I feel guilty that she has sacrificed her class to pick me up, especially when this morning was such a waste of time . . .
‘Maybe you ought to do something else,’ Mum says, something I sense she’s wanted to suggest for quite a while.
I think of the past eighteen months, turning up to warehouses in the middle of nowhere with about forty other models only to find out they wanted someone taller, darker, someone with brown eyes, not blue; they wanted someone who wasn’t me. It hasn’t all been bad; I’ve had some great jobs along the way. Modelling may have chipped away at my confidence, but at the same time featuring in Tatler gave me a large dose of self-belief. I’ll never forget how excited Frieda, my booking agent, was when she told me I’d been selected out of hundreds of models, and it certainly gave me a platform for other work. I am glad I signed up eighteen months ago. I don’t believe in regret. But recently I have had sleepless nights thinking there must be something else out there for me. ‘Maybe,’ I say to Mum. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘How about a fashion course?’ she asks. When Mum was in her late teens she went to a dress design school in London, where a flamboyant Russian had taught her pattern cutting and sewing. She used to make all her bohemian clothes, even her own wedding dress. I sometimes wonder if Mum regrets not becoming a dressmaker after she’d married and had Jake and me. Perhaps she’d always planned to; but then again plans don’t always work out the way we’d intended.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘A course in hat making?’
Hat making? ‘I can’t even thread a needle, Mum.’
We laugh.
‘Or you could do that TEFL thing, teaching English as a foreign language?’
Tell her you want to be a singer; that you want to write music. Since I was a child I’ve loved to sing and dance and have always dreamed of being on stage. When Jake and I used to watch Top of the Pops, I fantasised about one day being as famous as Kylie Minogue. Jake wanted to be the next Jonny Greenwood, lead guitarist in Radiohead. I think back to university. It was a dark period in my life. I wasn’t a normal student and at times it was painful watching my friends enjoy their freedom while I was still living at home, grateful as I was to have my parents’ unconditional love and support. The only thing that helped me make sense of my situation was writing down my thoughts and feelings in song. Singing.
I glance at Mum, considering telling her that I want to ask Professor Taylor’s advice about singing as a career. Professor Taylor is my consultant. My God in a white coat . . .
‘Alice?’ Mum prompts me. ‘I think you’d make a lovely teacher. It’s something you could do part time and—’
‘No.’ I’ve wasted enough time doing the wrong thing.
‘Don’t just say no.’
‘No.’
‘Alice!’ she laughs with me again. ‘How about writing? Write a novel.’
‘I’ll be dead by the time it gets published.’
‘Don’t talk like that. A short story then.’ Mum turns to me with that twinkle in her eye that makes us look so alike.
‘Have you spoken to Jake yet?’ I ask, keen to change the subject.
‘Yes. He’s excited about his show tonight but anxious he won’t sell enough.’
‘He’ll be fine.’
‘You know what he’s like, though, he runs off his nerves. This new gallery has invested a lot in him.’
I’ve modelled for Jake a number of times, especially at the beginning of his career, when he needed sitters. Tonight he’s exhibiting, amongst many portraits and landscapes, a series of me painted in bright neon colours, along with a painting of me wearing a sundress in the South of France. I’d bought a beautiful black wide-brimmed hat from one of the local markets.
‘Is Phil coming?’ Mum asks.
Phil is my boyfriend. He’s an account manager in an advertising firm.
I nod. ‘We’re coming up to our first anniversary next month.’
She indicates right without any comment.
I met Phil at my local Thai takeaway. ‘You must keep this place in business,’ he’d said, listening to me reel off practically everything on the menu. I always order more than I need since it’s a constant battle to eat as much as I can to keep my weight healthy. Phil was tallish (he says he’s six foot but he’s five ten), with dark hair and stubble and wearing a leather jacket. He had one of those smiles that lit up his blue eyes, suggesting he’d just done something naughty, like sleep with the headmaster’s daughter. ‘Philip, but everyone calls me Phil,’ he’d said.
‘Alice.’
‘Single?’
‘Maybe. You?’
‘Maybe.’ His eyes played with mine.
‘Interesting.’
‘Yes, very interesting.’
When our food arrived, we exchanged numbers. ‘I’ll call,’ he’d said, mimicking the action. On my way home my mobile rang. I turned to see him leaning against a lamppost. ‘How about dinner tomorrow night?’ he said.
I mentioned I had ‘just this lung condition’ on our third date. I’ve always thought the words ‘cystic fibrosis’ sound ugly and frightening, and I didn’t want Phil to be scared. Besides, my CF does not define me. It is not who I am. I also wanted to explain that even though I was based at home, it was my flat and my space. I’d moved home after a minor set-back, but the move was only temporary.
I glance at Mum, unsure how much she had overheard of the argument we’d had two weeks ago. It was a Monday morning and Phil had been furious because my coughing had kept him up half the night. ‘I have such an important meeting today and I haven’t slept at all,’ he’d shouted, storming around my bedroom, picking up his clothes strewn across the floor from the night before. ‘It’s all right for you, Alice. You don’t have to go to work. All you do is fanny around going to the odd casting here and there when some of us have proper jobs.’
I was too numb to say a word.
Later that afternoon I was writing when Mum came downstairs with a delivery. Red roses. She watched as I opened the small white envelope. Inside the card the message read: ‘Please forgive me’.
When Mum parks the car, ‘I’m sorry you missed your art class,’ I tell her. ‘What was the lesson on?’
‘Life drawing. Perspective and anatomy. Apparently we had a real man . . .’
‘A real man.’
She switches the engine off. ‘Don’t tease. Yes, a real man in the nude coming into the studio. Alberto.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘You needed me,’ she says.
I’m touched. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘Besides, I wouldn’t have known where to look.’
As Mum and I walk up the steps to our front door my mobile rings. It’s Frieda, my booking agent.
‘Where are you?’ she barks the moment I pick up.
‘I didn’t get the job.’
‘Never mind, you need to get to Bethnal Green in forty-five,’ she says, before rattling off the address of the next casting at breakneck speed.
Shall I go? Can I get there? I could give it one last try . . .
Mum unlocks the front door. Only minutes ago I’d suggested taking her out for lunch as a thank-you for picking me up.
‘And don’t be late,’ Frieda says, about to hang up.
‘I can’t,’ I say, fast-forwarding to yet another casting where I’ll be hanging around for hours only to be turned away because I’m not quite right. The bottom line is I’m never going to make my name in this industry. All I can hope for is a scrap of work here and there. ‘I can’t.’
‘What do you mean you can’t? Unless you’re seriously ill you get yourself to Bethnal—’
‘No.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m so sorry, Frieda, but I can’t do this anymore.’
I want to be a singer.
I want to write songs that mean something.
It’s the only thing that will make me happy.
Each time I’ve thought abo
ut trying to find a manager, each time I’ve allowed myself to dream that a record company could sign me, I remember my music teacher, Miss Ward, and that fateful lesson at school.
But I know now that I won’t be at peace with myself until I stop listening to her voice and start listening to my own.
3
1986
I’m fourteen years old and sitting in the music room, waiting for my piano lesson after school. I think about Jake. It’s the beginning of the autumn term and he’s back at boarding school. Already I miss him.
During the summer holidays I met some of his friends who have formed a Police tribute band. Jake plays lead guitar. One of the band members, Will, his dad said they could rehearse in his garage. I pleaded with Jake to let me join in, even if just for one day. A day turned into tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. One morning their lead singer was ill so I suggested I take his place. ‘Can she sing?’ Will had asked Jake, as if I was invisible.
I stepped in front of him. ‘I can sing and I can play the piano.’ Jake isn’t the only talented one in our house.
Will offered me the stool behind his keyboard. ‘Go on then, sing us something.’
‘Anything?’
He looked amused. ‘Yeah, anything.’
The only song I could think of was Jennifer Rush’s ‘Power of Love’. I’d bought the music and learned it off by heart on the piano. As the boys watched me I felt self-conscious, but soon I was belting out the song as if performing in front of millions of fans. When I stopped, Will was staring at me, open-mouthed. ‘Told you she could sing,’ Jake said.
My thoughts are broken when Miss Ward enters the room, her dark curly hair especially unruly today. She’s in her early forties and I don’t understand why she wears those ugly clear tights that reveal the thick dark hairs on her legs. I also tell Mum there’s a distinct whiff of body odour when we’re sitting in such close proximity, but Mum says it would be a shame to give up my piano just because of that. Jake began learning aged seven. Already his room is adorned with framed certificates. I didn’t have proper lessons until I came to this school because the coordination of my fingers and hands has never been a strong point. Over the past few years I’ve reached Grade 3. Miss Ward was disappointed when I achieved only a pass at Grade 1. ‘My reputation hangs on good results,’ she’d said, glumly handing me my certificate, as if I’d failed.
Today Miss Ward is wearing a checked skirt along with a cream silk blouse, the buttons straining across her generous bust. When she sits down next to me it’s straight to scales. G minor. Out of the corner of my eye I see Daisy Sullivan outside the music hut, pulling faces at me through the window. She’s in my class and mimics my walking and coughing. I turn away. ‘Carry on,’ Miss Ward insists, poker-faced, when I hit the wrong key. ‘In an exam you can’t go back.’
After a couple of scales and arpeggios, she tells me, ‘Let’s move on to your set pieces.’
‘I haven’t really worked on those . . .’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I’ve been singing in a band.’ I hope that might impress her.
‘A band?’
‘My brother’s. And I’ve been writing my own songs.’ Silence. ‘Would you like me to play you one?’ I produce my lyrics book from my school bag.
‘Alice, will you stop this nonsense and play one of your set pieces.’
‘But you’d really like—’
She presses her lips together. ‘I won’t ask you again.’
Reluctantly I exchange my lyrics book for my Grade 4 piano exam book that still looks brand new.
‘Stop, stop!’ Miss Ward exclaims, halfway through the piece. ‘You’re playing it wrong. All wrong!’
‘But this chord sounds so much better with that one,’ I say, trying to ignore her face clouding with impatience. ‘Don’t you think?’ I repeat the chord change. ‘Instinctively I feel—’
‘Alice, you have to stick with what’s in the book.’
‘But my version’s better.’ I cross my arms defiantly.
For a moment I think she’s about to agree, but no. ‘That’s beside the point. Good results are all that matters.’ She gestures to her watch. ‘You’d enjoy these pieces much more if you put in the practice.’
Tell her, Alice. Tell her what you want. ‘I promise I’ll practise but please listen to this.’ Before she can protest, I’m playing her one of my own songs and singing along to it.
When I reach the end Miss Ward remains quiet. Finally I build myself up to say ‘I want to write songs. I want to be a pop star.’
‘Don’t be absurd, you can’t sing.’
‘I can.’
‘Alice, singing is about breathing. You have one of the most serious lung conditions that makes it impossible for you even to consider such a thing. A pop star.’ She shakes her head.
‘But . . .’
‘Your doctor would not thank me for encouraging you to pursue this as a long-term goal when singing would positively harm your lungs. By all means sing for fun; I could give you a lesson or two . . . but the problem is there are always going to be people out there who are better singers than you, singers who don’t have cystic fibrosis.’
I can’t look at her. I stare at the swollen tips of my fingers.
‘There’s no need to be down,’ Miss Ward says. ‘You could take part in a musical here. I could put you into the chorus.’
‘I don’t want to sing in the chorus.’
‘You’re a brave girl . . .’
Don’t call me brave.
‘. . . but it wouldn’t be kind of me to tell you what you want to hear now, would it?’
A hot surge of tears boils inside of me, but I must not cry, not in front of her.
‘In this life we have to be realistic.’ She taps my knee. ‘Something you will understand when you’re older.’
‘But—’
‘Enough. You will never be a singer, Alice.’
I will be. I’ll show you.
I will be a singer.
Say it, Alice. Say it. Tell her she’s wrong.
I leave without saying a word.
4
December 1998
Phil and I take a taxi to Jake’s exhibition in the West End. Despite the flowers and my accepting his apology, things remain awkward between us. Since picking me up he has barely said a word; anyone would think he’s on a date with his mobile. When I tell him I gave up modelling today, ‘Uh-huh,’ he says, still staring at his phone as if expecting a life-changing call.
I look out of the window. Did I do the right thing quitting? People always ask, ‘what do you do?’ and I used to be proud to say I was a model. I call Cat. ‘Oh thank God,’ she says when I tell her. ‘Now you can focus on your music.’ Cat is the only person who has ever listened to my songs.
‘The music industry will be just as tough,’ I remind her, even if I feel relieved she is reinforcing that I’ve done the right thing. ‘If not tougher.’
‘But the difference is you were born to sing.’ I love her even more when she adds, ‘I think you have a chance.’
Five minutes later the cab driver drops us off outside the gallery, a glass-fronted modern building set on two floors. ‘You go on,’ Phil says, shoving a couple of ten-pound notes into the driver’s hand before producing a pack of red Marlboro Light from his jacket pocket. ‘I need to make a quick call.’
I walk through the softly lit room, weaving my way through the crowds. Lucy, Jake’s fiancée, approaches me. Lucy is pretty, with soft brown hair, blue eyes and an English Rose complexion.
‘How’s it going?’ I ask as we hug.
‘We need less chatting, more buying,’ she says. We glance at a woman, a cashmere scarf draped over her shoulder, holding a glass of champagne, standing in front of a picture painted in Venice. Jake once told me Venice is a place everyone knows, it’s on all the postcards and biscuit tins, so it can be hard to find a new angle, but at the same time he wants to paint everything he sees when he�
��s there. ‘It’s the only time I don’t begrudge getting up at five in the morning,’ he said. ‘I never tire of seeing the light shimmering on the water. It’s magical.’ Jake sees poetry in everything, even in a cloud.
My father approaches Lucy and me, in his suit. He would have come straight here from court. Dad is a judge. ‘Hello, darling.’ He kisses me on the cheek before whispering, ‘I’ve been going round pretending I want to buy everything.’
‘You’re so daft, Dad.’ I push him away before Mum joins us, asking if I’ve seen the paintings of me on the second floor.
‘Not yet.’
‘Can’t think why he hasn’t painted me,’ Dad says, adjusting his tie and striking a pose.
‘He’s not that desperate,’ I tease. Distracted, I look for Phil. ‘Won’t be a sec,’ I say, heading back to the front entrance, where I can see him pacing up and down the pavement, still surgically attached to his mobile. Who’s he talking to? What can be so important? He knows tonight is a big deal for Jake. I notice a tall man with blond hair outside the gallery, also on his mobile. He must sense me staring as he catches my eye and smiles. He has a warm open face and I find myself smiling back before I hear Jake’s voice. I turn to see my brother talking to someone, no doubt chatting them up. Jake always maintains he has to sell himself, not his art. ‘They have to believe in me before they buy my work.’ He isn’t lacking in charm so it usually works, but he also has a huge passion for what he does and you can’t fake that. It’s odd seeing him dressed formally when I’m so used to seeing him in scruffy jeans and trainers with a paintbrush in one hand, a mug of coffee or a camera in the other.
Soon he’s bounding over to me saying I’m needed upstairs. He takes off his black-rimmed glasses, gives them a quick wipe on his shirtsleeve before putting them back on. ‘Someone’s interested in the picture of you.’
I follow Jake, but can’t help glancing over my shoulder to see if the man with the blond hair is still there. To my disappointment, I can only see Phil outside lighting another cigarette.
Upstairs is another room, lit by spotlights, both walls adorned with large portraits, including the one of me in a dark sundress and sunhat, along with the seven-by-twelve-foot painting of a sequence of me in different poses, the one in bright neon colours. ‘As you can see, Alice is my muse,’ Jake says when we join a tall bearded man standing in front of the image of me in the sundress. ‘I painted this in the South of France. Our family went there for a week last year,’ Jake tells him.
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