Cold Water

The Abuse

Instead of dragging out excruciatingly, the shows were passing in a blur. On the second day, Stephen felt people looking at him in the corridor, bad at hiding their surprise that he'd more than coped with the first show. At times, it felt like only Ant and Dec had believed he was going to be fine; everyone else seemed shocked that it hadn't ended awfully.

He was shakier the second night, if that was even possible. He knew, if they weren't pointing out every stumble, the hate comments focused on that more than anything. Some people seemed to think it was laughable that he was presenting when his hands were trembling at his sides. They didn't seem to understand that his hands shook a lot nowadays, even when he wasn't battling under-confidence in front of millions of people.

And it was millions. The viewing figures on the first night had come close to the main show's total, an unheard-of record for ITV2 and not one Stephen particularly wanted to hold. He knew the surplus beyond their usual numbers had only tuned in to see how badly wrong it could go. It was that sort of curiosity that made the nerves worse on the next couple of nights. People were still waiting for the 'told you so' moment, when he finally stopped keeping up the façade.

He got all the way to Thursday before coming close to that. He wondered if it was psychological because he'd been watching the show, silently hoping that one act wouldn't get through to the final and inevitably they were sent straight through. He had nothing against the contestants, merely dreading having to sound out their name during the introduction to the show.

Not that he had long to worry about it. Ant and Dec were concluding the main show by the time he'd talked himself down from inevitable failure. He was back to taking steadying breaths, clenching his hands into fists as he stood backstage, listening to the crowd applauding one last time. The countdown in his own ear was even more off putting, pulling him closer and closer to reminding the audience of their latest finalists – to saying that name.

He'd been stumbling with the judges every night – it was always his biggest hurdle and no matter how many times he sat in his dressing room beforehand repeating 'it's time to talk to the judges,' nothing was making the stammered 'j' sound go away.

So, naturally, he wasn't thrilled that the first-place act that evening were called the Jumping Jacks.

The support in the room was getting easier to accept. It had taken him aback to start with because they were clapping louder than normal, the sound going on persistently every night before he started introducing the show. He'd never minded attention before; it was his job, after all; but ever since the accident it had been tempting to fade into obscurity, something that wasn't conducive to standing on a stage every evening.

He read the script in front of him steadily, hearing himself stumble a little more frequently than every other night but swallowing his immediate instinct to give up and pushing forward. Ant had already told him that it sounded worse in his own head when he'd mentioned the second show being worse than the first.

"Was it?" the older man had asked, looking genuinely confused and not as if he was pretending for Stephen's benefit. "It sounded the same to me, Stevie."

Stephen guessed it was the same effect as when he got stuck, when time started to drag out endlessly but only in his frame of reference. So, he kept himself calm and took it one word at a time, ignoring the crowd and the camera in front of him. The producers had told him he could afford to slow down anyway, not pushing the words out faster when they came easily, so he listened to their advice as well.

But then they were approaching the hard part and his tongue felt like sandpaper and he could feel his hands shake a little more and he instantly wondered how long it would take for someone on Twitter to point it out. Ideally, he wasn't going to give them anything else to mention but sometimes things didn't work out the way he wanted them to.