Welcome to the Real World Read online

  Praise for

  CAROLE MATTHEWS

  “It’s a big five points for humor.”

  —Kelly Ripa, Live with Regis and Kelly on For Better, for Worse

  “With a lovable heroine, a dashing hero, and plenty of twists and turns, Matthews’ new novel has all the right ingredients.”

  —Booklist on Welcome to the Real World

  “A knack for snappy dialogue.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Welcome to the Real World

  “Carole Matthews writes of the travails of romance, relationships and motherhood with hilarity, tenderness and despair. It’s a story loaded with laughter, tears and hope. This is one to share with your girlfriends.”

  —Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of The Queen of the Big Time, on With or Without You

  “Carole Matthews is adept at putting a fresh spin on each and every one of her chick lit tales…. Pick up With or Without You today, and see why Carole Matthews is blazing her way to the bestseller lists.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Definitely one of the summer’s must-reads.”

  —Glasgow Daily Record on With or Without You

  “Matthews delivers a realistic and unflinching look at love, marriage and infidelity and still manages to inject some light humor.”

  —Romantic Times on Let’s Meet on Platform 8

  “Her humorous storytelling resurrects the power of romance to conquer all.”

  —Booklist on For Better, for Worse

  Also by

  CAROLE

  MATTHEWS

  and Red Dress Ink

  MORE TO LIFE THAN THIS

  WITH OR WITHOUT YOU

  LET’S MEET ON PLATFORM 8

  A MINOR INDISCRETION

  CAROLE MATTHEWS

  Welcome to the Real World

  This book was great fun to write and, while it is

  entirely fictitious, I have to thank everyone at

  Welsh National Opera for their invaluable input

  and allowing me access to their company.

  To Caroline Leech, Catriona Chatterley and

  Hazel Hardy, for helping out a woman who didn’t

  know her La Traviata from her Turandot. It’s been

  lovely to work with you. Also, thanks to

  Simon Rees, Dramaturg at WNA, for kindly

  allowing me to use his translation of

  La Traviata—very much appreciated.

  To Christopher Purves—a huge talent and generous

  man—for giving me an insight into the life of an

  opera star. To Gareth Rhys-Davies, for letting me

  see him with and without his makeup. To Julia, Liz

  and Katie, for looking after me backstage. And to

  all the lovely members of the company who have

  tirelessly answered my inane questions. The only

  complaint I have is that I’ve had to make up all the

  diva moments and tantrums myself—you are all

  far too nice to be opera singers! Thank you all so

  much for taking the time to allow me to have an

  insight into your wonderful world—you have left me

  with some cherished memories. With kind thanks

  also to English National Opera and War Memorial

  Opera House in San Francisco, for helping me

  with additional material. All the mistakes

  and terrible liberties taken in the name

  of opera are entirely mine.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Chapter Eighty-three

  One

  ‘I need more money.’ Tilting the glass in my hand, I pull yet another pint of beer.

  ‘Don’t we all, man.’ My dear friend Carl looks at me through the fog of his cigarette smoke, eyes barely slits. He’s propping up the bar opposite me and I smile across at him, mainly because the hubbub of noise in the pub makes it difficult to be heard and I want to save my voice.

  Carl is a man out of his time—I’m sure he would have been much happier as a 1970s rock god. His battered denim jacket, shoulder-length hair and tendency to say, ‘Yeah, man,’ don’t sit comfortably with current ideas of personal styling. But Carl and I go back a long way. A long, long way.

  ‘No. I really need money,’ I say. ‘This time it’s bad.’

  ‘It always is,’ Carl remarks.

  ‘Joe’s swimming in a sea of unpaid bills. I have to do something.’ Joe is my older brother, but somehow I’ve become responsible for him. I don’t mind at all. He needs all the help he can get.

  ‘You work two jobs already, Fern.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ The till does its digital equivalent of ker-ching again and, grinning insanely at the next punter, I reach for another glass.

  ‘How much more can you do?’

  Win the lottery? Put on my shortest skirt, strike a pose outside King’s Cross station and hope for a bit of business? Get a third job that requires minimum effort, yet doles out maximum pay? I�
�ll fill you in quickly on what I like to call my ‘situation’.

  Bro’ Joe lives on benefits and is constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now Peter has been robbed so much he has nothing left. My brother isn’t, however, the media version of a person living on the dole—work-shy, feckless or lazy. Joe can’t work because he has a sick son, Nathan. My beloved nephew is a five-year-old blond-haired heartbreaker and has severe asthma—and when I say severe, I mean severe. He needs constant attention. Constant attention that his mother—the beautiful and brittle Carolyn—wasn’t prepared to give him as she left my lovely brother and their only child when Nathan was barely a year old. And, call me a bitter old bat, but I don’t think that could be considered as giving it a fair crack of the whip.

  If anyone thinks it’s easy to manage on measly government handouts, then think again. If anyone thinks it’s easy being the single parent of a sickly child, then ditto. Joe had a promising career in a bank—okay, he wasn’t setting the world alight. My brother was never destined to appear on Newsnight in a pinstripe suit giving his opinion on the world money market, but he was getting great appraisals, regular promotions, small pay rises—and a pension to die for. He gave it all up the moment Carolyn departed to stay at home and care for Nathan. And, for that alone, he deserves all the support I can give him.

  ‘You’re on in a minute,’ Ken the Landlord shouts over at me, giving a pointed glance at the clock.

  As well as pulling pints behind the beer-stained bar of the King’s Head public house, I am also ‘the turn’. I do two half-hour sets every evening Monday through Saturday—Sunday is quiz night—singing middle-of-the-road pop songs for a terminally disinterested crowd. I finish serving the round of drinks and then nod my head towards Carl. ‘Ready?’

  Carl is my pianist. Again, I think he’d be happier as lead guitarist—which he also plays brilliantly—for Deep Purple or someone of that ilk, leaping around the stage, doing ten-minute solos, head-banging to his heart’s content. But Carl has bills to pay, too. He jumps down off his bar stool and we head for the small, raised platform that is our stage. A once-spangly curtain is attached by a row of drawing pins to the wall behind us. Despite Carl’s rebel, dropout appearance he is the most reliable person I’ve ever met. He’s very low-key rock ’n’ roll, really. Okay, he smokes the occasional joint and puts ‘Jedi Knight’ as his religion on Electoral Roll forms, but I don’t think he’s ever been moved to bite the head off a live chicken on stage or any such thing. And he’s never smashed up a guitar as a display of artistic expression, because he’s far too aware of how much they cost. He is also patience personified, spending every evening on that bar stool waiting for our two brief periods of respite when we can do what we truly love doing.

  ‘We could do a couple of extra hours busking in the Tube,’ my friend suggests as we make our way to the stage. ‘That usually pulls in a few quid.’

  I grab Carl’s hand and squeeze it.

  He looks at me in surprise. ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘I love you,’ I say.

  ‘Cupboard love,’ he replies. ‘Would you still love me if I wasn’t the world’s best ivory tinkler?’

  ‘Yes.’

  This is a confession now. Carl and I used to be an ‘item’. We never did the horizontal tango together—something for which I’m truly grateful. But we used to spend hours necking and I used to let him feel my top parts—occasionally even under my jumper. In my defence, however, this was when I was fifteen and we were at school together. And it was a much more innocent era.

  Now that I’m thirty-two, I have no boyfriend and no time for one. Not even Carl, who I think still holds a torch for me. Well, not just a torch, a bloody great flashlight, a beacon, whatever type of light it is they have on lighthouses. I feel sorry that I don’t love Carl in the way that he loves me, but I got him out of my system years ago and, basically, he’s still sporting the same jacket and hairdo that he wore then. Need I say more?

  We take our places on the stage, Carl behind his keyboard, me at the temperamental microphone. I wish I had more presence, more va-va-voom, but I always feel so insignificant on stage—partly because I’m only fractionally taller than the microphone stand. There’s a slight hiatus in the hullabaloo of conversation and a smattering of disjointed clapping. Without preamble—no ‘one, two, one, two’ as I test the mike, no shout of ‘Good evening, London!’—we launch into our performance. As this is a predominantly Irish pub, U2 hits feature heavily in our repertoire, as do those of The Corrs and Sinead O’Connor. We usually also knock out a few 1960s favourites and some classic ballads at the end to keep the maudlin drunks happy.

  I spill my heart and soul, sliding flawlessly from one song to another, and at the end I take my bow and, in return, receive some muted applause. Is this what I do it for? For a few meagre crumbs of appreciation and an equally few extra quid in my pay packet at the end of the week?

  When I’m back at the bar and serving pints again, one of the customers leans towards me and says with beery breath, ‘You’ve got a great voice, darlin’. It’s bloody wasted here.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You want to get on that Fame Game programme. You’d beat the pants off most of them.’

  This isn’t the first time I’ve been told that. Usually by men with beery breath and no knowledge whatsoever of the music industry.

  ‘That’s a great idea!’ I don’t point out to him that to take part in any of these talent-spotting fiascos, you need to be under the age of twenty-two and possess a belly flatter than your average pancake—neither of which applies to me.

  My admirer lurches away clutching his drink.

  I give Carl another pint of lager. ‘That went well,’ he says. ‘I thought “With or Without You” was really heavy, man.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll come round tomorrow and we can go through the running order. Maybe try out a few new songs.’

  ‘Sure.’ We analyse all our performances as if we’ve just come off the stage at Wembley Arena and, sometimes, it makes my heart break.

  Once I was asked for my autograph at the end of the night by a young guy, but I’m not sure if he was taking the piss. All his friends laughed when he showed them the beer mat with my name scrawled on it in marker pen. It still made me walk on air for a week afterwards. I stifle a sigh. Don’t think I don’t have ambitions beyond being a badly paid barmaid-cum-pub singer. I, too, would like to be Joss Stone, Jamelia and Janet Jackson rolled into one. But, tell me, how on earth do I get my big break when all my days and nights are spent just trying to earn a crust?

  Two

  When you roll into bed at about one o’clock every morning, the next day comes around very quickly, I find. I force my eyes to open. Eventually the blurry mist settles and I think about getting up. Slipping my feet into my cow-patterned slippers, I try to pretend that my flat is not the skankiest place imaginable. Even Shrek would turn up his nose at living here—and that guy’s at home in a swamp. My rising damp hit the ceiling years ago and, as is hugely beneficial for someone partly reliant on their voice for their earnings, I have developed a slight asthmatic cough due to the number of spores that live here with me. But it’s cheap. I bet you couldn’t guess that.

  Shuffling into the bathroom, I stand in the bath while the warmish trickle of water from what I laughingly call my shower does its darnedest to revive me. My poor throat. Every morning, I feel as if I’ve swallowed a dozen razor blades. I put it down to the effects of passive smoking in the pub and spend the day drinking gallons of water to try to counteract it. I rub the scrag end of a bar of soap over my weary body.

  My sense of smell is the next thing to wake up. The flat is situated above an Indian restaurant—The Spice Emporium. Their advertising says, As Featured On BBC Television, but what it fails to mention is that the only time it hit the TV screens was when it made the local news programme because of a salmonella outbreak when thirty of its diners went down with food poisoning. The owner, Ali, obvio
usly hopes that his customers have very short memories. My main problem with The Spice Emporium is that the chef there has the frying pan on the go at about six in the morning. Everything I do during my waking hours at home is accompanied by the smell of cooking spices. My tummy constantly growls from the minute I’m awake, as it’s convinced that onion bhajis are the thing to have for breakfast—whereas I am not.

  I stay here because Ali, also my landlord, is lovely. The flat may not be a shrine to domestic elegance or even pass any basic health and safety regulations, but Ali takes a relaxed attitude when it comes to paying my rent. If I’m really strapped, he’ll let me work a few shifts washing up in the restaurant until I’ve paid off my debt. That’s the sort of landlord I need, not some ogre with a slobbering Rottweiler.

  I’m still getting dressed when the doorbell rings, and I know that it can only be Carl. He will have brought me something wonderful to eat because he knows that I never have enough money to buy food. I often wonder if I’d simply cease to exist if Carl ever abandoned me. My friend has a degree in Social Anthropology—whatever that is—from Oxford, no less. I’m not sure how useful that is for swindling the Department of Health and Society Security, but it means that Carl is able to live on benefits and work most of the week cash-in-hand, so he’s relatively flush—particularly when compared to me. I pull on my jeans and rush to the door while dragging my sweater over my head.