Remember My Name. Abbey Clancy

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      My dad gave me a lift home after dinner. Part of me had wanted to stay the night, but I needed to do some thinking. And it was always hard to think with my family around—they were just too noisy, bless ‘em. Everyone had an opinion, and everyone wanted you to listen to it at the same time. Even the lure of sleeping in the top bunk wasn’t quite enough to tempt me.

      So I’d climbed in the back of Dad’s black cab, and we’d lumped and bumped our way across the city centre, which was all lit up and looking gorgeous, milling with glamorous women and tipsy tourists and people of all ages out for a good time.

      We drove past the Albert Dock and up towards my end of town—which was slightly less glamorous, but a bit more affordable for a pair of struggling children’s entertainers. Plus, it was on the same road as a Lidl, which was quite a selling point.

      He pulled up outside the flat, and made his usual joke: ‘That’ll be twelve pounds fifty, please, queen.’

      He’d tried to charge me for lifts since I was twelve, and he never seemed to get tired of the gag. Instead, I climbed out, grabbed hold of my bag, and gave him his usual tip when he wound the window down—a big kiss on the cheek.

      ‘Bye, love!’ he shouted cheerily, waving me goodbye as he stopped traffic in both directions with a very anti-social three-point turn. Cabbies, eh?

      *

      When I walked back into the flat I shared with Ruby, I immediately knew that her boyfriend Keith was round. And I immediately knew they were getting jiggy with it in the bedroom.

      None of that makes me Sherlock Holmes—I could actually hear the headboard banging against the wall, and Ruby screaming her head off as Keith performed his manly duties. Uggh.

      I shuddered, and slammed the living room door as hard as I could to let them know I was home. There was a pause in the headboard banging, a few giggles, and then it started again. Charming.

      Our living room was open plan with our kitchen. And our dining room. And the utility room. In fact, there was just one quite small room, with a couch in front of the TV (one of the old ones with the fat backs), and the cooker and sink and fridge right behind. I was lying about the dining room—there isn’t one. We eat our noodles off trays on our laps, usually while we’re watching crap reality shows and slagging everyone off. It’s a very glitzy lifestyle.

      I threw my bag on the couch and put the kettle on to make a coffee. Opening the fridge, I found that Ruby had not only used the last of the milk, she’d put the empty carton back on the shelf. It sat there, mocking me, next to a piece of mouldy cheese and some eye drops I’d used for conjunctivitis two weeks ago.

      So much for the comforts of home, I thought, deciding that I should have stayed at Mum and Dad’s after all.

      The only other item in there was a bottle of Prosecco—one that Jocelyn’s mum had given us as thanks after the party. And possibly to stop us suing her for emotional trauma. I was amazed that Ruby and Keith hadn’t nabbed it and taken it into their love shack with them, and I grabbed hold of it quickly, just in case they remembered and appeared naked to claim it back.

      I opened the cupboard to get a glass, then remembered they were all in the dishwasher—the dishwasher that had broken last week, and we were still waiting for the landlord to get repaired. I didn’t dare look in there. It’d be like a scene from a sci-fi special, complete with new lifeforms. Instead, I popped the bottle open and retreated to my own room.

      It was only small, but I’d done my best with it. I’d repainted the crappy box-built furniture in a pretty pastel shade of light green, and the walls were plain and white to make it feel bigger. There wasn’t space for much, but I had a wardrobe, a dresser filled with all my make-up and hair stuff, the mirror spotted with Blu-tacked photos of friends and family. One of Mum and Dad, outside the Michael Bublé concert. One of Luke when he was six and still cute. One of me and Daniel, the night of the school concert … which seemed about a million years ago.

      My queen-sized bed was decorated with fairy lights draped around the wrought-iron headboard that made it look like there was a party going on when they were illuminated. Not that it had seen much action recently, I thought, not since Evan, and, despite having a couple of hot flushes when I was crushed up against Jack earlier that day, I intended to keep it that way. Life was simpler without men in it, even if a bed was a lot less fun without a man in it.

      I pulled off my clothes, suddenly exhausted, and climbed under the duvet naked. My mum had washed all my bedding for me the day before (like I said, she never stops), and the smell of the fabric softener she’d always used wafted into my nostrils in a way that comforted me far more than the few mouthfuls of chilled booze I’d just swallowed.

      Still, I decided to persevere and see just how comforting a whole bottle of Prosecco could be … I thought I deserved it after the day I’d had. And maybe it would give me some inspiration; help me answer a few of the dilemmas I was facing.

      I had some decisions to make. On the one hand, the chance to work with Jack Duncan—the chance to be part of Starmaker—was a dream come true. I had a work ethic as well-developed as my mum’s when it came to my music, although I lagged behind a bit on the hoovering front.

      I was willing to work—to slog my guts out, in fact. I’d always wanted to be a singer—I’d never entirely given up, no matter how many knock-backs I’d had. No matter how many people had told me I wasn’t quite right: not blonde enough, not cute enough, not sexy enough, not … something enough. All those auditions and meetings that ended in the same conversation: ‘You have a strong voice, but we’re looking for XXX’—and then it was just a matter of filling in the blanks. They were looking for someone older. Or younger. Or Korean. Or, on one occasion, someone fatter—they were going for a plus-sized girl-group vibe. There was always something missing, something not right.

      Jack Duncan hadn’t said I wasn’t right, though. He’d said I was fresh, and talented, and authentic, which I knew from watching The X Factor was a good thing. He wanted me to come to London, to meet his mysterious music-biz friend Simon (my heart wished for Cowell, but my head said don’t be so gullible). He was offering me the chance I’d been waiting for—and if it worked out, not only could I be a success, but I could share that success with my family. Pay off their mortgage. Send my mum and dad on that cruise they were always talking about. Make sure that Becky’s baby wanted for nothing. Get Luke a personality transplant.

      It wouldn’t just change my life—it would change theirs as well.

      But on the other hand—although both my hands were a bit shaky now as I was halfway through that bottle of Prosecco, chugging from the bottle like the pure class I was—I’d have to go to London. I’d have to leave my friends, my home, my family. I loved the bones of my family, and I’d only ever been away from them for a few weeks at a time for shameful holidays to Malia and Ibiza. If I was gone for too long I’d miss Becky’s baby being born, wouldn’t be around to welcome the next generation of Malones set to terrorise the world.

      I’d have to leave Ruby, and my other friends, most of whom I’d known since I was a little kid. I’d have to leave Liverpool—a place I’d never dreamed of escaping from.

      I’d have to leave my flat. My bed. My Lidl … how could I ever leave my Lidl, I thought, as I felt my eyelids droop shut and found just about enough conscious thought to put the bottle down before I crashed out into snoozeland. Once I was there, I was plunged into a very nice dream involving Jack Duncan, an igloo, a roaring log fire (I wasn’t sure how that СКАЧАТЬ