Star Struck

by Anne-marie O'connor

  Jo had always tried not to take Catherine for granted. It had been hard sometimes, when she wanted to shout at her mum or dad but Catherine had been the only person there to listen. She knew that Catherine needed her own life; that she shouldn’t be bound to the family home for ever just because their dad needed something to fill the wife-shaped hole in his life. This was why she wasn’t about to let her father’s incessant sulking derail Catherine’s chances on Star Maker.

  ‘D’you think Mum’ll pop back up when Catherine gets on the telly?’ Jo wondered. ‘She’d love that wouldn’t she? A half-famous daughter.’

  ‘Yes, she would,’ Mick agreed, almost cheerfully.

  What was that about she wondered? God, he was deluded. Did he think that Karen would now pop along to see Catherine on Star Maker and then somehow decide that she’d made a terrible mistake and that she really should be with her smelly, depressed ex-husband? Jo needed to burst her father’s bubble before he wandered any further into Cloud Cuckoo Land.

  ‘Yes and that Jay’d love nothing better than a bit of free national publicity for one of his “Exhibitions”.’ Jo stressed the word sarcastically and sketched quotes in the air with her middle and index fingers.

  Mick sunk back in his chair with a face like a smacked backside. ‘Wouldn’t he just? Probably paint his John Thomas and run around onstage, the big show off.’

  Jo laughed. ‘Yeah, he’d probably make a public appeal to the British Museum, see if they wanted to mount it after he’s gone.’

  Mick laughed too. ‘I’ll mount it for him, the bloody berk.’

  Jo looked at her dad for a moment. It wasn’t often they laughed together; it was a shame the only thing they ever seemed to bond over was slagging off Jay the Nob.

  ‘You think she’s going to do all right in this competition don’t you, our Catherine?’ Mick said, turning to face Jo.

  ‘I don’t know. But I hope so. Be ace, Catherine all famous and us getting into swish parties. She might even let you come if you put a smile on your face.’

  Mick soured again. ‘Unlike you, I’m not all starry-eyed about these things. I know they’re a racket. They use the likes of our Catherine.’

  Jo couldn’t listen to him anymore. He had to bring everything down to his miserable level. ‘And what’s the alternative, Dad?’ Jo asked, standing over her father, her hands on her hips.

  ‘She was happy enough here,’ Mick said, refusing to catch Jo’s eye.

  Jo shook her head in disbelief. ‘What? So she stays here and sorts you out? That’s the alternative? I’d take my chances with the evil pop machine if I were her.’

  ‘We all know what you’d do: look after number one.’

  ‘God! That is rich coming from you. I’m not looking after number one; I’m just being a teenager. I go to college, I come home, I eat cereal for my tea because I can’t be arsed cooking and I think about getting my tongue pierced every now and again and then decide it’s a bad idea. I’m not the devil incarnate – I’m normal. You, on the other hand, you’re different to most dads I know. They work, they look after their kids, not the other way round.’

  ‘I’m ill!’ Mick shouted.

  ‘So you keep saying. You take pills every day but you never say what for. You stay in bed, you moan and shriek and carry on but you never actually say what’s wrong with you, do you?’

  ‘You don’t care what’s wrong with me; I could be lying in a ditch …’

  ‘What does that mean? Lying in a ditch? What ditch, where?’

  ‘It’s a figure of speech,’ Mick huffed.

  ‘Well, talk sense, Dad, you’re doing my head in!’ In the corner of the room the land line began to ring. Mick looked at Jo. ‘I’ll get it, might be Catherine. Don’t want you putting a downer on everything.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi, Jo.’

  ‘Catherine, how’ve you got on?’ Jo’s stomach knotted, she was so nervous for her sister.

  ‘I’m through to the last forty-eight!’ Catherine squealed.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Jo jumped up and down. Mick folded his arms across his chest knowing that whatever Catherine was telling Jo, it wasn’t good news for him. Jo took a deep breath. ‘Dad, Catherine’s down to the last forty-eight. From four hundred!’

  ‘Well done, love,’ Mick said flatly.

  ‘How is he?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘Miserable.’ Jo said shooting a look at her father.

  Jo heard Catherine take a deep breath. ‘Jo, can you go to your room with your mobile and I’ll call you from there?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask. I don’t want Dad getting suspicious, I’ll call back in half an hour.’

  ‘Good luck for tomorrow!’ Jo said brightly. She hung up the phone.

  ‘Was she asking how I was then?’ Mick asked as Jo gathered her beauty treatments and mobile phone and headed for the door.

  ‘Yes, course she was. She’s having the time of her life, doing really well in Star Maker and she just wants to know about you because you are obviously all she thinks about,’ Jo said, slamming the living-room door behind her and heading to her bedroom to wait for Catherine’s call.

  Catherine had sung her heart out at the afternoon auditions but the competition was becoming tougher and she wasn’t sure she had made the cut. So when she was told by Richard Forster that her and the others in her group – which included Star and Kim this time – had sailed through to the next round, Catherine had been ecstatic. Marissa, Heidi and Jill hadn’t been so lucky. Jill had gone out that morning while the other two made it through to the afternoon auditions only to be told it was time to go. But Star and Kim were still in the running.

  ‘I can’t wait to get to America, they’re going to love me.’ Star had said modestly. ‘I think that I might ask Barack Obama to appear in one of my videos …’ She added, as an afterthought, as if the president had nothing better to do.

  Kim had tapped the side of her head and rolled her eyes to Catherine. Star really was deluded; her only saving grace was that she was in the right place and doing all the right things to ensure that her delusions might not be so far-fetched after all.

  As Catherine sang through the songs for the following day in her head, Catherine began to think about things at home. Only twenty-four hours ago the idea of her getting through to the final twelve had seemed like a pipe dream by now she was down to the last forty-eight it was a possibility, albeit slim. Her dad was sick with cancer and she needed to support him and if she couldn’t be there to do it, then someone else would have to step in. What if his condition worsened though? Then what would she do? Catherine didn’t know who to turn to and so she decided, with a heavy heart, that she should tell Jo. She’d toyed with the idea of telling Claire but Claire had enough on her plate with her own family. She knew Maria wouldn’t know what to do with a conversation that didn’t revolve around herself, but Jo – although still a teenager and completely barking in some respects – really had her head screwed on.

  Catherine allowed Jo enough time to get to her bedroom and then dialled her mobile number. If Mick found out what she was doing he would freak and Catherine would feel terrible, so she needed to make sure that Jo was on her own.

  ‘Yo!’ Jo said breathlessly into the phone.

  ‘Yo.’ Catherine always felt like someone’s sad uncle trying to be cool when she said things like ‘Yo!’ She wasn’t a ‘Yo’ person. She was more of a ‘How do you do?’ person. She would probably have been better suited to post-war Britain, with its politeness and its rations and its make-do-and-mend mentality than the early twenty-first century with its ‘Yo’s and its text speak.

  ‘Ha! Catherine, you sound like a nob when you say “Yo”.’

  Catherine sighed. ‘I know. Thanks.’

  ‘No prob. So, what’s up?’

  ‘Jo, how’s dad been?’ Catherine asked cautiously.

  ‘I told you, Les Miserables.’

  ‘Right …’

  Although he
did manage to laugh when we talked about the Nob.’

  Catherine half-smiled, if there was one thing that could unite the Reillys it was a general dislike of Jay.

  ‘Why, what did you expect?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Has he been taking his tablets?’

  ‘Yeah, he loves them doesn’t he? “Oh pass me my one o’clocks, Jo, if I don’t take these my spleen’ll fall out.” “Oh Jo, quick, I’ve stopped rattling, pass me my three o’clocks, my bowel’s packed in again.” What they all for anyway?’

  Catherine cleared her throat, could she really say it? She must. ‘Cancer,’ she whispered.

  Jo fell silent and then said, ‘What?’ as if she hadn’t heard Catherine correctly.

  Catherine took a breath; she felt a rush of relief followed by guilt, but there was no going back now. ‘Dad’s got cancer. He didn’t want to worry anyone so he only told me,’ Catherine explained, ‘but I think it’s serious.’

  ‘Of course it’s bloody serious, it’s bloody cancer!’ Jo spat into the phone.

  ‘All right, Jo. Keep your voice down.’

  ‘My voice is down!’

  ‘Jo, it isn’t.’ Catherine winced, hoping that her dad was in his usual place – in front of the TV with the volume turned up.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jo said finally. ‘I’m just totally shocked, that’s all.’

  ‘You can’t say anything to him. He’ll kill me if he finds out I’ve told you, I just don’t know what to do. He won’t give me any details at all. He sort of hinted it was stomach cancer but all he’s really said is that it wasn’t good and he didn’t want to trouble anyone.’

  ‘I’ll find out what sort it is, don’t you worry,’ Jo said, sounding like she was already making plans to pin her father against the wall and take him to task about keeping this quiet.

  ‘Please, Jo, you know what he’s like. He stresses, he can’t take things like this. I’ve been really thinking about it and I just know that it’ll make him worse. If he thinks I’ve told you, he’ll assume I’ve told the others. And then it’ll suddenly feel really real and make his condition worse.’

  ‘God, I hate him sometimes!’ Jo shouted.

  ‘Jo, please!’ Catherine pleaded. She waited for Jo to say something but there was silence from the other end of the phone.

  ‘Jo? You OK?’ Jo was rarely stuck for something to say. ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘What did we do to deserve this, Catherine?’ Jo asked, her voice cracking. Catherine wasn’t used to hearing her sister so serious, but then again she wasn’t used to telling her that their dad had cancer. ‘We’ve got the shittest mum in Manchester and a dad that could be dying for all we know but is so fucked in the head that we can’t even talk to him about it because we’ll make it worse.’

  ‘Sorry … I shouldn’t have said anything.’ Catherine wound the telephone cord round her hand and peered down the corridor checking she was alone. Thank God she had been shown this pay phone, she wouldn’t want everyone hearing this news at the other public phones.

  ‘Of course you should, don’t be silly,’ Jo said gently. ‘I’m just mad that’s all. Mad and sad. Shit combination.’

  ‘I know,’ Catherine agreed. She felt terrible too. Suddenly she knew that she needed to do something about it, not pass the buck to Jo, but do something herself. ‘Listen, I shouldn’t even be having this conversation, what am I thinking?’ Catherine’s mind was whirring. ‘I’m coming home. I need to be there. I need to help Dad. Who do I think I am, swanning round this mansion singing Mariah Carey songs?’

  ‘You’re going nowhere,’ Jo said firmly. ‘You’re staying there and you’re getting as far as you can. Then, and only then, are you coming home. Don’t worry about Dad, I’ll sort him.’

  ‘No, I can’t, Jo, I should be there.’

  ‘Catherine, if you come home I’ll tell everyone that Dad has cancer.’

  ‘You wouldn’t …’

  ‘I won’t have to because you’re staying there and you’re going to just see how you get on, OK? If you get through to the finals then we’ll talk about what to do, but only then. Yes? Look, I know you think I’m still twelve and you need to mother me but you don’t. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself and misery-arse Dad too.’

  Catherine wound the telephone cord around her fingers, fighting back the hot tears that had sprung to her eyes.

  ‘I know what you gave up for us when Mum left …’

  ‘I didn’t give up anything really …’ Catherine cut in.

  ‘Yes you did. You could have had a life and then you didn’t.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jo backtracked. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Catherine was trying to hold back her emotions but found herself sobbing. She didn’t want her younger sister to think that she’d ever given anything up to look after the family but it must be obvious to everyone that she had. That was why she had never pursued any of her own interests. Why she had hidden her love of music and just settled into a job that was easy and meant that she was near home. That way she could be home each evening to make tea and help Jo with her homework or their dad with whatever harebrained project he had taken up to prevent him from pining over their mum.

  ‘Yes?’ Jo asked again. Catherine wasn’t used to people doing things for her, especially her little sister.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Right, go and put Flixton on the map. Preferably somewhere good, like next to Monaco.’

  Catherine laughed despite her tears, ‘Thanks Jo.’

  ‘And I won’t say anything until you come back, OK?’

  ‘OK, bye.’ Catherine hung the phone on the hook and wiped her eyes. What she really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sob her eyes out but she couldn’t do that. Star would probably be hovering over her giving her advice on how best to cry.

  ‘Are you OK?’ a voice behind Catherine asked. For a split second she thought it was Jesse; he was the only person that knew she used this phone. When she turned around she saw that it was Andy.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ Catherine said, surreptitiously wiping her eyes.

  Andy looked at her curiously and then looked at his feet; they both knew she wasn’t all right.

  ‘Just stuff at home, you know.’

  ‘How’s everything going with your group?’ Andy changed the subject.

  ‘Good, they all seem … nice.’

  ‘Star still being charming?’ Andy asked as he smiled. His eyes twinkled and little dimples appeared at the corner of his mouth. Cute, Catherine thought.

  ‘She should contact the UN, they could do with someone like her as an ambassador,’ Catherine said.

  ‘They should send her in with the troops,’ Andy warmed to the theme. ‘She’d be brilliant on peace-keeping missions.’

  ‘I can just see her in Sierra Leone,’ Catherine agreed with a smile, ‘telling everyone that if they just stopped squabbling and just talked about her then things would naturally sort themselves out.’

  Andy laughed out loud. Catherine shyly looked at her hands, not sure what to say next.

  ‘So, you’re down to the last forty-eight? Good going.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’ve got a great voice. And a really great chance of doing well.’

  ‘Do you think?’ Catherine looked at him. She wondered if he knew something she didn’t, but the earnest look on his face suggested that he was just being kind. ‘We’ll see.’

  Catherine decided that she needed to stop talking about herself and turn the conversation to Andy. He was probably sick to death of listening to people talking about themselves, about their ambition, their talent, their ‘journey’. Everyone seemed extremely keen to be on a ‘journey’. Even the woman with the Roy Orbison song had said that she felt that learning the dance to ‘Penny Arcade’ had been part of her ‘journey’. Catherine thought that it was a bit grand to be calling it a journey after being booted out at the first hurdle. It was more of a trip, surely, or a li
ttle outing maybe.

  ‘So how are you finding working on Star Maker?’ she asked. She really didn’t know how other people managed to flirt. She was utterly hopeless at it. In all other aspects of her life – home, work, dealing with door-to-door salesmen – she knew where she was. But when it came to members of the opposite sex she had chosen to bow out early, aged seventeen, when she had been first let down by her one and only boyfriend, Darren Gleeson. Darren had made a big play for Catherine; asking her out after they had been partnered together on the lighting rig at the annual school play. Darren had taken her to the cinema and to Frankie and Benny’s (the height of sophistication at the time). He also informed Catherine that he was an expert at removing a girl’s bra with one hand because he’d practised on his sister – which was so wrong that warning bells should have rung, she realised with hindsight.

  Darren had been intensely interested in Catherine for the four weeks they were together; writing her poems, buying her fluffy toys and then as quickly as he had become interested, he became wholly uninterested and moved on to a girl called Jenny Addison, leaving Catherine feeling silly and rejected. She hadn’t bothered since then. She knew this probably seemed harsh to other people, that she would cloister herself in this way, but she didn’t want to be hurt and so didn’t put herself in situations where the chance might arise. She always marvelled at girls who could just get off with someone and then get up next morning and think nothing of it. She wasn’t wired that way. Anyway she knew that boys fancied girls like Jo and Maria who had confidence in spades, not girls like her and besides she had too much on her plate with her dad and now with singing to be thinking about romance. She had decided to leave the relationship stuff to the big girls and getting on with what she was good at, namely staying in the background and looking out for other people.