To Be Someone Read Free Page B

don’t do disgrace, I thought. There had to be some other option. I thought about what I really wanted out of life, what exactly it was that I’d been working toward all these years.
    Eventually, what I came up with was me, Helena Nicholls, being somebody . Not as a songwriter or band member or even as a DJ, not as a friend or girlfriend or daughter, however important all those things were, but as me. I wanted people to remember my name with admiration, not scorn. Not “Oh, her, she was that DJ who got high and smashed her face up—and didn’t she use to be in some eighties band? ”
    And right now I was in serious danger of meeting that “didn’t she use to be” fate. Helena Nicholls, made a prat of herself and was never seen again.
    So the situation required drastic measures.
    A plan started to form in my mind, gathering its genesis around itself like a snail shell’s twirl, tighter and tighter, until all my ducks lined up, quack, quack, quack, in an orderly fashion, and I thought, Yes, now I know exactly what I’m going to do.
    I’ll tell Geoff Hadleigh I’ll accept his offer of a job, I decided, and I’ll tell him that my hearing has recovered, whether it has or not. Starting from now, I’ll make a list of all the records that have played behind my life, my requests, and write down, in detail, exactly why I’ve picked them. A life’s soundtrack will take more than just a five-minute explanation—if I talked about it on air, I’d never have time to play the songs themselves. Hence the accompanying manuscript.
    When I come to broadcast all the songs, even though it will be two A.M. and the show’s ratings will be minuscule, it will make radio history. Once everybody realizes what I’ve done, what I’m going to lock myself in the bathroom and do immediately after the show. I don’t know what method I’ll use yet; pills, probably. But it’s not important how I do it.
    The point is that it will make me a legend. Bigger than I ever was in Blue Idea, or as a hip breakfast DJ, and certainly bigger than the silly tart who broke her face on a dance floor. Justin’s career will skyrocket. All our old records will be rereleased. It’ll make all the papers. Hopefully I’ll get a publishing deal for the book, and the New World show could be released on a compilation CD. Perhaps even a Hollywood movie …
    I got out a pen and a pad of lined A4 (which Mum had brought me, hoping in vain that I might cheer up enough to write some song lyrics) and prepared to take the plunge. I can do this, I told myself. I can write. I’d won awards for my songs; I’d written hundreds of letters to Sam; kept a diary for a little while. In fact, I’d already been published, if you counted the abysmally puerile Bluezine (a fanzine the record company made me churn out from the road).
    Hell, I’d been meaning to write my autobiography for years. This would just be a different way of doing it. Using the songs would help me focus—I didn’t want to do one of those all-encompassing tomes that subscribed to the “more is more” philosophy, and besides, I’d never be able to remember it all without thinking of the records that went along with it.
    It felt so weird, not having to think in rhymes and verses, no breaks for middle eights or guitar solos. This was my life; it needed to be fluent, complete, yet selective. No choruses or intros. No neat bite-sized chunks.
    I was going to begin at the beginning, me and Sam, but then I thought—no. Start with the accident, then you’ll get it out of the way and not have to think about it again. It had its own record, very definitely: Space with Cerys of Catatonia—“The Ballad of Tom Jones.” It was a pity, really. I always loved that song, the humor and harmonies and sexy Cerys to boot. Now I loathed it. For days after I regained consciousness it kept going through and through my battered head. It was such a bizarrely chirpy song to induce such terrible memories.

Space with Cerys