The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp: ‘A razor-sharp retelling of Vanity Fair’ Louise O’Neill

For the first two weeks or so, the worst wasn’t that bad. Despite spending so long in The Colony Rooms each night that the next day she seeped noxious gin fumes through her pores, Babs did have a roster of clients in work, albeit strictly D-list. Comedians still hankering after their glory days in the seventies when they could get a primetime slot on Saturday-night TV telling mother-in-law jokes and making racist jibes. Superannuated dollybirds hoping to resurrect their careers with a slot on Celebrity Masterchef or in a gritty TV drama on Channel 4. More recently, Babs had started to mine a lucrative seam of reality-TV contestants determined to cling on to their fifteen minutes of fame like it was the last lifebelt on the Titanic.

Babs had done well enough for herself that she had a house in a little mews in Paddington where she installed Becky in a spare room along with boxes of glossy ten-by-fours of former clients and left her alone every day with ten quid to buy herself snacks and a big TV with all the satellite channels.

Becky knew it couldn’t last because nothing ever did.

The worst, when it came, was far worse than Becky had ever imagined: Babs shipped her off to Bournemouth to act as a companion to her ageing aunt, Jemima Pinkerton, once the queen of British soaps, and now a septuagenarian with atrial defibrillation, two artificial hips and a recent dementia diagnosis.

‘I’ve been so worried about poor Auntie Jemima,’ Babs told Becky as they travelled down to poor Auntie Jemima’s well-appointed bungalow in the exclusive enclave of Southbourne, under the guise of a little daytrip to the seaside. ‘She hasn’t got a soul in the world – fame is a fickle, heartless bitch. And then I thought, well, poor, dear Becky doesn’t have a soul in the world either. You’ll be the granddaughter she never had.’

‘You want me to spend my days wiping the shitty arse of some senile old has-been?’ Becky had spluttered.

‘She’s not senile. Not yet. Just a bit forgetful, and the years might not have been kind – neither was her third husband, an absolute brute – but Jemima’s a sweetheart …’

‘I don’t care if she’s the queen of fucking everything,’ Becky had interrupted. ‘I’m not doing it.’

Then Babs had taken Becky’s cheek between thumb and forefinger as she’d used to do, and this time when she finally let go, she’d left a bruise. ‘Listen to me, you ungrateful little wretch, you’ll do this or we’ll turn round and I’ll take you to the nearest police station so I can turn you in for stealing three pieces out of my jewellery box and four blank cheques.’

‘They’re not worth anything. Just glass and paste,’ Becky muttered, but she subsided.

‘Also, once you’re sixteen you can claim a carer’s allowance, which is something because it’s not like I could even get you a walk-on in a crisps commercial,’ Babs had pointed out because in those days, Becky had been small, wan and her perfectly pert breasts had yet to put in an appearance. It also explained why Babs had left her to rot in care when Frank Sharp had first been sent down four years ago. At nearly sixteen, Becky was useful in a way that she hadn’t been when she was nearly twelve. ‘Besides, you owe me for two weeks bed and board, plus your expenses. Take you months to work off that debt.’

It had taken months, but by then Becky and Jemima Pinkerton were firm friends. Jemima trusted Becky implicitly (‘You might as well have my pin number, because God knows, I won’t be able to remember it before too long’) and Becky made herself indispensable to the old lady. After all, you didn’t bite the hand that fed you and in her way, Becky supposed that she was quite fond of Jemima.

Certainly, Becky had learned more from Jemima than she’d ever learned on the infrequent occasions when she’d somehow found herself in a classroom. Becky had listened transfixed to all of Jemima’s stories. From her ingénue days as a contracted player at Gainsborough Studios, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene that had earned her the title Bond Girl, through stints as a series regular on cop shows and medical dramas, a short season with the Royal Shakespeare Company and a dry spell (‘drier than the bloody Sahara in a heatwave’) that had lasted five years and had seen Jemima working the Christian Dior counter at Harvey Nicks. Then fame had beckoned again as the matriarch of an East End gangland family in a new soap opera, which had put a sizeable sum in Jemima’s pension pot and had led to all kinds of lucrative voiceover work.

Yet it wasn’t life treading the boards or working on a big sound stage at Shepperton that had enthralled Becky. On the contrary, that seemed to involve a lot of hanging about and knitting, and she wasn’t ever going to be the type to knit one purl one. No lessons to be learned there.

But Becky was fascinated by Jemima’s tales of the casting couch, amorous directors and handsy casting agents; of ambitious starlets nobbling the competition with a tube of greasepaint carelessly left on the dressing-room stairs; of young juvenile male leads seeing to the needs of rich, older ladies; and of that other, shadow world of gangsters and dealers, kingmakers and hookers … Well, all of human life was there.

Again, it couldn’t last for ever. But it lasted long enough. Besides, her father had always said that the longer the con, the bigger the reward. Nearly four and a half years, by which time Becky had blossomed like a dewy young rose, petals slowly unfurling. And Jemima, bless her, had withered. Her limbs clawed with arthritis and her mind slowly eaten away by the ravages of time.

In the end, Jemima had gone in her sleep. The ink was barely dry on the death certificate (natural causes) before Babs Pinkerton descended in a cerise power suit (‘Auntie Jemima wouldn’t have wanted me to wear black’) clutching a will that predated the newer will that Jemima had drawn up from a will-making kit that Becky had purchased in WHSmith.

‘It will never stand up in a court of law,’ Babs had said, when Becky had presented her with the evidence that she, Becky Sharp, loyal companion to Jemima Pinkerton during her twilight years, was the late and much-loved actress’s sole heir and beneficiary. ‘Everyone knew that Jemima’s mind was so addled that she didn’t know her arse from her elbow, God rest her soul.’

It had got nasty enough, even without Becky daring to seek legal counsel. It seemed that there were items of jewellery missing, large sums gone from Jemima’s bank account, her fur coat currently in the window of the local pawn shop. But as Becky sweetly pointed out, ‘Like you just said, poor Jemima was very confused towards the end. We may never know where she hid her jewellery or what she spent all that money on.’

While Babs was gasping like a landlocked fish at that sheer audacity, Becky happened to mention that the press might be quite interested to know that a large standing order on Jemima’s account was paid to Babs every month. ‘Though it’s not like you’ve been busy finding her work. And Jemima was beloved of so many that I think people might get quite cross if they thought that she was being taken advantage of by her niece, who also happened to be her agent.’

‘Or by the common little tart that’s been living off Jemima for the last four years,’ Babs countered, and Becky was old enough and big enough now that when Babs’ hand crept up to take hold of her cheek in a bruising grip, she knocked her hand away.

‘I’m not a common little tart,’ she corrected. ‘I’m a poor little orphan devoted to Jemima. The granddaughter she never had, that’s what Reverend Squills used to say when he invited us over for Sunday lunch. Towards the end, you see, Jemima found God …’

Babs Pinkerton snorted in derision at such a notion.

‘… Anyway, we were quite regular churchgoers so I’m sure the Reverend would be happy to defend me. He’s got quite a taste for publicity. It’s hard to keep him out of the local paper banging on about the gangs of feckless youths hanging about on the seafront. I can’t even imagine his reaction if the nationals started sniffing about …’

‘What do you want?’ Babs had asked thinly.

A modest sum from the eventual sale of the bungalow, the right to keep any mementos – for instance, any jewellery that Becky might just happen to find when she was clearing out the bungalow – and some insurance against the future.

‘I’ve been stagnating in Southbourne for the last four years, so what now?’ she demanded of Babs who’d taken command of Jemima’s favourite easy chair and a very large gin, easy on the tonic. ‘I don’t have a qualification to my name and I can’t really see the point of toiling away at evening classes just so I can end up working in a call centre.’

Barbara had raised one over-plucked eyebrow. ‘The world needs people to work in call centres. Natural selection and all that.’

‘We can do better than a call centre. These …’ Becky gestured at her breasts, ‘her famous frontal development’, as they were described by the good Reverend, who wasn’t as godly as his venerated status suggested. Not when he was chasing Becky around the vestry with an avaricious gleam in his eyes. ‘And this …’ she pointed at her pretty face, her slanting green eyes and defined cheekbones giving her an almost feline, feral look, ‘and this …’ she tapped her head, ‘would be wasted on people wanting to change their internet service provider. You have contacts and connections. You can make me famous!’

Although Becky couldn’t sing or dance, her dramatic talents clearly weren’t in any doubt. If Babs could turn the girl into a meal ticket rather than a thorn in her side and collect her 20 per cent commission, then it would be win/win. Babs knew a producer at a production company who owed her a rather large favour and so eight weeks ago, Becky had entered the Big Brother house.

‘The rest is up to you,’ Babs had said.

Now, Babs placed a consoling, pink-taloned hand on Becky’s arm. ‘Even though technically you’re a loser, there’s still some serious money to be made before your meter runs out,’ she said. ‘We have a golden window right now. I’d make the most of all those personal-appearance fees to press the flesh at suburban nightclubs. Then we can get you at least ten thousand to appear in one of the Sunday tabs in your undies to spin some sob story about your dear departed ma and pa. We might even be able to bag you a footballer. Not Premier League but definitely First Division.’

What was that unpleasant sound in Becky’s ear? Ah yes, the bottom of the barrel being scraped.

‘I didn’t spend eight weeks locked in a house with a bunch of vacuous morons to get my tits out for the Sunday People and then disappear. Have you any idea what I’ve been through, Babs? There were times when I had to lock myself in the toilet and bite my hand towel to stop myself from screaming.’

‘They were a particularly sorry bunch this year.’ Babs’ eyes narrowed. ‘But if you were to get your knockers out, I could probably get you a few more thousand.’

There was a commotion at the other end of the bar as the more worthy, though far less deserving winner, entered the room. Amelia was with her mother and father, both of them tall and rangy, fair of hair and face. Amelia had told Becky that her father managed a hedge fund, and that her mother was the daughter of a man who’d made his fortune in plumbing supplies. Rich enough that home was a six-bedroom townhouse in Kensington and a pretty, ivy-strewn manor house in Oxfordshire. Rich enough that Mr and Mrs Sedley both had a set expression as if they were clenching their jaws and trying not to breathe in the smell of fried food, air freshener and cheap white wine that permeated the bar of the Elstree hotel.

There was no sign of Amelia’s Eton-educated brother who did something lucrative with energy drinks but there were a man and woman bringing up the rear, the man clamped to his mobile phone, the woman clamped to two mobile phones. It was clear that Amelia’s agent and publicist were cut from a very different cloth to Babs Pinkerton.

‘I don’t just want “a few more thousand”. I want more,’ Becky said to Babs Pinkerton, as she caught Amelia’s eye. The other girl smiled, waved enthusiastically and beckoned Becky over: but she wasn’t going to hurry to Amelia, like an obedient little pet dog.

‘More what? More money? Your boobs aren’t that great, Becky,’ Babs said witheringly. ‘And don’t start thinking that another agent will get you more cash – they won’t. They’d tell you the exact same thing and anyway, you signed an exclusive contract with me.’

That was a lesson learned the hard way: never sign anything. And no, it wasn’t just more money. Or more time in the spotlight.

It was more everything.

Amelia detached herself from the adoring throng that had congregated around her and hurried over to the corner where Becky and Babs were still in their unhappy huddle, followed by her anxious-looking Mama and publicist.

‘Becky!’ Amelia seized her hands and hauled her up. ‘I can’t wait for you to meet Mummy! I know you two are going to be best friends.’

From the pained and furrowed brow of Mrs Sedley, Becky very much doubted it. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you, Mrs Sedley,’ she said politely and as Mrs Sedley unwillingly leaned forward a scant five degrees for an air kiss, Becky held out her hand instead, to the other woman’s evident surprise and gratitude.

Then Becky made sure the handshake was brisk, firm but not too firm.

‘Rebecca, congratulations on doing so well in the house,’ Mrs Sedley said tightly.

‘I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in there without Emmy,’ Becky said, resting her head on Amelia’s shoulder. ‘She was an absolute lifesaver.’

‘I think you have that the wrong way round,’ Amelia said, putting her arm round Becky’s waist. ‘Come and sit with us.’

‘No, you must have so many people wanting to talk to you, I don’t want to intrude,’ Becky said, as she heard another one of Barbara Pinkerton’s snorts from behind her as her erstwhile mentor levered herself off the banquette.

‘When you’ve stopped having notions, you know where to find me,’ Babs muttered as she pushed past Becky who was giving her full attention to Amelia and Mrs Sedley, so that even in the muted lighting of the bar, they’d be able to see the slightly forlorn expression on her face before she gave them a brilliant smile that drooped ever so slightly at the edges.

‘Honestly, Emmy, after eight weeks you must be sick to death of me,’ Becky said with a self-deprecating little laugh. ‘I know how close you are to your mother, how much you must have to catch up on.’ She ended on a wistful little sigh.

‘Oh, Becky! And you don’t have anybody,’ Amelia exclaimed, the arm round Becky’s waist tightening. ‘You don’t even have anywhere to call home now we’re out of the house.’

‘Is that true?’ Mrs Sedley asked. ‘Are you homeless?’

‘Homeless’ had all sorts of unpleasant connotations even if technically it was true. ‘I was a live-in care assistant before Big Brother but the lovely lady I was looking after – she was like a grandmother to me – well, she died.’

Becky had mentioned this on the show. Just the once. To Carlo and Amelia (and three million viewers) but Amelia’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Becky …’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Becky insisted, squaring her shoulders and raising her chin but it was just a momentary act of bravado and then she drooped again. ‘Babs, my agent, says I can make some money if I agree to pose topless but I don’t think that I want to do that. I’m sure something else will turn up and in the meantime, I just have to look on the bright side. Like, I can’t be homeless because I’m booked in here for the night.’ Becky caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked off to the side. ‘I’m sure I could extend my stay. It can’t be that expensive. It’s not a particularly grand hotel, is it?’

‘It’s an awful hotel. They have pot-pourri in the ladies’ bathrooms,’ Mrs Sedley said from between gritted teeth, as if, of all the indignities heaped on her by her daughter appearing on a reality TV show, pot pourri in the ladies’ loos was the very final straw. ‘I’m sure Emmy would never forgive me if I didn’t insist that you come and stay with us, for a week or so, until you’ve made other arrangements.’

‘I really wouldn’t want to impose.’ Becky lifted her chin again, even as her bottom lip trembled. ‘I can look after myself.’

‘Only because you’ve never had any other option,’ Amelia said, tucking her arm through Becky’s. ‘You haven’t even met Rhoda, my publicist, yet,’ she added, gesturing at the woman hovering next to them, who was in a sleek black suit with a sleek black bob to match and looked as if she had all sorts of useful contacts and strategies to ensure that her clients (and potential clients) could forge long, successful careers without having to flash their breasts to the readers of a downmarket Sunday tabloid. ‘She wants me to do all sorts of things. TV and radio interviews. Photo shoots. It all sounds terrifying but it wouldn’t be so terrifying if we did them together.’

‘Well, I suppose … If I could help out … then I wouldn’t feel quite so bad about imposing,’ Becky decided. ‘And as soon as I’ve outstayed my welcome, you’re to let me know and I’ll pack my bags. I mean, I hardly have anything in the way of bags, but you know what I mean.’

‘You can stay as long as you want,’ Amelia promised rashly. ‘Now, let’s get out of here. The smell of fried food is making me feel nauseous.’

Chapter 4

Emmy Sedley @Amelia_SedleyBB

Becky and I are on our way to This Morning to chat to Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby! #BFF #bliss #humble #teamworkmakesthedreamwork

The Sedleys’ London residence (because any house with a staff annexe and its own sauna and steam room counted as a residence) was in Kensington. On the wrong side of the park, because no matter how many millions Mr Sedley had made from hedging funds and gilt-edging futures, the family weren’t old money. Only old money and the very newest money could afford the right side of the park.

But as Becky was shown into a pretty guestroom, decorated in white and a delicate pale green, with its own en suite bathroom, she decided that it would do very nicely indeed.

She hadn’t been exaggerating for dramatic effect when she’d told Amelia that she didn’t have much in the way of bags. Baggage, perhaps, but that was another matter. All her worldly possessions fitted into her Big Brother suitcase, a shabby black holdall and a checked laundry bag.

Amelia swept into the guest room the next day to be confronted by the sorry state of Becky’s goods and chattels and the even sorrier state of Becky’s wardrobe. There hadn’t been much call for anything other than jeans and a jumper when she was tending to Jemima Pinkerton and the only man she regularly came into contact with was Reverend Squills. No wonder Amelia’s mouth and china-blue eyes had become three perfect circles of horror.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh, Becky. Oh no.’ Then she swept out again.

She was back not even ten minutes later, her arms full of clothes. ‘No, Emmy, absolutely not!’ Becky said, from the doorway of the en suite. She was swathed in a fluffy white towelling robe, her hair hidden by another towel so that she looked all eyes and cheekbones. ‘I have my own clothes. They’re not as nice as yours, but they’ll do.’

‘These are all too small for me,’ Amelia insisted, having spent a lot of time in the Big Brother house comfort eating. Mrs Sedley had remarked on the way home last night that Amelia would have to go on a juice fast immediately.

‘It goes straight to your face, Emmy,’ she’d said with some concern. ‘We were quite shocked at how puffy you looked in the last week on that show.’

Now Amelia held up a floral dress. ‘I bought this after I came back from Niger. It fitted me for two weeks and now it’s just taking up wardrobe space.’ Then a pair of designer jeans. ‘I’ve never been able to get into these. Bought them online from Net-a-Porter and never got round to returning them.’ Next a grey cashmere jumper was lifted up for Becky’s inspection. ‘Grey completely washes me out but you can wear pretty much anything.’

‘Not anything,’ Becky disagreed, creeping forward to touch the luxurious soft pile of the grey cashmere as if she couldn’t help herself. ‘Oh, I’ve never felt anything so soft.’

‘And Jos – my brother, Jos, you’ll meet him soon – sent over some workout gear. He’s booked me a personal trainer too. Said he can’t have a lardy sister …’

‘It must be delightful to have a brother like that,’ Becky murmured as she held up a navy-blue designer dress which would be perfect for her TV appearance that morning.

‘He is delightful,’ Amelia agreed, because she never had a bad word to say about anyone. It grew quite tiresome after a while. ‘Except, I feel as if I hardly know him. He’s ten years older than I am so he was at school when I was growing up and then he went to LA after university … LA is so far away and he has rather taken to the lifestyle.’

‘Oh? Is his wife from LA too?’ Becky asked as she wriggled into the navy-blue dress.

‘No, Jos isn’t married,’ Amelia assured her. ‘He says that there’s no way he could have built up the second-largest protein-ball business on the West Coast if he’d prioritised relationships. He also said that he wasn’t going to get married until he was thirty-five so we tease him that he’s only got three years left to find a wife. Oh, Becky! That dress looks so much better on you than it ever did on me.’

‘I’m sure it doesn’t,’ Becky said automatically but later on, in front of the TV cameras, Becky’s navy-blue hand-me-down really made her skin and hair pop whereas the cream blouse Amelia wore put at least ten pounds on her and, despite the best efforts of the make-up department, seemed to blend into her skin tone in the most unflattering way.

The day passed in a blur of TV-studio and radio-station green rooms. Nobody was pleased that Becky was there too, like a free gift with the booking of the latest Big Brother winner. Amelia’s publicist, Rhoda, even suggested that Becky wait in the car and Becky really didn’t want to get in anyone’s way (‘honestly I don’t, but Emmy, you’re shaking. Shall I come and sit with you while you wait to go on?’).

When it quickly became clear that Amelia only made good TV when she was crying, Becky was no longer the spectre at the feast. On the contrary, she soon had joint billing and it turned out she was a natural for live TV and radio, with an endless supply of amusing anecdotes about life in the house, all good to go. ‘No one could get to sleep for the smell, could we, Emmy?’ she recalled as she sat side by side with Amelia on the This Morning sofa.

‘No. It was a very bad smell.’

‘Finally we tracked it down to a rancid mug of soup that Johnny had left under his bed that had attracted maggots, and they made us stay in the garden while the fumigators dealt with it.’

‘And it was raining,’ Amelia added timidly.

‘Pouring with rain,’ Becky elaborated. ‘And that’s why I’m never going to eat mushroom soup for as long as I live.’ She paused. ‘At least Johnny swore it was mushroom soup but we all had our suspicions, didn’t we?’

‘Did we? But what else could it have been?’ Amelia’s face was absolutely without guile as Phil and Holly hooted with laughter.

They ended the day at a shoot and interview for Hello magazine shot in a location house in Clapham, because Mrs Sedley absolutely wasn’t going to have people tramping in and out of her house with equipment when she’d just had the parquet flooring redone. (She was also quite terrified that her choice of soft furnishings wouldn’t pass muster because she’d insisted on doing the decorating herself even though Mr Sedley had begged her to hire an interior designer.)

The journalist was blonde and perky and cut from the same cloth as Amelia who happily reeled off her list of achievements to date. The Chelsea prep school where she graduated, being able to speak German and Mandarin (though neither of them had stuck). She’d then attended the same boarding school as the Duchess of Cambridge where she failed to excel academically but had won a trophy for tennis. Only two hardships had blighted Amelia’s life to date: her sluggish metabolism which meant that the only way she could maintain a size-ten figure was by eating twelve hundred calories a day and working out for an hour, and the three years she’d spent sleeping in a back brace to improve her posture.