Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen (23 page)

‘I don’t know about that,’ Alex goes on. ‘She was fine up until a few days ago when she found out they went on a date …’

I hoot with laughter. ‘Come
on
,’ I say, ‘Jaz doesn’t give a shit if they went on a date.’ I look at the camera. ‘This isn’t going in, by the way, Alison.’

‘Have you spoken to her about it?’ says Ruby, touching my arm. ‘Perhaps she
is
feeling a little hard done-by. They’ve always been close; it might have felt like a shock.’

‘It wasn’t a shock,’ I tell them, ‘because Jaz was integral to them hooking up in the first place. She was the one who told Lou he liked her!’

Alex looks momentarily stumped.

‘Oh dear,’ says Ruby.

‘Oh dear what?’

‘We all know why she did that.’

‘We do?’

‘It’s a
classic
defence mechanism, my goodness: the forced brush-off. She’s scared after what she went through last time.’

‘Yeah,’ agrees Alex, not having the faintest clue what we’re talking about, ‘that’s right.’

‘“The forced brush-off“?’ I roll my eyes. ‘What a load of old bollocks. There’s no jealousy, take my word for it. And if anyone’s still concerned,’ I pin Alex with a stare, ‘for I’m sure that’s what this is all about, I’ll have a word with her myself.’

‘I know she likes him,’ he blurts.

My head snaps up. ‘What?’

‘I know Jaz likes Simon. She told me.’ His voice is almost
as robotic as his appearance. ‘And she’s really upset about them getting together.’

OK,
what?
It’s tempting to tell Alex that if anyone secretly likes anyone on that bar, it’s Jaz who secretly likes him, but I’m not about to give him the satisfaction – and anyway, it’s all getting a bit confusing.

‘I’m sure that’s not the case,’ I say. ‘Alison,
will you put that bloody thing down?
‘

Alex looks at me sideways. ‘Think what you like.’

Disconcerted, I get up from the booth. Again I glance over at Jaz, who’s busy serving drinks. The others are at the opposite end of the bar, working so close together they might as well be sewn at the hip. Alex is winding me up, he has to be. Why he insists on doing it in front of the cameras I have no idea.

Uh-oh. Someone’s picked Mariah Carey. I make my way through the crowd to the strains of ‘Hero’ – and ‘strains’ is about the right word for it, since the woman on stage has gone completely red in the face. On all the twiddly bits (which is most of the song), she sounds like a toad gargling water. Why do people put themselves through this? I’ll never understand.

I’m about to nip outside for some fresh air when I spot Nick Craven, half in, half out of the store room. He’s standing in shadow, hands on hips, and it looks like he’s talking to someone, but at this angle I can’t make out who. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt and I can see his tanned forearms (I go weak-kneed for forearms) and just have time to imagine what it might feel like to—

‘Maddie, there you are!’ An altogether different arm shoots
out from behind the bar and grabs me. It’s Lou. ‘I’ve got a favour to ask. All I’ll say in advance is, don’t hate me.’

I scrunch up my nose. ‘What is it?’

‘Sing something with me.’

I look at her like she’s crazy. ‘Have you lost your
mind
?’

She laughs. ‘No. I’ve got a bet on with Simon that you won’t. I mean,
he
says you won’t, he says you never would, and I said, with a little persuasion, you might.’

‘Lovely! Simon’s won.’

‘Wait!’ She yanks me back as I’m making my escape. ‘Just listen. Of course you’re going to say no at first, but then I figured, I’m your best friend, aren’t I? And if best friends can’t pull in a favour or two every once in a while …’ Seeing my appalled expression, she continues, ‘Please! It’s to prove a point. I can’t have Simon thinking he knows you better than I do.’

‘In these circumstances, he does.’

‘Pretty please?’

‘No.’

‘But you’d be testing the boundaries of fear!’ She tries the cod-psychology approach. ‘We should continually test our boundaries, Maddie – otherwise fear becomes abstract, and we forget what it is we’re really afraid of!’

‘Sounds all right to me.’

‘Didn’t you see that episode of
Peter Andre: The Next Chapter
where he faces his fear of heights? He had to cross a tightrope in the mountains.’

‘Did he do it?’

‘Well, no, as it goes, he had to walk back down.’ She nods. ‘Actually he was totally freaking out, it was awful. But that’s not the point.’

‘You know I’d do anything for you, Lou,’ I tell her solemnly. ‘But I won’t do that.’

I peer over her shoulder. From here I can see who Nick’s talking to – it’s Nathan, the greasy-haired sound guy. It looks like they’re having an argument.

Before I know what’s happening, Lou’s got me by the hand and is hauling me on stage, her grip like a pair of cuffs.

‘Make way, make way!’

‘Lou, what the fuck are you
doing
?’ I hiss, making a vain attempt to break free.

‘It’s good for you,’ she tosses back over her shoulder. ‘Thirty seconds, that’s all.’

‘I am never going to forgive you,’ I declare, incensed, ‘
never
. Never ever
never
. The Contract of Eternal Friendship? It’s burned. The Sisterhood Bracelet? Cursed. The Emergency Spinster Pact? Dead to me –
dead
, do you hear? The cats are all yours.’

I deliver her one of my notorious pinches, but to my chagrin Lou seems to be enjoying herself. She’s built up immunity over the years to my pinching – when we were ten we spent many a productive afternoon testing each other’s pain threshold and writing it down in a series of colourful charts. A
ha
. Now if I can just get her into a Chinese burn …

Everyone’s looking at me so I plaster a reluctant smile on my face, deciding I’ve got two options: I can either hold a microphone and mumble something incoherent into it for half a minute, or I can conduct a sitting protest and kick and scream like a toddler being dragged from an ice cream van. Neither sounds especially appealing, but in the interests of salvaging at least a remnant of dignity, I’ll go with number one.

But that’s before I’ve heard what the current song is: Celine Dion’s impassioned version of the Roy Orbison classic, ‘I Drove All Night’.

Great.

‘Seriously, I was impressed.’

‘Don’t take the piss.’

‘I’m not!’ Nick’s smile shines white in the moonlight. ‘Especially that part where you coughed into the microphone, it really added something to the story.’

‘Shut up,’ I say, but I can’t help my own smile. ‘I was nervous.’

We left the club a while ago. Nick suggested getting some air shortly after my performance – if it can be called that: I just stood sort of rocking from one foot to the other like the only girl with braces at a school disco, occasionally warbling one of the low, more manageable bits while Lou chirruped over the top.

Once we’re clear of the hectic Soho grid, complete with Obligatory Figure Puking in Alleyway, we emerge at Charing Cross and head down towards the river.

‘But really,’ he says, ‘the cough was appropriate to the song.’

‘How’s that then?’

Nick puts his hands in his pockets. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘consider the lyrics. It’s about someone travelling through the night, right?’

‘Right …’

‘And he’s so desperate for this woman he’s prepared to go any distance – all he can think about is getting laid, never mind if his girlfriend’s up for this surprise visit or not.’

‘She probably didn’t even bother shaving her legs when she had a bath that night.’

Nick nods. ‘But Roy doesn’t care, he just wants to get his own leg over.’

‘Charming.’

‘So it’s a pretty sinister concept as it is. Throw in the part where this person – who, by the way, is never confirmed as being invited and might just be some random stalker – actually breaks into your room, creeps to your bedside and wakes you up god knows how, and you’ve got a full-on sex predator on your hands. For, uh, want of a better phrase.’

I laugh. ‘Roy Orbison’s a sex predator?’

‘You know what they say about dark glasses.’

‘Hmm. The thought of Celine creeping into my room freaks me out more.’

He imagines it. ‘I see what you mean.’

‘And the cough?’

‘What about it?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

Nick thinks it through. ‘Every sex predator’s got to have a cough, a really gravelly, pervy one. It warns you they’re coming. Yours was pretty spot-on, I must say.’

‘Thanks. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of being a sex predator? I mean, the whole point of Orbison’s song is she
doesn’t
hear him coming, whoever he is.’

‘And that’s a good thing?’

‘When you put it like that, probably not.’

He lifts his shoulders, point proven.

‘Fine. And of course that’s exactly why I
did
cough – in the interests of an authentic story. It was nothing to do with the fact I haven’t been ritually embarrassed to that extent since Mum dressed me up as Adam Ant and paraded me at Minehead.’

It’s his turn to laugh. The sound of it draws something in me, and instinctively I take his arm. I half expect him to pull away, but he doesn’t. It’s not romantic, exactly, just a natural, friendly thing to do.

We walk down Villiers Street towards Embankment and pass the people spilling out of pubs; the pack of boys queuing for Subway; the crowd outside Gordon’s wine bar, smoke from their cigarettes blooming and dissolving in the night.

Briefly I glance behind me, looking for what I’m not sure. Walking through Soho I couldn’t shake the feeling of being followed – I’ve been thinking too much about what Loaf said, his enigmatic warnings. Either that or I’ve spent too long with the cameras in recent weeks. I must be getting paranoid.

‘I saw you talking to Nathan,’ I comment. ‘Is everything all right?’ I only say so to take my mind off it, but straight away I feel Nick tense.

‘Everything’s fine,’ he says stonily. Instantly I regret mentioning it, and feel I should take my arm away but don’t know how to without it looking deliberate.

I don’t have to worry, though. As we pass through the station and take the steps on to Hungerford Bridge, he gets pulled away in the crowd. Couples hurry past after a night at the theatre, bodies close, their heads bent together. We walk in silence and then, halfway across, Nick stops and looks out
at the river. Music from a nearby busker fills the balmy air, and I experience a rush of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

I love the Thames at night. On one side Big Ben stands proud, his white face showing almost-midnight, a giant heart about to beat across the city; the Houses of Parliament, lit up gold, big as cathedrals yet intricate as jewellery; the Eye, its silver arc studded with purple, closing for sleep while it can. On the other, the Oxo tower with its bold red hat, the pearly dome of St Paul’s and the bright buses crossing Waterloo Bridge. Above us, aeroplanes flash scarlet as they come to land at Heathrow. Below our feet, the cool black rush of the water.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ says Nick.

‘It is.’

We’re shoulder to shoulder, leaning our elbows on the side and looking out to the east, where the orange wink of Canary Wharf pierces the dark sky.

‘I came here with my brother once,’ he says. ‘Ages ago.’

He’s deep in thought, and he’s got the handsomest profile on earth (and I never really thought about profiles in that way before).

‘You did?’

‘Yeah. I was sixteen and he was … he would have been about ten.’

It hits me that I know nothing at all about this man … and why would I? I wait for him to go on, not wanting to interrupt for fear he’ll pull back.

‘Dad was working up here – he was always working.’ Nick clears his throat. ‘He couldn’t get someone in to look after
Luke, it was short notice, so we had to come to the city – on a Sunday, I think it was, and wait till he was done.’ A wry smile. ‘We waited a long time.’