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  ‘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.

  ‘Am I done yet?’ I asked, glancing at the clock hanging on the opposite wall. Ten minutes until … show time. Yikes, bugger, and OMG!

  ‘Almost,’ he said, starting to dismantle the golden-spray-painted lilies he’d nicked from the booth tables. He peeled one off the base, and wove the steam through the gunk in my hair, repeating it all around my hairline with different blooms.

  When he’d finished, he stood back, gave me a thorough once-over, then a big grin.

  ‘Ta-da!’ he said, standing back so I could see myself completely in the mirror. ‘The princess shall go to the ball!’

  It wasn’t quite the same ‘holy cow’ moment as the big reveal on one of those Gok Wan make-over shows, as I’d been half watching the transformation all the way through the very hurried process. But Neale had, I have to say, created a very powerful look when it was all taken together.

  I stared at myself, turned around, and craned my neck to see as much of the back view as I could, and blinked rapidly to see if anything had changed. No. I still looked nothing at all like my real self. I mean, I’d been made up before. I’d worn sexy clothes before. I’d had my hair done before. But never quite like this.

  As I was coming to terms with the new me, there was yet another flush from the toilet, and the sound of running water as Vogue washed her hands. She emerged unsteadily from the door, her face wet where she’d splashed herself down, and stopped dead still as she saw me.

  Her face gave nothing away—other than the fact that she was feeling like crap—and I had a moment of complete horror where I thought she didn’t like it.

  Then, eventually, she grinned—or she grinned as much as she was capable, under the circumstances.

  ‘I love it,’ she said, walking around me slowly so she could see me from all angles. ‘It’s kind of a sexy slave girl vibe, a bit like Katy Perry went straight from the set of the Roar video to a Roman orgy … excellent work, Neale! I think, looking at this, you can even get away with doing it barefoot, too. The radio pack will tag onto the belt, and you’ll have an in-ear monitor that will be covered up by all your hair. It’s brilliant.

  ‘Just be careful on that high C in ‘Midnight’—you’ll have come straight out of the dance steps, and you need to buy yourself a bit of time to breathe before you go for it, all right? I’ve heard you sing it. You can do it. You’re going to kill this, Jessica.’

  God, I thought, I hope so.

  Chapter 14

  I’d like to give a detailed account of that first performance—the one that changed everything—but I can’t. The truth is, I don’t even remember most of it—it’s like I was drunk or high or having some kind of out-of-body experience. Singing and dancing on the astral plane.

  I remember the walk back down the corridor, out of the dressing room—the room I’d entered as a tired waitress, and emerged from as a dolled-up superbabe from outer space. I remember Jack glancing down at me from the stage, where he stood with a microphone in his hands, and him giving me a huge grin that felt like an energy drink whooshing through my body.

  I remember Neale rubbing my shoulders, whispering encouraging words, and the tech guy checking my radio pack and mic. And I remember Jack announcing me to the crowd, managing to make it sound like the event of the decade: ‘And here she is, ladies and gentlemen, the star we’ve all been waiting for … Jessica!’

  After that, it’s all a blank—apart from occasional spots of clarity, like the moment I managed to nail that high C. The moment I realised I’d changed up the dance moves and still didn’t fall over. The moment I finished ‘Midnight’, Vogue’s new single, and stood there, exhausted and panting and sweating so much I thought my whole face might fall off.

  Mainly, I remember the moment after that—the moment when the whole room burst into stunned applause, the sound of the cheers ringing around the club, crashing into my ears as I froze there, the spotlight still shining vividly into my eyes, blinding me.

  As I looked out at the audience, I couldn’t make out a single individual face in the pulsing sea of humanity there before me, but I could feel their energy—their appreciation, their pleasure, their approval.

  I felt it so clearly, that moment—and it reminded me so much of that time at the end of the college show, all those years ago. When I’d been dressed no less ridiculously as a cheerleader who’d saved the planet from an alien invasion. It might have been a different world, a different life back then—but it was the same feeling. The sense of utter exhilaration, the same high I realised I’d been chasing ever since—and, unsurprisingly, not finding at kids’ parties and in bingo halls in Liverpool.

  I knew I might crash and burn immediately—discover that they’d all been paid to cheer like that, or turn around and see that Vogue had been behind me, doing the performance all along. That I might be plunged back into my normal world again—but for that one magical moment, standing there in the spotlight, my chest heaving from the effort of singing and dancing my heart out, everything felt … perfect. I never wanted to it to end, which possibly explains why I didn’t move from that stage—I just took my bows, grinned like an idiot, and tried to make it last forever.

  Eventually, Jack jumped up onto the stage with me, giving me a big hug before holding my hand and leading me in one final bow—before he edged me firmly away to the steps at the side. It was the Jack equivalent of yanking me off with a crooked stick around my neck.

  I wanted to stay there, in the dim recesses, hidden away in the darkness with Jack, to enjoy my moment—to see how proud he was of me, to hear his words of praise, to let it all flow over me. But the world had other ideas—and my job clearly wasn’t done.

  Jack smiled down at me, his brown eyes shining with happiness, which gave me almost as much of a high as the performance had.

  ‘I knew you could do it,’ he said, gazing at me as if I was a precious jewel. I gaped, still too tired to actually formulate words, and clung onto his hand. Without that, I thought I might actually float away, off into the distance, never to be seen again. Still, if I was going to go, what a way it would be.

  Neale ran over, his mouth spasming with a grin that could only be described as inane, his glasses bouncing up and down on
the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said, holding my face up to the light and inspecting it for cracks. ‘And now … just a quick touch up before you go and meet your adoring public, sweetheart!’

  He immediately started dabbing at me with sponges and brushes, and sprayed me with a bottle of perfume, wafting it around my hair and face and every part of my exposed flesh. It was probably a good idea, as eau de sweat was never attractive, even in a nightclub.

  ‘Good as new!’ he proclaimed, as I coughed in the middle of the toxic mushroom cloud of fragrance. I looked behind me, towards the magic door that led backstage.

  ‘Did Vogue see it? What did she think? I hope I didn’t let her down …’ I muttered.

  ‘She had to go, honey,’ replied Neale. ‘There was a brief pause in the shitstorm, so she made the most of it and dashed off home. But don’t worry—she’ll be able to watch it tomorrow, and there is no way you’ll have let her down. That was amazing.’

  ‘No,’ added Jack, still holding my hand but looking around, distracted, obviously thinking about what happened next. It’s a good job one of us was. ‘You were magnificent, Jess. But now it’s time to get back to work …’

  For one startled, unreal moment, my brain short-circuited and I genuinely thought he meant I had to get back to work as a waitress. That I needed to run back to the dressing room, take off this ridiculous outfit, and sneak back out here in my stain-free black and whites, hoisting a tray of smoked salmon twists on my shoulder. I wondered if anybody would recognise me if I did, or if I’d be like Clark Kent, and nobody would know who I was with a costume change …

  Luckily, I was prevented from making a huge tit of myself, by actually asking out loud if that was what he meant, by the arrival of Patty, in a cloud of sulphur. Or Dior Poison, which amounted to the same thing when she was wearing it.

  ‘Right!’ she said, staring at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Now you’ve done the easy bit, it’s time to come out there and meet the press. This is where the hard work starts. I’ve primed the pump, they’re all excited to meet you, for some reason—so don’t screw it up, all right?’

  I gulped in air and realised I was so dehydrated I might shrivel up like an Egyptian mummy. It was partly the physical effort of the show, and partly the new wave of terror that Patty’s precise words had brought on. My God—the performance was the easy part? What the hell would this be like? I glanced out at the darkened club, and tried to stave off paralysis.

  There were hundreds of people out there. Famous people. Important people. People who would shape my public image, dictate how the world saw me. People who, I knew, could make or break a young singer just taking her first steps on the road to success. It was even more terrifying a prospect than getting up on stage had been—I mean, I knew I could sing. It was one of the few things in life I was truly confident about. But could I perform just as well on a one-to-one basis? What if I said something stupid, like I usually did? Or used a swear word by accident? Or my costume exploded while I was talking to Piers Morgan? Not that he was there, but the theory was the same.

  Patty unscrewed the top of the bottle of water she was wielding, and thrust it into my shaking hands.

  ‘Drink this. Take some deep breaths. Stay calm. You can do this.’

  I looked at her, feeling pathetically grateful as I accepted both the water and the words, which were just about the most supportive ones she’d ever tried out on me. Predictably enough, the détente didn’t last.

  ‘I would normally tell people to just relax and be themselves in circumstances like this,’ she added, looking me up and down. ‘But in your case, I’d say smile a lot, laugh at everything they say, and try not to look like any more of an idiot than you absolutely have to. Understood?’

  I nodded, finished the water, and gave Jack one final glance before I entered the main room. I suspected it looked pleading—something along the lines of ‘Please don’t make me do this,’ but he just smiled encouragingly, and used the hand he had on my back to propel me forward through the gates of hell.

  The next hour was possibly the longest and most bewildering of my entire life. Coming off stage, I felt like was underwater, and could hear a frenzy of voices talking to me. Everyone seemed to want a photo of me, and my smile became fixed to my face, liked a demented ventriloquist’s dummy. I posed and I grinned and I looked, I realised the next day when I saw the photos, like someone who’d just been hit by a bus and survived to tell the tale.

  All the celebs who’d ignored me—in some cases politely, in some cases aggressively—while I was trying to offload the smoked salmon twists were suddenly interested. The journalists wanted to get quotes from me, the bloggers wanted to record video chats, and the record execs from Starmaker were staring at me like those cartoon characters that have dollar signs flashing in their eyes.

  It was utterly chaotic. Part of me recognised it for what it was: shallow, fickle, superficial, and on some level sickening. I mean—I was still me. I was still the girl they’d all looked straight through as though I didn’t exist an hour ago. Except now I was me to infinity—I’d suddenly become a commodity, an option, a product. I’d become the Talent.

  The other part of me, though … well, the other part of me absolutely loved it. I loved the attention and the focus and the flattering comments and the way that people were muscling in to chat to me; people who hadn’t got a clue who I was half an hour earlier. That quickly, it had changed—and I lapped it all up.

  It was, after all, what I’d been fighting for all these years—recognition. The acknowledgement of the fact that I could sing, that I could make it in this messed-up industry, that I had something to offer as more than a waitress or a children’s entertainer.

  Jack snapped me out of that underwater feeling and stayed glued to my side all night, a protective hand on my elbow or the small of my back, always ready to steer me away to the next crowd that had gathered; always ready to jump in with a cool soundbite when my not exactly PR-ready brain failed to kick start into action. Always ready to protect me from anybody who was being too intrusive, too pushy, too touchy-feely.

  That—and the fact that Patty was hovering behind me like a hungry bird of prey—was probably the only thing that got me through it. I’d been well and truly thrown in at the deep end, and Jack was my rubber ring.

  We moved around the room together, me and Patty and Jack, with Neale lurking on the edges ready to dive in if I had a wardrobe malfunction or a life-threatening mascara emergency or my hair fell off. I was introduced to each new group by either Patty or Jack, depending on who it was—both of them so utterly smooth and effortless and charming with everyone we spoke to. I wasn’t surprised at Jack pulling that off—but I must admit I saw a whole new side to Patty, one that I grudgingly had to respect.

  I knew from working with her that she had a spreadsheet of media and online contacts who she rated out of ten in terms of their usefulness—and that was reflected perfectly in the way she co-ordinated the interviews; ten minutes to someone on the upper levels, just a quick photo or video for those lower down her PR stratosphere. But somehow, she did it all so well that nobody seemed insulted or rejected when she swept me away from their clutches. She did it with a smile and a joke and a promise of ‘catching up over a Mojito some time very soon’.

  It was also astonishing to see how easily she’d switched into ‘Jessica is Awesome’ mode—bigging up my vocal abilities, my work ethic, my determination, the dazzling career that was ahead of me, thanks to Starmaker’s amazing talent machine. She even did a gag where she produced sunglasses from her handbag, popped them on her face, and pronounced, ‘Jessica’s future is so bright, I have to wear shades.’

  As Patty had spent most—well, all—of the time since I’d met her in ‘Jess is Shit’ mode, it was really quite confusing. She’d almost have had me fooled if not for the fact that every now and then, when I wasn’t performing properly or I was starting to say something she disapproved of, she pinched me, reall
y hard, on the side. The real Patty was still in there—she’d just been taken over temporarily by her nicer twin sister.

  Everything was going well until one of the journalists looked at his notes, presumably based on what Patty had told him earlier, and asked me how it felt to escape my deprived childhood and make it in the big city.

  I gaped a bit at that one, and frowned as I tried to come up with an answer that would both defend my childhood and my home town without provoking a pinch from Patty. I had enough bruises already.

  ‘Well,’ I said, eventually. ‘Like all big cities, Liverpool has its share of problems—but to be honest, I had a really happy childhood.’

  ‘But didn’t you suffer because of poverty, and drug use in the family, and going to a school that’s since been closed down because of gang-related shootings?’

  I stared at him, and the phone he was using to record my replies on, and felt a real sense of anger starting to rise within me. Not aimed at him—he was just doing his job—but at Patty. Patty for coming up with this bullshit; and at Jack for presumably signing off on it. I mean, I thought my story was strong enough on its own—couldn’t they just have sold me as a real-life princess-whose-dreams-came-true? A fighter who never gave up? An ordinary girl who believed in an extraordinary dream? The girl who was plucked from obscurity at a garden party and catapulted to almost-fame? The waitress who dumped her tray and picked up a career?

  Surely, any of those lines would have done the trick—and again, I realised as I processed it all, that in some ways Jack had been right. I had been learning the industry from the inside out, and I knew from the PR team’s activities that all of those stories were sellable.

  Instead, they’d chosen to portray me as some street urchin from a crack house who dodged bullets on my way to PE lessons. That, I decided, was going too far—none of it was true (apart from the school closing down), and my mum and dad would be horrified if they read all that in the papers. I couldn’t go along with that kind of betrayal, even if Patty did think it was the best way for me to grab headlines.