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Tuesday, October 5, 2010 THE SUN

  In today’s exciting extract from socialite Stacey Blyth’s new autobiography, she reveals how a good gossip helped to clear her head in rehab, and work out who she really was...

  ‘POSH PRISON BREAK’

  ‘So I wake up, and it’s the morning after the night before. Only it was morning when I went to bed, really – although I always think it’s Night until you go to sleep, whatever time it is, and then it’s Morning when you get up, even if it’s the afternoon? Which it was. So, ok, it’s the afternoon after the night I fell in the Thames, then.

  And I get up, and I’m in what looks like a Travelodge room, really tiny, with rubbish curtains that let all the light in, no bath, no toiletries, just a chair and a red cord by the loo like old people pull when they fall over.

  So I’m like, Where am I? And I think about last night and notice I’m not wearing my own clothes, I’ve got these scrubs on still, so then I remember the hospital, and ringing up and getting the car and arriving at rehab, and here I still am.

  And I can still remember my name, Stacey, I must have yanked that ‘Jane Bloggs’ wristband off in the car, so I know I’m OK and decide to go home. Fine.

  Only – brilliant – I can’t remember where I live yet. I mean, I know it’s somewhere classy, it has to be, but do I know my actual address? No. So when this pretend-friendly nurse knocks on my door and says it’s group-therapy time, I figure, Might as well go along, while I’m waiting to remember my post code.

  I’m not expecting anything, I’m just planning on sitting and thinking until everything pops back into place or my brain dries out or warms up or whatever it has to do. So I sit down on this plastic chair, in a circle, and try to retrace my steps to Sloane Square.

  Anyway, someone starts talking, I don’t know who, I’m not paying attention, I’m trying to imagine a map in my head and that’s not working, so I accidentally tune in to what’s being said and it’s like I’ve found this radio station of pure gossip.

  And here’s the most amazing thing – it’s not people talking about other people, it’s people talking about what they’ve done themselves, all the awful things. And no-one’s making them say it, they’re volunteering! Unbelievable. They can’t stop!

  There’s supposed to be this ‘Code Of Silence’ thing going on, like in libraries – you’re meant to nod like you care and look all shocked and say things like, ‘And how did you feel, when you’d eaten the entire turkey before your guests had arrived?’ and not laugh – but people are only being quiet because they’re making mental notes about everything.

  Not for blackmail. For bitching.

  Rehab’s basically just a posh prison you pay to go to. Like, you have to go to sessions and talk to doctors but after that there’s not much to do – there are maybe some books to read, and they’re all boring or really long or both, and even though it’s dead expensive here, we don’t have Sky – so we have to make our own entertainment.

  Gossip.

  (Like, don’t think I’m being disrespectful – I’m sure rehab’s really awful if you’re in for something serious, like drugs or obesity or being Russell Brand-randy, but I’m not, am I? Because as well as my address, I’ve forgotten I’m depressed. Success!)

  The only thing is, you have to be careful who you talk to, because there are these weird alliance things going on you don’t know about at first, so it takes a while to suss out who you can slag off to who, so they don’t turn around and tell them, all two-faced.

  Anyway, there’s this other girl in my group – Chiara, she’s called – who doesn’t seem friendly with anyone else, so I keep an eye on her. You know how burlesque dancers are just too fat to be normal strippers? Well she’s like that, only without the tassels. As far as I can tell! You know – if she was doing online dating she’d say she was “curvy”, that kind of size. Shotputter type. Brown hair.

  Anyway, she does this big laugh-cough during a session one day so I follow her to the loos and say something about Turkey Girl and she goes ‘Ha!’ and that’s that.

  So we hang out in the Ladies after sessions and come up with codenames for everyone – like Sex Pesto (a pervy chef), Snow Joke (a cokehead comic), Flashpants (a pole-dance addict) – and it’s like their mental behaviour keeps us sane.

  Anyway, one day Chiara says she’s done a deal with a nurse to get gossip mags smuggled in and hidden behind a sanitary bin, and she’ll let me read them too. And I go, ‘Oh, great, thanks’, but then I think, Hang on, this means life has been going on without me – how did that happen? When I fell, out of respect, everyone should have waited ’til they heard I was OK... only it’s like no-one’s even tried to find me. I mean, I’m signed in under my real name, I’m not even trying to hide. Then I think, Wait – maybe I’m big news, maybe they know I’m in here and it’s a massive scandal but I’ve been protected from it all and now I’ll find out. So I’m well nervous to see what’s been written about me, obviously.

  Nothing.

  Not a word. Everyone’s still going to parties and premieres and wearing horrible borrowed dresses and no-one looks even remotely worried. I mean, maybe they’re putting on brave faces but they’re so not that good actresses. Although, Botox might explain it.

  Anyway, I’m gutted. So I sit and seethe for a bit, on top of the cistern, and I think, If they’re not there for me, why should I keep their secrets? And I’ve got plenty, me.

  So there’s a picture of this singer – a right mess, even after a few stints in here – with some bloke supposed to be her boyfriend, even though he’s clearly just helping to hold her up in front of the paps. And I go, ‘Him, yeah? Gay. Gay as...’

  And it’s like I’ve not said it loudly enough or something, because Chiara just goes, ‘Oh? He doesn’t look gay.’

  So I say, ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen him get off with as many men as I have,’ and she goes, ‘He’s got off with as many men as you have?’ like she’s trying to catch me out or be clever or something and I’m not having that. This is my moment.

  Then she’s reading an interview with this talent-show judge who’s a right cow, so I go, ‘You know how everyone says she’d be so much prettier if she wore less make-up?’

  ‘Mmmmmm?’ Still not interested.

  ‘Not true. Acne Central. Can’t find a cure. Everyone calls her the Pepperoni Princess and she can’t understand it because she doesn’t even eat meat.’ All true.

  And Chiara looks really closely at her photo and goes, ‘You might be right’.

  ‘She’s shitting herself about the show going HD,’ I say. ‘She’ll have to quit.’

  Then Chiara goes, ‘So what about her? Did she really exercise off all that weight?’

  On the cover, there’s this proper fishwife soap actress, who’s shopping some sob-story about how a) her husband left her and b) she’s done an exercise DVD.

  ‘Her?’ I go. ‘She didn’t lose weight because he left, he left because she was doing so much coke she was losing weight – he thought she’d stop and she didn’t. She almost had a heart attack last month. He’s a nice guy but she can’t stop because she has to pay all the DVD money back if she gets fat again.’

  I feel bad for about a second, then Chiara raises her eyebrow and smiles so I know she believes me and it’s like I’ve got my power back so sod them all for ignoring me.

  We hear someone coming so we have to hide the magazines but as I’m closing mine I see this picture on a travel page – it’s not somewhere I’ve been but something about the tower and the sunset look really familiar anyway.

  Next day, I’m in this one-to-one session – which apparently is ‘obligatory’ or I totally wouldn’t have bothered to go, it’s not like I’m going to get any gossip from myself, is it? – and the therapist’s messy little office is absolutely boiling. The radiator won’t turn down and it’s so hot we have to force the window open – in January.

  And I’m going through the motions about how, yes, I’m having a nice
stay and, yes, I feel much better, and so on, and then this noise starts and I go, ‘What is that?’

  It’s a loudspeaker blaring out, only you can’t understand what it’s supposed to be saying, it’s like something out of the war – an air-raid warning or something.

  Are we at war? Like a proper war, actually in England?

  I’m sh*tting a brick but the therapist is totally not bothered, he just stops doodling on my folder for a moment to point at the clock with his pen and goes ‘It’s the adhan’, wearily, like I’m supposed to know what that means.

  So I go, ‘Does ‘adhan’ mean bomb in your language?’, because he’s got an accent.

  And he looks at me like I’m the one speaking a foreign language and says – a bit angrily and unprofessionally, if you ask me – ‘No, it’s the call to prayer. For the mosque.’

  Then I remember that picture in the magazine and my ‘vision’ from the river and I think ‘Mosque?’ and it’s like my mind is finishing a jigsaw. As if I’d do a jigsaw.

  I go a bit quiet so he goes, ‘I see from your file that...’ and I think, Of course, I’ve been here before, so maybe he can explain what I’m seeing, like I knew it all before but I’ve forgotten I knew it, only now I’m remembering again.

  So I interrupt him and go, ‘Does it say anything in my file about mosques?’

  And he looks all angry, like the session isn’t supposed to be about me when it is, and sighs – I don’t know how he keeps his job – and goes, ‘Let me check’.

  And I try to listen out for the noise again but it’s finished, it didn’t last long, and then he goes, ‘Well, you grew up in Morocco, it says here. Which is a Muslim country... ’

  And I obviously look like it’s the first I’ve heard about it, because he goes, ‘Have you had a CAT scan, did you sustain a head injury? Amnesia is very serious, you know...’ but all I can think about is the dream I had: That’s not Heaven – that’s Marrakech!

  So I say, ‘I’m fine, I’ve just been a bit forgetful,’ and he goes, ‘What led you to come here, in this instance?’ so I look sad and say ‘It’s too soon...’ like it’s a painful memory but really I can’t be bothered to go over it and just want to know what else my file says.

  I’m about to ask him to tell me what it all says, then I have this brilliant idea. Open window, ground-floor office – adventure! So I waffle on for the rest of the session then, afterwards, once I’m back down to my normal body temperature, I find Chiara.

  ‘Fancy a fag?’ We don’t smoke – although I think a pipe might suit Chiara, give her big hands something to do – so she’s knows it’s code for something. So we wander outside to the Smokers’ Zone, wait until it’s just us huddled there, and then I run around the corner.

  Chiara catches me up and I go, ‘My file, it’s in the room with the dreamcatcher!’ and she flattens herself against the side wall and sort of shimmies along it, heavily.

  She points up at this stupid twig’n’feather hanging and mouths ‘This one?’

  I nod, so Chiara peers in, and the therapist must be taking a break – skiving, more like – because she just goes for it, leans right through the open window for a minute or so, then pops out and croaks ‘This one?’, waving a folder with a doodle on the cover.

  So I beckon her back and she crawls along the ground like she’s at boot-camp, then we rush back to the Smokers’ Zone, pretend to grind out some butts and go inside.

  I’m already feeling a bit sick from the excitement of being outside for the first time in, what, weeks?, when I see the folder starting to poke out from under Chiara’s muddy jumper, so I go, ‘You should change, you look cold – maybe another jumper?’ And she looks at me like What are you on? then looks down and sees what I mean and goes ‘Oh’.

  So I’m waiting for her in the common room, still het up and sweaty, if I’m honest, and Chiara takes ages. All she has to do is change for show and put the file under her pillow or mattress, so I start getting well annoyed that she’s reading my file and knows things about me I don’t. What right does she have? If I wanted to, I could grass her up, there’s no evidence I was involved and the file’s in her room... And so on.

  When she gets back I’m thisclose to starting a fight, but she’s shaking her head and doing this ‘thumbs down’ gesture, like she’s in Gladiator.

  ‘Bad news...’

  So I’m thinking, she must have been caught – sh*t. What now, will they throw her out? Will they throw me out, did she say I was there too? Some friend she is. Nice one. I’ll blame her, they can’t prove I had anything to do with it.

  Bu then she goes, ‘Wrong file’.

  We watched Porridge the other day, where everyone’s in prison only it’s funny, and in it, Kate Beckinsale’s dad goes to do an exam and Ronnie Whatsit steals the wrong answers for him, so now I’m thinking, Great, my life is officially a sitcom...

  Then Chiara looks all apologetic and goes, ‘It only said “Stacey” on the cover, sorry. Your notes must be inside another file – the ones we’ve got are all someone else’s.’

  She obviously knows I think it’s her fault, which I do, that she switched the folders or something, so she goes, ‘Maybe we could get into the computers? Everything’s probably on there now...’ like she’s Little Miss Dragon Tattoo. I think not.

  All that effort – mainly on Chiara’s part, true, but it was my idea – and nothing to show for it. Although, and I can actually feel my brain working when I come up with this, if they’re not my files, there might be some juicy info in there. As compensation.

  ‘So, whose files are they, then? What did they say?’ I ask, trying to sound like I’m not really bothered, what with them not being about me after all.

  And Chiara’s eyes light right up.

  ‘Well,’ she goes, glowing with gossip glee, ‘I think we’re living with an heiress...’’

  IN TOMORROW’S PAPER: ‘What better revenge than being filthy rich?’