The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride

Chapter Nine

I have absolutely no idea which direction we travelled in, or how long we drove for. It started with the suburbs turning into motorways and that was when I nodded off. I remember us stopping at some service station for petrol and a pee. I tried to rush in and out quickly, so as not to be recognised, but actually there was hardly anyone there and none of them were bothering to look at anyone else, everyone concentrating on their own business in the middle of the night, all of them probably wishing they were safe in bed at home.

     The next time I woke up we weren’t on floodlit motorways any more and everything was dark apart from the slice of light created by our headlights, which just showed hedges and trees and the odd fox shooting across in front of us. I felt secure in the warm leathery interior of the car and didn’t want the journey to end, didn’t want to have to face anyone or anything new.

     When Luke put the car radio on they were playing our version of ‘Summer Wine’, which made us both laugh. It seemed like our voices were singing to us from another world.

     I was awake when we turned into the gates of Luke’s house, although I didn’t realise that was what they were. They looked big enough to be an entrance to a park or something. It was only as we crunched to a stop on the gravel outside the house that I realised we had arrived. All I can say is, ‘f***ing hell’. The house looked more like a hotel or maybe a local town hall. I felt like we were walking through the doors of BeckinghamPalace as we came into the front hall, although I doubt if Posh lets the cobwebs build up around the chandeliers quite like they had here. There were lights blazing everywhere and the place was really warm. A giant Christmas tree was standing in the hallway, waiting to be decorated. It was the sort of size you usually only see in shopping malls. I could hear voices in the distance and laughter.

     ‘Come on,’ Luke said, taking my hand, ‘let’s see if we can find something to eat.’

     We went past loads of doors, down a corridor that smelt a bit musty and then into a kitchen that was like some baronial hall. I half expected to see Henry the Eighth sitting at the end of the table, chucking chicken bones over his shoulder. There were people all round the table, which was strewn with the remains of a meal and half empty glasses of wine. A pack of muddy looking dogs emerged from baskets around the room, and under the table, their tails wagging as they clattered across the old tiled floor to greet Luke and sniff me out.

     ‘Hello, Darling,’ a woman with grey hair and a posh accent boomed over everyone, ‘what a lovely surprise.’

     ‘Hello Mums,’ Luke said, pecking her on the cheek and waving at everyone else, ‘thought we’d pop down to see you.’

     ‘Lovely. Have you eaten? There’s some lasagne on top of the oven and plenty of salad stuff in the fridge.’

     ‘Thanks. This is Steffi, by the way.’

     They all shouted out some sort of greeting. It was very friendly and it took me a few seconds to realise why it was strange. It was obvious none of them had the slightest idea who I was. That sounds really up myself, I know, but by then I had grown so used to walking into a room and knowing that everyone in there knew who I was, even though I didn’t know anything about them, that I suddenly felt I’d been robbed of my identity. All this family saw was their son bringing home a new girlfriend. It was a weird feeling, a bit liberating in a way, but unnerving. I was going to have to make conversation with strangers in a way I hadn’t had to for months.

     The other funny thing was there was no telly on. There was a pile of Sunday papers on the side, which had obviously been well read, but they were none of them the sort of papers that I was used to reading or appearing in. It was like I’d walked through another looking glass into another new world where nothing was the same as either of the worlds I was used to. In our house there was always a telly on in the background, and there were always a load of tabloid papers and magazines lying about the place. If an actress from any of the soap operas had walked through the door unexpectedly it would have been like a Martian had landed, or a member of the royal family.