by A. J. Crofts
It was nice to know that she didn’t hold any grudges against me, but I still came off the phone with a new lead weight in my stomach. These people had been the nearest things I had to friends all through my time at school. Even though I knew they only really tolerated me because I was with Pete, they were still the closest friends I’d had so far. We’d been through puberty together, for Christ’s sake, and a fair bit more besides. I didn’t like the idea that they might be badmouthing me around the place. Pete’s mum might not be taking any notice of them, but there were always people who were keen to think the worst of anyone who appeared on telly or in the press. It sounds pathetic to say it, but I just wanted everyone to like me.
When I told Luke about my worries he suggested I ring them and put my side of the story, show them that I wasn’t putting on any airs or graces just because I’d had a bit of good luck. It sounded like good advice, but when I tried to ring their mobiles none of them picked up. Maybe that should have rung some alarm bells, but all it did was make me sad about how much of my past I had lost.
I don’t know how I would have coped without Luke and his family. It just seemed to be taken for granted that I would be staying with them for Christmas. They never questioned me about my situation or anything else, just included me in all their family rituals. Despite all their efforts to make me feel a million per cent comfortable I couldn’t help but feel like an outsider, finding myself thinking about Mum and the others and what they would be doing at any given moment. Luke’s mum said I was welcome to invite my family over, but I knew that wouldn’t work. If they had felt uncomfortable in my little house, imagine how they would have felt there.
When ‘Summer Wine’ sold more copies than any Christmas single since God alone knows when, the news actually seemed to filter through to Luke’s family that I was a celebrity (cringe, cringe), but they still didn’t seem that interested. The song came on the radio in the kitchen once or twice and Luke’s mum commented on how much she liked it in a polite sort of way, but nothing else. And when the first of my old school friends’ ‘exclusives’ appeared in the News of the World it didn’t seem to impinge on their world at all.
I know it didn’t bypass them completely because this time one or two brave journalists actually made it up to the house, or rang the house phone, but Luke’s dad just told them to fuck off (using different but obviously much more effective words) and they did. I guess they have an automatic respect for people who look like they could afford the best lawyers and wouldn’t hesitate to use them. Apparently, one of Luke’s brothers was a red-hot media lawyer and Luke said he would be happy to help if I wanted. I said I didn’t want to get into all that. The whole idea of lawyers and courts frightened me sick, if I’m going to be honest. I thought it would be better to just keep my head down and wait for the whole storm to blow over rather than risking making it worse by creating a fuss.
There were two girls in particular who had obviously cashed in big time with the paper. Apparently, they had been to see a publicist called Quentin James, who Luke told me was well known for selling these sorts of stories for really high prices.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘He’s infamous, a talking head on the telly, gets on the news every time there’s some sort of new scandal or sleaze exposé. He’s got a finger in everything; disgraced politicians, adulterous footballers, misbehaving royals, the lot. He’ll probably be ringing you next, offering to tell your side of the story. Just about everyone ends up in his office eventually.’
‘Fuck that.’
‘He can be good for putting your side of the story across. The editors listen to him. He did some stuff for the West End Boys when we were trying to get some media attention.’
‘Dad would have a fit if I started mouthing off in the papers. That’s exactly the sort of thing he’s been on about from the start.’
‘Do you think you really need to worry about what your father thinks when he won’t even speak to you?’
‘Fuck off,’ I replied, not willing to even go there.
I suppose I’m kidding myself when I say these girls were my friends in school. Actually, they were just a couple of slags who liked to hang around Pete. In fact, they probably hated me from the start because I was the one who got off with him (not that I’m kidding myself he didn’t shag them too from time to time). I was never quite part of their gang. They caught me reading books once or twice, and the fact that I hung out with Dave discussing plays in break times meant they had me down as a total geek. I guess they only really tolerated me to please Pete, now I think about it. That’s a bit bloody depressing.
Most of what they wrote in the papers about our times in the squat was pretty accurate when it came down to it – it was just the way they phrased it that made it sound so bad. I guess that may have been down to the reporters they were talking to rather than them. I know all too well how they can twist your words to give a different meaning when they want to. The basic gist of their stories was that I had been a hooker – which is a bit of a showstopper as accusations go, really.
I’ve never for a moment thought of myself as being on the game, but there were occasions when Pete couldn’t afford to pay one or other of his suppliers, and he would ask me to help out. Usually it was just a quick hand job, or a blow-job if they weren’t too disgusting and if Pete owed them an awful lot, but it was never full sex. Having said that, there were a few parties where we all mixed and matched, but I had never been aware of any money changing hands. These two seemed to have different memories. All I can say is if there was money changing hands no one ever told me about it. I’m not saying I would have done anything differently if I had known, I’m just saying … I guess I’m just saying I must have been a bit more naive than I would have liked to think at the time.
I can see why it looks bad when I describe it like that, but it never seemed that big a deal to me. It certainly wasn’t for Pete, who knew exactly what was going on, and was often the one who suggested it. If you love someone you don’t mind doing them the odd favour, do you?
Whatever it may have seemed like to me, it was certainly a big deal to the media now. ‘Steffi’s vice-girl past’ became the big running story in every tabloid over the next few days and the rest of the press overcame their reticence to travel to the country and set up camp outside the mighty gates of Luke’s family estate, snapping and shouting at every car that drove in or out. The story fitted so nicely with the plot lines Nikki had in The Towers, and contrasted so beautifully with the on-screen romance Luke and I had been playing out for all to see while singing our sweet little duets, that everyone wanted to read more – or, at least, the editors believed they did.
Although his family were incredibly cool about the whole thing, just pretending it wasn’t happening most of the time, I could see Luke was having a bit of trouble getting his head round some of the detail that was being gloated over by the great British reading public. It was the first time I had seen him really lost for words. He should have known what the media were like better than most; God knows the West End Boys suffered from more than their fair share of inaccurate rumours and stories in their time. But this one did seem to have got him rattled.
‘Is it true?’ he asked, after reading the first of the slappers’ stories.
‘Well, I’m not a fucking “vice girl” if that’s what you mean,’ I snapped, unreasonably cross with him for the wet way he was looking at me. ‘But we did do some pretty wild partying.’
‘So it is true?’
‘We were only kids,’ I protested, unable to understand why he wasn’t treating the newspapers’ hypocritical mock outrage as a joke like he usually did. ‘We were straight out of school, just messing about. No one died, for Christ’s sake.’
I was probably getting a bit tearful again and he gave me a hug, but didn’t offer any words of comfort, which pissed me off.
I’m not easily embarrassed, mainly because
I haven’t done that much in my life that I’m ashamed of, but this was a bit of a setback. I still didn’t really regret anything I’d done, but I wouldn’t necessarily have wanted to share it with the whole world. I mean, taking a dump is one thing, taking a dump in the middle of Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Eve quite another, if you get my drift. This is the thing about fame: there are just some things you would rather not do in front of the whole bloody world, and that includes giving blow-jobs to passing scumbags. But the worst thing was that the girls were claiming I’d betrayed Pete, sold him up the creek (a bit rich, coming from a couple who were definitely selling me up the creek). They were implying that I had turned my back on my old friends and wasn’t therefore the ‘nice girl next door’ that I pretended to be. Well, I’ve never pretended to be anything – unless I was acting, that is. It was the reporters who decided to make out that I was some sort of ‘tart with a heart’, but now the same journalists seemed to be keen to show that I had somehow tricked them into thinking I was a loveable working-class character when actually I was some sort of ambitious, social-climbing, scheming, treacherous, ‘vice girl’ bitch. Well, thank you soooo much! In fact, they were making things far worse for Pete than I had, because now the press thought he was a pimp as well as a gun-toting junkie.
Once the story was out there, and once I was back in London, every reporter in the world seemed to be banging on the door or ringing me to try to get my side of events. Apparently, it’s always a bit quiet for news in the New Year. They were all really sympathetic and keen to help. ‘We can offer you protection,’ they all said. ‘We could take you to a secure location and make sure no one else bothers you. Then you could have the opportunity to tell your story in your own words.’
They all said exactly the same thing, more or less. ‘What they are actually saying,’ Luke explained, ‘is that you should sign an exclusive contract with them and they will then make sure none of their rivals can get near you to write a spoiler.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it to anyone.’ I was
categorical. ‘Then don’t accept any of their offers. Retain a dignified silence.’
But that didn’t stop them from asking. They were more persistent than any telephone-sales person. They were driving me fucking mad; I came so close to giving in and going with one of them, just to shut them all up, which was exactly what they were after, of course.
Usually when something went wrong in the papers, Mum would give me a ring to check I was all right. In fact, sometimes that was the way I found out that something had appeared in the first place. But this time there was a deafening silence from that direction. I could imagine just how Dad must be crowing, as if this was proving he was right to chuck me out of the house. He was probably dumping all the blame on her head for supporting me in my dreams to be an actress and not backing him up when he tried to put a stop to them.
It took me a little while to pluck up the courage to ring her after the latest set of revelations and when I did she put a brave face on it as usual, but I could tell she was shaken by the whole thing. She didn’t suggest coming round to give me something to eat and a hug, but maybe she thought Luke would be handling that side of things now. It was an odd conversation, like we had become strangers. It left me feeling deeply sick, like my soul had been bruised.
I dreaded going back to work after Christmas, when I knew everyone would have read the stories. I half expected to be told that Nikki was going to have to be written out of the series, but it was like nothing had happened. The other actors were all so used to reading things about one another and themselves that they just assumed the whole thing was a fabrication and didn’t even bother to comment, apart from the odd passing commiseration. The producers said nothing to me, but Dora informed me they were now even keener to sign me up for the next few months – so keen that she was holding out for more money.
‘You are by far the most famous person in the series at the moment,’ she explained, when I expressed my surprise. ‘You’re their star; they aren’t going to want to lose you while you’re so hot. We have to make the most of it while it lasts.’
She was turning out to be such a good businesswoman on my behalf it was hard to understand why she had never been able to make money for herself in the past. She also seemed to be totally unconcerned about the nature of the stories.
‘They’re all begging for interviews,’ she said. ‘Every paper and magazine has been on to me, and all the sofa shows.’
‘I don’t want to talk to anyone, in case I drop Pete even further in the crap. And I really don’t want to be having hundreds of conversations about blow-jobs with leery reporters.’
‘It might be good to do just one big TV interview, so you can set the record straight, put it all in perspective. We could lay some ground rules for what they can and can’t ask. It helped Hugh Grant when he did Letterman, and Parkinson did wonders for George Michael when he had that trouble in the public toilet.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘if you think I should.’
I would really have liked Luke to come on the show with me, but he was acting a bit funny about the whole thing, so I decided not to push my luck. He kept going into long, silent moodies, and then swearing there was nothing wrong when I asked him. To be honest, it was beginning to get on my tits a bit. All I really wanted to do was concentrate on my acting, do a bit of singing if anyone asked and spend as much time as I could with him. It should all have been going so well, but somehow it just didn’t feel right any more. It felt like something even worse might be brewing up on the horizon, that these stories had just been warning rumbles of thunder and the real storm was yet to come.
Chapter Eleven
Jonathan Ross – what a star the man is. It was like chatting to one of Dad’s leery mates in the pub. He asked his questions with a mixture of innuendo and irony which made the whole thing seem like a storm in a teacup.
Dora had always said that a good actress can sense the mood of an audience, and I felt I could sense a strong affection in that studio. If I looked up I could see older women smiling at me indulgently, like I was their favourite cheeky granddaughter, and I swear that the men whose eyes I caught while I was signing autographs afterwards all blushed. What was that all about? Probably best not to think about it.
The papers were still ranting on about how I was an example of everything that was morally wrong with the young people today, that Pete and I and the others at the squat were typical examples of the ‘disenfranchised underclass’ (that bloody word again), but these people I met, who were presumably readers of all these papers, didn’t seem to be judging me at all. It was all a bit confusing, especially when Mum and Luke, the two people I cared about the most, were acting all odd.
Dora had been keeping all the articles that were appearing, good and bad, and eventually I plucked up the courage to go round to her place and go through them. She said it would be good for me to understand fully what was being said. She opened a bottle of red wine and rolled a joint and we settled down at her kitchen table with the cats wandering about over the papers as we read. She was right; when looked at with a cool head, it wasn’t so bad. Quite a lot of journalists had come out saying that I hadn’t done anything wrong, that my openness and honesty was very refreshing and should be applauded. Even some of the ones that had ranted the most when the accusations were first made were mellowing in the face of readers’ letters and a general reluctance on the part of the public to get their knickers in a twist over anything so stupid. One article got all serious about my acting – in The Towers, for Christ’s sake – claiming that the reason I brought such ‘depth’ and ‘power’ to the role was because I had so much emotional baggage to draw on. I rather liked that one, read it twice and highlighted ‘depth’ and ‘power’ with Dora’s yellow pen thing.
‘You’ve had a few interesting offers too,’ Dora said, once I’d read all I needed to. ‘I’ve had a call from a publisher asking if you would like to do a book.’
‘
Me, write a book? Do they know I didn’t even get my English GCSE?’
‘They’d give you a ghostwriter for that.’
‘Nah, that would be the final nail as far as Dad was concerned.’
‘The other offer that I think might be worth considering is a revival of Sweet Charity in the West End, playing Charity.’
‘Seriously? The Shirley MacLaine part? I love that movie.’
‘It is another hooker, of course – well, a sort of hooker – so we’d have to think about typecasting.’
‘And what about The Towers?’
‘That’s the other thing we’d have to consider. The way things are going at the moment I could probably get you six months off to do the play, with Nikki coming back again later. But maybe it’s time to move on anyway.’
This was a shocker. I had sort of imagined that I would be doing Nikki till they threw me off. I imagined myself hanging on like Ken Barlow in Corrie, or Dot Cotton in EastEnders. It hadn’t occurred to me that it might just be a stepping stone to something bigger. I think the media always assume that someone like me has some grand career plan, but how would that work? How could I have foreseen any of the stuff that was happening to me that year?
‘My God, Dora. I thought this would be it. I thought I’d be playing Nikki till I was all wig and wrinkles.’
‘That’s partly why the public loves you so much,’ she said, topping up my glass.
‘Why?’
‘Because you haven’t the faintest idea how good you are. It’s very appealing.’
That made me feel a bit of a fraud, because I had always thought I was pretty good at the acting and singing, I just hadn’t imagined that I would be able to break into the business so easily.
‘You don’t have to make up your mind yet, but it does put you in a strong bargaining position. They have been asking if you would be interested in doing Chicago, too, but everyone does that. Sweet Charity would be better because she’s such a nice character. The women in Chicago are such bitches.’