Remember My Name (21 page)

I
t had been an absolute shit of a night. The answer to my question had been exactly what I’d dreaded it would be—Jack Duncan.

After the initial shock had worn off, we both decided that this was a conversation best had on dry land. We climbed out of the Jacuzzi, both of us silent as we processed the situation, and wrapped ourselves up in big, furry bathrobes. Taking the wine back upstairs—this was definitely going to be a chat that needed to be accompanied by wine—we settled in on the biggest leather couch in the lounge, and also cracked open a giant bag of Doritos. Emergency rations.

‘How long?’ Vogue asked, squeezing the words out from the side of her mouth that wasn’t crammed with Doritos.

‘A few months,’ I replied. ‘It didn’t start straight away. Well, the flirting did, I suppose. But not the … you know, the …’

‘Shagging?’

‘Yes,’ I said, blushing for some reason. ‘The shagging. You have to believe me, Vogue—Paulette—I had absolutely no idea that he was seeing you as well. There is no way—no
way
—I would have got involved with him if I had. I … I just
don’t do stuff like that, you know? I don’t shag other women’s men, plain and simple. I honestly had no idea.’

‘I know that, hon,’ she said, reaching out to pat my robe-wrapped leg. ‘I could tell from the look on your face when we both realised what was going on. And I had no idea about you, either. It’s not our fault, and we need to stick together now—blaming each other won’t do us any good.’

I nodded, feeling pathetically grateful for that Girl Power moment. Because if Vogue had decided it
was
my fault, she was big enough and strong enough to have drowned me in the Jacuzzi by now.

‘What about you and Jack?’ I asked. ‘How long has that been going on?’

‘Oh, not long …’ she said, her voice laced with bitterness. ‘Only about five bloody years. Five years of sneaking around, and secret meetings, and constantly being told it was “best for my image” if we weren’t seen together. Five years’ worth of various excuses and lies and, now I’m seeing it a bit more clearly, a pathetic lack of self-respect on my part. I can’t believe he’s done this to me. And I can’t believe I let him …’

Tears started to flow down her cheeks, which was all it took for mine to join in and start a sympathy sob. I knew exactly what she meant, it felt terrible—and I hadn’t wasted five years of my life on Jack like she had.

I looked back on all the times he’d bullshitted me—all the times he’d told me he was ‘busy at a meeting’, or come up with yet another reason why we couldn’t go public. All the times he’d assured me in private that we were real,
that I mattered to him. All the times he’d presumably been giving poor Paulette exactly the same lines—but for a lot longer.

‘He told me I needed to be single,’ I said, swiping away my own tears angrily. ‘That it was better for me to be seen as single. That people might think I’d slept my way to the top if they found out about us.’

Vogue gave a tight little laugh, one that contained no real humour at all, and replied: ‘Yeah. He said similar stuff to me too, to start off with—except he was worried about people thinking he was exploiting me. To be fair to Jack, I’ve known him since I was a teenager—he did at least wait until I was in my twenties to start up with me. And I got the same lines. I think, with hindsight, he loved all the mystery of it. Kept me on my toes, always keen to see him. It was exciting and illicit and forbidden—he even asked me to use a phone just for him. Remember that time you called me, and I answered by calling you sexy or something?’

I nodded, remembering it vividly—it was the number I’d lifted from Jack’s phone without him knowing.

‘That phone was one only Jack had the number to—so whenever it rang, I’d know it was him, and only him. When you were on the line, I was totally freaked out—and I should have realised right then something was off. I know he wouldn’t have given that number to you, so you must have girl-snooped it from his phone, yeah?’

I nodded again, feeling a bit like the Churchill dog.

‘I did,’ I said. ‘I was round at his flat, the night you were sick. The night of the first gig at Panache.’

Vogue was staring off into space, chewing her lip so hard I could see spots of blood appearing.

‘Yeah. That night I was sick—the night I was here, on my own, puking my guts up. The night he’d told me he loved me, and that he’d be round first thing in the morning to check on me. To be fair, he was—and I was so grateful. I don’t think I’d have been quite so grateful if I’d known he’d spent the night with you, Jess.’

‘Oh God, Vo—I mean Paulette—I am
so
sorry …’

‘No!’ she said, snapping her eyes back to mine. They were big, and round, and filled with tears that spilled out as soon as she blinked. ‘It’s not your fault—let’s not even go there. There’s only person at fault here, and that’s him.

‘I’ve listened to his advice for so long, I think I was blind to what was going on. You probably weren’t even the first, Jess, let’s face it. I met Jack when I was seventeen. He changed my whole life—he created Vogue, if I’m honest. He shaped me and moulded me and I’ve always trusted him. I’ve made decisions based on his views, and lived my life in a way he thought was best … and now here we are. Two girls crying into their wine, and wondering where it all went wrong. Part of me is devastated and hurt—but part of me just wants to kill him. Do you know what I regret the most?’

I shook my head. I had no idea—but I suspected I was about to find out. Her pain, her anger, were so fierce and so raw, I felt I had to keep mine inside for just a little while longer.

‘Simone,’ she said simply. I frowned at her, confused.

‘Your little sister?’ I asked.

‘Well, that’s the thing, you see. She’s not my little sister.
She’s my daughter. I had her when I was sixteen. It was … God, it was one of those teenage things, you know? I was trying to be tough, trying to be cool and impress some boy, and ended up pregnant while I was still at school. I can’t blame Jack for that—and I can’t blame him for what we decided next. Me, my parents—we moved to Peckham from a different estate, and started over. We told all our new neighbours that the baby was my mum’s—a late in life miracle—and I went back to college. It seemed to make sense at the time … I was just a kid myself.

‘But college didn’t work out—because I ended up leaving Paulette behind, and becoming Vogue instead. I was young enough and selfish enough back then to want that more than I wanted anything else—it was way too easy to concentrate on myself and leave Simone with my mum and dad. And I’ve had to forgive myself for that. But once she was two or three, I really wanted to find a way to tell her. My parents agreed, and we decided we’d do it by stealth—she was young enough for us to do it back then, without it totally freaking her out. I’d move back in, they’d move out, and gradually, I’d become Mum. And, once it was sorted at home, I’d go public. Except … well, you can probably guess the next bit.’

‘Jack,’ I said simply, my heart breaking for her, for Simone, for myself. For the whole bloody mess. ‘Jack advised you that it would ruin your career. That it would expose Simone to the tabloid press. That your parents would start getting papped. That the best thing you could do for everyone was keep it a secret.’

‘Pretty much word for word, Jess, yeah. Now I think—well, I know—he was only really thinking about Starmaker, about
himself. I’d made a lot of money for them by that stage—and he didn’t want anything to happen that could threaten that. He fooled me into thinking he was saying all of that crap for my sake, for the sake of my family. But he was only thinking of himself.’

I puffed out my cheeks, swigged some more wine, and chewed some more Doritos. I was hurt beyond belief. My confidence was shattered, and I also felt decidedly dirty—the thought of him jumping from my bed to Vogue’s and back again made me feel sick, as if I needed to scrub myself with bleach.

Everything he’d ever said to me about our relationship had been a lie—one that I’d fallen for hook, line, and sinker. My sister Becky had always hated him—and now I realised why. She’d seen beyond the good looks and the veneer of charm, to the selfish, scheming snake that lay beneath it all. He might have given both Vogue and me our big breaks—but he’d also broken our hearts.

‘So,’ I said, after we were both silent for a few moments. ‘I think we can both agree that he’s been an absolute bastard. I suppose the question is, what are we going to do about it?’

‘We’re going to make him pay,’ she replied, her voice quiet and determined and frankly all the more terrifying for the low volume. ‘We’re going to make him pay, and we’re going to get whatever we want. Tomorrow, we both pretend like nothing’s happened. We go to work, we do our jobs, we smile and laugh and reply to those stupid text messages he’s likely to send to both of us. Then at some point—after this hangover has worn off—we get together, and we plan. We plot and we scheme
and come up with a way to turn all of this to our advantage. What do you say?’

‘I say,’ I replied, clinking my glass against hers. ‘That I’m in—a hundred per cent. He’s not going to know what hit him.’

The fighting talk made us both feel better, I think. Certainly, it was a lot better than crying and wallowing and feeling sorry for ourselves—but it was a high that only lasted as long as I was actually with Vogue.

By the time we’d drunk the house dry, compared war stories, and called Jack every name under the sun, I was exhausted, and so was she. I crawled into a cab at about three in the morning and fell asleep while the driver navigated his way to my apartment building.

When he woke me up, shouting, ‘Oi! Sleeping Beauty! We’re here!’ very loudly through the plastic partition, I was dazed and confused and a complete mess. My eyes were swollen from crying, and I was drunk to the point where I couldn’t be bothered fumbling for change, and just gave the cabbie two twenty pound notes and muttered ‘Keep the change’ as I almost fell out of the door and onto the pavement.

Luckily, there were no enterprising photographers lying in wait in the street, or they would have had an absolute eye full of me, Jessika, staggering around like a faulty wind-up toy, bumping off walls and feeling my way to the doors with my hands, as my eyes seemed to be too blurry to function properly.

I tried to pull myself together as I made it into the lobby, doing that ‘I’m-not-really-pissed-look-I-can-walk-in-a-straight-line’ strut that actually just announces to the world that not only are you completely off your head drunk, but
you’re daft enough to think you’re not. I waved at the doorman as I passed his desk, and he said something to me in reply. I couldn’t completely understand the words, so I just smiled, waved again, and pressed the lift buttons. Possibly, I pressed all the lift buttons, as it seemed to stop on every single floor before it reached mine.

I was dying for a wee by that point, and desperately hoped the lift wouldn’t get stuck between floors. It’s the kind of thing that occurs to you when you’re hammered and watching lift doors constantly open and close in front of you while you jig about on one leg.

When I finally made it to my floor I zigzagged out down the hallway to my flat, wondering how many attempts it was going to take for me to use my key. I got it out in advance, practising in the air in front of me.

It was only when I was right by my door that I realised there was something in front of it. Or, to be more precise, someone.

I frowned and stared at the small heap of black clothing, curled up in a ball on my doorstep. I poked it with one pointy-toed boot and a smooth black head emerged, like a mole coming up for air.

The face followed, along with a pair of trendy glasses knocked askew by his impromptu kip, and recognition finally kicked in.

‘Neale!’ I shrieked, unbelievably happy to see him. My gay best friend. My partner in wine. The man who knew my body almost as well as Jack—the bastard!—knew it. I leaned down
to hug him, and almost fell over in shock when he knocked my hands away.

‘How could you, Jess?’ he asked, standing up and glaring at me as I tried to regain my balance. ‘I thought we were friends—how could you do that to me?’

T
en minutes later, I’d had a wee, which came as an enormous relief. I’d splashed my face with cold water. And I’d made both me and Neale big mugs of coffee, which it looked like we could both use.

I was still technically drunk, I was sure, but the fact that the person I thought of as one of my closest friends in London was staring at me with what I can only describe as hatred was quite the sober-up.

Neale’s usually impeccable clothes were rumpled from having been collapsed outside my front door for several hours, his eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and there was a sore looking crease on the bridge of his nose where his glasses had dug in.

‘I just can’t believe you said that about me,’ he muttered, wrapping his shaking hands around his mug.

‘But … said what, Neale? I don’t even know what I’ve done! Please, tell me, so I can make it right! I’ve had the worst possible day, and—’

‘Well, that’s bloody typical, isn’t it? Here I am, looking at
the scrap heap that is now my life, and it’s all about you! All about the megastar that is “Jessika”!’

He used his fingers to create sarcastic apostrophes around my name, and I closed my eyes for a moment. I could actually feel my hangover starting to develop behind my forehead, and wanted to do nothing more than to take my poor, battered heart, and my poor, battered head, and climb under the duvet for a few hours. Which, I thought, forcing myself to pay attention to Neale again, was just about as selfish as he was accusing me of being.

‘Neale. Please. Tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I can’t even believe you’re saying you don’t know. That either means you think so little about me that you don’t even remember discussing me in an interview, or you’re lying. Either way, it all spells bitch. I don’t know why I even waited out there for you …’

I stared at him, feeling fragments of memory bind together in the confusion soup that was my brain. Discussing him in an interview? I did discuss him in an interview—the one that Vogue had said had gone online. The one about our night out after the single launch. The one that used a picture of us outside McDonald’s. Could that be it? Could that be what had upset him so much?

‘Erm … do your friends think you’re a vegetarian?’ I asked, realising as the words tumbled from my mouth how ridiculous they sounded.

‘NO!’ he shouted, standing up tall and waving his hands at me. It probably would have looked a little more intimidating if he wasn’t so short, but he made up for it with his absolute
fury. His eyes were full of tears as well, and I guessed he suffered from the same disease as me—crying when he was angry as well as crying when he was sad.

‘You said I was gay! In an interview! With a national newspaper!’

‘But … you are gay, aren’t you? Surely you are—you snogged about four people that night, and they were all blokes!’

He sighed, completely exasperated with me, and I felt really sorry for him. I knew I was drunk, and being dense, and making things even worse, but I didn’t quite have the mental wherewithal to pull myself back together.

‘Yes, Jess. I
am
gay. But my parents—my extremely religious, extremely conservative parents—don’t know that. Or, they didn’t know that—until they started getting calls from friends asking if they’d seen the story about their Neale. Now they do know—and they might never talk to me again! How
dare
you discuss me like that?’

I sat down heavily, feeling the horror of what he was saying seep through me bit by bit. It wouldn’t be a big deal in my house if one of us was gay; but clearly, Neale’s house was a different kettle of fish.

‘Okay … right. But, how did they
not
know? It’s so completely obvious …’

‘Does that even matter, Jess? Maybe I’m less of a flaming queen when I’m at home. Maybe they don’t know any gay people and aren’t quite sure what the signs are. Maybe you should have just kept your big, fat mouth shut!’

‘Couldn’t this be, I don’t know, a good thing? I mean,
my mum and dad would still love me if I told them I was a lesbian … surely they won’t mind that much?’

He stared at me, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, and I suddenly wished I was recording this whole conversation on my phone so I could listen to it the next morning. I knew I was going to wake up with that horrible, vague self-worth problem, knowing I’d said loads of stupid things but not quite sure what, and having to piece it all together as the flashbacks came.

‘You are unbelievable, Jess. Completely unbelievable. My relationship with my parents is absolutely none of your business—and it’s certainly not your place to decide to break the news to them that their only son is gay. I might have told them, one day, when I felt it was the right time. But that would have been when
I
decided—not you, Jess! It’s nothing to do with you—you’ve created this whole stinking drama, and now you’re trying to convince me it could be a good thing? And somehow judging my parents for not being as cool as yours?’

I really wanted to say something in return, but couldn’t think of a single thing that made sense and that wouldn’t make the situation worse. Not a single word. Instead, I just flapped my lips like a goldfish, and tried to look contrite.

After a few seconds of me not replying, Neale threw his coffee mug at the sink. An arc of black liquid sloshed out of it and splattered all over the wall, and the mug itself shattered as it landed. We both jumped at the noise.

‘You,’ he said, pointing his finger at me accusingly, ‘need
to learn when to keep your mouth shut. You also need to find yourself a new stylist, because I’m out.’

As he stalked towards the door, slamming it behind him as hard as he could, a single word finally came to mind. The one I should simply have said to start with.

Sorry.