You Don't Know Me Read online

  She pokes her head round the door, searching us out in the dim light. She’s all glossy locks and big eyelashes and total innocent surprise.

  ‘Hello? Sasha Bayley? Can I help you?’

  I step forward, into the shaft of light from the open door. Jodie and Nell step out behind me, like henchmen. This could totally be a scene from an action movie. But with heels and hair extensions, in Michelle’s case.

  ‘Yes. I think you can,’ I say. ‘The texts. I know it was you, Michelle.’

  I’m getting good at this, after challenging Elliot about the votes. I don’t think I sound nearly as nervous as I feel. Michelle steps gingerly into the room, but maintains her innocent expression.

  ‘Sorry? Me what?’

  I pause for effect. I do believe Jodie and Nell have got their hands on their hips behind me. I hope we look like Charlie’s Angels.

  ‘You sent me death threats. I’ve got them all. And they come from your number.’

  Michelle stops dead and her breathing quickens, but she regains her composure.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Death threats? That’s crazy. I never sent any death threats.’

  There’s a wild, panicked look in her eyes now. Nell and Jodie step forward to stand beside me. I take my phone out of my pocket and show her the screen. Its dim light glows eerily in the gloom of the darkened studio. Elliot has organised it so all Michelle’s messages show up, one after the other.

  For a moment, she can’t speak. I can see little beads of sweat on her forehead, silhouetted by the light from the open door. When she does talk, the words struggle to come out.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know what you mean. Those aren’t from me. I didn’t do that. I . . . I don’t even know you.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I say with a sigh. ‘You don’t. But you still sent these. We can prove it.’

  Please don’t ask me how. Please don’t ask me how. I don’t want Elliot to go to jail for hacking the database.

  More sweat beads appear on Michelle’s forehead. I keep talking while I have the advantage.

  ‘See that third message?’ I ask. ‘It’s a criminal offence to send death threats. I’m going to have to go to the police.’

  ‘No!’

  Her sudden shout echoes through the drama studio. She holds her hand out to face me, palm up, in a gesture of horror. Her mouth is a big, round ‘O’.

  Mine is a thin, straight line. Beside me, Jodie looks very menacing, and even Nell looks slightly less babe-ish than usual, and more than slightly annoyed.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I ask.

  Michelle crumples. Straight down onto the floor of the studio, crying.

  ‘Because of George. Because of you kissing him at the festival. He told me all about it when you were on TV. He didn’t realise what he was saying, he was just boasting to his friends. You evil . . .’

  Through her tears, she looks up at me angrily. I glare back at her.

  ‘I did not kiss him. He kissed me,’ I point out in a rage. And then it hits me. ‘So this isn’t about Killer Act at all? Apart from me being on TV.’

  Her mouth forms an ugly, self-pitying pout.

  ‘Who cares about a stupid talent show? I only care about George!’

  I wait for a moment while she cries some more. Wow. She really has it bad for the boy. I would feel some sympathy – given his tendency to kiss other girls behind speaker stacks – if it wasn’t for the fact that SHE RECENTLY THREATENED TO KILL ME.

  Jodie looks at me, raising an eyebrow. Oh yeah – the whole kiss thing. Haven’t mentioned it till now. I’ll have some explaining to do shortly. But for now I just shrug and turn back to Michelle.

  After a while, the sobbing dies down.

  ‘But I didn’t mean it, any of it. Please, Sasha.’

  ‘You know what they said in those cyber safety classes,’ I say, echoing Elliot’s little talk. ‘It’s a criminal offence. Look – the evidence is here. I have to call the police.’

  I flash the phone screen at her again, with the messages still on it, backlit against the semi-darkness, and she flinches away from it.

  ‘Please! No! Anything! No! I didn’t mean to say those things. They were just a joke. I . . .’

  She sobs harder. Jodie lowers over her, eyes flashing. She knows how it must have felt for me. When 370,000 people already officially hate you . . . that’s no joke.

  ‘Police now?’ Jodie asks, pulling out her BlackBerry. ‘I can call them from here if you like, Sash.’

  I simply stare at Michelle. Her whole body is shaking with the effort of her frightened crying. She’s not a hulking stalker in the bushes; she’s just a stupid, selfish girl. She’s a stupid, selfish girl and I am free of her.

  After a couple more sobs, she tries to get up from the floor, but it’s not easy in high heels. Eventually, I hold out a hand to help her. She takes it without looking at me.

  ‘Are you calling them, then?’ she asks, sulkily, rising to her feet.

  ‘I haven’t decided,’ I say. Although I have. I don’t need them now, and Elliot doesn’t need the trouble. ‘If I ever get a message like that from you again . . .’

  ‘You won’t! You won’t! I promise. And those other ones . . . you’ll delete them, right?’

  ‘No.’ I eye her coldly. ‘Even if I did, they’d still be out there somewhere. Once it’s on the web, it stays there, remember?’

  ‘Oh!’

  She looks so upset that a tiny part of me wants to comfort her, but I’m not going to. Things were bad enough before, but she put me through hell. What she did was horrific and now that I come to think of it, she still hasn’t apologised to me. She just cried. She’s still crying as she runs back out of the studio.

  Jodie and Nell put their arms around me.

  ‘You were fantastic!’ Nell says. ‘Pure Powerpuff Girl.’

  ‘I was thinking Charlie’s Angels actually.’

  Jodie laughs. ‘OK. That works.’

  We make our way slowly, arm in arm, back into the light.

  It occurs to me that not sharing things with Nell and Jodie was possibly not my best idea. Sure, I used to share most things with Rose, but SHE’S NOT HERE NOW. And sure, Jodie freaked about the whole stalker thing to start with, but once she calmed down she was actually very helpful. More than that, she was brilliant. I couldn’t have done all that stuff in the studio without her. OK, so I was stupid for not telling her before.

  Slowly, gradually, I start talking. I accept Nell’s offer of a revision night together, and while I’m over at her house, I tell her and Jodie about George Drury. They’re sympathetic. It feels so much better now it’s not a guilty secret any more. And I tell them about my songs. They don’t laugh at me, they want to hear them. When I play the recordings on my phone, they really like them. They have suggestions for improvements – good suggestions, which I take on board.

  Next time, we meet at my place and I play them on my guitar. When we get to ‘You Don’t Know Me’, Nell says, ‘Ooh! This one’s good!’ and she and Jodie sing along. Their harmonies take the song to new places. It’s almost like the old times. Almost.

  Why did I spend so much time being jealous of what Rose could do, rather than trying it myself? I suppose she was the serious musician, the sophisticated girl from London, and I was just the dancer, the party girl . . . But nobody can go through what happened to Jodie, Nell and me and be ‘just’ anything. We are Charlie’s Angels and we are amazing. OK, so we don’t have two million fans and a hot record deal, but we’re still here. I think we can be pretty proud of that.

  Like It’s Going To Be That Easy

  We don’t do catsuits this time, or sequin shorts, for the ‘closure’ meeting at the posh hotel. For a start, we are so not in a sequin shorts mood. And also, Lockwood House is not a sequin shorts place. Yes, if you’re Kylie, filming a video. No, if you’re anybody else, doing anything else at all.

  Jodie forsakes her normal lumberjack shirts and combat boots for a pale blue
dress with a pleated skirt, a tie-on pearl collar and high-heeled Mary Janes. I have never, ever seen her look like this. She sighs at herself in the mirror, adding a dash of orangey-red lipstick and brushing her hair into dark, obedient waves.

  ‘If you’re going to do these things, you might as well do them properly. Do I look ladylike enough, d’you think?’

  ‘You look . . .’

  ‘Weird, right?’

  She sighs again. Nell and I stare at her reflection.

  ‘If you’re sure . . .’ Nell says, uncertainly.

  ‘It’s not Dolce & Gabbana, but it’ll do,’ Jodie pronounces.

  Nell chooses a red dress with a high neckline and a short, dainty skirt that makes her look uncannily like she’s channelling Taylor Swift. I’m not sure who I’m channelling. I just know that the simple navy shift dress I’m wearing suits my mood.

  ‘Wow! Grown up!’ Nell says.

  ‘Perfect funeral attire,’ Jodie observes.

  She’s right. That’s how it feels: the funeral of a friendship. Conducted under the lights and boom mics of reality TV. Personally, I wouldn’t want to watch it, but maybe somebody will.

  They send a car for us, and a producer with another sackful of release forms for us to sign, giving them the right to use the film how they like, and us the right to do nothing at all.

  I sit in the back with Jodie and Nell. The car whisks us round the dusky lanes in near silence. When we arrive at the gates to Lockwood House, we turn off the country road with its untidy hedges, and into a new world of landscaped avenues, crunchy gravel and soft, hidden lighting under the trees. As we round a corner, the trees seem to part like a magic curtain, and there is the house ahead of us: long and low, built in mellow gold stone that seems to glow in the evening light, with tall, mullioned windows and a steep, sloping roof. White peacocks, strutting on the lawn outside, turn to look at us. They look a lot more at home here than we do. Outclassed by a flightless bird on arrival. Fabulous.

  A man in a smart green jacket miraculously appears at the front door as we draw up to it, and shows us in. Inside, the hallway is large and dark, lined with old oak panelling, lit by a dim chandelier. We wait in our vintage finery, admiring portraits of grand Elizabethans in big gilt frames, while the receptionist sends someone off ‘to see if they’re ready for us’.

  ‘I wish they’d brought us here when we were studying the Tudors,’ Jodie grumbles under her breath. ‘It would have saved a lot of trouble Googling Elizabethan architecture.’

  ‘I doubt they do school visits,’ I whisper, as a woman in an immaculate silk dress and heavy jewellery descends the stairs.

  ‘To think Rose is actually staying here for weeks,’ Nell breathes.

  ‘Hi girls! She’s ready for you now,’ announces a voice from behind us. It’s Janet, the floor manager from our audition, with her trusty clipboard under her arm and her trusty harassed expression on her face. ‘We thought we’d meet in the parlour. My . . . don’t you look different?’

  It’s impossible to tell whether she means different, good or different, bad. She’s already bustling us off down panelled corridors, past more portrait-lined rooms, to a roped-off area at the back of the house, with a temporary sign on a post saying ‘Quiet – Filming’.

  So this is Rose’s new world. The room we enter is not large, but it’s elegant and comfortable, scattered with sofas and armchairs in rich, jewel colours, set off by the vivid blue of the portrait-lined walls. It would be more comfortable if it wasn’t currently crammed with camera equipment, lights, sound equipment, a cameraman, a producer and a worried-looking hotel manager, anxious that everyone has everything they need. As it is, we hover in the doorway, searching for Rose, uncertain what to do.

  ‘If you’ll just sit over here,’ Janet says, bustling us towards an arrangement of sofas near the window, ‘we can get on. Rose will be joining us in a minute. Now, when she comes, I want you all to be totally natural. You’re just catching up and explaining what you’ve been up to since the show. Obviously there’s been some . . . awkwardness . . . so you might want to talk about that. I can give you some suggestions if you need them. Does anyone want a drink of water?’

  We shake our heads. So no tea, then. And no champagne. Just a rising feeling of nausea and the certainty that, yet again, we’re making a mistake.

  We all take the same sofa, squeezing up together, with Nell in the middle. No need to wonder what Jodie’s thinking – what is Queen Rose up to? Is she in her state room, arranging peacock feathers in her hair, like some sort of star from Downton Abbey? Meanwhile, a makeup lady dashes in to powder our faces, in keeping with the ‘totally natural’ look.

  After a few minutes, we hear footsteps in the corridor. A young man in a black T-shirt appears and nods to Janet: ‘She’s here.’ The lights are given a final adjustment. The cameras roll. A new wave of nerves and nausea hits me. Behind the producer, Rose emerges slowly, peering past the crew to find our faces, pausing when she does.

  Rose! Here at last. I want to get up. My instinct is to hug her, but I quickly remind myself – this is the new Rose, the one I hardly know. Instead, I stay close to Jodie and Nell.

  She’s not what we expected at all. She’s dressed in black leggings and a grey hoodie, with no visible makeup, and her hair in a messy bun. Instead of rushing over to say hi, she waits in the doorway, clutching a bottle of water, staring and saying nothing. Without makeup, she looks even more tired than usual. And now, in our finery, we look like idiots.

  Janet goes over to her and mutters something in her ear.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mouths, and goes out again. When she comes back, she takes a breath at the doorway and comes over to meet us, with a big fake smile on her face.

  ‘Hi! Sasha! Nell! Jodie! How great to see you again.’

  She sits down opposite us. Her voice is forced and her eyes look desperate. We smile our own rictus smiles. In the silence, you can almost hear the tumbleweed rolling across the room. This has to be the worst TV ever.

  I glance across at Janet, who nods at us and makes a rolling motion with her hands for SOMEBODY to say SOMETHING.

  ‘So, er, Rose, how do you like the hotel?’ I ask.

  Really? Did I just say that? Like she’s a stranger, visiting from Japan.

  ‘It’s very nice.’

  Nice. Not exactly a Rose word. Not for an Elizabethan mansion. She looks down at her hands, which are twisting nervously in her lap. I notice that the hoodie is cashmere. So she’s not totally slumming it, outfit-wise.

  ‘You three look . . . nice,’ she says, staring at us.

  Her hands are going like socks in a washing machine now. She doesn’t want to be here. We don’t want to be here. She still hasn’t forgiven us. She seems to be regretting the whole trip. When she looks up, her eyes are deep pools of misery.

  Tears form and threaten to spill over. ‘I’m sorry.’ She turns away and wipes at her face with a cashmere sleeve. Then she turns to Janet. ‘Can we do that again?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Janet says. ‘We’ll edit it out. Keep going. Perhaps you could talk about how you all feel now, about what happened on the show?’

  ‘What, like when a million people all sent us hate messages?’ Jodie asks.

  Rose gasps, but it’s hardly news any more. Everybody avoids everybody else’s eye. I want to say something to break the silence, but all I can think of is the railway bridge, and how I felt before Dan came and found me. Charlie’s Angels are nowhere to be found. This was such a bad idea. One of our worst.

  More tumbleweed. Janet checks her notes.

  ‘So why don’t you talk about what you’ve been up to?’

  Jodie nods. ‘Sure. Why not?’ She purses her lips for a moment, then leans forward with a dangerously innocent, quizzical expression.

  ‘So, Rose . . . what have you been up to recently? Apart from the fashion shows, and the number one?’

  Rose blinks and takes a breath. She knows when Jodie’s playing with people.
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  ‘Erm, I’m doing the ad for Interface. You know we’re launching it at St Christopher’s? And we’re, er, trying out some songs for the album,’ she adds with false brightness. ‘There’s such a great recording studio at Jim’s house, and I’m going there every day. And then there’s the tour.’ Now her words tumble out in a rush. ‘It’s been very busy. I had no idea it would be like this since I won. It’s lovely, of course. I’ve had such a great time. I’ve met lots of my heroes. I get to stay in beautiful places.’ She flaps her hands around, indicating the room. ‘It feels like I’m always on the move.’

  She laughs a high, nervous laugh.

  ‘Wow,’ Jodie says, in the flattest voice in the universe. It comes out remarkably like ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘So I haven’t had much time to keep in touch,’ Rose goes on with a brittle smile. ‘I’m sorry. But how are you all?’

  I’ve been thinking about the recording studio at ‘Jim’s house’. It’s well-known around school that Jim Fisher, who’s one of the biggest guitarists from the Eighties, has a stately home a bit like this one not far from here, with its own studio in the grounds. So Rose is on first name terms with Jim Fisher. His last house guest, according to school rumour, was Elton John.

  ‘We’re fine,’ I say, dully, remembering the moment I was Coked. She could have texted. It would have helped. It would have helped a lot.

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ she says, brittle as a pane of glass. ‘I’m glad you came today. It seems a long time since we were the Manic Pixie Dream Girls.’

  The name makes all of us flinch. It doesn’t conjure up happy memories.

  Then I realise how it must look: the three thin girls on one sofa, radiating hostility, and the ‘attractively curvy’ one opposite them, looking upset. Oh my God. Just like it was before.

  Why is this happening? What about the hate campaign we went through, when all her fans turned on us, and all the apologies I sent her, and the fact that a part of me still wants to go over to her and give her a hug? Why is all the real stuff so impossible to say on ‘reality’ TV?