Dream Machine

by Will Davis

  ‘So, what’s your name then?’ says the girl next to me in a thick Scouser accent, making me jump because I was completely lost in thought. She’s got very pointed features, crimped brown hair and an expression that’s quite scary because it looks so determined. Her skin is a blatant solarium job, which Rita despises because she says it gives you prematurely aged skin and looks like you’ve eaten nothing but carrots. You can see the first few lines around her eyes already I note, kind of like Geri Halliwell had back before she did the surgery.

  ‘Ella,’ I say, trying to sound relaxed and confident. I remind myself of a mouse, puffing itself out to seem big in front of a cat.

  ‘Hi Ella, I’m Valerie. Nice to meet you!’ says the girl loudly. ‘Your song the other week was wicked! Loved it, loved it, loved it!’

  ‘Thanks . . .’ I say. ‘Yours was good too. Really good.’

  Her smile widens and she seems to be waiting for more. But I don’t know what else there is to say, because the truth is I was so nervous I don’t actually remember anyone else’s song, apart from Joni’s, which stood out because she didn’t have any music. When it becomes clear to Valerie I’m not going to say anything else about how brilliant she was, she simply turns away and starts talking to the girl on her other side. Right away I feel stupid, because whenever I speak to people I don’t know I always become all tongue-tied and start acting like I’m autistic. No wonder at school all the girls treat me like I’m a mutant and avoid me like they think it’s catching.

  I’ve been absolutely dreading what it’s going to be like staying in a house with six other girls. We’re all in a dormitory together and have to share this one big bathroom, and I’m just terrified of what’ll happen once the lights are switched off. I’ve never even been to a slumber party before. When the camera crew came this morning they seemed surprised that I didn’t have any friends there to cheer me on. Luckily I had Mimi instead, who made up for it by practically dying with pleasure at the chance to be in front of the camera. When they interviewed her she told them she was my biggest fan and she and her friends all think I have an amazing voice, which is complete BS since when I practise for choir she always complains of a headache. But she’s U-turned since I got through, and for the last two weeks has acted like I’m a celebrity. It’s weird to think that there’s a possibility that one day very soon it might even be true. That there’s a one in seven chance I’ll actually win this and go on to become the new member of Purrfect. One thing’s for sure: if that does happen I won’t be ignored and avoided everywhere I go. But I can’t think about it, because when I do it makes my head spin and my mouth go dry like I’ve just run a marathon.

  The double doors to the studio burst open. The girls all immediately stop talking as Tess, Joe and Emma enter, all carrying big black folders and looking very, very serious, like they’re attending an execution. A lurch of my bladder tells me I need the loo, but there’s no way I can go now so I clamp my legs shut as tight as I can. Tess is dressed in a plain black suit with tapering sleeves, which I’ve seen in House of Fraser and which she bulges out of in all the wrong places like a fat rag doll that’s leaking its stuffing. Emma’s blonde hair is pulled back tightly into a bun, and she’s wearing a brown pencil skirt topped with a sugar-pink silk shirt that’s got to be Red Label. Joe is dressed in an Armani vest and combats topped with green shades, looking like a cross between a soldier and a tourist. With a grand sweeping gesture of hello, Tess lifts her folder and opens it up.

  ‘Good evening, ladies!’ she barks. We all chorus good evening back and she peers around the half circle like she’s appraising the pathetic maggots she’s got to train up.

  ‘Congratulations to all of you for getting through,’ she continues in a voice that couldn’t sound less like she means it. ‘We have selected you from hundreds of other wannabe singers, and that means you are all talented and all have the potential to become the new Purrfect girl.’

  Next to me Valerie starts to clap and Joni lets out a whoop. Tess silences them immediately by raising a hand, rather like Hitler in one of those fuzzy black-and-white video clips we have to watch in History class.

  ‘However,’ she barks, ‘only one of you will become that girl. The rest will return home and back to whoever they were before, be it studying for exams or stacking the shelves in Tesco’s. This contest is not about losers. The stakes are high, girls, and the winner takes all.’

  She swivels her head slowly round the semi-circle, giving each one of us a penetrating look, like she wants us to know from now on she’s always going to be watching. When she looks at me I get a lump in my throat and can’t stop myself from gulping. She’s much scarier than any teacher, even more so close up than when she was sitting in the audience. Luckily at this point Joe steps forward with his folder and takes over.

  ‘The next six weeks are going to be very exciting,’ he reads. ‘You will work with some of the best choreographers, singing coaches and image consultants in the industry. No expense has been spared on this chance to find the new member for one of the most successful girl bands ever to storm the UK charts. Those of you who make it through to the final round will be met and judged by none other than Purrfect themselves.’

  There is an intake of breath from all around. I imagine myself shaking hands with Saffron, being so close to the lead vocalist of ‘My Heart Is Not Your Toy’ that I can smell her scent. I imagine this connection we will have as our eyes meet. How they will see me and know, just know, that I am one of them. It’s a nice fantasy.

  ‘Over the next six weeks you will face many obstacles and challenges. It will be hard work, the hardest you have ever done, and at the end of each week, those not up to scratch will be eliminated.’

  Joe bows his head like a reverend at the end of a funeral, and Emma clears her throat and opens up her folder.

  ‘Next Saturday night, you will face your first challenge,’ she says. ‘This will be a dance routine you will have been working on as a group with Patty Lion, our in-house choreographer. You will also be individually performing songs with expert vocal coach Edgar Hall. On Saturday the songs will be performed in front of an invited audience who will vote for their favourite. The girl with the most votes will get a free pass into the next round. Out of the remaining girls, the panel will then decide whose performance showed the least potential. At the end of this week, one of you will be going home.’

  Her last words chill me to the bone. One of you will be going home. It sounds like a death sentence. Emma raises her head and stares straight out in front of her, like she cannot bear to look at us having conveyed this horrible news.

  Tess slips her folder under her arm and sets her mouth in a big smile. Unfortunately she’s got one of those mouths that can’t really smile, that’s obviously so used to pursing and sneering that it’s no longer able to express things like love and joy. She looks like a shark opening its mouth in order to bite off a pair of dangling legs.

  ‘Right everybody,’ she says through her teeth. ‘I expect you’re all very tired and ready for bed. Tomorrow you’ll be given your songs and then you will get straight to work on them. But before we let you go we’ve got a treat for you. A special preview of the first episode of The Purrfect Search before it’s broadcast on Friday.’

  Everyone gasps. But in the pit of my stomach there’s another sudden sinking sensation. It’s similar to how I felt when I first had to go into the room in front of the panel two weeks ago. The studio doors open and two men in black wheel a huge portable widescreen TV into the room. Tess nods to one of the men and he switches it on.

  On screen up come all these shots of London, bright flashing lights and billboards with the girls from Purrfect on them, all pointing and a speech bubble coming out of their mouths saying ‘Do you have what it takes to be a Purrfect girl?’ Over the top is music. It’s Purrfect’s first number one, ‘I Want to be Purrfect’ – the one with the angry dance beat. The girls around me start cheering, but they quickly quieten down when a lon
g shot of the music studio where we went for the first day of auditions appears. As the camera moves up the endless queue of girls lining up for the chance to sing before the panel, there are several shrieks as some of the girls recognise themselves. ‘Hundreds of girls are here today to find out if they have what it takes to become part of one of the most successful girl bands the UK has produced,’ announces a woman’s voice, which I recognise right away as belonging to Stina Ellis. ‘Only seven girls will be selected, to enter a house in which they will battle it out until just one is left standing, to become the new member of Purrfect!’ Again everybody cheers, but this time it is more muted: all these sound-bites come up from girls of every size, shape and colour, all saying how much they want to be in the band, how it’s the most exciting thing ever for them. It’s disconcerting to see all these faces, all these eyes, all with the same thing written in them – the longing to be recognised as the next Purrfect girl. Then up come the auditions. I see Valerie singing a shrill but powerful version of Shania Twain’s ‘You’re Still the One’, followed by a tall girl with a bob who’s sitting two seats away, who sings a slow version of ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’. Several other girls who aren’t in the room with us come next, all super-embarrassing to watch.

  There’s one which really gets to me. It’s this dreadfully obese girl whose face is practically hidden by all the rolls of fat that surround it. First of all she’s interviewed in the queue, standing there with her parents who’re also super-fat, so much so they almost look like a different species altogether. The girl is really shy and won’t say anything, just looks down at the tent-shaped dress she’s wearing, which is pink and covered in little white flowers. Her blonde hair is all curly, and she looks like an inflated china doll. But her parents are both really raring and go on about how talented she is and how she’s going to simply stun the judges when they see her. Already the other girls are giggling, but to me there’s something really chilling about the way her parents’ eyes are all shiny with hope, like they really believe there’s a chance their chronically overweight daughter might make it. Then the camera cuts to the auditioning studio and the girl is standing in front of the panel, her little piggy eyes open wide with fear as Tess witheringly stares her up and down. Then she opens her mouth and in this ghostly thin voice she starts to sing ‘The Power of Love’. It’s just terrible, so bad it’s not even laughable, and the panel are all making faces at one another like they can’t believe this isn’t a joke. But there’s something about watching her sing, something about the mixture of hope and desperation in her face as she struggles through the song that’s actually heartbreaking. She gets through the first verse and then trails off, noticing the expressions on the faces before her and obviously losing whatever nerve she had. Then, horribly, she just stands in silence looking at the ground like she wishes it would swallow her up. After a pause Tess leans forward and tells her she needs to lose half her bodyweight and that her mouth looks like the Dartford Tunnel. Everyone in the room laughs and I join in, but really I feel disgusted. The girl on screen nods slowly, like she’s actually grateful to be told this, and suddenly it dawns on me that it’s not just her dreams that have been stamped on, but her right to even have those dreams has been destroyed too. It’s like Tess has only confirmed what she secretly knew already: that she’ll never amount to anything. That she’ll never be looked at or thought of as special, ever.

  There are more auditions, and lots and lots of close-ups of Tess looking like she’d love to have the girl in front of her liquidated, and of Emma smiling sympathetically as some hopelessly off-key voice warbles out another wrong note, and also of Joe cringing or bobbing his head up and down to an imaginary beat. Joni is briefly in it, being told she’s got good vibes by Joe and being given a dismissive ‘Okay’ from Tess, and I look over and see her eyes are wet and shining. All the girls in the room are shown on that first day, apart from me. I’m relieved but the sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach hasn’t gone away yet.

  ‘Join us after the break for the call-back,’ says Stina Ellis, appearing in a red bustier and feather boa in front of a backdrop of London. She flicks her hair and gives us a dazzling smile and then there’s a few seconds of black screen where we’re told the adverts will be inserted. The programme starts again with the following week, showing the entrance hall to the studio in Shepherd’s Bush, milling with girls and their families queuing up for the pop boutique. There are a few before and after shots, which include the tall black girl on the other side of the room, the one who almost bowled me over that day. In her before shot she’s dressed like a trashy version of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, and in the after one she’s all in black and looks like a conservative Kelly Rowland. It’s quite a transformation, and I notice the girl is chuckling. Tonight she’s back in her hooker clothes, wearing a fashion-disaster combo composed of a white PVC mini-skirt and a tight-fitting, low-cut green top that basically just spells out BOOBS in capital letters. I shift my attention back to the screen and that’s when my heart stops. ‘Unfortunately, some people aren’t too thrilled by the opportunity these girls are getting,’ says Stina Ellis’s voice over the top. The crowd has formed a circle around a man who is pointing at the camera and clearly getting very angry. It’s hard to tell what Jack’s shouting exactly because there are so many bleeping noises. They’ve blurred his face, but you can see me perfectly, standing behind him in the pink Nancy Dee dress, looking like an albino rabbit frozen in the headlights as Jack lurches forward and attacks the sound guy. Everyone in the room turns to look at me, and I feel myself blush scarlet. ‘Flippin’ heck,’ breathes Valerie. Onscreen two huge security guards arrive and prise Jack away, with lots more bleeps as he struggles and demands to know where I am. Oh my God, I think. Next week this is going to be broadcast all across the country. Everyone who knows us and sees me will figure out that Jack is the angry man who lost it, and even if they don’t they’ll be told by someone who has. Jack is going to be so miserable – he’s never going to forgive me. I have to warn him, I realise. I have to get them to change it. I have to do something about this before it’s too late. Otherwise there’s no chance of him ever loving me again.

  ‘Well . . . it’s tough. You don’t realise how much work there is goes into this professional [bleep]. Sorry. I just mean that I’m finding it real rough, that’s all. I’m missing home. Me mum. Me . . . friends. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still grateful to be here! Still one hundred per cent focused and all that.’

  Raise your leg higher, Joni! goes Patty in my ear. The bitch then grabs hold of my ankle and gives it a yank. I scream at the pain.

  Oh don’t be such a wuss! she goes with this little laugh.

  Get fucked! I want to shout at her, only I can’t cos of the stupid cameras which film you every second of every day. They’ve seen me lose it several times this week already. The only time they leave you alone is when you go to take a crap, and even then they hang round outside the door to the toilet, waiting like they’re checking that you’ve washed your hands properly.

  Despite the fact I’ve got to share with six other girls I got to admit this house is a fucking luxury pad. There’s hot water and fresh sheets every day, and someone even comes and makes your bed while you’re doing the classes. There’s all the soap and shampoo and stuff you could ask for in the bathroom, Oil of Olay, Tressemé, L’Oréal, Body Shop, you name it – even that new moisturising cream from Clinique which is so expensive they don’t even give out samples. At breakfast there’re these menus so you can just pick whatever sandwich you like and someone makes it up for you and has it ready for lunch. And in the evening after classes are finished there’s this kitchen with cupboards full of any food you could wish for, so you can rustle up whatever you fancy. Makes you wonder if it ain’t really some plan to fatten us all up. But there’s not much weight being put on, that’s for sure, not with all the stretching and exercising we’re doing. And any fat I did have has fallen away faster than if it was dandruff.
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  Okay girls, turn over! shouts Patty. Now copy me and push up into Cobra!

  She lies down on her belly and demonstrates this position. Looks simple enough, but as soon as I’ve got on to me tummy on the mat with me hands out it’s like trying to lift a fucking lorry. Thought I was all right when it came to being fit till I got here. I walk everywhere all the time back in Reading. Sometimes the only thing that’ll get Baby down is to put him in his stroller and take him for a good long wander, and I’m forever carrying that stupid contraption up and down the stairs to our place cos you can’t leave it in the hall else it’d get pinched. I used to do aerobics classes too, Thursday mornings down at the Beverly Centre. But these classes of Patty’s ain’t nothing like aerobics. More like frigging torture.

  God, this is all so basic, isn’t it? whispers this toothy girl Anya next to me, really rubbing it in. Like half these bitches, she’s all posh and annoying, one of them Paris Hilton types on a smaller scale. She’s got a different coloured leotard for every day and walks round with this smug grin plastered over her mug cos she’s already so bendy she could probably eat herself out if she wanted. I watch her stick out her tits and arse and push herself up into the air nose first like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Meanwhile I can’t even get halfway without collapsing.