It Felt Like a Kiss

  ‘If I do it, it has to be tomorrow. Is that a problem?’ Ellie asked. The oily aftertaste of the smoked salmon was making her feel sick, or maybe it was the prospect of going on national television. It might be the only way that Ellie could have her own unedited right to reply, but that didn’t make the prospect any less terrifying. She had to have at least three vodka shots before she could think about doing karaoke and occasionally the On The Sofa studio audience could get quite chippy. ‘If I don’t do it right away I know I’ll lose my nerve.’

  Tess knitted both brows and hands together imploringly. ‘So, are you saying that you’re going to do this?’

  Ellie took a deep breath. She even thought about putting her head between her knees so she didn’t faint. Instead she took a sip of lukewarm, oversweet orange squash. ‘Yes. Yes,’ she repeated, her voice getting firmer. ‘But it has to be tomorrow and I don’t want them using that sodding bikini shot when they introduce me.’

  ‘I’m going to make a phone call.’ Tess shot off the sun lounger and almost sent Lola and Ellie crashing to the ground as the end that she’d been sitting on sprang up in the air. ‘I’ll probably have to go into work this evening, but I forgive you.’

  The two girls rearranged themselves and sat back down. Lola prodded Ellie in the side. ‘You’re really brown, you know,’ she said apropos of nothing, as if Ellie being really brown wasn’t a good thing. Lola preferred to look as if she’d just been laid out on a mortuary slab. ‘Will you promise to lay off the self-tanner between now and tomorrow, otherwise you’ll look like you’ve been Tangoed?’

  ‘But it’s TV! I don’t want to look washed out by the studio lights.’

  ‘You don’t want to look like a drag queen either,’ Lola insisted. She assumed a martyred air. ‘Maybe I should come with you as your personal make-up artist. I’d love to have a crack at Jeff Jenkins … Beneath that bland daytime TV exterior, he’s meant to be an absolute sex monster. Dick bigger than a French stick.’

  Ellie clapped her hands over her ears. ‘You are so not coming anywhere near the On The Sofa studios tomorrow. And thanks, now all I’ll be able to think about when I should be concentrating on my interview is how big Jeff Jenkins’ knob is.’

  Lola looked entirely unrepentant. ‘Well, it beats imagining the audience in their underwear when you get nervous.’

  Camden, London, 1987

  Everyone was making demands on her. On one side there was Sadie and Carol. On the other side was Billy. But they were all united by a common purpose: to snatch Velvet away from Ari and install her in the beautiful nursery in Golders Green with the handmade cot and rose-sprigged wallpaper, and never give her back.

  Velvet should have been the most demanding thing of all, but she wasn’t. She’d stare up at Ari with big, trusting blue eyes in a way that made Ari fall apart.

  Billy was furious when Ari brought Velvet back to the playwright’s house instead of handing her over to Carol, but Carol would get to spend the rest of her life with Velvet so the least she could do was let Ari have a measly six weeks. Not that Carol saw it like that.

  Billy was furious that even the playwright’s Japanese girlfriend was besotted with Velvet and invited mother and daughter out of their third-floor suite of rooms to ply them with expensive baby clothes in return for cuddles.

  He was furious that Ari was breast-feeding and eyed Velvet jealously as she clutched onto her mother, as if Ari’s breasts were for him alone. ‘Why can’t you bottle-feed her, Ari? It’s the nineteen eighties for fuck’s sake.’

  He was especially furious that Velvet slept in the same bed as them, in between them, and that Ari couldn’t give him her undivided attention like she used to because Velvet needed her undivided attention too.

  But Ari was furious with Billy too. Furious that he still hadn’t fallen in love with his daughter when loving Velvet was the easiest thing in the world.

  When the six-week deadline slid by and Velvet was still with them, Billy didn’t shout. And when Carol came round almost every day and demanded what she’d been promised, he watched with an impassive face as Ari gave her sister reason after reason why now wasn’t a good time.

  ‘Of course you can have her, but the thing is she’s a bit chesty at the moment.’

  Or, ‘I just haven’t had time to see the lawyer.’

  And even, ‘The health visitor says I need to breast-feed her for at least three months. At least!’

  Billy didn’t say a word but he arranged for the playwright’s girlfriend to babysit Velvet and he took Ari to dinner at the Russian restaurant in Primrose Hill. Ari tried not to twitch or to look as if her mind was miles away, or not miles but five hundred yards down the road and across the square where Velvet might be left unattended or have developed colic or was perhaps simply crying because they’d never been parted.

  She tried to focus on Billy, who was smiling at her in the soft candlelight. He looked so beautiful that it was hard to remember that most of the time his face was split with a sneer.

  They ordered borscht, then stroganoff, mopped up with dark rye bread, but Ari could hardly eat. Finally Billy pushed their plates to one side so he could take her hand.

  ‘You know I love you, Ari,’ he said. ‘You know I’ve been waiting for you.’

  Ari knew what was coming. She stroked her fingers along the rigid line of his knuckles. ‘I’m still here. I haven’t gone anywhere.’

  Billy shook his head. ‘You don’t love me any more. Not like you used to.’

  ‘I do love you, but now I love Velvet too. It’s not like people just have a set amount of love to dole out. It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘But we had a deal. You promised, and I get that your hormones are through the roof, but Ari, we were heading somewhere. We’re not going to get there if you take your eyes off the prize. When was the last time you even picked up your guitar?’

  The solution was simple. She wondered why’d she never thought of it before. ‘It doesn’t have to be either or. I can have it all,’ she said, and she laughed because it was so obvious now. ‘Why can’t I have Velvet and fame, if it will have me, and you?’

  Billy’s face darkened and Ari realised too late that he didn’t want to be third on her list of priorities, and actually he wasn’t. But Billy hated being in second place too. ‘You can’t have it all,’ he told her bluntly. ‘You either love me completely, and that means that you give me all of yourself, or you don’t love me at all.’

  She wasn’t going to keep Velvet, but Ari had never counted on Velvet being part of her, so that losing her would be like losing a limb. Worse. People managed without arms or legs, but once Velvet was gone, Ari would be fractured and the kind of broken that couldn’t be made whole again. She loved Billy – she did – but he was never going to be enough to fill the void that Velvet would leave. When Velvet was gone, Ari still wouldn’t be able to give all of herself to Billy, because her heart belonged to her daughter now.

  ‘Two more weeks.’ It was a desperate plea. ‘Let me have two more weeks with her.’

  Billy didn’t shout or swear or cause a scene. He stood up, pulled two grubby ten-pound notes from his pocket and put them on the table. ‘Me or the kid, Ari,’ he said, and then he walked out.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The next morning, as she was driven to the On The Sofa studios on the South Bank, the size of the male co-host’s penis was the very last thing on Ellie’s mind.

  Despite the air conditioning in the car, Ellie could feel sweat dotting her forehead and her upper lip. She had three white dresses in the garment bag draped over her lap. Tess had said to bring options, and she was worried that even with repeated applications of a so-called invisible antiperspirant she’d have unsightly yellow marks under her arms. She’d have to remember to keep her arms at her sides, but in a natural way. Not a stiff, shop mannequin way.

  She and Tess had also come up with a list of talking points: Ellie had no problem with Billy Kay or any member of his family and w
as very sorry that they’d had their lives disrupted. She was just a hard-working young woman who wanted to get on with her life. And she had a really funny but completely untrue anecdote about dressing up as a four-pack of Kleenex Velvet loo roll one Halloween, because Tess said it was essential to make the audience laugh at least once. Probably, Ellie’d have had more luck in memorising her talking points if she was giving them her full attention instead of wondering if she should call Ari. Not to apologise, not yet, but she wanted to hear Ari tell her that she could do this, that she’d rock it out and that she had her blessing.

  It had been twenty-four hours since they’d last spoken. They’d hardly ever gone so long without even a phone call before. Ellie was pretty sure it had happened only once when she’d had laryngitis. But she was still furious with Ari, years and years worth of fury, and she couldn’t handle another row before her TV debut.

  She wiped her sweaty forehead with her equally sweaty hand. It wasn’t just nerves that was making her glow and giving her an insistent, nagging throb between her eyebrows. The endless weeks of sticky heat had given way to a humid, airless day. Thunderstorms were predicted, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They’d predicted thunderstorms before, which hadn’t amounted to anything more than a light breeze, but this morning the city was simmering like it was about to come to the boil.

  ‘Would you mind turning up the air con?’ Ellie asked the driver, struggling to make herself heard over Talk Radio, then she settled back on her seat. Could she make it to the studio without throwing up?

  It was a relief when her phone rang, but it wasn’t Ari. It was David.

  She was tempted not to answer, but then Ellie thought of how it would feel to hear his voice. So polite, so proper even when he was talking utter filth. There was absolutely nothing he could say that she wanted to hear, other than, ‘I’m sorry for all the heinous things I put you through. I was wrong, and I’ve found a way for us to be together.’ This was never going to happen so she answered with a snippy, ‘What do you want?’ to let him know that she might be taking his call, but she wasn’t taking any nonsense.

  ‘Ellie?’ There was the beat her heart skipped. ‘Don’t do it.’

  ‘Don’t do what?’ she asked, genuinely confused. Don’t live your life without me in it. Don’t forget to floss before bed. There were so many possible don’ts.

  ‘Do not do the interview that you’re on your way to do.’ It sounded like he was whispering.

  ‘What makes you think I’m on my way to an interview and what makes you think it’s any of your business?’ she snapped.

  ‘Please don’t do it. You have to trust me on this.’

  ‘Trust you as my father’s legal representative or trust you as the man who’s happy to shag me as long as nobody knows about it?’ Ellie had to whisper herself because even with Talk Radio on, she didn’t want the driver to hear, then maybe mention it to someone from On The Sofa in the staff canteen.

  ‘That’s not fair. How about you trust me because—’

  ‘Because what?’ she demanded. ‘Because …?’

  ‘I have to go,’ David said abruptly, then he was gone and the car was pulling in outside the TV studio.

  Ellie was so spooked that it took three attempts to undo her seatbelt and the driver had to get out and open the door for her. She hadn’t even had time to take more than two steps on wobbly legs before a young man with extravagantly coiffed hair, dressed in a very tight, very blue suit hurried out to meet her.

  ‘Velvet?’ He didn’t even wait for an affirmative reply but gathered her up in an exuberant hug. ‘I’m Zach. I’m one of the researchers from On The Sofa. I’ll be looking after you. We’re so psyched that you’re here.’

  So, this was one of Tess’s arch nemeses. Ellie could tell why. She also wondered what the opposite of psyched was as they swept past Reception and down a long corridor, the walls painted a zingy lime green and dotted with photos of the great and good and also the not so great and not so good.

  ‘Do you mind if we don’t get the lift? I’m so claustrophobic,’ Zach said, ushering Ellie through another set of doors to a stairwell. ‘It’s only a couple of flights up.’

  They reached the third floor and apparently it was still ‘only a couple more flights’, when Ellie panted, ‘I thought Tess would be here.’

  ‘Oh, she’s around,’ Zach said vaguely. ‘Anything you need, just ask me. We all want you to love your On The Sofa experience. We’ll get your make-up done, give you a little pampering session, then we’ll try on some clothes. You’re a size six, right?’

  ‘I’m a size eight,’ Ellie gasped in panic. ‘Sometimes I’m a ten. Tess told me to bring my own outfits.’

  ‘Oh, no need to worry about that.’ They were on the fifth floor. Zach opened another door and eyed Ellie’s garment bag. ‘Why don’t I look after that for you?’

  Ellie tightened her grip. ‘That’s OK,’ she said sweetly, though a distant alarm bell was going off in her head. ‘I really would like to see Tess, please.’

  ‘I’ll find her for you,’ Zach said as he galloped down another corridor, Ellie scurrying to keep up with him. ‘Look! It’s your very own dressing room!’ A door was thrown open and Ellie was hustled inside. ‘Even Pippa Middleton didn’t get her own dressing room. She had to share with a girl from EastEnders.’

  Ellie knew when someone was trying to sell her a bridge, but she smiled tightly at Zach, who muttered something about having to see a man about a dog (she hoped she wasn’t the dog in that scenario) and left her alone.

  There was a counter lined with mirrors adorned with lightbulbs, which made Ellie feel a bit showbusiness, but also even more panicky as she parked her vanity case and studied her face for open pores, blackheads and any stray eyebrow hairs that needed eradicating before she was HD ready.

  There were also a few limp-looking, garishly hued frocks hanging from a clothes rail. Ellie was having nothing to do with them. She unzipped her garment bag and carefully hung up the three white dresses she’d brought with her. She didn’t want to look too virginal, that would really be pushing it, but they’d look good against her tan and wearing a crisp, white dress was the quickest way she knew to becoming her own heroine and finding some semblance of calm.

  Suddenly Zach reappeared with two women. One of them was lugging a huge make-up case with her and the other had a few more garish dresses over one arm and a carrier bag full of shoes that looked like they’d come from somewhere that advertised itself as ‘a one-stop shop for all your stripper needs’.

  ‘So, this is the lovely Velvet, and this is Elaine and Mercedes who are going to make you look even more beautiful,’ Zach exclaimed.

  Elaine was make-up, Mercedes was wardrobe and was already pulling out a skimpy red dress that was slashed down to there and hocked up to here. ‘This would look great with your colouring and your long legs,’ she said, holding it out to Ellie reverentially like it was this season’s couture.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Ellie said politely. ‘I never do legs and cleavage.’ She also didn’t do clothes so thin and shiny that they’d go up in flames if they came within ten metres of a lit match.

  ‘What about this one, then?’

  Another dress was held up for Ellie’s inspection. It was neon pink and would have been a great look if she were a podium dancer in an Essex nightclub.

  ‘Why don’t you slip one on so we can see what it looks like?’ Zach suggested. ‘I know they might seem a little—’

  ‘Cheap?’ Ellie asked. It wasn’t often she could arch an eyebrow, only when she didn’t think about it too hard, but her left eyebrow was sweeping up now.

  ‘Bright,’ Zach said. ‘They’ll really pop under the studio lights.’

  ‘I think I’ll end up popping out of them, and before the watershed too,’ Ellie said with a fixed smile to show that she wasn’t being a bitch. ‘I’ll be more comfortable in my own clothes.’ She waved a hand towards Mercedes and her clothes rail. ‘I’ve also g
ot my own shoes. I have narrow feet and weak ankles. I’m very difficult to fit.’

  Ellie had a whole cacophony of alarm bells ringing in her head now. David’s phone call was taking on a new significance, She was meant to be here to be portrayed in a flattering light, not dressed up in tacky clubwear.

  ‘Why don’t we make a decision about the clothes later? Let’s sort out make-up,’ Zach said with the same ingratiating jolliness.

  Sorting out make-up involved Ellie shying away as Elaine came at her with thick foundation five shades darker than her skin tone, or false eyelashes or vampy red lipstick, or said cajolingly, ‘What about a nice smoky eye?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate make-up for daytime TV,’ Ellie kept saying, though Zach and Elaine both insisted that anything lighter would fade out under the studio lights. ‘I want to see Tess.’

  Zach was still mouthing platitudes when Tess finally responded to Ellie’s increasingly frantic texts.

  OMG!!! So, so, so, so sorry. New producer wants ratings up. Lara & Rose Kay been booked too. Totes stitch up. I’m locked in an office. Think U should walk.

  Ellie’s first instinct was to walk. It was her second, third, fourth and fifth instinct too, but then she thought about her half-sisters in the very same building, just a few metres away, prepping for their turn on On The Sofa to sing their same tired song: We’re sad. We’re devastated. She’s a no-good little tramp. Her mother’s even worse. We only want to protect our precious, precious baby brother. And have we mentioned that we’re guest presenting some lame show on ITV4?

  Ellie was here so she could finally tell her side of the story. But it wasn’t a story. It was the truth. Lara and Rose might have Georgie Leigh to brief them and David Gold to be utterly scheming on their behalf, but Ellie wasn’t entirely inexperienced. She was friendly and personable, and if she could flog thousands of pounds worth of art to arrogant Russian oligarchs or uppity R ’n’ B artists or vicious trophy wives and have them add her to their Christmas card lists then she could sit down on a sofa for twenty minutes and make the studio audience and the wider public like her too. How hard could it be?