Remember My Name

by Abbey Clancy

  I was walking towards the break room—looking forward to ten minutes with my feet in an elevated position while I digested way too much smoked salmon—when the door to the dressing room burst open, catching me on the shoulder as I passed it and flinging me back to bang up against the corridor wall.

  Well, I thought, as I unstuck my lip gloss from the plaster-work, at least I hadn’t been carrying a tray of canapés when that happened. Things were looking up.

  I rubbed my face to make sure it was all still in one piece, and turned round to see what all the commotion was about.

  I came face to face with Neale, the trainee make-up artist. His shaved head was glistening with sweat, and there were actual tears running down his cheeks. His hands flew up into the air in panic, and he looked at major risk of hyperventilating.

  ‘Neale!’ I said, reaching out to take hold of his hands. I thought he might float up to the ceiling like a helium balloon if somebody didn’t pull him back down to earth.

  ‘What’s up? Calm down, for goodness’ sake—What’s happened?’

  He grasped on to me for dear life, his slim skinny-jean-clad body slumping towards me in desperation.

  ‘Jess! Help! It’s Vogue! She’s … she’s …’

  ‘She’s what?’ I asked, peering past him into the dressing room, trying to see what was going on.

  ‘She’s puking her guts up!’ came a gravelly voice from inside, shortly followed by an unpleasant retching sound that left very little to the imagination.

  I stepped inside, dropping my shoes to the floor, and walked towards the megastar—who was currently burying her head in a vase that had, I guessed from the damp patch and the crushed lilies lying on the carpet, until recently been full of fresh flowers.

  She was wearing what I recognised as one of her stage outfits—I’d watched her rehearsing in it enough times to know it—made of thin leather straps and sultry dark fishnet. She normally looked amazing in it—all Amazonian sex appeal; a kind of black-dominatrix-Madonna look that I could never pull off in a million years.

  But just then, she looked anything but sexy. She looked absolutely terrible, her body hunched in over the vase, shaking and shuddering as she vomited. She finally looked up, wiping her face clear of drool and smearing vivid red lipstick all across her mouth as she did it.

  Her wig had come loose and slipped to one side, so her natural close-cropped curls were peeking out, and her false eyelashes were barely weathering the storm of puke, sticking together in clumps as tears streamed from her eyes, drizzling mascara over her cheekbones.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ I said, kneeling down in front of her and gazing up at the disaster zone that was Vogue’s usually beautiful face. I grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the dressing table and started dabbing at her, trying to rescue some of the work that had been done to get her stage-ready.

  I glanced at my watch. She was due on at ten thirty—which, horrendously, was only thirty minutes away. Either Vogue was going to start a whole new trend of zombie-faced vomit-chic, or the show was going to be very, very late.

  Her shoulders were still shaking, and the tears were still flowing, and she smelled, frankly, like sick—which is an aroma that not even the very glamorous can successfully pull off. She pushed me away with her trembling hand, which, as she immediately started throwing up again, I was very grateful for.

  ‘How long has she been like this?’ I asked, looking up at Neale, who appeared pretty nauseous himself.

  ‘It started about fifteen minutes ago,’ he answered, hands flapping and voice racing upwards to the kind of note that could shatter lightbulbs. ‘At first she just thought it was nerves—she says it sometimes happens before shows—but … it just won’t stop! I’m only here to help out—she arrived half an hour ago, already done by Suzi, her stylist. I was hanging around in case she needed a touch up, or there was a wardrobe malfunction, or … well, I was just hanging around, really!’

  I nodded, letting him know I got it. He was looking for his big break at Starmaker, just like I was—which seemed to involve an awful lot of hanging around, just in case.

  I stroked Vogue’s back as she puked, holding the strands of her black wig away from the sides of her face and making what I hoped were reassuring noises until the latest bout finally came to a throat-wrenching halt.

  With a final shuddering moan she leaned back in her chair and tore off the wig completely, throwing it away from her so hard it got caught on the lampshade, hanging there dangling down from the middle of the ceiling like some hideous Halloween decoration.

  She held her face in both hands, using her shaking palms to smear away snot and tears and spit and make-up, turning her look into something Picasso might have dreamed up while he was on an acid trip.

  ‘I can’t go on,’ she finally said in her thick south London accent—the one that Patty never objected to, even though it was twice as strong as my Scouse one. ‘I just can’t fucking do it. Not tonight. You’ll have to go find Jack, Neale. Tell him I’m almost dead. Tell him I’ve got cholera.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve actually got cholera, Vogue …’ started Neale, then abruptly shut up when she snapped her eyes wide open at him, her watery green glare so vicious he decided to whimper instead.

  ‘Cholera. Right. Got it. I’ll be right back.’

  He fled from the room in a blur of black, and I heard him squeaking to himself in horror as he ran back along the corridor.

  I stood up, feeling my knees crack after squatting down for so long, and walked to the dressing table. I found a packet of baby wipes—make-up artists never leave home without them—and handed them to Vogue, keeping a safe distance just in case she started chucking up again. I unscrewed the lid to a fresh bottle of water from the mini-fridge, and passed that to her as well.

  She nodded gratefully and took a few sips, before using the baby wipes to start cleaning herself up. I looked on, fascinated, as the layers came away. The make-up and the lashes and the fake beauty spot and the now-smeared lippie. The wig was long gone, and she was snapping open the fasteners at the back of her tight leather bustier so she could breathe better. She tugged out her earrings and lashed them down on the dresser. She used one finger to poke out her intense green contact lenses, revealing her own huge brown eyes. Her thigh-length patent leather stiletto boots followed, slung across the room, where they settled into a shiny, creaking heap.

  By the time she’d finished, she looked … well, still gorgeous, in all honesty. But gorgeous in a way that wouldn’t have looked out of place down the market on a Saturday morning. Gorgeous in a way that you could look if you were doing the shopping, or going to church, or picking the kids up from school. Gorgeous like a normal, genetically blessed young woman—who’d just endured a major vomiting fit.

  Underneath the slap and the bling she emerged like a different person—one who looked very much like she needed to go and crawl under a duvet for a few weeks to recover.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked, holding forward the waste-paper bin so she could throw her crumpled up wipes away. ‘Can I do anything else for you, Vogue?’

  I could, of course, have offered her a smoked-salmon twist—but somehow I didn’t think that was a cure for cholera. Or whatever it was that Vogue actually had.

  She took a deep breath, and another long drag on the water, before looking up at me. She gave me a sad, tired smile.

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Thanks, though, sweetie, you’ve been awesome. Sorry if I caught you with any splash back. I don’t know what’s happening … my little sis had a tummy bug earlier this week, as did half the other kids at her birthday party. I probably should have stayed away, but, well, you know—it’s family. I don’t see enough of them as it is, and it was her tenth. I couldn’t skip that, could I? They’d have killed me, apart from anything else.’

  ‘I understand,’ I answered. And I did. Family was family—and it had to come first, even if it made you quite literally throw up as a result of spending time wit
h them. ‘But are you feeling any better now?’

  I looked nervously at the door, wondering when Neale would finally be able to find Jack and bring him back here so he could sort everything out. Jack would know what to do—he was that kind of guy. He’d have a masterplan, I was sure. He was probably a qualified doctor as well as a music-industry guru.

  ‘A little bit,’ she said, voice wobbling and cracking, ‘but I don’t think I can go on stage tonight. Even if I didn’t look like the Joker after he’s been in a sauna, I couldn’t sing. Not the way my throat is hurting right now. Plus, I couldn’t dance—I know this is probably TMI, Jess, but I have my suspicions the puking was just the start … I think it’ll be both ends soon, if you get my drift.’

  I pulled an ‘eek’ face that hopefully conveyed both my confirmation of the fact that yes, I definitely got her drift, and also my sympathy. We’ve all been there, let’s face it—nobody is immune from the levelling power of Having the Shits. Not even really classy people, like the Queen of England, or George Clooney’s wife.

  I had no idea what they’d do about it. The party was a Starmaker celebration—a shindig to raise its profile, gather the great, the good, and the gossip-worthy under one roof and get the flash bulbs popping. Not that people really used flash bulbs that much any more.

  There were plenty of well-known faces here already; there’d been masses of alcohol consumed, masses of food left to rot, and masses of cocaine had entirely possibly been snorted in the toilets. That was only a guess, mind—I didn’t go in for that kind of thing myself. But I had noticed, during my time on the outer fringes of the celeb world in London, how strange it was that these people could be obsessed with looks and health—eating juiced kale for lunch, going to the gym every day, taking every vitamin supplement known to man—and still bugger it all up by going on class-A binges at parties. A puzzling paradox.

  This party was probably no different, if the high-energy, high-octane atmosphere in the club was anything to go by. As well as the celebs, there were all sorts of important people from the record industry—the execs, the big bosses, the true VIPs. The people with levels of wealth that would make them contenders for hosting the Judges’ Houses section of The X Factor. Not just from Starmaker either, but from the company that owned it—and the distributors, the digital-music-movers, and media from TV, print, and online.

  It was, to give it its correct term, a Big Deal—and the star of the show, the diva who was supposed to be providing the highlight of the evening, was slowly turning as grey as out-of-date pigs’ liver and rooting in her bag for an Imodium so she could get a cab home with her dignity intact.

  I felt sorry for all the people who’d organised it, who’d put so much effort into making the night a success. Apart from Patty, of course, who evoked about as much sympathy as a velociraptor where I was concerned.

  ‘Shit,’ said Vogue, throwing her handbag to the floor and kicking it with her bare foot. ‘I was sure I had some there. God, I’m dreading the drive home—and I’m dreading reading the papers tomorrow. They’ll have made up all kinds of stories about why I was a no-show.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll have you pregnant,’ I suggested, probably not very helpfully.

  ‘Ha! You’re not wrong, kid. Or they’ll give me an eating disorder.’

  ‘Or they’ll have you booked into rehab.’

  ‘Or,’ she said, looking at me with the first signs of laughter in her tired eyes, ‘maybe they’ll give me cholera!’

  ‘Don’t be daft—who’d come up with an idea like that?’ I replied, grinning.

  We both laughed, briefly, and then both stopped just as quickly, as Vogue doubled up in sudden agony, rolling over into a foetal position and clutching at her stomach with her arms. She moaned and groaned, and was obviously in a lot of pain.

  When she eventually straightened up, still wrapping her arms across her belly, her face was drawn and haggard and her eyes were screwed up against the spasms that I could actually hear rippling through her.

  ‘No,’ she said, more definitely than she had before. ‘I actually really can’t do it. I thought maybe I could once the vomming had passed, but now we’re heading for round two, and nobody wants to see that live on stage, no matter how drunk they are. Shit, I don’t care what the tabloids say, but I really hate letting people down. I try so hard to be professional and good to work with, and they’ll all be so pissed off and think I’m just throwing some kind of diva fit—but, look at me! I just can’t do this!’

  I stepped towards her, and put my arm around her shoulder, giving her a quick squeeze and hoping nothing popped out as a result.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, copying the no-nonsense tone I’d heard my mum use with us when we were being down on ourselves. ‘Nobody will think that. We all know how professional you are—it’s just one of those things. I know they always say the show must go on, but unless you can do it from the bogs, I don’t think it’s going to happen this time, is it?’

  Vogue leaned into me, and I could feel the clammy, cold sweat on her forehead, poor thing. She really wasn’t very well at all. She was quiet for a few minutes, and I genuinely started to wonder whether she’d fallen asleep on me, and how I was going to move her so I could get back to work.

  I glanced at our reflection in the mirror, and saw that far from being asleep, she was looking at me through slightly narrowed—but suddenly more alert—eyes. She was chewing one corner of her lip, as though she was wrangling with a big philosophical issue, or an especially hard question on Pointless. I raised my eyebrows at her, my expression asking her what she was thinking.

  ‘Jess,’ she said, finally.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, feeling a little bit freaked out by her change of mood.

  ‘I have an idea.’

  ‘Okay?’ I said, not willing to commit any further until I knew what it involved.

  ‘You’re right—the show must go on. And I think I know exactly how we can make that happen …’

  Chapter 12

  It was very difficult to speak with someone else’s fingers poking around in your mouth, I was discovering—but I was trying desperately hard to do it anyway.

  ‘I aaan’t oo it!’ I mumbled, tempted to bite Neale’s hand as he smoothed the Crest whitening strips down onto my gnashers.

  ‘Of course you can do it,’ he said back, smoothly, refusing to be distracted by my wriggling or my distorted words. ‘And you’re going to look fab-u-lous while you’re doing it.’

  He finally finished, and I clenched my mouth shut in relief. He’d already scoured the existing make-up off my face with a touch as gentle as a WWF wrestler, and had sprinkled drops into my eyes to ‘give them a little oomph’.

  He’d slathered a quick facemask all over my skin, and when I looked in the mirror I saw that not only was I wearing plastic strips across my teeth, but my whole face was green. I’d gone Hulk within the few minutes it had taken for Neale to realise that this was his big chance to prove himself—whether I was willing or not.

  Vogue’s great idea had been so ridiculous, I’d actually laughed out loud when she suggested it. It was only when I saw her still-serious expression that the true horror of it all sunk in.

  ‘You go on instead of me,’ she had said, not even cracking a hint of a smile. I fought the urge to look round for the hidden cameras, before coming to the conclusion that she actually meant it.

  ‘What?’ I’d replied. ‘I can’t do that. I’m just here to hand out the food that nobody wants. I can’t … I’m not … I couldn’t …’

  ‘You are, and you can,’ she’d said briskly, real steel coming into her voice. She stood up, still clutching her tummy, and I suddenly felt a bit scared. Even without her heels she had a good six inches on me.

  ‘I’ve heard you rehearsing, Jess. I’ve seen you practising the routines in the dance studio. I know—I one hundred per cent know—that you are capable of pulling this off.’

  ‘That’s different,’ I bleated, pathetically. ‘
That’s just rehearsing. That’s just in private. That’s … no. I can’t do this.’

  ‘I thought you were here because you want to be a star?’ she said, tilting her head and staring at me.

  ‘I do … but I’m not ready for this, Vogue.’

  ‘Nobody is ever ready, Jess. It’s like having a baby—you might not be ready, but you won’t ever regret it.’

  I wondered briefly, amid all the panic that was flooding my senses, how she’d know about having a baby—but it was definitely not the right time to ask. It was the right time to flee for my life, and I found myself eyeing the door, wondering if I could make it out alive before she rugby tackled me to the floor.

  ‘This,’ she said, walking so close to me our noses were almost touching and I could smell the sour note of her breath, ‘is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You’ve been putting the work in. You’ve got the talent. And that room is jam packed with some of the most important people in the music world—are you going to be the one who jumps in and takes her chance to shine, or are you going to be a waitress for the rest of your life? You have to ask yourself which of those paths you want to follow—because right now, you’re at a crossroads. If you want to stay on the road to nowhere, that’s your choice.’

  Ouch. She’d hit a nerve just about as effectively as a trainee dentist with a hangover—and I felt the jolt of what she was saying flow through my mind. I had come to Starmaker to make a name for myself. Whether that name was going to be ‘Jess Malone—star’ or ‘Jess Malone—waitress to the stars’ was still debatable.

  This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for—and if anybody had told me it would arrive like this, in a cloud of vomit and panic, I wouldn’t have believed them. I also wouldn’t have believed them if they’d said I’d be so scared—terrified, in fact.