The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride

Chapter Four

‘Okay,’ Dora said, ‘here’s the deal. You need to buy yourself a house. I’ve been onto OK! and they’re willing to pay two hundred thousand for the exclusive rights to photograph you moving in, and they’ll furnish it for you and do it up.’

     ‘You’re joking me, aren’t you?’ I was trying to take it all in. ‘A magazine is basically willing to pay me enough to buy a house, just for the rights to photograph me in it?’

     ‘Well, you may have to get a mortgage for a bit more than that, but nothing that we can’t manage from your salary.’

     ‘I don’t know, Dora, do I want the responsibility of a house? I’m not very good at all the paperwork and stuff.’

     ‘You just leave all that to me. You can’t go on sleeping on other people’s sofas and God knows where else forever. I’m sure your career will keep going now, but if it doesn’t you don’t want to have wasted this opportunity to get a roof over your head. If The Towers was axed tomorrow you might not work again for years.’

     ‘Shit, really?’ When she put it like that I could see what she was getting at.

     ‘Think of the advantages. You could have your mum and the rest of them round to visit whenever you wanted. You could get some privacy after a hard day’s work. You might even get yourself a proper boyfriend.’

     I let that one pass. I was well aware that Dora was not a big fan of Pete’s, but she had only met him once, she had never seen how sweet he could be when we were alone together; well, alone apart from the others in the squat. The one time they’d met he’d wandered into an interview I was doing in a hotel. I'd told him I’d meet him afterwards in the pub next door, but he got impatient and came looking for me. He was being a bit lairy, feeling out of his depth I guess, and had obviously had a few drinks, which never brought out his nicest side. When Dora politely asked him to wait until I’d finished he got all arsey and accused me of giving the journalist a blow-job or something. Luckily the journalist was a decent bloke and didn’t put any of that in the article. If it had been one of the tabloids we would have been in serious trouble.

      Dora gave me a big talking to afterwards; told me he was a liability and all the rest. I knew she was right but you can’t just chuck someone because they’re a bit of a hopeless case, can you? Not when you love them.

      I don’t know what I would have done without Dora. I mean, I know she was going to be getting ten percent of whatever I earned, but that wasn’t exactly a fortune, and she seemed to be willing to take over my whole life, like a replacement mother.

     ‘I feel really bad about asking you to do so much for me,’ I told her. ‘But I just don’t seem to have time for anything.’

     ‘Don’t worry,’ she brushed aside my worries, ‘when you’re making a fortune I’ll be getting my pound of flesh.’

     ‘But you do much more than anyone else’s agent.’

     ‘Listen, Kid,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in this shitty business for nearly half a century, ever since my mother first dragged me to my first ballet class. You are by far the most talented person I have come across in all those years. I’m enjoying being the wind beneath your wings, as the song goes. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth –and that’s all the clichés you’re getting out of me today.’

     So that shut me up. I just gave her a hug, which reminded me how long it had been since I’d been able to hug any of the members of my family when I wanted to. I’d hugged Pete a couple of nights before, but he’d been unconscious on something so he didn’t exactly reciprocate. Thank God for Dora, that’s all I can say.