All She Wants Read online

  ‘Can you put me on speakerphone, Ivanka? I want to sing them a LULLABYE.’

  Oh no. My boss was phoning her kids from inside a toilet. I heard Eva strain quietly then start to sing, ‘Hush Little Baby Don’t You Cry’. As she did I heard something falling into water.

  Oh God. My boss was singing her kids to sleep while taking a dump. I felt sick. Talk about multitasking. I got up, flushed, unbolted the door and went out to do some damage-repair to my panda eyes. Trudy stood by the basins, touching up her lippy.

  ‘Isn’t Stu with you tonight?’ she fished.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Did you not see Brunch With Bronwen?’

  Trudy looked at me. ‘God, babe. I’ve watched it like eighty times on YouTube. So it was true?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t making it up.’

  She rubbed my arm and cocked her head to one side again.

  ‘Oh, babe. It was really brave of you to try and have a boyfriend who wasn’t in the business. But, babe, people like us aren’t meant to date civilians.’

  She turned back to her other best friend, the mirror, and added, ‘So, did he find out about your little . . . affair and stuff?’

  I was about to argue with her – I had not been having an affair – but before I could say anything she was talking again.

  ‘You know what you need, babe?’

  I chuckled and examined my chest in the mirror. ‘A boob job?’

  Trudy laughed. ‘Apart from that, babe!’ And she opened her massive handbag. I peered inside. It was completely full of miniatures. (Drinks. Not miniature anything else, like miniature furniture. That would have been weird.)

  She winked at me.

  ‘A drink.’

  I smiled. Maybe she was right.

  An hour later and boy was I feeling a lot better. I think I’d had five miniatures by then. Or maybe six. Enough to feel nice and warm. Like on Christmas Day. But a nice Christmas Day. Not the sort of Christmas Day where your husband beats you up or your dog eats the turkey. You know, the sort of Christmas Day you might get on Acacia Avenue – a nice nostalgic Christmas Day where you’ve got all the presents you want and you’ve eaten too much turkey and the dog doesn’t fart and your boyfriend isn’t, like, ‘Give me a blow job during Victoria Wood’ etc. ‘Coz it’s, like, women’s comedy and it’ll help me get into it.’

  Like. Go fuck yourself, Stu.

  And then I remembered. I wasn’t with Stu any more.

  God this was a long night. And the seats were really uncomfortable. I was wedged in between that new girl who played the chip shop assistant with OCD whose name I could never remember, and the sweet one who played tearaway Asian teenager Supjit (I was convinced Supjit was a made-up name, invented by lazy/racist storyliners). There was a tribalistic feeling in the hall, with each quarter of the stalls area holding cast members of the different soaps, penned in like horses on slaughter day, each team power-screaming for their representative nominee as the names were read out. It was getting so heated I half expected to see loo roll and chairs come flying above our heads every time Acacia Avenue was name-checked.

  I felt my mobile pulse in my bag and pulled it out to check for texts, hoping against hope that it might be from Our Joey. But no, it was from Jason, who played Dodgy Rog, Acacia Avenue’s much loathed drug dealer.

  ‘Nice rack.’

  I looked round and saw him sat a few rows behind. He winked and took a swig from a bottle of lager he’d snuck in. I shook my head playfully, then turned back round to see Trudy mouthing, ‘D’you want another Absinthe?’ I didn’t realize how good I was at lip-reading till then and nodded eagerly. She handed me another miniature and I unscrewed the top and glugged it greedily. This stuff was great, it had almost made me forget all my worries over the past few weeks and the upcoming serial-killer story. They were just announcing Best Storyline. As Acacia Avenue was declared victorious for its ‘evil Pippa escapes from prison and pretends to be her nice identical twin (with tragic consequences for the Nandras)’ storyline, the entire cast and crew leapt to their feet in a frenzy of self-congratulation. Cameras zoomed up the aisle towards us and I found myself performing for them, suddenly bursting into tears with pride. The two actresses on either side of me caught on quickly and followed suit. It had the desired effect: a camera jabbed in our faces, beaming our tears into millions of living rooms. Eva, some of the writers and the actresses who played Pippa and Feroza Nandra practically flew towards the stage, with Eva screaming, ‘Can you BELIEVE this? This is SO deserved. SO deserved,’ to the wrong area of seating. She was shouting it to EastEnders.

  ‘Well done, guys. Well DONE, guys!’

  She clearly hadn’t put her contacts in. When she reached the stage she screamed into the mic, ‘GOD, YOU GUYS GET IT RIGHT SOMETIMES! WOWZER!’

  I thought I might be a little bit tipsy because I started to zone out and wonder if Stu might be watching me. Yeah right, Jodie, dream on. If he was watching this he’d probably be sticking pins in a doll of you. I tried to think of something else.

  I wondered if Mrs Mendelson might be watching. Mrs Mendelson was my drama teacher in the Nineties. She ran the Myrtle Mendelson School of Drama and Disco, South Merseyside with a rod of iron and a well-oiled metronome in a couple of rooms above a betting shop two nights a week and all day Saturdays. I was her star pupil. No mean feat when, according to Mrs Mendelson, ‘South Merseyside is a breeding ground for stars. They’ve all come from here. Smile!’

  At which point her thirty eager students, standing straight backed in rows of five facing her, smiled as though we were on dangerously strong anti-depressants.

  ‘And . . . Look worried!’

  The thirty wannabes switched from beaming grins to furrowed brows and lip biting in an instant.

  This was one of Mrs Mendelson’s techniques: instant emotion.

  ‘You never know when you’re going to be called upon to instantly emote. When you are arrested on The Bill, when you have to choose which conjoined twin to lose on Casualty, even selecting a sweet at The Kabin on Coronation Street. Will you have hours to get into character and practice ‘the Method’? No. You will have to instantly emote. And . . . be scared!’

  The furrowed brows gave way to wide-eyed terror, hands jumped to faces. I whimpered out loud like a kicked puppy.

  ‘Very good, Miss McGee. Never be frightened to make a noise. They can always switch the boom off if they no likey. And relax!’

  We relaxed. Mrs Mendelson grabbed her stick and crab-walked to the toilet. This was a little ritual of hers, disappearing to the ladies’ room every twenty minutes with her lorry-sized handbag to ‘powder my accoutrements’. She was a strange woman, Mrs Mendelson, with her victory-roll hairdo and clip-on earrings that looked like sucked boiled sweets. She had a habit of unclipping them during a lesson and then putting them back on later with not so much as a glance towards a mirror, leaving the earrings at mismatching levels on her ears. She always spoke as if playing to the back row, and had a habit of rolling her Rs so aggressively that strangers passing the Myrtle Mendelson School of Drama and Disco, South Merseyside, might have mistaken it for machine-gun fire. She would return from the toilet cherry red of face, having secretly knocked back some vodka from a hip flask. After each comfort break she’d flop into a chair, come over a bit misty-eyed and regale us with tales of her life in weekly rep in the Fifties and how Sir John Gielgud once made a pass at her then boyfriend when they were in Salad Days in Chipping Norton. I loved these tales and would hurry home to repeat them at the dinner table to Our Joey and Mum and Dad. I was really good at taking her off, so even though the family rarely met Mrs Mendelson, they felt they knew her intimately.

  I hoped she could see me tonight and be proud. Purists might have poo-pooed her instant emotion technique – I could hardly imagine Fiona Shaw employing it when performing Medea – but on a soap like Acacia Avenue it was an invaluable tool. I had a reputation at work for being able to cry buckets on cue. When
the writers saw how good I was they started writing tears into nearly every episode. Sister Agatha was frequently sobbing over the Godlessness of the world, her ill-fated kiss, and in a recent episode I’d even had to bawl about finding some litter on Acacia Avenue, whilst uttering the immortal line, ‘Why, dear Lord? Why do they do it?’ The memory made me shiver.

  Trudy slipped me another Absinthe and again I found my mind wandering back to Stu. In the big scheme of things I should have been married by now. I should have had seven children, three dogs, annual holidays somewhere fancy and a macrobiotic chef. Instead I was twenty-eight, and already washed up and over the hill. I felt like crying.

  Suddenly I was being nudged. The Supjit girl leaned in.

  ‘You next, Jodie. Good luck!’

  I appeared to have slumped down in my seat. I could see two Trudies and they were both mouthing, ‘You OK, babe?’

  I tried to sit up. Straight back, eye on the sky, as Mrs Mendelson used to say. Some cheesy pop presenter walked onstage and said, ‘And now the award for best dramatic performance by an actress. Let’s have a look at the nominations.’

  For some reason, I started to giggle uncontrollably.

  TWO

  The next thing I remember I was waking up. Judging by the strain it took to prise my eyelids apart I guessed correctly that I hadn’t taken my false eyelashes off. And judging by the pain in my forehead, something was digging into it – it would appear I still had my diamond-encrusted headband on. I was lying face down on a bed, not my bed. I looked around the room. Oh yes, I was in a hotel. This was the room I’d checked into a few days ago; this was my room in a hotel in central London with a bed and a couch and products in the bathroom. It had a number and I’d ordered a paper for the morning. So far so good. So I couldn’t remember going to bed, so what? Lifting my head off the pillow – lilac with black stripes from my mascara, nice – I pushed myself up and looked round the room. There were a few empty glasses on the coffee table and . . .

  Oh NO!

  There was a brown stain on the bed sheet. What had I . . . then I relaxed when I realized it was just the chocolates they must have put on the pillow the night before in an attempt to be chichi. I turned myself over and sat up and . . .

  Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

  There was a sleeping man in the bed beside me. And he wasn’t Stu.

  Shit shittety shittery shit!

  Then I remembered that Stu and I had broken up. Still, this was the behaviour of a loose lady, and I was not a loose lady.

  SHIT!

  I immediately jumped out of bed and . . . whooo . . . started relaxing a little bit more when I realized I was fully clothed. I even had my shoes on, so how much funny business could really have gone on with this strange man? I crept around the room, hoping no floorboards would creak and wake him, and slipped onto the other side of the bed to align my face with his. I approached the task with as much caution as if I were reverse parking. His face was covered with a flipped-up corner of the duvet. As I stepped over his shoes – maybe he’d been less pissed than me; his DJ was hanging on the back of the door, too, most neat – I pulled down the duvet and saw his face.

  Oh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit SHIT!

  I had shared a bed with Jason. He who sent me the text the night before saying, ‘Nice rack.’ Jason who played drug dealer Dodgy Rog in the show.

  Oh BOLLOCKS!

  Who knew? Who might have seen us coming back to my room together? Did Trudy see? Did Eva? Oh Christ, Eva! What time was it?! And where was my phone? My bag? I started running round the room in a zigzag fashion, trying to locate both items. If I’d been so drunk I didn’t remember getting back to the hotel, was it not also possible that I’d lost everything I had bar the clothes – and diamond-encrusted headband – I stood up in? The noise of gladiatorially laced high heels on Axminster carpet made Jason stir. Then . . . Hallelujah! My handbag, with my phone inside, was on the bathroom floor. I checked the time.

  Nine forty-six.

  NINE FORTY-SIX!

  I was in London. It was nine forty-six. And in exactly fourteen minutes’ time I was meant to be having a face-to-face meeting with my boss in Liverpool. Liverpool was a million miles away from London; it would be impossible to get there on time unless I had a tardis.

  Shit!

  Panic rose in my chest and I saw the phone shake in my hand as I jabbed in a number. Oh well, best to be honest in these situations. Or was it? As I was calling Eva I clocked something on top of the toilet cistern that completely floored me. An oblong of glass about a foot high and engraved, ‘The National Soap Award for Best Actress’. Oh no. I had clearly got hammered and stolen it from Colette Court for a laugh. Some joke! How would I get it back to her?

  Then on closer inspection I noticed something that made me sink to my knees.

  Two words were engraved on the award: Jodie McGee. My eyes flickered between the two words like a spectator at Wimbledon. Yup. The first word said Jodie and the one on the right said McGee. Together that made Jodie McGee. That was my name. I had won the bloody award. I dropped my phone. I grabbed it back and checked my text messages. I had thirty-six unread texts. The earlier ones said things like, ‘Well done’, ‘About time, too’ and ‘Congrats hun!’ The latter ones said, ‘How pissed were you?’, ‘You were hilarious LOL’, ‘Pisshead!’ and ‘You showed them!’

  I felt sick. Still kneeling in front of the toilet I phoned Eva. After a few rings she answered. Curtly.

  ‘Jodie.’

  ‘Hi, Eva.’

  ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘Oh God, I think I’ve got really bad twenty-four-hour flu or something.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  She said it the way Adolf Hitler might have said it to Winston Churchill when he won the war (or was he dead by then?).

  ‘Thanks,’ I replied uneasily.

  ‘I take it you’re cancelling our meeting?’

  ‘Oh. Well . . .’

  ‘Well, tough. I don’t care what time you get here, just get here and come straight up and see me.’

  ‘Erm.’

  ‘I’ve got a call waiting from my nanny.’ And she hung up.

  I hoiked myself to my feet and steadied myself on the sink. I stared in the mirror and got a fright. I looked like a Transylvanian drag queen with bad surgery. I had lipstick all over my chin, panda eyes and, worse still, my hair looked like Melanie Griffiths’ in Working Girl. I staggered back into the bedroom. Jason was awake now and stretching his arms. He still had his white shirt on and it appeared to have red wine stains all over it.

  ‘Morning.’ He yawned and I nodded, saying nothing. ‘Jeez, you look shocking.’

  I rolled my eyes. He pulled himself up in bed, looking round the room.

  ‘Are you in today?’ I asked, as if it was completely normal for us to have shared a bed in a hotel room and be discussing work. He scratched his hair and nodded.

  ‘Not till three. You?’

  I shook my head. ‘But I’ve got to go and see Eva.’

  He giggled. ‘I’m not fucking surprised.’

  What did he mean? WHAT DID HE MEAN? OH GOD!

  ‘Anyway. I’d better get back to my room for a shower,’ he said, jumping out of bed. It was then that I saw he was wearing his dress shirt. AND NOTHING ELSE. I felt sick. He shyly turned away so I would only see his (rather pert, it has to be said) buttocks. I turned coyly in the opposite direction and looked up, as if inspecting for cobwebs. Which is when I saw something that put the fear of God into me.

  My knickers were hanging from the ceiling fan.

  On the train back to Liverpool I got my iPad out and decided to write some lists. God I felt sick. I was fully aware that people were staring at me. At first I thought it was because they recognized me as Sister Agatha, even though I was wearing shades and a baseball cap, but then I discovered I had a Tampax stuck to my Mulberry handbag. I flicked it off. Today was not going well.

  So. That list. Life felt
more achievable when you made lists. OK, so:

  Bad Things About Last Night

  •

  I got very drunk on live TV and don’t remember anything.

  •

  I slept with Jason. Although Jason is fit he is a dirty get and will shag anything that moves. He even shagged Morag in Costume and she’s the double of Jeanette Krankie (as a little boy) so this is not good. (Slept = sharing a bed. Have decided that just coz not wearing knickers, doesn’t mean sex was had. Even if knickers were on ceiling fan as if thrown off lasso style as part of high-jinks jiggery-pokery business.)

  Good Things About Last Night

  •

  I won an award.

  •

  I beat Colette Court.

  •

  I did not lose my handbag.

  •

  I did not lose my phone.

  •

  I did not lose my award.

  •

  I did not lose the free clothes given to me by top designers.

  •

  I did not lose jewels.

  •

  Nobody thought I was a bad person because of what I did on Brunch With Bronwen.

  •

  Mind you, they might have, but I can’t really remember.

  OK, so I was trying to make the second list longer in a desperate attempt to feel good about myself, but guess what? It worked. My positive list outshone my negative list. The pros outweighed the cons. Hoorah! A good night then!

  My phone flashed to say I had an answerphone message. I listened to it. It was Dad. In a very sombre tone he said, ‘I don’t care what the extenuating circumstances are. You have brought shame on me, on the family and on nuns.’

  Shit, what did I say? Stu had said I should look at YouTube. Maybe tomorrow. Stu was quite sweet when I’d called. I’d waited till Jason had left my room before trying and had reached him at work.