A Moment Like This

by Anita Notaro

  Sharon wisely said nothing, just patted my hand and looked out the window. The next twenty minutes were spent with her pointing out the sights to me, from Kensington Palace to Sloane Street. ‘The things you can buy here are just amazing,’ she breathed, pointing out row after row of designer shops. ‘Maybe we could cheer ourselves up with a little shopping at the end of the trip. There’s space in the schedule, I think, after the meeting with Marc Davidson.’

  I was only half-listening, but at the sound of that name, I turned my head. ‘Isn’t he a record-company executive? I think Karen mentioned him.’

  ‘Yep, he’s one of the best. A real sharp cookie with a great sense of the market. And he wants to see you. And Damien, for some unknown reason,’ she muttered. ‘But we’ll stagger the meetings, Toni. Don’t worry, you won’t be running into Damien again.’

  ‘It’s not Damien I’m worried about,’ I said, thinking suddenly of Maurice Prendergast. What would he have to say about Marc Davidson? I tried to remember Maurice’s advice about not agreeing to anything until I’d consulted him first. But surely it wouldn’t do any harm just to meet Marc Davidson? I didn’t have to sign a contract.

  I hardly opened my mouth for the rest of the journey, just managing to mutter goodbye and thanks to Sharon. I’m sure she thought I was rude, but I felt so upset because of what had happened after the show. All I wanted was to hide. I stumbled into the lift and out again, fumbling for my hotel swipe card as I did so. Once in my room, I leaned against the door, sliding to the floor, where I sat for a while, feeling the silence envelop me. After that evening, it was a balm to my soul.

  And then my phone bleeped and my heart started racing. I debated for a while whether to open the message, knowing who it was from. Eventually, I rummaged in my tiny bag, pulling out the handset, the centre button flashing. In the dark, I fumbled around for the ‘read’ button.

  ‘I’m sorry. I love you. Niall xx.’

  I leaned my head back against the door and cried my heart out.

  26

  I DIDN’T SLEEP much that night, tossing and turning, my mind spinning, reliving every moment of the previous evening, until it was all a huge jumble in my head: Niall, Mum, Amanda, the show, everything. Eventually, I gave up on sleep and got up to look out my hotel window. The hotel was on a quiet Knightsbridge Street, all tall white buildings and swanky cars – London really was amazing – but all I could think was that I was going backwards somehow. Sure, I was growing stronger, and more confident as a person, but what good was that when I couldn’t understand the world around me? How on earth had I not seen the real Amanda? And not noticed how jealous she was of me? I’d thought she was a great friend, and all the time she was sitting at home, composing nasty text messages. And then Niall – how had I never noticed his temper? He’d always seemed so … controlled. Maybe that was the problem. He was too controlled.

  I sighed. It was as if I’d been living in a convent all of these years, even after I’d left the orphanage. It would have been easy to blame Mum and Dad, to say that they’d sheltered me too much, but in fact, I knew that I was partly to blame. I’d hidden away in Glenvara, happy to be in the background, to look after Mum and to let life pass me by.

  But now it was different. I’d been given a chance in a lifetime. I owed it to Mum to make the best of it, no matter how hard it was. I owed it to myself. And so, as I stood, looking at the dawn break over London, I resolved that from now on, the singing would be the star, and that I’d focus all my energies on making the most of this opportunity. That was what I really wanted, and nothing came without a sacrifice, did it?

  It was funny – my decision not to text Niall back, to try to move on, made me stronger. With every day that passed on the London trip, I missed him more than I thought possible, but I also found that I was capable of more than I’d imagined, fielding all the press conferences and photocalls that came with the British show with as much aplomb as I could muster. And if I felt lonelier than I’d ever been in my life, longing for home and my friends around me, I didn’t let on.

  Karen approved. ‘You’ve grown up,’ she said to me after one tough encounter with a journalist.

  He’d asked me about the nightclub, of course, but I’d pulled myself together and smiled at him. ‘That’s all in the past. I’m focusing on my music now, and on making the most of this great opportunity I’ve been given.’ I’d cringed as I’d said the words, but he’d seemed to be convinced, nodding and jotting them down on a pad.

  He’d even smiled at me. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘God, you charmed him.’ Karen was pleased, I could tell.

  ‘Thanks, Karen. I’m trying,’ I said to her. Even though my heart feels as if it’s been broken into a million pieces.

  My meeting with Marc Davidson was scheduled for the last full day of my London trip. Karen was jubilant at having got ‘anywhere near’ him. ‘You’ve no idea, Toni, how big this guy is. He can make your career.’ She insisted on taking me to one of the best hair salons in London for a new cut. ‘Something sexy and sophisticated. Less country girl,’ she explained to the hairdresser, an intimidatingly trendy young girl with fabulous blonde hair, called Wendi.

  Wendi looked at me dubiously, running a comb through my hair, which had grown long and curly again. ‘Hmm – it’s beautiful. But it’s very … thick.’ She announced diplomatically.

  I nodded. My hair was my pride and joy, and I prayed that she wouldn’t want to give me anything too radical.

  ‘How about a crop?’ She looked at me. ‘They’re all the rage at the moment, and it’d really work with that lovely little face of yours.’

  Oh, God. I wouldn’t have a hair left on my head, I thought, fingering my thick curls.

  ‘I was thinking of a few layers.’ I laughed.

  She looked at me again. ‘Are you a singer?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Well, it depends on what your market is, but don’t you want to look a little less … middle-aged?’

  ‘Middle-aged?’ I squeaked. I looked at myself in the mirror. Did I look middle-aged? Well, I supposed it was a little conservative, having waves of golden brown to my waist. Maybe I could try something new. And before I could think twice about it, I heard myself say, ‘Go ahead.’

  She looked at me and her jaw dropped. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Take it all off,’ I insisted. ‘I need a complete change of look.’ As I said the words, I knew that I was right. I needed a whole new me to match my new direction in life. I needed to shed the old Antonia and be Toni.

  Karen had popped out for coffee, and when she came back, clutching two cardboard cups of cappuccino, she screamed so loudly the entire salon turned in our direction. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Me?’ I said, unable to turn my head in her direction, because Wendi was in mid-snip. ‘I’m having a haircut.’

  ‘I can see that. I meant a trim, a bit of shape, not a Buddhist-monk job. Toni, for goodness’ sake! The photo work we’ve done will be useless now.’

  ‘Well, they can do new ones.’ I stuck my chin out, determined. ‘It’ll give them all the more reason to take my photo now, won’t it?’

  ‘You really have changed,’ Karen said, giving me a faint smile and handing me my coffee.

  I didn’t answer. I had changed, she was right. I looked at myself in the mirror, my golden-brown hair a close crop around my head, making my eyes look huge, and I didn’t even recognize myself. A new look for a new life, Toni, I told myself, unable to understand why I suddenly felt so sad.

  My new haircut demanded a whole new wardrobe, of course. ‘Less pageant queen, and more foxy chick,’ as Karen said grimly, dragging me along to the boutiques on Sloane Street. ‘What Simon at Celtic will say to this, I don’t know,’ she muttered.

  ‘He’ll be thrilled at the fresh publicity,’ I said. ‘And I’m paying for these myself, Karen.’ I shot her a warning look as she rummaged in her handbag. ‘I can afford it, and I want to buy them.’ I ha
dn’t made any money from the show yet, in spite of all the predictions, which was understandable considering all the money Celtic was spending on me, but my inheritance meant that I didn’t really have to struggle. I was lucky, I knew.

  My tone brooked no objection, and so she just sighed dramatically and said, ‘Oh, well, I suppose I’d better get into the vibe here,’ and started pulling at the rails.

  Two hours and much laughter later, I had a look to match my cut, much younger and funkier. ‘My God,’ I said, gazing at myself in the mirror. ‘I look about nineteen.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of, Toni. It’s not the nation’s sweetheart look that won you all those votes. Take it easy, will you?’

  I suddenly felt sorry for putting her through this. She’d done nothing but support me and here I was, giving her a hard time.

  ‘Look, I promise I’ll grow it out, Karen. It’s just for this meeting with Marc Davidson. I don’t want to resemble a middle-aged beauty queen. I can’t think that he’d want to take me on looking like that.’

  She nodded. ‘You have a point, I suppose. But for God’s sake, when you get back home to Dublin, tone it down a bit, will you? You won’t have a fan left.’

  ‘I will, Karen. I promise.’

  27

  THE FUNNY THING was, after all the fuss, I took one glance at Marc Davidson and knew that I didn’t like him. He looked good, sure, like a lot of people in this business, who had the money to dress well and have an expensive haircut: in his case a messy half-Mohawk that was too young for him. He had an all-over tan, and when he smiled his teeth were blindingly white.

  ‘Toni, I’ve been dying to meet you,’ he gushed, standing up as I entered his office, on the twenty-second floor of the Samroy Record Company building in the City. The views were astonishing: of St Paul’s Cathedral and the brown swirl of the Thames, all the way down to Tower Bridge. It was breathtaking.

  ‘You are just exquisite,’ he said as he came around his huge black desk, and leaned in for a kiss, placing a hand in the small of my back. I resisted the urge to wriggle from his grasp, turning my head so the kiss landed on my jaw. He stood back then, and gave me a penetrating look, as if he could see into my soul. ‘Utterly exquisite,’ he repeated, in a way which made me cringe inside.

  He didn’t greet Sharon at all, merely throwing her a look. I wanted to introduce her, but didn’t have the nerve. Not for the first time, I wished Karen was there, but she’d been taken ill that morning. ‘It’s all the stress,’ she’d managed to joke down the phone to me, her voice muffled with the symptoms of a cold. ‘Now, don’t sign anything,’ she’d warned me. ‘Just go and see what he has to offer and we’ll discuss it, OK? And be careful, will you? He has a bit of a reputation.’ Looking at him now, I could see why.

  ‘Sit,’ he gestured, going around his desk and sitting in his outsize chair again. I pulled out one of the chairs, a heavy straight-backed one covered in cream damask, which made a loud scraping sound along the floor. Mortified, I perched on the edge of it.

  ‘You seem nervous.’ He smiled.

  ‘I am a bit,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve never met a record-company executive before.’ Oh, God, I sounded so naïve.

  ‘Well, relax, Toni. You’re among friends.’ And he smiled, a smile which didn’t reach his eyes. The ‘friends’ he was talking about were a beautiful thin Chinese woman in skinny jeans and a white fringed T-shirt, who was tapping at a mobile phone, and who hadn’t looked up since we’d come into the room, and another man, who, although he was sitting beside Marc, made no move to introduce himself. If I was among friends, it sure didn’t feel like it, I thought. But maybe that was just after the week I’d had; I was too paranoid. This could be an opportunity, Toni, don’t muck it up, I thought.

  ‘Well, we’ve seen the tapes from the Irish talent show.’ He smiled patronizingly, as if it was a local agricultural show he was talking about. ‘And I can see you’ve got talent, but the material … well, it’s only right for the grannies, to be honest. It might work where you come from.’ He grinned. ‘But for this market, we need something funkier. I like your cut, by the way.’ He nodded at my crop and I blushed. ‘I mean, you look right, but the songs … well, you need something, that’s for sure. What do you think, Nick?’ He turned to the silent man beside him, who nodded, but said nothing. Maybe he couldn’t speak, I thought, fighting the urge to giggle. I could feel the hysteria mounting, and prayed that I wouldn’t burst out laughing from sheer nerves.

  ‘What kind of songs did you have in mind?’ I ventured.

  He gave me the kind of smile which told me that I wasn’t supposed to have spoken, but his reply was polite enough. ‘I’m thinking less Leona Lewis and more … Alicia Mayhew.’

  ‘I love her!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Well, great.’ He laughed. ‘Tell you what, I’ll have a little think about material in that area.’

  ‘Great …’ I began.

  ‘And I’ll be in touch, OK?’

  ‘OK …’ I said doubtfully, wondering if this was it. There was a rustle around me as everyone got to their feet, and I had to conclude that it was.

  ‘Thanks for stopping by, Toni.’ Marc didn’t kiss me this time, thank God, just extended a hand. It felt moist to the touch, and my stomach turned.

  ‘Sure.’ I gulped. ‘Thanks for seeing me.’

  ‘Pleasure. Mai, will you show the girls out?’ The thin girl moved for the first time, still not looking up from her phone, and opened the door, which she then closed behind us without another word.

  Sharon and I travelled down in the lift in complete silence. We didn’t speak until we had walked through the vast marble foyer and out of the revolving doors.

  ‘What the hell was that all about?’ I said once we were safely outside in the street.

  ‘I think he likes you.’ Sharon grinned.

  ‘That’s him “liking me”?’ I said.

  ‘You betcha. He’s a real cold fish, Marc Davidson, but he knows his stuff. Just wait and see. Now, I really fancy a fry-up, after all this rabbit food I’ve been eating. How about you?’

  ‘You’re on!’ After my meeting with Marc, I couldn’t think of anything nicer than to tuck into bacon, egg and sausage. I remembered Betty’s legendary Sunday morning fry-ups after Mass. Every once in a while, she’d invite the choir over for a huge feast of unhealthy food, washed down with lashings of hot tea.

  I stood there for a moment on the pavement in London, longing for home and for a bit of chat and a laugh with the gang from the choir. I wondered how Sister Monica was. She wasn’t a texter, and I hadn’t heard from her since the final – Mum would kill me, I thought, if she knew that. After everything Sister Monica had done. I’d ring her as soon as I got home, I told myself. Home, where I suddenly wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world.

  I only saw the card when I got back to the hotel that afternoon. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it before. It was plain white, expensive, with ‘Marc Davidson’, written in neat black ink in the middle, and an address in Kensington. He’d scribbled a note on the back: ‘A party at mine tonight. You might meet some interesting people. Marc xx.’

  I sat down on the bed and stared at the card. He must have slipped it into my bag, I thought, when we were saying goodbye at the office. And yet, he hardly knew me, so why the invitation? I was in a quandary. If I went, I’d be alone: Karen was sick with a cold, and I didn’t dare ask Sharon because she was having her first night off in months with her boyfriend. Well, I’d promised myself I’d seize every opportunity, I reasoned, and there were bound to be all kinds of interesting people there. If I was serious about having a singing career, I couldn’t hide any more. Right, I decided, getting up from my bed and sorting through the outfits I’d bought on Sloane Street, I was going. And I was going to knock him dead.

  Eventually, I decided on a black tuxedo jacket with a sharp, knee-length pencil skirt. It looked modest and businesslike, yet trendy at the same time. I applied just a few touches of m
ake-up – mascara and some lipgloss – and then stared at myself in the mirror. With my sleek new haircut, I hardly recognized myself. ‘Who are you?’ I said out loud in the gloom.

  It took me a while to find Marc Davidson’s house. Even the taxi driver struggled to locate the tiny back street in Kensington, taking several wrong turns before finding it. ‘Need to do my knowledge all over again, love,’ he joked. Once he’d heard my accent, he’d kept me entertained with a stream of Irish jokes, and I’d found myself relaxing, so by the time he let me off on a dark corner, I felt almost carefree. I tottered unsteadily in my high heels down a lane which had no streetlights, thinking that there couldn’t possibly be anyone living in it. It felt spooky, deserted. Maybe the card had been a hoax. For a second, I felt like turning back, but I forced myself to go on, until I spotted the outline of a building a little further on. A solid block of shiny grey concrete with tiny windows slashed in the side, it looked like a bunker. Just right for Marc Davidson. I spent another few minutes trying to locate the bell, rummaging around in my handbag for my mobile phone and cursing myself for my stupidity, until eventually the door just clicked open. Startled, I stood there for a minute, until a voice said, out of the darkness, ‘CCTV.’

  I jumped and let out a little scream. There was a small laugh and Marc Davidson appeared out of the gloom. ‘I’m sorry to have startled you, Toni. I thought I’d better come down to you. It’s very hard to get in here.’

  He seemed warmer than he had that morning, and I allowed myself to relax and return his kiss in greeting.

  ‘Great that you could come. You alone?’

  I nodded, wishing that I wasn’t, that I’d brought somebody with me, anybody. I could feel the colour rising to my cheeks as I followed him up a narrow set of stairs, in the shiniest marble, and in through a black hall door into the whitest, most modern home I’d ever seen. Every surface seemed to gleam under the bright lights in a way which made my eyes hurt. He led me into a vast open space, furnished in white, grey and cream, at the end of which crackled a fire in an open grate. There was nothing on display on the walls except one large and expensive-looking modern painting. The room was gorgeous, but it didn’t feel as if anyone lived there. It was more like a corporate headquarters than a home, I thought.