The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride

by A. J. Crofts

  I made us both a cup of tea while he read the article in silence. By the time I plonked the mug down beside him he’d read as much as he needed to.

  ‘And this is truly the first you’ve heard of any of this?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely. Quentin James, you know, the publicity guy, he warned me there was going to be a story coming out, but I just ignored him. I mean, there are stories coming out all the time; I didn’t think one more would make much difference. Then these reporters came round to get my reaction but I was too wasted to be able to understand what they were saying.’

  It felt like I’d gone into shock, numbed by the enormity of this woman’s claim. Was she a lunatic? If so, how had she managed to convince the newspaper of such an unlikely story? Or was it that they didn’t even care if it was likely or not, as long as it sold newspapers? So many questions and absolutely no answers in sight.

  My phone was ringing constantly and I checked to see who each of the callers was in case it was Mum or Luke, but neither came up on the screen. There were a lot of numbers I didn’t recognise but guessed must be the press, and then Quentin James’s name came on. I didn’t even know his number was in my phone, which was a bit spooky, like he was stalking me. He must have put it in there himself at some stage when I wasn’t looking, maybe in some club somewhere when I was too drunk to take in what was going on. I hesitated for a second and then picked up.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, without even bothering to confirm it was him speaking, which seemed a bit of a presumption – one more presumption in a long fucking line. ‘Seen the paper?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, having abandoned the idea of trying to act cool and pretend I hadn’t. ‘It’s complete bullshit. She must be some sort of con artist. Or did you put her up to it? Is she one of your sad fucking clients, hoping to get a bit of cheap publicity?’

  ‘She’s one of my clients, and I’ve checked her out like I check out everyone who comes to me. The story stands up. She is your real mum.’

  ‘That is such crap!’ The tears rose up and threatened to block my throat. I felt Gerry squeezing my hand.

  ‘Why don’t you come and meet her at my office tomorrow?’ Quentin suggested, all reasonable and fatherly.

  ‘I’m working tomorrow,’ I snapped.

  ‘Come after work. You tell me the time and I’ll get her here.’

  My first instinct was to tell him to fuck off, but I was actually kind of intrigued to meet a woman who would make up a story like this. If I met her, I reasoned, maybe she wouldn’t seem so threatening; maybe she would just turn out to be a bit of a hopeless loon and I would be able to force Quentin to sort the whole mess out, issue an apology, whatever it was that they did in these cases.

  I agreed to do it and he promised to text me the address. I felt bad to be even talking to such a slimeball, but it seemed that there was no way round it just at the moment. Gerry promised to go with me. I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to handle such a stroll into the lion’s den without him there.

  Several hours later, I got a call from Mum. I guess she’d had to wait until Dad was out of the house, down the pub. I could tell she’d been crying.

  ‘I’m so sorry, baby,’ she said, her voice choking up.

  ‘There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I’ve brought all these fucking lunatics out of the woodwork.’

  ‘I’m sorry that you had to find out like this.’

  That stopped me in my tracks as effectively as a punch in the face.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gerry could see I was in shock and put his arm around me. I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself from shaking, like I was coming down from a bad trip, or staggering out of a car crash. I just couldn’t get things straight in my head.

  ‘She says it’s true,’ I managed to say eventually.

  ‘Shit.’ He hung on to me for a minute, then said, ‘We need to get you out of here before the rest of the press arrive.’

  ‘Where can I go? I could go to a hotel, I suppose.’

  ‘No.’ He sounded firm, calm, in control. ‘We’ll go to Mum and Dad’s. No one will think of looking for you there.’

  ‘What about your neighbours?’ I asked, remembering the video camera at the bedroom window outside my house the night Pete came round.

  ‘I don’t even know who the neighbours are,’ he admitted. ‘Mum and Dad have always pretty much kept themselves to themselves. As long as you aren’t seen going in, we’ll be fine. No one would think of connecting you to us.’

  The idea of being anonymous again, like Gerry and his family, seemed incredibly attractive. I had always thought that being famous was the passport to everything good in life, not realising it would mean never being able to escape from anyone who might be looking for me.

  From a quick glimpse at my reflection in the mirror I could see it was unlikely anyone was going to recognise me from a casual glance just at the moment. To be honest I looked like a complete minger, and if anyone did manage to get a picture it would make the front pages just because it showed what a state I’d got myself into. The press were still trying to get through on the phone, but when Gerry peered out there was no sign of any activity yet in the street. I shoved a few essentials into a bag, drew the rest of the curtains so they wouldn’t know whether I was there or not, and we scurried down the road to Gerry’s battered old Saab. I glanced up at the bedroom opposite but there was no one there. He’d be kicking himself if he knew what he was missing, the nosey bastard.

  When we got there it felt a bit like coming home. Gerry’s mum and dad were so sweet, just acting like it was a normal Sunday and I was just a normal girlfriend that their son was bringing home for a visit. They were Sunday Express readers, not News of the World, so they hadn’t heard anything about this latest twist in my parallel tabloid life. Going there was exactly the right thing to do, just to be having a normal Sunday at home with a normal family. Gerry was so kind to me, not trying to force me to talk if I didn’t want to, just making sure I had food and warmth and an endless river of hot tea.

  As the shock of the revelations began to wear off and the shaking died down, I found I could actually read the story and take it in. The woman’s name was Maggie, although she might have been making that up because her whole life seemed to be a bit of a sham. The story was that she had been a bit of a ‘vice girl’ herself in the 1970s and 1980s (their words, not mine, and probably not hers either, I guess, knowing how reporters work). She claimed she’d had a one-night stand with Dad when they met in a strip club in Soho when Dad was on a stag night with some mates.

  That was a pretty revolting picture to get my head round, but I managed to do it without losing the little bit of lunch that I’d managed to choke down. She then went into a whole load of crap about how she had to give me up because of the stigma of being an unmarried mother in ‘those days’ and the pressures of society – I mean, we’re hardly talking about Victorian times here, are we? It was the late bloody 1980s, for fuck’s sake! Seemed more likely it was the pressures of being a career ‘vice girl’ that helped her towards her decision, but I kept telling myself I shouldn’t judge the woman on things I read in the press because it was impossible to know which were her own words and which ones had been put into her mouth by reporters. She did say that giving me up to Mum had been ‘the most painful day of her life’. Well, good!

  Mum came across as pretty much a saint in the whole thing – if perhaps a bit of a doormat to Dad – and the paper didn’t hesitate to remind its readers of how I had told my acting class about Dad beating her up. I felt really sorry for her, but I was also beginning to feel a bit pissed off with her as well. If even part of this woman’s story was true, how come Mum had never told me? How had she let me go on believing she was my mum for so long? Why wasn’t she ringing me and coming round and helping me to come to terms with things, explaining the story from her side? Unless, of course, Dad wasn’t letting her. That was likely, but why was she letting hi
m do that to both of us? Why didn’t she stand up to him for once? I loved her like mad, but I had to admit she was coming out of this looking like a bit of a serial victim.

  It also pissed me off to think that Dad had been lecturing me about the family’s ‘reputation’, when he had pulled a stunt like this. How dare he refuse to talk to me when he’d been lying to me all these years? If I was endangering the family’s good name by being an actress, what was he doing that night in Soho?

  The more I thought about the whole situation the more my head was spinning. Most of all I felt like I’d been isolated even further from the family. If the story was true, my brothers and sisters didn’t even share the same mother as me. I truly was an outsider.

  Gerry came to bed with me that night, but he didn’t even attempt sex, just cuddled me until my whirling thoughts finally allowed me to go to sleep. I was grateful for that. My head was still full of Luke and it wouldn’t have felt right to be doing it with someone else – not yet. Not even Gerry.

  The next morning we set off for the studios together like an old married couple, falling back into our old routine. There were a few press lurking around outside the studio doors, but they didn’t even give a second glance to the scruffy young couple in the battered old car. As the day progressed they started to find ways of getting through to me inside the studio, despite security. One got into the canteen at lunchtime, posing as an actor on some other programme; another managed to get me paged on the studio landline by pretending to be calling about my grandmother dying. A third got through to my mobile when someone else answered it for me while I was filming. They were all making the same offers of protection if I sold them my side of the story. I said nothing to any of them, just pretended I couldn’t hear them, as if they didn’t exist. I can understand now how film stars or other people in the media get that glazed look in their eyes when they’re walking through crowds. They have to make the outside world invisible otherwise it would overwhelm them with its attentions. I don’t know why I’m talking about them like they’re another species; I had become one of them and it was a very scary feeling. At least film stars have their millions to protect them, and their studio minders, and the big politicians have policemen at their doors. All I had between me and the pack was Gerry and his mum and dad.

  The whole day I had a lot of trouble concentrating on work, which worried me. I had a big scene to do with one other character, just the two of us, spitting and fighting over the same man – Nikki had been up to her tricks with someone else’s husband and the shit was just hitting the fan. We did take after take and in the end I just had to summon every ounce of energy and block everything else out of my mind. I really let rip, which had the desired effect, taking my fellow actress by surprise, which worked for the scene. The crew gave me a round of applause at the end, which made me feel good for about ten seconds before I remembered what I was going to be doing that evening after work.

  I was still very unclear what I was in for once I got to Quentin James’s office. Mum had been too choked up to really explain anything over the phone, and then Dad must have come back into the room she was calling from because she suddenly pretended to be talking to someone else and hung up, all breezy and cheerful; I was coming to the conclusion she was a better actress than I had previously given her credit for. A few days earlier I would have assumed that was where I’d inherited my talent from, but now I didn’t know anything any more. That was what was really freaking me out. Who the fuck was I? Was Dad really my dad? Was I adopted? I hadn’t been able to get any questions out during the call and when I tried to ring back again later her phone had been turned off. Chances were he’d guessed who she was talking to and had smashed it to pieces. If he was cross with me before, he must have been a thousand times angrier by then and just thinking about it made me want to cry again.

  Gerry was really sweet with me all day, just being there, not asking any questions, just waiting for me to talk to him. At the end of filming he walked out of the studio with me without saying a word. I slid my hand into his and squeezed tightly.

  Quentin’s offices in Soho were full of posh girls on phones, but weren’t half as flash as I would have expected. It looked like a place where work actually got done and posing was kept to an absolute minimum. Not that Quentin wasn’t a hell of a poser himself, and I had to allow him a bit of a gloat since he had warned me that there was a big story coming and had offered to help me out (with a good dollop of self-interest there as well). Quentin’s own office was a complete tip, filled with piles of magazines and newspapers and a giant television screen; the mess made me feel slightly more kindly disposed towards him. As we walked past what looked like a conference room I noticed there was a film camera crew working in there. A year before I would have paid a bit more attention, but I no longer found the presence of cameras remarkable; in fact, it sometimes felt quite strange when there weren’t any around.

  ‘Welcome to the lion’s den,’ Quentin joked, shaking my hand and entirely ignoring Gerry, which seemed a bit bloody rude but not worth making a point about just yet. I really wanted to find out as much as possible about this woman who claimed to be my mother, and if that meant I had to be polite to Quentin for a bit I was willing to swallow that. Gerry was just going to have to put up with it. He didn’t seem remotely bothered, but then he never seemed remotely bothered about anything really.

  ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ Quentin purred. ‘I think we can help you a lot.’

  ‘I don’t really understand what’s going on,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well, luckily for you, I do,’ he beamed smugly, ‘because this is my business. You, my dear, have become part of the great national pantomime; one of the characters that the public want to see up on the media stage every day and, in order to satisfy that need, the media will be looking for any stories they can find about you, and when they can’t find any they will make them up.’

  ‘I already know that.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, but this is probably just the beginning. With our help you can take control of which stories get out there, and we can limit the damage of the unauthorised ones that manage to slip through the net. As much of my time is spent keeping stories about my clients out of the papers as getting the stories they want in.’

  He appeared to be taking it for granted that I was there to take him on as my own personal publicist, which seemed about as wise a course of action as recruiting a pimp to set me up on a blind date. I decided not to disillusion him until I had got as much information out of him as possible.

  ‘They’ve decided that you are a “tart with a heart” – a cliché, I know, but the whole pantomime is cast on the basis of cliché: cliché villains; cliché heroes; cliché fallen women; cliché love rats. Once you’ve been allotted your role it’s hard to change it, unless they decide to recast you. That’s when you hear people moaning on about: “The media built me up, then they decided to destroy me.” The general public likes a Greek tragedy. We like our gods to be shown to have feet of clay. But that doesn’t mean they don’t still love you.’

  He was getting bloody comfortable on his hobby horse and I tuned out, taking a bit more of an interest in what was going on in the conference room, which I could sort of make out through the series of glass partitions that divided the floor up. There was a woman sitting at the conference table, talking to camera, wreathed in cigarette smoke. After a moment or two she stubbed her fag out and the fog cleared slightly.

  ‘Is that her?’ I asked, my voice croaking like an old frog.

  ‘Yes,’ Quentin said and for a second he seemed to be lost for words, like he might actually have been caught out on something.

  ‘I thought smoking in offices was illegal.’

  ‘Special dispensation on emotional grounds,’ he grinned, as if the two of us were sharing an in-joke. ‘She would really like to meet you, you know.’

  ‘Who are the camera crew?’ Gerry asked.

  Quentin ignored him, as if he hadn’t spoke
n.

  ‘Who are the camera crew?’ I repeated.

  ‘They’re making a documentary about her, a reality makeover thing. It would be great to film you meeting her for the first time. It would be very compelling.’

  ‘You’re fucking joking, aren’t you?’ I couldn’t believe his nerve.

  ‘You feel like that now,’ he went on, smooth as silk, ‘but once the fuss has died down it will be nice to have something to look back on.’

  ‘This isn’t a family holiday. I’m not shifting from this office till you get that camera crew out.’

  Quentin sat still for a moment, like an old lizard trying to out-stare me. I didn’t flicker and he cracked first. ‘OK, give me a minute.’

  He went through to the boardroom and we could see him talking to the cameraman. Maggie glanced across at me and I didn’t avert my eyes. She looked away nervously and fumbled around to find a fresh cigarette. She’d obviously done herself up for the cameras and looked quite striking, a bit like an old film star, but when I stared I could see things weren’t quite as glamorous as the first impression.

  The camera crew all left with their equipment and Quentin came back to get me. I took a grip of Gerry’s hand, to make sure he knew I wanted him there for moral support, and walked through with my head held high. It looked for a second as if she was going to get up as we came in, but then she seemed to think better of it and stayed put – making herself look a bit arrogant, to be honest. She didn’t put her hand out or anything, maybe afraid I would reject it, and just sat puffing on the fag, which made her look pretty in-your-face and not exactly maternal.

  Close up she was a lot rougher than she had seemed from the other end of the office. She could have done with a bit more weight, her neck was scraggy and there was a line of make-up along her chin, like she was wearing a kabuki mask. Her skin had been smoked as dry as an old kipper, mapped with tiny lines she’d tried to cover with pancake, particularly around the mouth.