Remember My Name (9 page)

N
ow, though, as everyone around me burst into a bubble of hyperactivity, I was starting to doubt myself. To think that I couldn’t do it, after all. To bottle it, as my dad might have said.

Neale had leapt into super-stylist mode the moment Jack had agreed to let me go on.

‘Have you got your kit with you?’ he’d asked him, and Neale had immediately nodded like the Churchill dog, even replying with an ‘Oh, yes!’

‘I always have it with me,’ he’d said proudly, ‘in case there’s a cosmetics emergency.’

Apparently, I counted as a cosmetics emergency, and Neale was currently scraping off the green goo and standing back to survey my face the same way a builder might before he demolished something.

‘You’ll need to sell her up, Jack,’ said Patty, staring at me with more interest than I’d ever seen from her before. I wasn’t sure I liked it—it felt a bit like her eyes might actually laser holes into my skin, and leave me smouldering and sore.

‘The advantage is she’s been useless so far, so nobody will know anything about her. Big up the Liverpool thing, people
like the common touch. Emphasise the way you plucked her from the shithole she was living in to make her a star.’

‘I did
not
live in a shithole,’ I snapped, pushing Neale’s hand away to object.

‘You shut up,’ said Patty, ‘and concentrate on looking good and remembering the words. This part of the business has nothing to do with you.’

Funny how she’d suddenly started to understand every word I said—and even funnier how she’d suddenly decided that ‘the Liverpool thing’ could be an advantage, instead of the kiss of death she’d always regarded it as before.

Still, I did as she said, and shut up—I didn’t have much choice, as Neale was back at my teeth, checking the whitening strips.

‘I get it,’ said Jack, nodding at Patty. ‘I’ll sell the story—a star is born, yeah?’

Patty twisted her face up as though she’d just accidentally eaten a dog turd, and reluctantly agreed.

‘It’s the only way, I think,’ she replied. ‘We need to distract them from the fact that our
real
star is inconvenienced, and make them think this is a better alternative. I’ll go back out and talk to a few of the journos, get the buzz started. By the time she’s on stage, they’ll be excited about it, not disappointed. At least until she opens her mouth.’

She cast me a final scathing glare, and added: ‘You need to sort out costume. The dancing waitress look just won’t cut it, even if it is her natural calling in life.’

Neale looked up as she said it, doing his Churchill-dog impression again. Boy, was he keen to please.

‘I’ll sort it,’ he said, sounding thrilled at the opportunity. ‘I’ll create something … magnificent!’

I cringed a little inside—partly at his words, and the sense of terror at what Neale’s idea of ‘magnificent’ might involve, and partly because he was currently yanking my hair around at all angles while he heaped on dry-shampoo powder to ‘volumise’ it.

He rubbed it all in vigorously, and I looked at myself in horror as I saw my blonde hair was now lifted a good three inches from its roots, sticking out as if I’d been electrocuted.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, patting my hand reassuringly, ‘I’ll finish that when I’m back.’

With that, he followed Patty out of the room, his Converse squeaking on the lino in the hallway, presumably to go and find me a costume from thin air.

That left me—channelling Medusa—and Jack. Plus, every now and then, a very vocal reminder that Vogue was still locked in the toilets, earning her PhD in pooing. Poor thing.

Jack walked over and crouched down in front of me. He smiled and, as usual, I felt better—his smile was like the equivalent of heroin for me, I was starting to realise. He reached out and cupped my face—now thankfully back to its usual colour—and kissed me once, very gently.

His brown eyes met mine, and I felt a tremble run through my body. I was so completely, utterly scared—at exactly the time I needed to be confident.

‘Now then, Princess,’ he said, holding on to my shaking hands and squeezing them softly. ‘This is it. This is your
moment. This is your chance to show everyone what you’ve got. This is what you came here for, isn’t it?’

I nodded, still incapable of speech, and feeling embarrassing tears welling up in my eyes.

‘You can do this,’ he said, firmly. ‘I know you can. Vogue is right to trust my instincts. I spotted her at a youth dance festival in Peckham, and I spotted you at a garden party in Cheshire. I don’t back losers, Jess. I back winners. And you’re a winner. Let me hear you say it.’

I gazed at him, wishing we could just go back to his flat and eat pizza. Or go to the pub. Or have a bare-knuckle fist-fight with Godzilla—anything but this. God, I told myself, you’re not a winner—you’re a whiner.

I squeezed his hands back, took a big breath, and muttered: ‘I’m a winner,’ with as much convictions as I could find. Which, in all honesty, wasn’t very much.

Jack nodded, and stood up to leave.

‘I’m going out there now to tell everyone about you, Jess—and I believe every word of it. You were born to do this—so just believe in yourself as much as I believe in you, okay?’

My lower lip was wobbling, my heart was racing, and I kind of had the feeling I might just cling on to his trouser leg and hope he didn’t notice me dragging along on the floor behind him when he left.

Luckily for any shred of self-esteem I had left, Neale chose that moment to come barrelling back into the room, clutching a pile of random cloth and what looked like two of the spray-painted-lily table decorations perched on top. I could barely
see his glasses peeking over the heap, and he dumped the lot at my feet, grinning insanely.

Jack gave us both a mock-military salute, and left us to it. I stared at his back as he went, wondering how I was going to get through this.

‘Right,’ said Neale, oblivious to my mood, rummaging around in his kit and coming up with a pair of vicious looking shears, ‘here we go!’

I recoiled in horror, genuinely convinced for a moment that he was going to start hacking away at my hair, or trimming my nose or something.

‘No, silly!’ he said, laughing at my expression. ‘This is for the costume! Now, take all your clothes off and let’s get a look at you …’

I stared at him, wondering if he’d lost his mind. There was no way I was going to strip in front of a deranged make-up artist wielding a pair of scissors. Or any other man I didn’t know who wasn’t a qualified medical professional.

‘Believe me, girlfriend,’ he said, ‘you ain’t got nothing I’m interested in.’

He delivered it in such an overdone ‘strong independent Beyoncé’ kind of way that it made me laugh. That alone came as a relief—to be able to breathe again, never mind laugh. I stood up and removed my skirt and blouse as instructed, feeling ridiculously exposed, even if Neale’s gaze was purely professional and not in the slightest bit sexual.

He inspected my black panties and bra—matching, and lacy, thank you very much, just in case it
had
turned into a date night with Jack—and my pattern-topped stockings and
suspenders. Never had I been happier not to be wearing those washed-out greying knick-knacks that had been through the washer a million times.

‘Okay … could be worse. Now, let’s make the magic happen!’ he said, disappearing head first into the pile at his feet and emerging with a red velvet curtain, which he’d clearly filched from one of the booths outside.

Somebody would be missing their privacy tonight—probably me, I thought, catching a glimpse of myself almost naked in the mirror. At least avoiding those carbs had paid off—I was definitely a sleeker version of my former self, and all the dance rehearsals meant I was a lot more toned as well.

That, of course, ruled out using any of Vogue’s costume—as she was a foot taller, had curves in all the right places, and then some more on top. I was also relieved that Neale seemed to have ruled out using her discarded wig, as it was still dangling from the ceiling, and had vomit crusted into one side of it. Not a good look for anyone.

‘So,’ he said, as he draped the velvet over me, looked at it, nodded, hummed, and then nodded again, ‘what’s your name?’

‘You know my name … don’t you?’ I said, frowning in confusion. At least I’d thought he knew my name—I could have sworn he’d used it several times, but maybe I just had delusions of grandeur. I mean, nobody else at Starmaker had bothered to learn it; why should Neale be any different?

‘I
mean
,’ he replied, giving me a look that told me how retarded I was being, ‘what are you going to be called on stage? I don’t suppose Vogue’s her real name, is it?’

He gestured towards the toilets with his shoulder, then bellowed out: ‘Vogue, love! What’s your real name?’

‘Paulette!’ she yelled back, the last bit drowned out by the sound of the loo flushing. Hopefully, she’d peaked.

‘See?’ said Neale, closing one eye and peering through a needle as he threaded it. ‘You need a name. Usually, there are meetings about it—you know, head of marketing, head of brand, head of blah-di-blah, all having these top-level debates about being bang on-trend and capturing the key demographics. You’re not getting that, sweetheart, so you need to come up with one on your own.’

I ouched as the needle accidentally poked into the flesh of my side, and Neale gave me a little ‘oops!’ apology before he carried on tacking away.

A name … God, I’d never even thought about it before. I felt like a superhero who needed a new secret identity, fast.

‘Well,’ I said, breathing in hard as he tugged the red fabric so tight around my waist I thought my boobs might pop out of my mouth, ‘I was always Jess at school. And Jessy to my family.’

‘Maybe you could use Jessy, but just add your initial after it?’ he suggested, standing back to survey his handiwork.

‘Erm … I think that’s already been done,’ I answered, trying not to cringe as he knelt down in front of me, chopping away at the velvet until he made a skirt so short it revealed the lacy black stocking tops. ‘And Jessie J sounds a lot better than Jessy M, anyway.’

‘What about Jessica, then? Is that your naughty name? My parents always use my full name—middle name included—when I’ve been bad, which seems to be a lot of the time.

I giggled—looked like it was the same the world over. But … Jessica. It
did
sound classy. A bit more mature than Jessy, and more ‘take-me-seriously-goddamn-you’ than Jess on its own sounded. I ran through a few scenarios in my mind: ‘And now, live on stage, it’s JESSICA!’; and, ‘For the first time on the
One Show,
all the way from Liverpool, it’s JESSICA!’; finishing with, ‘And at number one in the UK charts this week, it’s JESSICA!’

Hmmm. It kind of worked. Especially if I said it in capitals. Admittedly, I was more used to hearing it in terms of Mum saying things like, ‘I asked you to do the dishes, Jessica!’ and ‘Jessica, how many times do I have to tell you, empty the bath when you’re finished with it?’—but it worked. And bearing in mind that Neale and I were having to hold this particular top-level meeting without the benefit of the head of brand, or even the head of blah-di-blah, it would have to do.

‘Yeah,’ I said, eventually. ‘Jessica. I like it.’

‘Well that’s that sorted then—we make an amazing team! We came up with that without even using PowerPoint! I’ll run over and tell Jack as soon as I’m done here, okay?’

He was still kneeling down, and was using the edge of the scissors to create a deliberately frayed, ragged look at the end of the red velvet mini skirt. The waist was cinched in tight, and he’d used one of the gold cord tie-backs as a belt. He’d looped the other one around my neck, tying it in a knot and letting the ends dangle down into my cleavage, which was covered in the black fishnet he’d pulled loose from Vogue’s abandoned outfit. Luckily, I decided after a quick sniff, it had escaped the worst of the vom-a-thon.

Neale reached up one hand to grab an eye liner gel from his kit, then mysteriously crawled around on the floor until he was crouched behind me.

‘What are you doing back there?’ I said, twisting my head back over my shoulder and trying to see.

‘Drawing seams onto your stockings to make them even more fierce,’ he replied. ‘My nan says the women used to draw lines onto bare legs covered in gravy browning during the war—at least we’re not that desperate!’

Once he was done, he stood up and faced me, looking at my hair and face critically. I realised then how short he was—barely an inch or so taller than me, and even slimmer.

‘How do you cope when you need to work on really tall people, like Vogue?’ I asked, realising as the words tumbled out of my mouth that they should probably have stayed as part of an internal dialogue instead. I’d basically just called him a midget, which could be considered rude—especially when he was doing his very best to turn me into a megastar. The phrase ‘silk purse from a sow’s ear’ sprung to mind.

He fixed me with a look as he started to mess with my hair, pulling it this way and that in a solid mass.

‘Well, darling, they’re usually sitting down—and not wearing an impromptu hand-crafted artisan bespoke one-of-a-kind couture garment that could, very easily, fall to pieces at any moment. Or sometimes,’ he said, sweeping my hair up and giving me a super-cheeky grin, ‘I just wear white stilettos.’

He’d done the impossible, I thought—made me giggle yet again.

‘You’re very naughty,’ I said as he moulded the roots of my hair into an upsweep. ‘I can see I’m going to have to call you Benjamin all the time.’

He pouffed up the parts of my hair that hadn’t turned to putty with the dry shampoo powder, letting the loose blonde strands flow down over my back and shoulders in a kind of explosive waterfall, before getting out a can of industrial strength hairspray and almost choking me with it.

Through the haze, I saw him messing around with his powders and creams and glosses, and endured his prodding and rubbing and blending while he turned me into a painted lady. We’d done this bit together before, so I felt a bit more relaxed about it—he already knew what colours suited me, and what my skin was like, and how to make my eyes pop and my cheekbones shimmer. He finished off with a vibrant red lipstick, and then sprayed my face—hopefully not with the same stuff as he’d used on my hair, but you never can tell.