To Be Someone

by Louise Voss

  Sam lived in my house with me for the first year, before moving out to rent her own flat in Mortlake, nearer the legal firm where she was doing her Articles. She also acquired a new and flashy boyfriend, Timothy, whom I believed prompted her defection. Mortlake was quite nearby, and she did still come and stay, but it was obvious she preferred the carnal pleasures Timothy had to offer over another night watching TV round at my place. I was hurt that she hadn’t stayed permanently with me, but she claimed that it would have been “too easy.” I did understand, I supposed. After all the time she’d spent living in her parents’ basement, she wanted to taste complete independence.

  Occasionally I went out with them and their old college friends, but I always felt uncomfortable. Her friends never said anything directly, of course, but they made such an effort to be “normal” around me that the evenings were invariably terribly strained and awkward in their forced jollity. Sam told me that I was paranoid, and imagining things, but I had a lot of experience in that type of situation. I knew that they could not get out of their minds the fact that they were having a drink with someone who was as widely recognized as a member of the royal family.

  I couldn’t understand why, but it also seemed to bug Sam that I was happy just staying home and tinkering around with my bass.

  “Why don’t you get out more, meet more people? You could get a job,” she suggested several times, until I snapped at her.

  “I had a job I liked, and I made enough money that I don’t need to work anymore. I’ve just taken early retirement, okay?”

  “But aren’t you bored?” she’d say incredulously.

  The truth was that, yes, I was beginning to get a little bit bored. I had undoubtedly needed a really long break after the stress of years on the road, and then the trauma of the breakup and the publicity of the trial, but enough was enough. I needed to do something with my time.

  I thought about setting up a music publishing company for my newer songs, but somehow I never got round to it. Besides, all my existing songs were in the firm grasp of Ringside Publishing, who were understandably unwilling to relinquish their ten percent, and there wasn’t much point in having my own company without my old material, too. Then I thought about music management, but decided that it would be too much like hard work. I even toyed with the idea of becoming some kind of upmarket chef—since buying my ten-piece dinner service and cutlery canteen, I had whiled away many a day teaching myself to cook exotic dishes in preparation for the big dinner party—but that one got nixed on the grounds that I was far too famous to go into catering (this was before the cult of the celebrity chef had invaded our TV screens).

  After that, I was stuck for ideas. But then Vinnie came into my life, and suddenly I was no longer bored.

  I met him on a winter Saturday in my small but exclusive local deli, the only place I deigned to visit personally to do my shopping. I never went to the goldfish-bowl supermarket, preferring the privacy of ordering my groceries by phone and having them delivered. But the deli was lovely, and I couldn’t resist the occasional browse. I’d never been recognized in there, and it felt safe.

  So when Vinnie came up and earnestly quizzed me in a strange but sexy accent on how to cook fennel, having, he said, spotted it in my basket, I thought that he had a sweet, ingenuous smile, and explained at length my favorite fennel recipe.

  All the time we were talking Vinnie showed no signs of knowing who I was, which endeared me to him still further. We chatted for about ten minutes near the sun-dried tomatoes and porcini mushrooms, and then amicably moved toward the till together. I was flushed with exhilaration when, once we had both paid and packed our stuff in brown bags, he invited me to go for a drink with him.

  Sitting in a nearby pub drinking pints of dry cider, our respective bags propped up on the velveteen-covered benches next to us, I couldn’t believe myself. A pub! Pints of cider! It was an old-fellas’ pub, gnarled hands cradling creamy Guinnesses; nobody asked for my autograph or even looked askance at me. I got such a huge buzz out of the normality of the whole situation that I even deigned to remove my shades.

  After establishing the origins of each other’s strange accents—mine mid-Atlantic, his half-Zimbabwean—I discovered that he had lived briefly in Florida, and we got embroiled in a slightly bizarre discussion about the cultural differences between Britain and the USA. This turned into a debate on the comparative merits of English and American supermarkets—although I had to pretend that I knew more about Sainsburys than was strictly true.

  “Don’t you just love Sainsburys! There are some good supermarkets in the U.S., too, but they’re pretty few and far between. The towns around where I grew up in New Jersey just had these terrible poxy places where you had to check the sell-by dates on everything, and the cashiers were so dumb that tomatoes were about the only produce they could identify.”

  Vinnie giggled, a weird, high-pitched, girly giggle, obviously thinking I was exaggerating.

  “No, really, I’m serious. They were so ignorant that they’d hold up a mango and ask what it was. You’d say, ‘Oh, those big peaches, ten for a dollar,’ and they’d just ring it up at ten cents when actually they were a dollar seventy-five each, or whatever. Once my mother was buying broccoli and the girl picked it up and said, no joke, ‘Is this cabbage?’ ”

  Vinnie laughed and laughed, rather excessively, I realized in retrospect, and I felt witty and entertaining, a girl who could make strangers laugh without them knowing I was worth millions.

  After the second pint, Vinnie said, “What are you doing tonight? Can I see you again?”

  I was thrilled. “What do you want to do?” I asked, with genuine innocence.

  Vinnie looked seductively into my eyes and my spine suddenly seemed to dissolve.

  “I mean, where do you want to go?”

  Vinnie just kept gazing at me, until he leaned forward and gently brushed my lips with his.

  “How about your place?” he said casually. I hesitated. I never let strangers come to my house, but Vinnie wasn’t a stranger, and I had a feeling he was going to become something much more important. Besides, here was someone besides Sam I could try out my cooking skills on.

  “Shall I cook you dinner, then?”

  Vinnie grinned triumphantly and thrust a sticky beer mat and a Biro at me.

  “Great. I’ll be there at seven. Write down your address for me, would you?”

  When I got home half an hour later, slightly drunk from too much Dry Blackthorn, I dumped my upmarket groceries on the kitchen table and immediately tried phoning Sam. Timothy picked up the telephone.

  “Hi, it’s Helena. Is Sam home, please?”

  Timothy answered in the guarded, slightly disapproving tone he always adopted with me. “Sorry, Helena, she’s having a nap at the moment.”

  “Is she okay?” I’d thought Sam had stopped having afternoon naps months ago.

  “Yeah, I think so. She’s just feeling a bit under the weather at the moment.”

  “Oh. Right. Could you just let her know that I rang, and that I’ll give her a buzz tomorrow?”

  “Okay. Bye, then.”

  I hung up, concerned for two minutes until thoughts of Vinnie swarmed back into my head. It was three-thirty; he’d be here at seven. Three and a half hours to prepare.

  First, what was I going to cook? I had a quick flip through a couple of cookery books, and decided on Casarecce with Ricotta, Basil, and Arugula—quick, hearty, and quite posh. We could have that, with some fennel in orange sauce as a starter. Bit of an odd choice, but with some hot bread it would be okay, and after all, it was the fennel that had got us talking. The whole thing would only take fifteen minutes, and I had all the ingredients.

  Next I ran myself a hot bath with lavender bubble bath and put Massive Attack’s Blue Lines on the stereo. The bath was my favorite place to listen to music since I’d had extra speakers wired through and wall-mounted in there. After drawing the blinds and lighting a couple of candles in the bath
room, I climbed slowly into the steaming bathtub, one toe at a time because the water felt as though it was scalding my chilled feet. As I gradually immersed myself, body acclimatizing to the temperature change, I relaxed and listened to Blue Lines in a tipsy, euphoric state. I lay motionless as the bubbles died around me, only my face, breasts, and knees like icebergs breaking the surface of the fizzy water.

  When I raised my hand, steam flew from my outstretched fingers in the flickering candlelight, and I felt like a witch. I wondered if I’d put a spell on Vinnie, if he was as excited as I about the forthcoming evening. Already I couldn’t quite remember his face, other than a sly sexy smile and his crinkly green eyes. He was whippet-thin, medium height. Sinewy. A little tremor of lust juddered through me as I visualized him naked, disturbing the tiny uniform bubble-remnants outlining my body.

  I could not quite recall the last time I’d had sex. It must have been at least three years ago, because Blue Idea had still been together. I had a vague memory of an unsatisfactory liaison with a marketing director from Ringside’s Mexican company, after a promotions dinner and too much tequila.… Best forgotten about, like most of my dalliances.

  All being well, I estimated that Vinnie would become about the seventh notch on my bedpost. I made a brief tally in my head, to check. First had been my one-night stand with David. Then there’d been a particularly persistent French fan named Claude, who followed us across the Alps in his 2CV when we were on tour in France and Switzerland. After one show, drunk, I had conceded to let him into my hotel room. He had smelled of pesto sauce and body odor, but that was all I could remember about that night or any of the other nights of that particular tour.

  Next there was a highly public but very short-lived relationship with the lead singer of a West Coast grunge band, who ceremoniously dumped me for a soap star after only four weeks. I’d been totally humiliated, having made the cardinal mistake of believing myself to be in love, and telling the papers so.

  Then there was the lovely Patrick, who, much to her chagrin, Sam never got to meet. He never did return my calls, and eventually I just gave up trying, writing him off as another disaster.

  The others I couldn’t even identify, apart from the Mexican marketing director. I was ashamed of myself, but they were just groupie shags, one way or another, and they always left me with the belief that men only wanted me for what I was, rather than who I was. I think a few of them probably had wanted to see me again, but when I sobered up I invariably gave them the kiss-off, in no uncertain terms.

  After Grunge Boy and Patrick, I decided that I couldn’t take the risk of a relationship—it would never have lasted, with the amount of touring we did.

  But I wasn’t on the road anymore.…

  I decided that it was of paramount importance for me not to repeat the mistakes I’d made in the past, if I wanted this one to last. No drunken sex, certainly no sex on the first date, and definitely no being sweet-talked into bed. If Vinnie wanted me, he could have me on a grown-up, mature, relationship level, taking things one step at a time.

  Of course, I wasn’t saying that I wanted to get married and have kids, not yet, anyhow, but I was ready to make more of a commitment to somebody now. I had the time, the energy, the inclination. Mmm, regular sex, I thought as my fingers slipped quietly beneath the surface of the now-lukewarm water, in search of submerged pleasures.

  Ten minutes later, I roused myself and washed my hair thoroughly, sluicing off shampoo and conditioner in alternate hot and cold rinses, which made my scalp tingle and my hair feel soft like wet silk. I shaved my legs and armpits—well, you never knew, even if sex was off the agenda, I might let him fondle my calves, if he was lucky—and climbed out of the now-tepid bath. I dried myself, then slathered Issey Miyake body lotion over every inch of my skin. I wrapped my head in a neat hand-towel turban, baby-powdered everywhere that didn’t require body lotion, and donned the toweling bathrobe that hung on the dolphin peg behind the door.

  Planning to start my makeup, I wiped the steam off the bathroom mirror with my sleeve, but the warm moist air immediately put another, thinner layer of fog on the cleared surface, so instead I went into the bedroom and blow-dried my hair until it sat in a sleek, smooth chestnut bob around my face.

  So far so good. I decided to get dressed before doing my face, in order to match my makeup with my outfit, so I slipped out of my dressing gown and deliberated for a long time in front of my open wardrobe.

  The phone rang. My heart leapt at the thought that it might be Vinnie, ringing to cancel, but when I picked it up, it was only Sam.

  “Hi, what’s up?” she asked.

  I walked with the cordless phone over to the full-length freestanding mirror in my bedroom and stood naked in front of it. “I’ve got a date, that’s what’s up,” I said proudly.

  There was a screech from the other end. “Who with?”

  I surveyed my body, trying to see it through someone else’s eyes. Large but perky breasts, tight stomach. Hips and thighs a tiny bit bigger than I’d have liked, but still a safe size twelve. I thanked God that I hadn’t stayed chubby. It was so difficult to be in the world’s spotlight if you were carrying even a few extra pounds.

  “He’s called Vinnie, I met him in a shop, he’s originally from Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, whatever. He’s coming round for dinner.”

  There was a slight pause.

  “You met him in a shop? What shop? What does he do?”

  “The deli. He doesn’t work there or anything. We just got talking and then went for a drink to the pub. He’s a mature student, does art and design. Oh, Sam, he’s so hot. All thin and trendy, with a really sexy way of talking. Confident. I like that in a man.”

  “And does he … I mean, did he … know who you are?”

  “That’s the best bit—I really don’t think he did. He didn’t say anything, anyway. Isn’t that neat? He just fancied me for my own sake.”

  Sam sounded thoughtful. “Yeah—that’s great. Just be careful, okay, Helena? Don’t get carried away. I’m not sure how I feel about him coming to your house, though. He could be anyone. Do you want me and Timothy to come over for moral support? We’re not doing anything tonight.”

  I laughed. “No way! I don’t want you gate-crashing my romantic dinner, thanks very much! But I appreciate your concern. I’ll call you first thing in the morning and tell you how it goes.”

  “You’d better.”

  “Anyway, gotta go, Sam. I have to start cooking. Thanks for ringing. Lots of love.”

  “Good luck. Lots of love to you, too, Helena. Let’s meet up tomorrow, okay? You can give me all the gory details over lunch.”

  “Okay. Deal. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  It was only after we’d hung up that I realized I’d forgotten to ask how she was feeling.

  I got dressed, finally deciding on my Agent Provocateur underwear underneath a low-key but very sexy Ghost dress. The steam had dissipated from the bathroom mirror when I returned, so I leaned against the sink and got to work on my face. Foundation, blusher, golden-brown eye shadow, black eyeliner and mascara, and finally a tawny-gold–colored lipstick. A generous squirt of perfume completed the transformation.

  I flung my wet towel over the shower-curtain rail and picked the sodden bath mat up off the floor, feeling new, polished, and as ready as I’d ever be. It was six-twenty.

  By six-thirty, I was in the kitchen chopping fennel and mashing garlic. There was a bang at the door at around six-forty, just as I’d put the fennel into boiling water and weighed out four ounces of pine kernels.

  “It’s Vinnie,” he said, through the stained-glass panel in the front door.

  “Oh, hello,” I replied from the hall, completely overcome with panic. Thank God I’d put my makeup on before beginning to cook.

  “Well, are you going to let me in, then?” he called, mock-impatient, through the letterbox.

  I opened the door.

  “You’re early,” I said nervously.


  Vinnie looked me up and down appraisingly. “You look totally gorgeous,” he said. “Great house, too. Do you live here alone?”

  I nodded, blushing at the compliment. He looked exactly the same as he had earlier, right down to the large brown paper bag he held in his arms. A five o’clock shadow gave away the fact that he probably hadn’t spent hours in the bath, and the same clothes indicated the unlikelihood of him agonizing in front of an open wardrobe. Still, that was guys for you.

  Vinnie stomped down the hall into the kitchen as if he’d been there a hundred times before, plonked the bag down on the table, and unpacked it. It turned out to contain not his groceries from earlier, but a medium-sized bottle of gin, a large plastic bottle of tonic, two lemons, a packet of Gauloises, and a family-sized pack of tortilla chips.

  “Thought we could get started with a few G and Ts,” he said airily. “Where do you keep your glasses?”

  Somewhat surprised, I got two tumblers out of the cupboard. “How do you know that I like gin?” I asked.

  “Oh, most people like gin. You do, don’t you?”

  “Well, kind of, but …”

  “There you are, then.”

  He sloshed a large measure into each glass, topped it up with tonic, and helped himself to ice from the freezer. I stood and watched, mouth agape, as he deftly chopped up lemons, found a bowl to pour the tortilla chips into, opened his packet of cigarettes, and without asking my permission, lit one from the gas ring on the hob.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said sarcastically.

  “Cheers,” he replied through a cloud of evil-smelling smoke, handing me a glass. “Your good health. Now, shall we adjourn to somewhere more comfortable before dinner? That looks done,” he added, turning off the gas underneath the bubbling fennel. “Why don’t you just strain it, and then you can finish the cooking later?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t want to strain it. You’ve done everything else,” I said, fetching a colander. Again the sarcasm seemed lost on Vinnie.

  “Oh, no—you’re in charge.”