by Chloe Rayban
‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. My voice sounded unaccountably loud now the dryer had cut out. June paused, sponge poised. Mum stared up, her eyes looking big and black and scary in her white base-coated face.
‘Do you think we could find some time to actually talk?’ I asked.
‘Talk? About what?’ demanded Mum.
‘About, like – why I’m here? How long am I staying? Basically, what’s going to happen to me?’
Mum and Vix exchanged glances.
Vix ran a pen down her clipboard. ‘I think we might be able to fit something in tomorrow around sixteen-ten. Twenty minutes or so, as long as you don’t run over.’
‘Lovely,’ said Mum. ‘We can have family tea together. All cosy and English … (So, Mike … let’s talk contracts tomorrow, OK?)’
It seemed I had been dismissed.
Vix got up and began to bustle me out of the suite, meantime firing off directions at top speed about what I was or wasn’t allowed to do in the foreseeable future.
5.00 p.m.
Back in my suite it looks like the fairies have been in during my absence. My personal possessions, i.e. comb, toothbrush and ponytail band, have been perfectly aligned on the vanity top. My coat has been hung up and my cardigan folded neatly, both looking shamingly drab in the context of the Royal Trocadero decor.
My bed, only used so far by my teddy, has been stripped and remade. A totally new set of twelve pristine white fluffy towels, a bath mat and a new fluffy bathrobe have magically replaced the ones I marginally shifted during body maintenance. I think guiltily of the hole in the ozone layer which must have gained at least two inches in diameter in the last hour, which will eventually cause the inundation of most of Holland and quite possibly some of Belgium too. And of the rising tide of greyish-white detergent foam which is currently heading on its way down the Thames towards Gravesend (a name which suitably suggests impending doom).
There is a brand new basket of free stuff complete with everything from cotton balls to conditioner. Each glossy monogrammed package no doubt filled by exploited and possibly under-age hands in some distant underdeveloped country.
Sorry about all this. It’s Mum that brings it on. Whenever we meet up, I’m engulfed in this huge tidal wave of guilt. Not that I can think of anything to do about it. I mean, Mum’s doing her bit. She performs absolutely free of charge at these vast aid events and if the albums she sells top the charts as a direct result, it’s hardly her fault, is it?
I was distracted from this train of thought by my mobile. It was a text message:
have you been beamed up by aliens?
you just totally dematerialised.
had to torture sister marie-agnes to get the truth.
took six pins before she admitted your mum sent for
you.
text me back
Bx
It was from Becky. She’s my ultimate best friend. Like, so close, we practically have synchronised dreams. She’s the only girl in the school who actually knows who my mum is. And she’s totally unfazed by it. All the girls on our dorm floor have posters with Mum’s face plastered over their walls except Becky. She’s got this massive poster of Vanessa Mae instead, ’cos Becky’s really into classical stuff. In fact, she spends half her life in the music practice rooms with her violin. Which according to everyone else at school technically pigeonholes her as a nerd. But Becky doesn’t care one bit. Because the way she sees it, her music is far more important to her than her position on the Sisters of the Resurrection popularity curve. When I admitted to her who Mum was, she simply shrugged and said, ‘So?’ We were soulmates from that moment on.
I knew I shouldn’t tell her exactly where I was in case my message got hacked into or something. So I texted back:
S.O.S from the planet andromeda
you got it. I was borne off silently in sleek black alien
vehicle.
now prisoner in plush pod. non-stop buffy replays on
cable and
force-fed mocha chocolate chip haagen-dazs.
eat ya heart out all at SotR
love you lots
keep texting
HBWx
At that point my door buzzer buzzed and two bellboys came in wheeling a couple of mobile clothes racks on wheels. These were followed by a girl with a bleached blonde crew cut and pierced lower lip who introduced herself as Sam – the Kandhi Store marketing manager.
‘So you’re Kandhi’s daughter,’ she purred. ‘Boy, are we going to have fun dressing you up.’
I gazed at the racks of dazzling Lycra dance wear. I don’t think so!
‘Yes, I’d say you were definitely an eight,’ she continued, looking assessingly at my least spectacular measurement.
I won’t go into what followed. It was just too humiliating. Lycra is made to stretch – right? But it has to have something to stretch round (round being the operative word). But Sam wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had me looking ‘stellar’, as she put it, dressed in Khandi Store from neck to thigh, and left me with a whole closetful as well.
Once she’d gone I took to pacing my suite like a caged animal. I’d been told by Vix to stay locked inside and well away from the windows because of this ‘nasty threat’ thing. Mum was dining out and apparently it would be ‘far too dangerous’ for me to accompany her. God, doesn’t she overreact!
Talking of dinner, my stomach now remembered that I’d missed school lunch ages ago. We generally have supper at around six thirty at SotR and hunger pangs were going off like alarm bells. But I had the feeling that the Royal Trocadero couldn’t possibly sink to serving food at such an uncool hour. So I attacked the bowl of complimentary fruit. I ate one mango, one pawpaw, two mandarins, the entire bunch of grapes, two bananas and a lychee. Then I felt slightly odd.
That’s when my phone rang.
‘Room service calling, Miss Winterman. I don’t believe we’ve received your dinner order yet?’
‘Oh, right.’ I didn’t dare admit I’d eaten practically their whole bowl of fruit.
‘You’ll find the menu in your Executive Suite folder. Just give us a call when you’ve made your choice.’
The leather-bound folder had all these glitzy pictures of the dining room, which I wasn’t permitted to visit, of course, being as I currently was a maximum security luxury prisoner. I’d checked the security several times. Each time I poked my head out the door the security guy at the end of the corridor kind of leapt to his feet and remembered he was meant to be looking fierce, so I ducked back in again.
I ran through the pages of really lush food like ‘Beef Wellington dans son jus de Porto’ and ‘Escalope de Canard à la Chinois’ and ‘Sweet and Sour Sea-bass Dans Son Coulis of Mediterranean Vegetables’, and felt a strange subterranean rumbling inside. The fruit from various incompatible countries, seasons and continents seemed to have set up global warfare inside my tummy.
In fact, all I really fancied was some toast and Marmite and maybe some cocoa, but I couldn’t find any sign of those in the menu choices.
So I rang back and said I’d be OK till breakfast.
Much later that night
I woke up bitterly regretting my dinner decision. Fruit simply doesn’t stay with you, as Gi-Gi my great-gran always says. I was so ravenous that I took a pen to the breakfast menu and ticked every single item. Then I went back to sleep.
Thursday 23rd January, 9.00 a.m.
Suite 6002, The Royal Trocadero
I was woken by the buzzer on my door. I climbed into the big fluffy white bathrobe and went to open it. Two waiters swept past me, each wheeling a trolley covered in a pink tablecloth with a vase of fresh flowers and loads of dishes covered in big silver salvers. When they’d gone I took a peek under the salvers.
Oops! Well, maybe I’d gone just the teeniest bit overboard on my order. For breakfast I had freshly-squeezed-orange-juice-tropical-fruit-salad-organic-muesli-peach yoghurt-scrambled-eggs-and-crispy-bacon-sausage-and-tomato-wholemeal-
toast-and-butter-waffles-and-maple-syrup-raisin-toast-and-marmalade-mini-Danish-pastriescroissants-and-honey-a-pain-au-chocolat-and-a-double-cappuccino. And there was still loads left. (Which Gi-Gi would’ve said was a ‘wicked waste’.)
After that I went and sat in a hot bath feeling like a bouncy castle. Half an hour or so later I climbed out and reluctantly got back into yesterday’s Kandhi Store clothes in order to please Mum. OK, so I now had curves – but in all the wrong places.
3.00 p.m.
I’d watched daytime cable for hours till I got sick of channel zapping. In fact, there was so little on that I decided to ignore the dire warnings about ‘the nasty threat thing’ and, taking my life into my hands, I went to look out of the window. If there were automatic weapons trained on my suite this was their chance. But as you can see from the fact that my narrative continues – I survived.
But hang on. There was something happening in the street outside. Looked like there was going to be a demonstration or something. The police had put up all these barriers and people kept turning up and craning over them. There was quite a big crowd already. Mostly girls about my age.
I stood on tiptoe to get a better look. That’s when a load of them started screaming. I couldn’t actually hear them screaming, of course, because of the double glazing and the noise of the air con. But I could see they were.
As the pitch of the screams went up a few decibels, so that they faintly reached me, the door of a limo was opened with a flourish and an unmistakable figure climbed out. Dark glasses, that blonde hair, and – surely not. Wasn’t that a fur she was wearing?
It was Mum.
4.10 p.m., the Penthouse Suite (cosy English family tea)
The minute I enter the suite I know something is up. Mum is sitting on this kind of curvy couch thing looking as if creme fraiche wouldn’t melt in her mouth. On the table there’s this triple-decker cake stand and lacy serviettes and a silver tea service.
But that’s not what draws my attention. What I home in on is the guy with the big professional camera and the woman sitting opposite Mum who has a little portable recording machine propped up beside her cup of tea.
‘Come and sit by your mama, babe, on the love seat.’
Mum’s had a total image change since she climbed out of the limo. June has somehow managed to make Mum, in a kind of weird chameleon way, look as if she could in actual fact be my mother. She, like me, is wearing a Kandhi Store outfit, but the adult version – ‘Kandhi Klub Klassics’ – which basically means it’s the same stuff but made in silk and cashmere. She’s played down her make-up and her hair has oddly enough changed to a shade not unlike my own. Could this be a wig? Or was the blonde a wig? Did wigs come in ‘mouse’? Or maybe it was her natural colour? Unlikely. Even her roots must’ve forgotten what that was.
‘Mum? What’s going on?’
‘My, don’t you look wonderful!’ I don’t. I look like a stick of ‘Kandhi’. All straight up and multicoloured. I look as though if you cut me in half you’d find my name running through from head to toe.
‘But, Mum. I thought it was just going to be you and me.’
‘It is just you and me, babe. That’s the whole point.’
I stare meaningfully at the woman with the recorder. Mum reacts by giving me a reassuring smile.
‘This is Jocelyn. She writes for Wave magazine. You must have seen her column: “Family Ties”?’
I had, of course. It’s kind of addictive, mums and daughters or dads and sons with cheesy smiles giving you all these ‘insights’ into what their ‘real lives’ are like. And like how they have so-oo much in common. Jocelyn is going to have her work cut out on this one.
‘I just want you to be really natural. Behave as if I’m not here,’ says Jocelyn, leaning forward earnestly.
‘Do you think you could move a little closer in, Hollywood,’ chips in the guy with the camera. ‘You two girls cheek to cheek, maybe?’
Mum puts her arm around me and lurches me towards her. I cannot recall being this close to Mum, ever. Although I must have been once, I guess.
‘Lovely. You two look so alike.’
Rubbish. Mum’s kind of petite and curvy and I’m like all legs and arms – not to mention feet.
‘Now, what are we going to talk about?’ asks Mum.
I feel as if the recording machine has grown ears. I can actually sense it listening in judgmentally. I can’t think of a single thing to say.
‘So. How long is it since you two have been together?’ prompts Jocelyn.
We answer in unison.
‘A month,’ says Mum./‘Nine months,’ I say.
‘But I imagine you’re always in touch?’
‘On the phone all the time,’ says Mum, giving me a hard stare./‘I email Mum from time to time,’ I reply truthfully.
‘How about holidays?’
‘Yes, South of France. My Greek island. Shopping sprees in Paris.’ Mum waves an all-embracing hand./‘I always spend my holidays with Dad,’ I say flatly.
‘I see,’ says Jocelyn. Mum is flashing me icy glances. I feel equally annoyed. How can she be so blatantly untruthful?
Jocelyn is starting to feel the bad vibes. Abruptly she switches her attention from Mum and turns on me.
‘Now, Hollywood. Let’s just concentrate on you for a moment. Now you’re together after … errm … a while. There must be something you’ve been dying to ask your mother, face to face?’
It’s now or never. This is the chance I’ve been waiting for. How many girls my age get the opportunity to air their grievances in front of a bone fide member of the press?
‘There is, as a matter of fact. Mum, tell the truth. Was that real fur I saw you wearing just now?’
Mum swallows. ‘Factory farmed. Humanely killed.’
‘But they’re still animals! How would you like to be raised in a cage?’
A low-key hissed domestic breaks out at that point. It has been brewing for some time. Years, actually. Jocelyn kind of looks on like a spectator at the Davis Cup, her head going from side to side as we score points off each other.
As our row reaches its crescendo she switches off the recording machine and holds a hand up for silence.
‘I can see you two have a lot to catch up on,’ she says. ‘Maybe we could reschedule the interview for some more appropriate time?’
Vix appears magically at that point. I think, in fact, she must’ve been hiding in the bathroom ready to prompt Mum if she forgot some key fact about our relationship. Like which of her husbands my dad was, or my name or something.
‘I’ll give you a ring when I’ve got Kandhi’s diary in front of me,’ says Vix, opening the suite door and gesturing violently to me behind Mum’s back.
I manage to slip out ahead of Jocelyn and make my escape.
6.00 p.m., Suite 6002
I sit on the edge of my bed with my teddy. He is looking at me disapprovingly. I know I shouldn’t fight with Mum. I know, in particular, that I shouldn’t fight with Mum in front of journalists. I am going over the ins and outs of the argument in my mind, trying to decide if it was me or Mum who was in the wrong. I mean, I know she shouldn’t wear fur, seeing as who she is and how she influences like millions of people. But maybe this is something that I should have brought up in private. Teddy doesn’t look as if he’s on my side so I put him in the closet and close the door.
Vix rings down at that point.
‘How’s Mum? Is she furious?’
‘Well. Let’s put it this way. I’d make myself scarce until tomorrow morning if I were you. She’s got a dinner date anyway. That should cheer her up.’
‘Oh?’
But she doesn’t elaborate. I can hear Mum’s voice demanding something in the background, so Vix rings off.
8.00 p.m.
Absolutely nothing has happened. I ordered a steak and chips and ice cream from room service and ate them in front of the TV. They’ve just been and taken away the meal trolley.
I watched a
suspense movie that I’d missed the beginning of and never did get my head around the plot. When I checked down the corridor I found nothing had changed except the security guard. This one was taller. Sigh.
I thought of what they’d be doing right now at SotR. Which was most likely homework and I even missed that. So you can see I was in a bad way. In the end I forgave teddy and took him out of the closet and went to sleep with him.
Friday 24th January, 9.30 a.m.
Suite 6002, The Royal Trocadero
Still nothing happening in my maximum security luxury cell. When I checked down the corridor I found they had changed the security guard again. Yesterday morning’s was back. We’re starting to strike up a relationship. When I poke my head out of my door he now smiles and nods.
But hey, this is cool! Along with my breakfast comes my post. It’s a card from Dad. It’s got a picture of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building on the front. And the girl clutched in King Kong’s paw looks just like Mum. Dad’s added a speech bubble so she’s saying: ‘Put me down, you beast. Don’t you know who I am?’
On the back it says:
Hi Holly-Poppy (Sad but true – Dad’s pet name for me)
Hear you’re shacking up with your mum. Just a few tips:
a) She doesn’t like criticism.
b) She likes to have her own way.
c) She’s always right.
Bear these in mind and you’re in for an easy ride.
B-C-N-U
Dadx
Dear Dad. I wondered who’d told him I was with Mum. Gi-Gi probably. She’s really fond of him.
I’ve got to tell you about Gi-Gi, my great-gran. Two generations may separate us but I’m closer to Gi-Gi than anyone. She’s the one who steps in when my parents forget they have a kid. Which they tend to do quite often – like half-terms or Christmas or Easter – but Gi-Gi is always there. She’s the warmest, cuddliest, roly-poly great-gran anyone has ever had. She’s Russian, you see, which may account for it, because Gi-Gi says that Russian people are the most loving in the whole world – especially to their families. I don’t know what happened to that Russian blood in Mum and my gran Anna. Maybe it skipped two generations. Anyway, hopeless task as it may be, she’s all for keeping the family together. She still writes Dad proper letters with pen and paper to keep him in touch.