What She Wants

Nicole checked the kitchen to make sure everything was switched off then climbed the stairs. She passed her own tiny bedroom and went into Pammy’s. Barbie predominated. There wasn’t any bit of Barbie equipment that Nicole hadn’t bought her little half-sister. Quiet as a mouse, she peered down at her fondly. In sleep, Pammy looked even more angelic than she did awake. Her tousled white-blonde hair stuck up at all angles and her soft, babyish cheeks were plump and innocent. She was only five and Nicole completely adored her. She thought guiltily back to what she’d said to the drunken groom in the pub: yes, she’d love a place of her own, somewhere she could be utterly on her own and not responsible for any other human being. But she’d miss little Pammy so much. And her mum. No matter what her gran said about Sandra being a few sandwiches short of a picnic, she was a good mum and she did her best. She was Nicole’s responsibility and that was that.

Pammy woke Nicole up at half six by climbing into the small double bed and bouncing up and down. Sandra moved just enough to pull the duvet closer around her neck.

‘Nicole, wake up!’ sang Pammy before she started trying to tickle her big sister under the arms.

‘C’mere, brat,’ she growled in her best tiger voice and pulled Pammy’s small, squirming body under the covers where she began to tickle her, much more successfully.

‘Lemme go! Lemme go!’ squealed Pammy delightedly as she tried to wriggle away.

‘No, the tiger has got you!’ growled Nicole. ‘Grrr, grrrr, I love yummy little girls in the morning…I’m hungry, grrrr…’

After a bit more growling, she let Pammy go and then swung her legs out of the bed, shivering in the coolness of the bedroom. She pulled on her mother’s dressing gown and went downstairs with Pammy to get her breakfast.

By seven forty-five, they were both fed, dressed and ready to leave the house. Nicole took a speedy cup of tea up to her grandmother.

‘Thanks love,’ said Reenie Turner, sitting up in Nicole’s bed. ‘You’re a good girl.’

‘Sorry I didn’t see you last night, Gran,’ Nicole said. ‘But I’ll see you on Sunday. Don’t forget to wake Mum before you go. She’s due at work by ten today.’

She ignored her grandmother’s snort of disapproval. Despite being mother and daughter Sandra and Reenie Turner were like chalk and cheese. Keeping the peace between them was a full time job. Reenie disapproved of Sandra’s part-time job as a manicurist and the way that Nicole took care of Pammy as though she were her mother. And Sandra hated Reenie’s comments about her occasional men friends.

‘Once in a blue moon I meet a nice man for a drink, once in a blue moon, that’s all. Just because I’ve got kids doesn’t mean I have to live like a nun, you know,’ she’d snap.

‘Fat chance of that,’ Reenie would sniff unfairly.

Nicole hated her grandmother criticizing Sandra. For all that her mother was dizzy, she’d worked hard to bring her and Pammy up and hadn’t so much as dated a man when Nicole was a kid. It was only when Nicole was a bit of a teenage tearaway that Sandra had met Pammy’s father.

Pammy danced along the wet footpath with Nicole, singing tunelessly to herself. She’d settled incredibly well at St Matthews, for which Nicole was grateful. Apart from the first day when her lower lip had wobbled when Nicole finally left her in the capable hands of Miss Vishnu, she’d run happily into school ever since. Miss Vishnu was very young and sweet and the children appeared to love her.

Once Pammy was dispatched into school with her Poke-mon lunchbox, Nicole had to rush to the bus stop to catch the five to eight. She had to stand for nine stops but finally got a seat on the top deck where she could sit and listen to her CD Walkman as West London rolled by.

She enjoyed those moments to herself on the bus or tube, even if she was surrounded by people. There was still a solitariness to it that she liked: listening to music and not having to talk to anybody.

Copperplate buzzed with the usual Friday morning excitement of ‘only a few more hours and it’s the weekend!’ In the canteen, plans were being made for lunchtime shopping expeditions for new clothes and discussions were going on about what everyone was doing that night. Top Shop had a sale and there was great enthusiasm for butterfly tops like one Jennifer Lopez wore which were reduced to twenty quid.

Nicole bought a cup of tea and sat in the smoking section of the canteen. She flicked through a paper that someone had left on the seat beside her, scanning the news rapidly before reaching the horoscopes. Leos were in for a good day, she read. Be prepared for breathtaking news to hit you. How you react could be very important but remember not to do anything rash.

Breathtaking news could mean she got the sack, Nicole thought, lighting up another fag even though she didn’t really want it. Sharon appeared at the canteen door, face lit up with excitement.

‘You’ll never guess!’ she yelled at Nicole as she ran over to the table.

‘We’ve been given a day off?’ Nicole suggested. ‘Ms Sinclair Bitch has been run over by a truck? You’re engaged to Leonardo DiCaprio?’

Sharon slid into the seat beside her friend and passed a small, rather grubby card over to her. ‘Better than that,’ she smirked.

‘Dickie Vernon, manager,’ Nicole read. ‘What’s this mean?’

Sharon beamed. ‘He heard you sing last night in the Parrot. He’s a top class band manager. He told me about some huge band he managed but I can’t remember which one. Anyway, he wants you!’ Sharon could barely contain herself. ‘He thinks you’ve a wonderful voice and you could be a pop star! Imagine it.’

Nicole laughed. ‘This is mad, this is. Just have a look at my horoscope. It says I better not do anything rash.’

‘Rash?’ demanded Sharon looking up from what the day foretold for Geminis. ‘They’ll never let you on Top of the Pops with a rash.’

Nicole had never felt so nervous in her whole life. Her hands were actually shaking as she peeled the cellophane from the cigarette packet. She’d better get a grip or she’d sound like one of those dolls who stutter ‘Mama’ when their string is pulled. Taking a huge drag of Rothmans, she let the nicotine enter her system and give her the hit. The drug did its thing. Great. She sagged a little in her new high leather boots and leaned against the wall as her body relaxed. Then she jerked away: this place was such a dump. Who knew when it had last been cleaned. You’d probably get rabies from just leaning against the scummy wall.

From the way Dickie had spoken about the small recording studio owned by a friend, Nicole had been under the impression that she was practically going to Abbey Road. Instead, she was in a dingy old premises in Guildford with a warren of rooms and a studio that looked as if it hadn’t been used since the sixties. And the equipment looked even older, like stuff from the Antiques Roadshow.

The man who owned it seemed nice enough, though: a skinny old guy who wasn’t exactly threatening, which was good. Nicole had been a bit nervous about going there on her own with Dickie.

‘What if they’re rapists who just use this “you could be a singer” line to get you on your own?’ Sharon had protested. ‘I’ll go with you; you need moral support.’

But Nicole had insisted she went to the studio on her own. ‘If we both take a sickie on Tuesday, Sinclair is going to figure something’s going on. She’s not that stupid,’ Nicole pointed out. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll take my army penknife just in case.’

‘I thought the actual knife fell off,’ Sharon said suspiciously.

‘I’ll stab them to death with the bottle-opener bit,’ Nicole retorted.

She had the penknife in her bag but she didn’t think she was going to need it. Dickie may have looked like a total sleazoid but he seemed genuinely only interested in her singing ability.

‘You shouldn’t be smoking,’ he’d said, scandalized, the first time he’d seen Nicole light up, the seventh of her twenty a day.

‘Who the hell are you? My bleedin’ mother?’ she demanded.

‘It’s bad for your voice. No top singer would ever smoke,’ Dickie said.

Tough bananas, Nicole thought, stubbing out one cigarette and extracting another from the packet. She needed to smoke. She’d never be able to sing otherwise. She had the words and music to one Whitney Houston song ready not that she could read music, but it looked good.

Dickie came back into the studio. ‘Everything’s ready to go,’ he said breezily. ‘Just one more thing.’ He casually held a piece of paper out to Nicole. ‘You just need to sign this, love. To make it all legal and formal, you know.’ He held out a pen with the other hand.

The corner of Nicole’s mouth twitched. Did this guy really think she was that dumb? Just because she’d taken a chance by going to a studio with him, he couldn’t honestly think she would blindly sign a bit of paper that would undoubtedly give him rights over her and her unborn children for the rest of her life?

She gave him her Bambi look, the one where she widened her eyes and blinked slowly, as if blinking quickly was too much of a mental strain. ‘Sign this?’ she repeated.

Dickie nodded, more confident now.

‘I don’t know,’ Nicole said, still in Bambi mode.

‘It’s legal stuff, nothing to worry about,’ Dickie urged.

Nicole took the paper and skimmed over it. What did Dickie think she did at Copperplate Insurance: make the tea? She may have been on the bottom rung of the office ladder but she still spent enough time dealing with insurance claims to know about the law. Plus, she could probably work out percentages more quickly than Dickie could and fifty per cent was a bit steep in her opinion. All at once, she decided that it had been a mistake to come here. If she wanted to be a singer, she’d have to approach it another way. She folded the piece of paper up and stuck it in her handbag, while Dickie stared at her open-mouthed.

‘Wha…?’ he started to say.

‘I’d never sign anything without getting a lawyer to look at it,’ Nicole said with an impish grin. ‘And I think that asking someone to sign something without explaining what they’re signing, is described as “sharp practice”.’

She waved at the skinny guy behind the glass plate. ‘Thanks but no thanks.’

‘You can’t do this!’ roared Dickie as the penny dropped. ‘You can’t walk out like this. I’ve invested time and money in you, I’ve talked you up.’