Remember My Name. Abbey Clancy
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Название: Remember My Name
Автор: Abbey Clancy
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
Серия: MIRA
isbn: 9781474045254
isbn:
I glanced up at the heavens as the now intensely familiar opening chords of ‘Let It Go’ kicked in. The sky was completely black now, almost as though there’d been a total eclipse of the sun. I said a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of Children’s Party Entertainers—and if there isn’t one, there really should be—and asked very nicely if any lightning that was planned could hold off for the next ten minutes at least. I wasn’t at all keen on that electrocution thing.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and … let it go. However wet I was, however tired I was, however itchy that dress was, I loved to sing. Even this, which I’d done over and over and over again for so long, still had the power to lift my spirits.
It was a beautiful song, and an absolute dream to perform. I tried to avoid Jocelyn’s gaze—I suspected her eyes were glowing red like an evil child from a horror film by now—and threw myself into it heart and soul. That’s what I was paid to do, and, more importantly, that’s what I loved doing.
Things might not have worked out quite the way I’d hoped when I was eighteen, but at least I had managed to make a living from singing—assuming by ‘living’, you meant a steady diet of Ramen noodles, no landline, and sneaking vodka into pubs in my handbag to add to my coke on nights out.
Still, I was doing what I loved. What I still thought I was born to do—and at the ripe old age of twenty-two, I wasn’t quite ready to give up on my dreams just yet.
Plus, if I kept my eyes screwed closed, and ignored the rain, and blocked out the sounds of the kids screaming at each other, I could still lose myself in the music; lose myself in the joy of the song … and imagine everything was very different. That I wasn’t standing here being mocked by a group of minipsychos and their boozed-up parents. That I was on my own stage, doing my own concert, for my own adoring audience …
As I sang out the last few lines, my fantasy was rudely interrupted by what felt like a giant blast of washing-up liquid to the face. It sloshed up my nose, choked my mouth, and stung my eyeballs. I yelled and tried to back away from the liquid punch in the gob; sadly, my heels were still firmly embedded in the muddy ground and, although the rest of me backed away, my feet didn’t.
As a result, I landed on my blue-polyester-clad backside, squelching around in an ever-expanding puddle of dirt, grass, and rainwater. I’d dropped the mike, and was now screaming as the snow machine continued to spew at me.
It was supposed to create a beautiful fairy-tale effect as I finished the song—one that the children usually loved. We filled the special tank with what was mysteriously called Snow Fluid, and when Ruby pressed the button, it gently showered me with foamy snowflakes. It got oohs and aahs every time we used it.
This time, though, something had gone badly wrong. I don’t know whether it had malfunctioned, or Ruby had pressed some magical and previously unused setting, but the stuff had blasted me full in the face like one of those water cannons police use in riots.
As I lay there, drenched to the skin, unable to get up again because the mud was now of a level that hippos would enjoy wallowing in, I finally heard it. The sound that usually made me happy.
Bloody applause.
I craned my neck up at such a weird angle I knew I’d have a crick in it later. Yep, I was getting a standing ovation—not for my majestic performance of ‘Let It Go’, but for falling on my arse in a load of mud. What a knob!
I could hear the kids screeching and cackling and whooping, and the deeper tones of the parents joining in. So much for being the grown-ups. I peeked up again, and saw that even Ruby had tears of laughter rolling down her cheeks. Her slightly too chubby cheeks, I thought, with a spike in my usually low bitchiness levels. Being stuck in a trough of dirt in a fake Disney Princess costume will do that to a girl.
Everyone was so busy laughing it up at my expense that nobody bothered to come and help me. Ruby hadn’t even turned the snow machine off, so the foamy water was still shooting out of it, making my predicament even harder to escape from.
I was pondering whether to just give up—maybe turn face down in the mud and drown myself—when someone reached down and grabbed hold of my flailing hands. I gripped on, not caring who it was, and I was pulled up so hard I slammed right into the body of my rescuer.
A body that was tall and strong and very, very male. I gazed up, and looked into a pair of deep, dark, chocolate-drop eyes. Okay, they were a bit crinkled up from laughing, but at least he’d bothered to help.
The eyes were gorgeous—and the rest of the package wasn’t to be sniffed at either. Even if he did smell so nice I was quite tempted. He was about six foot, broad-shouldered but lean, and had dark hair that was done in one of those really super-expensive cuts that looks super-casual, a bit of fringe flopping over his forehead in the wind and the rain.
He was getting drenched by the snow machine and, I realised, covered in mud from me—the Disney Princess who’d spent the last thirty seconds resting in his arms and looking at him like he was a hot chocolate fudge cake. With squirty cream.
‘Oh God!’ I said, jumping away from him and almost falling over again. ‘I’ve got you all dirty!’
He reached out and took a solid hold of my arm, ignoring the mud and holding me steady. He gave me a huge grin—one of those infectious ones that makes you see the funny side in everything.
‘I don’t mind,’ he said, with a cheeky sideways smile, ‘I like being dirty.’
There were so many responses to that one, I didn’t know where to start. So for once in my life—and anyone who knows me will agree this was a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence—I kept my mouth shut. This guy was handsome and dashing and probably rich. He was giving me the once over in a way that let me know the princess dress was now extremely wet and extremely clingy, and he was still holding on to me.
It was one of those situations that should come with a DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE! sign, and maybe a little cartoon of a woman with a broken heart. I’d just come through a nasty break-up with my ex, a window cleaner called Evan, who I’d discovered was whipping out more than his chamois leather on his rounds. I’d decided to become a born-again virgin—and this man looked like he ate born-again virgins for breakfast. In a good way.
I kept one hand on his arm to steady myself, leaned down, and pulled my white heels off. It meant I’d have to squelch barefoot in the mud, but at least I wasn’t trapped any more. Ruby had finally recovered enough from her laughing-gas attack to turn off the snow machine, and I could hear the sound of her leading the kids in a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. I usually did that—in character as Elsa—but all things considered, it was probably best to move on without me.
‘Thank you, so much,’ I said, staggering off to one side, being led by him to the shelter of the gazebo. ‘I honestly thought I was going to pop my clogs then.’
‘If you’d been wearing clogs,’ he said, grabbing up a navy blue gilet from the back of СКАЧАТЬ