Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen (20 page)

Loaf laughs hollowly. ‘I don’t think so. I’m aware I’m an eccentric – and it’s eccentrics like me that these reality shows eat for breakfast.’ He dunks a Bourbon biscuit and sucks the liquid from it loudly.

When he’s finished he asks, ‘So what happened today?’

‘Apart from getting mauled by David Bowie?’

‘Apart from that.’

I sigh. ‘Well, it’s nothing really. I don’t think. It’s just that things have been great so far, really great, and I’ve been thinking how maybe the reality TV thing wasn’t so bad after all. But now it’s like it really
was
too good to be true, either that or I’ve spectacularly missed the point, because Evan Bergman – he’s the producer at Tooth & Nail—’

‘I know who he is.’

‘—he’s started going on about “stepping things up a notch” and giving viewers “something to sink their teeth into”. Basically he wants me to engineer things so people – my friends – get pissed off, or upset, or argue with each other. And that’s not something I’m prepared to do.’

Loaf nods. ‘I can understand that.’

‘So I’m just going to stand my ground. I’m not going to let Evan bully me.’ I get to the bottom of my coffee and it turns gritty.

‘Evan Bergman’s a difficult man,’ says Loaf. ‘He’s very convincing.’

‘Tell me about it!’ I splutter. ‘Hang on a minute – you know him?’

Loaf checks the time. ‘I should get back,’ he says.

‘But you know him?’ It seems vital to find out. ‘How?’

A pause before Loaf stands up. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he says, ‘it’s not worth going into.’

He collects the mugs and I notice his hands are shaking. What on earth is this about?

‘All I’ll tell you,’ he murmurs, ‘is what I told you before: look after yourself and watch your back. You’ve learned that for yourself today.’

‘But what about Evan? I mean, if there’s something I should know …’

He turns round at the door. ‘That’s all you need to know,’ he says solemnly. ‘For now.’

It’s raining the next day when Lou and I emerge from Simply Voices. We get drenched as we run for the tube, my pound-shop umbrella flipping itself inside out and filling with wind, threatening to carry us away.

‘My hair’s ruined!’ Lou cries once we’ve ducked into the station. It’s rush hour so we have to flatten ourselves against the wall to avoid being slammed into.

‘You look gorgeous,’ I say, catching my own reflection in the glass of a poster ad and not liking what I see – my own hair is
like Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen’s. ‘At least Simon’s going to think so.’ I flash her a cheeky grin.

‘Wish me luck,’ she says anxiously, patting her hair. ‘Is my mascara smudged?’

‘No. I’d say if you looked anything other than perfect, and you don’t.’

Tonight is Lou and Simon’s first date. I’m excited enough, so I can only think what she’s going through.

‘Good luck,’ I tell her, as a guy with a massive backpack bumps into me – he apologises in French, ‘but you won’t need it. Do you know where he’s taking you?’

‘Just the pub,’ she says. ‘Thankfully he didn’t suggest dinner – I’ll have some scampi fries or something later. I can’t go for a meal on a first date.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m too nervous. And besides, I never know what to order. If I order a salad he’ll think I’m a waif. If I order a steak he’ll think I’m a pig – even if I really want steak, which I invariably do. And if I order something with garlic in – and practically
everything
has garlic in – I’ll stink!’

‘What, and scampi fries don’t?’

‘Good point.’

I laugh. ‘Simon likes you already. You’re friends, remember? It’s not like a blind date – you already know he’s a nice guy.’

‘Yeah …’ She squirms. ‘That’s why, though, I don’t want to mess things up.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ I say, hugging her. ‘Call me first thing, OK?’

‘OK.’

As Lou disappears down the steps, I lament that my parents’
flat isn’t quite far away enough to warrant getting the tube. Instead I brave the elements once more and pray my tatty umbrella, which now resembles a dead crow’s wing on a stick, survives the distance.

All the way home I think about Lou and Simon: I’m so happy they’ve finally got it together. And they will, I know, however tonight goes – they’re made for each other.

Annoyingly, my thoughts turn to my own love life, or lack thereof. I wonder what Lawrence is doing now, but rather than feeling upset at his new relationship with that theatre director, I’m just annoyed at having wasted so many months with him. I still can’t believe he was seeing us both at the same time! In truth I’m inclined to agree with Lou about the relationship with what’s-her-face-Montgomery not being the greatest love affair in the history of the world: Lawrence is, I realise, too selfish. And it’s far too like him to embark on something that’s going to further his career to that extent. I don’t want it to still sting, but it does a little. Not that he’s dating someone new, but that the time we spent together was so clearly a farce.

I pass a bunch of people sheltering miserably under a bus stop and one of them meets my eye. This is happening more now: someone looks at me for a fraction too long, frowns a bit and nudges the person next to them, then by the time they’ve reached any conclusion about
Blast from the Past
I’ve already disappeared. Despite the size of the city, I feel more anonymous here than I would anywhere else: there are too many people and things to draw the attention away.

Everyone at Simply Voices has got over-excited about the show, too – I deliberately kept it to myself at first, maintained a low profile and didn’t tell anyone, but when my identity got
blown it only made the shock factor that much more. The most surprising is Jennifer, who, when she first caught wind of what I was doing, was pretty brutal about the fact it would wreck my life, ruin my parents’ hard work, make fools of us all, etc., etc., but as
Blast from the Past
began to gain momentum – and popularity – did a quick backpedal and started getting me to sign things for her friends. It’s all been quite flattering until she asked me for Nick Craven’s signature and I realised then the true motivation behind her turnaround. As if I’d do that! I’d look like the biggest suck-arse on the planet. I told her she should come to the club and ask him herself, which brought her out in a rash and made her fumble hot-handed with a vanilla-iced cupcake till she dropped it down her silky peach blouse.

But even I have to admit that the show – and my involvement in it – is causing a stir. At the start I tried to resist it, thinking I could somehow fly under the radar, but of course that’s impossible. Viewers have taken to the theme in a way I could never have expected. Evan says it’s the kitsch nostalgia; Toby says it’s the humour (despite the spangly new machines, it just goes to prove that karaoke can only ever sound terrible); Alison says it’s the personalities – we’ve got some strong characters working at the bar; Nick says … well, I don’t know what Nick says. He’s been on-set – if that’s the right term – for several days, but I haven’t spoken to him much. His job is to make sure the cameras follow what action there is, and occasionally he’ll ask us to move into a different part of the club to refresh the angle. But if I’m completely honest, I’ve been avoiding him: every time we speak I seem to make a tit of myself.

It annoys me that I care what he thinks, I reflect as I turn into our street. After all, who is he to pass judgement on another person’s behaviour? I’ve never met anyone less qualified to do so in my whole entire life. He’s a shallow go-getter. Yes, that’s what he is. He’s not at all nice, or charming – or even that handsome! He
tricked
me into believing he was handsome, by putting me on the back foot from the first moment we met. I’ve become far too carried away with the
idea
of what he looks like, when in reality he’s not actually that fit …

Oh.

Except he is.

Because there, standing in the porch next door to Pineapple, with his hands in his pockets, is Nick Craven.

It’s as if I’ve summoned him by sheer force of imagination, so when he sees me and waves, I experience a hot rush of you-found-me-out embarrassment. Had he not spotted me I would have turned right around and walked in the opposite direction.

What the fuck do I do now?

I go towards him. It seems to take for ever. I smile in what I hope is a friendly way, then don’t really know whether to carry on smiling or stop smiling, but if I stop smiling I just have to wear this serious face and if I carry on I look like some sort of nutter. Do I keep looking at him, or is that creepy? Look at the ground? No, weird. Glance around in an interested way like I haven’t walked down this street ten thousand times before? Even weirder. The umbrella has all but given up and is a serious threat to passers-by, so I bundle it up and stuff it under one arm. The bottoms of my jeans are soaked and I can only
imagine what my top half looks like: all straggly hair and blotchy make-up. Why, oh
why
can’t he turn up when I’m wearing my new Whistles dress and heels, and maybe talking on the phone to a friend, laughing and making someone else laugh, and I’ll see him and be like, ‘Oh, hi, Nick, give me a sec’ while I laugh some more and he just looks on and thinks I’m so out of his league it’s not funny, so what am I laughing at?

But it is funny. Ha ha ha. Because right now I look like something that’s crawled out of a drain.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘how’s it going?’ He’s shielded from the rain and looks utterly … beautiful, with messy black hair and wearing a lovely woolly dark-green jumper, the sort of jumper you want to hug.

I gesture to my own outfit. ‘Soggy.’

Soggy. Got to be one of the most attractive ways to describe oneself
.

But he laughs. ‘Yeah, it’s horrid.’ A pause. ‘I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this.’

I shake my head.

‘I’m not really here for work.’

‘You’re not?’

‘In a sense I am, but not exactly.’ He seems a bit awkward. ‘Look, I get the impression we haven’t got off to the best start.’ He grins. ‘I mean, the first time—’

‘Yes, yes, we know what happened the first time.’

He nods, gathering himself. ‘And there’s stuff I’ve been meaning to discuss with you, so I wondered if … I mean, there never seems to be a good time to … well, you know.’ He stops, runs a hand through his hair. ‘Anyway, if you’ve got half an hour now, I’d really like to buy you a coffee.’

I’m taken aback. ‘Now?’

‘Yeah.’ He frowns. ‘Only if you’ve got time – or else we can do it another day.’

‘No, no, now’s good.’

To my shame, all I can think is:
Is this a date? Is this a date?
And then I tell myself off for being so stupid. Of
course
it’s not a date. And I don’t want it to be – because I know exactly what Nick Craven gets up to on his so-called dates with unsuitable women. Am
I
an unsuitable woman?

‘I just need to grab a shower,’ I say, despite myself already thinking about doing my hair and shaving my legs (why?) and using some of those expensive Jo Malone bath goodies that I was given three Christmases ago but was always too afraid to open. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

‘You live here?’ he asks, glancing up at the windows of my parents’ flat. The wooden blind, half-pulled, is sagging drunkenly across the window and there’s a faded Wet Wet Wet sticker in one corner that, sadly, is just about visible. I think I scratched Marti Pellow’s face out once when drunk.

‘Er … yeah.’ I unlock the door and he moves to follow me in.

My mind darts to the treasures concealed at Mum and Dad’s. The photographs. The purple mirrors. The cello chair. I’m not ready to show Nick those delights quite yet.

‘Wait here,’ I instruct him, practically closing the door in his face.

‘What? It’s raining.’

‘Like I said, I won’t be long.’

‘Come on, it’s freezing!’

‘There’s a cafe over the road,’ I suggest through the gap in
the door, surprised by how rude I’m prepared to be if the circumstances are right. ‘Back in a sec!’

Inside, I bolt up the stairs and nearly drop my keys, my hands are shaking so much. Davinia emerges from her apartment in a silk kimono, her hair done up in rollers.