Helen Grant

My name is Iris Duffle and I stalk celebrities.

Well, the lead singer and drummer of Brit band Decker, but the gossips will have you believe I’m stalking the guitarist, the backing dancers and the band’s groupies. There are dangers to telling lies. I should know.

The truth is I study the Decker twins, Mari and Donald, not in a scary way, but from a distance – and I dress and act like them.

“Does that count as stalking?” I say to Connie. It is Saturday and we are hanging out at the airport with her brother Roger, drinking cocktails.

“You copy their mannerisms and habits. You use the same phrases. You eat at the same restaurants and hang out at airports, hoping to bump into them. Yes, that’s stalking,” Connie says through her teeth.

I cast my mind back. “I wasn’t always so star struck. When I was 18, marriage and babies were the norm. Everyone wanted to be pregnant.

“I wanted that too but David wouldn’t commit. We’ll marry when we’re 30, he said. So I waited, but it never happened. I struggled with being an unmarried mum. And then …”

Roger frowns. “I can’t imagine that of David. Not the way he is with Jill and the children.”

Connie shakes her head mutely.

I search for an excuse. “Some people are better suited,” I say.

She fiddles with her watch. “I was 18 going on 30 too, but I had bigger plans. I was desperate to move away, get a career, and become famous.”

“What happened?” I laugh.

“My crazy mother – bless her heart. She coped with Roger moving 10 miles for college, but she’d have been dead in her grave if I’d moved to London or New York.”

“But you had a rare talent,” I sigh. “My ambition was to be a cleaner. My cousins laughed at me for idolising Deirdre Barlow.”

“Never judge a person until you’ve walked a year in their shoes,” Roger smiles.

“That’s what Mari says …” Connie speaks quietly, “In this month’s Vogue.”

I pluck a copy from my bag and open it to page 22. “There!” I say gleefully, slapping it on the table, and pointing to Mari’s pretty face.

In three page glory are the Decker twins, dressed in fake fur with quirky white sunglasses and swimwear, next to a smaller picture of Mari in a clinch with a married celebrity.

Confident I won’t offend, I tell Connie I am against infidelity, and she blushes pink.

“It’s hardly a shock,” she says. “Everyone knew they were together, except you.”

I look to Roger for reassurance. “The way he dumped his wife is disgusting. He might be a celebrity, but a text message? What do you think Roger?”

Roger inhales deeply and coughs. “You’ll get used to it. In time you may even get to like him.”

“You don’t like men much do you?” Connie says coldly.

“I’m never going to like Peter Cooper, if that’s what you mean. He reminds me too much of David.”

Roger shifts uncomfortably. “I love the bit where the writer compares Donald Decker to a younger version of John Lennon.”

“Yes!” I grab Roger’s hand with genuine pride. “Wait until they crack America, they’ll love it! The photo shoots, the interviews, the flashing cameras, they’re going to need a private secretary.”

Roger smiles. “I’m not sure about that, but this one’s going to be their biggest hit by far. They’ve topped themselves. The fans will be screaming to get backstage this summer.”

Connie looks me in the eye. “I believe you mean well Iris, but underneath the greasepaint there’s a craving for normality. No-one takes the trouble to dig beneath the showbiz.”

“Greasepaint? But Mari and Donald wear the most extraordinary things!”

“Yes, but they’re not James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.”

“Look …” I point to the last image of Mari wearing a vintage shawl wound tightly around her pale neck; Donald is wearing skinny black jeans pasted on to his bandy legs, a little bit of rock n roll with his dark glasses. Not black but blood red to match the stain on his sister’s lips, and the distressed skinny black leather jackets a la Burberry.

“I don’t know how they do it, but their influence is why I have no fear about what I wear today,” I beam. “Everything Mari wears is an extension of her personality and an extension of the band’s brand. The spike heeled Dior boots, dapper pin striped waistcoat and the starched cotton shirt …”

“Stiff and Persil white …” Roger laughs.

I kiss the twin’s photograph. They have been famous for as long as I can remember. I’ve read their autobiography and they had star quality before they were born, with matching curly hair and two teeth.

The following Sunday, Connie calls with an invite to a rock festival. “Come as our guest. There’s someone we’d like you to meet,” she says.

Unable to contain my excitement, I drive to the shops on Friday and use the last of my wages to buy a green dress with a red abstract pattern. I’ve had my eye on it for ages because it reminds me of something Mari would wear. I tell the assistant it will go perfect with my brown boots, and make a mental note to ask Kath next door to curl my hair.

On Saturday, a car arrives. It has blacked out windows and a personalised number plate. The chauffer takes my bag and pours me a glass of champagne. He refuses to start the car until I am strapped in, so I belt up, and smile at him coyly in the rear view mirror.

“Your friends look amazing tonight,” he says, “All eyes are on them.”

“What are they wearing?” I ask.

The driver winks, “With their charm they breathe new life into anything.”

As it happens, Connie is wearing skinny jeans and pearl earrings, the same milky white as her skin.  A plastic red belt clinched in, spike heeled Dior boots, and a starched cotton shirt, Persil white. And Roger’s skinny black jeans are pasted on to his bandy legs, a little bit of rock n roll with his dark glasses.

I spot the rock on Connie’s finger and wonder who put it there, just as I used to wonder what I would do if I ever passed the twins on the street, or if David proposed to me instead of Jill.

Not in this rain-washed rural non-entity, but somewhere in New York, Paris or Milan. Where the boutiques never sleep, and elegant women sip house coffee from white paper cups, watching the world float by, undetected through oversized glasses and floppy cashmere hats.

That dream comes to me often, and always so real – the colours pure and undiluted, crystal sharp, every detail as loud as if it is a memory.

Later, when I return to the hospital, the terror starts again.

“Where are the twins?” I gasp at the smiling nurse who hands me my tablets. She runs me a bath. “Here’s your towel Iris,” she says, “don’t be long or the water will get cold.”

Tears roll down my face. “For the good sleep and happy memories,” she says, pushing the pills into my hand.

Fleeting moments today are the happiest times, when I speak to my children aloud as if that dreadful night never happened.

You see, the brain has little niches. Each niche has thoughts and memories, and if you think the same thing repeatedly the thoughts become real.

That’s how Roger and Connie became Mari and Donald, and how next week they will be living in Hollywood. Maybe in time they won’t be dead at all. My fingerprints won’t be on the pillow, and their father will love me after all.