‘Er, really?’
‘Really,’ said Lacey, looking longingly at a particularly bizarre ensemble. ‘At least try it on.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
Normally, I would have done. Me and Lacey were very good at wearing silly outfits. But not here, not in Cindy’s.
‘But –’ Lacey began.
‘Katie,’ said Savannah. ‘Listen to someone with taste for one second, please. Like, I know you have this whole floppy baggy thing going on but you are not actually that fat.’
‘Er, thanks.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Savannah. ‘I mean, you could be way thinner if you just stopped with all the junk and found your inner model, she’s completely in there, somewhere. But in the meantime, you should find your not-terrible bits and emphasize them.’
‘My not-terrible bits.’
‘Honour your waist, Katie.’
‘Let’s get this straight, Savannah. You are telling me to honour my waist?’
‘Yes, babes.’ She took a dress off the rack. ‘With this.’
‘This’ being a floor-length navy blue dress with clever straps that twizzled around the shoulders and in across the bodice in a way that I could already see would give me what Gran would call ‘a proper bust’.
‘That is so my party,’ said Savannah. ‘Go try it on.’
I checked the label. ‘It’s two hundred and twenty pounds,’ I said.
‘So?’
She looked at me, head cocked to one side, and I realized she wasn’t quite seeing straight. I mean, she was seeing the me that had a million hits. The me that deserved nice things. The me that was going to her party.
What she wasn’t seeing was the other me. The me that didn’t have two hundred and twenty pounds. The me who lived in a falling-down house and had been known to eat pizza for breakfast.
‘I can’t afford it,’ I said.
‘Eew,’ said Savannah. ‘That is so upsetting.’
‘Sorry, Savannah.’ And I found myself feeling the tiniest bit of sadness. I don’t know why. I mean, I’d never spent two hundred and twenty pounds on a dress before. I’d never considered that I might. I’d never even considered considering it.
People who spend lots of money on clothes are idiots. Me and Lacey have always been extremely clear on that. It’s way more fun to go to Oxfam on a Saturday morning and find something weirdly wonderful and take it home and lop the sleeves off and take the hem up and wear it loud and proud.
Except that, standing there, in the shop, with Savannah looking at me pityingly and the dress resting in my arms, all shimmery and clean-smelling, I was starting to think that maybe it wasn’t more fun to go to Oxfam. That perhaps it was more fun to be Savannah.
At which point, I knew I had to get out of there.
‘Oh, is that the time? I need to be back for dinner,’ I said.
‘Call me, yeah, babes?’ said Savannah, who surely hadn’t seen my phone recently because otherwise there is no way she’d have allowed anything so hideous to know her number.
‘Will do.’ Then, before anyone could say anything else, I bolted from the shop, with Lacey just behind me.
‘What the –’
‘Wait!’ I told her, holding my hand up until we were around the corner. Then, ‘Two hundred and twenty pounds!’
‘Where does she think you’d get that kind of money?’ asked Lacey. ‘Honestly, she is so on Planet Savannah. She forgets the rest of us exist. Shall we go and get a Magnum?’
We went and got a Magnum. I let Lace have most of it. I was feeling kind of unsettled.
‘Ooh look, Oxfam’s still open.’
‘Is it?’ I said. ‘Actually, I do sort of need to go home. I should send Savannah that tracklist before I forget it all.’
‘Great,’ said Lacey. ‘Just me in there, then. Whatever I find, I keep!’
‘OK.’
‘Even if it’s really amazing.’
‘Fine.’
‘Even if it would actually look better on you.’
‘All right.’
‘Katie! Can you honestly believe I’d do that to you?’
Which brought me back down to earth, and I smiled. ‘You wouldn’t dare. And I’ll come in with you next week, once I’ve got my allowance. Got to get a party outfit, haven’t I?’
‘It’s a date.’
Still, though. I couldn’t help but think that once you’ve been to Planet Savannah, even though it’s weird and scary and incredibly expensive, you wouldn’t mind going back.
So I was walking away from the high street back towards the main road through a particularly grotty bit of town. Once upon a time it must have been all right, as the road was cobbled in places, and a few of the buildings had beams and those nice windows you push up with both hands, that sometimes drop and try to snap your fingers off.
Anyway, because it was also Harltree, there were fried chicken boxes and cans lying around, and the shops were the sort I wouldn’t even consider going into, a dodgy newsagent, something to do with second-hand computers and –
Oh no.
Amanda was just closing the door to Vox Vinyl. Adrian’s place. Which was not where I’d intended ending up. Not now or ever. I turned around, but . . .
‘Katie! Over here!’
‘Hey, Mands.’
Her shoulders had been slumped, but now she was bobbing about like a kite in a hurricane. ‘You came!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, you should’ve texted or something, another five minutes and I’d have gone.’
‘I didn’t know I was going to be here until now. Mands, the video! It’s had a million hits! One million! And I’m in the paper!’
‘Great,’ said Amanda, clearly not listening at all. ‘Are you coming in, then? There’s loads to show you, I’ve got this noticeboard going, local bands can advertise gigs, look for new players, I’ve set up some cool lighting, and –’
‘Maybe another time,’ I told her.
‘We’re not in any rush.’
‘Actually, now I’ve run into you, I wouldn’t mind a lift back. I want to tell Mum about the hits. All one million of them. A million, Mands! A million people watching me! Us!’
Amanda slowly digested the news that I hadn’t, in fact, come for a magical mystery tour of Adrian World and set off towards the car park. ‘That’s crazy,’ she said.
‘Are you saying I don’t deserve it?’
She shot me a sharp look. ‘Calm down, Miss Sensitive. I didn’t say that, did I?’
I scurried along, trying to keep up.
‘You’re leaving early,’ I said.
‘I suppose so,’ said Amanda.
‘How come?’
‘Adrian just told me I could go home, OK? God, Katie, why are you making such a thing about it?’
I hadn’t been making a thing of it. But I would now.
‘Did you mess up? Hey, you didn’t nick something, did you?’
‘What? No! Of course not!’
‘Were you rude to a customer?’
She looked at her hands. ‘Didn’t exactly get the chance.’
This was not on. ‘I can’t believe he doesn’t let you talk to customers! You know everything about everything, seriously, there’s not a band in the world you can’t go on about, and you’re quite nice. He can’t stick you in the stockroom like you don’t exist. Do you want me to talk to him? I’m going to talk to him.’ She unlocked the car and I slid into the passenger seat. ‘You left a perfectly good job to go and work there, the least he can do is let you get on with it.’
‘You are not going to talk to him, all right?’
‘Oh, and you’re just going to roll over and take it?’
There was a short pause while Amanda swallowed an imaginary something. ‘The reason I didn’t get to speak to a customer isn’t because Adrian wouldn’t let me. It’s because there aren’t any customers.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, he did sort of say not to jack in the café . .
.’ I stopped when I saw her eyes begin to glisten.
‘You can’t say anything. Not a word. Mum’s got enough to worry about.’
‘We’ll talk about my million hits instead, shall we?’
‘Good plan.’
Then she turned on the radio and we sang along to Adele all the way home.
In Honour
You said you were the one with taste
You said I should honour my waist
But I think taste is a thing you eat
And my waist says I need a treat
Gonna honour my hips
And honour my thighs
With ice cream, chips
And crisps and pies
Crisps and pies
You said being thin’s a doddle
You said to channel my inner model
How did that model end up inner?
I guess I ate her for my dinner
Gonna honour my hips
And honour my thighs
With ice cream, chips
And crisps and pies
Crisps and pies
And come next week
I’ll have a stew
With extra mash
In honour of you.
‘Mum!’ I was out the car and running up the road, my feet whacking the pavement, swack thump swack. I felt simultaneously as old as I’ve ever been and also about six. ‘Mum! Muuuum!’
She was still in her uniform. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s had a million hits! I’m in the paper! How cool is that?’
‘It is very cool,’ said Mum, which reminded me that Mum shouldn’t really use words like ‘cool’. It sounded almost as bad as the one time she said the word ‘sexy’, which still haunts me to this day. ‘We should celebrate. Let’s celebrate!’
‘Yes! How?’ I thought of a Savannah-style festivity, with champagne and toasts and probably a firework display.
‘Chinese?’ said Mum.
‘Takeaway?’
‘No, ready meal. Adrian found a reduced box of them in Asda.’
I told her about the press conference and being invited to Savannah’s party and how we’d been shopping and I’d seen a dress I liked, because you never know.
‘That is a disgusting amount of money,’ said Mum.
So, OK, sometimes you do know.
It was still pretty nice, though, especially with the smell of the black bean sauce leaking out of the oven and Amanda humming Just Me to herself as she got out the knives and forks.
‘And let’s have proper Coke,’ said Mum.
We sat down at the table, the three of us, and smiled at each other.
‘They played bits on the radio,’ said Amanda. ‘Annie Mac was telling people to go and find you online.’
‘The consultant’s daughter says to say hello,’ said Mum. ‘Apparently they’re all big fans.’
Maybe fireworks are overrated.
Then:
‘Evening, all.’ He looked at the table. ‘Enough for one more?’
There wasn’t, but he sat down anyway and started digging into Mum’s portion.
‘Ade! We’re celebrating. Katie’s had a million hits!’
‘Probably more, by now,’ I said giddily. ‘Probably quite a lot more.’
‘Let’s see then,’ said Mum.
Amanda looked down at her phone. ‘One million, two hundred and thirty-seven thousand, six hundred and twenty-six,’ she said.
‘I can’t even slightly picture it,’ I said.
‘I think there’s about a hundred thousand people living in Harltree,’ said Mum. ‘So imagine everyone in Harltree’s seen it. I mean, everyone.’
I imagined the guy in the mobile phone shop, and all the other guys who worked in the mobile phone shop. And all the customers in the mobile phone shop. And everyone in all the other shops, up and down the high street. The women with the buggies and the babies in the buggies and every single person going in and out of the car park. All the streets, all the houses between there and here, the house with the funny turret thing and the flats they’d built in that old primary school and the posh houses with the great big gardens. And all the roads I’d never even gone down, probably never would go down, and the roads that came off those roads, and the roads that came off those roads, and each of them lined with houses and in each house, people, all those people, every single one of them watching me.
‘Now times it by eleven,’ said Mum. Then, after a few seconds, ‘I know.’
‘You have to remember this feeling,’ said Amanda. ‘For ever and ever.’
It was then that I noticed Adrian was shifting about in his seat. And I kept noticing him, picking at invisible bits on his jeans with those sausage fingers, rumpling what was left of his hair up and down and twiddling one of his supersized earlobes.
‘So,’ he said.
‘What?’ I replied, through quite a lot of beef chow mein.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Remember this feeling,’ I said. ‘For ever and ever.’
‘After that,’ said Adrian.
‘Er, I don’t know.’
He was really rocking around now, so much so that I thought he might break the chair. ‘This kind of thing, it just doesn’t happen. You get record labels trying to break people for years, spending all this money, touring them, and nothing. And then in just a couple of days, you’ve got the kind of following some bands, even pretty big ones, can only dream of.’
I honestly didn’t know what to say. ‘. . . So?’
‘So I think this is an incredible career opportunity. And you have to take it.’
This was completely unexpected. Not just for me, but for Mum, too, who looked about ready to punch him.
‘This isn’t what we discussed.’
Wait, there’d been a discussion?
He looked at the table. ‘No. It isn’t. But –’
‘But nothing. Katie is finishing her education and then she is going to get a proper job and, unlike some people, lead a decent and responsible life. She’s got the brains to do so much more than this pointless . . .’
‘My music is not pointless!’
‘It’s a hobby!’ said Mum. ‘And that is what it will remain!’
‘Is this about Dad?’ I said.
‘It is about taking responsibility!’
‘I’m a teenager! I don’t have responsibilities!’
‘You have the responsibility to finish school,’ said Amanda in a way I don’t think any of us found very helpful. ‘And work hard and clean your bedroom and . . .’
Oh, honestly.
‘I hear what you’re saying, Zo,’ said Adrian. ‘But that doesn’t change the basic fact that what Katie has here is . . . something really incredible, and in my opinion she needs to embrace it.’
‘In your opinion,’ said Mum.
‘Yeah. And I’ve been making some calls –’
Mum’s face went purple, which sounds like an impossible exaggeration but isn’t. ‘Have you?’
‘Yeah. And my old bandmate Tony, he’s still in the business and he’d like to catch up, and meet Katie. Talk to her, find out what she’s about –’
‘Since when did I give you permission to start phoning people about my daughter?’
‘That’s not –’
‘And how dare you send her off to one of those places on her own? She’s a child, she can’t be expected to make decisions like that . . .’
‘Which is why I’ll go with her!’
‘Who said you could do that? I know how this goes. First, it’s a recording here, a quick gig there. “Just a one-off, Zoe, and the money’s great.” Then suddenly they’re running here, there and everywhere, and you don’t see or hear from them in months. And then everything that was good, everything important, it gets . . . it gets . . . My family comes first, Ade. Before anything else.’
He held up his hands. ‘I was only –’
‘Before anything.’
‘All right!’
She hadn’
t seemed especially interested when I’d basically come straight out and told her I couldn’t stand the guy. Now that he was offering to do something nice for me, she was going mental.
I do not understand my mother at all.
Back upstairs in my room, I could still hear the shouting going on, little snippets drifting up the stairs like balloons, if the balloons were filled with misery. I heard, ‘You do not go behind my back,’ and, ‘There is nothing more important than her education,’ and ‘This is Benjamin all over again,’ which was not good news, considering what Mum thinks of Dad, and Dad almost certainly being the Benjamin in question.
I shut the door and turned it all over in my head. The facts were as follows:
1. Just Me had had over a million views
2. Adrian could get me a meeting with a record label
3. Mum did not want me to meet with a record label
4. I had lied to Lacey about taking down the video
Which seemed about the size of things, although it didn’t factor in Mad Jaz. But then, some things aren’t suited to lists.
Discounting number four, because really, I couldn’t do anything about that right now, I was left with a sort of empty feeling inside. I could pretend all I liked that I didn’t care about my song. Only, I did. I cared massively.
They’d played Just Me on the radio. My words, straight from the heart, out there in the world, doing their thing, getting into other people’s lives. As though I’d diced up bits of my soul and chucked them over the airwaves like confetti.
And, people liked it.
But Mum didn’t care. Even Mands didn’t seem especially bothered. How bizarre that the only person who seemed interested in my future was the one person I wanted out of it for good.
Still, if Mum said no, then that was that. I knew from experience that arguing with her wouldn’t help. Once she’d decided something, she’d never change her mind. No amount of begging or pleading or leaving articles about nursing jobs in California lying around would alter the situation.
The only thing I could possibly do was go to meet this Tony guy without Mum’s permission.
But if I did that . . .
Then I’d be, as McAllister would say, ‘crossing a line’.
A line with signs all along it saying things like Are You Sure? and Danger! and This Could Get Everyone Into Some Pretty Serious Trouble.
Accidental Superstar Page 10