Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen (2 page)

Anyway for six months it was amazing – we even talked about setting up together: I want to get into management and Lawrence could be my first big breakthrough – but the past few have been, well, rubbish. The hard reality of the industry set in and as the jobs became fewer and further between – especially for the north-London posh-boy: curse that new Doctor Who – and the money even thinner on the ground, his self-esteem followed suit. I’ve remembered this: Lawrence’s tantrums aren’t born out of malice, they’re born of frustration. It’s awful not to meet your potential.

My voice softens. ‘Look, why don’t we have a break for a
couple of weeks? Give us each some time to reflect on what we want.’

He shakes his head and spits ‘
No
’ with such vehemence that a group of school kids shuffling past on their way to Madame Tussauds turn to look at us. ‘I need to branch out,’ he goes on, quieter now. ‘I’m sorry, Mads. It’s over. Don’t call me, OK?’

I can feel the hot spill of tears threatening to push free. Why am I crying? I knew it was going nowhere with Lawrence, but in spite of this it’s still horrible. Getting dumped is
horrible
.

‘Fine,’ I say, mustering my dignity. My feet are soggy. Why the bloody hell did I wear flip-flops? Those cork-soled ones, too: I might as well have sponges strapped to my feet.

Lawrence tries a no-hard-feelings smile. The rain is pitpatting on the coat strung between his arms, and for the first time I notice the slogan on the cruise poster behind him:
BEST WATER TRAVEL
. The material obscures each end of it, leaving the letters
T WAT
hovering just above his head. I decide to bank this image for the dark days ahead.

‘Goodbye, Lawrence,’ I say proudly, choosing not to return the smile. I shall walk away with my chin up, my shoulders back, hoping he remembers that I once looked like Rachel McAdams. I shall disappear into the London crowds like a ship at sea. I shall leave him in my wake, looking on at my departing back, brimming with regret. I shall. I shall.

At the swarming entrance to the tube I do a quick look back, just to verify all this. He’s already bolted.

It’s only as I’m stood, depressed, on the escalators that I realise Lawrence is one of the few people in the world who knows my real name. My
full
name. The one my parents gave me. The same parents who named their band Pineapple Mist.

Oh Jesus. Oh dear god, no. I’ve just got to hope that my ex-boyfriend searches the depths of his soul, the pit of human decency, and resolves to do the right thing, the only thing: to take my secret to the grave.

Breaking up with someone takes identity protection to a whole new level.

‘He’s an idiot,’ says Lou, rummaging around under her desk for a pair of size fives. It’s useful to have a best friend who changes her shoes at least once a day and thus has a shop floor’s worth of them within reach for occasions such as this.

Just minutes ago I stumbled back into the Bond Street office, bedraggled and tear-stained, eliciting gasps from the entire female contingent of Simply Voices. By some weird intuition they all seemed to know what had happened. Clearly twenty-five-year-old women don’t stand out in the cold on showery April days unless they’re breaking up with someone.
Cue lots of kind concern and offers to make tea, and the magical appearance from somebody’s drawer of a box of Mr Kipling’s chocolate fingers with sticky icing.

‘Maybe,’ I grumble, patting my soaked hair with a freebie beer mat a client sent us last week.

Lou surfaces and tosses me a hideous pair of those super-calf-toner trainers, the type with suspension better suited to a four-by-four. There’s a two-inch-deep chunk of bright white sole, curved like the belly of a sailing boat. Not what a recently dumped girl in doubt of her own desirability needs.

She clocks my expression and laughs. ‘Just take those wicker things off,’ she instructs, nodding to the sorry wet flipflops hanging off my feet. ‘The trainers are comfy.’

‘He implied I was holding him back,’ I say, doing as I’m told. ‘Do you think that’s true? I mean, maybe I’ve been subconsciously preventing him from reaching his goals as a way of maintaining my own sense of—’

‘Maddie, shut up,’ says Lou, coming over and putting her arms around me.

‘You’re the psychologist,’ I mumble.

‘And you’re a big wally. Lawrence doesn’t know what he’s lost.’ She kisses the top of my head, even though it must be like putting her face in a wet dog. Lou’s the best.

And these trainers
are
comfy. They’re really … bouncy. I have an urge to spring to my feet and run a million miles, like Forrest Gump. I’ll run far away from Lawrence, from my dead-end temping job, from everything. I’ll run so far and so fast that I break some incredible record and everyone decides I should do a marathon or something for the Olympics and then Lawrence will come crawling back and I’ll forget it was him I
was running from in the first place and then perhaps … Oh, as if. I hate running. And anyway, these trainers do pinch a little at the toes.

Lou perches on the side of my desk and bites into a Granny Smith. ‘Look,’ she says reasonably, tucking a lock of bobbed blonde hair behind her ear, ‘the way I see it, you and Law were never that suited.’

I frown. ‘You never told me you thought that.’

She shrugs. ‘Of course I didn’t. But I always knew you’d break up some day and then I’d be able to tell you. So while it was a bit of a fib, it was like an IOU fib.’

‘Right …’

‘Anyway, my point is that you’re bound to feel like shit right now, but sooner or later you
will
see that it’s the best thing. You’re too good for him. I promise you.’

I smile at her.

Jennifer, the boss’s PA, strides over with a cup of herbal tea. ‘Drink up, sunbeam,’ she commands, plonking it down and giving my shoulders a rigorous and borderline painful rub. I shoot Lou a worried look and she stifles a laugh. Jennifer is lovely, but she’s about as delicate a masseuse as a tattooed trucker. Sadness is something to be treated in much the same way as an especially tenacious bout of athlete’s foot. Efficient sympathy, if such a thing exists.

‘Why don’t you two take some time out’ – she waves to the kitchen – ‘ten minutes should do it?’

‘Ten minutes should be ample time to sort out Maddie’s life,’ Lou agrees.

Jennifer nods once, satisfied, as Lou grabs the tea with one hand and my arm with the other, dragging me towards the
little area where we make coffee in the morning and read
Heat
magazine. In these trainers I’m about nine feet tall.

‘Do you want my diagnosis?’ asks Lou, shoving a cup under the new cappuccino-making machine. It spits furiously and Lou yelps, before it settles into that smoothing
ahh
and a rich shot of caramel-coloured froth streams out the nozzle.

I take a pew on the side counter thingy and sip my own drink. ‘Go on then,’ I say gloomily.

‘He didn’t get you, not like your friends do.’ Lou adds sugar and comes to sit next to me. ‘Which is common enough, I guess – boyfriends don’t always see the side we do. But with Lawrence it was like he wasn’t ever that bothered.’

I must look hurt, because Lou quickly clarifies: ‘Not bothered about
being
with you; just bothered about getting to
know
you. The real you.’

‘Maybe.’

‘And it was always about him, always. You were for ever going out of your way to mop up his various disasters. Every time I called he was having some crisis and you had to go running over to give him a shoulder to cry on, or an ear to bend, or lend him money for a cab – why can’t he take the sodding bus like everyone else, by the way? – or talk him down from whatever precipice he was on that particular day of the week—’

‘OK, OK, I get it.’ I tip the rest of my drink down the sink. Tea’s not going to cut it.

I give my mug a quick rinse and open the staff fridge, pondering what Lou has said. She’s not quite a psychologist, but is two years into her degree at UCL and reckons what she’s learning gives added gravitas to any relationship advice dispensed to friends in need. (I like to think she’s right, as her
verdict post-relationship is strictly Anti-Ex.) I recommended her to Jennifer when Simply Voices were recruiting for more part-time bods but we’ve known each other since we were six. It’s funny, but we sort of fell out of touch as we got older then became tight again. I don’t think it’s possible to lose someone who’s truly your best friend.

‘Plus he’s anally retentive,’ she adds.

My thoughts are dragged back to Lawrence and I sigh unhappily, wondering whose Tupperware box this is with blocks of millionaire shortbread inside.

‘I suppose,’ I concede. ‘He was always pretty uptight about stuff.’ I search the lid for a name. ‘Like when I accidentally used his organically sourced mystic-bamboo-root soy sauce as Baby Bio.’

Lou raises an eyebrow.

‘Or that time I said I fancied Darius and he had to go for a walk round the block and didn’t come back for two hours.’

Lou shakes her head. ‘No, I mean
literally
. All the times I had you guys over he never once went to the loo in my flat.’

Shocked, I turn to face her. ‘Really?’

She lowers her voice. ‘
Never
. After I got the idea into my head, I never stopped noticing.’

I prise open the Tupperware and cheekily nick a couple of biscuits. Lou holds out her hands and I chuck one over. There goes our vinegar diet (Lou’s latest weight-loss idea: douse everything in balsamic vinegar and it suppresses the appetite; plus, apparently it’s got some clever enzyme that breaks down fats, or something). Probably wise, as I was beginning to feel a bit sour.

‘That’s weird,’ I say as we stuff our faces.

For a minute we sit in silence. It’s impossible to chat with a mouthful of shortbread – it gets thicker the more you speak.

‘I think he was intimidated,’ Lou observes when she’s finished.

‘By what?’

‘The whole Pineapple Mist thing.’

I can’t help but laugh. ‘Come on, Lou – that’s absurd.’

‘Why?’

‘Because …’ I search for the words. ‘Because Mum and Dad are many things, but they’re
not
intimidating. They’re … manic, and strange, and silly, but they’re not intimidating.’

Lou shrugs. ‘It’s not them as such – it’s that they made it. Once upon a time, OK, but they still did: they
made
it. How many people can say that?’

I make a face.

‘Pineapple Mist was
the
hottest thing in the charts. Fine, it was ’87, but even so. And you got to grow up with all that. Someone like Lawrence is
bound
to get jealous. It’s all he’s ever wanted, that kind of attention.’

‘But he was never even fussed about seeing them!’ I exclaim. ‘I practically had to force him to meet them in the first place.’ A shiver ripples down my spine at the memory. ‘They made us sing “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong”.’

‘Ooh,’ says Lou. ‘Did you do Joe Cocker?’

‘They had to drag me to do anything at all – you know what I’m like when I get down there. It’s like descending into the bowels of Hell. Hell with a mirror ball.’

At this point I should tell you what my parents do for a living these days. I say ‘these days’, but we’re talking major
nineties throwback here. Sometime last year they had a journalist call up doing a Where-Are-They-Now?-inspired feature, tracking down people like David Van Day and some bloke from Haircut 100. They must have got a shocker when they arrived at Sing It Back, where Pineapple Mist had solidified into more of a gooseberry fool.

Sing It Back is my parents’ Soho karaoke bar, a flagging flagship of eighties-slash-nineties memorabilia, a hopelessly outdated den of sordid serenading where the most cutting-edge pop numbers are ‘Mysterious Girl’ and several flops by Billie Piper. It’s got a certain charm, if you like that sort of thing (I don’t), and you’re drunk (if ever faced with karaoke, I do), but it’s in need of a serious overhaul. The biggest selling point is my parents’ names – Rick and Sapphire have become as recognisable as Pineapple Mist – but even so, their market is fairly niche: retro-thrill-seeking twenty-somethings on the occasional hen do or their usual Saturday night crowd of bar staff’s friends and a guy who sits in the corner doing ‘Bat Out of Hell’ on repeat and calling himself simply ‘Loaf’. (Don’t worry, it’s not really Meatloaf. We don’t think.)