by Chloe Rayban
‘We’re not allowed to at school.’
‘You’re not at school now, babes.’
‘But what if I go back?’
‘Why don’t we worry about that when the time comes. Now can you zip me up?’
Before I know it, Mum’s swept out of the suite in a heady cloud of her own personal designer perfume ‘K’ and Daffyd and June have been summoned.
So now I’m clamped to a chair with Daffyd taking chunks of hair and sliming gloop on and wrapping it in tinfoil. June has grabbed one of my hands and is trying to find enough nail to file. As soon as they get to work they seem to forget I exist.
Daffyd is updating June on the never-ending saga of his wedding to fiancée Bronwyn in Bangor.
‘Yes,’ says Daffyd. ‘Bronwyn’s finally decided on cyclamen.’
‘Isn’t that a bit strong for bridesmaids?’ wonders June.
‘Since it’s a March wedding, she thought it’d brighten the place up. Rather an exotic touch, don’t you think?’
‘I’ve always thought of bridesmaids in pastel. You know, to set off the bride.’
‘Well, Bronwyn’s dress is oyster satin. Not that I’ve seen it, mind.’
‘Of course not.’
I try to remember how long Daffyd’s been planning this wedding. Which is like for ever. Each time he and Bronwyn set a date, he has to postpone it because Mum insists on taking him off somewhere.
‘What do you think?’ Daffyd asks June. ‘Just a natural sunflashed look, or should I add a third tone?’
‘She’s pretty pale-skinned. I’d go for the natural look.’
Excuse me, do I get a say in this? Isn’t it my hair? But they carry on regardless.
‘A little individual basket for each guest, with sugared almonds wrapped in tulle inside. That’s what the French do, you know.’
‘Will they understand that, in Bangor?’
‘It’s not the end of the world, June. Only Wales.’
‘Umm.’
‘Anyway, the whole problem is, she’s set her heart on silver and cerise. They already do the almonds in silver. But she’s been on the net trying to find a supplier who’ll do the cerise.’
‘Hmmm. Tell me, have you been biting these nails, Holly?’ cuts in June.
‘No. At least, not any more.’
‘I might have to go for extensions,’ says June. ‘Cut down maybe, so as not to look too obvious.’
‘No way!’ I exclaim. ‘I’m not going around with stuff glued to my fingers.’
‘Well, it would stop you biting them,’ she retorts.
I glare at her, and then Daffyd wants my head tipped back so I have to be content with glaring at the ceiling.
Wednesday 29th January Suite 6002,
The Royal Trocadero
When I wake up next morning my hair is all over the place. I try to smooth it down some with my hairbrush and that makes it worse.
I’m just hacking at some bits that are falling in my eyes when Mum rings and asks me to come up to her suite right away as she has something important to give me.
Give me? I wonder what it is?
I throw on my clothes and make my way up there.
‘Oh yes, I like the hair,’ she says as I enter the suite.
‘Do you? I’m not sure –’
But before I have a chance to continue she says, ‘Listen, babes. I know you were really disappointed we had to come back so soon from Paris. So I’ve got you a little present, to make up.’ She’s holding out a watch that looks a bit like a Swatch.
‘Oh, thanks, lovely. But you shouldn’t have, Mum. I’ve already got a watch.’
‘Not like this one, you haven’t.’
‘Errm no …’ Actually, no one at school is wearing Swatches any more.
‘You see this one has got a little bitsy chip in it which means wherever you go, you can be tracked on a compu—’
‘Tracked?’
‘Umm. On a computer. Isn’t it clever? So even if you did get kidnapped your mama could find you, just like that.’
‘Mum, you can’t mean this! You want to tag me, like some wild animal?!?’
‘Only because I want to keep my one and only baby safe.’
‘No way!’ (No way! My freedom, such as it is. Little forays, like my trip to Harrods, for instance, are important to me.)
So I go on at some length about my right to a degree of personal liberty. Like not being tagged like some violent and possibly perverted prisoner.
Mum pouts at this and says, ‘So if you won’t take a simple little precaution to please me …’
‘Mum, I’m always doing things to please you.’
‘Like what?’
She’s got me there. I can’t think of a single thing.
‘So what are you doing today? Couldn’t we do something together?’ I counter.
‘Well, my meeting’s been cancelled so I thought I’d spend the day at my health club having a body wrap and a de-stress massage. I think I can feel just the teensiest bit of tension coming on in my neck.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘Hollywood, babes – you could come with me and have one too.’
For your information, I do not fancy being wrapped in wet bandages soaked in mud or to have some person pummelling and stretching my naked body. For someone like me, with my least impressive measurement, it is just too humiliating.
‘No thanks. I might drop over and see Gi-Gi. She rang and said she hadn’t heard from you for ages and was everything all right.’
Mum puts on her wounded expression. ‘Well, if you’d prefer to be with your great-grandmother than your very own mother …’
‘It’s not that I’d prefer. I just don’t want to spend a boring day at the health –’
‘No, it’s OK. I understand. You do your own thing. I won’t mind spending the day on my own with no one to talk to.’
So I go over to Gi-Gi’s and invest some time in putting Thumper (who is gaining grams by the minute) through an intensive session on his circuit training course. The only problem is he will only go though each obstacle if I put a tempting morsel of sesame dumpling the other side, which kind of defeats the purpose.
When I get back that evening, Mum is in a post body-wrap state of relaxation. She’s laid out on her bed propped up by big fat satin cushions.
‘How was Gi-Gi?’ she asks sleepily.
‘Fine. She might kind of appreciate it if you dropped by.’
‘Vix. Send Gi-Gi some flowers,’ Mum calls out. ‘With a note. You’ll know what to say.’ She turns back to me with an angelic smile. ‘So it’s all settled, babes. Vix has been on to the agency and she’s got two teachers starting tomorrow. We’ll get the most important things sorted first.’
‘Two?’
‘Well, you can’t expect one teacher to know everything.’
‘No, I guess not. Tomorrow?’ Suddenly starting work doesn’t seem so totally urgent.
Thursday 30th January, 8.30 a.m.
Suite 6002, The Royal Trocadero
I wake to hear an odd clumping noise from the suite next door. And I roll over in bed. Then I remember what Daffyd’s done to my hair and I rush to the bathroom mirror to see if it’s still like it was yesterday.
It is. It’s hardly grown out at all. I just look so non-me. I tug at random shafts of multi-coloured hair. The bits I had a go at with the nail sissors are now sticking out straight, looking even more obvious.
When I get back to my room, I can hear more furniture moving sounds from the suite next to mine. There’s a communal door beween us and up until now it has been locked. Gingerly I turn the handle and to my surprise it opens and I come face to face with – a grand piano.
So that’s what they were doing, moving a piano in. I wonder who could possibly need a grand piano in his suite. Maybe some famous musician is going to be staying there and he’s going to have to practise. Something to tell Becky. Odd, though, that they’ve unlocked the door.
An hour later, just as I am
finishing my breakfast, there’s a brisk knock on the door in question.
‘Hello-oo,’ I try tentatively and the door swings open.
‘Could this be the suite of Miss Hollywood Bliss, by any chance?’
The voice is American. New York American. Leaning through the doorway is this big tubby guy with nice twinkly blue eyes and a totally shaven head set off by one earring.
I nod and swallow a lump of croissant.
‘Well, hello. I hope I haven’t interrupted your breakfast. Uh-huh, I have. Any coffee going?’
He doesn’t look much like a famous concert pianist. But these days you can never tell.
‘No. Yes. Sure, I think so. Though it may be a bit cold.’
‘I like my coffee cold, so be a star and pour me a cup and then we can start. I’m Jasper, by the way.’ And with that he goes next door and seats himself at the piano and plays three chords:
Thrumm … ‘Jasper.’ Thrrrummm … ‘Fernando.’ Thrrrumm … ‘Garcia.’ Thrumm te Thrumm … And I’m here to teach you, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘You’re my tutor?’
‘At your service.’
‘Oh, right. I better get my books.’
‘No books,’ he says. ‘Sit down and tell me all about yourself.’
‘What do you want to know?’ I put his coffee down on the piano and pull up a chair.
‘Errm. Well. Let me see. For a start. Can you sight-read? Have you any particular repertoire? Anything you’d like me to work on? Or shall we just start with a few scales?’
‘Hold it right there,’ I say. Suddenly I have a sinking feeling that Mum has her own ideas about my ‘education’. ‘What is it precisely you’ve been hired to teach me?’
‘Why, singing of course. Music theatre is my specialty. But I can do you the odd operatic aria if that’s your thing.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t think so.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘For a start I’m hopeless at singing.’
‘But surely with Kandhi for a mother, and if I’ve got my facts right Pete Winterman’s your father, jeez, you must have music running though your veins.’
‘Oh no, not me. I’m rubbish at music. I reckon I could even be tone deaf.’
‘No worries,’ says Jasper. ‘I’m telling you. I can teach anyone to sing. You should hear some of the cases that have been sent to me.’
He turns back to the piano and plays a note. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Sing that.’
I sing it.
‘Well, we’ve established one thing. You’re not tone-deaf, Hollywood. But we’re going to have to teach you how to breathe.’
I point out that I think I’ve managed pretty well so far, like since birth – but Jasper goes into a long rigmarole about how you have to learn a particular kind of breathing for professional singing.
‘But I don’t want to be a professional singer.’
‘You don’t?’ says Jasper. ‘What do you want to be?’
‘I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s not a singer. For a start I don’t want to be anything like Mum.’
Jasper cracks up at this.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘It’s just that I teach all these kids. And they idolise Kandhi. All of them are burning to be like her. To be megastar famous. They spend their whole lives working for auditions. And when they don’t get the parts it breaks their hearts. Practically kills them. But you say you simply don’t care?’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘Well, I think that’s wonderful. But I don’t know what we’re going to tell your mum. She’s set her heart on you learning to sing. Besides, Kandhi, she pays well. I need the money.’
‘You do?’
‘I do.’
‘Can’t you find anyone else to teach?’
‘Not at the rate Kandhi pays. The thing is, I’m flat broke. No, worse, I owe loads.’
‘I see.’
‘Umm.’
‘Maybe you could teach me something else?’
Jasper shakes his head.
‘All right, then, I guess I’ll give it a go. But just for a while. Until I go back to school.’
‘Right,’ says Jasper, swinging round on the piano stool. ‘Let’s get down to work.’
Friday 31st January, 11.30 a.m.
Suite 6002
I am standing in front of the mirror with my hand on my diaphragm, trying to push my hand out simply by breathing. I didn’t know lungs went down that far. Jasper says he reckons he can improve my range by at least half an octave. (See, I’m already mastering the jargon.) I decide to text Becky with the news.
are there any duets for
soprano and violin?
If so I’m booking the royal albert hall
for us next season.
HBWx
After that I check my voicemail. Vix has left a message to say that Mum and her whole team are out on location for the day and Tutor Two is arriving at 12.00 sharp.
I range my books into piles, wondering which subject Tutor Two will start on. I’m hoping it’s not maths because that ‘D– Please see me’ is not the ideal introduction to a new teacher.
Twelve o’clock comes and goes and nothing happens. I’m just about to ring down to reception and complain when a call comes through for me saying that someone is waiting for me in the ballroom.
‘The ballroom?’
‘Yes, Miss Winterman, she’s been there a full quarter of an hour.’
I take a stack of books and go up in the elevator. The ballroom is on the top floor. I make my way through the debris of last night’s ball – sad deflated balloons, wilting flowers and glasses full of cigarette butts – to find my new ‘Tutor’ standing waiting for me.
She’s in the centre of the ballroom floor doing some stretches. She’s dressed in a leotard and tights and legwarmers and has a little pink fluffy angora bolero wrapped round on top. Maths tutor most definitely NOT.
‘We’ll get the most important things sorted first.’ That’s what Mum has said. And I guess on her scale of one to 100, singing and dance must be way up top and schoolwork way down at the bottom. I mean, to quote her on geography: ‘If you want to know where somewhere is, you ask the way.’ Or history: ‘History, it’s all so passé.’
Tutor Two turns at that point and catches me standing there. She walks over with long swift steps.
‘Hollywood. I’m Stella. I thought you’d got lost. My goodness, yes. Lovely long legs.’
I dump my books on the floor. ‘Don’t tell me. My mum wants you to teach me … dance?’
‘Is something bothering you?’
‘I just thought … No, forget it.’
There’s no point in arguing. I might as well get on with it.
It takes us a while to get organised. Like, I have to go back down again and get kitted out in some Kandhi dancewear. But within half an hour or so I am standing mid-ballroom facing Stella with my feet in what she calls ‘first position’.
Stella is looking tall and straight and somehow impossibly relaxed at the same time while I’m looking tense and sticklike and I’m all legs and arms and feet. (Mostly feet.)
We start with some barre work and then Stella takes me through a couple of step routines. And I’m telling you this is absolutely nothing like school aerobics. I’m using muscles that have lain dormant since birth.
When I land up on the wrong foot for the fifth time, we pause.
‘I’m not much good, am I?’ I pant.
‘You’ll be fine. Just relax.’
‘Mum’s a really good dancer, isn’t she?’
‘She’s a natural mover. But she hasn’t got your height.’
‘Are you a proper dancer? I mean, like on the stage?’
‘On and off. I trained for ballet. But I guess I hadn’t got what it takes.’
‘But that’s impossible, you’re brilliant!’
‘Like hundreds of other girls. In ballet, even if you’re brilliant, there’s always someone a bit
more brilliant than you. Mostly, you have to settle for being in the troupe. I was in the back line.’
I stare at her. I mean, I’ve always taken success for granted. That some people naturally get to the top, like Mum had.
‘Well, you’ll be relieved to hear, the last thing I want to be is a dancer.’
‘It’s a pity, you’ve got the right body. And having a mum like yours could be an advantage.’
I shake my head. ‘Look at the way I move. My legs and arms and feet are all over the place.’
‘We can sort that out.’
‘I wish.’
‘Look,’ says Stella, glancing at her watch. ‘That’s all we’ve got time for today. You’re going to feel stiff in the morning, so do a few of those exercises we started off with and take a hot bath.’
I watch as she packs up her CDs and heads off.
‘I’ll be back the day after tomorrow,’ she says. ‘Don’t forget the stretches.’
The ballroom is silent after she’s left. It’s a vast room with mirrors all round and a glass ceiling that lets the sun through in a great shaft like a spotlight. I hang around for a while, making private surreptitious attempts to do one of those neat turns that Stella did with such ease, one leg thrown nonchalantly in the air.
Then as I turn I freeze in shock. I’ve caught sight of my reflection in one of the full-length mirrors. And for a split second, I take myself for Mum.
I stare at my reflection in its brightly coloured Kandhi dancewear. That’s what she’s doing, I realise. Mum – she’s turning me into another version of her. It’s like the ultimate in reinventing yourself. She’s turning me into a Kandhi clone.
6.00 p.m., the Penthouse Suite (facing Mum up with it)
I caught Mum alone for once while she soaked in the tub. She was up to the neck in Charles of the Ritz bath foam. It was puffing up all around her like little fluffy clouds.
‘So how do you like your tutors?’ she purred before I could get a word in.
‘They’re lovely but –’
‘You were lucky to get Jasper, he’s really in demand. He’s even done some of my backing tracks. Ages ago, of course, but –’