The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride (12 page)

Luke must have been drinking water or something all night, because he was sitting on the other side of the room eating a cooked breakfast and reading the papers. If I felt bad when I woke up, I felt a fuck of a lot worse once he’d showed me the pictures of myself coming out of the club in the middle of the night. I had no memory of any of it, but it was definitely me, even though I looked more like Dad after one of his major benders, the ones that left him in the gutter outside the pub, waiting for Mum or one of us to scrape him up and stagger home with him.

Even though I was in too much pain to see the funny side of it myself at that moment, I did think Luke might at least crack a smile as he showed me, but he looked furious, like I’d let him down or something, shown myself up for the drunken slapper I really was. Worse still, he actually managed to make me feel guilty, made worse when I had to rush to the bathroom and get rid of the remains of the cocktails still swilling about in my stomach. Hauling myself up from where
I was, kneeling on the floor, I stared blearily into the mirror, shocked by the smeared make-up, crushed hair and deadly pallor that glowered back at me. I locked the door quickly and ran a shower, determined to improve things before I represented myself to the love of my life, who was looking so spruced up and clean living.

Eventually, having managed to at least get rid of the smell of sick, even though I hadn’t managed to find any mascara to make my eyes look like they actually existed, I ventured back out, grabbing a pair of Ray-Bans he’d left on the side and ramming them over my eyes before sinking into the chair opposite him and accepting the cup of tepid black coffee he passed over. Finally he seemed unable to keep up the angry schoolmaster act any longer and cracked a grin.

‘You look well and truly fucked,’ he chuckled.

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ll order some fresh coffee. You need your wits about you because we need to make plans.’

‘Plans?’

‘We need to think about the tour and everything else we talked about last night.’

Vaguely, through the haze of pain, I could recall snatches of the previous night.

‘OK,’ I said, a bit doubtfully. ‘But we need to talk to Dora because she knows everything I’m going to be doing this year acting-wise.’

‘Listen, babes,’ he said, ‘you are going to have to put the acting on hold for now. After last night we are really hot and you have to strike at moments like this. If we wait even six
months we will lose the momentum. Believe me, I know this business. It’s all down to timing. You can go back to acting any time.’

I probably should have taken things a bit more slowly and tactfully at that stage, but my stomach was bubbling back up towards my throat again and I just didn’t have the time for it.

‘I’ve told you,’ I said as I struggled back to my feet. ‘Singing is just a hobby. The acting has to come first.’

‘Don’t let me down on this, Steff,’ he said and I caught a glimpse of his face before I crashed back through the bathroom door. To look at him you’d have thought I’d just run him over with a truck.

S
ince I hardly got to see Mum any more, at least not for long enough periods to really confide anything to her, Dora had become like my confessor. She seemed to be endlessly patient, just lighting one cigarette after another and pouring the coffee as I told her all about everything that had happened at the Brits and my worries about how it was getting out of control.

‘Now Luke wants to go on tour and God knows what else,’ I gabbled, a bit hysterical really. ‘But I don’t know.’

‘The record company want you to do some songs on your own,’ she said, as casually as if she’d just remembered a phone message she’d taken for me.

‘You’re kidding.’ I felt a strange mixture of buzz and dread. ‘He’d do his fucking nut if he knew that.’

‘You’re bigger than he is, Steff, and a better singer. Maybe he’s going to have to face up to that. Where would Cher be if she’d stuck with Sonny?’

‘Who?’

‘Exactly.’

‘How can I be bigger than Luke? What about the West End Boys and all those platinum records?’

‘That was then. Just because the group was big doesn’t mean he can be a star on his own. You’re the one everyone’s in love with now. And you’ve got a real talent. That’s why he needs to be part of a double act with you. He had his chance on his own and it didn’t work.’

‘He’s still famous,’ I protested, a bit feebly.

‘Only because of the band. Your generation of girls will always remember because you were fans, but younger kids won’t have a clue who he is, any more than you could name the members of The Monkees or The Bay City Rollers.’

‘Really? Jesus, if Luke ever thought that, it would destroy him. Singing is his whole life. I’ve already insulted him by suggesting acting is superior in some way.’

‘He’s a big boy now.’ Dora shrugged. ‘He knows how the business works. He’s got to accept it.’

I couldn’t get my head round that; I mean, he’s Luke Lewis, for God’s sake! To me he was always going to be a pop god. So I changed the subject. ‘You ever heard of someone called Quentin James?’

‘Of course, why?’

‘He said I should sell my story. Said he could make me a couple of million.’

It was hard to believe I was even saying that. I mean, what sort of money is two million? It’s like gigantic wealth, isn’t it, and I was bandying the figures about like I was talking about a couple of hundred quid. Everything was going so weird.

‘He probably could,’Dora said, in exactly the same matter-of-fact voice. ‘He’s very good at his job. All the editors take his
calls and he’s set up most of the big deals in recent years. Everyone ends up in his office eventually.’

That bloody sentence again!

‘Do you think I should do that?’ I asked.

She paused for a moment to light a new cigarette and give herself time to think. She likes her dramatic pauses, does Dora. ‘What you’ve got to ask yourself is: do the real stars sell their stories? I mean, the legends? Or is it just the little people? The big people may write their autobiographies, keeping control of every word that goes out, but do they actually go to the newspapers with their hands out for cash? Or do they retain their distance and their dignity? Apparently, the Royal Family have a saying: “Never apologise, never explain.” You could do worse than take a leaf out of their book. Doing a deal with Quentin is like selling your soul to the devil. Once you’ve sold your story to one paper, all the others will see it as an invitation to discredit you in any way they can to try to get a slice of the cake. They’ll make stuff up if necessary, just to get back at the paper you’ve done the deal with. At the moment you still have your integrity and dignity intact. Is it worth two million to lose that?’

I have to hand it to Dora, she has a way of putting things. Did I want to sell my soul for two million quid? Not such an easy question to answer, really.

I decided not to mention her comment about going solo to Luke. I had no intention of doing anything about it anyway and it would just have upset him, but that decision proved to be a mistake because three days later there was a story in one of the tabloids about men who were overshadowed by the
women in their lives – Prince Philip, Denis Thatcher, Guy Ritchie and poor old Luke among them. The journalist mentioned the rumour about me going solo as evidence that I was ‘eclipsing’ Luke. I then made my second mistake when I went round to his flat and he started raving about treachery and whatever.

‘I’m not going to go solo,’ I assured him.

‘So you knew about this?’

‘Dora mentioned it.’ I immediately knew I was in even more trouble.

‘And you didn’t think you should tell me? Thanks a lot.’

‘Oh fuck off, Luke. I didn’t think anything of it, and I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. There was no need because I wasn’t going to do anything about it.’

The more I said the worse it got, the hole growing deeper and deeper as I dug. I could see there was no easy way to get myself out of it now, so I tried going quiet and just being sweet, but he wasn’t having any of it. His manhood had been questioned, not to mention his talent, and it was more than he could handle. Every petty resentment that he had been building up inside against me – the record company, the business in general, the other members of West End Boys, their former management – all came pouring out. It was like everyone in the world was conspiring against him, trying to ruin his career. It was the sort of paranoid rant some junkie might go into on a bad day. I kept quiet for a bit, but it was like he was goading me, trying to force a reaction, make me say something terrible and eventually I did.

I guess there must be a fair bit of Dad’s temper lurking
inside me somewhere because I lost my patience and flared up, telling him not to be such a fucking wuss and to be happy that I loved him, that I didn’t care whether he had number one records or not, that it was him I cared for not his fucking talent. Wrong thing to say again, apparently; I might as well have told him straight out he was a talentless nobody.

Realising my mistake I tried changing tack, telling him how talented he was, reminding him how much I’d loved his music when I was a kid. Well, that finally did it. Not only was I calling him talentless, I was telling him he was a has-been, over the hill, lucky to have someone as hot as me as a girlfriend. At that stage I lost all hope of being able to pull the whole thing back from the brink. In fact, I lost the will to even try.

I stormed out of his flat, bursting with anger, but by the time the taxi had delivered me back to my house the anger had been replaced by a terrible feeling of emptiness and desolation; an awareness that the best relationship of my life had just disintegrated in front of my eyes. Starting a relationship with Luke had been like another of my childhood dreams coming true, and now it had vanished as quickly as it had arrived. It felt horrible that I wasn’t even going to be able to see his family to say goodbye properly. They had been a big part of the last few months of my life and with next to no contact from home they were pretty much all I had apart from Dora.

Maybe, I tried to tell myself, it was for the best. If my feelings for Luke had just been an extension of a childhood fantasy, perhaps it wasn’t the most grown-up basis for a relationship. Was this the moment when I had to grow up and
realise that dreams didn’t always come true, even for someone enjoying a run of luck like mine?

All the way home the taxi driver insisted on chatting about
The Towers,
telling me everything about it that he hated. At the time, feeling trapped and unable to think straight, I just wanted to scream at him to shut up, but in fact he did me a favour by distracting me. At moments like that I hated the fact that people like him knew so much about my life and my work, or at least thought they did, while I knew nothing about them. I didn’t know if he was the kind of guy who beat his wife and children, or anything about him. How come he was free to tell me about my life?

The moment I was inside the house I pulled all the curtains, not wanting anyone to be able to look in, and poured myself a vodka and Coke, adding an extra couple of slugs of vodka in the hope of speeding up a lift in my mood. I tried to fill the silence with the television, but the upbeat tones that seemed to come from every channel grated on my nerves and I had to turn the sound down low, just keeping the flickering picture for company. I tried ringing Mum but her phone was switched off, so I left a message. I tried my sisters and got through but they were in a hurry to go because they were getting ready to go out. There was nothing I could have said to them anyway – they didn’t know anything about my relationship with Luke. How could I complain to them about anything in my life when they believed I’d had all the lucky breaks that they would have wanted? I poured myself another drink, my mood still not lifting, but the pain beginning to numb a little.

When my phone went off, I just picked it up and answered
without checking who it was. I don’t know why I did that. I never usually did. I suppose I just assumed it would be Luke or Mum.

‘Hi, Steffi, Quentin James here.’

‘How did you get this number?’That came out too sharply, but I was past caring about politeness. Had he heard about the split with Luke already? Was there nothing this bloody man didn’t know about?

‘No one can escape me,’ he chuckled, in a voice that I guess was supposed to sound jokey but actually came across as spooky. ‘I think we need to meet.’

‘No, really,’ I said, the vodka making me bold, ‘I truly don’t want to sell my story to the papers.’

I was even more certain of that having seen the damage my career choices so far had done to my private life. My father was refusing to speak to me ever again and now the love of my life had dumped me. The last thing I needed was to raise my profile any further.

‘Well, as you know, I think you’re wrong on that. But this is about something different. Someone else has come forward with a story that affects you and I thought I ought to give you a chance to hear it first.’

‘I’m really not interested.’ This was more than I could cope with. ‘If it’s another old school friend dishing the dirt then do your worst.’

A sudden, horrible thought struck me. ‘Is it Luke?’

‘No.’ He paused and I realised I had accidentally given him a glimpse into my head. ‘Why would it be Luke? Have you two fallen out?’

‘No,’ I said, too fast to be convincing. ‘I don’t want to be rude but I’m going to hang up because I really don’t want to talk now.’

I hung up before he could protest, feeling rude but terrified I would give something else away if I kept talking. He tried to ring back but I ignored it, draining my drink then pouring myself another vodka, leaving out the Coke.

I didn’t answer any more calls from unknown numbers, and there seemed to be an awful lot of them, although I was getting a bit confused and dropped the phone quite a few times as I squinted at it, trying to work out who kept ringing and ringing. Eventually I realised it was the doorbell not the phone and I staggered out to answer it. I hoped it would be Mum, responding to my message from earlier, or Luke, realising he’d made a mistake and wanting to make up. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to open my door without checking at the peephole first, when I’d been going to so much trouble not to answer my phone, but there wasn’t anything very logical going on in my brain by then. Maybe I just craved a bit of company, somebody to help me empty out the rest of the vodka. Maybe I tried to look but hadn’t been able to focus my eyes properly by that stage.

Two complete strangers stood on the doorstep, a man and a woman. I could see they were startled by the state I was in. They announced they were from the
News of the World.
I was getting sick of hearing that name, and told them so. They didn’t really seem to hear, but it’s possible my words were a bit slurred by then and hard to make out. They said they’d been trying to get me by phone because they were following
up a story. I tried really hard to understand what they were telling me. It sounded like they were saying a woman had come forward claiming she was my mother. Why would that be interesting to them? Mum wasn’t exactly a state secret. Maybe it was to do with Dad smacking her about. I was about to ask them if that was the best they could do for a story this week, then thought better of it. The man on the doorstep was holding up a picture of a woman who looked like an actress, although I didn’t recognise her. He was asking if I knew her.

I leaned forward and squinted really hard, but the effort made me lose my balance and I toppled into his arms, which really wasn’t what I intended. My legs didn’t seem to be responding very well and so they helped me back into the sitting room and laid me out on the sofa. That was a mistake, because I promptly threw up over the man’s shoes – which should have been embarrassing, but for some reason I didn’t seem to care about anything any more. I did, however, feel a bit better and had another go at trying to understand what they were going on about. They seemed to think that this woman in the photograph was my mother. I explained that she was the wrong colour for one thing – which made me laugh a lot, but not them – and that I had never seen her before in my life. After a while they seemed to accept that they were wasting their time. The female reporter left the woman’s photograph on the table, and a card with her mobile number on, and said I could call her if I wanted to give an interview and that’s the last thing I remember. I guess I must have passed out and they must have let themselves out of the
house because by the time I woke up, probably around 14 hours later, there was no one else there.

The room was a pretty good mess and it looked like I had been sick a bit more in my sleep – most of the vomit had matted into my hair and dried to a crust on the sofa cushions. It took me a few moments to delve far enough back through the nauseous feelings before I remembered why I was so drunk and a dull emotional pain mixed in with all the others.

Little snatches of what had happened the previous night were beginning to come back to me. Seeing the picture of the woman on the table brought a vague memory back, but it wasn’t clear. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t work out what it was. I drank a glass of water, made myself some coffee and toast and sat down to stare at it.