Perfect on Paper

by Gillian Harvey

  As a campaigner for women’s rights, I myself have come in for criticism over my appearance – have found myself seen but not heard. And I for one applaud Martha B. for bringing this important issue into the public conscience.

  Read more of Stephanie’s Hard Truths in tomorrow’s Chronicle.

  Clare sat, stunned, for a moment. Could it really be that through a little YouTube rehearsal clip she was touching a nerve with women all over the country? She’d felt so alone a couple of weeks ago, but now it seemed as if everyone was in her corner – even if they didn’t actually know who she was. Although she was a little disgruntled that they’d marked up her age by a decade.

  The bedroom door opened and Clare quickly flicked back to the homepage, as if somehow by hiding a story that had already been shared over three thousand times she could avoid her husband seeing it.

  ‘Hi, love,’ he said, dropping his trousers without ceremony, stepping out of them and kicking them into the corner, before beginning to unknot his tie. ‘Finishing up a bit of work?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  The tie also hit the carpet and was kicked in the direction of the laundry basket. ‘Good dinner tonight,’ Toby said, unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a slightly grey vest. When had he started to wear vests? ‘Kids ate well.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, watching as item after item hit the carpet without even an attempt to pile them together or put them in the right place. Then her eye was drawn to his stomach – if she wasn’t mistaken, he seemed to be developing if not a six-pack then definitely a two.

  He was annoying, sure. But he was pretty sexy, all things considered. She thought of the way she’d been enjoying Dan’s attention and felt suddenly guilty.

  ‘Um, Toby?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you think we should try to get our date night up and running again?’ she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and feeling suddenly almost teenage with self-consciousness.

  He looked at her then, and for a moment it was as if time had slipped back six months and they were once more on the same wavelength. ‘It’s been too long, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Just a bit.’

  They smiled. ‘I’m a bit crap, aren’t I?’ he said.

  ‘We both are, I think. But yes. Yes, you are,’ she said, half smiling. ‘Look, Toby, is … is anything going on at work, anything I need to know about?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’re stressed … or, I don’t know, there’s someone else or something.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, sitting down next to her and touching her hand. ‘I’ve just … I don’t know. All I seem to be able to think about is work. And I know I seem distant and … I know I haven’t been here much. I keep thinking to myself that I’ve got to sort it out. But, it’s kind of – that environment. I get lost, you know?’ He looked at her and she felt a wave of sympathy.

  ‘There … there isn’t, you know. Someone else?’ she asked tentatively, searching his face.

  His cheeks flushed. ‘Someone else?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Yeah, I don’t know. The wonderful Hayley perhaps.’

  ‘She’s twenty-five.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘I do, of course I do. I’m not saying you’re sleeping with her or anything, just … well. Maybe you like her.’ A vision of Dan came into her mind and she pushed it away guiltily.

  ‘There’s nothing like that. Honestly. I mean, I value her opinion about stuff. But it’s only because I’m so clueless. She makes me feel about a hundred years old if I’m honest.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I just feel, well, things aren’t great at the moment, are they?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to be. It’s not you, it’s … well, it’s us isn’t it?’

  ‘Guess so,’ he said. Then looked at her as if for the first time. ‘Hang on, have you done something different with your hair?’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Clare woke up with a start at six o’clock, half an hour before her alarm. She’d been dreaming of having toothache; dialling the number of the dentist again and again but getting it wrong each time. Her stomach fluttered a little when she remembered their callback was tonight – they’d be performing again for the judges to see if their combined acts would work for the competition. What would happen if they didn’t get through? And what would happen if they did?

  The bed next to her was empty – a small dent in the pillow the only evidence that Toby had been there at all. Even though a lot of his footage was now filmed in more social hours, the need for him to be in London and his desire to make a good impression meant he was slipping out at some ungodly hour at least three times a week. ‘I’ve got to demonstrate my commitment!’ he’d told her when she’d called him on it. ‘It won’t be for ever.’

  She silenced the voice of doubt inside her. If they were ever going to get back on track they had to trust each other. He hadn’t said much about her own irregular hours – she could hardly start quizzing him on his.

  She yawned. Despite having almost eight hours of kip, she felt exhausted. Too frequently she was up in the night with racing thoughts, worrying about the kids, work, stressing over whether she was trending on Twitter – everyday stuff. Picking up her phone, she idly read her updates, and noticed a text from Dan. It had been sent about 10 minutes earlier. WATCH THE NEWS, it said. Feeling slightly unnerved, she reached for the remote and switched on the small TV that sat on top of a chest of drawers in their bedroom. The news was just starting, so she propped herself up against a pillow and blearily watched the credits.

  ‘PM confirms that reshuffle will be announced tomorrow,’ said the official-sounding newsreader over the top of the dramatic opening music. ‘Supermarkets warn that the price of turnips is set to rise.’ Clare yawned indulgently and shuffled into a more comfortable position.

  ‘But first, the unlikely talent act that’s taken the internet by storm,’ the newsreader smiled, as the camera zoomed in. ‘Rap star Martha B., with her backing dancers Eezee Troupe, has sparked an internet craze, with women taking to their keyboards to complain about being hashtag MehToo. Gilbert Humbuckle reports.’

  Clare felt a strange, sinking sensation in her stomach. Surely, she had imagined that?

  ‘Millions of people post videos on YouTube each day, in the hope of getting likes and clicks,’ said the voice-over, completely oblivious to the fact that Clare was frozen in horror. ‘But few have taken off so quickly as a novelty rap act, known only as Martha B.’

  A clip of Clare, conveniently shielded by her enormous dark glasses, played on the screen. ‘Not the cover, but the book!’ her televised self said, striking a pose she couldn’t even remember.

  ‘In the viral clip, Martha is accompanied by an innovative street dance troupe made up of thirteen boys, each at least half her age. But the main reaction seems to have been in response to this unlikely rap star – and the message she’s sharing with the world.’

  A scrolling Twitter page showed on the screen.

  ‘You may have heard of the word “meh”,’ continued Gilbert Humbuckle’s voice. ‘Often used in texts and tweets, it means to feel a little ordinary or dull. But this word is used in Martha B.’s rap to describe how she feels as a woman in her forties.’

  Forties. Clare straightened up, offended. ‘Thirties, actually’, she hissed at the screen.

  ‘Women have complained for years about feeling invisible as they get older, and Martha B.’s clever summation of this feeling clearly resonated with her audience, who created the hashtag MehToo as a way to connect with others feeling the same way.

  ‘Women from across the country, and even further afield, have gone online to complain of the bitter blow life deals women of a certain age – the fact that they fe
el stretched beyond belief, but invisible at the same time. The feeling that life hasn’t quite worked out the way they’d hoped.

  ‘We spoke to Professor Agnus Alder, Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Oxford, for her opinion.’

  The camera cut to a white haired, female professor. ‘This idea of women feeling dull or taken for granted at a certain age is nothing new. But Martha B.’s rap seems to have provided a platform for an outpouring of suppressed rage that has been building up across the country,’ the woman said to her nodding interviewer. ‘Bringing attention to what is quite a significant problem for this demographic can only be a good thing.’

  The camera now panned onto Gilbert’s face, zooming in on his clear skin, designer stubble and piercing blue eyes. ‘By midnight on the evening it was posted, the hashtag had been used almost four million times. At one point, the site crashed from overuse.’

  Tweets started appearing on the screen. I’m fed up! #MehToo, Time we got noticed #MehToo and Women power! #MehToo.

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ concluded Gilbert, half hidden behind the messages. ‘The mysterious Martha B. has captured the imagination of millions of women and given them a collective voice with which to call for change.’

  Clare stood in the shower moments later, feeling surreal. When she’d boarded that bus, agreed to some rehearsals – even when she’d agreed to let Dan post the footage on YouTube – she’d never expected things to gather pace the way they had.

  Like it or not, Martha B. had taken on a life of her own. After this coverage, surely tonight’s run-through would just be a formality – there was no way the judges were going to say no. People would be watching the competition to see them. They’d expect them to make it to the next stage of the contest at least. She felt a flicker of something a bit like fear.

  At the same time, she thought, as she scrubbed her hair with something that promised not only to wash the grease from the roots but transform her into some sort of natural goddess, it was a strange situation but it was something she’d created. Something that in some odd way she’d maybe needed.

  That battered book of poems she’d carted around for all those years, feeling slightly embarrassed, didn’t seem so daft now. Sure, she loved her job in the law – but there was something great about putting your feelings out there to the world and have the world embrace you. All that time thinking she was the only one who felt the way she did – when there were millions of women feeling the same.

  She thought back to the times when Toby had begged to have a peek at her writing; when Katie had found her book in the bottom of a bag and Clare had snatched it from her hands. All the competitions she’d thought about entering. The social media posts she’d been tempted to write. You can’t exactly complain of invisibility, she thought, if you’re hiding.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  There was no sign of Eezee Troupe when Clare drew up outside the audition venue after work. The car park was almost empty – there were a couple of motorbikes in the corner and three battered-looking silver cars parked randomly in the other spaces. She parked her red, overpriced, car of the future in the corner – feeling conspicuous – and turned on the radio to pass the time before the boys arrived.

  A few minutes later, a rattling minibus pulled up next to her. The doors opened and the boys came tumbling out of the back like a spilt load on a motorway.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Dan said, walking over to her open car window with a grin. ‘My mate coaches a footie team and he let us borrow it.’

  ‘Very nice,’ she smiled.

  He was dressed in light blue jeans, a white T-shirt and a black jacket that had ‘Crew’ stitched across the top pocket. ‘You look nice,’ she said.

  ‘Reckon?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She snapped off the radio and got out of the car, locking it before Claudia had time to start nagging, and they walked into the building together. A woman dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that said ‘Mellow Grooves 1984’ was waiting in the small reception area with a clipboard and a worried expression. ‘Are you Martha?’ she said to Clare.

  ‘Well … yes.’

  ‘Great. You’re the last act on the callback, if you’d like to come and wait here?’

  She gestured to a room on their left where a few blue cushioned chairs had been placed in rows. A sign on the wall, wonkily applied with Blu Tack, said ‘Wait Here’.

  They filed in, the boys sitting and wriggling like infants in assembly. The room smelled of sweat, and the window was steamed up. Mark went over and drew a face, which began to drip and run as soon as his finger left the glass.

  ‘Pack it in, Mark. This isn’t your mum’s sitting room, mate,’ Dan said, standing at the front like an impossibly young, cool teacher.

  ‘Sorry, Dan.’

  ‘So, remember,’ Dan said to the boys, who were all dressed in black tracksuit bottoms and green T-shirts, ‘this is your chance. We ain’t gonna mess it up are we?’

  ‘No,’ replied the boys in unison.

  ‘I can’t hear ya?’ Dan said, reminding Clare of the pantomime she’d watched with the kids last Christmas. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘No, Dan!’ the boys chorused.

  ‘God, no pressure,’ she whispered as he sat down next to her. ‘What if I mess it up?’

  ‘You won’t,’ he said, so confidently that she began to feel even more anxious.

  ‘You really care about these boys, don’t you?’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Remind me of me, I suppose.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah. You know, I was pretty good at dancing back in the day.’

  ‘Back in the day – what are you, twenty-eight or something?’

  ‘Thirty-two. But you know, if you haven’t made it as a dancer by twenty or so, you can forget it.’

  ‘Really? That sucks.’

  ‘Yeah, plus I went and put my back out before the biggest audition of my life. Which pretty much scuppered any chance I had.’

  ‘Ouch. Poor you.’

  ‘But these boys,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his face, ‘these boys, they’ve got so much talent, but nobody to support them. Half of them would be hanging round outside the corner shop or at the park smoking if they weren’t doing this.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘They’re lucky to have you.’ She covered his hand with hers and gave it a squeeze, without really thinking about what she was doing and what it might mean.

  They grinned at each other, and she had to look away.

  Before either of them could speak, the door opened and Susan appeared, wearing a powder-blue jumper and a long floral skirt. ‘Welcome, welcome!’ she said, almost too enthusiastically. ‘Thank you for taking the time to come and see us again!’

  ‘No problem,’ Clare said, as she and the rest of the troupe stood up. Dan put his hand gently on her back as they walked to the room. ‘You’ll do great,’ he told her, and she felt herself smile.

  The room looked much as it had before: the same table in the corner, the same sign. The blinds had been pulled down halfway and the table was in shadow. A silhouette was visible and as her eyes focused in the gloom, Clare could make out a man in his fifties with a moustache and bald head.

  ‘This is Jack Higham, manager of the Grand Theatre,’ Susan said. ‘I invited him along to see you, I hope that’s OK?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Pleasure,’ Jack said, in a surprisingly high voice. ‘I’ve seen your show already of course, your act should I say. Rather a fan.’

  ‘Oh … thanks!’

  Susan took her seat next to Jack behind the table they’d set in the corner. The rest of the room was free for Clare and the troupe to strut their stuff.

  ‘We wanted to say,’ Susan added, looking at Jack as if for permission, ‘that we’re ever so thrilled you decided to come ba
ck. Especially after … well, fame and fortune have found you!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Dan said.

  ‘Yes,’ Susan said, ‘I mean, when I made the suggestion, well … about the rap, I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. I’ll be honest, I thought it might be more of a novelty act … but – well, seeing you all over the news. I’ve been stunned.’

  ‘Yes,’ added Jack. ‘I must say that by this stage, having seen the video and the … the reaction this is more or less a formality. A treat if you will.’

  ‘Right. Thank you.’

  They took their places and Dan set up his speaker in the corner. Then they were ready.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Yet again Toby disappeared in the early hours the next morning. This time into a sleek black people carrier which pulled to a stop outside the house at about 5 a.m. He vanished into its shaded depths as Clare looked from the window and gave a little wave. She’d been told he was interviewing a major celebrity today. ‘All very hush-hush,’ he’d said, tapping the side of his nose.

  ‘I see.’

  He was using his car less and less, she realised.

  In fact, seeing it glistening in the drive when she left the house just after eight, Clare was tempted to borrow it for a day, just to avoid the constant chatter of her convertible. Claudia had seemed a great feature at first, but she had to admit the cow had been driving her just a little bit mad.

  ‘Can it be disabled?’ she’d asked the garage owner when she’d phoned him yesterday after a particularly taxing journey.

  ‘’Fraid not, love,’ he’d said. ‘No one’s ever asked that before! Besides,’ he’d added, a little affronted, ‘Claudia is a she, not an it.’

  ‘Seat belt, seat belt,’ Claudia said to Clare in greeting when she inserted the key in the ignition.

  ‘No problem.’ She clipped it into place. ‘All right now, Mum?’ she said, then realised that she was both insulting mums and conversing with a car.