As the weeks progressed, my follower numbers and requests continued to increase. And soon, I was no longer turning down invitations for nights out because I couldn’t afford it. My long-delayed London social life had begun.
It was through work colleagues that I ended up spending much of my time on the Kensington and Chelsea scene. Most of those I rubbed shoulders with were born into money, and when asked, I was vague about my underprivileged background. And I admit to losing myself by trying to be someone I wasn’t. I dated men based on their net worth instead of their worth as human beings. I became accustomed to being bought clothes and jewellery, taken to fancy restaurants or away for weekends, without ever having to put a manicured hand in my pocket. By the time Brandon and my worlds collided, I barely recognised myself.
He was someone’s plus-one when he sat next to me at a Knightsbridge restaurant at the leaving dinner of a mutual work friend. And aside from the fact he was so bloody good-looking, I noticed he was the only one around the table clocking the exorbitant menu prices before giving the waiter his order. I felt for himbecause I’d been him. No, I was still him, just in designer heels paid for by someone else. I surprised myself with a sudden urge to show him who I really was.
‘They’re not exactly Nando’s prices, are they?’ I whispered in his ear.
At first he was unsure if I was mocking him. When he realised I wasn’t, he smiled.
‘Is tap water an acceptable starter?’ he asked.
I said nothing about my extra-curricular money-making ventures, but there was something refreshingly honest about him. I learned that like me, he wanted to better himself, and had relocated to London following a failed business venture with a friend. Now he was a personal trainer in an upmarket gym. He also sold subscriptions to personal-training videos on the website OnlyFans. In a short space of time, the site had become a one-stop shop for musicians, chefs, authors, artists and adult entertainers to release original work to paying subscribers.
I waited all that night for a red flag or a hint of toxic masculinity, but there was none. So we made arrangements to meet the following week for dinner, at the much more credit-card-friendly noodle restaurant Wagamama. And after that second night, we barely left each other’s side.
The weeks progressed as quickly as our growing closeness. But it gnawed at my conscience that this man I was falling for was oblivious as to how I was funding my life. He deserved transparency. So I slid my iPad towards him one evening and played a video I’d made for a client who’d wanted me to be critical of naked images of his genitals. Five minutes of work had earned me £120. Then, as I fixed my attention on Brandon’s expression, I braced myself.
He closed the screen and turned his head towards me.
‘To be fair, you’re right.’ He smiled. ‘That guy really does have an ugly cock.’
With that, I knew Brandon and I were going to be just fine. In the years that followed, we bought our first place together. It didn’t bother me that I’d put down most of the deposit. In fact I preferred it that way. We were happy.
And then a spanner hit the works. More accurately, two twelve-week-old spanners, the size of plums and with heartbeats, which were growing inside me.
And here we are now.
This morning, I finish my hot chocolate, leave the cup in the sink and check the time. The kids will be up in an hour, so there’s little point in going back to bed. Through the window, the interior light of a car catches my eye. It illuminates Anna’s husband Drew. I briefly wonder what my new neighbours really think of me. Do they see me as the woman I’m trying to project myself as? And will their opinions change if they ever discover how I actually found investment in my new studio?
Because it took a lot more than just making a few sexy videos.
Chapter 10
Margot
My knees are bent and my feet are tucked firmly under my bum as I sit on the sofa watchingThis Morningon mute. The persistent prattle of today’s conveyor belt of presenters is already getting on my nerves. But now the house is silent. Too silent. Because silence and I aren’t great bedfellows. Silence gives me too much time to think. To dwell on the past. To relive the old life I miss more than anyone could know.
Soon after the kids returned to school post-Christmas holidays, Nicu began making regular trips to our neighbouring town of Milton Keynes to rehearse. After this spring, my professional ballroom-dancing husband will begin a four-month countrywide tour performing in a brand-new show. He mentioned the theme, but I wasn’t really listening.Old School Hollywood or some other rehashed cliché, I think. Every show looks the same to me, full of perma-tanned, glittery bodies wearing the same sequinned, glittery gowns or glittery shirts unbuttoned to their glittery navels performing the same glittery dance routines. And all for a paying audience of sexually frustrated women who fantasise that my husband is about to dance them into bed. I suppose it’s not inconceivable.He danced me flat on my back once upon a time. Then as winter approaches, he’ll return to his regular gig on TV’sStrictly Come Dancing, where he first found fame and I found him.
Today, he’s borrowing my car while his is being serviced, which leaves me stuck in the village all day. I glance at the fireplace clock: it’s not even 10.15 a.m. It’s going to drag, like watching an old person sucking a boiled sweet.
I need a distraction, so I pick up my iPad and visit the favourites section. Then I spend half an hour being pissed off as I re-download apps that have vanished overnight. This bloody gadget keeps erasing them for no reason and it’s driving me mad. I know I’m not very tech-savvy, but it’s even confused the bloke at the so-called Genius Bar at the Apple store who I went on to harangue about how useless he was. Genius Bar? No. Acne-ridden virgin bar is a more accurate description.
I respond to some of the messages left on an app I’ve hidden inside a subfolder titled ‘Home Decor’. The kids are banned from using my device, but if they were to pick it up, they’d have no reason to look there. It’s my little secret. Next, as the YouTube app opens, I choose a 2009 episode of ChristmasTop of the PopsI’ve previously favourited. My band the Party Hard Posse is sandwiched between a JLS studio performance and a Sugababes video.
Amidst the cheering of the audience I’m taken back into the studio when the opening synths of our biggest-selling single kick in, and I’m reminded of how young I once was. Twenty-five, all tan, tits and teeth. The latter two, along with my nose, had by then already benefited from a little surgical revision. The following February we were at the Brit Awards in Earl’s Court accepting an award for British Single of the Year. Somewhere up in the loft, I think I still have that award, along with some gold and platinum discs. I considered trying to sell them once, as I’m sure the fanswould snap them up, but I decided against it. They and YouTube are all I have left of that Margot. Christ, I miss her.
The song comes to an end, and the applause begins before the camera moves away and focuses on the next big thing. A metaphor for the rest of my career, it turned out.
I’m reminded of the turning point for the band a few short months later. The name Glastonbury still sticks in my throat like a particularly well-endowed Brazilian I met backstage during Rock in Rio. It was my idea for us to pitch to perform, and I was overjoyed when they offered us a forty-minute Friday afternoon slot at the festival, following Florence + The Machine.
My fellow band members lacked the vision to see how a successful show could alter the trajectory of our career. They hadn’t accepted our time in the spotlight had a shelf life and that somewhere, another group of fame-hungry pop puppets were being groomed to replace us. To quote our own lyrics, ‘shaking our booties on the dancefloor’ or ‘partying with a capital P-A-R-T-Y’ weren’t going to cut it for much longer.
In hindsight, our management team were right to have warned us against Glastonbury, as it turned out to be an epic fail. We couldn’t have counted the number of bottles of wee that were hurled at us when we reached the chorus of the second song. It was like an orchestrated missile attack. But the bottles and the booing didn’t stop us. We ploughed on right until the bitter end. Some critics praised us for our ‘stoic, if unwise performance’, but to everyone else, we were a laughing stock. Potty Hard Pissy became our nickname. Even now, footage from that performance makes regular appearances on those TV list shows, likeThe Fifty Most Embarrassing Moments in Music.
Soon after, management dropped us and the band went their separate ways All these years later, and we still haven’t spoken.
I move on to another YouTube clip, this time for my first solo single. It has almost 500,000 views now – about 499,999 more than the number of copies it sold. Try as it might, my new record label couldn’t get either the airplay or the press’s interest. There were thousands of thumbs-down symbols on YouTube, which stopped the algorithm from suggesting it to other users. Two years after the Party Hard Posse imploded, I was playing the songs I’d fought so hard to distance myself from on cruise ships around the British Isles like a low-rent Susan Boyle.
