Building

Him:
Sometimes, when looking at a couple from outside of their world, we think they are so close that they are almost one person and that a wedge, even of cigarette paper thinness, cannot be driven in. Yet if we look closer, little spaces – little pockets of air – can be seen to divide them. Spaces where the dust of life settles, encourages mould and accelerates the decay that exists between them, from the inside. So we, Emily and I, have decided to do this TV show. We have invited the cameras into our home, so that you – the viewer and, doubtlessly, fan – can gain a better insight into what makes our world spin.
Welcome to our world, as they say.
A house, for the most part, is just a building. Four walls, a floor and a roof. That’s all that houses are, in principal at least. Somewhere in which to come, rest, and to play with your kids. To relax and unwind in, a place in which to feel safe once the door has been locked behind you. In these aspects, all houses are the same whether they are large mansions or small cottages. In rural districts or on council estates, houses are buildings and homes are what we make of them.
Though not overly elaborate, the house stands alone in some nine acres of wood-land, boasts fifteen bedrooms, an indoor heated, three quarter Olympic sized pool, a gymnasium, tennis court and a fully equipped recording studio as an essential for my work. It also has a dining room, master’s room, reception room, a reading room, conservatory and a completely installed, state of the art office. A room replete with all of the gadgets needed in the feisty world of modern business, more than half of which will remain unused. I am, after all, not in a ‘modern business’. I’m a musician who still takes his daily cup of ambition, heavily sugared and lightly creamed to hide its natural bitterness, in the same way as I, and my predecessors, always have.
From the simple list above, the word ‘Room’ attaches itself to everything like a magnetised depth charge and drags joy down under its weight, until ready to explode. Despite of the number of gaps we have made out of bricks and mortar, the one thing that Emily and I don’t have in our lives, is room; in which to breathe, room in which to move, room in which to be ourselves and in which to find love, again. Of all the places in which to hide our love, we found the business. That clasping, grasping whore that drinks blood and chews on the marrow of morality, before spitting out a shrivelled husk of the former self.
What was it we were thinking of, hiding our passion in such a place? Why and how, did we allow it get so far down the path of self-desecration? God only knows but what is certain is the fact that it’s not too late to find that desire – that love - again.
The house, in comparison with some, is nothing spectacular but we – Emily, The Kid and myself – are alive here, or so it appears. After all, that’s the main thing isn’t it, that appearances are kept up. Impressions are important; those taken at first glance especially. We couldn’t have people prying into our private affairs. That’s what the front door is for. To keep those out whom we don’t want in.
So why, you ask, invite the cameras in?To dispel some myths is the answer.
To give it to you straight and unblemished, a view of our world from the highest and lowest points of which the latter will predominate, I’m sure.
It will, I hope, make interesting TV.
Amy is nine years old. Sometimes I look at her, hear her voice, and think that she’s much older. She’s my little girl and I call her The Kid because it winds her up. She hates it, but in that way that all children hate everything that they secretly like. I secretly like winding her up.
Emily, as you know, is my wife. She’s thirty-two years old, blond haired, slim, intelligent and funny. A former catwalk prowler, she has a smile so dazzling that it could almost drop a man to his knees at fifty paces and eyes that gleam like those of a deer caught in the cross-haired sights of a gun.
We are the perception of the model family, an inspiration to millions across the world who read about us every single day in some publication or other. We smile, we wave, we give our interviews and we reap what we have sown.
For the cameras never lie, do they?
At the moment our house is being renovated. A new bathroom – a fourth – is being installed on the upper of three floors. In addition, a games room and new studio are being constructed at the rear of the house and a building to house an indoor sauna, Jacuzzi and solarium is being built, separately, in the garden. It costs space, true, but what the hell in nearly two hundred and fifty acres of land.
Of course the lettuces may suffer a little. They may drown in the shade of the new erections and this is a worry, my main concern, because I have nurtured and loved those things from the seed in which they were packaged. The biggest cost is that which is wrought upon us because the wearying pretence – The Game - even behind the closed front door, must continue in front of the workmen. The Kid does not take part in our game unless forced and she’s away for much of the year at school anyway. A very exclusive school, paid for by the rewards of The Game.
Just Emily and myself reside here permanently.
Whilst the renovations are taking place, we spoke of checking into a hotel. But this opportunity, the TV show, decided us and in the end we decided against moving out because we wanted the thing to be done to our specifications and really need to be on call for the builders. What better way of showing our true selves? Moving out would only have meant regular returns and, besides, filming will be so much easier. Staying means that the façade for the sake of the builders must continue whilst behind closed doors. No big deal, easy money, until the show is aired.
My tour has just ended to rave reviews. It’s taken me across the world and back, with album sales rocketing up and way beyond expectations. I’m a hit, again.
Emily came along for the ride, because it is expected.
Me? I like this place and its tranquil setting. It’s what I’ve – or rather we’ve – worked for all of our married life. The tour was good, but it wasn’t home – whatever that is?
It’s now five-thirty in the evening and the workmen are almost packed up for the day. Large vans are being loaded with gear and, once finished, they will go back out to the chalets in which they are staying for the duration. There they will shower, change, eat and drink beer – my beer - around the pool until gone midnight. They will go to bed then, rest, wake and begin the whole process again.
Normality and routine. I want both!
We are delighted that we have succeeded in making the builders think, so far, that we are happy even though we are not happy at all.
When they leave – when you leave - we can try to be ourselves for the first time in years. We can fill those little pockets of air that surround us with the frustrated angst that our relationship has been crammed with, parcel it up neatly, take it out into the garden and bury it deep somewhere lonely to rot.
We bitch and fight. We don’t even sleep together. Our marriage is a business deal kept together for the sake of our management team. When we talk, it’s in strained tones and conversations only ever concern the next deal, the next album, and the next tour. Our meals are taken separately, in different rooms of the house. We pass each other on the stairs with barely a sideways glance. We have, in short, become strangers in a vast world of our own creating. A material, marital world kept so secret from those outside it is difficult to imagine its existence at all, until now that is.
How did we become these people? I think these programmes will reveal that the answer is easy; we drifted into it like the wood from a wrecked ship will drift to the shore over a course of years and, in all honesty, I take much of the blame. Always on the road with the band, we became recognised and signed the deals that made our names. We got paid handsomely for what we enjoyed doing, day in and day out. Who could complain?
Dalliances with birds, booze and drugs were common, though I tried to shy away. I had Emily, even back then. I’m no saint, but rules are rules, aren’t they? We’d met and married young and some said that she was only with me for my money. I could have had anybody they said, but I wanted her.
In retrospect, I didn’t know what I wanted at all. I was persuaded to marry Emily by her willingness to accept my lifestyle and by my agents. She was a good-looking woman on my arm. Eye-candy to be clicked at.
She is the one that all the others wanted to be.
When she became pregnant, I was in America. I’d flown back during a short break and fate had played a hand in making our idyllic life complete. The patter of tiny feet would soon be echoing around the house and they – the public - were so happy for us.
Cards and good wishes came to us in vanloads. Flowers filled dozens of vases in every room of the house. We swam in home knitted bootees and scarves and woolly hats. Toys, expensive and modest together, swamped our space.
The night The Kid was born, I was playing in Paris. I was told of her arrival by a crewmember as I came off stage. I recall smiling at the news and kept it to myself for that moment, that precious moment of make believe, as I headed for the dressing room.
At the press conference afterwards, it was the first thing that was mentioned and my secret evaporated, as I switched from being the experienced and talented musician, to the image of the proud father in the bat of an eye.
If only they had known that, later during a routine medical, I’d discovered I was sterile.
I love The Kid as much as it is possible for any husband to love another man’s child. She is the beacon around which my world revolves – my constant reminder - and I act as her father. Emily had a bad time and could not have any further children as a result. Her sin, my consequence and I make do with what God has given me, with a smile for the cameras.
Now, standing here in the hallway looking around at the devastation that exists within our house, I see the marble stairway that leads away towards the upper floors. A thing of beauty covered in a grime despite the tattered dustsheets that have been taped down to avoid disturbance.
Made of Italian stone, the stairs were imported and, by hand, were inserted a piece at a time by craftsmen using only ancient, outmoded tools, skill and sweat. By true masters of their art we were informed that this would be the only feature of the house that could not be altered in any way at all, once it was installed. The stairs are the artery of the house that almost appear capable of ferrying passengers along its thoroughfare, eventually reaching heights of loveless solitude. The creamy marble is flecked with a hint of aquatic blue veining. Starting narrow at its base in the reception hall and widening, like a tributary forming a slowly flowing river of stone, it appears to move imperceptibly while the image is enhanced by the cast shadows from the crystal shaded lights surrounding it from walls and high ceilings.
The banisters, hewn from Canadian Redwood trees over two hundred years old, are carved and emboldened with darkened inlays depicting scenes from the great fairytales; Hansel and Gretle, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty.
Rapunzel, trapped in a tower waiting for release and who, having let down her hair to form an escape ladder, fled with her handsome prince, has been a favourite tale of mine since childhood. I often wonder that, if Emily were my Rapunzel and I, her handsome prince, then the tale could be written without the happy ending and so form the basis of our life as it is now. We are both, after all, trapped in the ivory towers of our own building. Slaves to the masses who worship icons that are both false and demeaning, we do what we’re told and get paid handsomely in return, in kind.
Though not for much longer, as this show will see to that!
So our world may shift and descend into chaos, but at least the stairway is safe and sound for an eternity. All that has gone before will become discarded, I think. You, our public, will at last see the face behind the face as you become as voyeurs – inspectors – of our secretly colliding world.
Enjoy the show!
If you’ll excuse me now, Emily will be down soon. I need to change for my solitary dinner.


Her:
The builders are here to decorate the hall and to re-render the ceilings. The season will soon be on us and Tommy insists that the house is looking at its best before the masses of performers and agents and managers descend upon us once more. It’s an annual event here at Greybridge and one that I could do without.
This is not a home, it’s a shell and our life in the shell can be said to resemble the dust. It has formed in clouds and is being blown to the four corners of the globe on a storm of publicity.
We are the goldfish, the camera lens our bowl. A cliché but, hey, who cares?
Never a day shall pass without either myself, Tommy or Amy being seen in the papers, that’s the rule. I confess that I loved the life at first, but now it disturbs me. It’s prostitution as I’m sold to the highest bidder in return for the widest smile or the most willing pose. Tommy is my pimp!
I respected him at first, now I hardly know him. What I do know is that I married an egotist with whom I hold nothing more in common than the need to be noticed. We float around in this house alone, but together.
Only the imposition of the builders right now makes us civil to each other. Were it otherwise, the damage would be inestimable. Our secret is to stay in the can until the show is aired and so the decision was taken to use these tiny video cameras, rather than having crews of men marching around us directing, editing and shaping the truth to how they see it. We know the value of image; the image is king in this house and must be protected at all costs. Persona is Queen Ant in the hill and must not be disobeyed. This TV show will throw up some surprises for you out there. Tommy wants it uncut? Then as his loyal wife I must do as my husband instructs me.
It appears, as far they are concerned – the builders, the press, the fans, everybody outside - that a crow bar could not prise us apart. We are deeply in love and our only regret is that we have Amy. Without her we would have separated years ago.
If only they knew.
I often lie awake at nights thinking of Simon. I lie awake alone too often.
Amy.
Perhaps if Tommy and I had been granted children, then things may have been as perfect as they seem. If he’d only ever created a little time for me – for us – then perhaps ….
Instead he went off to work. Not in an office or a yard or on a site like normal men. No, he went to work in a studio, was good at what he did and was successful. Good, I’m not begrudging him his success. I’ve had my rewards from it. This house for one thing, and the attention of course!
But away from it all, we have nothing. No hope, no life, no future, no chance.
I plan to file for divorce as soon as filming is finished. Unreasonable behaviour.
I don’t see Amy’s real father anymore. It was just a case of bad luck on my part. Well, two case of misfortune really. I pick a husband who is as fertile as the Gobi desert and a stagehand who’s like the rain forests on the day I’m at my reproductive peak. Of course, I forgot – in the heat of sexual boredom – that I don’t take precautions and so fell with Amy.
Fool.
Tommy and I spoke of divorce, but then the image of which he is so proud would have been irrevocably tarnished. So, for the sake of the child – the business child I mean, not Amy – we stayed together. That child is grown now. That and the fact that my time in the spotlight would have all but ended I mean, just look at Jerry Hall. Do we ever hear of her now? Only when she played Missus R in The Graduate and showed the world her tucks for three seconds a night. I aim to be different. I plan on existing alone.
I wasn’t ready then, not to end it all.
I am now.
I have no desire to be like Jerry - no wish to be like anybody, in fact. I have my affairs and Tommy pretends not to notice. The life that I have is good and I have a certain amount of freedom to do what I please. The pretence is bearable, the money good and the notoriety unbeatable. But Tommy’s announcement to the world at the end at the end of this series of video films will cause upset the planet hasn’t seen since the day The Beatles split up, I’m sure. And though I’m glad of this chance to set the record straight, I’m not sure that this is way in which to go about it. Court would be better, I think.
Ah well, only time will tell I expect
I am dressed for my solitary dinner and I am just coming to the top of our covered over marble staircase. It was hand built by Italian craftsmen and we were told that it was the only part of the house that could never be altered.
I hate it! The lie that it cannot be altered is comparable with our own life together. Give me some dynamite and I’ll show you what can’t be altered. Of course, Tommy loves it, especially the banisters upon which I have snagged far too many silken sleeves on the gold leaf edges of the those hideous engravings.
If only there were craftsmen who could hand build relationships, marriages and perfect lives. Then all of our troubles would be solved, wouldn’t they?
I must leave you now. Dinner is waiting for me.

Amy:
He will be here soon, so I’d best be quick and tell you about my life as best as I can. I’m just trying out the new video camera, just checking that it works. This show is my chance to set the record straight. Better yet, it’ll be my opportunity to tell you about the real life my parents have created for me. Or at least think they have created, though the credit – if that’s the correct word in this context – is not theirs alone. I know more than they think. I know that my father is not my father, isn’t it obvious? The result of a one-night stand, I am their reminder that their secret world is so very fragile.
Or at least, if I’m not, then I damn well should be
They have built up this world of make believe and have become divided in two by the pressures of their life together. Yes, I know that they have brought it on themselves but what else could they have done? Divorce would have set one of them – or both of them – back considerably and, possibly, fatally. It was too big a risk.
I know that they would rather be apart and I know that I am here, in this school, because it’s expected for me to be out of their way like the secret I am and have always been.
But this series has been commissioned on the proviso that I have my say for the first time and I am going to use it to the full.
At the moment they have the builders in again, adding bits and pieces, tidying it up for the new season. The new social circus begins in May and, as we’re in March, time is running short. Everybody who is anybody will descend during the season’s peak and the house must look its best. It’s one of the rules of the game that my parents play, the keeping up of impressions. According to dad, those struck first are the most difficult to dissolve in the eyes of the masses and he even wrote a song about it once.
It’s what he does. He’s a drummer in a band – The Grateful Harvest – and his talents have created some of their biggest hits, though those days seem to be in the past now.
Many things seem to be in the past, though they don’t seem to realise it.
Not yet.
My mother is a sad, lonely Joan Collins type figure. Her age lines are only outnumbered by her hang-ups and her infidelities. An aging temptress, she hangs on to the belief that men still fancy her for her looks and not her connections. As the season kicks off, then so will she with her endless – embarrassing – rounds of flirting. The TV show will, probably, only serve to make her actions all the more flamboyant and all the more distasteful.
I’ve never really been included in these gatherings. I’m thirteen years of age and still treated like a child, sent away to school until the middle of July and then on to Southern France for two weeks to stay with family friends, before joining my parents in Spain at their holiday home on Majorca and a series of obligatory photographs, ‘snapped’ from a distance.
Christmas is about the only part of the year I stay for any length of time at the house because dad is a bit of a traditionalist. Though that doesn’t extend to ‘quiet family times’ sipping mulled wine and nibbling mince pies around a blazing fire. No, Christmas is usually more of the same summer madness, but with a chill in the air.
I can picture him now in my mind. Dressed in an old blue tour t-shirt, ripped jeans and with a faded, red bandana wrapped around his head. The aging, but none the less, distinguished family man cum rocker who lives in a world so usually filled with sin and debauchery, getting his hands dirty with the mortals.
He’s supervising the building work he thinks. What he doesn’t know is that the foreman listens attentively and then does exactly what he knows is best anyway. When either of them questions the decisions Greg, the foreman, makes he simply tells them that it was what was decided earlier in the week, to which dad will nod sagely agreeing with the result whether he likes it or not.
First impressions, do you see?
To disagree would cause friction and friction causes anger. Anger causes resentment and, such is the thin bubble of happiness that my parents have created in which to surround themselves, they dare not see it pricked by a needle so small as a disagreement about a house that will be changed again inside twelve months. The house is their symbol of solidity. Though it changes from year to year, it is always the constant of which their life represents. It is their magnet, the thing that draws them in without letting go.
Perhaps it has the same, invisible, hold on me too. Because, though I started explaining to you about my father, I’ve already started taking about the house as though they were two co-joined twins attached at the conscience and only ever to be mentioned in the same breath, save causing offence to the one left out.
So there he is, I imagine, at the top of the stairs, the expansive creation made of Italian marble, looking down at the workmen as they gather together their tools at the end of the working day. They’ll not be leaving for their own homes. They stay on at the house, in the chalets especially built for such occasions, until the work is completed.
Nora – our housekeeper - will cook for them later and beer will have been provided in the small bar that was built two years ago, near the pool. Just the one case between the seven of them because hangovers aren’t permitted during the weekdays, it’s in the contract. At the weekends they can do what they like and generally do. But they are good men. Good, good men. Dad says so and when has he ever been wrong?
My father calls me The Kid whether I’m there or not. He knows I hate it, so does it all the more to wind me up. Perhaps that was the clue I should have spotted, regarding my paternity I mean. You see, I think he thinks my name but finds it hard to say. Instead he hides behind the nickname, so that the pretence of normality can be seen from afar.
That’s not to say that he doesn’t love me. He does, I know, very much. But I’m hard work for him to accept. I’m the living proof that he’s living a lie. The result of my mother’s fling with a crewmember, he sees me as a surrogate child, a pet, who needs to be exercised and exorcised in the same manner – by removing me from the game, as best and as cleanly as possible.
It’s what I’ve thought for a while and, today, it has been confirmed for me. Why else would I be dispatched to school and to foreign climes for eighty per cent of the year? I’m the thirteenth at Tom’s table, an uninvited guest and chief performer at a pseudo Banquo Banquet. I am the same person seen as two separate identities, by two very different people. It’s why I’m kept away. I am the secret stain on the white carpet of a seemingly blemish free existence. A stain unknown of – unnoticed - by outsiders.
So far as my father is concerned, I am a toy and little else. Today, I have found out that he loves me in no other way than a man loves his dog. Something to coo over and to make perform tricks, I was taught piano at four and classical guitar at six, so that I might give recitals on demand. I sing in the choir – badly – and act in the school plays considerably better than I sing.
We’ve studied Macbeth this last term so that we might perform it during the end of year festival. Its greyness appeals to my senses, its timeless depression stirring something within me - a sense of rebellion, perhaps?
Should I have been Banquo? Or a witch? Not Lady Macbeth, no not her. Never her.
Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble.
He is going to use this show to announce his retirement. Thinking that people still care about what he has to say, he wants to devote more time to his family, while he’s still young enough to do so. Or at least that’s the official line. He then plans to be dragged back in a couple of year’s time and so re-launch his career.
Clever, if not entirely original!
What I don’t know is, why? Surely he can’t believe that his wife still – or has ever – loved or loves him? It was always him that was besotted with her, not the other way around. To Emily, he was a meal ticket – a train ride – out of the darkness of second rate calendar shoots and Littlewoods brochures. It was a chance to live in the sunshine, like a basking, poisonous lizard and she took it with both hands.
Perhaps he thinks that love is like the staircase at home, running both ways and something that cannot be altered without being destroyed before being rebuilt.
I hope he’s right, for his sake.
And so the wheel turns slowly. The building of my life – our lives - may be crumbling to pieces, but the stairway is made of Italian marble and cannot be altered.
For one month we are to record our every move and send it to the editors at the end of thirty days. Only then will it be decided – by Emily and Tommy alone – what will be aired and what will not. I will have no say in the matter.
But they have reckoned without my plan.
I will disappear and, doubtlessly, a full scale hunt will be carried out. I am not being kidnapped, but am instead leaving the school to be with my father – my real father.
I have built up a contact with him over recent months, after he showed up here to tell me the truth. A truth that, at first, I denied. Eventually I came, have come, around to believing that it is true. Don’t ask me how, I just have.
So then we decided. We will go to a place where nobody will think of and we will be happy. This recording will trace and recount my steps and will show you what Tommy and Emily are truly capable of. How they have duped so many people into believing their perfect world is obtainable through hard work and mutual devotion. How they have cheated and lied their way to the top. How they have used and abused those around them. How they are nothing more than profit conscious thugs, with all the shallow depth of a puddle.
Of course, none of you outsiders will know of this for a month by which time I will be safely away, with my father.
I am turning my back on the gory glitz and glamour to which Tommy and Emily have fallen victims. Why? Because happiness isn’t fame and fame does not equal happiness. I am only thirteen years old and even I can see that!
Just turn on your TV sets on in around three months time, and it will be shown to you, as clear as day, that secret worlds can be invaded by shadows and ghosts too. This show has given me a choice; a choice to win or lose everything that my future has to offer. It’s a chance to be me and it’s too good an opportunity to miss. I think – I hope - you will agree.
So perhaps, after all, I am my mother’s daughter. Selfish, stubborn, deceitful and uncaring of the world most girls of my age would die for. Though please don’t think that I believe all that I read in the papers, like she does. For one major difference between Emily and myself is the fact that I really don’t care.
Like you.









The Press:
Aging rocker, Tommy Huyton and his wife the ex-model, Emily, have today announced that the TV show – Alone With Tommy And Em – has been dropped through a lack of interest from the major TV companies. The show, which was set to see the two former stars living their day-to-day lives at home, was so poorly representative of reality that only one obscure satellite channel showed and interest and they, in turn, were put off by the exorbitant fee demanded by the couple’s management team. Even the fact that Amy, their daughter, announced that she was illegitimate and left her private school to be with her natural father, failed to stir excitement, in what was seen as a somewhat crass publicity stunt.
Tommy’s last album with his band, The Grateful Harvest, failed to breach the top 200 and has been rumoured to be their swansong. Emily has recently won the ‘Bitch’ award in the notorious magazine People Watch in recognition of her being the most unpopular celebrity of the year. This is in no small way due to her reputation for rudeness, over-statement and an astounding lack of ability in anything other than for being a leach. Amy has returned to school.