his nicest side. When Dora politely asked him to wait until I’d finished, he got all arsey and accused me of giving the journalist a blow-job or something. Luckily the journalist was a decent bloke and didn’t put any of that in the article. If it had been one of the tabloids, we would have been in serious trouble.
Dora gave me a big talking-to afterwards, told me he was a liability and all the rest. I knew she was right, but you can’t just chuck someone because they’re a bit of a hopeless case, can you? Not when you love them.
I don’t know what I would have done without Dora. I mean, I know she was going to be getting ten per cent of whatever I earned, but that wasn’t exactly a fortune, and she seemed to be willing to take over my whole life, like a replacement mother.
‘I feel really bad about asking you to do so much for me,’ I told her. ‘But I just don’t seem to have time for anything.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she brushed aside my worries, ‘when you’re making a fortune I’ll be getting my pound of flesh.’
‘But you do much more than anyone else’s agent.’
‘Listen, kid,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in this shitty business for nearly half a century, ever since my mother dragged me to my first ballet class. You are by far the most talented person I have come across in all those years. I’m enjoying being the wind beneath your wings, as the song goes. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth – and that’s all the clichés you’re getting out of me today.’
So that shut me up. I just gave her a hug, which reminded me how long it had been since I’d been able to hug any of the members of my family when I wanted to. I’d hugged Pete a couple of nights before, but he’d been unconscious on something so he didn’t exactly reciprocate. Thank God for Dora, that’s all I can say.
She found me a nice little terraced house not far from Gerry and his family, so I would still be able to drop in for meals now and then after a hard day at the studios, and the deal with OK! was all set up. I felt strangely sad about leaving Gerry’s family, almost like I was leaving home again. Gerry was so incredibly cool about it. I’d been afraid he’d get difficult and try to dissuade me – after all, he’d basically had sex on tap with me there – but he never said a word, quite happy to fit in with my plans. We would still spend most of our days together at the studio and he didn’t seem to mind whether we slept together or not – which was a bit insulting in one way, but really restful in another. He was a hard one to figure out, which was partly why I stayed interested, I guess.
The décor and furniture that the magazine supplied weren’t exactly what I would have chosen – they’d pimped it up to be a bit ‘footballers’ wives’, to be honest – but it was another gift horse that didn’t need its dentures checking.
The photoshoot was a major embarrassment, and I just had to grit my teeth and keep telling myself that they were basically giving me a house and the agony would soon be over. I had to drape myself around the furniture, trying to look funky and sexy at the same time, which was more of a test of my acting than anything I’d ever had to do on any stage or in front of any camera. They filled the place with flowers, which was nice of them, even if they did take them away with them again at the end of the day. They even brought in a fluffy kitten that I had to pretend was mine, since I didn’t have a celebrity boyfriend I could show off to them. I didn’t tell them about Pete in case they actually suggested I brought him along. He definitely wouldn’t have been the sort of image they were looking for, and he most likely would have been laughing too much at the whole set-up to get any pictures done anyway.
Once they’d all gone, including the kitten, I ordered in a pizza and opened a few beers and for a while it felt really nice to have a place of my own. Then I felt a bit lonely, so I rang Mum to see if she and the girls fancied coming over. About two hours later they all turned up because Dad had gone down the pub. I thought it would be really fun, like it had been when we were all living together at home, but they were all a bit weird. Mum was really sweet, saying how well I was doing and how proud she was of me, and the others were impressed by the place and spent the whol
e time playing with the electronics, but none of them really relaxed. They seemed completely different, like they were on a day out somewhere where they had to behave themselves, like they had to be polite to me because I had invited them to my home.
I was shocked by how scruffy they looked alongside everything in the house, which was all so gleaming new and shiny, and that immediately made me feel guilty for looking down on them. I really wanted them to relax and make some mess around the place, like a proper party, but it ended up all being a bit embarrassing and they all went home at about midnight, even though I said they could stay and sleep on the sofas and stuff. I couldn’t understand quite what had happened and I felt bad for the rest of the night.
I tried asking Mum if she thought that Dad would come round to forgiving me soon and if I would be able to come home again to hang out with them. I noticed her eyes were suddenly tearful, but she made a big effort to stay cheerful and suggested I just ‘give him a bit longer to get used to everything’. It felt like there was something else going on that she wasn’t telling me, but I couldn’t think of the right questions to ask to get it out of her.
I missed Mum more than any of the others. Sometimes I would ring her twenty times a day, just to say ‘hi’ and find out some of the gossip.
‘Are you all right, Steff?’ she asked on one call I was making during a break in filming, while the lighting people were taking a bloody age to get the shadows right and I was afraid that if I didn’t distract myself I would end up eating all the way through the bag of doughnuts Gerry had just given me.
