Just then Kim came round the corner and seeing Catherine trying to fend off the reporter, dived behind a pillar. Catherine wanted her to come over to take some of the pressure off her but she knew she couldn’t. If they were seen boarding the plane together and this woman had done her research and had Kim down as someone who was going through to the finals too, she would have her story and Kim and Catherine would be in trouble before they even got to New York. So Catherine braved it out in the queue.
A little boy in front of her turned and said, ‘Excuse me, are you famous?’
Catherine laughed and said, ‘No, they think I’m someone else.’ She just had to get to the front of the queue, get checked in and then she’d be all right, she reassured herself. But something was worrying her, something which totally stood to reason but she hadn’t really thought about until now. Once you were famous you were public property and intrusions like this would become, if not commonplace, at least something she couldn’t complain about when they did happen. And if one thing was for sure, by accepting her place in the final six of Star Maker: Transatlantic, Catherine was now officially signing herself up for fame whether she liked to admit it or not.
Chapter 11
CATHERINE STARED OUT of the limousine at the New York skyline as they drove towards Manhattan. This famous city, one that was etched in her memory from childhood films through to the terrible events of 9/11 seemed so familiar, and at the same time, so other worldly.
‘Wow!’ Catherine said, without realising that she had spoken.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Star asked.
Star had been her usual charming self on the flight over. Having had a few days away from the others Star had cooled down again and decided that being cool and distant was the way to go. Catherine had decided to leave her to it. In her opinion they had been treated like royalty by the cabin staff on the flight over from the UK; Star didn’t seem to agree. ‘They shove us in business class? What about first class?’ she sniffed.
Catherine had never been on a flight that lasted more than three hours. In fact, she’d never been anywhere further than Spain and she’d only been there twice. Now here she was, flying to another continent, business class. Each girl had their own seat that made into a bed, they were served champagne before the plane had even taken off, they were given the option to have a back massage, a foot massage or a facial – Catherine had all three – and the food they were served was definitely the best meal Catherine had ever eaten: smoked salmon roulade followed by a cooked-to-perfection steak with mashed potato and sticky toffee pudding for dessert. Star had turned her nose up at it, saying that she didn’t eat plane food. Kim had asked if she ate fancy food, but Star had just ignored the joke and buried her head in her copy of Vogue.
As the limo powered across the Manhattan Bridge, Catherine turned to Star. ‘Sorry, I just haven’t seen skyscrapers before.’
Star sniggered as if Catherine had just admitted that this was the first time she’d clapped eyes on a wheel. ‘What? Where have you been?’
Catherine stiffened, ‘Manchester, Star. I haven’t lived all over the world like you.’
‘But surely Manchester has skyscrapers, London does.’
‘Canary Wharf might have, but London doesn’t, not really,’ Kim interjected.
‘Who asked you?’ Star asked, throwing Kim a withering look.
‘Right,’ Kim said calmly in her broad Yorkshire accent. ‘Let’s get one thing straight: you use that mouth of yours again on me and I’ll punch your lights out. Got it?’
Star, for the first time since Catherine had met her, was speechless. She gathered herself and, pretending not to be bothered, looked out of the window.
‘Star, I said, “Got it?”’ Kim wasn’t going to let Star get away with her queeny demeanour any longer, it seemed.
‘Got it,’ Star squeaked.
‘Good.’ Kim turned to Catherine, ‘I’ve never really seen skyscrapers either. Not all together like that. It’s mad isn’t it?’
Catherine felt as if she was free to speak now without being ridiculed by the worldly Star. ‘Yes, they look so packed together. Why don’t they build on the other islands? Why does it all have to be concentrated on this one little bit of land?’
Star cleared her throat as if she was about to say something, but a hard stare from Kim quickly put paid to that.
They drove into New York City and Catherine took in the familiar sites of jammed roads, yellow taxis, newspaper stalls and towering buildings. One moment they would be in an area that looked like somewhere you shouldn’t step foot into alone, the next they were driving through parts of the city with glistening shop fronts and picturesque stucco houses with huge steps up to the grand wooden front doors.
‘Times Square, ladies,’ the driver said through his microphone. He couldn’t simply turn around and tell them because there was bullet-proof glass between him and the girls. Probably to stop him turning round and shooting the likes of Star, Catherine thought.
Looking out at the bright neon lights and the hundreds of people crossing the street in different directions, Catherine’s head buzzed with everything she had to take in. Adverts screamed from every billboard, people flooded in and out of the touristy shops. Theatres were tucked away along side streets but their hoardings shouted the names of the shows. Once through Times Square the limo driver turned a corner and pulled up at a set of lights.
‘What’s with the horse?’ Kim asked. There was a shire horse pulling a carriage parked in front of them. She pressed the button to speak to the driver. ‘What’s with the horse?’
‘They’re a pain in the ass. That’s what’s with the horse. For tourists, they ride them round Central Park and then they shit all over the road and I get it stuck in the tyres.’ The girls laughed at the driver’s turn of phrase and his strong New York accent. The driver then launched into a story which culminated in him telling the girls that he had been engaged to Liza Minnelli but couldn’t go through with it because she couldn’t cook.
‘Here we are,’ the cabbie said, looking up at the gothic building facing out onto Central Park.
‘Is this the one that was in Ghost Busters?’ Kim asked.
‘No, no, no …’ The driver shook his head.
‘It’s where John Lennon lived, where he was shot …’ Star said assuredly. ‘The Dakota building.’
‘No, that’s the one up there,’ The driver said, pointing up the road.
Catherine stepped from the car. Kim and Star followed her. ‘Are we staying here?’ Catherine took in the magnificent building.
‘You certainly are.’ Richard Forster answered. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, beaming at the girls. He had a camera crew in tow.
‘I’ll introduce you to the guys when we get inside but they’ll be trailing you pretty much around the clock now that the competition is on.’ Richard gave them a Machiavellian smile.
Catherine looked at the crew. There was no sign of Andy as yet, thank God she thought. After what Jason had told her, Andy was someone she needed to avoid, so she should just stay clear and let him get on and flirt with whoever else came his way.
Jo had been up for two hours and it was only nine o’clock in the morning. She now knew what jet lag must feel like. She didn’t want her dad to leave the house when she was asleep, but she didn’t want him to suspect that she was going to follow him to make sure that he was OK either.
Mick came into the kitchen wearing a suit. ‘Where you off to?’ Jo asked, confused.
‘The hospital. Make us a brew Joanna, would you, there’s a love.’
Jo resisted a sarcastic remark. Mick might be ill, but old habits died hard.
‘Why are you wearing a suit?’
‘Thought I’d spruce myself up. Them consultants think they’re above us all you know, but if you go in wearing a suit and with your head screwed on then they have to talk to you on their level, not as if you’re some halfwit who’s just walked in off the street.’
Jo felt a pang of pain for her dad. He just wanted a bit of respect and that was totally fair enough, she thought. It didn’t matter that he got on her nerves and was totally over the top about things most of the time. On this occasion she thought he was absolutely right. He wanted to be treated with dignity and was doing everything he could to make that happen.
‘Why don’t I come with you dad?’
‘I won’t have it, Joanna. I’ll let you know how I get on when I get home.’
‘But what are you even going in for today?’
He hadn’t even told them that, he was being so vague about everything. It was certainly out of character – Mick would usually go to great lengths to describe the most trivial ailment – but maybe this time he just wanted to get on with things and for his daughters to leave him be until he was ready to talk about the cancer.
‘A thingy …’ he pointed at his stomach, ‘a scan thingy.’
‘Haven’t you had a scan already?’
‘They do them a lot. Just to check. You know.’
‘No, I don’t know. Explain it to me.’
‘I don’t want to explain it, Joanna!’ Mick said thumping his fist on the table making Jo jump. ‘I just want to get it over with.’
‘All right, Dad, jeez, I’m sorry,’ Jo said, feeling both foolish for pushing the matter and annoyed at her dad for shouting.
‘Well, don’t be going on about it.’
‘Right. I won’t.’ Jo said, rising from the table and heading to the door. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Jo walked out of the house and into the garage and decided that she’d cycle over to Christie’s and wait for her dad and then figure out what to do from there.
Jo preferred cycling to public transport. It was loads better than sitting on the top deck of the bus with murderous idiots and sweaty smack heads. She had once even been hit, by a girl on a bus who accused Jo of ‘looking at her’ even though Jo had been facing forward and the girl had been sitting behind her. The girl had followed Jo off of the 520 from Flixton and said, ‘What were you looking at?’ When Jo replied, ‘The poster saying “Give up your seat for elderly people”,’ the girl had slapped her across the face. A big Sue Ellen out of Dallas slap. Jo loved watching reruns of Dallas as well as Dynasty on UK Gold. She didn’t, however, like being slapped like someone who had crossed JR’s wife.
She dragged her mountain bike out of the garage and set off in the direction of Withington. It was a long cycle, about six miles, but she was determined to find out what was going on with her dad, even if he wasn’t willing to say.
Jo cycled through Trafford Park, past the futuristic War Museum and the Lowry Gallery at Salford Quays, past Old Trafford Football ground and along to the tram station that would take her around the outskirts of Chorlton. When she had set off she had promised herself that there was no way she would go to Chorlton, no way that she would swing past her mum’s to see if she was in. But when she found herself cycling along tree-lined Seymour Grove and faced with a left turn to Withington and the cancer hospital or a right turn to Chorlton and her mum and Jay’s house, Jo pulled the bike to the right. I’ll only be a couple of minutes, she bargained with herself. Dad isn’t at the hospital till eleven.
She cycled through the main row of shops and on towards Beech Road, the gentrified area where Jay had his huge house. She passed the cafés and the art shops – and would have sneered at them had there been anyone there to sneer with – and cycled up towards the house. Just as she was about to turn the corner, bargaining with herself about how long she would stay around to see if there was any sign of her mum, a familiar sight made her throw her bike quickly down a small alleyway. The manoeuvre was so sudden that her bike went in one direction and Jo fell in a heap in the other. Her dad was climbing out of a taxi and walking along the street, as if doing this was the most normal thing in the world.
‘I could do without a camera crew jammed up my arse twenty-four seven,’ Star complained, throwing her Louis Vuitton luggage on the bed. This was the first time that Catherine had ever clapped eyes on real Louis Vuitton luggage. Maria had a wardrobe full of the stuff, but as it had been sourced from a man called Fat Kev who worked on freight at the airport, Catherine wasn’t too confident about its authenticity.
‘They’re a bit full on,’ Catherine agreed.
They had had a quick pep talk on arrival from Richard and then they had been assigned rooms and roommates. Catherine, Kim and Star were to be roommates again, which was no surprise but it still made Catherine’s heart sink a little, realising that she would have to wake up every morning to Star until one of them was ejected from the competition.
Catherine walked over to the window and looked out across Central Park. ‘Oh my God, this place is amazing.’
The park stretched out in front of her for miles. People were walking their dogs, jogging, sitting on the bench by the John Lennon memorial, watching the world go by. ‘I can’t believe it’s in the middle of the city.’
‘A park’s a park,’ Star said, like she knew everything.
Catherine stopped for a moment and was about to point out that wasn’t actually the case, that this was Central Park, the most famous park in the world, in New flipping York, but she knew that it would fall on deaf ears. ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s pretty much the same as Dog Poo park.’
Kim, who had just entered the room, laughed.
‘Where the hell is Dog Poo park?’ Star asked.
‘End of our road in Manchester.’
‘Why’s it called Dog Poo park?’ Catherine looked at Star, was she serious? ‘Because there’s dog poo everywhere?’ Star answered her own question, her face contorting as if this was the most fascinating and disgusting thing she had ever heard.
‘Got it in one.’
‘Jesus, where do you live?’
‘Don’t you have dog poo in London?’
‘We clean it up.’ Star said, pulling her clothes out of her bag and smoothing each garment before hanging it in the giant oak wardrobe.
‘We could learn a lot from you, Star,’ Kim said, throwing her case on the floor and unzipping it.
Star didn’t bother to retort. The dressing down she had received on the way from the airport had obviously done the trick.
There was a knock on the door. ‘Hi girls, the dentist is here,’ Jesse informed them. Jesse had been to see the girls on their arrival to say hello, but there had been no sign of Andy as yet.
Kim, Star and Catherine looked at one another. ‘My teeth are perfect,’ Star complained.
‘What dentist?’ Kim asked.
Catherine had completely forgotten to mention the conversation she’d had with Antonia on the last night in London; she’d been too wrapped up in what was happening with Andy.
‘It’s in our contract,’ Catherine said, feeling like a Star Maker drone. ‘We have to have our teeth done. Straightened, whitened whatever it takes to make us look good for the camera.’
‘Get lost!’ Kim couldn’t believe it.
‘It’s true.’ It was true, but Catherine knew it didn’t make it any less ridiculous.
Catherine, Kim and Star were back in their room, holding their faces, in varying degrees of agony. Catherine had been informed that her teeth were ‘in great shape’ but that they needed whitening; a process which involved a large metal clamp, some gum shields, a very bright light and searing pain. Catherine hadn’t realised her teeth were so sensitive. Kim had had a similar procedure, whereas Star, with her ‘perfect teeth’ was now sporting a set of the dreaded Da Vinci veneers. She looked like she had a mouthful of white piano keys.
‘Nggnngnnna,’ Star moaned.
‘What did she say?’ Kim asked Catherine.
‘I think she said “sadistic bastards”,’ Catherine giggled and then held her own face in pain. There was a knock at the door and Shoneeka, Meagan and Freya walked in, wearing trainers and gym clothing.
‘Hi guys. Oh God, what happened here?’ Freya asked.
‘What training?’ Catherine asked. Antonia had said she wouldn’t have to do any just after her dentist work.
‘Core training for you guys, I think, and a run for us. Come on, it’ll be fun!’ Freya said, and clapped her hands in an insanely happy way.
‘No it won’t, it’ll be a pain in the ass, but I’m not going on TV looking fat, so I’m in.’ Shoneeka was evidently resigned to her fate.
‘We’re lucky,’ Meagan informed them. ‘The over-twenty-fives have been here for five days and two of them have had a face lift and a tummy tuck. Not good.’
‘This isn’t right, is it?’ Catherine blurted out. Everyone turned and looked at her, surprised by her outburst. ‘Sorry, but I just didn’t think it would be like this. It’s a singing competition, not a model competition.’
‘It’s showbiz, baby,’ Shoneeka said, jumping up and down on the spot ready for her run, ‘and you’d better get used to it,’ she added, as if she’d been doing this for years.
Chapter 12
JO LOCKED HER bike to a lamp post with her three bike locks (she’d lived in Manchester all her life and knew that a bare minimum of three locks were required). Her mind was racing, what the bloody hell was her dad doing here? He wasn’t meeting their mum on a regular basis and hadn’t bothered to tell them, was he? She wanted to speak to Catherine but she wasn’t about to call her in the States to ask her why their father might be bothering their mother. She took her phone out and began to dial Claire’s number, but then decided against it. That would mean explaining that she had also taken a detour to Chorlton to have a glimpse at her mother and how the other half lived. She didn’t want Claire knowing that there was any chink in her armour where her mother was concerned; she was barely ready to admit that to herself.
Jo crept along the alleyway and looked along the road, peering directly into her mother and Jay’s house. She felt like Dog the Bounty Hunter and Sue Ellen spying on JR all rolled into one. This was quite exciting, she thought and then remembered that she was just following her poor, sad-case dad and was not about to perform a Dog-style ‘Intervention’. She stood at the corner of the road wondering where her dad had gone, when a familiar voice made her jump a mile.
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