by A. J. Crofts
‘You’re a funny one, you are,’ she’d say, but always with affection in her voice and a twinkle in her eye. I always took comments like that as compliments.
Now that I was getting my head round the idea of the singing programme I was beginning to think it might be a really good thing. (And not just because it meant I could spend time with Luke Lewis.) Maybe it would bring Dad round a bit. I could understand why he didn’t like the idea of his daughter being portrayed as a hooker three times a week for all the world to see, even though I didn’t think it was a reasonable thing to make a fuss about, but surely he couldn’t complain if I was just singing songs? He was always really encouraging when I was in the school choir and all that stuff. Maybe this would be my chance to get back into his affections. He actually cried at Mum’s brother’s wedding when I stood up at the reception and sang ‘Ben’, that Michael Jackson song about a rat. I can’t have been more than eight but I managed to make most of the people in the room water up. Mind you, half of them were either completely bladdered or stoned by that stage and probably would have cried at anything. I remember it helped to calm down the atmosphere a bit because there’d been a few fights just before that.
I know this is going to sound pathetic, but on the day I was due to meet Luke Lewis for the first time as a grown-up I felt as nervous and star-struck as I would have been when I was 12. His career hadn’t exactly been going great guns over the previous couple of years. He hadn’t disappeared from sight altogether, but he certainly hadn’t had a solo hit since the group had disbanded – none of them had. He was the only one whose name and face were still known to the public at all. It’s hard to exaggerate just how beautiful he was when he was a teenager. He was six years older than me and seemed to be the perfect male specimen as far as I and a few hundred thousand other pre-pubescent girls were concerned. Looking back now, I can see he was still pretty girly himself at the time, but we liked that. When you’re 12 you don’t fancy having your face ripped to pieces with stubble or any of those other smelly, manly realities that we all get a taste for later on. At that stage we just want boy equivalents of ourselves, eyeliner and all.
I’d seen him on telly a few times since then and I knew he was still a bit pretty for someone on the way to thirty, but he was certainly still a looker, and he still had a voice that made me tingle between the legs, reminding me that for five years he was the only man I ever fantasised about. Although I had often seen him live, I had never really taken in how tall he was until he walked into that studio, strode over and shook my hand like it was an honour for him to meet me rather than the other way round. He was well over six foot tall and broadly built – I’ve always liked that in a man, it makes me feel safe, like they could wrap me up in their arms and protect me from all the dangers of the world.
He’d always seemed really nice when he was interviewed as well, all polite and modest and sweet. I knew he was a bit posh because I’d read virtually every bit of magazine biography that had ever appeared about him. He’d even been to a private boarding school, which sounded like living on another planet as far as we were all concerned at my school, but he never seemed up himself. I think his whole band had met at the same school, although I was aware that might just be a story put about by the media. I was beginning to get the hang of how the whole thing worked on this side of the ‘looking glass’. At least, I thought I was.
That first day in the studio, where we would be recording our first song for the competition, I think the producers were hoping we would be really crap together so they could show how much we had improved by the end of the series, or whatever their game plan was. I wasn’t nervous about the singing because I knew I would be able to do that, but what if I said something really stupid to him? Or what if he remembered my face from all those times I stalked him? How embarrassing would that be?
He was so polite. When he shook my hand I immediately had to apologise because it was all sweaty, making up some stupid story about having to run for the bus, when he knew perfectly well I’d been picked up from home by a driver in an air-conditioned Mercedes. I think he even gave a little bow of the head at the same time as holding my hand while I babbled stupidly on, but I may have imagined that – having a bit of a Jane Austen moment. He was dressed in that sort of preppy way that posh boys sometimes do: chinos and coloured shirts, jumper round the shoulders, anyone for tennis? That sort of thing. He was just gorgeous, even more gorgeous than I remembered from the days when he had a mop of hair spiked up all over the place and dressed like some Brighton art-student junkie.
‘I’m a great fan,’ he said, still holding on to my hand and I thought I was going to pass out. I mean, I had been just about to say exactly the same line to him and now I had nothing else lined up to say, so I grinned and laughed like some half-witted hyena.
‘Do you know what the first song they’ve chosen for us is?’ he asked, leading me by the hand over to the coffee and croissants.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Is it something really naff?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s beautiful. “Summer Wine”. Do you know the Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood version? They did it on their album Nancy and Lee. The Corrs covered it in a live recording with Bono as well. It’s a beautiful song.’
Who the fuck was Lee Hazlewood? I knew something about Nancy Sinatra, what with her dad and the Rat Pack and everything. I knew the Corrs, but they weren’t exactly the sort of thing Pete and I listened to most of the time.
‘I’ve got it on my iPod,’ he was saying, fiddling about with the dial and slipping one earphone into my ear and the other into his own. This guy was really into his music. I liked that. Lee Hazlewood’s voice wasn’t unlike Luke’s, although maybe a bit more gravelly. He was right, it was a beautiful song and I knew it was going to be well within my range, which was a relief. I was beginning to have the best time.
A few of the other celebrities were there as well, although I didn’t recognise most of them. One was a newsreader. There was a rugby player, who was very sweet, and a woman who had a programme about gardening or something. Most of them were older. I only recognised about half of the singing mentors as well. Luke was by far the most famous as far as I was concerned.
There was a cameraman circling around the crowd, recording us all getting to know one another. I was getting so used to having cameras around by then I hardly noticed. To be honest, I was too busy staring at Luke like some lovesick puppy to really notice anything else. Thinking back now, I suppose the cameraman did stick around us more than the others, so maybe they thought Luke was the most famous one there too, and I was the only person from The Towers, which was the top-rated show by miles at the time, so I guess we were the most likely to pull in the viewers. It’s so weird how easily I’d got used to things like that – like it was the natural place for me to be in life – forgetting that it was only a few months since I was working the hotel dishwashers.
They took Luke and me into a separate studio to try the song out, just with a backing track, no musicians. The first run-through was a bit bumpy, only because I was so unfamiliar with the words, but even so it was obvious that it was going to work like a dream. The producers and other behind-the-scenes guys were all huddling in small groups, whispering among themselves and glancing over at us.
‘I think they might be changing their plans a bit,’ Luke said quietly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t think they realised quite how good you were going to be. It’s dawning on them they have a potential megastar on their hands and they’re just working out the best way to milk the most money from the situation.’
It’s not often I’m completely lost for words, but that was definitely one of those rare occasions. He was so cool about everything and I was trying to be the same, but all I wanted to do was tear his clothes off.
Chapter Six
Pete and I were just chilling at his squat the following Sunday afternoon when my mobile went off. It’s a number that hardly anyone has, so
I hadn’t bothered to turn it off, even though we’d been having sex and hadn’t wanted to be disturbed. There were other people in there, as always, old school friends of ours, but they were more or less unconscious in the other room listening to music. When I say friends of ‘ours’, they were more Pete’s friends really, people who put up with me because I was with him but wouldn’t have given me the time of day otherwise. Someone had managed to get some regular electricity into the place, which made it much more civilised, and warm enough to be able to take your clothes off.
I liked those quiet moments with Pete, partly because they’d become so rare, what with my filming schedules and Pete’s sleeping habits. When he was mellow he was lovely to be with. I’d had to disguise myself in the tatty tracksuit, with my hair scraped up inside an old woolly hat of Mum’s that looked like a tea cosy, in order to get to the flat without being noticed. It’s no good complaining all the time about not being able to go anywhere without being stalked by the paparazzi and then waltzing out the front door in a little Versace number, a pair of Manolos and hair extensions. If you make yourself look ordinary enough, not many people will spot you; they’re all too busy getting on with their own lives, worrying about their own problems. Usually it’s the photographers who spot you first, and that attracts everyone else’s attention, which is really embarrassing. All you want to do is make them go away before anyone notices, but if you ask them to fuck off they just act like they can’t hear you and keep snapping away.
As we had been a bit wild about shedding our clothes it took me a while to find the tracksuit bottoms the phone was in. I got there just in time before it stopped ringing, but in too much of a rush to check the name before picking up. If I’d known it was going to be Luke I probably wouldn’t have chosen to take the call while I was stark naked and still pretty sweaty from having been a bit athletic.
‘Oh. Hi,’ I said, scrabbling to find a voice that wouldn’t raise Pete’s suspicions that I was being rung by another man before I’d had a chance to explain, but would still sound friendly and welcoming to the new pop star in my life. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m great, I was just listening to Nancy and Lee and thinking of you …’
It sounded like he was settling in for a bit of a long, leisurely, casual chat, which I definitely didn’t think I was going to be able to get away with under the circumstances, even though I couldn’t think of anything I would rather do.
‘Listen, are you going to be around later?’ I asked. ‘Could I ring you back?’
‘It’s later I was wondering about,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come round for supper?’
Now I had to think quickly. ‘Sure,’ I said lightly. ‘Can I ring you in a couple of hours and we’ll chat about it?’
‘That would be great.’
‘OK.’ I hung up quickly before he could say anything else.
‘Who was that?’ Pete asked sleepily, pulling me back under the duvet.
My brain racing, I remembered that Luke was listed on the phone and Pete would be able to catch me out if I lied. ‘I’m doing this singing programme with a guy called Luke Lewis. He wanted to talk about the song we’ve been given.’
Not exactly a lie.
‘I know that name, don’t I?’ Pete murmured, sliding his hands back down my body.
‘Used to be lead singer with the West End Boys.’
‘Yeah, I remember them. He was cool. Nice singing voice. You singing with him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That will be cool, man.’
To stop him thinking any further I gave him a blow-job to finish him off, which sent him off to sleep like the rest of his flatmates, and I was able to slip back out on to the street a couple of hours later without any of them even opening their eyes. I dialled Luke’s number as soon as I was safely in the back of a taxi.
‘Hi, sorry about that, I was with some friends and it was a bit awkward …’
He gave me his address, somewhere in Fulham, and I said I’d pop over later. I hope I sounded casual, not like my tongue was hanging out. At eight o’clock I was there, all bathed and shaved, fake-tanned and ready for action. If I’m honest, the flat was a bit of a disappointment – pretty shabby and rundown – but then I had got used to living with brand-new footballers’-wives-type stuff, so probably my taste had got a bit distorted. He looked so gorgeous I had to hold on very tightly to my self-control not to throw myself all over him the moment he opened the door, and he’d cooked me a meal. I loved Pete to death, but he’d never even shared a KitKat with me, let alone cooked me a meal. If we ever went out for a takeaway, he was always having to borrow the money off me to pay. This was the whole romantic deal: table laid up, wine chilling in the fridge, Nancy and Lee on the music system.
‘I’m so pleased you came,’ he said as he took my coat and hung it up. ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot.’
He’d been thinking about me? I’d hardly thought of anything else but him from the moment we parted at the studio a couple of days before. I’d only really gone round to Pete’s to take my mind off Luke Lewis. Now I feel guilty for even saying that. I was being such a cow to Pete, but even he had to admit that Luke was ‘cool’. Pete didn’t rate that many people, especially singers, and certainly not singers with boy bands.
It was the best evening of my life. We’d both switched our phones off and we talked and talked – mostly about music, although I think I may have told him things about my childhood that I had never told anyone before. He was so easy to talk to. He seemed so interested in everything about me. We drank almost a bottle of wine each and did some coke and when we slid into bed together at the end of the evening it seemed like the moment I’d been waiting for ever since I was given their first album on my twelfth birthday. I’d fantasised about it so often it should have been an anticlimax, but it wasn’t.
For the first time ever I turned up late for work the next day, in a taxi, straight from his place, not having learned my lines. Dora had drummed it into me a thousand times that it was the worst sin possible to be late, even for a wardrobe fitting, because one late actor could hold up a whole day’s shooting and cost the production company thousands. That day, thank God, no one seemed to be too bothered because I was able to catch up on the lines in time for the first take, but it shocked me. I felt like I’d lost a little bit of control of things. It was an exciting feeling, but scary at the same time.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him all day – and feeling really guilty about Pete. I decided that at the end of filming I would go round to the squat and I would tell Pete that it was time for both of us to move on. I really wanted to keep him as a friend, and I was paranoid that he would think I was dumping him because now I was the big TV star and my old friends weren’t good enough for me any more. I wanted to think that I would still be able to go round on Sunday afternoons and chill out; I just didn’t think the relationship was going anywhere. It was actually his mother I was most sorry about disappointing. She’d always been so sweet to me, telling me I was the only decent thing in her son’s life. I don’t want to sound up myself, but if I was her I would have thought the same. Pete seemed to have given up any ambition he might ever have had for his music. Doing a bit of dealing, just to give him some pocket money, seemed to be all he cared about, apart from getting high and shagging. I mean, I’m all for getting high and shagging, obviously, but it can’t be your main goal in life, can it?
I had every intention of going straight there and doing the decent thing, but then Luke turned up at the studio with armfuls of flowers and whisked me off to dinner at some fancy Mayfair restaurant where the toilets were shaped like eggs and God alone knows what else.
‘You didn’t have to bring me to a place like this,’ I said when I saw the size of the bill. ‘I would have been just as happy with a pizza somewhere.’
‘Pizza?’ He looked puzzled, as if I’d suggested we ate his loafers. ‘I like it here because people don’t keep bothering you for pictures and autogr
aphs. Not that I mind doing all that stuff, but I wanted to have you all to myself.’
I know those sorts of lines are corny, but they get me every time. He’d started to open up a bit about his career and why he had agreed to take part in the singing contest.
‘The problem was, we didn’t write our own material,’ he explained. ‘We might have been selling millions of records, but we didn’t own anything. They were flying us around the world, hiring limousines and private planes and hotel suites for God knows how many people, and that all had to come out of our money in the end – not to mention the costs of making the videos. I mean, we did make some money, don’t get me wrong, but nothing like as much as anyone would have thought from looking at our lifestyles during those years. Now I’m pretty much living off what I can earn for gigs like this competition.’
‘It’s still more than most people,’ I said, wanting to cheer him up because he looked so sad.
‘I know, and the whole thing has been a gas, so I wouldn’t change any of it. It’s just that it feels like the best is behind me already. At least, it did till I met you.’
There he went again, making me feel like I was the most special person in the whole fancy room. I should have given more thought to Pete. I should have rung him and arranged to go round the next day and explain the situation. I should have done so many things, but I didn’t.
I was determined not to be late to work again the next day, and I just made it, by the skin of my teeth, but I fell fast asleep in the canteen with my head on my arms over lunch. Some bright spark took my picture with their phone and the next morning I was all over the front of the tabloids, looking like some down-and-out, with the journalists all worrying about whether I was ‘burning out’ and asking if I was exhausted because of my eating disorder. I wanted to scream, ‘I don’t have a fucking eating disorder! Why do you all keep going on about it?’ In the end I made some feeble joke about ‘power-napping’ to a journalist who managed to get my mobile number, but I don’t think she was remotely convinced. Mum was round the next evening, just when I was about to pop over and see Pete, and was making cocoa and coaxing me to eat another piece of her sweet-potato pie. She’s lovely, but you really can have enough of sweet-potato pie.
