The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride

Chapter Two

     When I got to her flat the next day I hardly recognised her. She’d even washed her hair instead of just piling it on top of her head and sticking it together with pins, and she was wearing make-up, which actually looked a bit spooky, like a small child had painted a woman’s face on her. Her car was a pretty good disaster. I doubt if she had ever removed a single piece of rubbish from it in all the years she’d owned it and it reeked of old fag butts, which upset me a bit since I’d spent about an hour in the bathroom that morning, before anyone else was awake, trying to make myself smell like a meadow in springtime.

     ‘Just be yourself,’ she kept saying as we drove, which seemed pretty rich coming from someone who looked totally unlike their usual self. ‘They’ll love you.’

    ‘Okay.’

    Funnily enough I wasn’t nervous about the actual audition, but I was excited at the thought of maybe meeting some of the cast and seeing what things were like inside a real television studio.

     ‘I feel like Alice Through the Looking Glass,’ I told her, ‘about to step through the screen into a world of make-believe.’

     ‘You’ve read Lewis Carroll?’ she asked, obviously surprised.

     ‘Nah,’ I laughed, ‘saw it on telly one Christmas. Did he write it then?’

     Dora laughed and nodded. I made a mental note to see if I could get a copy. I always tried to do that. If I heard someone talking about a book I would go into a bookshop and ask for it. I never read around the house, that was asking for trouble, but I liked to have a book in my bag for travelling on the bus and for my breaks at work. Everyone at home, apart from Mum, thought reading books was a sign of weirdness. She’d given up trying to persuade them different. Maybe some of the others were doing it on the quiet too, like me. Dave had been useful for recommending stuff. He used to lend me things he’d read and liked as well.

      The reception area at the television studios lived up to all my fantasies, with giant blow-ups on the walls from all my favourite programmes and a gigantic glass reception desk with beautiful women in immaculate suits dealing with the visitors. As Dora and I waited to be fetched I scanned every passing face in the hope of spotting someone famous. I was sure I recognised some of them, but it was hard to tell when they just looked like ordinary people going to work.

     Everyone seemed to be so busy and it was almost as if we were invisible. Well, that’s not strictly true, it was just me really. It was almost as if I had vanished or at least wasn’t someone they could talk to directly. Women with clipboards and earphones kept talking to Dora as if I wasn’t there.

     ‘Is this Steffi McBride?’

     ‘Does she have an appointment?’

     ‘Does she have an agent?’

      Hello? I do have a brain, you know, was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t, mainly because I was so thrilled to be there at all, but also because Dora seemed to take it all for granted. It was like she was a farmer bringing her prize young heifer to market, to have her prodded around by potential buyers before they started haggling over a price.              

     ‘Should I have an agent?’ I whispered in a moment when they had all gone away again.

      ‘Probably. Certainly if they offer you the job.’

      ‘How do I find one?’

      ‘That won’t be hard. I know plenty.’

      ‘Couldn’t you do it? You know how all this stuff works.’ The idea grew on me. ‘Tell them you’re my agent. They only seem to want to talk to you anyway.’