Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen (5 page)

‘They’ve done
what
?’

It’s four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, a couple of hours before Sing It Back is due to open for another sleepy weekend. In the end I got stuck on number nine on my list, so decided to call a meeting with the bar staff. We’re gathered round the table in my parents’ flat, the scene of last night’s horrendous revelation.

I hand Jaz a cup of coffee. ‘Three months. So …’ I smile weakly. ‘It looks like I’m the boss!’

‘I don’t get it,’ says Simon, running a hand through his dark-blond hair. ‘Why didn’t they tell any of us?’ He pours milk into his drink and stirs thoughtfully. I can understand what Lou sees in him – if you like the quiet bookish type with the possibility of a battered Sartre in his coat pocket. He’s got ambitions to one day complete a novel of his own, and working at Sing It Back means he’s able to temp part-time, thus freeing up his hours to write.

‘It ain’t any wonder – look at the state of yer!’ Archie Howard, Sing It Back’s longest-serving employee – and, so the rumour goes, my parents’ former hairdresser, though he’s wise enough never to admit it – shuffles upright in his chair. ‘Bless ’em, they knew there’d be this right old fuss with the lot of yer. So they’re gone for a bit, it ain’t the end of the world! You’ll take care of us, won’t you, pet?’ He looks at me with crinkly eyes.

I try to appear confident. Privately I think my parents’ failure to mention their trip is more likely down to an acute lack of organisation, but highlighting that doesn’t help our plight.

‘But Maddie doesn’t know the first thing about Sing It Back – she hates it!’ Jaz points out, fiddling with a gigantic scissor-shaped earring. I don’t have the energy to feel offended.

‘Then we’ll all make sure we show her, won’t we?’ Archie pats my knee and I’m grateful for his reassurance. I just wish I had the same faith in myself.

‘Hell
ooo
!’ cries the final member of our party, a six-foot
leggy blonde called Ruby du Jour, half stuck out the window with a fag in her mouth. ‘What’s with all the
drama
? Whatever happened to PMA?’

There’s a silence. Simon looks embarrassed.

‘Positive mental attitude!’ shrieks Ruby. ‘PMA! That’s what I’m talking about, girls.’ She grinds the cigarette out and slams the window shut, waving the smoke around with perfectly manicured hands. But blokes’ hands, nonetheless.

Ruby du Jour is Sing It Back’s much-loved resident drag queen. Her real name is Rob Day, an ex-backing dancer in his forties who worked for a time with the inimitable soul diva Bobbi Sanchez. Unable to leave the stage behind after Bobbi’s career plummeted amid a drugs scandal, Rob hit the drag scene in the nineties and toured a handful of London’s clubs with a brilliantly reviewed comedy act. He’s really talented, or at least he was in his heyday – and the wonderful thing is you never know who’s going to turn up at the club on any given night: Ruby is extravagant, exciting, extraordinary; Rob is sensitive, capable, trustworthy. I like them both in separate ways – it’s like having two friends in one. Recently I’ve seen far more of Ruby than I have of Rob, though, and I miss him. He never ‘came out’ as Rob, only as Ruby, and I sometimes wonder if she’s the only person he knows how to be these days.

‘Look,’ I say, ‘we’ll make it work. Trust me. I’ll … I’ll sort it out.’

‘What’s with all the negativity?’ demands Ruby, coming to sit opposite me. She crosses her long legs. ‘It’s not like any of us are losing our jobs … are we?’

I shake my head. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then what’s there to be upset about?’ Ruby looks round
at the assembled faces. Simon shrugs. Archie raises an eyebrow. Jaz examines her neon-painted nails.

‘The way I see it,’ Ruby goes on, ‘this is one hell of an opportunity. Not just for Maddie but for all of us!’

Jaz looks up. ‘What d’you mean?’ Curiosity gets the better of the guinea pig, too: with an enquiring expression, Andre emerges from her handbag. Is that a
monocle
he’s wearing?

‘I mean’ – Ruby unclasps her clutch and plucks out a lipstick – ‘that the club is in a sorry state. It’s rock bottom. It’s an embarrassment.’ Blank faces. ‘Come on, we all skirt around the issue—’

‘We know you do, Rob,’ Archie interjects gruffly.

‘—but quite frankly the place is a
dive
.’

I hold my hands up. ‘No offence, Ruby, but this isn’t making me feel better …’

‘Let me finish!’ Ruby’s painted eyebrows shoot up like a pair of brackets. ‘My point is that it can’t get much worse, can it?’ Silence. ‘Exactly. So whatever Maddie does
has
to be an improvement. If you ask me, we may as well make that improvement worthwhile.’

Simon looks doubtful. ‘How?’

‘Let’s throw everything we’ve
got
at it!’ cries Ruby, as though it’s the easiest thing in the world. ‘Why just cope, why just manage, why just’ – she addresses me – ‘“make it work”? Why, when we can do so much better?’ She applies a slick of bright red lippy and we all wait, transfixed. ‘Archie, let’s start with you. Shake up the old cocktail menu, it’s nearly as ancient as you and it’s crying out for a revamp. Market research, that’s what you need to do.’

‘Market you-what?’

‘I can ramp up publicity,’ Jaz chips in with a shrug, scooping Andre out and plopping him on the table. ‘It can’t hurt to print a few fliers and get some support going …’

Ruby extends a painted-red talon. ‘Exactly.’

‘I could update the playlists?’ Simon suggests, looking to me for approval. ‘Some of the stuff on there’s pretty evil.’

‘And
I
,’ announces Ruby, ‘will be working on a new cabaret act.’ Everybody groans. ‘What? What’s wrong with my cabaret act?’

Archie shakes his head.

Ruby looks hurt.

‘Hang on,’ I say, ‘Ruby’s got a point.’ And the more I think about it, the more she has. A little germ of hope is glowing in my chest, and the more I turn possibilities over in my head, the brighter it becomes. ‘Ruby’s absolutely right. We can do this.’

‘Thank you very much!’ Ruby says pointedly to the old man.

‘And not just that,’ I continue, warming to my cause. ‘Why stop there? Why not turn the whole place around, make a completely fresh start?’

‘I don’t know what you’ve got in mind,’ says Jaz, ‘but it’ll cost money.’ She’s pretending to look disinterested, but those big eyes betray a glimmer of curiosity – I know her too well.

‘Mum and Dad left me a cheque book … though realistically speaking there’ll be nowhere near enough in their accounts.’ Suddenly I’m animated. ‘I want to re-do the entire place from floor to ceiling. Let’s change everything. If we can get it back to where it was fifteen years ago—’

‘We’ll throw a massive re-launch party for when they get back!’ Ruby cries.

‘Yes!’ squeals Jaz, bobbing up and down in her seat. ‘And we’ll get posters done and invite Z-list celebrities and me and Andre’ll get in the back pages of
Hello!
—’

‘Yes! And—’

‘Hang on a minute,’ I laugh, my head buzzing. ‘One thing at a time. I’ve got to look at ways of saving. I mean there’s always taking out a loan, but to be honest my parents have kind of rinsed that option—’

‘We’ll help,’ says Simon, nervously glancing round the table. ‘I mean … won’t we?’

‘Of course!’ Jaz grabs my hand. ‘Trim our wages—’

‘Nobody’s doing any such thing,’ I interrupt, clocking Archie’s slightly relieved expression. ‘This is my project and my responsibility. Nobody’s giving me anything.’

Despite the seeming impossibility of what I’m suggesting, I realise I’m shaking. I can make this work. I can totally make this work.

‘I’ll move out of my flat,’ I say, almost to myself. ‘I’ll move in here, then all my wages from Simply Voices can go into the bar. I’ll be right on top of it that way, too – I’ll need to be here to oversee the alterations—’

‘But, Maddie, it’s
hideous
in here!’ Jaz’s gaze darts across the walls.

I wave her away. ‘It’ll be fine.’

Ruby clutches my arm, like we’re war-bound heroes about to storm the beach at Normandy. ‘You can do this,’ she tells me. ‘You can.’

For a second my confidence falters. ‘What about Mum and
Dad? I mean, what if I mess things up?’ Yes, I want to do this for me – this is my chance to prove myself as management material – but it’s imagining the look on my parents’ faces that has me wanting to succeed.

It’s Archie’s turn to speak. ‘If Rick an’ Sapphy ’adn’t trusted you, they wouldn’t ’ave left you in charge.’ He winks at me. ‘Simple as that.’

Ruby squeezes my hand again. ‘Don’t you see what we’re saying, Maddie?
Use
that trust.’ She shrugs. ‘You can make this happen.’

And do you know what? I believe her.

At least I do until about nine p.m.

‘Come on,’ says Jaz, popping the top off a bottle of Corona, ‘it’s not
that
bad.’ She takes a slug of the drink and sits down behind the empty bar. In moments she’s back to flicking through her celebrity magazine.

‘You think?’ But my words are swallowed up by a ghastly shriek as one of the club’s antique microphones blasts its feedback over a drunken rendition of ‘Nine to Five’. The poor girl singing – one of only four here this evening – winces at her friends apologetically.

Jaz squeezes a wedge of lime into the neck of her beer.
Tonight her dress consists of mini laminated post-its with big black crosses scrawled over each one – I applaud her efforts even when there’s no one around to admire them.

‘Check this out.’ She lifts her magazine and shows me the double-page spread.

I peer in. ‘Ugh!’

All across Soho, bars and clubs like ours are pulling in the punters, raking in the cash, bringing in the custom. Jaz and I are examining a pop princess who performed on GMTV wearing an outfit made entirely of human hair. That’s how busy we are.

The last time I set foot in Sing It Back was about four months ago, on Mum’s birthday. Throughout the night I kept to the shadows, hid in the booths, never staying in one place for more than a few moments – in fact, at one point I remember hiding at the back of the broom closet with Lou, eating Frazzles and bitching about how Lawrence had failed to show up … I did
anything
to avoid my parents dragging me on to that stage. Especially when, at the end of the night, Dad took Mum’s hand, knelt down in front of everyone and crooned to Stevie Wonder, with the bobbing head and everything. By ‘everything’ I mean he closed his eyes. God, yes, he actually sang the whole thing with his eyes shut. Argh.

But at least the place was sort of full that night. OK, it wasn’t a typical Saturday and the guests were all my parents’ friends, but there was at least an atmosphere.

I look around. Sing It Back is in a state. It’s dark enough already but two of the overhead ‘spotlights’ have blown, leaving pockets of the room shrouded in almost-complete darkness. Every so often the dim light from a chipped mirror
ball swings reluctantly round, washing everything grey. The back wall is lined with booths, their mustard-coloured upholstery old and stained. Fringed lamps squat miserably on the tables, each bearing the name of an eighties act (Mum and Dad thought it was a genius alternative to table numbers, in the giddy days when they anticipated a kitchen opening up). In a foul clash the walls are papered poppy-red, peeling like sunburned skin. Cracked pink-framed mirrors punctuate the space; a huge wall-to-wall one, like you get at dance schools, is behind the raised area known as the stage. Whoever
wants
to see themselves singing? Isn’t it bad enough hearing it?

A man brandishing a pint – one of the sole party of four – has taken to the mic. He’s belting out a heinous rendition of Whitesnake’s ‘Here I Go Again’, proving my theory that the only part of that song anybody knows is the ‘Here I go again on my own’ bit (which, for a lone vocalist, starts to feel a tad repetitive. Ah, there he goes again. And again. Please, not again). Every ten seconds the mic fleetingly cuts out and this woolly metallic boom wings around the bar. I feel like we’re at the foot of the tripods in
War of the Worlds
.

‘Mic!’ the other bloke shouts, then what sounds like ‘That’s a shit mic.’ I’m about to accept their criticism and refund the paltry sum we’ve made from their custom when I realise he’s addressing the singer by his name. The good thing about terrible karaoke is that most people are too drunk to mind.