Star Struck

by Anne-marie O'connor

  Maria claimed to know why she and her sisters were all so dark – they were Black Irish, she told Jo – she loved to think that she was something special, descended from some heady Celtic/Spanish mix. Maria liked nothing more than to talk up her own part in things. That was why, Jo thought, when Maria bragged about her job as a trolley dolly on a budget airline you’d think she was responsible for actually flying the plane.

  ‘You’ve just pulled out without looking and we could have all died!’ Jo shouted at Claire. Her sister’s driving really did scare her witless. They were now careening across the Mancunian Way, a busy concrete flyover that straddled the city centre.

  ‘God, you’re so sensitive,’ Claire said, looking straight at her as if the road and their position on it was inconsequential.

  ‘Eyes on the road!’ Jo shrieked. ‘Sensitive, eh? So why’s that bloke beeping his horn and giving you a wanker sign?’

  ‘Joanna!’ Mick piped up. ‘I won’t have any wankers on a Saturday morning.’

  Jo swallowed back a giggle and tried to ignore the elbow that Maria had just jabbed into her ribs.

  ‘Can we just get there in one piece, please? Jesus,’ Maria asked loftily.

  ‘“Jesus”. “Wankers”. I don’t know where I got such potty-mouthed kids from,’ Mick said, throwing his eyes to the heavens.

  Jo was going to point out that her dad could make Gordon Ramsay blush if he put his mind to it but she decided to let it go. She had a hangover and she didn’t want to enter into a pointless argument this early in the day.

  The previous evening was a bit of a blur. Jo knew it involved some annoying bloke who wouldn’t leave her alone while she was out trying to have a good time with her mates. He kept bothering her and trying to buy her shots of tequila. Jo hated tequila and she hated men who tried to buy her tequila. In fact she hated men who tried to buy her drinks full stop; it got on her nerves. She was only interested in men if they wanted a good laugh. She didn’t need some cheesy slimeball trying to buy her Verve Cliquot and thinking he could parade her round in his sports car. Manchester seemed to be full of these sort of idiots. Jo didn’t know where they got off, but she liked to tell them where she thought they should.

  Her hangover meant that she hadn’t been quite as on the ball as she might have been when Catherine came in, asking to ferret through her wardrobe. She should have known something was amiss when her usually dressed-down sister had asked if she could borrow her silver wedges. Where had she thought Catherine was going to wear silver wedges on a Saturday morning – Netto? Jo had pulled the quilt over her head while Catherine helped herself to some of her stuff and then managed to fall back to sleep and a nice dream about living in a bouncy castle when she had been rudely awakened by Claire.

  ‘What the bloody hell does Maria find to do in there?’ Claire said, plonking four-year-old Rosie on Jo’s bed and nodding in the direction of the bathroom.

  ‘Pluck her monobrow?’ Jo offered sitting up in bed and looking at her alarm clock. ‘What the hell are you doing in my bedroom, getting on my nerves at eleven o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘You’re a cheeky sod, do you know that?’ Claire asked, eyeballing Jo. ‘We’re hiding.’

  ‘From who?’

  Rosie jumped down off the bed and began playing with Jo’s jewellery on her dressing table. ‘Go into Aunty Catherine’s room, Rosie, she’s got well better stuff than me.’ Claire threw Jo a look. ‘What?’ Jo asked with mock innocence. Rosie ran into her aunt Catherine’s room.

  Even though Claire had left home years ago, as soon as she was back in the house she resumed big sister duties and thought that she could take over the place and order Jo around. Jo didn’t hold it against Claire, she had her own life when their mother had left and she’d always made sure that Jo was looked after, taking her out for the day when she was younger and letting her stop over at her house whenever she wanted. She was married to Paul who wasn’t the brightest tool in the box but he was nice enough if a little dull – his only topics of conversation seemed to be about Manchester United or the traffic on the M60.

  Actually, Jo quite liked Claire – it was Maria who got on her nerves – but it made her laugh that her eldest sister thought that as soon as she turned up order was restored. It was obvious to anyone who stepped foot into the Reilly household that the person who had held the family together since their mum had left eight years ago was Catherine.

  ‘Anyway,’ Claire sighed. ‘It’s Dad. That’s who we’re hiding from.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Rosie just said, “Eurgh, Grandad – poo!” and then I had to pretend to him that she wanted one, rather than she was indicating that he smelt of it.’

  ‘Dad? Does he?’

  ‘Well, he stinks of something. Who’s looking after him?’

  ‘What do you mean, “Who’s looking after him?” He’s a grown man. I’m fed up with all this pussy-footing-round-poor-Dad routine. He needs to get his bloody act together. I’m telling you, he gets right on my wick.’

  ‘Catherine’s meant to sort him out, where is she?’ Claire asked, as if she hadn’t listened to a word her sister had just said.

  ‘If she’s got any sense, she’s gone out. Anyway, why’s she meant to look after him? I know she does, but that’s just because she’s a massive mug.’

  Jo had run out of patience with her dad’s demands years ago and wished that her older sister would do the same. But for some reason, one that Jo couldn’t fathom, Catherine seemed beholden to her father, especially lately. Only last week Mick had decided on a whim that he wanted to go kite flying on Saddleworth Moor and Catherine had willingly obliged. Jo couldn’t think of anything worse than getting tangled up in the strings of a box kite, with her hair whipped by the wind and sticking to her lipgloss, just because her dad had decided he needed a new hobby.

  A sound like someone bouncing on a trampoline was coming from Catherine’s room. Claire jumped up to investigate, throwing Jo a look of annoyance as she went. Jo threw the quilt covers back and slowly followed her sister. She arrived at Catherine’s bedroom door to find Rosie jumping up and down on the bed.

  ‘This is Aunty Catherine’s room, darling, you wouldn’t like it if she came round and bounced on your bed,’ Claire was saying.

  ‘Would,’ Rosie said.

  Fair enough, thought Jo. She was four, she probably would.

  Rosie jumped backwards and landed on the bed with a thump. Jo held her breath, it was hard to tell sometimes if her niece was going to laugh or cry. Whatever she did, Claire would no doubt give her a round of applause and a medal. Rosie was spoilt in Jo’s opinion, Claire was way too soft with her. They were in luck this time – Rosie burst into a fit of giggles and Claire clapped approvingly.

  ‘Come on, petal, let’s have you.’ Claire said, trying to coax Rosie off the bed.

  ‘Just pick her up.’ Jo said.

  ‘All right, Super Nanny.’

  ‘What?’ Jo asked innocently.

  ‘When I need childcare tips, I won’t be coming to a hungover nineteen-year-old for them.’

  ‘Oooh!’ Jo said camply. ‘Anyway, I was watching a programme on Sky the other day about kids; this nanny was saying that you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.’

  ‘Well, when you’ve got your own, Mary sodding Poppins, feel free to be as cruel-to-be-kind as you want.’

  ‘Are you allowed to say “sodding” in front of Rosie, or will she have to go and see a child psychologist by the end of the week?’ Jo asked, smiling with mock-sweetness.

  Claire pulled a face at her younger sister. As they bickered, Rosie picked a piece of paper out from under Catherine’s pillow and began playing with it, scrunching it into a ball.

  ‘Can Mummy have that?’ Claire asked.

  Rosie giggled and screwed it up even more.

  Jo shook her head at her sister and said to her niece, ‘That’s mine, thank you,’ and whipped the paper from her hands. Rosie looked crestfallen. ‘It could be important,’
Jo said, sitting on the edge of the bed reading whatever was written on the paper as Rosie jumped down next to her. ‘Oh. My. God.’

  ‘What?’ Claire asked, intrigued before evidently her conscience got the better of her and she pretended that she had been beginning a sentence. ‘What … ever that is put it back now. This is Catherine’s room.’

  ‘She’s at the Star Maker auditions,’ Jo said. She couldn’t quite believe it. Her sister, the quiet one, the reliable one, the not-exactly-Leona-Lewis one was at the Star Maker auditions?

  ‘Catherine? What for?’ Claire asked, seemingly as amazed as Jo by this revelation.

  ‘Well … she does have a good voice,’ Jo said tentatively.

  ‘When was the last time you heard her sing?’ Claire asked. ‘Ten years ago in choir. She could sound like a strangled cat now for all we know.’ Claire paused for a moment and looked seriously at Jo, ‘They’ll annihilate her,’ she said gravely.

  ‘Come on now, that’s a bit harsh.’ Jo replied.

  ‘She’s hardly Kylie, is she?’

  ‘You are so tight!’ Jo said, shaking her head.

  ‘I’m not tight, I’m right.’

  ‘Nice saying.’ Jo said, impressed. She turned her attention back to the piece of paper. ‘She still writes songs,’ Jo said, staring at the audition acceptance form. ‘Dad told me.’

  ‘Really?’ Claire looked shocked. ‘I’m surprised he even noticed.’

  Jo knew what she meant. Since his wife left him, their dad had become more and more insular, moping around for years until he was finally diagnosed with clinical depression. Their mother, Karen, when told of Mick’s illness had said, ‘Depression? He’s depressed himself with the sound of his own voice.’ The milk of human kindness didn’t exactly run over where their mother was concerned. Jo didn’t care what her mother thought, or at least she didn’t want to care what her mother thought.

  ‘We’ve got to stop her,’ Claire said, jumping up.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the last thing Catherine needs is Richard Forster telling her she’s useless,’ Claire said.

  Richard Forster was the Svengali judge who had created Star Maker. He had achieved fame and fortune on both sides of the Atlantic creating pop stars and dashing the dreams of hopefuls during televised auditions. He was nearing retirement age but due to a team of cosmetic surgeons and great make-up artists he looked somewhere in his late forties or early fifties.

  ‘We could just go and cheer her on,’ Jo said, looking at Claire hopefully. Anything for a day out, she thought.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Claire said. ‘We’ll figure it out when we get there.’

  And this was how Jo had come to break one of her most important rules. No one else had a car. Maria’s ex-fiancé Gavin had taken theirs as part of their break-up settlement. He got the car, she got the ten-foot-high, Posh and Becks-style professional picture of the two of them entwined and kissing. Jo couldn’t help thinking that Gavin had come out of the deal far better off than Maria, especially as they all had to look at it every day sitting at the top of the stairs. Maria was very sensitive about the picture and when Jo teased her about it she bit her head off and told her that someone had bought it from eBay and she was waiting for them to pick it up. Jo couldn’t wait to clap eyes on the nutter that would part with their hard-earned cash for that pictorial monstrosity. So Jo couldn’t drive, Maria had no car and Mick was everything-phobic, including driving. That left Claire to chauffeur them all unsafely to the venue of the Star Maker auditions.

  Mick looked out of the window at the Manchester skyline and sighed, ‘I can’t believe she didn’t tell us.’

  Her dad loved sighing, Jo thought. He would often string a load of sighs together so they sounded like one big ongoing outtake of breath. Jo once told an ex-boyfriend that there was no point in coming round to her house to meet anyone because her dad just sat in the corner sounding like a pressure cooker and they wouldn’t be able to hear themselves think.

  ‘I wonder what she’s going to sing?’ Jo pondered.

  ‘They’ll crucify her,’ Maria said matter-of-factly.

  ‘No they won’t,’ Jo snapped. Jo didn’t want to enter into one of Maria’s bitch-fests. Maria got off on other people’s misery – or so it seemed to Jo. What Jo couldn’t work out about Maria was how so many other people actually seemed to like her. People from work were always ringing up, she had at least one billion friends on Facebook and when it was her birthday she didn’t just go out for a drink or a bite to eat – no; it was a five-day, Liz Hurley’s weddingesque affair, with different themes and venues. Last year she’d had a night out in Manchester, a night out in Black-pool and a weekend in Magaluf. Jo thought that she’d rather stab herself in the eye than spend a weekend in Shag a Muff with her sister and her so-called mates but she’d kept quiet and bought her an iTunes voucher.

  Jo often wondered why Maria was so popular without coming up with much of an answer. As far as Jo could see it was as if the nastier and more cutting Maria was with people, the more they wanted to be her friend. It was classic school-bully behaviour and Jo saw it as her civic duty to pull her sister up at any given opportunity, seeing as no one else had the bottle to. ‘I wonder what she’s going to sing?’ Jo asked again.

  ‘R. Kelly, “Flying without Wings”,’ Maria said.

  Jo burst out laughing. ‘More like that’s what you’d sing, you wrong ’un. I can just see you up there, all moony-eyed at the judges, thinking you were the dog’s bollocks.’ Jo shut her eyes and began crooning in a high-pitched voice.

  Maria punched her in the arm. ‘Piss-taker.’

  Mick tutted his disapproval at the language.

  Jo shoved her back. ‘Deluded R. Kelly lover!’

  ‘Will you two give up!’ Claire shouted from the driver’s seat. Jo and Maria piped down as Claire began slapping the satnav angrily. ‘No, I do not want Peter Street in Abergavenny; I want Peter Street in bloody Manchester.’

  Jo bit her lip. She wanted to laugh but knew that she would be shouted at and in making Claire shout would distract her even further and they’d no doubt end up under the wheels of a tram. They all sat in barely held silence as Claire pulled up to a red light by Piccadilly train station and waited impatiently as if the whole traffic system was designed to be against her.

  Jo’s thoughts turned to how this was all going to play out when they got where they were going. What exactly did they think they were doing? What were they going to do when they got there – run in and put a hood over Catherine’s head and kidnap her, IRA-style? Catherine wasn’t answering her phone and Jo wasn’t sure she would take too kindly to her family turning up and demanding that she not put herself through a public audition. Maybe they should just support her, Jo thought. But then Jo didn’t really get a vote where family decisions were concerned – as the youngest she was always treated as the baby without any of the usual perks. She wasn’t even allowed the odd teenage strop without someone pulling her up and telling her how hard it had been for them when they were younger – like her three sisters had grown up in a Dickens’ novel or something. They’re not that much older than me, for God’s sake! she thought. Catherine was twenty-four, Maria was twenty-eight and Claire – first in line to the Reilly throne – was thirty-three. As much as Jo tried to put her point across and make the others see that she did sometimes know what she was talking about, she felt that her opinion was never really taken on board by her older sisters. Today would be no exception. She knew what would happen as soon as they arrived at the auditions: Claire would take charge and everyone else would fall into line. It was just the way things were.

  Claire rounded a corner in fifth gear and Jo lurched to the side, squashing poor Rosie who had been sitting quietly minding her own business all the way into town. ‘Sorry, Rosie,’ Jo said, putting a protective arm around her niece.

  ‘That’s it! There!’ Claire said, screeching to a halt outside a five-star hotel.

  ‘You can’t just d
rop us off here,’ Maria said. They had stopped on double yellow lines and were being waved at by an angry-looking man in a high-visibility jacket.

  ‘Right, you lot go in and I’ll park up. I’ll be one minute.’

  Jo jumped out and helped Rosie out of the car. She looked across at the sea of people who were packed inside the building. ‘We’ll never find her in there,’ she said to Maria.

  ‘We bloody well will,’ Mick countered defiantly.

  Jo looked at her father’s disgruntled expression. She had a feeling that daddy dearest didn’t want Catherine – his carer – going anywhere anytime soon.

  Andy Short wasn’t short. He was six foot two and his skinny frame and shock of black hair made him look even taller. He heard the line ‘You’re not very short are you?’ nearly every time he was introduced to someone. He had grown to think this odd; like saying ‘You’re not very black are you?’ to Jack Black.

  Andy worked in TV. ‘Our Andy works in telly,’ he would often hear his mum say proudly. Then she would pause for effect and add the killer punch, the one that got even the most hardened and snobby of her I-don’t-care-that-your-son-works-in-TV friends staring at him with admiration. ‘He’s working on Star Maker.’

  Once this bit of juicy information was out of the bag everyone always asked the same question, ‘What’s Richard Forster like?’ The real answer to that was that he had a penchant for young girls and many of the hopefuls who came through the doors found themselves being promised the earth and invited back to his palatial hotel suite in whichever city they were auditioning that week. But Andy never told anyone this. Neither did any other crew member, not just because it was unprofessional and sounded like sour grapes, but more importantly because Cherie Forster – Richard’s wife and one of the other judges – was such a formidable character that everyone assumed she’d find out who’d snitched on her husband and they’d never work anywhere in the world again, ever.

  Andy lived in south Manchester in the suburb of Withington with his parents, something he had vowed to change this year. He was definitely going to get his own place. He loved his mum and dad dearly but his mum had a habit of vacuuming at least three times a day and other people’s legs had less rights than the vacuum in her domain. As a result Andy always had bruises on his ankles where his mother had feverishly gone at them with the Dyson. He wanted his own flat and the right to never vacuum again if he so wished. Withington was populated with students and young professionals and, although Andy had left school at seventeen, coming from an area like this made him feel that he had to do something exciting with his life. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life pulling pints in the bar where he had worked for the past four years, listening to students rattling on about how drunk they had got the previous evening and pretending they didn’t revise.