Not that Kinda Girl. Lisa Maxwell
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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 in case something dodgy happens …’
My friend Danielle was beautiful, with lovely dark hair: she wore mascara and bright red lipstick, and to me she looked just like Snow White. Her mum had an antique stall on the Bermondsey Market and she gave me a keeper (friendship) ring. She was very into horoscopes, mediums and reading the future. I was once in Danielle’s room when I watched a lamp fly off the windowsill without anyone touching it. Oh God, her mum’s going to think I broke it! How was I going to tell her it just came off on its own? All she said was: ‘Don’t worry, darling – it’s only Danielle’s poltergeist.’
Danielle and me used to spend all our time together talking about boys – we even practised kissing just to know what it felt like. When I was 14 I really fancied this boy called Lee who used to sell newspapers at the Elephant and Castle. He looked cheeky and funny, like a squashed version of Mike Reid, and would call out the newspapers in a singsong voice, which I found very attractive. Danielle passed a note to him saying I fancied him and he arranged to take me out on a date. I remember he turned up in a little beige suede bomber and wore gold chains. We did have a kiss, my second ever, and I seem to remember it lived up to expectations. Funnily enough, I have clearer memories of kissing Danielle – what does that mean? But I didn’t see him again: I remember thinking myself a bit above him, which sounds snobbish, I know. I’d been brought up to believe only Prince Andrew was good enough for me.
Danielle pursued acting for a while, but family life took her in another direction. Her brother Jamie, however, in my opinion became one of the best actors of his generation.
Another of my really good friends was Suzy Fenwick, whose cousin Perry plays Billy Mitchell in EastEnders. When we were kids, Perry was appearing at the Shaftesbury Theatre in a production of Peter Pan as one of the Lost Boys. Suzy and I used to hang around with them. She fancied one of Perry’s mates, a lad called Nick Berry. We were mucking about at my flat one day when we found his phone number. Suzy rang and asked, ‘Is that Nick Berry?’ When he said yes, she replied: ‘I went through the phone book and I only found one berry, so I picked it!’ Suzie had to put the phone down – she couldn’t speak, we were laughing so much: it was really silly teenage girl stuff.
Back home, life wasn’t all rosy, though. When I was a teenager, Mum and I used to fight a lot in the way that I think sisters sometimes fight; Grandad would have to tell us to calm down. Both of us knew (and still know) which buttons to press. Our fights would be about trivial things but underlying them would be pent-up feelings about each other.
Mum never did things by half. I remember she was on tranquillisers and decided to come off them abruptly after hearing on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life that you shouldn’t take them for more than three weeks or so. By then she’d been on them for six years. She just threw the whole lot down the toilet and went cold turkey, but you’re supposed to come off them gradually. I remember having to hold her in the night when she was freaking out – I was about 12 or 13 at the time. She was shivering, sweating and rocking her body backwards and forwards. Even after that first terrible night I’d still hear her whimpering and moaning, but she did it: when Mum decides on something, she is very single-minded.
She gave up cigarettes in the same way. When I was 18 she went to see a doctor about a cough, and when she came back she said: ‘He told me I’ve got very thin airways.’ She used to smoke 40 Consulate menthols a day but gave up there and then at the age of 40. I wish I could have had the same self-discipline: it took me several attempts to quit.
Whatever was happening at home, I still had my escape route: the train that took me to my beloved school every day, where I could sing, dance and be with my friends all day long. For me, schooldays really were among the happiest of my life.
It wasn’t always wonderful, though.
CHAPTER 4
My Secret Shame
I’d been nursing a secret for a whole week after I was summoned once again to the principal’s office. On this occasion Mrs Sheward stressed it was nothing to worry about but the staff had noticed I’d put on a bit of weight and they didn’t want it to get any worse. She told me to be careful with what I ate and said they would keep an eye on me. By then I was 13.
Afterwards I was so upset and embarrassed and I couldn’t understand it. I knew another girl who had been put on a diet but she was really fat – how could I have let myself get that big without noticing? When I looked in the mirror I didn’t see fat, but if they thought I was fat then I must be so. I kept the conversation to myself, but then it got worse, far worse: I was about to be outed as a fattie.
‘Lisa, will you come here, please. I just need to check how you’re doing with your weight.’
Having been called to the front of the class, I had to stand on some scales next to the teacher’s desk. I was mortified, more embarrassed than I’d ever been in my whole life. Now all my friends and classmates knew: I was officially fat. And that terrible feeling, as I walked from my desk to the front of the classroom, has never left me: with one massive blow it seemed to destroy the image I had of myself. No matter how many times my friends told me that I was nothing like the other girl on a diet, the damage was done. I think I was a little bit chubby. My body had started to change and fill out; I remember lying down next to one girl in jazz class doing