My Life So Far

by Chloe Rayban

  8.00 p.m.

  We’ve paddled back from the island with Brandy and the salmon. Mum and I are now well and truly hungry. Lunch seems like hours back. Grapefruit and salad, even with lots of nuts and seeds in it, doesn’t keep you going for long.

  We have collected a great big pile of brushwood and I’ve managed to hang the salmon above it by the ingenious use of a piece of bent metal. Brandy is watching all this with curiosity. It’s OK for him, he’s had a big bowl of dog food. When I opened the can it gave off the most delicious smell of rich beef stew. I nearly ate a spoonful. So you can see how hungry I was.

  ‘I reckon we could light the fire now,’ I say to Mum.

  ‘How long do you think it will take to smoke?’

  ‘Probably depends on the weight. It’s a pretty big fish.’

  ‘Oh my God! Guts!’ Mum exclaims with a sudden uncharacteristic bit of foresight.

  ‘What do you mean, guts?’

  ‘It’s got guts in it. I remember now from when I was a kid. You have to ask the fishmonger to take them out,’ says Mum.

  I stare at the fish. Hazy memories of my convent Biology lessons tell me she’s right – nothing can live without guts.

  8.30 p.m.

  As an aspiring vet, I can now claim to have had my first experience of surgery. The salmon came off worse – marginally. Mum went and sheltered in the cabin while I attacked it with a knife.

  The fish was full of horrible, slimy, slithery stuff which smelt disgusting. Even Brandy backed off a bit. But with tremendous strength of character I have performed the operation, buried the guts, and the salmon is now back suspended above the fire ready for smoking.

  ‘Can I come out now?’ asks Mum.

  ‘All clear.’

  It is a brilliant fire. The brushwood is really dry and the flames are soon licking up round the fish. We can hear it fizzling and crackling.

  ‘It’s smoking nicely,’ comments Mum.

  I say nothing but go and get plates and knives and forks and what is left of the salad.

  After about twenty minutes the fish is done. I take it down and carve it. It has beautiful pinky white flesh and not too many bones. I don’t let on to Mum that the fish isn’t smoked but cooked because I know she won’t eat it.

  When we finish our meal I give what is left of the fish to Brandy.

  Then I go out and join Mum. She is down by the lake lying on her back on the rock, staring up into the sky. The first bright star of the night, Venus, is just appearing above us.

  ‘I guess we don’t really have to leave first thing in the morning . . .’ she says dreamily.

  ‘You mean we can stay for one more day?’

  ‘Why not?’

  So that’s what we did. Each day we extended our stay by another day. Mum even managed to persuade Hal to haul himself off his bed at regular intervals and drive out with supplies. He’d kind of cottoned on to Mum’s diet thing and from somewhere he conjured up things unheard of in Pookhamsee – like parma ham and smoke-cured beef and sun-dried tomatoes.

  He was helpful too. I was carrying out the trash when he said, ‘I’ll take that for you if you like and dump it in town.’

  Monday 23rd June, 11.30 a.m.

  Paradise Lost

  Mum and I are sunbathing on our favourite beach on the island. The water is lapping against the rocks . . . birds are singing . . . I’ve never seen Mum so relaxed and happy.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ asks Mum sleepily.

  I listen. ‘Sounds like a car.’

  ‘More than one.’

  ‘Probably forest workers or something.’

  ‘Sounds like they’ve stopped at the cabin.

  They have. I can hear footsteps crunching down the path. There are figures moving on the jetty and some of them are pointing in our direction.

  ‘Oh my God!’ says Mum, covering herself up.

  I sit up too. ‘What’s going on?’

  There’s the sound of automatic cameras going off in the distance.

  ‘It’s the press,’ says Mum. ‘How on earth did they know where to find us?’

  2.30 p.m.

  Mum and I are in the four-by-four heading along the winding road down the mountain. Mum has her dark glasses on and is spitting fire.

  ‘Never, never let anyone get their hands on our garbage!’ Mum is saying.

  ‘But how was I to know? I thought he was just being kind.’

  ‘Every single scrap of trash has to be incinerated under supervision. And that’s after the paperwork has been through the shredder. Fans have been known to spend months collaging together as little as a cheque stub.’

  ‘But we can’t be sure it was Hal.’

  As we pass Pookhamsee General Store, Hal is leaning up against the doorway looking dead pleased with himself. Beside him is a big hand-painted sign. In wonky letters it says:

  POOKHAMSEE GENERAL STORE

  Suppliers to the stars

  KANDHI SHOPS HERE

  Mum settles her dark glasses more firmly on her nose and drives past, ignoring his frantic waving.

  Tuesday 24th June

  The Plaza Residenza

  Once back home I check my mobile. I find I have a text from Becky.

  Greetings from an ancient

  civilisation. Remember England?

  I’m up for Young Musician of the Year

  again.

  But don’t stand a chance on my

  current violin.

  anything happened about the donation?

  luv

  Becky x

  I’d better go check whether Mum’s donated to her charity list lately.

  I locate Vix in Mum’s office.

  ‘Yeah, she’s pretty up to date,’ she says. ‘She’s given to all the major disaster funds, art foundations, research organisations, the blind, the dumb, the deaf, the limbless and the legless . . .’

  ‘Did she send anything to someone called Becky Marchant? I put her on the list.’

  ‘Not that I know of. You’d better ask her.’

  Mum is going through her mail. It’s been already sorted by Vix so it’s mainly fan mail. This is a well-timed moment. Fan mail always puts her in a good mood.

  ‘Hi, babes! What is it?’ She offers a cheek for a mumsy kiss.

  ‘You know that friend of mine, Becky?’

  ‘The one at the convent? Yes.’

  ‘Well, she’s not at the convent any more. She’s at this special music school in London.’

  Mum is reading a letter written on pink paper with a smile on her face. ‘So?’

  ‘Well, she desperately needs a proper violin. Like a Stradivarius. And she can’t afford it.’

  ‘Hollywood,’ says Mum with a sigh, ‘I’m not made of money, you know. Besides, that sort of gift isn’t tax deductible.’

  ‘But you did buy Marlowe a ranch.’

  ‘Marlowe deserved it. Look what he did for me.’

  ‘But Mu-um! Becky really needs this violin. She’s up for a big competition and she doesn’t stand a chance without it. So I thought seeing as you’re always giving to deserving causes –’

  ‘All right, I’ll think about it. Now can Vix and I have a moment’s peace? We have a wedding to plan in case you’d forgotten.’

  ‘As if . . .’ whispers Vix, rolling her eyes.

  It seems that in our absence Vix has hired a wedding planner. A wise move. With her attitude to marriage she could well overlook something vital, like the preacher or something.

  Our wedding planner is called Victor. He’s told Mum not to worry about the teensiest little thing – he’s in charge, it’s all being taken care of. Vix had not anticipated that she would be expected to work for Victor, doing menial tasks like looking after the guest list. Naturally, she is SO NOT happy with this.

  The plan is to have the wedding way up in the Hollywood Hills in the garden of a private house. An old friend of Mum’s, Elwyn Jones, has offered his home.

  ‘Elwyn Jones!’ I exclaimed when I hea
rd.

  ‘Yes, babes, it’ll be nice for you to meet up with your godfather.’

  ‘I didn’t even know I had a godfather.’ (This must date back to one of Mum’s Christian phases.)

  ‘You had several. We stars do these things for each other. But Elwyn is the only one whose fame has really lasted. The others just kind of faded away.’

  Elwyn Jones! I’d seen some old video footage of him when he was at the height of his punk phase. He had a red, white and blue Mohican and wore a skirt. Cool! Some godfather!

  ‘Elwyn’s place is totally isolated,’ Mum continued. ‘Not overlooked from anywhere. A really romantic secretrendezvous, just big enough for my dearest and closest friends.’

  She turned to Vix. ‘So how are you getting on with the guest list?’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve given me a big enough budget to get all of them. Roma Sheriton is trying to push us up another thousand.’

  ‘Mum, you don’t mean to say you’re paying people to come to your wedding?’

  Mum pouted. ‘It’s really the only way to ensure you get the A-list. Honestly Holly, we don’t want to be stuck with a load of nobodies.’

  ‘But how are you going to keep it secret if you’ve got all these people coming?’

  ‘Don’t you worry your little head about it,’ said Victor. ‘No one’s going to be told the actual venue until the very last minute.’

  Victor picked up a pile of his papers and swept out of the room.

  ‘It’s a logistics nightmare,’ muttered Vix as he left. ‘I’m already having to do a daily traffic survey by helicopter just to fix the timings. Not to mention the weather . . .’

  ‘What about Oliver’s guests? Won’t they be coming from England?’ I asked.

  ‘Oliver doesn’t need guests,’ said Mum. ‘He’d only want to ask a load of those frumpy old relations of his, who’d ruin the photos.’

  ‘But Mum, you can’t just have young and beautiful people. I mean, you are going to ask Gi-Gi, aren’t you?’

  ‘She’ll have to stand at the back, but of course . . .’

  And then I had a sudden thought. ‘And what about your mum? Anna?’

  Mum put on her ‘tragic abandoned’ expression. ‘I don’t think she’d want to come.’

  ‘But you ought to invite her all the same. She is your mother.’

  ‘She never made it to any of my other weddings,’ said Mum.

  ‘She might’ve done, if she’d known they were on,’ muttered Vix.

  (Perhaps I ought to explain here. Mum’s mum – my grandmother, Anastasia – abandoned Mum when she was a baby. She went off with the orange people – ‘all shaven heads and sandals’, as Mum puts it. Mum says that, according to her analyst, she has been deeply scarred by this.)

  ‘The next thing you’ll want is for me to invite your father,’ said Mum.

  ‘Yes, why not invite all your exes? We could charter a jumbo,’ said Vix.

  I frowned at her. Vix could have been more supportive.

  ‘Well, there’s no need to put Dad’s name on the list. He wouldn’t want to come. He loathes this sort of thing.’

  Wednesday 25th June, 8.00 a.m.

  The Plaza Residenza

  Mum has taken to making unscheduled visits to my bedroom since our great bonding trip. (There are downsides to having a loving mother.) On this particular morning she breaks into a very important dream in which I’m a really famous vet anaesthetising a race horse, and greets me with the news that Shug’s new single has risen to Number 19 in the singles charts.

  ‘So what?’ I say as I turn over.

  ‘I thought you’d be interested, that’s all.’

  ‘I can’t see why you’re his biggest fan all of a sudden.’

  ‘He’s Oliver’s son, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Ugghh! How could I?’

  ‘And his father’s very fond of him.’

  ‘Yeah, I wonder how many millions of copies he bought of that sad little single?’ With that I pull the covers over my head and try to get back to sleep.

  Later, when I go and get my breakfast and carry it back to the salon, I have my peace shattered by Mum turning on the radio.

  After a few bands, the first chords of ‘Grab-Machine’ ring out and Mum turns the volume up. She’s humming and tapping her fingers to the beat.

  I’m seething. Mum’s seems to have totally wiped Shug’s past behaviour. Now he’s going to be official stepson it seems he can do no wrong.

  In the shower I find the dumb tune is running through my head. Ugghh!

  Later, when I turn on my TV, I find Contrôle Technique’s on live. Shug’s wearing this skin-tight T-shirt to give us all the treat of seeing his pecs, and he’s wiggling his body round like it’s the best bit of male flesh in the entire universe. What an ego-tripper! But the girls down below dancing in the front are lapping it up. They’re waving their arms to the beat. If they get any closer, they’ll get trodden on.

  As soon as I turn off the TV I find I have a text from Becky:

  Disaster!

  William has gone off with first flute

  E> broken

  Bx

  Well, what did she expect? Boy-hopping never works out. I reply with the classic:

  rejection is character-building

  HBWx

  Almost immediately I get back the answer

  b*ll*cks

  B

  Thursday 26th June onwards

  The Plaza Residenza

  Be warned: absolutely nothing is going to happen from now on apart from wedding preparations.

  (PLUS ‘Grab-Machine’ slowly rising up the charts – uggh-grrr!)

  Friday 27th June, 9.00 a.m.

  The Plaza Residenza

  Vix announces that the ‘hardware’ has arrived from Tiffany. These are two platinum bands, identical except for size, set with Mum and Oliver’s birthstones and engraved with their star signs, their blood groups and their names in Sanskrit.

  Why Sanskrit? Apparently it’s the in-language this year.

  (‘Grab-Machine’ is at Number 17.)

  Saturday 28th June, 12.00 noon

  Mum and Victor are having a lunch meeting. I join them at the table. Nobody acknowledges my presence – they’re far too busy to notice me. I manage to grab some salad as it’s passed.

  Mum is interrogating Victor about The Cake.

  ‘I’ve been on to all known caterers in LA and found two who can do a ten-tier, but they’re not so happy with the music bit.’

  ‘Tell them to get on to Panasonic to put their sound engineers on the case,’ says Mum. ‘Doesn’t matter how much it costs.’

  ‘What music bit?’ I ask.

  Mum and Victor pause and realise I exist.

  ‘It’s a big secret,’ says Victor, lowering his voice as if the walls are going to hear or something. ‘You’ve got to promise not to tell a soul.’

  ‘Victor’s had this stroke of genius,’ says Mum. ‘When Oliver and I cut the cake, it’s going to play “Kandidly Yours”.

  Out of all my singles, it’s Oliver’s favourite.’

  Vix rolls her eyes at me from behind Victor’s back, but I do not respond. I reckon this could make a truly romantic moment.

  Sunday 29th June, 10.00 a.m.

  The Plaza Residenza

  Victor has put in an order for 30,000 Kandhi roses to be airfreighted over from Europe. It’s a rose that was named after Mum at this massive flower show in Chelsea, London – they don’t grow them in the States yet. Apparently to get them all to bloom on the right day they have to put acres of greenhouses into a mini eco-climate with timed misting and artificial daylight.

  (‘Grab-Machine’ is at Number 16.)

  Monday 30th June, 12.00 noon

  The Plaza Residenza

  The first wedding gifts have started to arrive. I am allowed to unwrap them as long as I keep the cards really carefully so that Vix can send personal handwritten thank yous from Mum.

  The first parcel
I open is a set of sheets and pillowcases from Fortnum and Mason in London. They’re in ivory satin with a deep blue embroidered monogram.

  It’s a pity about Oliver and Mum’s initials. Having OK written on all your satin pillowcases kind of brings the tone down.

  The second is an item so weird that I have to read the accompanying literature to make out what it is. It’s a platinum-coated candle-snuffer, guaranteed to snuff out candles without endangering your health by inhalation of noxious substances or the risk of Repetitive Strain Injury. I guess some people must snuff an awful lot of candles.

  (‘Grab-Machine’ seems stuck at Number 16. Huh!)

  Tuesday 1st July, 8.00 a.m.

  The Plaza Residenza

  Chaos! Gi-Gi has announced that she has managed to persuade the choir from the Russian Orthodox Church in Maida Vale to sing at Mum’s wedding. I think Gi-Gi is under the impression the wedding is going to be a full-blown church affair, not an excuse for a lavish and horribly expensive party in a garden.

  Mum is SO-OO not happy about this. She and Victor have already planned the music. There’s going to be a medley of her early hits transcribed for organ as she makes her entrance. This will be followed by a truly emotional bit. Just as Mum and Oliver exchange rings, an entire string orchestra is going to rise from behind the rhododendrons on a motorised dais and provide the backing for Mum to sing ‘Only You’ (Platinum, 1998) to Oliver. Then, of course, there’ll be ‘Kandidly Yours’ as they cut the cake.

  A Russian choir is SO NOT going to fit in with their scheme of things.

  Vix has been put on to the job of explaining tactfully to Gi-Gi that a Russian choir is going to be around fifty voices too many. Mum’s is the only voice she wants at her wedding.

  Gi-Gi is so shocked by this news that she says she won’t come. So I guess she’ll have to see the wedding later on video like all the other relations Mum says she can’t fit in the garden.