by A. J. Crofts
‘Yeah, I think so, why?’
‘There’s this rumour the girls found in a magazine, about you being anorexic, that’s all.’
‘Fucking hell, Mum, you know how much I eat. How could anyone eat a ton of chips a day and have a fucking eating disorder? You saw me a few days ago, did I look thin?’
‘That’s what I told them, but they showed me the picture and you do look a bit skinny. The last few times we’ve seen you you’ve been wearing all those baggy clothes and I always worry.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that. What magazine was it?’
She couldn’t remember the name of the magazine so after work I popped into the newsagent on the way home, which is always a bit embarrassing when everyone is staring and it’s obvious you’re looking for stories about yourself. Anyway, I didn’t have to look for long – the story was everywhere, illustrated with the same bloody picture. I grabbed an armful of magazines, paid for them, trying to smile politely as the woman behind the till went through the whole double-take thing of working out who I was, and then telling me – like I didn’t know already – and I scuttled home to study the stories in more detail.
Not that it was that easy to get in through my own front door, as there were photographers everywhere, all flashing away and shouting questions. I was wearing an old tracksuit that I always pull on after work. It’s not the most flattering of items and it helps to distract people from recognising me. It’s really comfortable and I love it, but it isn’t exactly the item I would have chosen to put on if I’d known I was going to be photographed. Call me vain, but I would prefer not to have to see myself all over the papers looking like some pikey housewife who’s given up the battle of life. Unable to think of any other strategy, I tucked my chin into my chest, covered as much of my face as possible with the magazines and made a dash for it, ignoring their shouts.
‘Hey, Steff, over here!’
‘You all right, Steff?’
‘How much do you weigh, Steff?’
‘Show us a bit of leg, girl!’
‘What you having for dinner?’
‘Over here, Steff, over here!’
‘Don’t be a bitch, Steff!’
I hate being rude to anyone and generally if a photographer or a fan shouts something out in the street I will always try to give a friendly, cheerful answer, but that evening I’d been caught off balance. I didn’t know what to say to them and I was slightly afraid I might burst into tears if I tried to fake some cheerfulness, which would give them exactly the sort of picture they needed to confirm that I was having some sort of mental breakdown.
Once I’d got inside, pulled the curtains, had a couple of drinks and calmed down enough to think about it, I realised the picture they were all talking about must have come from the day of the big fashion shoot, although it wasn’t one that Elle had used in the end. I was wearing this really skimpy outfit, which showed off my legs and arms, and I was lying in a position that made all my ribs stick out. But even taking all that into consideration, it didn’t look right. Despite all the eating that I do, I am reasonably skinny, always have been, apart from the boobs – fast metabolism or something – but this was more than that. I had to admit I did look a bit of a bag of bones, but I couldn’t quite work out why.
All the writers in the magazines were saying they were worried about me and it was sweet of them to care. I even pulled off my tracksuit bottoms and stared at my legs in the full-length bedroom mirror to check I wasn’t missing anything. If anything, they looked a bit chubbier than usual to me – oh my God, was that how it started? Was I deluded? I could remember a girl at school who used to do the whole eating-disorder thing. She looked like a matchstick but she was convinced she was grossly fat. Was my brain playing the same tricks on me? But what about the doughnuts, and the bacon sandwich this morning and the pizza in the canteen at lunch? I hadn’t been sticking my fingers down my throat to get rid of that lot, so they must still be in there somewhere. My God, wasn’t there a Mars Bar after lunch as well? Yes there was!
The more I stared at the picture, the more I realised that it had been tampered with. Someone had shaved a few more inches off my thighs and my upper arms with an airbrush, or whatever it is they use. And it looked like they might have increased the shadows under my ribs as well. It was done so subtly it was impossible to tell, but I knew what a good job they had done with my zits, so I could believe it was possible.
I could see why Mum might be a bit worried, but at the same time it was quite a sexy image, mainly because it didn’t look much like the real me, more like some perfect fighting-goddess fantasy woman off a computer game for boys. ‘Fucking hell,’ I thought, ‘who needs to diet when the photographers can do this for you?’
All the same, I knew it wasn’t good. I didn’t want young girls going off and starving themselves in order to look like Nikki when even I didn’t look like this. It was a bit of a liberty. So I rang Dora.
‘I’m ahead of you, darling,’ she drawled. ‘I’ve been on to the photographer’s people and given them hell, but they deny all knowledge of how it got out there. I’ve rung the editors who’ve printed the picture and none of them is saying where it came from. Maybe it was just some guy with a computer out to make a fast buck.’
‘I don’t want everyone thinking I’m sick,’ I grumbled.
‘This happens to every young actress at some time,’ Dora replied, trying to calm me down. ‘They’ll change their tack and start printing pictures showing you’re putting on weight and “letting yourself go” next.’
‘Charming.’
‘Goes with the territory. At least they’re talking about you. It’s when they stop that you have to worry.’
‘S’pose so.’
I wasn’t so sure that it was right that I should have to put up with this sort of treatment. I mean, I was enjoying the whole celebrity lifestyle, like when I would go to a club and would be ushered straight into the VIP section, but I didn’t have that much opportunity to do that sort of thing. By the time I’d got home, made myself some dinner and learned my lines for the next day, I was pretty much ready to drop off, which was pissing Pete off quite a bit. But he could sleep all day, so he was fresh as a daisy by ten o’clock and ready to boogie the night away, as I kept telling him. He always had stuff that would help me overcome the tiredness, but I didn’t want to be doing that sort of thing too often. I’d seen how quickly it would start to have an effect on people. I didn’t want to end up looking 50 before I was even 25. It was the work I really enjoyed and I didn’t want the executives at the studio reading these stories and thinking I was going to be a problem. Dora had always stressed how important it was for an actress to be reliable and if they thought I was going to be off in rehab the whole time they might decide that Nikki should meet with a prematurely sticky end.
‘It’s possible that it’s the studio PR people who are putting the rumours about,’ she suggested. ‘They like it when their stars get into the papers. It boosts ratings. If another half a million people tune in to The Towers to see how skinny you are, they’re more than happy.’
‘Half a million people?’ I was having trouble getting my head round this.
‘I’m just guessing. But you used to be a fan, you know how it is.’
It seemed odd to think that just a few months earlier I would have been reading these stories, watching the programme and then going into work the next day to gossip about what I’d seen with a load of other people who didn’t have the slightest idea what was really going on. From this side of the looking glass, everything looked so different.
‘Yeah, s’pose so. Need to give it some thought. Should I issue a statement or whatever it is people do when they want to deny something?’
‘I think a dignified silence might be more appropriate at this stage. Don’t want to make it look like you’re “protesting too much”.’
‘That Shakespeare,’ I thought, ‘has a little something to say for every occasion.’
/> ‘I was going to ring you this evening about something else,’ Dora went on. ‘Am I right in thinking you can sing?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
I’ve never thought there was any point in false modesty. I hate people who know they’re really good at something but have to go through the whole charade of pretending they aren’t until someone else comes forward and speaks up on their behalf. I don’t think it’s big-headed or anything to say I can sing, because it’s not like I’ve done anything to make myself good at it. I just happen to have been born with a good ear and a voice to match.
‘There’s a production company that’s putting together a singing talent competition thing for celebrities. They’re going to pair each of you up with professional singers and have them mentor you and do duets and stuff. It’s got a prime Saturday-night spot, so it would be good exposure.’
‘At least people would be able to see I wasn’t anorexic,’ I said.
‘Exactly. And it wouldn’t hurt to show them you can sing, in case a West End show came up later on.’
‘Really?’ I liked that idea.
‘Never say never.’
It was a couple of days before I heard from her again.
Chapter Five
‘Luke Lewis?’ I could hardly find the breath to speak. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Why, is that a problem?’ Dora asked.
‘No, it’s not a problem. Well, yes, actually it might be.’
I’d only been in love with Luke Lewis for around five years, from when I was about 12 till I was at least 17, and when I say ‘in love’ I mean the whole weeping, screaming, tearing my hair out and hanging around outside stage doors passion. He was lead singer with West End Boys, who were just the most beautiful boy band that ever existed. I read somewhere they had more number-one hits than Take That, Boyzone or Westlife, I mean they were immense. During those five years I would have died for Luke if he’d asked me, but fortunately he never asked. In fact, he never even saw me, walked right past my outstretched fingers every time I managed to get to the front of the pack. I never once managed to catch his eye from the stage, no matter how loudly I screamed his name. I even tried fainting at a concert once, but I just got carted off by some smelly middle-aged biker who insisted that I needed to have my clothing loosened and gave me a drink of water, which meant I’d lost my place in the front row by the time I got back.
‘I had a bit of a crush on him when I was a kid,’ I confessed.
‘Oh, well, now you’ll have a chance to live out all those fantasies, because he’s going to be your partner.’
The celebrity singing show had become a reality. I’d been for a sort of audition, although they weren’t that bothered whether the celebrities involved could sing or not since they were just as happy to have us make fools of ourselves in front of millions of people as to knock ’em dead. I could see they were quite surprised by my voice, which was a nice feeling, and once they’d realised I could sing they had sort of lost interest in the audition and talked more about the format of the show and the publicity they wanted to rev up around it.
I quite liked the idea of the publicity because the anorexic story seemed to be running and running. Other pictures had appeared with bits of me airbrushed out, but the more I tried to point that out to journalists who asked, the more it sounded like I was covering something up. I was accusing the media of faking the stories, and they couldn’t accept that, so the myth just kept on growing, even though they could see the truth with their own eyes when they interviewed me or watched Nikki taking her kit off on telly (which she did most nights of the week, what with repeats and omnibus editions and everything). I was beginning to see how the newspapers worked. Once they found a story that their readers were interested in they did everything they could to keep it going, just like our scriptwriters would keep a plot line going for as long as they could, only changing it when the public showed signs of getting bored.
Every journalist in the world seemed to have decided they wanted to be my mother, even the men, and they were all writing articles telling me what I should be eating and how I should be handling my fame and my career, worrying that I was getting too much success too soon and wouldn’t be able to handle it. I couldn’t understand how so many people I had never met could have so many opinions about me. I only had one opinion about them: I thought they should all shut the fuck up. As far as I could see, my ‘successful’ career consisted of remembering to set the alarm clock each morning and making sure I knew the lines by the time the cameras were rolling. We were doing three new episodes a week and Nikki was in virtually all of them, so, when you added on the other jobs Dora was cramming in, I didn’t have time for anything – including reading most of the magazines and articles, thank God.
I asked Pete if he thought I was too thin and he got that sort of glazed, puzzled look he gets with most of the questions he’s asked. It’s not that he’s thick or anything, it’s more like the drugs have rearranged everything he’s ever learned in his head and he has trouble laying his hands on the right file when he needs it. Bless him.
‘Do you think I’m too fat?’ I asked again in a silly momentary panic.
‘Jesus, give me a break,’ he wailed, as if I was always nagging him with my questions. I honestly think it was the first time I’d ever raised the subject with him.
Mum was as scornful of the stories as I was, but she still kept turning up with extra food, and would then sit around the kitchen watching me as I ate it. I didn’t protest because it was nice to have her there and it gave us a chance to catch up on the family gossip. The one subject we both seemed to spend most of our time avoiding was Dad. If I did mention him I could see a look in her face that was somewhere between panic and misery and I didn’t want to put her through that when we had so little time together, so I steered clear of it.
When the production company for the singing competition asked me to nominate a charity to donate my prize money to, should I win, I put forward the children’s home that Mum worked in – because you never know with charities just where the money would go, do you, but I knew Mum would keep an eye on it. She’d talked about ‘her kids’ to us so often over the years that I almost felt like I knew them all personally. One or two of them had come to the house for Sunday lunch from time to time, or to stay for a night or two once they turned 18 and the system turfed them out on to the street. They never stayed long because Dad would make his views very clear on how he felt about putting a roof over the heads of other people’s kids, ‘when I have enough trouble affording a roof over my own kids’ heads’. Once or twice Mum put up a fight about it, but mostly she would just smile and secretly slip them a bit of money before sending them off into the world on their own.
Now, even more bizarre than the anorexia story, the magazines and papers also had me down as a ‘fashion icon’. Not only was it weird that they were all telling me I was too thin, but at the same time they were telling their readers that they should try to dress like me. It was doubly weird, because I hadn’t bought any new clothes since God knows when. Firstly, I didn’t have that much spare money yet, as Dora was still getting all that side of things sorted out, but more importantly I didn’t have the time to go shopping. If you’re filming all day, and people are staring at you whenever you go out to the shops, you can’t really spend a couple of hours wandering around Topshop with any comfort. So I’d just been wearing all the things I had collected up till then, the same sort of stuff I would wear when hanging out at the squat with Pete, like cheap little dresses over jeans, second-hand jumpers, Oxfam bargains, all the usual stuff. But the fashion editors seemed to think it was a genuine look that I was cultivating. I kept appearing in their ‘best-dressed’ lists and they would have arrows pointing to various items, telling the readers where to get them (and they never seemed to get that right either). I liked the fact that people thought I looked good in my clothes, but I was a bit spooked by the thought that little girls might believe what they read and would
actually spend their hard-earned Saturday-job money trying to reproduce a look that should have been more or less free.
‘You’re thinking about it too much,’ Dora said when I voiced my fears. ‘They’ll turn on you soon enough and you’ll find you’re on the “worst-dressed” lists instead. Just enjoy it while it lasts.’
The good part of it was that I started to get invites to go to fashion shows and some of the shops would give me free stuff. I hardly ever wore any of it, because it was nearly always awful, but I would give it to other people at work or ask Mum to pass it round at home.
‘You were always the one for dressing up,’ Mum chuckled happily one day when I was handing over some of my freebies for her to give to my sisters. ‘I remember when I used to come home and find you had turned out all my cupboards and would be strutting round the house in my high heels and scarves.’
I remembered that so well. I would spend hours playing with clothes, dressing my little sisters up like dolls. Mum used to have drawers full of brightly coloured Caribbean scarves and materials that could be twisted round our little bodies into exotic dresses and piled up on our heads as turbans as we paraded around, making up characters and acting them out in stories which were always the same. I used to play with the girls a lot in those days, when they were still young enough to do whatever I told them. I would construct plays – with me in the leading roles, naturally. I was the big star, they were happy to be the chorus girls, obeying my directions. Once they started to complain that they wanted to have their share of the limelight I lost interest. Gradually, I had found myself becoming distanced from them; they got friends and interests of their own, none of which held my attention. I started to like it better playing inside my own head, or lying in front of the television, drinking in the films and soaps and music videos like my life depended on it. Mum would worry sometimes that I didn’t seem to socialise like the others, didn’t like hanging around in big groups. She seemed to think it wasn’t natural for a young girl to spend so much time with her own thoughts.