than me and already famous; I couldn’t believe we were in the same class. We wanted to criticise her to make ourselves feel better because she was such a high achiever, but we just couldn’t because she was brilliant at everything, also lovely to everybody else. She had black eyelashes that she told me were dyed – it was the first time I’d heard of anyone doing this.
Laura James was my best mate at this time: so pretty and super talented, I was always proud she chose me. If anyone should have been the next Liza Minnelli or Barbra Streisand, it had to be Laura (she’s now happily married to Jonathan Ross’s younger brother Adam, with two lovely girls). A right pair, we bonded over our sense of humour. We were a bit mean to Bonnie: she sat in front of us in class and we used to dip her ringlets in the inkwells. I’ve never owned up to this before and when I meet Bonnie – we are good friends – she may go off me, now she knows!
Laura and me would slip into Frank Spencer impersonations and keep it up all day (the older girls used to get us to do it; I think they thought we were a pair of freaks). She lived just three or four stops up the Northern line from me in Stockwell and I loved going to her house. It was my idea of what the perfect family should be: a mum, a dad and an older brother. I hardly ever invited her to mine, but I think she worked out that it was because I was ashamed of our flats. She was always very sensitive and never asked why.
We used to spend hours together at the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, pulling faces in the photo booth and buying Snoopy and Holly Hobbit pencil cases and rulers. At least, Laura was buying hers and I was demonstrating how good I was at nicking them. I got away with quite a few and shared the spoils with her – luckily, I was never caught. We’d also buy our favourite magazines: Bunty, Jackie, My Guy and Photo-Love. At 16 I made it onto the cover of Photo-Love, in my eyes one of my greatest achievements.
It was while Laura, Karen and I were mooching around in the school holidays that we were flashed at in the street. A man walked towards us with a coat over his arm, and when he moved it, ‘Run, he’s got his willy out!’ Laura shouted. We weren’t scared – we just thought it was funny. Laura and Karen started running but I was laughing so hysterically that when I tried to run I wet myself so I had to stop and cross my legs. We went to Laura’s house and then her mum and Karen’s mum took us to the police station to report it. Being 12-year-old stage-school girls, we loved the drama – I think we thought we were in an episode of Dixon of Dock Green. ‘Oh my God, you should have seen it! It was right down here …’ we babbled, gesturing down towards our knees.
The policeman asked the mothers if we knew what ‘erect’ and ‘flaccid’ meant. When they said no, he asked us whether it was pointing North or South. Finally Laura drew it for him by pointing towards the South. I’ve always said it was Karen who wet herself, but this book is about the truth: it was me who had to walk around in a pair of wet jeans and I’ve only recently apologised to her.
Meanwhile, back in the school dressing room we would play performing games: our favourite was Grease after Mum took a group of us to see it at the Elephant Odeon. We took it in turns to be John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Bonnie didn’t always join in our games but she loved playing Grease and if she was Danny she would leap off the table like the Russian gymnast Olga Korbut, singing, ‘It’s electrifying!’
Danielle Foreman was also a good friend at Conti’s, although like Bonnie she started a bit later than the rest of us. She’s the sister of the actor Jamie Foreman and their dad was Freddie Foreman, a well-known gangster (Jamie used to babysit me when Mum was going out – Danielle would come over and he’d be left in charge of us at our flat). The family lived in Dulwich and their dad wasn’t around some of the time because he was in prison but I can remember the thrill of him turning up at school to pick Danielle up in his sky-blue Rolls-Royce Corniche. Freddie was part of the whole gangster scene going on in London: he knew the Krays and the Richardsons and he was involved in a couple of murders as well as some big heists. I didn’t know any of this at the time but I think I was savvy enough to know he didn’t get his Rolls working down the market.
When 50p was nicked from Bonnie Langford’s moneybag, the finger of suspicion was unfairly pointed at Danielle and me for some reason: it wasn’t us. About six of us had been in the dressing room at the time and we were interrogated by Mrs Sheward. Afterwards Danielle and me were kept behind, probably because we refused to allow them to search our bags. It wasn’t because we had anything to hide; we were just being difficult.
A girl in our year had already started her periods and she seemed to be excused almost everything. She was always missing things because of her period – blimey, when you start your periods you become practically disabled, I remember thinking. So when they wanted to search our bags we told them: ‘You can’t search our bags! We may have personal things in there, like Pantie Pads.’ It was an invasion of our privacy, we said. We didn’t even know the right name for sanitary protection – we just thought it sounded good.
Being taken to Mrs Sheward’s office was a bit frightening. There were two offices: one for the agency, where everyone was chatty and the walls were covered in pictures of us all; and then her own, which was formal and contained a big desk with an embossed leather top. Mrs Sheward was a small woman, with lots of hair piled up on top of her head, like wedding hair – Marje Simpson could have been modelled on her. I always thought she got up at about 4 a.m. every day just to get the hair right. If you were called into her office, it was serious (I only went there twice). Anyway, she interviewed us separately, trying to get us to grass each other up, but we refused to do so.
I’m certain Danielle didn’t take the money. And I didn’t take it either, but it meant we were late leaving the school that day and Danielle’s dad was meeting us in the Rolls.
‘Don’t you ever let me catch you thieving, you little toe-rags! I’ll burn your fucking fingers off if I catch you at that game,’ he yelled at us. Looking back, it was funny coming from a man involved in all sorts of crime, but I can see he was just as determined his kids would have a completely different life. We never heard any more about the 50p at school.
At the weekend he’d sometimes pick me up in the Rolls (which I loved) to take Danielle and me out. I liked the neighbours in Stephenson House to see me, and Mum loved it, too. One Saturday we went on one such trip. We drove up the Old Kent Road with the roof down on the Rolls, even though it wasn’t that warm, but I didn’t care about being cold – I loved sitting in the back of the car with everyone looking at me.
Then he said: ‘We’re going up West now’. So we went to Ronnie Knight’s drinking club, which was called J. Arthurs. Because Danielle was Freddie’s daughter everyone made a big fuss of her: the barmen and all the staff treated her with real reverence. When they asked Danielle what she would like to drink, she said: ‘I’ll have a Harvey Wallbanger.’ So I said I’d like one of those, too, even though I had no idea what it was.
‘Why are you talking funny?’ asked Mum after Freddie had dropped me back home, and my speech was slurred (she knew I might be drunk but because I wasn’t ill she didn’t say anything). I told her I’d had Harvey Wallbangers. I think she thought they were some kind of hamburger.
‘Oh he’s lovely, that Freddie!’ she said.
For some reason Mum always thought Freddie was a saint. I used to rollerskate round the Elephant and Castle and about 8 p.m. one night I was skating in front of the Charlie Chaplin when he came past.
‘What you doing here, you little so-and-so?’ he asked. ‘Bet your mother’s worried out of her life about you. Go on, clear out of it! Clear off home and get some sweets.’
He gave me a £50 note – the highest note I’d ever seen. I gave it to Mum, who said: ‘God love him, he’s like the Pope – a god! He picks ’er up in a Corniche, buys ’er Harvey Wallbangers and sends her home
