by Chloe Rayban
Rupert has been suspended. Life is SO NOT worth living. I know I shouldn’t say this, but right now, I actually think I hate Mum. One day, hopefully well before what Reverend Mother calls the ‘Day of Reckoning’, she will be forced to do penance for what she has done to me.
I lie in bed considering various options to register my revolt:
a) Not speaking to anyone ever again
b) Not eating or drinking anything ever again
c) Not leaving my suite ever again
I try the first for a good half hour and then I have to ring Gi-Gi to ask how Thumper is. So I have to amend a) somewhat.
a) Not speaking to anyone except Gi-Gi (and Karl, who happened to answer the phone).
Thumper is fine. Karl took him to the vet, who put him on a strict diet which does not include sesame dumplings (Thumper not Karl). (Though the diet might have been a good idea for Karl too.) He has lost two grammes.
I cancel my order from the breakfast menu and try b) for a good two hours. At around ten I amend b) to:
b) not eating or drinking anything except from the mini-bar: crisps, luxury salted cocktail nuts and orange juice, to be exact.
It is 10.30 and I have been staring at the ceiling for an hour. I reckon all my muscles are going to waste away if I don’t do something. So I amend c) too.
c) not leaving my suite unless it’s to go down to the leisure centre for a swim or maybe a jacuzzi or a sauna.
By lunchtime, I decide that my ‘revolt regime’ has been so watered down that it’s not worth continuing and I have a lunch of steak and chips and fruit salad.
I do not feel quite so bad towards Mum or sad about Rupert on a full stomach.
Saturday 15th March, 9.30 a.m.
Suite 6002
Everyone seems to have magically erased ‘my illicit afternoon out’ from their memory, as tonight is the world premiere of the Heatwave.
The only communication I have had from the ‘evil powers’ above is a total rundown on what I must wear for the occasion. Apparently, I have a seat next to Gi-Gi in the VIP area where the cameras will be trained (when not on stage) and I have to wear a particularly nauseous Kandhi Store top that has a kind of iridescent daisy on the front. I am hoping the Special Gala Event Programme will be big enough to hide it. I have not been able to verify this as the Special Gala Event Programme has had to go in for a Rush Unscheduled Reprint due to Mum changing her mind about her intro song.
8.00 p.m., Wembley Stadium, The Heatwave
I am with Gi-Gi in this room buried underneath the stalls in Wembley Stadium which I think must normally be reserved for royalty. You can tell because there’s a big royal crest stuck on the wall. The room is all lined with Tudor oak panelling and there are shelves stacked with sports trophies and loads of old black and white photos on the walls of football teams in strangely baggy shorts. This place is so steeped in football heritage I’m starting to wonder if we’ve turned up for the right event.
However, Mr Schwarz and Mike Dee are here and they’re drinking champagne in a little huddle with a load of other guys in suits who must be music promoters too ’cos they’re all looking kind of tense. And then there are the other people who, like Gi-Gi and me, must be relations of people who are performing with Mum.
As I look around, the one thing that strikes me is how incredibly normal they all are. I mean, you wonder how any of those nice permed mums and those dads dressed in their uncomfortably new-looking casuals could have given birth to the kind of guys who perform with Mum. I mean, most are so ultra-cool they’re scary. Like, they don’t even talk to ordinary mortals.
I’m keeping an eye on Gi-Gi, who’s way out of her depth – already looking flushed with the glass of champagne she’s drunk, or it may be the reflection of her Kandhi Klub Klassics which are making her a luminous shade of cerise. She’s having a one-to-one with the lady beside her about the problems of having a star in the family.
‘Of course, she never eats a proper meal …’ I can hear Gi-Gi saying confidentially.
‘It’s not what they eat that worries me,’ comes the response.
My attitude softens somewhat towards Mum as I wonder how she’s feeling right now. I know how important this is to her. Her whole future hinges on tonight. This is her chance to totally wipe what happened at the Grammys. It matters to Jasper as well. This could be a turning point for him. And to Vix and Daffyd and June, Thierry and Gervase, Sid and Abdul, because they could all be out of a job. And to Mr Dee and Mr Schwarz and everyone at DBS Records because they could lose all the millions they’ve invested. What if she louses up?
But Sit is with her. She’ll be doing a bit of last-minute meditation before she goes on, which should help. (Sit must be in his seventh heaven. Relinquishing all wordly pleasures! A fan who’s actually backstage at a real live event with the object of their fandom?)
But hang on, something’s happening. A uniformed usher is taking us upstairs. We’re being shown to our VIP seats.
As we emerge into the stadium we’re hit by a wall of sound like a fleet of jumbo jets landing on your head. Instinctively, Gi-Gi grabs my hand. She clings to me, tottering slightly. I’ve never seen such a crowd. We’re dwarfed by the size of it, deafened by it. I feel as if I’ve shrunk to the size of an ant, no, smaller, smaller than a minute grain of sand. I am just one grain in a great shifting mass of heaving life-forms. Gi-Gi is gazing speechlessly into the stadium. I drag her along until we collapse into our seats.
Suddenly there is an uneasy silence. There’s a bit of an intro and then the warm-up band is announced. They come on stage and fling themselves into their first song.
I glance at Gi-Gi. She’s looking on with disapproval.
‘They are not good, yes?’
They are pretty good actually. But I say they’re rubbish, to keep her happy. As we sit through their songs, I can feel my palms going damp with apprehension and my mouth going dry. At last the final chords of their last song fade out.
This is it.
A hush falls over the crowd. For a moment I think nothing is happening. But then I realise the lights are going down, very slowly. We reach almost total darkness. Nothing but the green Exit lights glowing. The fidgeting of the audience has stopped.
Silence. Respect. It’s as if everyone is holding their breath.
Then in the darkness a spotlight comes on to a tiny, lonely, single figure centre-stage. And I remember Jasper’s words the first time he described the song to me. It’s night and it’s creepy and there’s this girl all alone centre-stage and she’s homeless, she’s got nowhere to go, and there’s a single eerie spotlight on her …
And then, heart-piercingly, Mum’s voice: clear, pure and unaccompanied, delivers the first few bars.
Despite myself – despite the fact that I’ve heard the song countless times, despite the fact that this is my mum singing – I’ve come out in goosebumps and big shivers are going down my back. And then the backing thunders in, and the dancers leap into formation behind her.
Suddenly every single person in the stadium is on their feet. The crowd has turned into a great waving, seething turmoil of frenzied bodies, arms up in the air, waving to the beat.
Up on the big screen, I can see Mum’s face. She’s responding to the crowd. Absorbing their love. Relishing it. It’s running like electricity through her body and she’s dancing like she’s never danced before. Her body is slick with sweat, gleaming like an electric eel while those little glints of rhinestones are picking up the light and fracturing it into a million rainbows.
And then I glance back down on the stage. The other dancers have faded into the shadows. It’s just Mum again. A tiny figure. Dwarfed by the arena. A mere speck on the stage. And it is on this tiny speck that the entire attention of thousands of people, in fact, millions if you count the TV too, is focused.
At that moment, maybe for the first time in my life, I realise what Mum is all about. I’ve always played it down – her mega-fame thing. But when you’re cau
ght up in it, when you’re swept away by it, when you’re blown apart like I was right then – it’s like arriving at the bottom of the biggest big dipper ever. And there’s only one woman on earth who can do this … and she’s my mum.
Suddenly the song’s over. The last notes fade heartbreakingly away.
When the applause breaks it feels as if it is going to blow the stadium apart.
It’s the same for Mum, song after song. You can feel the audience aching with love for her. And she’s giving them everything she’s got.
She leaves a breathless silence as the final chord of her last song fades into nothingness. I’m left tingling all over with the emotion.
Then Mum coolly blows a kiss, turns on her heel and leaves the stage.
But the audience isn’t having it. They start chanting: ‘Kandhi! … Kandhi! … Kandhi! … Kandhi! … Kandhi! … Kandhi! … Kandhi … Kandhi …’
They want more. They’re begging for more. Feet are thundering on the ground. The chanting continues, growing faster and louder. I can see the organisers in a huddle. Some guy’s come out on stage trying to lull the crowd. But it makes no difference. There’s nothing else for it. They have to give in. They have to bring Mum back on.
As she walks to centre-stage the respectful silence that falls over the crowd is like a religious moment.
She gives them what they’ve been pleading for. She sings ‘Home is Where Your Heart is’ once again. If anything more emotionally than the time before.
As the last notes hang on the air I can see tears in the eyes of the people nearest to me.
And then I realise that this is what Mum lives for. This is love like love has never been. She has the love of millions. So much love you could fill a supertanker with it. She doesn’t need to be loved by any one individual. She doesn’t need Oliver’s love. She doesn’t need my love. A single person’s love is just one tiny drip in the whole ocean of love that’s engulfing her. So small it’s meaningless.
As this thought follows all the emotion that’s come before, I feel drained. I feel small. I feel like nothing. I realise that I’m nobody. Nobody that matters to Mum at any rate. I recognise, in a great wave of misery, that Mum doesn’t need me. I’m simply a nuisance to her.
Gi-Gi is pulling at my sleeve.
‘Is it over?’ she mouths against the blast furnace of applause.
I nod.
‘Hmm,’ says Gi-Gi in my ear. ‘No doubt it will all go to her head.’
I didn’t think I could face the stampede afterwards. There was bound to be a big party with Mr Dee and Mr Schwarz and everyone from the record company getting totally smashed and I’d feel so out of it.
‘You OK?’ asked Gi-Gi.
‘Are you tired, Gi-Gi?’
Gi-Gi squeezed my hand. ‘How’s about you and me, we go home and celebrate. These people, they make so much noise.’
So that’s what we did. Gi-Gi and Thumper and Karl and I celebrated curled up on Gi-Gi’s big comfy couch. We had poppy-seed marble cake and sweet Russian tea. And, in spite of the diet he was meant to be on, Thumper had his very own slice of poppy-seed marble cake.
Sunday 16th March
Flat 209, Hillview Mansions, Maida Vale
I stayed over at Gi-Gi’s. I guessed no one would really need me around on Sunday. Like, they’d all be recovering from the night before.
I was tired out, anyway. We hadn’t got home till way past midnight and then I found it hard to sleep my mind was racing so much.
I spent all Sunday making this huge ‘Congratulations’ card on Gi-Gi’s kitchen table. She’d managed to find glue and Christmas sparkly stuff and even some sequins, so it was quite a work of art.
When I got back to the Trocadero late that afternoon I crept up to Mum’s suite. Mum wasn’t around. I guessed she was still in bed resting. The suite was full to bursting. There were loads of flowers and cards and boxes and stuff piled up outside Mum’s bedroom door. I was just about to prop the card up on top of the pile when Mum’s bedroom door opened. But it wasn’t Mum who came out. It was Oliver.
‘What are you doing here?’ I gasped.
I mean, it was a pretty stupid question. Not that he was in his boxers or anything. But he wasn’t exactly overdressed. He had on Mum’s bathrobe over his trousers.
‘I could ask you the same thing. Come to borrow some shoes, maybe? Or were you checking as to who turned up for her lunch date?’
Maybe it was meant to be funny but it came out in a nasty sarky way. They’d obviously been talking about me behind my back.
‘I just wanted to say congratulations to Mum.’ I held out the card as proof.
Oliver took it in both hands. ‘Oh, a card! How nice. Oh, and you made it yourself?’
He was really talking down to me. Suddenly the card looked like the dumbest most childish thing ever. You could even see where the sequins had been stuck on – the glue was going brown around the edges.
‘It’s not important.’
‘Oh, but it is.’
‘No. It’s not.’ I tried to snatch the card back. The paper wasn’t that thick and it tore in two right across the front.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ I stormed.
‘What’s going on?’ Mum’s voice came from the bedroom behind Oliver.
‘It’s Hollywood. She’s got something for you.’
‘No I haven’t.’
‘It’s got torn but I think we could stick it back tog—’ started Oliver.
‘Why don’t you both stop treating me like some kid? And why don’t you leave my mother alone? She doesn’t care one bit about you. She only wants to be seen with you ’cos you’re famous.’
With that I stormed out of the suite.
Later that night Mum called down and said that I had to apologise to Oliver. I said I’d think about it. She said, ‘You do that.’
Monday 17th March, 10.00 a.m.
Suite 6002, The Royal Trocadero
I have not apologised to Oliver. In fact, I can now add that to the list of things I have not done.
a) Not apologising to Oliver
b) Not getting the Blahniks back
c) Not doing either of the two essays Rupert set me before he was suspended.
At the very thought of the essays I go into the deepest gloom. What’s the point in doing them if Rupert isn’t going to mark them? I might as well leave them till I get a new tutor.
And then I have another thought. Why do I need a new tutor? Now ‘the nasty threat thing’ is all done with, I could go back to school. With that thought I get out of bed, shower and dress and head up to see Mum.
Mum’s having a diary session with Vix. At least, Vix is reading from a list of journalists who want to do interviews with Mum and Mum is staring absent-mindedly out of the window saying, ‘Yes … no … maybe … I’ll think about it … tell them to call back …’
‘Mu-um?’
‘Yes, Hollywood? Can’t you see I’m busy?’ Mum’s tone is ominous. She obviously hasn’t forgiven me over the Oliver episode.
‘You don’t want me around – you don’t need me here – why can’t I go back to school?’ I say all in one breath.
‘School?’ says Mum, turning on me as if I’d suggested running away with the gypsies or going down the mines.
‘Yes. I mean, why not?’
‘School? What on earth can you mean, Hollywood – I don’t need you here?’
‘Well you don’t … do you?’
For an instant a brief flicker of indecision passes across Mum’s face.
Vix clears her throat and snaps her file shut. ‘Maybe we should do this later …’
‘No, don’t go, Vix. I won’t be a minute …’
Mum turns back to me and opens her arms. ‘Come here, Hollywood.’
Obediently, I go to her and snuggle up.
‘Now listen to me, babes. We may not always see eye to eye. I may get angry with you at times. But I’m always your mum and you’ll always be my baby. Right?’ Mu
m has this choked sound in her voice that shows she’s really sincere.
‘Re-ally?’ I can feel tears starting in my eyes.
‘Really. Now you put those silly ideas of yours about going back to school right out of your head. You hear me?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Come on, have a good blow. Vix! Tissues.’
Vix passes the box of tissues with a frown. I blow my nose.
‘Better?’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
I go back downstairs feeling loads better. See? Mum cares about me after all.
Tuesday 18th March, 9.00 a.m.
Suite 6002, The Royal Trocadero
‘Home is Where Your Heart is’ has gone straight to number one. It was confirmed by Mr Schwarz, who rang Vix this morning. In fact, virtually every channel I switch to on the TV this morning seems to be talking about Mum. They’re playing the new ‘Home is Where Your Heart is’ video on MTV, complete with Mum in her new ‘homemaker’ outfits. I switch to breakfast TV. Hang on, it’s Mum they’re interviewing.
Mum’s had a total change of image. The black has gone, she’s all in soft baby colours and, for the first time I’ve seen in my life, she’s actually wearing a skirt that covers her knees. The two commentators are doing the laughy-jokey-off-the-cuff bit and being all smarmy-flattery to Mum and she’s lapping it up.
‘So tell us a bit about your new hit, Kandhi.’
‘Well, I suppose you all know how “Home is Where Your Heart is” comes from this un-be-lievable musical by this really talented guy …’
Thanks, Mum. She’s doing a plug for Jasper. Isn’t that nice of her?
‘So are we going to be seeing this musical on stage?’
‘I can’t really say anything. It’s all in the air. Everything is moving so fast,’ says Mum. ‘Of course my life has totally changed recently.’
‘Yes, we hear you have your daughter living with you now?’ the interviewer is saying.
‘Oh yes, little Hollywood Bliss. You know, all those years of not being able to be with my very own child. That’s one of the hardest things to take about being a star.’ Mum has that sincere choked sound in her voice, like yesterday … ‘Believe me, I’ve suffered,’ she adds, looking away from the camera and biting her lip.