The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride

by A. J. Crofts

  Mum led us into the sitting room, with everyone else crowding in behind us. It all looked just as I remembered, but I’d forgotten the overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia, so many bodies in such a small space, so many personalities vying for dominance.

  Gerry looked entirely comfortable, settling into a chair, introducing himself to the rest of them. It was as if Dad was being upstaged as the alpha male of the pack and I wasn’t sure how he was going to take that. He was standing quietly in the background, but I felt he was brewing up like a volcano.

  ‘I was just making a meal,’ Mum said. ‘You will both stay, won’t you?’

  ‘That would be great,’ Gerry jumped in before I could answer. ‘Steff has told me so much about your cooking.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ Mum almost wriggled with pleasure. I hoped Gerry wasn’t laying it on too thick.

  ‘Would there be time for Mr McBride and me to go for a drink and get acquainted before tea?’

  I couldn’t believe it. How was Gerry finding the nerve for this?

  ‘We’ve got time,’ Dad replied. ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘Your dad likes him,’ Mum said as the door slammed behind them, sounding as surprised as I was.

  By the time they came back, Dad was nicely balanced on the edge of being too drunk – just at that point where he was at his most amiable. One more and there was a risk he would tip over into anger and violence. Maybe he’d just had a few beers and no spirits. Gerry was pretending he was at the same point, but I knew he wasn’t. The chances were he’d managed to only have one drink to Dad’s three or four. If the others had been planning to go out, they had all changed their plans now, all wanting to be there for the meal to get to know the wonderful Gerry. I can’t deny it was an incredible relief, but I was also a bit pissed off that they were all so keen to hear about his adventures behind the camera and seemed totally disinterested in everything that had happened to me since I was last home. I mean, did a Bafta mean nothing to these people? (Only kidding. Well, mostly.) I couldn’t believe it; we were all sitting round the table like we were the fucking Waltons.

  ‘So, Gerry,’ Dad said, as if the two of them were the oldest mates in the world, ‘when are you going to be making an honest woman of our Steffi?’

  That silenced the room at a stroke as everyone turned to stare at him. Gerry didn’t look remotely bothered.

  ‘I’d do it tomorrow if I could persuade her.’ He grinned in a way that they no doubt thought was ‘boyishly charming’ but I thought was a bit slimy.

  It suddenly dawned on me why he had insisted on coming to meet the family: he was recruiting them to his fucking cause. My best friend, the shoulder I always used to cry on, was consorting with the fucking enemy. ‘Pull yourself together, Steff,’ I told myself, ‘they are not the enemy, they are your family and Gerry is doing a great job at reuniting you with them.’

  ‘You marry this man, Steffi,’ Dad boomed, like some jovial shopping-mall Santa. ‘Or I’m going to want to know the reason why not.’

  It probably would have sounded like pub banter to anyone who hadn’t lived with him for twenty-odd years, but I knew it was a direct order, and so did all the others. Mum, bless her, immediately started bustling around giving everyone second helpings and everyone else found something fascinating to stare at on their plates.

  I hauled as much oxygen in as I could manage, trying to quell the rising panic in my chest. I couldn’t find any words to make light of the situation. It actually felt as if someone had tied my tongue up. Mum did her best to cover up the tension, but it didn’t work. After that things went from bad to worse as I suggested we should leave because I had to be up early in the morning and Dad insisted on taking Gerry back down to the pub for a few more drinks. As the hours ticked by I began to feel angry as well as fearful of what state Dad would be in by the time they finally rolled back. If Gerry was too drunk to drive we would have to spend the night on the couch and the whole horror would stretch out to the morning. I was desperately craving the peace and solitude of the penthouse. The angrier I became, the more I realised I didn’t have to put up with it if I didn’t want to. I was an adult. I could make my own decisions about what I wanted to do. I phoned a taxi company and gave them the address. An hour later I was back in the penthouse, feeling horribly alone. I had so wanted to be accepted back into the bosom of the family, but when I was I’d felt like I was going to suffocate.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘They want to do a Meet the Real Steffi McBride programme,’ Dora announced. ‘You know the sort of thing: you on the stage, the audience packed with celebrities, planted questions and you singing some songs. Prime-time Saturday-night spot.’

  ‘I thought they just did that sort of thing with really big stars,’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘You’re about as big as they get at the moment, darling,’ she drawled.

  I wished I hadn’t said that, because now it sounded like I was fishing for compliments and I didn’t know how to react.

  ‘Do you think I should do it?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘Might be fun. They would let you sing whatever you wanted, and they would pay a lot.’

  ‘OK, whatever you think.’

  ‘Are you all right, darling? Having man trouble?’ Dora had an uncanny knack of reading my moods just from the tone of my voice.

  ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  The visit home had left me so confused. It was really nice that Gerry wanted me to marry him so much, even if it was a bit of an underhand way of going about it. It was also nice that I was back in touch with Dad, sort of. But it was so much pressure. Gerry had been totally taken aback when I laid into him about the whole thing when I saw him the next day.

  ‘I thought you would be happy to be reunited with your dad,’ he protested.

  ‘I am, but you could at least have discussed what you were planning with me. It would have been nice to have been a bit prepared.’

  ‘There was no plan,’ he said. ‘I was just going with the flow. You really have got to stop thinking the worst of everyone. I just love you, that’s all.’

  So then I felt like a complete dog turd on his shoe, but I still couldn’t raise my spirits enough to even act graciously. The moodier I became, the more reasonable, open and sunny he was. There just didn’t seem to be a single fault with the bloody man.

  Dad had rung me several times since that evening, usually after he’d got back from the pub, telling me what a great chap Gerry was and saying he wanted to put the past behind him, make a new start. Having been desperate to be back in touch with him, I now dreaded the long, rambling phone calls. Drink now seemed to make him fucking miserable and sorry for himself, but at least that was an improvement on violent. He kept talking about ‘getting things off his chest once and for all’, but when I asked him what he was talking about he would go all mysterious and evasive and I couldn’t be bothered to ask any more.

  I’m sure they all meant well. I’m sure Dad genuinely liked Gerry and thought he would be a good husband; and of course he was right. Gerry was an incredibly nice guy and he would always treat me well. But at the same time …

  I didn’t stop seeing Gerry, but I often told him I was busy in the evenings without telling him who I was busy with. Sometimes it was celebrity functions, which the publicity people liked me to turn up to in order to keep Nikki in the magazines. I had perfected a technique for those sorts of dos. If I accepted an invitation to an opening of a club or a film premiere, I would get the girls at the studio to make me up after work, borrow a frock from Wardrobe, take the limo to the red carpet, have my picture taken for the magazines, go inside and walk straight out the back, where the limo would be waiting to take me home. Sometimes I would take one of the younger blokes from The Towers, just to keep the reporters guessing, but the boys always wanted to hang around in the hope that they would pull some dozy Page Three girl. I think I might have hoped that it would piss Gerry off as well if I was photographed with other men, but he never seem
ed bothered. He hated those sorts of media events as much as I did and he obviously wasn’t fooled for a second into thinking that I was having a fling with anyone else from the cast. Sometimes his self-confidence and philosophical outlook on life could be quite annoying; occasionally I would just have liked him to get unreasonably pissed off with me when I behaved badly, rather than being all understanding and indulging me the whole time. It’s no wonder the poor sodding men say they don’t understand what it is that women want from them when we don’t know ourselves, is it?

  Quentin James had taken to ringing me quite often, as if we were old friends or something and, spookily, it was almost beginning to feel like we were. So when he rang, saying, ‘Maggie and I are having dinner this evening, want to join us?’ it seemed quite natural to say yes. He’d booked a table at a restaurant in the Berkeley Hotel, just along from Harvey Nichols (scary how quickly I’d got used to going to places like this) and they were both already there when I arrived.

  ‘My God, you look gorgeous,’ I said to Maggie, kissing her on both cheeks in true showbiz fashion before pecking at Quentin and sitting down. In fact, she actually did look gorgeous, unrecognisable as the woman I first saw across Quentin’s office. Whatever the surgeons had done to her had given her a sort of Lauren Bacall meets Charlotte Rampling look now that everything had settled down, kind of bony and haughty. She didn’t look at all out of place among the sleek Knightsbridge and Belgravia ladies on the surrounding tables.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ she purred. ‘It has been agony but it is finally worth it.’

  We ordered food, but not much as we were both keen to lose a few pounds. Quentin had no such inhibitions and tucked into a full three courses, making me feel bloody hungry as I nibbled on a Caesar salad.

  ‘I’ve been asked to do a television “audience-with” thing,’ I explained, ‘and I really want to get into a mini skirt and not look like an elephant.’

  ‘I heard about that,’ Quentin muttered through a mouthful of foie gras. ‘Half my clients have been asked to be in the audience.’

  ‘How is your singing going?’ I asked Maggie.

  ‘Brilliant. I’ve been signed to do an album of country covers. Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, all the standard weepies, giving them a bit of a clubby, jazzy edge.’

  ‘It’s a new slant on fusion,’ Quentin added, like he knew something about music, which I was pretty sure he didn’t. He struck me as a basic Abba’s Greatest Hits man, but I didn’t bother to say.

  ‘She’s being modest,’ Quentin went on and Maggie smiled, modestly. ‘She’s touring all over the country and every venue has sold out, almost overnight.’

  ‘Well done,’ I said. I genuinely did feel pleased. I could imagine just how much it would mean to her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It’s all a bit overwhelming, and I’ve been working on my book at the same time as all this has been going on.’

  ‘Your book?’ This was one surprise after another and I was beginning to feel a bit punch drunk.

  ‘My autobiography. Quentin set up this incredible deal, but they want delivery like yesterday, while I’m still fresh in everyone’s minds from the programme and the media coverage.’

  ‘Autobiography?’ I realised I was beginning to sound like some sort of monosyllabic dumbo, but I was having real trouble getting my head round all this new information.

  ‘Well, it’s not completely “auto”, if you know what I mean,’ she laughed. ‘Quentin found me this brilliant ghost to work with.’

  ‘Will Dad and everything be in it?’ I asked, feeling a growing sense of doom, like people must have felt in the old days when they all believed the atomic bomb was going to be dropped at any moment.

  ‘God, yes, we wouldn’t have got such a good serialisation deal from the papers without promising to talk about all that.’

  What could I say? I felt like I was about to be raped but I knew it was all my own fault. I’d started this whole thing with my fancy ideas about becoming an actress and I was being swept away in the avalanche; even my conception was going to become public property now. This would finish my relationship with Dad once and for all.

  ‘Dad can be quite a private person,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. ‘This could send him mental.’

  ‘I think your father is starting to see the advantages of cooperating with the media,’ Quentin said.

  ‘Dad is?’ Yet again he’d managed to shock me. ‘You’ve talked to him?’

  ‘We wanted to check a few things.’ Quentin was being deliberately vague. ‘We’ve been talking about other possibilities.’

  ‘I’d really like to read this book of yours,’ I said, suddenly unable to manage any more of my salad and emptying my wine glass instead.

  ‘Of course.’ Maggie put her hand over mine and squeezed reassuringly. ‘I’ll ask the ghost to email stuff through to you as he writes it, shall I?’

  ‘Great.’ I coughed, extracting my hand from under hers to cover my mouth. I was fighting an overwhelming urge to be alone, to escape from all of them. Dad had been talking to Quentin? About what?

  ‘I hear you’ve got a cameo in boyfriend Pete’s documentary,’ Quentin said as he paused between courses.

  ‘Oh my God, that was so embarrassing,’ I said, suddenly remembering the whole scene, still able to feel the impact of my boot on the cameraman’s shin. ‘How did you know about that? It isn’t on the Internet, is it?’

  ‘He’s my client, remember?’

  How could I have forgotten? This was like a surreal dream. This man had tentacles everywhere, even into a squat on my old estate.

  ‘How the fuck did that happen anyway?’ I wanted to know. ‘How did you get to meet him?’

  ‘I asked your old girlfriends for an introduction. I wanted to hear his music, see if I could introduce him to a few people. He was one of the highest-profile news stories in the country for a few days, remember? He was hot and everyone wanted a piece of him.’

  ‘The police were looking for him, weren’t they?’

  It seemed to sum up everything about Quentin. The whole London police force hadn’t been able to find Pete, but he had managed it. Maybe he actually was the devil.

  ‘Oh, that got sorted out,’ he said airily. ‘I introduced him to a lawyer who knows how to make those sorts of charges disappear. Since you weren’t lodging any sort of complaint they didn’t want to bother with unnecessary paperwork, especially if he was going to be a celebrity.’

  ‘So you got him a music deal?’ I was still trying to imagine Pete and Quentin even being in the same room together.

  ‘The man has street cred; he’s known to deal drugs and carry guns, that’s exactly the sort of market the record companies want to reach. He also has the cachet of being one of your exes.’

  One of my exes? My God, that made me sound like Kate Moss or someone.

  ‘Has he even written a single song since leaving school?’ I asked.

  ‘The record company’s working on that. They’ve teamed him up with some people. And his dad’s helping.’ Quentin shrugged. ‘The money is mainly going to be in live gigs and deejaying, that sort of thing.’

  ‘If he turns up,’ I said, remembering Pete’s general reluctance to get out of bed most days.

  ‘His mother’s working on that side of things. She seems a pretty tough character.’

  I had to hand it to him. Quentin might be a bit of a prize wanker, but he certainly knew his business and didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

  ‘I got a letter from your old friend the other day,’ Maggie said brightly.

  ‘What old friend?’ I had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Robert Lewis. He said he’d had lunch with you and that had set him to reminiscing about the old days.’

  ‘Does he want to renew the acquaintance?’

  ‘Invited me to lunch.’

  ‘His posh club?’

  ‘No, Rules. We went there a few times in the old days, a bit of a walk down
memory lane. We had dinner there with John Betjeman once.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  The two of them exchanged a look that really pissed me off – that ‘my God, the young people of today know nothing’ look – but I let it pass. I dare say there are a few people under the age of a hundred I know about that they are unaware of too.

  ‘Famous poet,’ Maggie said. ‘He was a friend of Robert’s family, I think.’

  I made a mental note of the name, as usual. I would look him up when I got home and try one of his books. I’d always fancied having a go at reading poetry. Dave had always said I’d like it, but somehow I’d never quite got my head round it. It would make it more relevant if it had something to do with Luke’s family.

  ‘So, have you planned the songs you’re going to do in this show?’ Quentin asked.

  ‘I’ve got a few ideas,’ I said vaguely, nervous about telling him anything in case it ended up on the front pages of the papers in the morning. ‘And the production company’s got a few ideas.’

  ‘You should do a duet with Maggie,’ Quentin suggested, like the idea had only just occurred to him. ‘The viewers would love that: mother and daughter reunited in song.’

  ‘They’ve already seen us reunited in plastic surgery,’ I muttered.

  ‘The public can never get too much of a good thing,’ he grinned. ‘If you can make ’em cry, they will always be back for more.’

  ‘Don’t be embarrassing, Q,’ Maggie protested, a bit half-heartedly I thought. ‘It’s her show, she can choose whoever she wants.’

  ‘You could have Pete on as well, doing his debut single,’ he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘That would get the kids watching.’

  ‘Why don’t we just have all your clients on the stage at once,’ I suggested, ‘like a giant gospel choir of sleazebags. No offence, Maggie.’

  ‘Really?’ She arched a freshly plucked eyebrow.

  ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant all the others.’

  She shrugged, apparently accepting the inevitable, and I felt guilty.

  ‘Well,’ I backtracked, ‘maybe it’s not such a dumb idea – the duet, I mean.’