Girls to Total Goddesses (18 page)

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34

The next few days were tense and expectant: Jailhouse Rock was looming now and we were caught up in the final throes. Rumours flew around, especially about Rose Quartz. I devoured the details on the websites and in the magazines.

Rose was wrecked; she was pregnant; she was in love with a hobo; she was going to give up touring; she had seen a vision of Elvis; she had set fire to her own hair in a shopping mall; she had given away all her shoes to charity; she had bought a flock of goats and they wandered free-range through her beach house in Malibu . . . She was even, for a blood-curdling forty-eight hours, in rehab.

I was still delivering flyers with Matthew at the time. As he was in his gap year he spent most of his time at the Major Events office, while I was slaving away at school, so, though relentlessly khaki and nerdy, he always possessed the latest info.

‘Beast’s tearing his hair out,’ he confided, in the middle of the rehab crisis. ‘They’re trying to line up a substitute act in case Rose drops out, but it’s dodgy because if Rose doesn’t drop out, they won’t need anybody, and it’s kind of an insult to say, “
We want you if she’s not available, but if she does turn up we won’t need you
.”’

‘God, what a nightmare,’ I groaned. ‘Is Charlie managing to keep Beast sane?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Matthew droned appreciatively. ‘Although if I was Beast, I’d be uncontrollable with lust . . .’ The terrifying image of Matthew being uncontrollable with lust would remain burned into my memory banks for decades. ‘She’s totally amazing, right?’ He sighed. I didn’t bother to agree or, indeed, to inform him that she was, in fact, a Grade-A nitwit.

‘She’s . . . well, she’s a goddess,’ breathed Matthew. A spear of molten fire hurtled through my heart. How dare Matthew think Charlie was a goddess? Had he absolutely no judgement? I wasn’t going to diss her: it would only look cheap and bitchy, but suddenly it made me wonder about the whole goddess project.

If Charlie was a goddess, I didn’t want to be one. The way Matthew had said she was a goddess, accompanied by gross drooling, made me shudder. Suddenly the whole goddess project fell away. The sense of relief was massive: it was like falling upwards and floating away over the clouds. A bit like being a goddess, ironically. But I wasn’t: I was just myself again, a slightly overweight schoolgirl with a massive zit on her chin.

Though I had abandoned my attempt to become divine, I still wanted to look the business. Eventually Chloe and I went to pick up our dresses. I’d performed another babysitting miracle with the Normans a few days back, with the help of Jess and Fred’s Toddlers’ Cabaret, and my finances were now hunky-dory. As long as I didn’t see a leper begging in the high street in the next five minutes, the pink dress was as good as mine.

We were on the point of entering the boutique when we bumped into Charlie. She was walking arm in arm with a rather fogeyish young man wearing glasses and a raincoat. Arm in arm didn’t mean much with Charlie, though: she’d walked along this same pavement arm in arm with me, for God’s sake, when she’d hardly even known me.

‘Oh, hi, Zoe!’ she grinned. ‘And uh – Claire!’

‘Chloe,’ said Chloe.

‘Chloe, yes, sorry. God, my memory! It’s hopeless!’ She tossed her head back, fluttered her eyelids and tousled her hair about gloriously as if to indicate that only sad losers with nothing going for them were able to remember people’s names correctly. ‘This is George,’ she continued. We said hello. George looked a bit disorientated, possibly because his name was really Gary, but also, possibly, because he was the latest victim of Charlie’s intense friendship project and it can be disconcerting.

‘Great news, anyway, isn’t it, guys?’ beamed Charlie.

‘What news?’ I asked.

‘Didn’t you know?’ She had a way of turning this phrase into a sneer, as if Chloe and I were Neanderthals drooling in a cave somewhere and going slightly extinct. ‘Rose is out of rehab and she’s arriving tomorrow. I’ve just put a press release out and now I’m off to the Dolphin Cafe to do an in-depth interview for
The Gazette
.’ She smiled adoringly at George. Ah! He was a journalist.

‘Keep this under your hat,’ she leaned forward with a weird wink, ‘but between you and me, I think Beastie Boy only managed to get Rose Quartz on board by pretending to be violently in love with her!’

If Charlie reckoned that was a sensible thing to say in the presence of a journalist, she was clearly even more insane than I had thought. At this point, thank God, she steered George away and we were spared any further ghastliness.

‘Great news, then, obviously,’ said Chloe, as we turned to enter the boutique. ‘Apart from Charlie, who is clearly a maneater of the very highest quality, your only rival appears to be a triple Grammy award-winning legend, whose latest album has sold more than two million copies!’

‘Fine, no problem,’ I replied. ‘With my magic dress on, anything’s possible. And if he’s not available, who cares? There’s always one of the princes.’

‘Which one do you fancy?’ asked Chloe mischievously.

‘I don’t care, frankly.’ I shrugged. ‘I quite fancy an old Italian one with a castle on the Med.’

‘It’s a bit like Cinderella, isn’t it?’ giggled Chloe. ‘And I’m the ugly sister.’

‘You so are not!’ I corrected her. ‘That’s Tam’s job. She’s as hideous as they come.’

We tried our dresses on one more time, just to make absolutely sure they were right. Surprisingly, I seemed to have lost quite a bit of weight – and I hadn’t even been trying. Pounding the pavements with Matthew may have been agonising at the time, but it seemed to have brought an unexpected benefit. The dress looked more fabulous than ever, because this time it wasn’t straining at the seams. Though far from slim, I was no longer lardy: more kind of sleek and curvy.

‘Wait till Beast sees you in this!’ whispered Chloe. ‘It’ll knock his socks off!’ I stared at my reflection. ‘You look like a movie star!’

I knew I didn’t look like a movie star, but I did at least look my very best. This dress was magic. The cut of it was just somehow outrageously flattering. I couldn’t believe what a difference the right clothes could make. I had a feeling that the dress was a bit like a suit of armour: it made me feel kind of defended and safe. I was in danger of becoming ludicrously, superstitiously attached to a garment.

As for Chloe, she had been transformed by her simple little black number. Her hair glowed like fire, her white skin was flawless and her green eyes sparkled.

‘Well, you look like you have always been meant to look,’ I beamed. Chloe turned round and looked at her own back view. ‘Fabulous!’

‘It’s funny, I think I do quite like black after all,’ she mused. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I had been trying to get Chloe to see the point of black for months, but somehow it had happened all by itself. However, I would be kind of sad and disappointed if she never wore anything adorned with orange tortoises ever again. It’s funny how life surprises you: your feelings change in unexpected ways, and suddenly you feel liberated from ideas that have been dragging you down for ages.

I felt a bit like that about Beast, now. Somehow, when I was wearing the magic dress I didn’t feel that anything could hurt me: I could face anything, even the sight of Beast and Charlie in a clinch. I had, in some mysterious way, finally made it to a restful mountaintop.

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35

Finally the great day dawned. The leaflets were all distributed, the tickets were sold out, and Rose Quartz’s little spell in rehab had done wonders for our coverage. Even the national newspapers had got excited about the possibility of Jailhouse Rock being cancelled because Rose was having a crisis.

As I was applying my lipstick (Hot Finale), a dog barked from my handbag. I was going to have to replace that ringtone with something more classy – a pack of wolves maybe. Chloe and I had been texting each other for the past half hour, exchanging exciting details of our preparations. Chloe had dropped her mascara down the loo, and I had been freaked out by a spider running across the bathroom mirror. Were these omens, signs that the universe was against us?

I grabbed my phone, eager for her latest disaster. But it was a text from Beast. My heart gave a demented little skip, even though I had told it sternly that as an organism we were not, now, interested in Mr Hawkins. I hadn’t seen him since the painfully ludicrous evening when he’d come round to the Normans and I’d cringed behind the front door, dressed as a hideous peasant with warts and a beard.

ZOE COME BACKSTAGE AT ABOUT 7 IF YOU WANT TO MEET ROSE. BRING CHLOE TOO. SEE YOU THEN.

Wow! I had never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d actually get to
meet
Rose. My heart now gave several huge demented lurches, with my blessing. Anxiously I glanced at myself in the mirror. The pink dress did it for me: I had to admit it looked fabulous, so though, of course, I would be paralysed with embarrassment when I met Rose, at least I would look OK. I wondered what she would be wearing – something amazing, no doubt, because she is famous for her dazzling wardrobe.

I called Chloe right away to tell her we’d been selected to meet the goddess.

‘Aw naaaaow!’ she literally screamed in my ear. ‘I don’t belieeeeeve it!’

We agreed to meet at the stage door in half an hour and made a pact that if either of us fainted or puked with excitement when being introduced to Rose, the other would join in.

Dad gave me a lift there. ‘Well, you look tickety-boo, old boy,’ he admitted as I climbed out of the car. ‘Enjoy it. And if the creature Rose offers you any recreational drugs . . .’

‘I’ll bring some home for you in a doggy bag, obviously, Dad!’ I quipped sardonically. I gave him a long hard look to convince him of my essential good sense and sanity, slammed the car door and teetered off in my killer heels.

Chloe was waiting and we launched ourselves into a hysterical hug, whilst, of course, ensuring that we didn’t smudge our make-up or crease our dresses.

‘You really do look like a goddess!’ breathed Chloe.

‘No, no, Chloe! That goddess thing is so last century!’ I purred. ‘Have I managed to look human? That’s what I’m worried about.’

‘That dress, though!’ Chloe gazed at me in admiration. ‘It’s awesome!’

‘Yeah, and so is yours! Move over, Cate Blanchett! Anyway, enough of us, let’s get in there! Oh God! I hope I don’t spit in her face by accident when we’re introduced!’

‘I hope she spits in my face!’ whispered Chloe. ‘Then we could collect the spit and sell it on eBay!’

There was a man who looked slightly like a meerkat in a little office by the stage door. He squinted at us through a window.

‘Zoe and Chloe!’ I told him. ‘Harry Hawkins told us to come to the stage door at seven.’ The meerkat consulted some notes, then made a phone call.

‘OK, he’ll be down in a minute,’ he told us. We waited in hysterical excitement. My pulse was thrashing and my heart was beating so hard, my whole body had become a samba band. It was handy being so nervous about meeting Rose, because I couldn’t really tell if I was nervous about seeing Beast again or not.

Moments later Beast appeared looking pale and hectic. My heart performed a couple of somersaults for old times’ sake. His hair was tousled, as if he’d been tearing it. I hoped it wasn’t because Charlie or Rose had been running their fingers through it. Although I was definitely over Beast now, I still seemed to be jealous. For a split second he looked right into my eyes and his smile somehow zipped right down the backs of my legs, setting them on fire. I was going to have to give my body a stern talking-to, later.

‘Zoe, Chloe, great to see you, come this way,’ he said, beckoning. We followed him through a maze of corridors. Loads of people were bustling about: guys in headphones carrying clipboards, random muscular types wearing stained T-shirts, and they all greeted Beast as we passed. I felt proud just to be a hanger-on.

‘OK, let me fill you in on the situation,’ said Beast, pausing in a quiet corner. ‘Rose is fine, but her minder has got flu and Rose has had a row with her manager and she won’t speak to anyone from that office. Charlie was with her for a while, but you know Charlie . . .’ He hesitated, and shook his head in a way that was not as affectionate as I would have expected. ‘. . . she managed to get up her nose, big time, so Rose threw her out.’ Though horrified at the news that the goddesses had been involved in a cat-fight, I only hoped it had been captured on CCTV so eventually we’d all be able to watch it on YouTube.

‘Rose is rattled,’ Beast went on. ‘She needs a bit of company: she’s always nervous before she goes on. So I want you to stay with her and be very, very soothing and supportive, OK?’

Beast look nervously to the right and then to the left, and dropped his voice. ‘Make sure she has everything she wants. And don’t let her do anything stupid.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at us with a wild expression not a million miles from panic.

We nodded, speechless with terror. He led us around a corner to the dressing rooms and knocked on a door. There was a faint reply, and he opened the door and led us in. I saw heaps of clothes everywhere, lights, mirrors, and somebody sitting at a dressing table. I don’t think my heart has ever beat so fast without lurve being involved.

‘Rose,’ he said, ‘this is Zoe and Chloe, my two best girls. They’ll keep you company and get you anything you want.’

Rose turned around in her chair, the light of the dozen bulbs round the mirror throwing her face into relief.

‘My freakin’ eyebrows!’ she yelled. ‘Kate usually does my eyebrows! I look like a heap of shit!’

‘Maybe Zoe can help you,’ said Beast, looking frazzled. ‘She’s the queen of eyebrows.’ I was startled to receive this sudden title, but willing to do anything to help poor Beast.

‘Excuse me for a bit,’ he said, backing towards the door, ‘I’ve got stuff to do.’

Rose Quartz fixed me with a pleading stare. ‘Can you do eyebrows?’ she demanded. ‘You, the one in the pink dress. Can you do eyebrows? I can’t go on looking like this, this is terrible. Sorry, I’m always hyper before a gig. I can’t stop talking. What was your name again?’ I approached her, trying not to be overawed because I knew the best thing would be to treat her just as if she was one of our mates.

‘I’m Zoe, this is Chloe,’ I said. ‘Sure, I’ll have a go if you like.’

‘Great! Be my guest! But don’t breathe in my face!’

‘I won’t breathe at all,’ I promised her.

‘And you – uh, sorry, Chloe – can you go and get me a hot dog with onions and ketchup and mustard? And a coke?’

‘Diet Coke or regular?’ asked Chloe nervously. I thought this showed tremendous presence of mind.

‘Regular, regular,’ said Rose. ‘Caffeine addiction. Ha ha! It wasn’t that, by the way. It was only prescription painkillers. Don’t believe anything you read in those damn magazines. Knock five times when you come back.’

‘OK,’ Chloe said, and disappeared.

‘Look at my eyebrows,’ commanded Rose. ‘The right one’s a disaster!’ I inspected her eyebrows.

‘I suggest we start again,’ I said, trying to sound calm even though I was shaking in my shoes at the thought that I was standing right next to Rose Quartz – indeed, about to mess with her face! I was close enough to touch the legendary snake tattoo on her right shoulder, although I couldn’t actually see it because she was wearing a kind of towel all over her top half to protect her dress – a bit like those cloths guys wear in old movies when they go to get a shave at the barber.

Rose Quartz looked up at me. I was surprised at how ordinary she looked, up close and personal and without much make-up on. She’s not really famous for her beauty, it’s her gravelly voice and the way she belts out songs. And her legs, of course. She’d shaved her head about six weeks ago, not out of some kind of mad impulse, but because her auntie had been diagnosed with cancer and she’d had to have chemo and was losing her hair, so Rose did it to show solidarity. For this reason alone I respected her big time. Plus it meant she wouldn’t get all stressy about her hair: it was just a kind of stubble of blonde bristles all over, and I have to say it looked fabulous.

‘Get on with it.’ Rose threw down her eyebrow pencil. ‘There’s remover stuff and everything . . .’ She lifted her face towards me and looked piercingly at me for a moment. ‘Amazing dress,’ she murmured, and reached out and stroked my thigh. For a split second I had a moment of sheer terror that she was hitting on me. ‘Satin,’ she murmured, ‘divine.’

Then she folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. I kicked off my killer heels and grabbed a wad of cotton wool.

‘Where did you get it?’ asked Rose.

‘A little local boutique,’ I stammered.

‘Always the best,’ said Rose. ‘Start again with the eyebrows. I know they’re a disaster.’

Gently I removed Rose’s previous attempt at eyebrows, thanking my lucky stars that I’d done eyebrows for my friends so many times. Especially Chloe.

‘That goddam Kate,’ grumbled Rose, her eyes still closed. ‘I’m going to sack her! Flu, for God’s sake. I mean, duh! Today of all days! I told her to go and get an anti-flu shot! I had one. I mean, you can’t let people down, especially charity! What charity is it again?’

‘Amnesty,’ I said, hoping my fingers would stop trembling soon as it was a bit of a challenge to redesign a diva’s eyebrows with your digits vibrating for England.

‘Poor prisoners,’ sighed Rose. ‘I so love ’em. I wish I could let ’em all out right now! I’d hate to be in prison, I couldn’t handle it for five minutes, I’d freak out big time and be screaming and climbing the walls. I can’t bear to be shut in.’

I glanced anxiously around the dressing room, hoping she wasn’t going to start any of that screaming and wall-climbing right now.

‘I hope your friend hurries up,’ said Rose. ‘I’m absolutely starving.’

Ten minutes later I had got the eyebrows right. I knew exactly how they should look because there’s a photo of Rose Quartz in the music montage on my bedroom wall. I had managed to do it without breathing in her face, and my fingers had stopped trembling. Then there were five knocks on the door, and Rose opened her eyes.

‘Come in!’ she shouted. A blast of nicotine hit my face. I vowed never, ever to smoke. Rose peered fiercely at her reflection. ‘Well done – jackpot – thanks so much!’ She nodded. Thank God she approved of the eyebrows. ‘I have to get up and have this hot dog now,’ said Rose. I stood back as she got up and flung aside her towel. She was wearing an amazing white dress.

Chloe had re-entered, accompanied by a delicious smell. Rose surveyed herself again in the full-length mirror, paying special attention to her eyebrows.

‘You’ve done a great job,’ she told me. ‘In a minute you must do my eyes.’

Chloe stood there looking embarrassed and holding the tray. Rose made a space for it on the dressing table, pushing a heap of make-up and underwear out of the way, then sat down again and beamed delightedly at the hot dog.

‘Great. Thanks. Now nobody talk to me for five minutes because I have to eat in silence.’

We nodded and backed off to give her space. She seemed happily oblivious of us, now, plugging in her iPod and jiggling about as she picked up the hot dog. She took a bite and munched away contentedly. Chloe and I watched in fascination from our place by the back wall. The dressing room was a tip. The floor was covered with debris: tissues, shoes, tights, food wrappers, empty cigarette cartons.

Everywhere there was a strong spicy fragrance: I would have to ask her what perfume she used, although I doubted if I would be able to afford it.

Rose took another bite of her hot dog . . . and a huge dollop of fried onions, liberally garnished with mustard and ketchup, leapt out of the side of the roll and splatted down on to her lap!

‘Aw naaaaaow!’ Rose shrieked. She threw the hot dog aside – it knocked into the plastic cup of coke, which tipped over, flooding the dressing table and splashing her dress. She jumped to her feet, swearing and hopping about in fury.

‘Look at this! Look at this!’ she screamed. Her lovely white dress was totally trashed: a huge stain of mustard and ketchup and grease was smeared right across the front of her skirt, and the rest of the dress was horribly spattered with coke stains. ‘Get Harry! Get Harry!’ she screamed. ‘This is a disaster.’ She was jumping up and down. ‘Get Harry!’ I whipped out my phone and rang Beast’s number. ‘That goddam Kate! My whole wardrobe is with her! This is my only dress! I can’t go on! I’ll sack her! I’ll sack the whole goddam pack of them!’ She flew into the bathroom. We heard the taps turned on, and another cascade of swearing.

‘Yes?’ Beast answered in my ear.