Dora agreed with Gerry about the house. ‘I’d been thinking the same thing myself,’ she said when I mentioned it. ‘You need somewhere more secure. You probably need to be in the country.’
‘I’m not really a country person,’ I said doubtfully.
My only experience so far had been with Luke’s family, but I couldn’t actually imagine living like that on my own. Even though they had been in the country they had been like a little community themselves, not stuck out all alone in the middle of nowhere.
‘Well, maybe not the real country,’ she said. ‘A nice suburban house in its own grounds would be good. I’ll work out what you can afford and come up with a few places for you to see. There are people who specialise in finding houses for celebrities. They know all about security.’
‘Jesus, Dora, are you sure I need all that?’
‘You saw what happened at the Baftas,’ she said. ‘Things get out of control very easily. And last time it was just Pete waving a gun about. Next time it might be a real nutter.’
‘Are you deliberately trying to freak me out?’
‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Of course not. But you’ve got to start thinking about these things. And anyway, you want to be able to keep the photographers out a bit.’
Dad’s words, ‘you’ve got the fancy life you wanted now’ kept echoing around in my head. I didn’t want people thinking I was putting on airs and graces, pretending I was some sort of Lady of the Manor or something. All that had happened was I’d got a job in a soap opera and released a gimmicky pop record, I hadn’t married the Prince of f***ing Wales.
Dora wasn’t letting the grass grow on this one and the next weekend she arranged for this poncey estate agent to pick Gerry and me up in his shiny BMW and cart us off around a few properties in Surrey. I have to say it did not feel right. I was a bit nervous about Gerry at this stage; it was nice to have him there for company, but I didn’t want him getting the idea that we were settling down as a couple because I was pretty sure he was not the man I was going to be spending the rest of my life with. The fact that pictures of Luke would come into my mind whenever Gerry and I had sex was a pretty good clue in that department. Not that there weren’t moments when the thought of settling down comfortably with a man who was easily my best friend didn’t hold a lot of appeal. Should I, I would wonder in moments of self-doubt, be grateful for what I was being offered and stop wishing for the impossible? How does that song go: ‘if you can’t be with the one you love; love the one you’re with’? Was I in danger of ending up sad and alone like Maggie?
I was a bit shocked when Dora told me I had a million and a half to spend. ‘A million and a half?’ I shouted. ‘That’s a f***ing fortune.’
‘I got you a good deal on “Summer Wine”,’ she said modestly. ‘And the advertising deals have been mounting up. On the strength of your Bafta night triumph I can rope OK! In for at least another quarter of a million if they get first photographic rights, maybe even double that. And you can get a good mortgage against your salary now. It would be better to have the money in bricks and mortar. If we invest it in anything else you end up paying tax on the interest…’
‘Stop!’ I held up my hand. ‘You’re doing my head in. Just tell me what to do.’
‘Go buy a house.’
I was even more shocked, however, when the estate agent, who was called Nigel or something, told me that ‘a million and a half doesn’t buy you much in this area’.
‘You should see the area I f***ing come from, mate,’ I said and from then on he obviously had me down as being a bit chippy, which I suppose I was. Don’t get me wrong they were very nice houses. If I’d been planning to move in with a husband and Landrover and four kids, and buy some ponies and maybe a Labrador or two, they would have been very suitable, but it was hard to see what one woman was going to do with three or four ‘ensuite’ bathrooms and God knows how many ‘integral’ garages. We saw glittering kitchens, gleaming bathrooms, laundry rooms and linen cupboards until our heads spun. We enjoyed ‘panoramic views’ over ‘sweeping lawns’ and crunched across a lot of weedless gravel. One of them even had a f***ing ‘gift-wrapping room’. I was beginning to feel deeply nostalgic for the squat with its dark and seedy cosiness.
The estate agent made a point of showing us how high the walls were, how electric the gates were and how many different parts of the grounds could be watched through cameras. There was no chance poor old Petey was going to be able to sneak in unobserved to any of these places. I could see Gerry was getting as depressed as I was at the whole thing.
‘If I move to one of those places I’ll feel completely isolated from everyday life,’ I moaned once we were back home. ‘It would be like being marooned on a luxurious desert island. I’d be drinking myself to death within a week.’
‘Welcome to leafy Celebsville,’ Gerry grinned.
The next day the papers were full of stories about how Gerry and I were house hunting together for a ‘love nest’. Nigel, or whatever his name was, must have snitched on us two seconds after waving goodbye. Gerry pretended not to notice the stories and so I didn’t say anything, but it was bloody embarrassing.
‘I think it might be better to buy a flat in London for the moment,’ I told Dora. ‘I don’t think I’m ready to be quite that grown up.’
‘Okay. There’s lots of good investment properties in Docklands. Fancy that?’
The next weekend we were escorted round a succession of river views in converted warehouses and I was so grateful not to be moving to Surrey that I just plumped for a pimped up penthouse where one of the bedrooms had been converted into a little private cinema and Dora had bought it for me by the end of the week.
My first night there was pretty much ruined by someone giving me a copy of Hello with a photo spread of Luke and some bimbo model I’d never heard of. So much for him pining away without me, the bastard! They were draped all over each other in some swanky country house hotel and I was shocked by just how acute the pain was as I looked at them. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to cope if I went on feeling like that for much longer. At the same time a nasty little voice in my head was nagging away that I was just kidding myself, Luke had moved on and it was pointless holding onto any fantasies about him turning up on the doorstep and begging for a second chance.
I rang Gerry and told him I wasn’t feeling well so wanted to be alone, and then sat up late in my new posh penthouse, drinking red wine and smoking a joint, watching the lights reflecting on the water, playing Roberta Flack through the perfect sound system and feeling really sorry for myself. Pretty pathetic, eh?
Once Quentin heard that I’d offered to take part in Maggie’s make-over documentary he couldn’t do enough to help and a few weeks later I found myself being whisked off to a boutique hotel in Kensington. I seemed to spend a large part of my life staring at the backs of drivers’ necks being whisked from one place to another. I thought it might be a good idea to learn to drive, but when would I find the time? And how vulnerable would I feel in a car on my own? Supposing I had a scrape or something in a busy street and had to get out and swap addresses. Imagine how embarrassing that would be. I never want to complain about being famous, but sometimes it would be nice to just do the same things as everyone else.
I was ushered into a suite by a really hyper presenter, under the all-too familiar, silent gaze of a camera. It was the first show of the series and this girl was obviously hoping it was going to make her reputation, turn her into the new Davina McCall or Fearne Cotton or something. Turned out she was another of Quentin’s clients; surprise, surprise!
Back under the scrutiny of the camera I found myself getting infected with her excitement and actually felt quite nervous about the impending meeting as they built up the tension. Whatever was filmed in this hotel suite was going to be presented to the watching world as my reunion with the mother who had abandoned me at birth. I would have felt a lot better if I’d had a scriptwriter and a director on hand to help me through the scene. What if I got it wrong and came across as bitter and twisted? What if Maggie got it wrong and came across as a cold-hearted bitch? Quentin had assured me I didn’t need to worry, that he would be able to veto anything I didn’t like before it went out, but I didn’t trust him an inch. His job was to create as big a media stir as possible for Maggie and to get as many people as possible watching the show. I did some deep breathing to try to slow my racing heart down, but it wasn’t working.
The presenter was really throwing her all into building the suspense for the great unveiling of their masterpiece and most of what she was saying was flying past me as I grinned and mugged inanely for the camera. Then the door to the bedroom opened and Maggie made her entrance.
Actually, I hardly had to fake my reaction at all, because she really did look stunning. Her face had healed and a make-up artist had done a brilliant job of making her look ten years younger. The teeth now looked like they belonged and someone had done something amazing with her hair, taking it back to blonde and cutting it into a fluffy, boyish style. They had dressed her in narrow jeans that showed off her legs and a silk top and the effect was pretty stunning. She looked very apprehensive and I genuinely wanted to reassure her as I put my arms around her. It didn’t feel like being with my mother, but I did feel a strange surge of affection for her. I actually felt happy for her that she looked so great. That was the moment we both lost control. I think she started crying first, and her tears set me off. I must have been bottling up a lot of stuff, and Christ knows how many emotional boxes she’d stacked away in her life, because we both really let rip. It was television gold.
There was so much sobbing going on the presenter actually forgot to stay upbeat and joined in the group hug. I was so moved and absorbed in what was going on between us I didn’t notice the photographer moving carefully around behind the cameraman.
I have to say, Quentin James may be some kind of slimeball, but he sure knows how to gauge the mood of the public and milk it for all its worth. By the end of the day ‘stolen’ snatches of the film were up on the Internet and being talked about on every sofa in every television studio in the land. The photographs of the reunion swamped the tabloids and magazines. The show was guaranteed a big audience and Maggie had got her showcase for the big time.
Whereas the media had been pretty vile and judgemental towards her up till then, angry with her for dumping her baby, they suddenly changed their tack. I suppose they thought that if I could forgive her, so should they. She was the prodigal mother returning to the fold, giving them endless amounts of material to write and moralise about, and they did.
But Quentin had one more trick up his sleeve. As a final scene for the programme he had arranged for her to perform some songs at Madame Jo-Jo’s a sometime gay and drag club just round the corner from Raymond’s Revue Bar in Soho, where she had met Dad. He filled the place with celebrities and music business contacts and asked me to go along. Gerry thought it would be a laugh and agreed to come with me. I have to say they did Maggie proud. The lights were low, there was champagne on the tables and it was all very Marlene Dietrich and Cabaret. Maggie swished out in a really slinky Gucci dress and I actually felt the hairs rising on the back of my neck. Once in the spotlight the old girl really did have some charisma. She did a few standard sixties tracks like Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’ and Peter Sarstedt’s ‘Where Do you Go To My Lovely?’ Then she finished with that Elkie Brooks song, ‘Pearl’s a Singer’. With its lines about ‘beer stained tables’, ‘singing to the lost and lonely’ and dreaming of ‘the things she never got to do’ and ‘all those dreams that never came true’ it seemed to evoke exactly what Maggie’s life must have been like. She delivered it perfectly.
I looked around the room as she growled through the song with her smoky, gin-soaked voice and everyone was staring, rapt, not wanting to miss a second. For that moment she was a star. I knew she was completely content, because we had talked about moments like that, moments when everyone is watching you, listening to you, taking notice of you, loving you. Moments that can never last for long.