Baby Be Mine

open shower is to my right, opposite double basins on my left. White fluffy towels hang on heated chrome towel rails.
    ‘Pretty nice, huh?’ Rosa chuckles. She walks to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to settle in. Why don’t you come on down to the kitchen when you’re good and ready and I’ll get you something to eat?’
    As the door closes behind her, I start jumping on the spot like a mad woman, face stretched into a silent scream.
    This place is mental! I’ve seen rock star mansions on MTV Cribs , but this is something else.
    I kick off my shoes and throw myself onto the enormous bed, laughing as I look up at the ceiling.
    If only Bess could see this place . . . It’s such a far cry from our dingy flatshare back home. It’s getting on for midnight now in England and she will have hit the sack long ago, sleeping off her hangover before work tomorrow. I decide to send her a text to wake up to in the morning. I climb off the bed, smiling at the feel ing of the thick white shagpile carpet between my toes, and grab my phone from my bag.
    Actually, I think I’ll send her a picture. I slide open the camera lens instead, snapping the massive room with the (now slightly crumpled) bed in the middle. I punch out a message:
    Check out my bedroom! Haven ’ t met him yet but house is amazing! Wish you were here x
    She is going to die when she sees the outside view. I’ll have to send her that tomorrow.
    I decide to unpack later and instead go and see Rosa downstairs. I find her in the kitchen, frying chicken, peppers and onions in a pan.
    ‘Hey there! I was just preparing you a quesadilla. You must be starving.’
    ‘Can I help?’ I ask.
    ‘No, no, no!’ She shoos me away, minutes later delivering the finished product, cheese oozing out of the edges of the triangular-cut tortillas. She’s right: I am starving.
    ‘I would offer to make you a margarita, but I think you just need feeding up, judging by the state of those skinny arms.’ She laughs and pulls up a chair.
    My arms are skinny compared to hers. In fact, every part of me is skinny compared to Rosa. She’s like a big Mexican momma away from home.
    ‘Where do you live, then?’ I ask, and discover that home is an hour’s drive away, where she has three teenage sons, one ten-year old daughter, and a husband who works like mad but loves her like crazy from the way she smiles when she speaks of him. It’s a long way for her to travel, but she adores working for Johnny. Her only regret is that she’s not often there to see him tuck into the meals she leaves for him. And it breaks her heart when she comes in the next morning and finds the food still in the refrigerator.
    ‘You have got to make that boy eat!’ she insists to me now. ‘Johnny don’t eat enough.’
    Hearing her speak about ‘Johnny’ is strange. I keep thinking of him as ‘Johnny Jefferson’, but soon he’ll just be Johnny to me as well.
    I do already feel like I know him, though. It’s impossible to live in the UK without knowing about Johnny Jefferson, and after a lunch break of Googling him when I worked at Marie’s, I now know even more.
    His mother died when he was thirteen so he moved from Newcastle to live with his father in London. He dropped out of school to concentrate on his music and formed a band in his late teens. They signed a record contract and were global superstars by the time Johnny was twenty. But he spiralled out of control at the age of twenty-three when the band broke up, before coming back almost two years later as a solo artist. Now thirty, he’s one of the most successful rock stars in the world. Of course there are still rumours of his dodgy lifestyle. Drink, drugs, sex – you name it, Johnny’s probably done it. I don’t mind the odd drink, and I’m not a prude, even if I have had only three serious boyfriends, but I’m really not into the drug scene, and I’ve never been attracted to bad boys.
    Rosa heads off at six-thirty and urges me to get outside by the pool. Ten minutes later I’m on the terrace, clad in the black bikini that I bought for my recent holiday in Italy with Bess. The sun is still baking hot so I stand on the steps in the shallow end and tilt my head back up to catch the rays. The glittering blue water is cool, but not cold, and I don’t flinch as I immerse myself fully. I swim a few laps and decide then and there to swim fifty every morning. I did so much walking in London that keeping fit was effortless, but everybody