by Adele Parks
But my parents?
Scott is keen for us to visit each other’s parents as soon as. I say I’d rather put in a call and visit in a few weeks. After all, we haven’t had that much time to ourselves yet (three and a half days and counting). Mark says meeting the parents is a PR opportunity and has to be managed with great care; we shouldn’t rush things, and while I don’t
‘OK, my fabulous Fern, if that’s what you want, I can roll with that but you ought to call your folks before the papers do.’ Scott tosses my mobile at me. Although he’s only a couple of feet away, I don’t manage to catch it coolly with one hand, instead I drop it and have to scrabble on the floor to pick it up. He grins indulgently, delighted even with my gaucheness. ‘I’ll give you some space.’
I don’t want space, I want sex. I can’t take my eyes off his butt as he leaves the room. I’m consumed with the thought of it naked and honest, framed between my clinging thighs. Oh. My. God. He’s lust on legs. It’s horribly frustrating that Scott and I have yet to make love; I’d much rather do that than call my parents. If only we could get a moment alone; it never seems to happen. Still, I guess Scott’s right, I can’t let a tabloid journo break this news to my relatives. The thought of my parents dampens the lusty fire in my mind; suddenly I’m consumed with quite a different sort of giddiness.
Why am I so nervous about calling them? They’ll be thrilled, won’t they? Of course they will.
The phone rings about eight times before anyone picks up. I’d told myself I’d allow it to ring ten times before I gave up. In fact, I know that my parents are always losing the handset and when the phone rings, general panic ensues in their home as they turn the place upside down in a desperate bid at rediscovery.
‘Hello.’ My father sounds breathless. Why, I’m unsure.
‘Hi Dad, it’s me.’
‘I’ll get your mother.’ So far so good. Situation normal.
‘Hello love,’ says my mum. ‘Did you have a nice birthday? I’ve been meaning to ring you to ask if you got our card, there was a tenner in it. Did you get it? You can’t be too sure when you send money through the post, can you? I was reading something in the Daily Mail the other week and it said that certain disreputable postmen target birthday cards and steal them because they often have money in them. That’s why I wrapped your tenner in a piece of paper and then put your card in a brown envelope. No postman is going to spot that. Anyway I was intending to call but Mrs Cooper –’ She pauses for a nanosecond to see whether I interject with the token grunt that will suggest I have a clue who Mrs Cooper is. I don’t grunt in time so she launches on. ‘You remember. Her from up the road who was married to the smiley bald man with glasses but he had a heart attack last Hallowe’en. Tragic. Well, she invited me over to look at her holiday photos. She’s been on a world cruise. Can you imagine? A singles holiday at her age! Mind, I’m not knocking it, she looks marvellous. But she had album after album to get through and she’s such a chatty sort I couldn’t get a word in edgeways. So I’m glad you called. But I would have got round to it as soon as I’d finished with the ironing and wormed the dog –’
‘Mum, I’m engaged.’
‘Well, I’m speechless!’
This is a lie. Because no sooner does she mutter that sentiment than she starts to yell to my dad. ‘Ray, Ray, our Fern and Adam are getting married. He’s popped the question. At last.’
‘No, er, Mum, that’s not right actually. Adam didn’t pop the question,’ I interject desperately.
‘Oh my God, Ray. She’s gone all modern on us. Our Fern asked Adam and it’s not even a leap year.’
‘No, Mum. That’s not what I’m saying.’ I’m almost yelling in my effort to be heard above her excitement.
‘But you are engaged?’ she asks suspiciously.
‘Yes. But not to Adam,’ I say at last.
Now she is speechless.
Eventually she mutters, ‘Then who?’
‘Scottie Taylor.’
‘I, I, I know the name.’ My mum stutters, confused and unsure. ‘Did you go to school with him?’
‘No.’
‘To college?’
‘No.’
‘Well, who the hell is this lad you are engaged to?’ she questions.
‘Scottie Taylor, the pop star.’
‘Stop being a silly sod.’
‘I’m not,’ I insist.
The longest silence in our relationship follows and is brought to a close when Mum finally says, ‘Talk to your father.’
I hear bewildered and angry snarls pass between the two but this isn’t odd. Devoted as they are to one another,
‘What’s all this bloody nonsense about you being engaged to a pop star?’ demands Dad.
Or it might be my news.
I convince Dad that I’m serious. I refer him to his paper (he takes the Mail every day of his life; he swears it’s just for the crossword) and I explain as best I can the circumstances of the proposal.
‘So you’ve been carrying on with this Scottie fella behind Adam’s back for a while now, have you?’ asks Dad, not bothering to hide his disapproval.
‘No!’ I assure him. ‘I only met Scott on Friday.’
‘Last Friday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stop being bloody soft.’ I consider, should I fess up to an affair I haven’t had? I’m sensing that my dad would understand that better than a whirlwind romance. ‘Have you not heard of the saying “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”?’
‘Well, yes, but I love Scott.’
‘You don’t know him. You live with Adam. Better the devil you know, I always say.’
‘Dad, I’m thirty. Adam was never going to ask me to marry him.’
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’ Dad is fond of quoting idioms. Until now, I’ve never noticed how fond.
‘He’s a multi-millionaire.’ I’m hoping this will impress my dad or at least reassure him that I’ll be looked after.
‘Aye well, a fool and his money are soon parted.’ I’m struggling to comprehend the relevancy of this particular idiom; I suspect my dad was just on a roll and it’s not, in fact, relevant at all. ‘Your mother is hyperventilating. I have to go. We’ll talk about this later, Madam.’
I seriously doubt we will. When you have five kids a policy on non-interference has to be followed in order to keep sane. In fact, when we were teenagers, it wasn’t unknown for my parents to lock themselves in their bedroom by way of disciplining us.
My father hangs up just as Scottie pops his head around the door.
‘How did telling your folks go?’ he asks.
‘Good,’ I smile. ‘They’re delighted,’ I add. Although I have the decency to cross my fingers. There is no point in upsetting him by saying their reaction was one of disbelief and hysteria. ‘You?’
‘Yeah, great.’ He nods and smiles enthusiastically, a little like one of those toy puppies that you see sitting in the back window of a Ford Escort. He’s lying too, no doubt. ‘I think, on reflection, there’s no need for us to dash off to Hull at short notice. Better that we get to LA and then we’ll fly the parents out for a longer more relaxed introduction, in a week or two. Like you said.’
‘Fine by me,’ I smile, happy to put that off for a while. Now, about the sex…
34. Scott
My mother has to be scraped off the ceiling; she maintains that this hasty engagement is the most stupid, stupid thing I have ever done out of the many, many, many stupid things she has to choose from.
‘Is she pregnant?’
Since I was thirteen my mum has been scared the answer to this question would be yes. Then, once I turned thirty, she hoped it would be.
‘No, Ma, she’s not.’
‘Oh.’ I can hear her disappointment. ‘Well, what’s the bloody rush then?’
If Fern had been pregnant my mum would have given her some grudging respect as the mother-to-be of her grandchild; she would have approved of the speedy engagement. My mum is big into lads
‘doing the right thing’, which in her book is marrying the woman they casually and carelessly shagged, as opposed to avoiding a pregnancy in the first place. She accepts that sex is a rush and a fact. An unstoppable force. My mum’s philosophy is based on the fact that she was four months gone when she and Dad tied the knot and that didn’t turn out too badly, except for the divorce and everything. As Fern is not pregnant, Mum will assume Fern is a flighty gold-digger and ‘no better than she ought to be’. I know, her reasoning is flawed, but hey, she’s my mum. Fern is not
‘Everything resonates between us. We rhyme,’ I say. ‘Fern’s going to be so good for my music. She’s inspiring.’
I’m so fired up with ideas for songs that I’m jotting stuff on the back of fag packets and old newspapers that I find lying around; I even scribbled something on the hotel wallpaper this morning. It’s great. It’s a forlorn space, the place that’s left where ideas used to be made. It’s like a bed where love used to be made. Fern can fill that. I’m sure of it.
‘Three days, you say. You met her three days ago!’ The disbelief is biting at my mum’s throat; I hope it doesn’t choke her. ‘Some would say it was a bloody silly thing to do to ask someone to marry you after just three days,’ she says huffily.
‘Why?’
‘She might’ve said no.’
‘But that’s unlikely.’
‘It’s too quick. You don’t know her,’ she says, stating the obvious. ‘She doesn’t know you,’ she adds with more alarm, voicing that which only she or I might worry about. Some say I’m a moulded pop product. Others say I’m a god. It’s become difficult for us to know for sure.
‘No one ever knows anyone anyway. At least this way we’ll have plenty to talk about over the next fifty years.’ Jokingly, I dismiss my mother’s fears.
She’ll calm down. My mum likes to pretend she’s oblivious to my famous charm but in fact I honed my skills on her. Besides, it’s not my mum who tells me what to
‘Mum, somewhere along the line I lost the luxury of just being liked for who I am. And maybe that’s no bad thing, because I’m not that likeable and if all I had to offer was me, naked, then who’s to say anyone would want to hang out with me?’ My mother sighs but doesn’t comment. ‘I’m impossibly cool and I mean that literally. It’s impossible to be as cool as they want me to be and I’m exhausted trying. Then along came Fern. Fern likes me for who I am.’
My mum is not a romantic. She’s been in love too often for that to be possible. Grimly she holds on to her anger and disapproval. ‘Your problem is you’ve had such a splendid life that now you’ve become fascinated with the mundane. That’s all that’s left.’
I would argue, but she might have a point. What do I know? My mum worries about my success but then, if I was a failure, that would worry her too. She’s one of the few who understands that if I’d never made it big it would have been good and bad in equal parts. Bad because I was born to be big. Convinced that I was a huge talent, that needed to find the light, she knows I would have died in the attempt to become great. But then, she knows I might die in the act of being great.
If I’d stayed in Hull I’d have been a cheeky rascal womanizer, with a few women crying after me and maybe an illegitimate kid I’d chosen to stand by. But now. Now,
‘You’ll meet her soon.’
‘When?’ Her curiosity can’t be crushed.
‘In LA.’
‘LA,’ my mum says with a tut.
Many Europeans are fucking snobby about LA because there aren’t any ancient coliseums or lofty spires. They dismiss it as flimsy, gaudy and tawdry, but still, everyone seems to find the place irresistible. Funny that. I think LA is a little like a big plate of microwave lasagne; empty calories but tasty. The trick is not to gorge yourself, not to eat the whole thing – believe the whole thing – because you’ll be left feeling sick. It’s true there’s a fair share of neon and plastic and broken dreams – I see them from my limo if I look hard enough – but there’s splendour and excitement and magic there too.
My mum’s dismissive tut has nothing to do with lack of spires. She doesn’t like LA because it’s a long way away plus there are lots of drugs there. Of course there are lots of drugs everywhere and she probably knows that too, but it’s a thought that’s too big and scary for her heart to deal with.
I think it must be torture being my mum.
I try to reassure her. ‘LA is peaceful. My relatively low profile there means I can actually walk down the street
When they do, I put on a hilarious (and no doubt inaccurate) accent and I swear I’m not Scottie Taylor but Zoran Obradovic from Serbia. I even offer to sign their autograph books as a lookie-likie but no one is ever interested in that, which is funny when you think at home women ask me to sign their tits with their lipsticks. In Europe I’m constantly met with hysteria: in Sweden my clothes are ripped from me, shops close for me in Germany, roads close in France. A police escort is essential in all the Latin countries. I’m often trapped inside a hotel room or TV studio. The screaming has become deafening.
‘Oh Scott, love,’ says my mum sadly. I think we both know the truth. The thing is, with each unhassled footstep I take in the US, I remember Paul McCartney telling me that the most important thing to all record producers, and to most artists too, if they are honest with themselves, is to break America. The thing is, without America you’re nothing. No one. You’re not even a Hasbeen. You’re a Neverwas.
And that makes me enjoy the anonymity an awful lot less. I need America. I have to have America. Above everything.
35. Fern
Falling in love with a mammoth superstar is not ordinary. Yet in some ways it is.
Falling in love with Scott Taylor or even Scottie Taylor is exactly like falling in love with anyone else. I want to be with him every moment of the day. Everything he says is wonderfully profound, interesting and clever. I can’t eat. Or sleep. I don’t even want to. We can’t stop touching one another. We both keep giggling. We forget that we’re sharing this planet with 6.6 billion other humans.
But in other ways, falling in love with Scott Taylor is unlike anything I was capable of imagining.
Take flying, for example. Pre-Scott my experience in airports was an ‘elbows out’ affair; endless queues, ground staff who had spectacularly failed to graduate from charm school and barefaced jostling with other passengers in order to secure uncomfortable, unyielding seats – first in the waiting areas in the terminal and then on board. Every flight I have ever taken has been delayed by a minimum of three hours. Two hours fifty-four minutes of which I spend trying to resist purchasing one of the gigantic slabs of chocolate that are on offer in WH Smith. Chocolate bars the size of a mattress – intended for families of four to share over a two-week period. I always fold to temptation in the last six minutes and panic at the till as I hear
I had no idea there would ever be a situation where I’d be whisked through check-in and security and a nice lady from British Airways would usher me through the noise and chaos of the terminal, past the fraught and stressed, past the comfy-looking Club Class lounge and even past the prestigious First Class lounge, to finally lead me into the haven that is the secret waiting-room reserved for royalty (both pop and the more traditional variety). There, among plush suede couches, the aroma of scented candles and the relaxing chill-out tunes, I was offered champagne and elaborate nibbles, most of which I couldn’t identify (but they tasted like little mouthfuls of heaven).
Scott, Mark, Saadi and I didn’t even have to walk the ten metres from the gate to the aeroplane steps; a limo was waiting for us. At the steps we were met by a softly spoken guy with an Irish accent, gentle grey eyes and a calm smile. He introduced himself as the First Class Cabin Service Director and discreetly whispered that he and his staff would serve our every need. As professional as the crew were trying to be, they could not resist craning their necks for an extra peek at Scott. One cheeky, friendly crew member, Gary, informed me they weren’t allowed to
ask for autographs but he would never wash his hand again as Scott had touched his fingers when he accepted an orange juice. I giggled and promised Gary I’d secure him an autograph before we reached LA. Gary melted in front of me and had to be scooped back into the galley. He showed his gratitude throughout the flight by playing
I’ve read my share of Heat and Grazia and a whole bunch of other glossy, gossipy magazines and I thought I had developed a reasonably good idea of how the other half lives, but it turns out I had none. I had no comprehension about how it feels to no longer need to carry a bag or a brolly or even money; someone else deals with that stuff. I had no understanding that everyone, absolutely everyone is overwhelmed by Scott’s presence and simply cannot act normally in front of him; many are overly solicitous or gushing, some are brash and hostile. It appears no one can just be normal in the presence of such wealth and success. From the glossy mags I could not grasp how scary it is when crowds of fans clamber on the car bonnet or lunge at Scott with a pair of scissors in an attempt to cut off a piece of his hair or clothes, to keep.
But then, I had no idea how much fun it could be to sit with Gary, in First Class, playing hangman while drinking champagne at two in the afternoon (or six in the morning – if you go by US time). It’s all surreal.
Gary has now dropped all pretence of being aloof and professional. Away from the eye of the Cabin Service Director his effervescent personality bubbles uncontrollably.
‘You are a lucky, lucky lady,’ he says affectionately, not quite hiding his jealousy however much he wants to; it ekes out of the corner of his mouth as he tries to force a smile – I’ve seen that expression a lot recently. I guess
‘I know!’ I admit indiscreetly. ‘I never thought I’d be this in love.’
‘Or this rich,’ adds Gary.
I bristle slightly. I can’t, hand on heart, say that I’m oblivious to the joys of Scott’s wealth; this morning when I slipped on a pair of Paul Smith trousers, a Matthew Williamson shirt and a pair of Manolo Blahnik strappy green sandals I practically had an orgasm. But I can, hand on heart, say I’d have taken the man without his millions. I’m sure I would. His mind is like an enormous labyrinth of wonder. I’m continually surprised, delighted and amused by him. Plus he has the body of a Greek god and can hold a tune. What’s not to love?
