Page 35 of Going Solo

“I’m not going back to school.”

Aunty Cheryl took a sip of her tea.

“Why don’t you come work at the salon full-time?”

I shook my head. “Mum and Dad want me to finish my exams.”

“Ain’t either of them got any A levels, and they done all right. Come work at the salon. You did great over summer. When you weren’t mooning like a lovesick puppy, at least. Or off rutting. Seriously, though, we could get you on the apprenticeship scheme as soon as tomorrow morning.”

For the first time in months, I felt something like hope.

“Really?”

“Course.” She winked and picked up a brownie. “You leave your mum and dad to me,” she said, popping it in her mouth.

* * *

In December, as I got into the swing of my apprenticeship, the Go Tos won the sixth season ofMake Me a Pop Starwith seventy-one per cent of the total audience vote. It was the widest margin seen in the show’s history. The fan base already had its own name, the Extremes. The coverage was inescapable, as the Totally Records publicity machine switched into top gear and the boys did a victory lap of commercial radio stations and regional shopping malls. Two days later, the band’s debut single came out. Called “My Daydream Girl,” about a teenage boy yearning for a girl no one else seems to notice, it rocketed straight to number one. It was the UK’s Christmas number one. I banned it being played in the salon. When tickets went on sale for the Go Tos’ first tour a few weeks later, they sold out in less than a day.

I was angry, empty, and jealous. I hated Cole for abandoning me, for getting to live my dream, for his success. I hated myself for auditioning for the show, for saying something so stupid on camera, for not being strong enough to handle the fallout. Aunty Cheryl was right: I needed armour. I spent most of my first pay cheque on a down payment for tooth veneers. A month after I started my apprenticeship, I stepped into a gym for the first time in my life.

EXCLUSIVE! “I don’t belong here”!

Cole’s anguish over long-lost family

Pop’s newest superstar, the Go Tos’ Cole Kennedy, fears he doesn’t belong in Britain and is desperate to find his long-lost family.

The 16-year-old has spoken openly about his adoption by Suffolk dairy farmers Andy and Orla Kennedy, who fostered Cole after he was given up for adoption by his birth parents.

But now The Bulletin can exclusively reveal Cole’s private anguish at the family and future he lost when his birth parents abandoned him, and the mystery surrounding his mixed-race heritage.

Cole told a friend he felt he couldn’t “shake the feeling I’m living in the wrong country, maybe growing up in the wrong religion, and certainly in the wrong culture.”

The teenage heart-throb was also haunted by the fact he might still have blood relatives alive who “might not even know I exist.” Tragically, Cole told friends he feared tracing his birth family would “kill” his adoptive parents, who might “think they’re not enough”…

A month after winningMake Me a Pop Star

ChapterFifteen

The salon phone rang. It was a busy Saturday morning in January, and I was folding towels out the back.

“Can someone get that, please?” I called out. “I’m in the dryer.”

Not two minutes later I stepped out into the salon with a pile of toasty warm towels, ready to put them away under the sinks, to find everyone staring at me. Aunty Cheryl switched off the hairdryer she was using on Mrs Fitz.

“What? What is it?” I said.

Mum set her comb and scissors down and walked towards me. You could have heard a pin drop. Every person in the room was watching me intently. Mum put her hands on my arms, rubbing my biceps with her thumbs—the pile of towels between us. She had a look on her face I’d last seen when she went to place an order on the Séance Beauty Products website and the browser auto-filled with SeanCody and the house rang with the sounds of gay porn. This was her Mum’s-very-disappointed-in-you face.

“What have you done, bubby?” she said.

I was genuinely baffled, and I said so.

“Well, Orla Kennedy has cancelled her three o’clock and said she won’t be coming into the salon anymore.”

“What, why?”

“I dunno, Tobes, you tell me.” Mum folded her arms. She meant business.

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