Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets - Cathy Kelly - Страница 51

Nicole Turner looked as if she was working – for once. Her dark head was bent over her desk and there was no tell-tale grin on her impish face which would have been a sure sign that she was telling jokes with her next-door neighbour, the equally feckless Sharon Wilson.

From her position at the top of the room, Ms Sinclair, claims department supervisor, narrowed her eyes as she looked at the bane of her life. Nicole Turner could look demure and hardworking even when she was secretly planning some prank that would cause uproar in the busiest department of the London headquarters of Copperplate Insurance. Like that time she’d rigged the big clock behind Ms Sinclair’s desk so it was half an hour early, meaning that everyone left for lunch at half twelve instead of one.

Naturally, Nicole had switched the clock back during lunchtime, so that when everyone arrived back at two, they’d actually had an hour and a half for lunch. In Ms Sinclair’s eyes, this was a sacking offence but she had no proof that Nicole was responsible so nothing could be done. And the section head pointed out that Nicole’s work was always excellent, so there were no grounds for firing her.

You had to watch her all the time, Ms Sinclair decided darkly. It was a task she relished.

At her desk at the back of the room, Sharon Wilson’s phone rang and she picked it up.

‘Hello, claims department,’ she trilled.

‘Is that old bitch still watching me like a hawk?’ asked Nicole, who was less than three feet away but who knew that clerical staff talking without actually being attached to their phones were in for a big black mark from Ms Sinclair.

Sharon peeked up the room. ‘Yes. Actually, she’s really staring at you now.’

‘Shit.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Sharon could see Nicole stand up and search through some files on her desk, her brow furrowed as if she’d been asked a sticky question by a customer and needed to check it out. Nicole located the big Copperplate Insurance manual and sighed theatrically as though her greatest wish in the entire world had been granted because she’d found the manual. She flicked through the pages and stopped in the middle.

‘Ms Wilson,’ she said now in her best placate-the-customer voice, ‘I’m afraid we won’t be able to cover your claim for the deer running out onto the road and flattening your Mini Cooper…’

Sharon giggled and had to hide behind her computer so nobody could see her.

‘You see, Ms Wilson, we happen to know that you were down the Three Crowns public house on the night in question and had seventeen pints of best bitter, before you climbed into the driver’s seat and drove home, with your boyfriend in the seat behind you attempting to remove your brassiere; a feat not recommended in the Rules of the Road handbook. Therefore, we feel unable to cough up the twenty-seven thousand pounds you feel entitled to. We will be, however, paying for plastic surgery for the deer, alright?’

Sharon giggled some more.

‘Seriously.’ Nicole had switched into her normal voice although to any onlooker, her expression was as grave as if she was on company business. ‘I’ve just got an e-mail from my pal Bacardi King. One of his friends is getting married and the stag party’s in the Red Parrot tonight and if you’re interested, we can go.’

‘To a stag party on a Thursday?’ said Sharon dubiously.

Nicole allowed herself to smile. ‘Ms Sin-Free-Zone-Clair isn’t in tomorrow so we can be as hungover as skunks and nobody will mind. And all Bacardi’s female friends are going. Having men only at stags is very old fashioned.’

‘OK,’ said Sharon, who adored Nicole and who felt that in the three years she’d worked with her, her own social life had improved no end. Nicole hung up and returned to her e-mail.

‘Hi B-King, love to hit Red Parrot with u. Is dressing up part of plan? Haven’t dressed up since I went to hallowe’en night party as a mummy – all rolled up in loo roll taken from the last pub. The bouncers in the night-club didn’t see the funny side of it, for some reason. Said I could be charged with robbing loo paper! No sense of humour. See u at 8.

Nicole.

Thursdays were perfect for going out. Her gran came over on a Thursday, so Nicole didn’t have to worry about who was going to be babysitting five-year-old Pammy.

At six o’clock on the nail, Nicole got up from her desk, dragged her backpack from underneath it and stalked off to the loos on her gravity-defying knee-high boots, regardless of the fierce glares from Ms Sinclair.

Sharon watched her friend enviously. Nicole just didn’t care about what people thought. Nicole never got embarrassed when she went to buy her round and found she didn’t have enough cash, and she’d just laughed the day they’d been running for the bus and she fell into a puddle of water, with at least thirty people watching. Sharon would have been puce with embarrassment. Nicole groaned good humouredly because the entire front of her skintight jeans were damp.

‘I’ll look like I wet myself,’ she said, ‘and we haven’t even had a drink yet!’

At five past six, having delayed for a few minutes because that way, it looked as if she was so engrossed in her work that she hadn’t noticed the time, Sharon gave her desk a cursory bit of tidying and rushed to the loos. Nicole was there, having a forbidden cigarette before she put on the minuscule amount of make-up she wore.

That was another reason to be jealous of her best friend, Sharon thought with a resigned sigh as she compared their reflections in the mirror. Nicole was so beautiful. Her café au lait skin glowed no matter how exhausted she was, and the tigerish amber eyes with their feline tilt at the outer edges dominated her triangular little face. Her concession to make-up was lots of glossy lipstick because her mouth, inherited from her mother instead of from her Indian father, was on the small side.

Her hair was her one vanity: she spent a fortune on conditioning treatments and shine products and it hung in a long, glossy curtain down her back. Even her body obeyed her. Tall, and slender as a reed, she had fantastic legs that looked scarily long in the black PVC mini-skirt she’d just changed into.

But Nicole was just about the best friend in the entire universe, which meant you couldn’t be jealous of her.

‘Want a fag?’ Nicole asked now in her husky voice.

Sharon took one, lit it and went into a cubicle to pee. They weren’t supposed to smoke in the loos but if Nicole could do it, so could she.

‘Are you up for karaoke tonight?’ Nicole said, pulling off her cream work jumper and wriggling into a small pink T-shirt with glittery stars emblazoned all over the front.

From behind the toilet door, Sharon groaned. ‘You know I can’t sing and I’m not making a fool of myself in front of all those guys at the stag night.’

‘Oh come on,’ Nicole begged. She needed someone to get up and sing with her or she’d feel stupid doing it. She hated show offs. Nicole adored singing and had been exercising her raw husky voice in private since she’d been a child. She often wrote her own songs but it was only for fun. Singing publicly was another matter. There was nothing worse than people who thought they were Kiri Te Kanawa getting up at family parties and sounding like a collection of drunken crows. Nicole couldn’t bear that. But since, at the age of fifteen, she’d sneaked into the local pub for an illegal drink and discovered karaoke, she’d loved it. While the other people she partied with thought that the sing-a-long part of an evening was just drunken fun, for Nicole, it was the best bit. She adored singing to Tina Turner and Whitney Houston tracks and loved having her pals waving their beer bottles up at her happily as they hummed along and cheered. But you had to get someone to get up there with you in the first place, Nicole felt. Otherwise you looked like a stupid show off.

‘Ready?’ she asked Sharon.

‘Just a minute,’ said Sharon, struggling with mascara that promised lashes like Cindy Crawford’s.

‘Right. I’ll phone my mum,’ Nicole replied. Using the office phone saved her from spending too much on the mobile.

She slipped back into the office where Ms Sinclair was still at her desk tidying up. Nicole immediately crouched down and crept along behind the desks until she reached her own. She took the phone down and wriggled into the space underneath where she’d be safe from detection. Sinclair would kill her for using the phone for personal purposes. At least during office hours, you could always pretend you were on a work call. It was annoying that Sinclair hated her so much. It wasn’t that Nicole didn’t work hard: she did. But Sinclair didn’t understand that Nicole could finish her work more quickly than most people in the department, and then she got bored. She couldn’t help the practical jokes, they helped pass the time.

Her mother answered on the first ring. ‘Hello love,’ she said to Nicole’s whispered hello.

‘Hi Mum,’ hissed Nicole.

‘I can’t hear you,’ said Sandra Turner in her soft, breathy voice. ‘Speak up love.’

‘I can’t,’ hissed Nicole. ‘I’m at work.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sandra vaguely. There was a pause.

There were always pauses in conversations with Nicole’s mother.

‘I’m going out for a bit tonight, Mum. That’s OK, isn’t it. I know you’ve got Bingo but Gran’s coming over for a few hours, isn’t she?’

‘I suppose. She didn’t phone.’

Another pause.

‘Shall I check if she’s coming over, Mum?’ Nicole volunteered. ‘We can’t leave Pammy on her own and she hates bingo.’

‘OK. You do that. Oh, the doorbell. I’ll get it.’

Nicole heard the phone drop and then her grandmother’s voice with the strong accent that was a strange hybrid of Cockney and Irish even after fifty years in London. A few minutes passed before her mother picked up the phone again. ‘Your gran’s here so I’m going out. See you later.’

She hung up before Nicole even had a chance to speak to her grandmother to ask what time she was staying until. Slowly, Nicole put down the receiver. She was glad her grandmother was there: it gave her a chance to have a night out without worrying about Pammy. She needed someone looking after her and sometimes, even though Nicole hated to admit it, her mother wasn’t up to it.

She crept back the same route to the office door where Sharon was waiting for her, all done up now and reeking of Eternity.

‘Let’s hit the pub, babes,’ Nicole said brightly.

The Red Parrot in Camden was not Dickie Vernon’s idea of a nice venue. It was a young people’s pub for a start, full of computer games, with lots of different coloured condoms in the dispenser in the loos and very loud karaoke. But in his job as a talent scout, Dickie had been in lots of headache-inducing places. Not that he ever said he was a talent scout. No, he was a manager, or so he told people to impress them. It was a great pity that his greatest find, the golden-voiced Missy McLoughlin, hadn’t had the balls for the music business. She was something else that girl. If she’d made it, he’d have been home and dry for life. Fifteen per cent of millions, he’d been sure of it. No more sitting around horrible old clubs looking for the next Celine Dion. The independent record label had been so interested until he’d got greedy and asked for more money. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. When they backed off at his increasingly outrageous demands, Missy’s nerve had failed her and she was now the proud mother of a toddler, lived in an Aberdeen semi and sang at weddings and funerals.

Dickie was back to managing the Val Brothers, a barber shop quartet, and taking care of the affairs of a country and western girl singer whose only resemblance to the successful Nashville ladies was her big, blonde hair. Anyone listening to her murdering ‘Jolene’ would immediately start looking for cotton wool for their ears. Still, she looked the part and that was half the battle, wasn’t it?

His trip to the Red Parrot was to meet up with a small record shop owner who was going to introduce him to a teenage rock band who were all still at school. The record shop guy was late and Dickie, bored rigid now he’d done the crossword in the Daily Star, was sinking whiskies. The karaoke machine was switched on and two drunk rugby playing types were howling their way through ‘Purple Haze’. Jimi Hendrix would turn in his grave, Dickie thought.

It was definitely a stag party. There were around thirty lads, all plastered, and one with a blow up rubber doll on his lap. The stag himself, stupid git. Dickie looked away and ordered another whisky. It was half nine, he’d give the record shop owner another half an hour and he was gone.

He blanked out the dreadful singing from the stag night people who were performing one dreadful rendition after another. A curvaceous brunette wearing spray-on jeans and a clingy red top sat at the table next to his. Dickie admired the way her small waist made her bum look curvier. She turned round and smiled at him. Dickie smiled back, giving her the full works, gleaming capped teeth and the Jack the lad cheeky grin that had been working since he was fifteen, a good twenty-five years before. The brunette winked at him.

He might stay a bit longer after all.

The strains of the old Al Green hit, ‘Let’s Stay Together’, drifted out from the karaoke machine and Dickie didn’t notice. He was considering asking the brunette if she wanted a drink when the vocals started. Two voices were singing, one flat and terrible, the other husky and rich. The husky voice penetrated the room, soaring above the music.

Dickie stared, the brunette forgotten. There, on the Red Parrot dais, stood a tall dark-skinned girl belting out this incredible noise. She was young, maybe twenty. But that voice: throaty and full of age, experience and sex. She sang like a world-weary divorcée who’d had it up to here with drink, drugs and men. Life in the very fast lane. If he hadn’t seen her for himself, Dickie would have sworn blind the singer was at least forty and a chain smoker with tired, hard eyes. Her voice resonated with experience, sex, excitement and power.

And incredibly, it was coming from a young, slim girl with an unlined little face that reminded him of a cat’s, slanting eyes and a profile like an Indian princess. Watching that tiny little face transported as she sang, Dickie felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He’d found her. His star. His ticket out of here.

‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ said the brunette flirtatiously.

‘Wouldn’t be seen dead here normally,’ Dickie said flatly and went back to watching Nicole Turner. The brunette flounced off.

When the song ended, the audience applauded loudly and Nicole and Sharon bowed happily.

‘Sing another one,’ roared Bacardi King.

‘You sing on your own, Nicole,’ urged Sharon. ‘You’re so much better than me.’

‘No,’ insisted Nicole. ‘You’ve got to stay.’

Normally, the sound of ‘The Power of Love’ at a karaoke session promised the sort of drunken howling that put you in mind of dogs at the full moon but not the way Nicole sang it. Dickie smiled beatifically as her lovely voice reached every high note, swelling where the song demanded it and fading down to gentleness at exactly the right moments. He watched her, mesmerized. He had to talk to her.

She was perfect, made to be a star. But he’d had too much to drink and probably looked more than a little worse for wear. He’d just hit the men’s loos for a minute and make himself respectable, then he’d approach her. After all, who’d believe he was a top-flight manager if he looked seedy and pissed. It would only take a minute.

Nicole flopped onto a seat and fanned herself with the cocktail menu. She felt exhilarated and tired. Now that the fun of the evening was over, she thought she might go home. Duty called, the way it always did. It was half ten and Gran liked to be in her own bed by eleven, come what may. Who knew if Mum was home yet.

The stag night boys were playing a drunken party game that involved discussing your wildest dreams.

Nicole was beside the groom-to-be, who was now wearing a pirate’s hat and eye patch. The blow up doll was sitting on his other side and had a pair of black lacy knickers on her head. The stag put an arm around Nicole and grinned drunkenly at her. With her little cat’s face glowing from the lights and her eyes glittering from her singing triumph, she looked stunning.

‘What would you really want if you could have anything in the whole world?’ he said, pulling Nicole closer to him and breathing in the scent of her hot, slender body, a musky scent mingled with Sharon’s Eternity.

Nicole smiled wryly. She knew what he was thinking: the stag wasn’t ready for the night to end yet. He was getting married in two days and yearned for one last wild fling to finish off his days of bachelorhood. Nicole was mildly amused that he’d even dreamed that she’d be up for it. He absolutely wasn’t her type and he was roaringly drunk. What a plonker.

‘Go on,’ he crooned, obviously thinking he was onto a good thing. ‘What would you like?’

‘I’d love a place of my own,’ she said suddenly. ‘My own flat where I could come and go as I liked and didn’t need to be there for anyone, total freedom.’

‘Wayhay!’ roared the groom. ‘I’ve got my own place and we could go back there now, I’ve got drink and everything…’

‘That’s not what I meant, you toe rag,’ Nicole said, calmly emptying the remains of her beer all over him. She’d had enough to drink.

He squealed with horror and Nicole daintily leaped up from the seat beside him, blew him a kiss and then tapped Sharon on the arm. ‘I’m outta here,’ she said, ignoring the furiously mouthing groom.

Dickie Vernon came out of the men’s room, looking much more together, much more like a successful manager of incredible talent. Thank God they still sold those mini toothbrush and toothpaste combos in toilet dispensers. Slicking back his dark hair, he made his way over to the stag party and looked around for the young, dark girl. But she was gone.

Nicole locked the front door and pulled over the curtain that kept the draught from blowing straight up the stairs. 12a Belton Gardens was a great place for draughts. Sometimes, the winter wind whistled from the front door right through the flat and out the back door again, making the kitchen and the narrow hall no-go areas. Nicole had tried draught excluder but it kept falling off so she’d bought a big curtain for over the front door instead. If only her mother would remember to draw it.

She walked into the small cosy sitting room where her mother was sitting on the old flowery couch wrapped up in a tartan blanket and watching a late night film. A mug of tea sat in front of her and she had a bowl of popcorn on her lap.

‘Hello love,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the screen.

‘Hi Mum,’ Nicole said, sitting on the faded pink armchair beside the fire. Her mother’s collection of china pigs glared down at her from the mantelpiece, alongside several scented candles which Nicole was always in mortal terror would set the place alight.

Her mother kept chewing popcorn. Nicole picked up the TV guide to see what was on. It was a 1970s Goldie Hawn film. Her mother loved Goldie Hawn. With her baby-soft blonde hair and sweet, faded smile, she liked to think she looked like Goldie too. Only in Sandra’s case, the kookiness wasn’t an act. Sandra Turner was kind, terribly naive and possessed of a vague dizziness that made her utterly unsuited to dealing with normal life. She felt helpless around domestic problems or money matters, hated confrontation of any kind and was addicted to the herbal tablets she took for her nerves. Men, especially, adored her helpless female act, until they discovered it wasn’t an act.

If Nicole didn’t do the grocery shopping and make sure that the bills were paid on time, the small Turner family would never have survived. Not that Nicole ever complained. Fiercely protective of her lovely, dizzy mother, she wouldn’t let anyone say a word against her. There may have been just the three of them but they were still a family and Nicole dared anyone to say otherwise. She knew that it had been hard for her mother to rear her on her own and that many men over the years had steered clear of dating a single mother. Sandra’s one chance at happiness had been with Pammy’s father. He’d been a nice man, Nicole remembered. But it had somehow gone wrong and the Turner girls were on their own again.

The film cut to a commercial break and Sandra Turner came to life.

‘Have a nice evening, love?’ she asked, turning to her daughter.

‘Lovely, Mum. How about you? Did you win?’

Her mother’s face scrunched up into an irresistible grin: ‘£100, love!’ she said jubilantly. ‘I’m going to get my hair permed and buy new shoes. They’ve got lovely ones down the market, just like Versace but they’re not the real thing.’

‘Good for you, Mum,’ Nicole cheered, mentally chocking up some more overtime. They were late paying the electricity bill.

She watched a bit of Goldie and then decided to go to bed.

‘I’m knackered, Mum,’ she said, leaning over to give her mother a kiss. ‘I suppose Gran’s asleep in my bed?’

Her mother bit her lip, like a small child asking forgiveness. ‘I was a bit late and you know she hates getting a cab home after eleven. You can sleep with me,’ she added eagerly.

Nicole checked the kitchen to make sure everything was switched off then climbed the stairs. She passed her own tiny bedroom and went into Pammy’s. Barbie predominated. There wasn’t any bit of Barbie equipment that Nicole hadn’t bought her little half-sister. Quiet as a mouse, she peered down at her fondly. In sleep, Pammy looked even more angelic than she did awake. Her tousled white-blonde hair stuck up at all angles and her soft, babyish cheeks were plump and innocent. She was only five and Nicole completely adored her. She thought guiltily back to what she’d said to the drunken groom in the pub: yes, she’d love a place of her own, somewhere she could be utterly on her own and not responsible for any other human being. But she’d miss little Pammy so much. And her mum. No matter what her gran said about Sandra being a few sandwiches short of a picnic, she was a good mum and she did her best. She was Nicole’s responsibility and that was that.

Pammy woke Nicole up at half six by climbing into the small double bed and bouncing up and down. Sandra moved just enough to pull the duvet closer around her neck.

‘Nicole, wake up!’ sang Pammy before she started trying to tickle her big sister under the arms.

‘C’mere, brat,’ she growled in her best tiger voice and pulled Pammy’s small, squirming body under the covers where she began to tickle her, much more successfully.

‘Lemme go! Lemme go!’ squealed Pammy delightedly as she tried to wriggle away.

‘No, the tiger has got you!’ growled Nicole. ‘Grrr, grrrr, I love yummy little girls in the morning…I’m hungry, grrrr…’

After a bit more growling, she let Pammy go and then swung her legs out of the bed, shivering in the coolness of the bedroom. She pulled on her mother’s dressing gown and went downstairs with Pammy to get her breakfast.

By seven forty-five, they were both fed, dressed and ready to leave the house. Nicole took a speedy cup of tea up to her grandmother.

‘Thanks love,’ said Reenie Turner, sitting up in Nicole’s bed. ‘You’re a good girl.’

‘Sorry I didn’t see you last night, Gran,’ Nicole said. ‘But I’ll see you on Sunday. Don’t forget to wake Mum before you go. She’s due at work by ten today.’

She ignored her grandmother’s snort of disapproval. Despite being mother and daughter Sandra and Reenie Turner were like chalk and cheese. Keeping the peace between them was a full time job. Reenie disapproved of Sandra’s part-time job as a manicurist and the way that Nicole took care of Pammy as though she were her mother. And Sandra hated Reenie’s comments about her occasional men friends.

‘Once in a blue moon I meet a nice man for a drink, once in a blue moon, that’s all. Just because I’ve got kids doesn’t mean I have to live like a nun, you know,’ she’d snap.

‘Fat chance of that,’ Reenie would sniff unfairly.

Nicole hated her grandmother criticizing Sandra. For all that her mother was dizzy, she’d worked hard to bring her and Pammy up and hadn’t so much as dated a man when Nicole was a kid. It was only when Nicole was a bit of a teenage tearaway that Sandra had met Pammy’s father.

Pammy danced along the wet footpath with Nicole, singing tunelessly to herself. She’d settled incredibly well at St Matthews, for which Nicole was grateful. Apart from the first day when her lower lip had wobbled when Nicole finally left her in the capable hands of Miss Vishnu, she’d run happily into school ever since. Miss Vishnu was very young and sweet and the children appeared to love her.

Once Pammy was dispatched into school with her Poke-mon lunchbox, Nicole had to rush to the bus stop to catch the five to eight. She had to stand for nine stops but finally got a seat on the top deck where she could sit and listen to her CD Walkman as West London rolled by.

She enjoyed those moments to herself on the bus or tube, even if she was surrounded by people. There was still a solitariness to it that she liked: listening to music and not having to talk to anybody.

Copperplate buzzed with the usual Friday morning excitement of ‘only a few more hours and it’s the weekend!’ In the canteen, plans were being made for lunchtime shopping expeditions for new clothes and discussions were going on about what everyone was doing that night. Top Shop had a sale and there was great enthusiasm for butterfly tops like one Jennifer Lopez wore which were reduced to twenty quid.

Nicole bought a cup of tea and sat in the smoking section of the canteen. She flicked through a paper that someone had left on the seat beside her, scanning the news rapidly before reaching the horoscopes. Leos were in for a good day, she read. Be prepared for breathtaking news to hit you. How you react could be very important but remember not to do anything rash.

Breathtaking news could mean she got the sack, Nicole thought, lighting up another fag even though she didn’t really want it. Sharon appeared at the canteen door, face lit up with excitement.

‘You’ll never guess!’ she yelled at Nicole as she ran over to the table.

‘We’ve been given a day off?’ Nicole suggested. ‘Ms Sinclair Bitch has been run over by a truck? You’re engaged to Leonardo DiCaprio?’

Sharon slid into the seat beside her friend and passed a small, rather grubby card over to her. ‘Better than that,’ she smirked.

‘Dickie Vernon, manager,’ Nicole read. ‘What’s this mean?’

Sharon beamed. ‘He heard you sing last night in the Parrot. He’s a top class band manager. He told me about some huge band he managed but I can’t remember which one. Anyway, he wants you!’ Sharon could barely contain herself. ‘He thinks you’ve a wonderful voice and you could be a pop star! Imagine it.’

Nicole laughed. ‘This is mad, this is. Just have a look at my horoscope. It says I better not do anything rash.’

‘Rash?’ demanded Sharon looking up from what the day foretold for Geminis. ‘They’ll never let you on Top of the Pops with a rash.’

Nicole had never felt so nervous in her whole life. Her hands were actually shaking as she peeled the cellophane from the cigarette packet. She’d better get a grip or she’d sound like one of those dolls who stutter ‘Mama’ when their string is pulled. Taking a huge drag of Rothmans, she let the nicotine enter her system and give her the hit. The drug did its thing. Great. She sagged a little in her new high leather boots and leaned against the wall as her body relaxed. Then she jerked away: this place was such a dump. Who knew when it had last been cleaned. You’d probably get rabies from just leaning against the scummy wall.

From the way Dickie had spoken about the small recording studio owned by a friend, Nicole had been under the impression that she was practically going to Abbey Road. Instead, she was in a dingy old premises in Guildford with a warren of rooms and a studio that looked as if it hadn’t been used since the sixties. And the equipment looked even older, like stuff from the Antiques Roadshow.

The man who owned it seemed nice enough, though: a skinny old guy who wasn’t exactly threatening, which was good. Nicole had been a bit nervous about going there on her own with Dickie.

‘What if they’re rapists who just use this “you could be a singer” line to get you on your own?’ Sharon had protested. ‘I’ll go with you; you need moral support.’

But Nicole had insisted she went to the studio on her own. ‘If we both take a sickie on Tuesday, Sinclair is going to figure something’s going on. She’s not that stupid,’ Nicole pointed out. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll take my army penknife just in case.’

‘I thought the actual knife fell off,’ Sharon said suspiciously.

‘I’ll stab them to death with the bottle-opener bit,’ Nicole retorted.

She had the penknife in her bag but she didn’t think she was going to need it. Dickie may have looked like a total sleazoid but he seemed genuinely only interested in her singing ability.

‘You shouldn’t be smoking,’ he’d said, scandalized, the first time he’d seen Nicole light up, the seventh of her twenty a day.

‘Who the hell are you? My bleedin’ mother?’ she demanded.

‘It’s bad for your voice. No top singer would ever smoke,’ Dickie said.

Tough bananas, Nicole thought, stubbing out one cigarette and extracting another from the packet. She needed to smoke. She’d never be able to sing otherwise. She had the words and music to one Whitney Houston song ready not that she could read music, but it looked good.

Dickie came back into the studio. ‘Everything’s ready to go,’ he said breezily. ‘Just one more thing.’ He casually held a piece of paper out to Nicole. ‘You just need to sign this, love. To make it all legal and formal, you know.’ He held out a pen with the other hand.

The corner of Nicole’s mouth twitched. Did this guy really think she was that dumb? Just because she’d taken a chance by going to a studio with him, he couldn’t honestly think she would blindly sign a bit of paper that would undoubtedly give him rights over her and her unborn children for the rest of her life?

She gave him her Bambi look, the one where she widened her eyes and blinked slowly, as if blinking quickly was too much of a mental strain. ‘Sign this?’ she repeated.

Dickie nodded, more confident now.

‘I don’t know,’ Nicole said, still in Bambi mode.

‘It’s legal stuff, nothing to worry about,’ Dickie urged.

Nicole took the paper and skimmed over it. What did Dickie think she did at Copperplate Insurance: make the tea? She may have been on the bottom rung of the office ladder but she still spent enough time dealing with insurance claims to know about the law. Plus, she could probably work out percentages more quickly than Dickie could and fifty per cent was a bit steep in her opinion. All at once, she decided that it had been a mistake to come here. If she wanted to be a singer, she’d have to approach it another way. She folded the piece of paper up and stuck it in her handbag, while Dickie stared at her open-mouthed.

‘Wha…?’ he started to say.

‘I’d never sign anything without getting a lawyer to look at it,’ Nicole said with an impish grin. ‘And I think that asking someone to sign something without explaining what they’re signing, is described as “sharp practice”.’

She waved at the skinny guy behind the glass plate. ‘Thanks but no thanks.’

‘You can’t do this!’ roared Dickie as the penny dropped. ‘You can’t walk out like this. I’ve invested time and money in you, I’ve talked you up.’

Nicole gave him a wry look and headed for the door.

‘I’ve got people interested in you, you stupid little black bitch,’ he shouted.

That did it. He’d been fine until he’d called her that. How dare he? She was proud of her Indian heritage and her colour, not that she knew much about India really, but she was proud of it anyway. Rage coursing in every vein, Nicole whirled round. She wanted to hit him but pride stopped her. He could behave like scum from the gutter but she wouldn’t.

‘When I’m famous, Dickie, I hope you’ll remember that you could have been a part of it.’ She gazed at him superciliously. ‘Except you got too greedy. And I will be famous, I promise you.’ With that, she left, her long silky hair flying as she strode out of the building.

She would be famous. She knew it in her bones. Dickie had done one good thing for her: he’d shown her that she wanted to make it as a singer. She’d been hiding from it for years but he’d helped her see that she could do it – and that she wanted to. She owed him that. Maybe she’d send him a ticket for her first gig.

Sharon was furious. ‘The scumbag,’ she raged. ‘I knew he was trouble. I’ll go round and kill him meself. No, I’ll get my brother to do it.’

‘Don’t waste your time,’ Nicole said. ‘No, what I need you to do is help me with some research. I need to make a demo tape and I want to know where I can do it cheaply. Secondly, I’ve got to find out who to send it to. Put your thinking cap on, Shazz. Between the pair of us, we must know somebody who can help.’

Sharon’s second cousin’s flatmate knew a studio engineer who wouldn’t mind a bit of moonlighting as a one-off. He knew who to send demos to but warned Sharon that record companies got zillions of tapes every year. ‘They probably file them in the black plastic filing cabinet,’ he said.

Nicole shrugged. ‘I’ll take that chance.’

The cheapest studio time for recording sessions was in the middle of the night, so at two a.m. two weeks later, Nicole, Sharon and Sharon’s second cousin, Elaine, lined up in Si-borg Studios. The engineer had drummed up four musicians to play along with her and, to hide her nerves, Nicole whispered to Sharon that the musicians mustn’t be much good if they were prepared to play in the middle of the night for damn all money. The money was from Nicole’s building society account and she still felt anxious every time she thought of spending it on something so ephemeral.

‘Shut up,’ hissed Tommy, the engineer, ‘or they’ll all go home. They’re not that desperate.’

Embarrassed, Nicole lit up. Nobody looked askance at her. At Si-borg, it was the people who didn’t smoke who looked out of place. The musicians, engineer and even the receptionist all puffed madly so the entire premises was fuggy with smoke and the walls were stained a cloudy vanilla thanks to years of late-night Marlboro sessions.

The first hour was hell for Nicole. Used to launching into a song as soon as the karaoke machine played it or singing her own compositions alone in her bedroom, she found it impossible to stop and start as the real musicians warmed up by snapping strings, getting riffs wrong and grumbling about unfamiliar songs.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ she whispered to Tommy as they took a break, mindful of keeping her voice down in case the musicians walked out.

‘Whitney Houston and Sade are not their thing,’ he grinned. ‘If you wanted to launch into something by the Manic Street Preachers, these would be your men.’

‘Charming.’ Nicole stomped off to the loo. She leaned her head against the mirror and closed her eyes wearily. This wasn’t working out as planned. She’d taken Tommy’s advice and had gone for covering other people’s songs instead of her own ones because he said her voice was the main thing and the demo would have greater impact that way.

She’d been so excited at the thought of working with real musicians and had had visions of herself belting out flawless hit after hit with everyone in the studio watching her in admiration.

Instead, all she had was a sore throat from the combination of singing and smoking too much, and she really wished she hadn’t worn those ultra tight pink snakeskin jeans and high-heeled boots. She felt bloated because she was pre-menstrual and the waistband of the jeans was cutting into her flesh like cheese wire. Why was she doing this? She must have been mad. Just because she could hold a note didn’t make her Mariah Carey. Would it be awful if she told them all to go home because she couldn’t keep going?

‘Nicole!’ said Sharon, dancing into the grimy loo clutching a can of beer and a roll-up that Nicole would swear was filled with more than just tobacco. ‘Isn’t it exciting? God, they love you. I just overheard the bass player telling Tommy that you had a fantastic voice and wondering if you needed a band?’

Nicole stood up straight and blinked tiredly. The harsh fluorescent light hurt her eyes: they were red-rimmed with tiredness, no matter how much kohl she’d painted around them.

‘They said what?’

‘That you’re marvellous! That you’ve got “star quality”,’ Sharon said happily. ‘Well, I could have told them that but it’s good that they think so, don’t you think?’ She prattled away about the bass player and how he’d said that Nicole was ‘mega’.

Nicole half listened and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Underneath the tired face and the weary eyes, there was a certain radiance. She smiled and the radiance shone out at her, bypassing the tiredness instantly. Star quality, huh?

‘Have you got any of that bright red lipstick on you, Sharon?’ she asked. ‘I left my bag downstairs and I look like death warmed up.’

Sharon rummaged around in a handbag the size of Santa’s toy sack and found the lipstick in question.

With a slightly shaking hand, Nicole applied a thick buttery layer. On her dark little face with her eyes glowing like jet, the rich crimson looked incredible. Sexy and mysterious at the same time. Nicole pouted theatrically at herself. ‘Let’s go get ‘em,’ she said with a huge grin.