by Lotte Daley
‘No, stupid, of course not. But they believed me.’
Lorraine Kelly stood next to a fat woman crowing about her miraculous diet plan that had helped her shed ten stone in as many months. She still looked like she had eaten a small town.
‘Coffee, toast?’
‘No, Katie, God, how many times do I have to tell you? Bread is evil. Do you have any eggs?’
‘Sure,’ I said, popping two slices of white into the toaster.
‘Egg-white omelette, please, and if you have any cress, that would do nicely.’
‘What did your last slave die of?’ I called through to him above the noise of the kettle.
‘Disobedience,’ he winked.
‘Hah, very funny.’
‘Darling, it’s Monday …’ Richard cooed.
‘Yes, I am aware of that,’ I said, rubbing my temples. I could feel a headache coming on after the cacophony of appliances and Richard’s incessant banging on my door. What a way to wake up, not pleasant, I tell you. I popped some ibuprofen into my cool glass of orange juice and I poured a glass of tap water for Richard.
‘No worries,’ he said, as I approached him with the glass. ‘I have San Pellegrino.’
‘So, to what do I owe this early morning visit, Rich?’ I said, stifling a yawn. I lit up a cigarette and offered him one. He took it and sparked it up before pulling out a copy of this week’s Sizzle Stars from his man-bag.
‘Here,’ he said, pushing it across the coffee table towards me.
‘Gosh,’ I said, breathing in sharply. For once, I looked a million zillion pounds. My hair was so glossy and bright, with various shades of blonde running through the tumbling bohemian waves. My face was light and happy, my lips were pink and shiny and my eyes were large and emerald green, framed by luscious long lashes.
‘You look absolutely amazing,’ Richard said, with a smug grin on his face. ‘I would,’ he winked.
‘Urgh, you would not,’ I mocked. ‘I don’t know where you’ve been!’
Ignoring me, he inspected his fingernails the way posh people do, fingers splayed out, knuckles slightly curled towards his body. ‘Hanna, myself, Aubrey, Ziggy Wang, Tom Theodore … we’re the best, don’t you agree?’ he simpered.
‘Yes, yes!’ I said, feeling a bubble of excitement in my belly. Everyone was going to see me looking like a supermodel on the front cover of Sizzle Stars magazine! I have never in my wildest dreams looked so perfect in all my life as I did on that cover.
‘I look …’
‘Unrecognizable,’ Richard mused. ‘It’s amazing what photography and airbrushing can do!’
‘Ouch!’ I said, jabbing him in the ribs. ‘I look like that, that’s me!’
‘Yes, obviously, but a heck of an improvement! I mean, look, darling, look at you now …’
‘I’ve just got up!’ I squealed in my defence.
‘Rocking the slob look as usual …’ he continued.
‘Hang on a cotton-picking minute, Mr Dewberry, you asked, no sorry, you all DEMANDED that I look horribly unkempt and sans make-up on purpose for like, ages, plus you made me waft about last week wearing a balaclava!’
‘Yes, well, we had to do that so as not to spoil this glorious moment, and as for your face, we had to let your skin breathe and it worked, no? I haven’t seen a pimple the size of the one you had on your chin last week since I was in the sixth form. Seriously. And now look at you. One spa trip later and you have the face of an angel, with skin as smooth as my perfectly taut derrière.’
‘Yes, well, I look great, please don’t piss on my chips,’ I said, as I got up and moved to the kitchen to finish Richard’s eggs. They came out looking like squashed ghosts, all wobbly and uneven.
‘Here,’ I said, plonking his breakfast in front of him and stealing Sizzle Stars. I sat down with my toast and flicked through the pages until I found my interview. I gasped.
Katie Lewis is an overnight sensation, a champion brand for real girls everywhere! the headline screamed, next to a picture of me looking like a supermodel. My teeth looked really white!
Katie Lewis rocks Marc Jacobs! another splash across the page, with me, once again, looking soft and feminine, yet sexy and delicious. I wanted to look like that all the time. I wished that everyone in the world could see through the eyes of a soft-focus lens instead of harsh reality.
The interview was great. Frenella didn’t make me sound or look like a total dipshit. Which I was thankful for, I tell you. Maybe Hanna Frost, for all of her arsey mannerisms, really did know what she was doing. I decided right there and then on the spot that I would never ever question anything she said again, I would simply believe her. My faith was now entirely in the hands of Poets Field PR team.
‘I love it!’ I squealed, grabbing hold of Richard. He nearly choked on his eggs.
‘Yes, it’s excellent, I can’t wait for it to come out tomorrow, such positive PR, your life is going to change dramatically, darling.’ He grinned wildly.
Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing went the door.
‘Whoever could that be?’ I questioned.
‘Don’t know, darling. Unlike Jessica Hilson’s mother, I am not psychic. May I suggest you open it?’
‘Funny,’ I said, standing up and shaking toast crumbs from my robe. ‘I meant, maybe you had some kind of thing going on for me today that I don’t yet know about.’ I went into the hall and opened the door.
‘Mum!’ I said, taken aback.
‘Kate,’ Mum said, standing there, arms crossed. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Um, we do?’ I said, feeling a bit uneasy. What could I have done now?
‘Well?’ she said, staring at me, an eyebrow raised.
‘Well, what?’
‘Are you going to invite me in, or is it now customary for you, as an almost famous person, to leave your poor mother standing on the doorstep of her elder daughter’s house?’
‘Mum, unlike you, my neighbours don’t care about every single microscopic move I make,’ I said, opening the door wide and standing back to allow her entry.
‘Well, that’s not strictly true now, is it, darling?’ Richard purred from the living room. ‘You probably still have bum prints in your flower beds from where the journalists were sitting last week. Plus, I saw an empty packet of chocolate digestives blowing about on your lawn.’
‘That was mine,’ I said, blushing.
‘No wonder you can’t keep a boyfriend!’ Mum said, prodding my hips.
I silently seethed. Richard said nothing. Traitor.
‘There are two things I need to speak to you about,’ Mum said, harrumphing as she laid her massive handbag on the floor and plonked her backside down on my armchair, which strained under her weight. She was one to talk, her bottom was three times the size of mine and her hair was so frizzy she looked as though she’d stuck her fingers in a plug socket. Still, she had an ethereal, matronly beauty about her and my father still adored her after thirty years of marriage, so she must be doing something right. ‘First, Janice has become obsessed with showing her particulars on Spacebook,’ Mum chuntered. ‘Have you got any biscuits?’
‘Sure,’ I said, as I got up. Spacebook? Was I hearing her right? I stifled a laugh.
‘You mean Facebook, Mother,’ I said, as I filled the kettle for another cup of tea.
‘Whatever it is, she’s putting indecent pictures of herself on the World Wide Web for all and sundry to see. Her bosoms are pushed up right under her nose.Your father is on the edge of a coronary. As we speak, he has in his hands a copy of a Reader’s Digest PC guide and is trying to disable her account. I’m so upset, I can’t tell you,’ she said, pulling a hanky out and dabbing her eyes for effect. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that Janice is the only one who can disable her Facebook account.
‘I’m sure they’re not that indecent, Mum,’ I said, trying to placate her.
‘Oomph,’ Richard said, pulling his collar in the way men do when they’re hot under it.
‘What?’
We both swivelled our heads round in his direction. Richard was twiddling with his BlackBerry.
‘I see what you mean,’ he said gravely.
‘Richard? Since when have you been friends with my seventeen-year-old sister?’ I shrieked.
‘Well, she added me and I thought it would be rude not to,’ he coughed. I know Richard so well. I know as much as I know night follows day that he’s absolutely dying to say something about her being legal, or that if there’s grass on the pitch you can play the game. His lips curled as he visibly repressed his vulgar jokes.
‘I’ll talk to her, OK? I’m sure once she knows how upsetting it is for you, she’ll have a change of heart and remove them.’ I patted Mum on the arm. The kettle whistled a loud tune.
‘Well, you’re hardly the beacon of respectability, are you, young lady?’ Mum sniffled. I poured the tea and carried it through to her on a tray, complete with a proper cup and saucer and even some posh sugar lumps. I kept Queen’s crockery for such times as when my mother decides to swoop upon my house uninvited. Ever since I’d given her a cuppa in a novelty mug that had a fully clothed man on it which became a very naked man when filled with hot water, I’d never heard the end of ‘Kate and her pornographic mug’.
‘Thank heavens this is a respectable set of china,’ Mum said, tutting. Anyone would think I was born from Hyacinth Bucket. Honestly, what a drone she could be.
‘And what is it that Katie has done to warrant being called “young lady” when she is anything but?’ Richard winked.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, aghast, ‘twenty-six is not old, Richard, just because you date prepubescent girls …’
‘Your friend is a paedophile?’ Mum shrieked, toppling her teacup all over herself and the carpet.
‘No! Good Lord, no!’ Richard squealed like a girl.
‘Is that why you are on my younger daughter’s Facespace profile?’ Mum snarled. ‘I’ve always thought you looked shifty!’
‘I’m not a paedophile, Mrs Lewis, I love a mature woman. Tell her, Katie, I am obsessed …’ he looked at the television for inspiration, ‘with Lorraine Kelly!’
‘What?’ I said, turning to Richard.
‘Lorraine Kelly?’ said Mum.
‘Lorraine, yes, gorgeous, just my type … um … I don’t like children, Mrs Lewis, I mean, obviously I like children, my sister has two, delightful creatures, but obviously, I don’t like them like them, in a sordid way, oh gosh …’ Richard visibly squirmed, his cheeks flushed. I’m sure she knows he’s anything but, but she’s really playing him now. Her face is an absolute picture. She sits there scowling at him, eyebrows raised.
‘Mum, shh, I was joking, it was a joke, Richard likes to date girls in their early twenties, he is by no means anything akin to being a paedophile, honestly. Calm down, and hang on there a minute, let me get you a towel. Are you OK?’
Mum said nothing. She continued to glare at Richard, who now looked like a very naughty schoolboy being reprimanded by the headmistress.
‘I’m sorry for the confusion,’ Richard said, gallantly. His phone beeped in his pocket but he didn’t dare answer it.
‘Here,’ I said to Mum, mopping up tea dribbles. Luckily, I had put half a jug of cold milk in it so that her tea wasn’t scorching hot. It wasn’t the first time she’d got herself in a tizz and dropped beverages down her front.
‘So, um, Mrs Lewis,’ Richard began, totally frightened by my over-zealous mother.
‘You can call me Jo, dear,’ she said, her face softening.
‘Jo,’ Richard replied, tepidly.
‘Go ahead,’ she said.
‘Well, what was the second thing you needed to speak to Katie about?’
‘Kate, I have it on good authority that you were riddled with beasts when you came back from your holiday with Nicola Baxter in the year 2000 and, in turn, had to sneak one of Betty’s nit combs from her salon to dislodge the creatures from your person.’
The room goes silent. I want to die. Richard is sitting there with his eyes as wide as saucers, a look of sheer disgust on his face. I was beyond embarrassed when Hanna Frost became privy to my unfortunate brush with crabs, but this was on another level entirely. At least Hanna could kind of understand, what with being a woman and having to deal with other itchy personal issues like thrush, or burning pain when using that erotica stuff that’s supposed to make your bits tingle with pleasure but in fact has you squatting in a cold bath for an entire evening, thus ruining an entire sex-game night. Trust me, don’t ever put anything on there that isn’t naturally secreted.
‘How, um, how did you know?’ I said, flabbergasted. I knew that Nicola was on some kind of mission to make me look as stupid as possible in the press, but I didn’t know why. We’d been friends since childhood, we’d gone to the Friday-night discos together, I’d snogged Matthew Robinson so she could snog his best mate round the back of Jimmy’s Bowling Green. ‘I was weeding the garden, minding my own business, looking out for the promised Daily Mail to take pictures of the house and ask us questions about you, when some youths rode past on their BMXs shouting vulgarities about your sexual health, my girl,’ she said sternly. ‘Well?’ she said expectantly.
Richard perched on the edge of the sofa.
‘Well,’ I said, lying through my teeth, ‘it’s not true. It was Nicola who had them.’
They both stared at me.
‘How could you possibly think it was me?’ I said, affronted.
Mum seemed to be swallowing it, as did Richard. Phew! I was a good actress. Maybe I should look into a new career. That would be the stuff of dreams, wouldn’t it, for me to take off as an amazing showstopping actress and for Jessica Hilson’s abysmal snore fest Cowgirls to sell no cinema tickets, rendering her prematurely on the acting scrapheap. Hah! That would be sweet revenge. Indeedio.
‘So it wasn’t you who had the pubic lobsters, then?’ Mum said, nonchalantly.
Oh God, I wanted to die. Richard spluttered his water all over himself.
‘No, Mum, I did not have pubic lobsters!’
‘But you did have crabs, didn’t you?’ Richard hissed as Mum began faffing about with the What’s On TV magazine.
I shot him a look. ‘Maybe,’ I hissed back. ‘It was super long ago!’
We both smiled. I was pretty sure Richard was riddled with disease, the amount of escorts he had sex with on a weekly basis. Let us pray he stuck something on the end of it and that my assumptions were hideously incorrect. Especially if, as I feared the worst, he ended up having it off with my sister. I’d seen the way Janice wiggled her hips and threw him backward sex glances. I’d seen the way he’d lapped it up and twinkled his eyes back at her. I hoped to God that I could keep her away from London, and I would most definitely make her remove him from her friend list on Facebook. How? I hear you ask. Because as all elder sisters know, the amount of dirt I had on Janice would be enough to make my mother tie her up and have her reside in the basement until her twenty-first birthday.
‘Jam tart anyone?’ I sang lightly.
‘That would be lovely,’ Mum said, ‘and if you’ve got any iced buns, that would be even better!’
Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing the doorbell rang again. We all looked around.
‘Aren’t you going to answer the door?’ Mum questioned.
Trrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing! Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!
‘Ach!’ she said, putting her hands on her ears. ‘My eardrums are going to perforate if you don’t get a move on and answer your door!’
‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ I huffed. I didn’t have octo-arms. I couldn’t do a zillion things at once. There I was trying to appease Mother, Richard, make more tea and locate iced buns and jam tarts in the fridge, praying they were still in date or else I’d never hear the end of it.
‘Bailey?’ I said, shocked to the core. Once again, I looked like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.
‘Katie,’ he began.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said, completely taken aback. Oh my God! I twirled round in my mind’s eye. He was here, he clearly hadn’t forgotten about me, he looked as fresh as a daisy and most unlike someone who’d been up all night partying and having complicated Kama Sutra sex with an impossibly long-limbed lingerie model.
‘So …’ I began to speak, my cheeks flushed, a large smile spreading all over my face. A warm glow was rising from the tips of my toes, up and all over my body. Bailey stood there, looking sheepish.
All of a sudden, he was shoved out of the way by a pint-sized blonde. Frenella. What on earth was she doing here?
‘Katie, darling,’ Frenella simpered before turning to Bailey. ‘Offload the rest of the things now please, Sam,’ she said as I noticed for the first time that in his hands, Bailey held a large steel box. He passed it to me.
‘It’s heavy,’ he warned.
‘What the …’ I began. Bailey shrugged and turned to go.
‘What’s going on?’ I demanded.
‘Ooooh, tinkles, it’s sooooooooo super exciting.’ Frenella jigged on her vertiginous heels. This time they were bright pink. She was wearing cut-off denim hotpants and a loose shirt. Mum would probably faint at the sight of so much leg. Bailey stood by the car, smoking a cigarette and looking forlornly at his feet. Hanna Frost emerged from the back seat along with Aubrey. What on earth was going on? Why was half of the Poets Field PR team here? Another car whizzed up and parked neatly behind Bailey’s black Range Rover. Hanna passed Bailey another box and shoved several long clothes carriers on to his shoulders. He nearly buckled with the weight of it all. His cigarette smouldered by his feet.
‘Darrrrllling,’ Hanna cooed, as she opened the door and air-kissed Magenta Rubenstein. God, it was full-on PR royalty here. Curtains were twitching next door as Richard came up behind me and rested his hands on my shoulders.
‘I didn’t know about this,’ he said softly.
‘What’s going on?’ I turned to him.
‘I don’t know, Katie,’ he said, squeezing my shoulders.
Magenta, Hanna and Aubrey moved up my garden path towards my front door with Bailey trailing behind them laden down with various bits and bobs of the fashion and beauty variety. Frenella B had already pushed past me and was now getting acquainted with my mother. Oh God … I thought. I plastered on a fake smile and prayed my mother didn’t bring up STDs or call me useless and fat in their company. It was a daily struggle to appear as though I was ‘one of them’ and now, thanks to Sizzle Stars’ glorious interview and the photos of my flawless and peachy self, I finally felt like I was making some headway.