by Jenny Colgan
Philly started talking to me as if I was really thick. ‘Well, you’ve been in the paper. Now there’s a whole career out there for you. Tearful interview with OK! Follow-up confessional in Mail on Sunday, triumphant appearance on I’m a Celebrity, a book deal, then Dancing on Ice . . .’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Stop being an idiot,’ said Philly, exasperated. ‘Something happened to you. You’re a commodity. There’s money to be made. From you. Uh, I mean, for you.’
I stared into the middle distance, chopsticks halfway to my mouth. ‘You mean . . . what, tell my tragic story, whore myself out to the media.’
‘If you lost some weight,’ said Philly pointedly, ‘you could do some modelling shoots too. They can do a lot with air-brushing these days. A lot.’
I ignored this. ‘So, I have to give lots of sobbing interviews about losing my dad and all my money and then everyone feels sorry for me and gives me money and stuff?’
‘That’s kind of how it works.’
‘Then I could get to be a Z-list celeb like those desperate horrors that clutter up charity balls that we always laugh at because they’re so desperate to get photographed they spend all night sidling up to an ex-game show host?’
‘Everyone wants to be a celebrity,’ said Philly huffily. ‘What makes you so special?’
‘So by trading in my own misery I could make a better living?’
‘Ironic, don’t you think?’ said Carena.
‘All jobs are like that,’ said Philly dismissively.
‘And you get, what?’
‘Twenty per cent,’ said Philly.
That was it. That was the last straw. I stood up.
‘You two,’ I said. ‘You are just disgusting. All of you. Pointless, desperate, leeches. You -’ I pointed at Carena - ‘steal a man off someone else and are too pathetic even to make up with her properly. And you -’ I pointed to Philly - ‘are just a pimp. And you just spent hundreds of pounds on a meal you didn’t eat, didn’t enjoy, and if you had eaten it would have spent half an hour in the toilets trying to vomit it up again. You are completely pathetic.’
I felt better.
‘Oh, and thanks for lunch. If you could let go of your terrible self-hatred for a minute, you’d see it was absolutely delicious.’
They sat there, not saying anything.
The waiter came over. Madly I thought he was about to congratulate me on telling those witches a thing or two.
‘Would you,’ he said discreetly, ‘like me to bag some of this up for you to take home?’
Feeling slightly sick, I boarded the bus home. Somehow I’d become completely oblivious to the noise of the children, and I quite liked the chatter of the pensioners. It was comforting, the way they worried about the price of potatoes and talked about their grandchildren. It was a relief to get to the flat.
‘They want you to do what?’ Cal said, when I told him about lunch.
‘I’m not sure exactly. Do interviews. Get my photo taken looking sad. It doesn’t matter anyway.’
‘What for?’
Cal had been, unusually for him, alone in the kitchen when I got back, and had enquired why I didn’t want dinner (pie and mash by the looks of things). I’d ended up telling him everything then, when Eck wandered in, telling it again.
‘Everyone wants to be famous, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’ said Cal.
‘Well, look at you,’ said Eck. ‘You think you’re a rock star.’
‘I’m an artist,’ said Cal. ‘That’s different.’
‘So if Damien Hirst invited you down the Groucho Club to get paparazzied you wouldn’t go?’
‘Well, that’s different.’
‘How?’
‘It’s different if you were famous for painting magnificent work or building superb sculptures or being the next person to do the Turbine Hall. But for . . . what, for a bit of bad luck that happened to you . . . surely that’s just embarrassing.’
‘It wasn’t “a bit of bad luck”,’ I grumbled. ‘My life is in total ruins. And with everything that’s happened to me I’m kind of beyond embarrassment. But I really, really need cash.’
‘Well, why don’t you put on a basque and parade up Shepherd’s Market?’
For fuck’s sake, Cal always had to cheapen everything.
‘That’s different.’
‘What, selling yourself?’
‘OK, maybe I don’t want any more advice from men who like to call me a whore.’
Cal rolled his eyes and went back to his dinner.
‘I think it’s quite a good idea,’ said Eck. ‘Get your picture in the paper, get back into that world where you belong. Plus, you’ll have everything on record if you manage to sue for your money back.’
‘Sue what?’ I said. ‘The world recession?’ Although there was still a tiny, tiny flicker at the back of my mind that suspected Gail had possibly stolen all the money. No. It wasn’t possible. Of course not. Just wishful thinking.
‘I mean, what would they make you do?’ said Eck, trying to pour oil on troubled waters as usual.
‘Knowing Philly, probably the most embarrassing things possible,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, I told them all to piss off.’
‘Well, how bad could it be?’ said Eck. ‘I think you should give it a shot.’
‘Not in a million years,’ I said.
‘OK,’ said Eck. ‘Oh, by the way, I hate to do this to you. But the electricity bill’s come in.’
I picked it up. I couldn’t believe how much it was for.
‘Christ,’ I said. I turned to Cal. ‘Are you running a full-on aquarium up there for all your exotic animals?’
‘Yes, but it’s solar powered,’ he said lazily.
‘I can’t afford this.’ I looked at Eck in a pleading way.
‘We’re all on loans, Sophie,’ said Eck. ‘None of us can. We all have to chip in, that’s how it has to work.’
‘I know,’ I said, feeling my stomach turn over sadly. I trudged to the kitchen cabinet. ‘I’ll get the mop out.’
Eck looked awkward. ‘And the windows could do with a wash.’
And it was perching outside, precipitously high in a howling gale, desperately scrubbing at a smeary window with a piece of newspaper with my face on it that I found myself thinking, Could Philly’s proposition really be worse than this?
Yes, as it turned out. Much.
Chapter Fourteen
There are moments in life when you wonder whether you aren’t the punchline of some enormous galactic joke. That, in fact, the whole universe is having an enormous laugh at your expense. That your very existence is part of a bet two aliens are having to see how much unbelievable humiliation one human body can put up with before it actually spontaneously combusts in an orgy of embarrassment. That must be it, I was thinking to myself. That must be why I kept getting myself into these situations. Surely it couldn’t all be my fault . . .
‘Yeah, move a bit, to the right, that’s right. Lift that left tit up . . . gorgeous.’
Julius was squinting at me from behind the lens. Yes. At me. It had been a month since my sashimi lunch with Carena and Philly. A very, very long month.
‘You scrub up all right you do. Course I prefer more than a handful, but that’s me, innit.’
I grunted in response. I didn’t want Julius talking to me really. Didn’t want any reminder of where I actually was right now - half naked in a draughty lock-up garage in south London. Selling myself. The thing I really, really hadn’t meant to do. I felt the colour rise to my cheeks again.
‘That’s lovely, bit of a flush, pretty, nice, nice . . .’
I did my best not to cry.
‘You can still see a bit of chunky fat around the side,’ yelled Philly from the far side of the studio, where she was also hollering down the phone at someone from a newspaper. ‘Well, that’s a ridiculous sum, Jeremy, no point to us, we’ve got the broad-sheets breathing down our necks . . . can’t
you hoik that left tit up a bit more? She looks like some old rock star’s wife.’
‘Yeah, I’ll just get my invisible tit-hoikers, you daft cow,’ said Julius, quietly.
I’d been so desperate. So desperate. I couldn’t eat another bean. I’d had horrible, seriously threatening letters from the council tax people, and I’d been turned down for housing benefit, on the grounds of actually trying to work for a living. I’d eaten humble pie. I hadn’t even had any phone credit, I’d had to phone Philly from a phone box. She was delighted.
Of course, it hadn’t been anything like what she had said it would be. There had been no sympathetic newspaper spreads; no kind interviews, or the media picking up an investigative torch on my behalf. It hadn’t been like that at all.
Although after the Daily Post feature I had received a letter in a slightly creased envelope. Inside was a card with a picture of a kitten wearing a hat and, in badly written English, a note. Dear Sophie, it said. Sorry I has no been in touch with you. Things were hard. Your stepmother was very sad. I hope you are no too sad also. You’re Friend, Esperanza. There was also a cheque for twenty pounds. I’d sat down at the kitchen table, holding it in my hands. I bought her granddaughter a dress and sent it back. It soothed the pain a little.
But after that, nothing, except a couple of weekly magazines that said, actually, if I didn’t have a disabled baby whom I’d given up for adoption, whom I’d met when grown up and then accidentally fallen in love with, they weren’t that interested. Finally, Philly took a call from a magazine who said if I could lose some weight their readers might be interested in seeing me with just a bikini top on, which wasn’t topless, after all.
She was delighted. ‘It’s the big time!’ she yelled down the telephone. I winced. Grace and Kelly thought it was the big time too. It wasn’t really what I’d dreamed of when I thought of the big time. In my wildest fantasies I’d imagined Vogue doing a photoshoot with me where they dressed me up in lovely clothes again. Taking my clothes off for a men’s mag? Absolutely no way. Definitely, absolutely not. I would rather drink non-brand-name bleach than put on a bikini and . . .
Then she told me how much they were paying. It was the difference . . . I mean, it was everything. Rent arrears, bills, some credit for my phone. It was money I didn’t really see any other way of getting. It was . . . well. I didn’t have much choice. It was wretched.
Two days earlier I had been walking home with Eck. He’d got in the habit of turning up on his way home from college and walking me home from the studio. I sighed.
‘How are you feeling?’ asked Eck.
‘I know,’ I said, ‘that Grace and Kelly do it every day. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. I’ve had such a cruddy day.’
‘Did you never have cruddy days before? I don’t know - fire at the gold and diamonds factory?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘Actually, no. It was all right. So, change the subject. How are you?’
Eck didn’t look that happy either, come to think about it.
‘The show is going really badly. I don’t know. The last couple of months, I’ve really lost my appetite for this art thing. I don’t know why. Find myself dreaming of the old nine-to-five. Mad. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’ll be fine. Let’s talk about nice things, like bunnies and kittens and stuff.’
I sighed again, thinking about the shoot. At least they’d agreed to let Julius do it.
‘You know, it won’t be that bad,’ said Eck. ‘I mean, people like that Isabella Hervey do them. Not that I would ever know or have ever seen them or anything like that, never, not ever no. Once, by mistake, at the dentist.’
‘You saw Isabella Hervey in a bikini at a dentist’s?’
‘Or it might have been very strong painkillers they were giving me.’
I kicked a stone on the pavement.
‘Have you spoken to your stepmother again?’ he asked, more gently.
‘No!’ I said. ‘I’m . . .’ I felt so safe with Eck, like I could tell the truth. ‘I’m frightened. She was my last hope.’
Eck punched me awkwardly on the shoulder in that boyish way of his. ‘She’s not. Never lose hope, Sophie.’
It was Esperanza who’d managed to track her down for me. I don’t know what I would have done without her. It turned out my stepmother was living in a rented mansion flat in Battersea. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. Maybe she was lying low until the lawyers went away. I squeezed myself into my old Max Mara suit and took the bus to Battersea Rise.
I was incredibly nervous. This was a woman I’d dedicated most of my life to ignoring, sneering at, answering back to. The one I was never going to let in my life. And now, she held the only key to anything that was left.
Her voice on the intercom sounded nervous and querulous. There was a long pause when I announced myself. I thought for a moment she wasn’t going to buzz me up at all. But she did.
The hall smelled of lavender, and small dogs. Fake flowers covered the surfaces and the mailboxes were grey with dust. The lift was tiny and dark and I followed the signs to the fifth floor. The door was on the latch. I knocked, tentatively, then entered.
Gail’s flat was tiny. Two strides would take you to the kitchenette. Two other doors led off the minute corridor; obviously bedroom and bathroom. Into the space she’d tried to shoehorn some ornaments from the old house - a large stuffed kestrel my father had liked (God knows why), an ornate vase; but the effect was a bit overcrowded and spooky. There wasn’t much light in the flat, and the carpet had a horribly swirly print which made my eyes prickle.
She was sitting in the corner. Having always looked so soft and young and slim and nothing like being in her mid-forties now, it was as if her face had just collapsed into middle-age. She was painfully, pitiably thin, with long grooves running down her face, right down the middle of her cheeks. I felt sorry for her at once. Sorry for her, and sorry for myself; that there would always be a gulf between us, and that I had not only dug it but maintained it.
‘Hello, Sophie,’ she said, getting up, her face kind. I felt like we were two old opponents in a war neither of us could remember the reason for.
‘Hello,’ I said, stepping towards her, but we didn’t touch. ‘Would you like me to make some tea?’
Her eyebrows lifted. I rolled my eyes. ‘I know how to make tea,’ I said.
‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘I never doubted it for an instant.’
I half-smiled and headed towards the kettle. Before I got there, however, I turned round. There was something I really, really had to say. That I should have said a long time ago, before it corroded everything.
‘Gail,’ I said. ‘I’m really, really—’ But before I could get the word out, Gail’s face collapsed. It looked like it was melting into grief, the tears running down the grooves already marked in her cheeks.
‘Oh, Sophie!’ she said. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
I knelt down by her chair.
‘What do you mean?’ I said, as she sobbed. ‘Why are you sorry? I want to say sorry to you!’
‘No,’ she said. ‘How could I turn you out of your home like that? I thought it’s what your dad wanted . . . please, please believe me, I had no idea, no idea at all about the situation. ’
I glanced around the mean little apartment again.
‘I believe you,’ I said, exhaling a long breath. My last hopes - that she had sneakily done a runner, and held some back for me - had pretty much dissolved in the scent of the dusty hallway.
‘If I had known,’ she said, ‘I would have stuffed your pockets with every diamond in the house. Everything. All of it.’ She hid her face in her hands.
‘They took all of it?’
‘Everything. I’d put it all in the safe just as I was meant to . . . I wanted to protect your inheritance, Sophie. I knew you didn’t trust me or like me, so I wanted to have everything accounted for properly.’
‘And they took it all.’
‘I’m such an idiot.�
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I couldn’t think of what to say to that.
‘Do you take sugar?’ I asked, finally, aware that I should probably have known.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just milk.’
She took the tea and heaved a sigh.
‘I mean, I’ve been poor before, but it’s so much harder for you . . . I can pick myself up again, I’ve done it before.’
‘I can do it too!’ I said, stung.
‘Can you? Can you, Sophie?’