The girls give directions to another club, an underground place south of the river, where, they assure me, their bouncer friends will let us all in, most likely for free. I tell them I’d really rather call it a night.
‘Gracie, no.’
‘That was too upsetting.’
‘Stay with us.’
‘We’ll look after you.’
‘I’m drunk and I want to go home,’ I say. ‘Oh no, I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Gracie, hang in there,’ Ban takes my hand.
They whisper among themselves. Something about Harry saying they mustn’t and not having anything anyway and, after I make a funny gurgling sound, they worry that I may well be about to vomit. Then right here in the back seat of the cab, Bip loads her fingernail with some white powder from a little plastic vial she’s retrieved from her bag and she puts it under my nose. Without thinking, I breathe in.
‘Oh no,’ I repeat, too late.
26
I wake up with a hazy recollection of the night before. Last thing I remember, I was counting the traffic lights on the drive home from Brixton, where I’d been clubbing with Bip and Ban in a musty-smelling vault. A club with frenetic music – boof boof boof, whiiir, weep, boof – and overly familiar people. Everyone kept offering me sips of their water. I stayed only until I was certain I’d fall asleep the moment I got home to bed. The girls bundled me safely into a minicab in the wee small hours of the morning.
My head is beginning to wrap itself around the idea that we crashed Jordan’s work party last night when someone knocks at my front door.
BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.
‘Gracie!’ A voice calls through the slightly ajar reception window. It sounds like Faith. ‘Gracie, this is serious. Let us in.’
I pull my dressing gown around my state of half-undress. The leather skirt is on the floor. My legs are still ensconced in the tan control-top tights. I’m braless under the strapless red top, and I’ve slept in the make-up I applied with the girls’ help last night. I pause briefly at the mirror in the hallway. I look like a prostitute at the end of a long shift.
As I open the door, daylight blinds me. I rub my eyes and my hands retract covered in blue eyeliner. Faith is at my door, and she’s here with someone else, and that someone is… Oh my Lord, Harry is here.
‘Thank you,’ Faith says, passing by me briskly and plonking herself down on the sofa. She’s wearing low-slung velour tracksuit bottoms – the trendy sort – a sporty singlet and a hooded top. Her long, blonde mane is in a high ponytail. Her face is devoid of make-up. Presumably, Faith was out last night at The Tricycle Club, but she looks like she’s just returned from a health spa. ‘You’ve really done it this time,’ she says, slapping a large yellow envelope on my coffee table. ‘Even for you, this is good.’
From the front door, Harry clears his throat. ‘It’s nothing we can’t sort out, Gracie.’ His appearance is as rumpled as I feel. He’s wearing a wrinkled shirt and muddied jeans (it must have been some wedding). His eyes are bloodshot when he removes his sunglasses. He gives me one of his trademark grins. ‘May I come in?’
Embarrassed to have left him standing – embarrassed that the tan control tights, with reinforced toes, are visible beneath my dressing gown – I stutter, ‘Sorry, Harry, of course. Come through.’
He comes inside my flat and into my front room, where he takes a seat in the armchair opposite Faith.
I take immediate leave for the bathroom.
I’ve made some dubious fashion statements recently, but this morning takes the biscuit. My hair has a streak of green paint on one side, transferred from one of the ravers last night. Dried-up bits of azure mascara cake my eyes. A huge spot on my chin threatens imminent eruption. My tongue is brown – I was chain-smoking inside the club, and nobody batted an eyelid (or lost their eyelashes).
When I sit down and pee, it comes out dark yellow and burns. I finish up and quickly comb my hair, swirl some mouthwash and rub a damp flannel over my mucky eyes. It’s a marginal improvement, until I mistakenly give the pimple a big squeeze, causing it to weep quite unstoppably.
‘Hurry up,’ Faith calls. ‘We don’t care what you look like. Trust me, it’s a little late for that!’
The spot is an angry volcano. I dab on concealer in a futile attempt to cover it. My broken skin is too oozy for it to hold. Desperate, I slather on some talcum powder for absorption – needs must – then more concealer. It’ll do.
By the time Faith calls again, it’s one spray of deodorant and I’m done.
Suppressing the urge to run back to bed and pull the covers over my head until they leave, I force myself through to the front room.
I position myself strategically at the end of the sofa, spot side facing away from Harry. Faith gives my tights a cursory wince before her gaze moves to where the strapless red top peeks through a gap in my gown. I curse myself for not getting changed and avoid further eye contact. From what I could see out of them, my pupils are still dilated.
‘So?’ I say.
‘So, Harry received this, first thing this morning.’ Faith hands me the yellow envelope.
‘Actually, the girls received it first thing,’ Harry clarifies. I don’t mention I was with the girls until very early this morning, and in his flat the night before. If Harry doesn’t already know this, I’m not telling. ‘They saw Alex Sutcliffe lurking about after it was pushed under my front door. They called me straight away.’
‘These are the photographs of Jordan?’ I unseal the envelope.
‘See for yourself.’ Faith says.
I slide out the photographs. The first is of Jordan spooning cat food into his mouth. The label on the can is legible: Pussy Paws – Packs a Punch Against Fleas. As Jordan feared, the big secret revealed.
‘Oh dear.’
‘Keep looking,’ Faith says.
I bristle at her tone.
The images get worse. Jordan gagging on a mouthful of sardine heads in jelly. Cat food spraying out his mouth, eyes wide with shock as he clocked Alex. A sequence of me thundering down Warwick Avenue in my ridiculous detective outfit, threatening the slimy photographer.
‘I would’ve speared him if I’d caught him,’ I joke.
Harry and Faith are ominously silent. They don’t laugh. I keep looking.
It’s more of the same. I’m tearing after Alex in the rain – looking not what I’d call athletic, but the shots aren’t as unflattering as I’d imagined. The next picture shows me outside The Tricycle Club, pleading with Gordon the bouncer to please, please, please let me in.
And then…
Me, slinking to the back of the long queue, desperately trying to reach Faith on her mobile.
Me, flailing my arms in uproar as Alex snatches my cab, the photo taken from inside the moving vehicle.
Me, wandering the streets of Soho alone and piss-wet through.
Me, entering Harry’s apartment block – rendering me unable to meet his eyes now, sitting in my front room with his offer to help me.
Me, looking less like the glamour puss I’d supposed I was and more like a drag queen in a black leather skirt and racy red top, staggering drunkenly between two perfectly formed Barbiesque sisters, about to gate-crash the Baker & Staines cocktail party. Shots of me hovering on the footpath as Jordan storms away from me, Rhiannon’s arm in his hand.
Me, unkempt among the tacky fluorescent backdrops and on-ecstasy revellers at the 456 Club in Brixton in the early hours of this morning. And slumped in a windscreen-chipped minicab, the Rastafarian driver toking a marijuana spliff, as I made my way home. Through the back window of the cab, the sun is rising.
There’s one last picture from last night and it’s mounted beside a station-approved promotional photograph of Faith, also dressed in black leather skirt and skimpy red top – the outfit she wore to promote the competition. The images are underscored with a handwritten caption: Gracie’s Leap of Faith Flops. With both of us in almost identical clothes, the c
omparison is striking. Where Faith is all long legs, sleeked hair and sex-kitten pout, I’m control-top tights, hooped earrings and amphetamine grimace. The cocaine, though only a tiny amount off a finger nail – I didn’t have any more voluntarily or make the same mistake twice – had made my jaw jittery again last night, for some time.
‘I didn’t mean to dress like you. Faith, I—’
‘Never mind that,’ she snaps. ‘What were you doing in that club? What were you thinking crashing Jordan’s work function? And were you on drugs? With those girls. Again?’ Faith looks at Harry. ‘Sorry, Harry.’
He throws his hands in the air to signify no offence taken.
‘I know you’ve had a rough trot lately, Gracie, but it’s too much,’ Faith insists.
I look directly at her – it doesn’t matter now if she notices my pupils – and when I see a hint of smug on her beautiful face, I’m consumed with rage. I hate her sitting in my living room in her ghetto-fabulous hipster bottoms and tiny singlet under a hooded top. I hate her pretending to understand what it feels like to be me, when she couldn’t possibly have a clue.
Me, who struggled to keep my boyfriend sexually interested.
Me, who practically climaxed on my own in a public place and later passed out over a man who likes me well enough, sure, but doesn’t fancy me.
Me, whose professional success is now so dependent on Faith, it may as well be hers.
I’m sitting here with talcum powder coagulating on a pimple on my chin. To be me… how can Faith possibly understand?
‘If you’d answered your phone, Faith, none of this would have happened,’ I growl.
‘This is my fault?’
‘It’s not your fault, Faith. But do you honestly believe I planned to go and embarrass myself in front of Jordan?’ I don’t want to mention Rhiannon. I can’t. Not in front of Harry. It makes me look so pitiful. I don’t need this situation any worse than it is. ‘I couldn’t get in at The Tricycle Club. You didn’t answer your phone. I didn’t intend to dress up like a two-bit whore, but my clothes got soaked after that git Alex Sutcliffe stole my cab. I got caught in the rain and it was a godsend when Bip and Ban picked me up. Thank heaven someone was there for me.’
Faith’s cold stare turns glacial. ‘You think I dress like a two-bit whore?’
I hate she is playing it cool, making me the spectacle – albeit Harry is doing his damnedest to pretend he isn’t listening to us fight.
‘No, Faith. You looked fabulous. You always do. Which is obviously why you deem fit to preside over me, because you’re so perfect.’
‘I’m not perfect, Gracie. No one is.’
‘Oh, but you’ve been judging me because I’m not. Bip and Ban don’t do that. They like me just the way I am. Not like you.’
The saddest part is, I know this isn’t all about how Faith is judging me now. It’s about how I’ve started to see myself in her shadow. Ever since Faith became the main attraction on the show, a storm’s been brewing.
‘Then we agree on something, because I would have judged you last night and I wouldn’t have let you humiliate yourself like this.’ Faith waves an especially savage shot of me staggering after Jordan. A roll of my tummy fat spills between the strapless top and the leather skirt. ‘Look at the state of you! High as a kite!’
I snatch the photograph from her. ‘For your information, I wasn’t on drugs at that point. I mean, maybe the sleeping tablets kicked in. And I’d had quite a lot of champagne. But the cocaine I took later on was by accident anyway. I didn’t mean to do it.’
‘Because you look so sleepy in these photographs,’ Faith roars back at me. ‘And how exactly does one accidentally take drugs? Pray tell.’
‘Do you know why I don’t tell you everything any more? Because of your sanctimonious bullshit,’ I scream at her. Faith likes being the one to swoop in and save me. But I have to ask: does she want me to be successful off my own bat? She certainly didn’t want me to end up happy with Harry. Oh no, she warned me off him. And that dream! Even asleep, I never dared imagine her reaction when Harry hit on her. ‘Who do you think you are?’
‘I thought I was your best friend,’ Faith says. Sadly. So that it flummoxes me.
After everything we’ve said and everything that’s happened, I didn’t expect this. It throws me. However, I’m too upset to be reasonable – those photographs side by side, globs of fat on me and not an ounce on her.
‘You have sex with multiple men you hardly know. You parade it all on camera for everyone to hear about and you’re frantic because some trashy pictures might make a public spectacle of me? Get over yourself, Faith,’ I hiss.
‘Gracie, we’re here to help.’ It’s the first Harry has spoken since we sat down. ‘Faith suggested we—’
‘Save it, Harry.’ Faith rises sharply from the sofa. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’ll keep my sanctimonious bullshit to myself from now on. Gracie, you’re on your own.’
In her ghetto-fabulous skinny outfit, she flounces out of my flat.
I ask Harry to leave, too. Instead, he moves closer to me on the sofa. When I catch a whiff of his gorgeous scent, I’m tempted to let him stay. But the state of me this morning – I don’t need further humiliation. When Harry touches my cheek to turn my face towards him, I’m so ashamed of myself, and my festering spot, I dash into my bedroom and slam the door behind me. ‘Can’t you all just leave me alone?’ I wail, locking myself inside.
A long time passes before I hear the front door close.
When I creep back out to the living room, I’m alone.
Harry is gone.
Faith is gone.
Jordan is long gone.
I’m completely alone.
On top of the yellow envelope is a scrawled note.
It will be OK, Gracie. We’ll fix everything. Call me. Love, Harry. PS. Sorry about my sisters, they mean well.
27
When you reach rock bottom, there’s nowhere left to fall. It takes me a few days to realise this. Monday, I call in sick. Tuesday, I also stay home, where I have the epiphany that things can’t get any worse. Rock bottom. Not such a bad place. The only way is up.
Throughout my hiatus, Harry and I have been texting:
Are you ill or hiding? Shall I bring you soup?
Hiding… I’m okay, Harry, thanks.
Don’t hide too long. I’ll miss you. Alex gone underground. Don’t worry, I’m on it.
Since our argument at my flat, Faith and I haven’t made contact at all.
Wednesday, I make it into the studio for our seventh recording. The station is abuzz with the news that Faith has invited a girl to be her date this week. Apparently, they’ve slipped off somewhere to chat. Is Faith avoiding me?
‘What’s she like?’ I ask Poppy in our dressing area. It’s just the two of us.
‘Who?’ Poppy twirls my hair and then lets it fall silky and bouncy down my back. I’m lucky I have good hair. I’m grateful.
‘Faith’s date, obviously. Poppy, is that dreadful spot covered?’
‘Yes, my sweet. But promise me you’ll stop picking it.’
Faith isn’t gay. Bi-curious, maybe. She’s likely on this girl-crush-exploration after my cutting remark about her being promiscuous with loads of different men. If I’ve hurt her feelings, this could be payback.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Lucy. Look up. Not that you need mascara with your lashes.’ Poppy applies lashings of it anyway.
‘Poppy, please tell me, what’s she like?’ I repeat. The suspense is killing me.
Poppy applies a peppermint-flavoured gloss to my lips. It’s tingly and, allegedly, will make my lips plumper. I surmise from Poppy’s hesitation to talk that she’s caught wind of my falling out with Faith. ‘She’s Australian,’ she eventually divulges.
‘Is she pretty?’
‘Oh, very.’ Poppy lets her guard drop. ‘She has the most amazing green eyes. Do you know how rare it is for a Chinese person to have green eyes?’
‘I thought you said she’s Australian?’
‘She sounds Australian.’
‘They’re not green contacts, are they? It’s a bit cliché if we have another guest wearing coloured contacts. Surely?’
‘I’m pretty sure Lucy’s green eyes are real.’
She’s not the only one.
‘Miss Gracie, are you okay?’
I back off. ‘Sorry, Poppy. I’m just a bit taken aback that Faith has sprung this on us without warning. I have a few days off…’
‘Sprung what on us, my angel?’
‘Never mind.’
I don’t want to sound homophobic when I’m not. Countless nights on Soho dance floors to counter the very notion.
I look in the mirror. The mask of soft, feminine prettiness Poppy’s given me hides my feelings of guilt, resentment and profound sadness.
‘Poppy, I don’t know how you do it, but I look the best I ever have.’ I give her a quick hug, worry I might cry and cause her to have to start over. She’d do it without complaint, sweet Poppy. Who never lets me down. Who never gets cross, no matter what I do. ‘Thank you, for everything you do for me, Poppy.’ I have to leave before I do start blubbing and spoil her good work. ‘I’ll go get us a can of ginger beer. Stay here. Back in a jiff.’
On my way to the canteen, I catch Faith chatting in the hallway with Harry, both of them laughing. I don’t know where Lucy is, but she isn’t with them. Faith affects not to notice me. At the last minute, Harry turns and gives me a smile.
Lucy is gorgeous. Skin the colour of honey. Slight build. Long dark hair. Eyes that are, amazingly, vividly and all-naturally green. She and Faith suit each other perfectly – apart from the fact they both have vaginas and Faith has never, in the entire time I’ve known her, batted an eyelash at our fairer sex.
Although there’s no script, and things are far from normal between any of us, we all slip easily into character for the recording. I tease Faith about her new-found fondness for lady-loving. Faith hams it up with Lucy accordingly, exchanging sizzling innuendo and smouldering glances.
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