Accidental Superstar

by Marianne Levy

  ‘Is he that bad?’

  ‘I did try to like him,’ I said, sadly. ‘For Mum’s sake. I did try.’

  I’d opened the door to him the day before.

  ‘All right? I’m Ade.’

  He was wearing a tight black T-shirt, which was not even slightly appropriate for a man of forty or fifty or whatever he was, and jeans and a huge cracked leather jacket.

  ‘Hello, Ade . . . rian.’

  ‘You Amanda or Katie?’

  ‘Katie.’

  ‘Mind if I come on through, Katie? I’m gagging for a slash.’

  He came on through, his jacket making a creaky noise, and an invisible battle started up between the lunch smell of roast chicken and his very strong aftershave. The chicken was just marching a retreat back to the oven as Adrian emerged from the loo.

  ‘Is that him?’ Amanda was at my elbow.

  ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Just watch for a second.’

  We stood in the doorway as he went through to the kitchen, kissed Mum, then poured himself a glass of water. He headed straight to the right cupboard and even knew to do the funny twist thing to make the water come out of our dodgy tap.

  ‘What?’ hissed Amanda. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘He’s been here before.’

  ‘So?’

  Was it while I’d been at school? I reran two months’ worth of breakfasts, me yabbering away over the Nutella, thinking I had Mum’s full attention, while all the time she must have been counting the minutes until she could get rid of me and see Loverboy.

  Or had he come round at night? Did Mum wait until Mands and me were in bed and then sneak out to let him in?

  All those times she’d given me McDonald’s money to go and meet Lacey in town, had she really been trying to get rid of me?

  Judging by the evidence – whose hand was now cupping one of my mother’s buttocks – the answer was yes.

  Now, there are lots of ways you can spoil a Sunday lunch. You can burn the chicken. You can drop your headphones in the gravy. Or you can sit down across the table from a man with two hairs sprouting out of his nose. By which I mean, the skin on top of his nose. Not his nostrils, which would have been disgusting but at least normal.

  ‘Good chicken, Mum,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda.

  ‘It’s not too burnt, is it?’ said Mum.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Your best ever.’

  ‘It really tastes . . . of . . . chicken.’

  There was a pause, which might have lasted a moment or maybe a hundred years.

  ‘It’s delicious,’ said Adrian, and then he leaned over and kissed Mum on the mouth. While she was still chewing. With tongues.

  After five of the most awkward seconds of my life he finished eating my mother and went back to his plate. ‘So, Amanda, Zoe tells me you play bass?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said, looking at her lap. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I used to be in a band once. Back in the day. Split up. Creative differences. You know.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Still got a lot of industry connections. You should meet my mate Tony, Tony Topper? The stories he could tell . . .’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘So, are you any good?’

  ‘I’m . . . OK.’

  ‘Just OK?’ Adrian leaned forward and I noticed he had a bit of squashed carrot stuck to his elbow. ‘Who are your influences?’

  And that was it. For the next ten minutes Amanda was off in Amanda Land, talking about the music she loves and the bands she’s going to see and the bands she’d like to see but can’t because they’re not touring at the moment or they’ve split up or they’re dead and blah blah infinite blah.

  And Adrian was doing it too! For every band she wanted to talk about he had an actual opinion, which is not what you do when Amanda kicks off on one of her music rants: you keep quiet until it passes. Nose Hairs, on the other hand, was encouraging her. And all the while, Mum was nodding and smiling and stuffing her face with chicken.

  ‘You know,’ said Adrian, ‘I could do with someone like you in the shop. Vox Vinyl, you know it?’

  Amanda nodded like it was Christmas and her birthday and she’d won the lottery. Twice.

  ‘We’re a bit short-staffed at the moment, and it’s so hard to find someone who knows their stuff. You free to do a few hours next week?’

  ‘I can be,’ said Amanda. Honestly, I thought she might faint. I mean, I know she’d always said she fancied working in a record shop, but I hadn’t realized it was her Life’s Great Ambition. Until now.

  ‘Good stuff,’ said Adrian.

  ‘I just have to tell the café I’m leaving, but that’s fine, I’m a rubbish waitress anyway.’

  ‘I don’t know that we’re busy enough to justify you coming over full-time . . .’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Amanda. ‘I’ll just . . . I’ll be really useful . . . it’s fine.’

  ‘Is it?’ I said.

  At which point, he turned his attention to me. ‘I’ve heard you and your sister like jamming together?’ Then he did a little burp. ‘’Scuse me.’

  Mum giggled.

  ‘I’ve got some instruments kicking around that I’ve been meaning to sell. Some Gibsons, a couple of Fenders – you’d be welcome to come and mess about with them.’

  ‘That would be amazing!’ said Amanda.

  I said something that can only be written as ‘Mblm’.

  ‘Katie writes songs,’ said Amanda. ‘About her life and stuff. She’s like Lily Allen used to be, sort of. Kooky.’

  I’d planned on staying silent but this was too much. ‘Don’t call me kooky! Kooky is for girls who wear plastic flowers in their hair and have names for their toes.’

  ‘Feisty?’

  ‘No. Feisty says “She’s so out there, which is really surprising because she is a girl”.’

  ‘Quirky?’

  I mimed being sick.

  ‘All right then,’ said Amanda. ‘How about “different”?’

  I thought for a second. ‘I will accept different. Thank you.’

  There was a very long silence.

  ‘So, Katie, how’s school?’ said Mum.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘Tell Adrian what you’re studying at the moment.’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘It’s OK, Zo. When I was her age, school was the last thing I wanted to think about. Especially not on the weekend. Bet you’re too busy chasing the boys, yeah, Katie?’ Then he winked.

  ‘We’re doing a play called Julius Caesar,’ I said, ‘which is where this annoying bloke who thinks he’s all that ends up getting stabbed.’

  And then I did my most evil stare. And then I choked on a roast potato.

  ‘It was all pretty grim,’ I said to Lacey, as we flumped into our form room. ‘So grim that I only managed half my usual portion of trifle. Which is saying something.’

  ‘But you went back for the rest later, right?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ I said. ‘Things are bad enough, I can’t risk malnutrition too.’

  ‘And Amanda’s going to be working for him?’

  ‘She’s handing in her notice at the café today. I tried talking her out of it but all she’s interested in is whether he’ll give her a staff discount. As far as she’s concerned, getting a twenty per cent reduction on the latest Alabama Shakes album is more important than the fact that there is this man in our flat, groping our mother.’

  ‘Mad Jaz alert,’ said Lacey, which is our code for when Mad Jaz is in the vicinity. OK, it’s not much of a code.

  ‘What’s she doing here? I thought Jaz was done with school?’

  ‘Look! Nicole’s filming her. This should be good.’

  We watched as Jaz opened a can of Fanta and poured it into Ms McAllister’s top drawer. Then, like she’d finished her work for the day, she turned around and left.

  ‘She is s
o mad,’ said Lacey. ‘And that is such a waste of Fanta.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Katie? Earth to Katie?’

  ‘Adrian drinks Fanta,’ I said. ‘And then he does this hissing gas thing through his fingers.’

  ‘You need to forget about him,’ said Lacey. ‘Focus on Savannah’s party. Or writing a song. Or your new fringe.’

  But I couldn’t. He was all I could think about. How, when we went for a walk in the park, Mum and Adrian had held hands. And how, when Adrian took Amanda into his shop to show her how to work the till, she was so excited she’d given him a hug.

  And, last night, when it got later and later and later, and Adrian didn’t leave and didn’t leave and didn’t leave, and at midnight, when I knew he was next door in Mum’s room, in her bed, all I could think about were those two nose hairs lurking, just a metre away, in the dark.

  Autocorrect

  You ask if I’ve finished and I say can you wait

  But before I can stop you you’re clearing my plate

  You ask am I happy? and I say I’m trying

  Your voice says that’s great but your eyes know I’m lying

  I guess if you want to earn my respect

  Can you maybe turn off the autocorrect?

  When you talk to your folks I couldn’t be better

  The undisputed star of your epic Christmas letter

  My behaviour’s amazing, my grades are great, too

  It’s kind of a pity that none of it’s true

  I get that there’s stuff that you have to protect

  But please can we turn off the autocorrect?

  It’s late and I’m lonely and though you’re next door

  There’s nothing to link us but walls and a floor

  I don’t want to lose you but I know I might

  No way will we talk when he’s here for the night

  Mum, if you want me and you to connect

  You will have to turn off the autocorrect.

  After that, Adrian was always there. Leaving his stupid jacket on top of the washing basket, or coming out the bathroom with his chest all hairy or using the kitchen table as an imaginary drum kit.

  ‘You do like him, don’t you?’ said Mum, on one of the very few occasions where he wasn’t standing next to her.

  ‘Um, yeah,’ I said, which was about as positive as I could manage.

  ‘Because –’

  ‘It’s just –’

  We’d both started at the same time.

  ‘You go,’ I said.

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  I’d been going to say that I thought it was all going a bit fast, but Mum had a funny look on her face so I decided I’d let her finish.

  ‘It’s just, we were thinking, we might move in together. He’s here most of the time anyway!’

  I did a few fish gulps before I managed, ‘But . . . there’s not enough room. Hasn’t he got ten million records or something?’

  ‘Ten thousand. But there’s plenty of space for them. And us. You girls have a room each. And there’s a proper kitchen, and a garden. With a shed. And a pond, sort of. Either a pond or a drainage problem, it depends how you want to look at it.’

  ‘Hang on . . . we’re all moving somewhere new? Together? As in, us and him? Sharing a house? And . . . a bathroom?’ I don’t know why this was the most horrifying thing to me but it really was.

  ‘Actually,’ said Mum, ‘our bedroom has its very own bathroom. I don’t think even your father’s place has that. Not that you’re to tell him. Well, maybe you can.’

  ‘I did, last night,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Is everyone in on this except me? Because it’s starting to feel like some kind of conspiracy.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Mum.

  ‘Then how come Amanda already knows?’

  ‘I suppose I might have mentioned it to her. But look, it’s not definite yet . . .’

  ‘Mum showed me pictures,’ said Amanda, ‘and it’s nice. Well, it could be.’

  ‘The lady who had it died, and it’s ever so cheap,’ said Mum, digging into her handbag, probably so that she wouldn’t have to look at me. ‘Adrian reckons –’

  I was about to launch into a proper speech about taking things slowly and thinking of others. And was she absolutely sure? And even if she was, maybe she ought to at least check that everyone else in the household was on board. Only, before I could, the man himself came barging in.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it that Adrian reckons?’

  ‘About what?’ he said, looking from me to Mum. She waved a crumpled bit of paper at him and I spotted an upside-down photo of a house.

  He grinned. ‘Ah! The place is a bargain, Katie. A real gem. If we move fast we can get it before anyone else even knows about it.’

  ‘Isn’t it exciting?’ said Mum.

  Going to live with Nose Hairs in the house of a dead lady.

  ‘Yaaaay.’

  They put in an offer and it got accepted straight away so I had to drink fizzy wine, and plaster on a fake smile, while Mum and Mands decided what we would take with us and which of my childhood memories they would bin (spoiler alert: all of them).

  And every night as we built up to the move I was called on to help wrap stuff and pack it away when I could have been sitting in my room with my guitar. Instead I was forced to be a part of Team New Home, stacking box after box in teetering piles up against the walls, which was incredibly dangerous, and if I stopped looking where I was going even for a second they would come crashing down on my head.

  Which meant everyone got narked at me for breaking their stuff at the exact moment when I thought I might have given myself permanent brain damage.

  Fun times.

  ‘Bye-bye, geese,’ I said to the geese paddling along the canal. ‘Bye-bye, footbridge. Bye-bye, old mattress.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re going to be getting the bus with the bus lot,’ said Lacey. ‘They’re messed up.’

  ‘Thanks for being so supportive.’

  ‘What can I say?’ said Lacey, who clearly knew completely what it was she was going to say, and was about to carry on saying it. ‘You’ve got Finlay from year eight, who has the mental age of a six-year-old. Then there’s the year sevens, like, about a billion of them. And Nicole from year eleven.’

  ‘At least she’s interesting,’ I said.

  ‘Apparently she got her ear pierced last week, right at the top, with this really tiny stud. Only it swelled up in the night and the stud part disappeared into her ear, like her skin had eaten it. She had to go to A&E and get it taken out. Mad Jaz filmed the whole thing and put it online.’

  ‘That is so disgusting,’ I said. ‘Have you seen it?’

  We slowed down so that Lacey could show me. The camera went right in close and there was even a bit of blood. It finished with Jaz giving the nurse a high five.

  ‘Eighty-seven views,’ said Lacey. ‘Honestly, who watches this stuff?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘In fact, I think Jaz gets the bus, too.’

  ‘No she doesn’t,’ I said, because a dose of Mad Jaz was the last thing I needed. Mad Jaz with her gothy clothes and pale skin, like she’s some dead lady from a hundred years ago who crawled out of the grave in order to hang around looking spooky and make snarky comments.

  ‘She does,’ said Lacey. ‘She lives down near those yellow fields by the roundabout. Poor you.’

  Which was much more like it.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘It’s like, the divorce was the worst thing in the world and we’d just managed to get through that, and then Nose Hairs comes along and now I’m bussing it with Jaz. Poor, poor me.’

  ‘Poor you,’ said Lacey. ‘Hey, so Paige and Sofie had a row over who got to buy these navy slingbacks in Topshop and they’re not speaking. So Savannah’s uninvited them both to her party until they sort it out.’

  Sometimes I think that Lacey isn’t quite as fascinated by my problems as she should
be.

  ‘Honestly. Who even cares about shoes?’

  ‘Not you, apparently,’ said Lacey, staring at my scuffed Doc Martens.

  ‘Lace, can’t you just be nice for five more minutes? We are never going to do this walk again, and I don’t want my last memory of our time together to be of you trolling my footwear.’

  She blew her fringe out of her eyes. ‘I’m just grumpy because I’m going to miss you. OK?’

  Oh.

  ‘Don’t say that! We’ll still see each other all day. And we can talk to each other on the phone the entire way in, so it’ll basically be like we’re walking together.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  She stopped under the tree with the picnic bench where we’d sometimes share a Magnum.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lacey. ‘Just . . .’

  She looked kind of worried, standing there, her white blonde hair blowing in the cold breeze that always comes off the water, and I wondered whether she’d planned for something unfortunate to happen as a leaving present.

  That’s the problem with Lacey: she’s not the best judge of this kind of thing. She could just as easily have got me a special Magnum as she could have arranged for the boys to chuck me into the canal.

  I readied myself, and then . . .

  ‘Surprise,’ she said, awkwardly, and pulled a little box out of her bag.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Open it.’

  So I did, carefully, and . . .

  ‘Lace!’

  My best friend had lined the box in violet tissue paper, my favourite colour, and filled it with . . .

  ‘It’s mementos of our best walks. There’s the party popper, from your birthday, I saved it. And the song we made up about the geese babies, I know you’ve forgotten it so I wrote it down . . .’

  ‘And a pair of Magnum sticks!’

  My insides went as warm and gooey as a chocolate pudding. In fact, I was starting to think of a new song, maybe called something like Walking With You, about friendship, and memories, and how beautiful it all was, when Lacey said:

  ‘Other surprise!’

  At which point the whole rest of the canal crowd jumped out from behind the tree and dumped me in the water.

  I got myself home and dried off and sat down on my bed, surrounded by boxes, some of which I hadn’t even unpacked from the last move, and thank goodness I had my stereo because otherwise I think I might have exploded or crumbled or something.