Star Struck (15 page)

Jo had run from the coffee shop all the way home and when she had burst through the door in floods of tears Catherine hugged her and stroked her hair and let her shout about how shit their mum was. Catherine had always been there for Jo to let off steam about their mother. She had stepped in to pick up the pieces when Karen left and had become more of a mother to Jo than Karen would ever be. Claire had already moved in with Paul and they were in the process of planning their wedding when Karen announced her departure, which led to Claire cancelling the church and the meringue dress and booking a flight to the Dominican Republic with Paul, where they were married with only a cocktail waiter as a witness. Maria was living with her first boyfriend Kyle and although she couldn’t believe her mum had left home, didn’t want to get to involved, so it was left to Catherine to look after Jo and their dad.

Mick hadn’t always been a disaster zone. He used to
be
fun, or at least that was how Jo remembered it. Mick had worked as a fork-lift truck driver at the Kellogg’s factory in Trafford Park. He liked his job and his workmates and used to come home with lots of free cereal and stories about sending new workers to ask for a ‘long stand’. But when Karen left, Mick began to decline. He went on the sick immediately and then never really went back. His sense of humour somehow turned in on himself and where before he would find the fun in things and enjoy taking the piss out of himself and others, he became bitter and sarcastic before – for a while – he stopped communicating altogether. Jo knew that Catherine tried to shelter her from her father’s unsettling depression, but she guessed what was going on.

Karen would come home from time to time and have Jo over to stay but as the years went by it became strained and Jo didn’t want to share her mum’s new life because she didn’t really try to include her daughters in it. Karen wasn’t like her friends’ mums, Jo came to realise, her natural instinct was to look after herself rather than her kids. It wasn’t that she was Cruella De Vil, it was just that she felt that she had done her bit and thought that they should all be thankful to her for sticking around as long as she had. Jo had once flipped and demanded to know if she had been an accident, it would stand to reason as there was a five-year age gap between her and Catherine. Mick had told Jo sourly that she had been a miracle as far as he was concerned, which led Jo to have doubts as to whether Mick was even her real father. Once Catherine had calmed her down and pointed out that she looked even more like a Reilly than Mick did, Jo had decided that she needed to
overcome
this Jeremy Kyle moment in her life and put some distance between herself and her mum. She didn’t want to be hurt by Karen anymore. So she had decided that every time she saw her mum she would act indifferent. It made Jo really sad, but she decided it was the only way to deal with someone who could leave a twelve-year-old child in the care of her not much older sister.

Jo had always tried not to take Catherine for granted. It had been hard sometimes, when she wanted to shout at her mum or dad but Catherine had been the only person there to listen. She knew that Catherine needed her own life; that she shouldn’t be bound to the family home for ever just because their dad needed something to fill the wife-shaped hole in his life. This was why she wasn’t about to let her father’s incessant sulking derail Catherine’s chances on
Star Maker
.

‘D’you think Mum’ll pop back up when Catherine gets on the telly?’ Jo wondered. ‘She’d love that wouldn’t she? A half-famous daughter.’

‘Yes, she would,’ Mick agreed, almost cheerfully.

What was that about she wondered? God, he was deluded. Did he think that Karen would now pop along to see Catherine on
Star Maker
and then somehow decide that she’d made a terrible mistake and that she really should be with her smelly, depressed ex-husband? Jo needed to burst her father’s bubble before he wandered any further into Cloud Cuckoo Land.

‘Yes and that Jay’d love nothing better than a bit of free national publicity for one of his “Exhibitions”.’ Jo stressed the word sarcastically and sketched quotes in the air with her middle and index fingers.

Mick sunk back in his chair with a face like a smacked backside. ‘Wouldn’t he just? Probably paint his John Thomas and run around onstage, the big show off.’

Jo laughed. ‘Yeah, he’d probably make a public appeal to the British Museum, see if they wanted to mount it after he’s gone.’

Mick laughed too. ‘I’ll mount it for him, the bloody berk.’

Jo looked at her dad for a moment. It wasn’t often they laughed together; it was a shame the only thing they ever seemed to bond over was slagging off Jay the Nob.

‘You think she’s going to do all right in this competition don’t you, our Catherine?’ Mick said, turning to face Jo.

‘I don’t know. But I hope so. Be ace, Catherine all famous and us getting into swish parties. She might even let you come if you put a smile on your face.’

Mick soured again. ‘Unlike you, I’m not all starry-eyed about these things. I know they’re a racket. They use the likes of our Catherine.’

Jo couldn’t listen to him anymore. He had to bring everything down to his miserable level. ‘And what’s the alternative, Dad?’ Jo asked, standing over her father, her hands on her hips.

‘She was happy enough here,’ Mick said, refusing to catch Jo’s eye.

Jo shook her head in disbelief. ‘What? So she stays here and sorts you out? That’s the alternative? I’d take my chances with the evil pop machine if I were her.’

‘We all know what you’d do: look after number one.’

‘God! That is rich coming from you. I’m not looking
after
number one; I’m just being a teenager. I go to college, I come home, I eat cereal for my tea because I can’t be arsed cooking and I think about getting my tongue pierced every now and again and then decide it’s a bad idea. I’m not the devil incarnate – I’m normal. You, on the other hand, you’re different to most dads I know.
They
work,
they
look after their kids, not the other way round.’

‘I’m ill!’ Mick shouted.

‘So you keep saying. You take pills every day but you never say what for. You stay in bed, you moan and shriek and carry on but you never actually say what’s wrong with you, do you?’

‘You don’t care what’s wrong with me; I could be lying in a ditch …’

‘What does that mean? Lying in a ditch? What ditch, where?’

‘It’s a figure of speech,’ Mick huffed.

‘Well, talk sense, Dad, you’re doing my head in!’ In the corner of the room the land line began to ring. Mick looked at Jo. ‘I’ll get it, might be Catherine. Don’t want you putting a downer on everything.’

‘Hello.’

‘Hi, Jo.’

‘Catherine, how’ve you got on?’ Jo’s stomach knotted, she was so nervous for her sister.

‘I’m through to the last forty-eight!’ Catherine squealed.

‘Oh my God!’ Jo jumped up and down. Mick folded his arms across his chest knowing that whatever Catherine was telling Jo, it wasn’t good news for him. Jo took a deep breath. ‘Dad, Catherine’s down to the last forty-eight. From four hundred!’

‘Well done, love,’ Mick said flatly.

‘How is he?’ Catherine asked.

‘Miserable.’ Jo said shooting a look at her father.

Jo heard Catherine take a deep breath. ‘Jo, can you go to your room with your mobile and I’ll call you from there?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Don’t ask. I don’t want Dad getting suspicious, I’ll call back in half an hour.’

‘Good luck for tomorrow!’ Jo said brightly. She hung up the phone.

‘Was she asking how I was then?’ Mick asked as Jo gathered her beauty treatments and mobile phone and headed for the door.

‘Yes, course she was. She’s having the time of her life, doing really well in
Star Maker
and she just wants to know about you because you are obviously all she thinks about,’ Jo said, slamming the living-room door behind her and heading to her bedroom to wait for Catherine’s call.

Catherine had sung her heart out at the afternoon auditions but the competition was becoming tougher and she wasn’t sure she had made the cut. So when she was told by Richard Forster that her and the others in her group – which included Star and Kim this time – had sailed through to the next round, Catherine had been ecstatic. Marissa, Heidi and Jill hadn’t been so lucky. Jill had gone out that morning while the other two made it through to the afternoon auditions only to be told it was time to go. But Star and Kim were still in the running.

‘I can’t wait to get to America, they’re going to love
me.’
Star had said modestly. ‘I think that I might ask Barack Obama to appear in one of my videos …’ She added, as an afterthought, as if the president had nothing better to do.

Kim had tapped the side of her head and rolled her eyes to Catherine. Star really was deluded; her only saving grace was that she was in the right place and doing all the right things to ensure that her delusions might not be so far-fetched after all.

As Catherine sang through the songs for the following day in her head, Catherine began to think about things at home. Only twenty-four hours ago the idea of her getting through to the final twelve had seemed like a pipe dream by now she was down to the last forty-eight it was a possibility, albeit slim. Her dad was sick with cancer and she needed to support him and if she couldn’t be there to do it, then someone else would have to step in. What if his condition worsened though? Then what would she do? Catherine didn’t know who to turn to and so she decided, with a heavy heart, that she should tell Jo. She’d toyed with the idea of telling Claire but Claire had enough on her plate with her own family. She knew Maria wouldn’t know what to do with a conversation that didn’t revolve around herself, but Jo – although still a teenager and completely barking in some respects – really had her head screwed on.

Catherine allowed Jo enough time to get to her bedroom and then dialled her mobile number. If Mick found out what she was doing he would freak and Catherine would feel terrible, so she needed to make sure that Jo was on her own.

‘Yo!’ Jo said breathlessly into the phone.

‘Yo.’ Catherine always felt like someone’s sad uncle trying to be cool when she said things like ‘Yo!’ She wasn’t a ‘Yo’ person. She was more of a ‘How do you do?’ person. She would probably have been better suited to post-war Britain, with its politeness and its rations and its make-do-and-mend mentality than the early twenty-first century with its ‘Yo’s and its text speak.

‘Ha! Catherine, you sound like a nob when you say “Yo”.’

Catherine sighed. ‘I know. Thanks.’

‘No prob. So, what’s up?’

‘Jo, how’s dad been?’ Catherine asked cautiously.

‘I told you,
Les Miserables
.’

‘Right …’

Although he did manage to laugh when we talked about the Nob.’

Catherine half-smiled, if there was one thing that could unite the Reillys it was a general dislike of Jay.

‘Why, what did you expect?’ Jo asked.

‘Has he been taking his tablets?’

‘Yeah, he loves them doesn’t he? “Oh pass me my one o’clocks, Jo, if I don’t take these my spleen’ll fall out.” “Oh Jo, quick, I’ve stopped rattling, pass me my three o’clocks, my bowel’s packed in again.” What they all for anyway?’

Catherine cleared her throat, could she really say it? She must. ‘Cancer,’ she whispered.

Jo fell silent and then said, ‘What?’ as if she hadn’t heard Catherine correctly.

Catherine took a breath; she felt a rush of relief followed by guilt, but there was no going back now. ‘Dad’s got
cancer.
He didn’t want to worry anyone so he only told me,’ Catherine explained, ‘but I think it’s serious.’

‘Of course it’s bloody serious, it’s bloody cancer!’ Jo spat into the phone.

‘All right, Jo. Keep your voice down.’

‘My voice is down!’

‘Jo, it isn’t.’ Catherine winced, hoping that her dad was in his usual place – in front of the TV with the volume turned up.

‘Sorry,’ Jo said finally. ‘I’m just totally shocked, that’s all.’

‘You can’t say anything to him. He’ll kill me if he finds out I’ve told you, I just don’t know what to do. He won’t give me any details at all. He sort of hinted it was stomach cancer but all he’s really said is that it wasn’t good and he didn’t want to trouble anyone.’

‘I’ll find out what sort it is, don’t you worry,’ Jo said, sounding like she was already making plans to pin her father against the wall and take him to task about keeping this quiet.

‘Please, Jo, you know what he’s like. He stresses, he can’t take things like this. I’ve been really thinking about it and I just know that it’ll make him worse. If he thinks I’ve told you, he’ll assume I’ve told the others. And then it’ll suddenly feel really real and make his condition worse.’

‘God, I hate him sometimes!’ Jo shouted.

‘Jo, please!’ Catherine pleaded. She waited for Jo to say something but there was silence from the other end of the phone.

‘Jo? You OK?’ Jo was rarely stuck for something to say. ‘Are you crying?’

‘What did we do to deserve this, Catherine?’ Jo asked, her voice cracking. Catherine wasn’t used to hearing her sister so serious, but then again she wasn’t used to telling her that their dad had cancer. ‘We’ve got the shittest mum in Manchester and a dad that could be dying for all we know but is so fucked in the head that we can’t even talk to him about it because we’ll make it worse.’

‘Sorry … I shouldn’t have said anything.’ Catherine wound the telephone cord round her hand and peered down the corridor checking she was alone. Thank God she had been shown this pay phone, she wouldn’t want everyone hearing this news at the other public phones.

‘Of course you should, don’t be silly,’ Jo said gently. ‘I’m just mad that’s all. Mad and sad. Shit combination.’

‘I know,’ Catherine agreed. She felt terrible too. Suddenly she knew that she needed to do something about it, not pass the buck to Jo, but do something herself. ‘Listen, I shouldn’t even be having this conversation, what am I thinking?’ Catherine’s mind was whirring. ‘I’m coming home. I need to be there. I need to help Dad. Who do I think I am, swanning round this mansion singing Mariah Carey songs?’