To the Devil - a Diva! (14 page)

Vicki was in awe. Though she hated letting her bluff tough facade drop in front of the hated Colin, her reaction for the first hour or so inside Lance's rooftop pad was simple, earnest, fan-girl awe. And she was secretly impressed with how cool Colin was being. He was treating Lance like he was just another person: as if he was, in fact, just a friend of his. Colin was in the kitchen, making thick, strong coffee and talking to their host. Vicki perched herself on the white settee alongside Raf. Neither of them had said anything other than a quiet ‘hello' when Colin had introduced them to the drunk and mostly-naked Lance. Lance had let them in and he had looked rattled, wrecked, nervy, paranoid. The flat was dark and musty-smelling. It was the unaired den of some creature too anxious to forage.

Raf's stock of cool had sunk just as Colin's had risen. Vicki was obscurely disappointed in her best friend. He was saying thank you for the smoking coffee Colin poured and passed him. Vicki had never seen Raf so polite and subdued: sitting there with his knees clenched together. Vicki was feeling supremely conscious of her screen-grab Lance Randall T-shirt. It felt rude somehow: bad taste to be flaunting pirate merchandise in the great man's own abode.

The man himself was leaning against his breakfast bar. He'd flung his dressing gown back off and was cradling a miniature coffee cup against his bare chest. There was dark stubble on his face and his mouth was set in a grim line. There was a confused look in his eyes.

‘So … I don't understand,' he was saying. ‘What are you kids doing here?'

Colin was having a good look around his kitchen. Figuring out what the various gadgets were for. ‘It was really boring in Slag! Just the same old faces doing all the same old things, and I remembered suddenly how you'd said I should pop in and see your apartment sometime soon. And we were a bit worried about you, because of how you were first thing this morning. Because you didn't seem all that chuffed about the news and everything …' Colin realised he was gabbling. ‘What news?' Lance croaked.

‘About Karla!' Colin laughed. ‘Karla Sorenson. You were taking it badly this morning. Is that why you're drinking? Is that why you've locked yourself up in here? Is it all that bad?'

Lance slapped both palms on the counter: a deliberate, devil-may-care, dead drunk gesture. He spoke as if his tongue had swollen up. ‘I don't care. They can put who they want in the show. It's got nothing to do with me. I don't get any say in the matter apparently.'

Vicki leant in to Raf and hissed, ‘God, he's taking it worse than we thought.' Raf shushed her and pretended to concentrate on the TV guide in front of them.

‘I think you could do with more coffee, Lance,' Colin said quietly. ‘It doesn't do to get … this despondent.' Colin was conscious of Lance showing himself in a bad light in front
of Raf and Vicki. They'd be lapping this whole scene up. Now Colin wished he hadn't let them talk him into bringing them here. He felt bad for Lance, like he was making fun of him and taking a lend of his good nature. This was at the forefront of his thoughts. At the back – and thrumming along excitedly – were his thoughts to do with being up here at last: up in Lance's world, where the expensive blinds were drawn against the moon and the overspill of city centre light. The faces of his friends were basked in orange and blue. Life up here was taking on a grainy tinge, and a dramatic, filmlike quality and Colin felt like he had stepped into his proper context at last. There was a sensation of impending calamity, an undercurrent of concern, but all of this was hand in hand with his pleasure in looking after Lance. Looking at those square, broad, naked shoulders with their collarbones sticking out, he just wanted to go over and give him a cuddle. Yet the presence of his friends put him off. He couldn't do anything like that with those two there. They were like two schoolkids on that settee. It was like they were trying hard not to giggle at Lance's plight.

Lance held up his cup for more coffee. When Colin poured it, he stared down like he didn't know what he was being given. He sighed and said, ‘I have to do a photo shoot for the Press. Monday morning. First thing. With her.'

Colin put the pot down and looked at him. Their eyes met. Lance took a moment to focus and then looked away. ‘With her?' Colin asked.

‘With La Sorenson herself. Pictures of me and her. Me welcoming her to my show. Welcoming her to the wonderful world of
Menswear
.' It was like he was about to cry. Colin thought that would be a bad idea.

‘That's fantastic.' Raf came to life all of a sudden. He was sitting bolt upright and, for the first time, he was looking straight at them through the murky, film-stock air.

‘Is it?' Lance said thickly.

‘You and Karla together! It'll be great!'

Colin willed Raf to shut up. Beside Raf, Vicki was just looking dopey.

‘Yes, well,' Lance croaked. ‘I've got to smile and grin and point at her knockers or something.'

Then Vicki was seizing up the TV listings magazine. ‘Hey – it's on. It's on right now. We're going to miss it. Don't you watch it?'

‘Watch what?' Lance sounded weary.

‘
Menswear
,' she rasped exasperatedly. ‘Your own show. It's midnight, Mr Randall. Don't you ever watch yourself?'

They all looked at their host. ‘Never,' he said.

‘Can we?' Vicki asked. ‘It would be such an honour.' She made a grab for the remote control and started waving it at the blank screen of the television. Colin felt like stabbing her.

Lance waved his hand unsteadily. ‘Sure. Why don't you kids just make yourselves at home?' He pushed himself away from the breakfast bar. He reeled slightly, and Colin jumped forward to catch him. ‘I'm going to the bog,' he announced, and slipped away.

At that, the telly burst into colour and noisy life. The blaze of static raised the hairs on Colin's nape. Vicki and Raf were agog: leaning forward as the show began with the familiar cheesy, loungy funk of the theme. Colin watched them watching the sequence of splashy graphics that showed the grinning heads of the major characters. He heaved a
sigh. No way were his friends this keen on watching the programme. It was an act.

The last star credited in the opening montage was Lance himself. He was pristine in a black suit and lilac cravat. He winked at the audience at home: confident, salacious, and very well-built.

‘Just imagine when Karla's in it,' Raf hissed. It was very nearly a squeal. He was squeezing his fingers into Vicki's pale forearm.

‘We'll have to ask him,' Vicki said, ‘how long the telly's behind. How many weeks it'll be, until it gets good.'

Colin put down his coffee cup and left them to it. He decided he had to see how Lance was doing.

The ladies had decamped. They managed to get a bit tiddly on Pernod and black at the fish restaurant as they watched the rest of their party leave. By the end they weren't quite part of that group at all. All their supposed pals, the senior citizens, were slipping out of the place satiated on chips and batter cooked to that unique and secret recipe. They seemed pleased with their night out. It was just enough: they'd had a bit to eat and they had sang their songs and they had lapped up the good company and nostalgia.

Sally was still fending off her malaise. She was watching the sulky brute of a boy who was serving her drinks at the bar. Young enough to be her grandson: tall and sucking in his cheeks so the bones showed up; making his lips all red and flashing his dark eyes about. He was willing them to go home so he could finish his shift.

Instead he's got us, she thought. Us sitting perched on padded high stools, laughing at the framed prints of the original proprietor of the fish restaurant chain: an altogether sinister old bloke in a pinny and a straw hat. The photos went back years. They showed him and his many sons at work in the very first shop and in little vans parked on cobbled streets. Dispensing carefully-wrapped, hot newspaper parcels
to women in headscarfs, men in caps. Children with scabby legs and their socks rolled down, playing in the streets.

‘That was us, back then,' Effie said, with a sudden clarity. ‘That's how we were. When fish and chips on a Friday were like a treat.'

Sally rolled her eyes at this and then squinched them up, gulping down the last of her Pernod. The aniseedy taste was like being on holiday. Continental. ‘Listen to you. Like someone off a documentary. Going on.'

Effie flashed back. ‘You've always known how to live, haven't you? How to be modern. You've always moved with the times.'

Sally could see that Effie was getting her back up. She was about to say so, in those exact words, but thought better of it. Effie could be very conscious of her dowager's hump.

‘Can I have your glasses now, ladies?' said the sulky bar boy and they had to relinquish them. With the Pernod, pickles and chip grease inside her, Sally felt all insulated, syrupy and thick.

They made their way out, onto the sodium-lit tarmac by the ring-road, where the only noise was motorway traffic.

‘Well, I never wanted to modernise,' Effie said. ‘I never wanted to live right up in the sky, however many mod-cons they chucked at me. My heart bled when they ripped up those terraces, like the one where you used to live. I think they've been daft. Changing everything they can …'

Stuck out here, waiting to cross the big road, dallying before they could brave the four lanes of city traffic, Sally could see that her friend had a point. This was a weird place now, this part of town: to their left, the road out to Eccles and, beyond that, Liverpool. And here it was McDonalds
and a Travel Lodge and Sainsburys and a casino: their rooftops picked out with neon trim. To their right, the four lanes of traffic swept under the old red bricks of the viaduct. Beyond that they could see the futuristic plate glass of new apartments. Their soft and luxurious lighting hemmed in by old warehouses done up at scandalous prices. And, ahead, the road into the centre of Manchester. The road they'd have to take before veering off towards Salford and home.

They were two relics, clumping along in their good winter coats, alone together on Friday night. Clutching each other's arms, the wind stinging their ears. The smart cars shushed by them with a noise like silk being ripped. Occasionally one would have all its windows slid down, and they would hear that very aggressive thudding dance music that seemed to be everywhere these days.

The lights went green and, linking arms, the two ladies scuttled over the four lanes, feeling dwarfed by everything. The huge, automatic billboards showed naked young bodies and it was hard to say what they were advertising with their witty, cryptic slogans.

They had to walk along the back of the TV studios. The office block loomed above them. There, everything was produced and filmed; deep inside that tall building surmounted by the red glowing sign. Satellite dishes and antennae on that roof were beaming out programmes to everyone in the country.

It was like being in the very centre of the world. That was how they felt when they went inside that building once, on a visit. They had applied for and received studio audience tickets for that show in which ordinary members of the public became a famous face for one day. ‘Wasn't it just like
being in the middle of everything? Right here at home?' Sally asked. ‘Like all the world was revolving around us while we were there.'

‘It was,' Effie said, though she hadn't much enjoyed watching the show. She found it slow and confusing and hadn't known who people were pretending to be. She liked a proper drama, with real people in. She was very keen on murder programmes, especially those with a female detective. One who had to prove herself in a tough man's world.

As they took the path along the high, secretive walls of the studios, there were late night trains groaning and rattling over the viaducts and bridges. ‘Everything criss-crossing,' Effie said. She knew they were both talking because the dark and quiet streets were disconcerting. ‘Zipping about and all busy, even at this time …'

‘There's that hotel,' Sally said thoughtfully, nodding across the road. ‘Where all the big stars stay, when they're appearing in a TV show.' The two of them had gone there for tea and cakes that day of their visit to the studios. They'd hoped to see some celebrities and they hadn't struck lucky. They'd both read about that American pop star who'd held an impromptu concert in the bar. They imagined him in his spangly shirt, singing at the piano, all sweaty-faced and egged-on by drinkers. Alas, they'd seen nothing so exciting, but they'd been impressed by the splendour of the Prince Albert.

‘I wonder if that's where Karla's staying,' said Sally. ‘I bet you it is. They'd put that one in the best place.'

Effie looked at her. ‘You said you wouldn't mind bumping into her, now she's back.'

Sally hesitated, not too sure now.

‘We could pop in for a tiny nightcap,' Effie urged. ‘I'm chilled through, just coming this far. And you must be frozen in that flimsy dress.'

Sally considered. The old cow would be tucked up in bed by now, even if she was in residence. Chances are, they'd never cop a glimpse of her. But it wouldn't hurt, would it? Just a little tipple in the hotel bar? It might be a pleasant finish to the night. She was all dolled up, too, and that had been wasted on the old dears at the fish restaurant.

‘All right,' she told Effie. ‘Don't get your hopes up, mind. And if we do see her, let me do the talking. Just you remember – she's as ordinary as the two of us. She's no one special.'

‘All right,' said Effie, and they set off at a trot towards the white and pale gold of the hotel's foyer.

Sally was thinking: What am I talking about? Karla's not an ordinary person at all. She never was. Not what I'd call normal.