Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen (32 page)

Jaz is waiting when I get back to the club. She gives me a massive hug as soon as I walk in and mumbles ‘Sorry’ into my hair. Then she holds on for so long that I have to tell her to get off while I at least put my bags down. Hastily I shove the pitiful Assolution into my handbag and zip it shut.

‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks nervously. She can barely look me in the eye, I notice. And she’s wearing … trainers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in flats, let alone something she could play sport in, and I’m not sure I like it.

I shake my head. ‘No.’

‘Maddie, I’m so sorry,’ she gabbles, ‘I’ve ruined everything, I know I have. I’ve been stupid, I made a terrible mistake. I wish I could take it back – please believe me, I’d do anything. Lou hates me, doesn’t she? Of course she does, I’d feel the exact same—’

‘Slow down,’ I tell her, slipping into one of the booths and encouraging her to do the same. ‘I’m not mad at you.’

She looks close to tears. ‘You’re not?’

‘Just sit down, Jaz, you’re weirding me out.’

‘Sorry.’ She does as she’s told. For a minute neither of us speaks.

‘Are you going to tell me, then?’ I ask softly. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

Jaz exhales very slowly and for a long time, as if she’s been holding her breath since it happened.

‘I was drunk.’

‘That’s it?’ I raise an eyebrow. ‘That’s your excuse?’

Furiously, she shakes her head. ‘Of course not. I was drunk because I’d been drinking.’

‘Yeah …?’

‘And I’d been drinking because earlier that day I had a phone call.’

This could take a while. It’s starting to feel like that rhyme about the old woman who swallowed a bird to catch the spider and she swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

‘From Carl.’ She looks up at me. ‘He’s in the UK.’

I’m shocked. I thought Carl was still in the States, rotting in a gutter for all I care – but more likely messing up whatever poor girl had the misfortune to walk into his life next.

‘What did he want?’

‘He’s here for a couple of weeks.’ She bites her lip. ‘I changed my number when I moved but he must have tracked it down somehow.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I couldn’t get hold of you. You were sick, you said you didn’t want visitors.’

It hits me how selfish I’ve been. All because of bloody Nick Craven, I’ve been acting like a dick to all the people I care about – and what for?

‘Sorry, Jaz,’ I say, meaning it.

‘That’s not the point. The point is it threw me. And I started remembering everything he told me about myself: that I was a waste of space, ugly, useless, how I’d never amount to anything … It brought it all back, you know? Even though I thought I’d left all that behind.’

I nod.

‘So I drank.’ She looks guilty. ‘A lot. And then the next thing I know Evan Bergman’s telling me that he needs my help.’

‘I bet he was.’

‘And that we had to make up for the fact you were upstairs with the lurgy. And the thing with Nick Craven was off, because you’d started seeing Lawrence again.’

A deep weariness descends on me. ‘It’s not like that at all,’ I sigh, ‘but fine – go on.’

‘So he told me to … you know, make something happen.’

I put my face in my hands. ‘And how did he suggest doing that?’

‘Well, he told me to … kiss Simon. Just for a second, because he said that’s all it was, just for telly, and of course it didn’t mean anything and everyone would understand that.’

‘He told you that was how reality TV worked?’

‘Something like that.’ She squirms. ‘And it’s not an excuse, I know that – I do have my own mind and I could have said no. But I wasn’t thinking straight and I just thought, Fuck it, what does it matter? It’s only for TV.’

‘It’s only for TV …’

‘Yeah. And Simon’s my friend, and I’ve kissed friends before and it’s meant nothing – I kind of didn’t think it was that big a deal. And of course I’d barely landed on him – because that’s how it was: he didn’t play any part in it – when he pushed me off.’ Her voice softens. ‘But by then it was too late. Alison had everything she needed.’

I frown. ‘This would be about when Ruby and Davinia came up to the flat?’

‘Must have been. I can’t remember, I was too out of it.’

I sigh. ‘Oh, Jaz.’

‘I tried to tell you!’ she cries. ‘Yesterday, before you went out with Lawrence.’

‘I’ve been a nonce,’ I say. ‘I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problems I haven’t noticed when my friends need me.’

A tear escapes out the corner of her eye. ‘I feel awful,’ she whispers. ‘Simon won’t even look at me. Lou hates me, I bet.’ She checks my expression.

‘’Fraid so,’ I tell her. ‘But she hates me too.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

I wave away her concern. ‘There’s more to it than this. She thinks I made a mistake by getting involved with Evan in the first place – and I’m thinking the same thing myself. I just didn’t want to admit it.’

Jaz reaches across and puts her hand on mine. ‘It hasn’t been a mistake, not really – look around you.’

I scan the room. Pineapple is virtually unrecognisable from the Sing It Back of weeks ago. The money we’ve made has updated the fixtures and decor to meet the current trend (Toby ran a competition for viewers to design their own furnishings) – it’s now more high-end boudoir than dead-end dive bar: glinting chandeliers bejewel the ceiling, a single obligatory ‘mirror cube’ at their heart; swathes of dark fabric closet each booth individually, lending an exclusive, VIP feel; elaborately framed mirrors stretch from wall to wall, glass surfaces shimmering like water; squashy couches line the space, shabby chic, alongside bespoke low-lying tables with stylised pineapples carved out of their centre. The revamped look has
attracted a wider clientele, reaching out to corporate functions as much as it does to hens, birthdays, anniversaries, engagement parties. We’ve moved the club’s profile into a new market and I’m proud of how far we’ve come. It just concerns me at what cost.

‘I guess it’s too late to stop the kiss going out?’ I say, my stomach crunching at the thought of it being broadcast.

‘I already thought of that,’ Jaz despairs. ‘Toby gave me Alison’s number – she practically hung up on me. She told me she understood but that Evan would murder her if she edited it out.’

‘So she refused?’

‘I tried.’

‘Hmm.’ My mind’s ticking over.

‘Why?’ Jaz’s eyes widen. ‘Do you think there’s something we can do?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘But let me speak to her. I think I know what might swing it.’

Alison’s flat in Kilburn is on the ground floor of an insalubrious period property. The steps up to the front door are mapped with tangled undergrowth and there’s a strong aroma of incense.

I’m instantly buzzed in without being asked who I am. Inside, the windowless hall is dark and quiet, and I trip over a bicycle tyre wedged against the wall. It’s just possible to make out the number on the first door I come to, and I knock firmly on it, three times.

A tall man with a dreadful beard answers. The smell of
weed from inside the flat hits me like a wall. And something else – spaghetti bolognese?

‘Oh. Hello.’ He scopes me up and down with a lascivious grin. ‘I know you.’

‘Is Alison in?’ I ask, folding my arms. There’s a brown stain on his Pearl Jam T-shirt that doesn’t beg analysis.

‘Dunno.’ He sticks his head round the door and yells to someone I can’t see. ‘Jon, you seen Al?’

Another man’s voice comes back, muffled.

‘She’s outside,’ he tells me, putting his arm up on the door-frame to let me pass. ‘Come on through, you can get out the back way.’

‘Thanks.’ I squeeze past, trying not to press the entire length of my body up against his but finding it difficult. He doesn’t seem to mind.

The flat’s a tip – there’s a crumpled duvet on the sofa and the remains of a Chinese takeaway lies scattered on the carpet. Half-drunk mugs of tea are dotted around the place. One of Alison’s biker boots rests on its side by the TV. As I go past the kitchen, Jon, short with thick-framed glasses, regards me suspiciously as he stirs something cooking on the hob.

I peer down a crooked set of back steps. ‘OK if I head out?’

‘Go for it.’

The garden is small, completely overgrown and un-looked-after but quite romantic, with the late afternoon sun bathing the grass in a caramel hue.

Alison’s sitting on one of two plastic chairs, the sort you find in school classrooms, her back to me. A haze of smoke lingers above her head.

‘Hi.’

She turns round in surprise and flips her book shut. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Toby told me where you lived … hope you don’t mind?’

Alison drags on her cigarette. ‘I was about to head to yours.’ She exhales. ‘What’s new? Anything good on the Jaz/Simon front? We need something juicy since you and Nick fizzled out.’ She sounds so blasé, it’s almost inhuman. I try not to let it affect me.

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ I say. ‘See, I need to ask a favour.’

‘And I know what it is.’ She throws her fag butt on the grass and blows the smoke out quickly. ‘I’m not cutting it, Maddie.’

‘There’s got to be something you can do,’ I beg. ‘There has to be.’

She shakes her head. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’m asking you as a friend.’ I sit down on the other chair. ‘Please.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Is it too late?’

A chill in the air makes her wrap her arms round herself. ‘It’s going out tomorrow,’ she says flatly.

‘Then we can still do something about it. This has hurt a lot of people, it’s not right. Evan went too far this time.’

‘And he didn’t go too far with Nick?’ she challenges. ‘I would’ve thought you’d be more fussed about getting that cut.’

‘You knew about that?’ I sit back, shaking my head. ‘Of course you did. Everyone knows about Evan’s game – apart from the people he’s playing it on.’

‘It’s not a game,’ Alison says, completely without guile. ‘It’s just how TV works.’

‘What about how people work?’ I say. ‘How feelings work? Doesn’t that count?’

She looks at me like she hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about.

‘Anyway I didn’t know about Nick,’ I say briskly. ‘About the footage, I mean, until it was too late. But this is different. I’ve still got time to do something about it.’

Alison draws out another cigarette and offers me one.

‘No, thanks.’

‘You’d have to talk it through with Evan,’ she advises. ‘And you know what he’d say.’

I choose my words carefully. ‘I know what he’d say to me.’

My meaning hangs in the air a moment, and Alison slides me a narrow look. ‘I’m not asking him, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘I think he’d listen to you.’ I feel my way, not wanting to scare her off. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

She pulls hard on her cigarette and doesn’t reply.

‘There’s something going on, isn’t there?’

Alison’s gaze is fixed straight ahead. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You and Evan,’ I say slowly. ‘There’s something between you.’

She snorts with derision. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘Come on, Alison, it’s obvious. I knew it the minute you turned up that day with the crew. One moment you hated Evan, the next you were all over him. And I saw how his behaviour affected you.’

‘How?’

‘Too deeply for him to be just your boss.’

She turns to me, her face softer now. ‘Does anyone else know?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I say gently. ‘Maybe.’

‘Oh god,’ she flicks the ash off her cigarette, ‘I knew it would come out eventually. You probably think I’m an idiot.’

‘It’s not for me to say.’

‘But that’s what you think.’

‘Who cares what I think? Evan’s not my cup of tea, but that’s irrelevant.’

Her body sags. ‘I’m so relieved to talk to someone about it,’ she blurts. ‘No one else knows – my flatmates wouldn’t understand, they’re too immature. All they do is sit around playing
Arkham Asylum
all day and picking their noses.’