Visitors were asked to write a short story on modern celebrity. The winner would get star billing on the Steffi site as well as having Andrew Crofts as a mentor to help work up the story into a novel, find an agent, publisher and so on.
Finalist: LOSING ABBY
By Veronica Ryder
The paparazzi are still out there. The hum of voices, bursts of laughter, filter through the closed curtains. They’re like vultures, perched on the walls, waiting for rich pickings. It disgusts me.
They took the body away hours ago so what more do they expect to happen?
The Police should move them on.
I consider putting on the TV - but they might be talking about Abby, playing her songs, dissecting her rise to fame, and how your past sometimes catches up with you just when you think you’ve risen above it.
Not that she needed to ‘rise above’ anything. We gave her a secure childhood, Jack and I. Some might say we were a little over-protective but she was so precious to us, born late in the marriage when I was nearly forty, Jack even older.
She was poorly for a while, in and out of hospital. At one point we thought we might lose her, but she was a fighter. And such a bonny little thing. I would gaze at her for hours, scarcely believing she was mine - ours.
*******
1
Music was always important to her - at home, at school. She sang in the Church choir, you know. That’s where her talent really flourished. She was an angel, with her blonde curls and wide eyes. There was a sweet purity to her voice, everyone was enraptured, complimenting me on my wonderful daughter. And I would smile and nod, thinking it would be like this for ever.
*******
Tim was her best friend at Primary School, her staunch ally at Middle School, and her admirer when they went on to the Comprehensive. He adored her, and was often to be found in our living-room with his guitar, strumming along while Abby sang. Sometimes I heard music coming from her bedroom, and if they wanted a bit of privacy that was alright by me. Tim was a nice boy from a good home. I had high hopes he would be ‘the one’.
*******
There was a new show on TV, ‘Starburst’, and Abby was hooked. She watched all the acts, criticising some, crying for others, cheering when ‘the right person’ went through to the next round.
I watched with her once, but found it embarrassing - tears and tantrums, no sense of dignity.
‘What would it mean to you to get through?’ asked the presenter. They all cried (even the boys) and said their lives would be meaningless, empty, disgraced.
‘Get a grip,’ I thought, taking myself off to do the ironing.
2
One afternoon, Abby hadn’t been well. I’d left her under the duvet on the settee, supposedly doing some school work but in fact she was watching a recording of Starburst from the previous week. She’d already watched it live, of course, but she liked to analyse the acts all over again.
When I got back from the shops, it was very quiet. The TV was off and I thought she must have fallen asleep, but when I looked round the door she was standing by the window looking out into the garden.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
She turned, her face pale and luminous with the fading light behind her.
‘I’m going to do it, Mum, I’m going to apply for the show.’
No need to ask which show. My heart dropped like a lead weight, a fist gripped my stomach. Somehow I knew this was what I’d always feared. Losing her. So I blustered: ‘No way, Abby, that sort of stuff isn’t for girls like you. And think of your Dad, what would he say?’
‘I’ve got to do it, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t try and stop me.’
*******
For her seventeenth birthday, Tim bought Abby an old VW beetle, promising to teach her to drive. He would spend hours in our garage tinkering with that car, making sure it was right for her. But by then her eyes were set on new horizons and she never seemed to have time for driving lessons.
The envelope arrived months later. Abby danced into the kitchen, eyes shining. ‘I’m going to be a star, Mum. I’ve got an audition, and I’m going to win!’
3
The rest, as they say, is history. Adrenalin-high, she would ’phone every week, shrieking her excitement that she was through to the next round.
‘That’s wonderful.’ I tried to sound like the proud and supportive parent I should be as she edged ever further away.
‘It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven,’ she said.
I wanted to ask: ‘When are you coming home?’.
The rumours about her and the judge that everyone loves to hate were hotly denied, but that didn’t stop Tim sitting at my kitchen table in tears, the lurid tabloids spread in front of him.
‘She’s gone, hasn’t she?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘We’ve lost her.’
My words of comfort sounded hollow, even to me.
That’s where they found him, you see - in the VW. He’d left the engine running and his note made it clear: he couldn’t live without her.
*******
Abby came home straight away when we telephoned her. We thought she should hear it from us, rather than read the headlines about ‘Star’s childhood sweetheart’ taking his own life. That’s why the paparazzi won’t leave yet - they know she’s still here.
When she arrived, pale but immaculate, my first thought was ‘I don’t know you any more’. But I went up to her room earlier: she was lying on her bed, old photographs spread around her, their favourite music playing softly. I held her as she cried, as we both cried, for the sweet innocence of the past, for hopes and dreams and the high price you sometimes have to pay to follow your path.
4
She’s in the living-room now, a small suitcase clutched in her hand. She tells me she’s going back, she has commitments, a tour, a fan base. The shutters are down again, I don’t like what I see.