7.27 p.m.
Robbie just texted to say he’s three minutes away. Perfecto.
That’s funny. Mum’s just opened the front door, but it can’t be Robbie and I didn’t hear the doorbell.
I can hear Dad shouting! When did he get back?
And now Mum’s shouting too!
8 p.m.
Can’t stop crying. Feel like my whole world’s turned upside down.
“Go on, tell her!” Dad yelled at Mum when I came to the front door to see what was going on. He was clearly drunk. OK, so he’s been known to have a few pints, but this was different. Tonight he was drunk to the power of nine!
“Tell me what?” I asked, confused.
“Reg, you’re drunk. Stop being so childish!” Mum sounded panicky.
“Tell her!” he shouted again. He was swaying all over the place. “Or I will.”
“Tell me WHAT?” I repeated, noticing that the nosy neighbours from across the road were sweeping their curtains back to get a good look.
“Your mum’s been having an affair.”
I frowned, thinking he must have got it wrong. Mum just isn’t the type.
“Reg, please. No!”
He pointed at her, still swaying, and said, “Too late now. This is your bloody fault. You’re the one who told him to come back!”
“I didn’t. I swear to you,” she said. “I just thanked him for sending Remy that money.”
“And he suddenly jumps on a plane from Australia?” he screamed. “Do you think I’m stupid?!”
I clicked that they were talking about Godfather Alan.
“Dad, please,” I intervened. “If you’re talking about Alan, he’s been wanting to come back for ages. He didn’t say he was coming because he wanted to surprise you. That’s all.”
“Who told you that?” Dad demanded.
“Alan did. If I knew it was going to cause a problem, I’d have—”
Dad interrupted to bellow at Mum, “Getting Remy involved in your sordid little affair? Do you have no shame?”
“Alan would never do something like that!” Mum snapped. And she sounded so defensive, so heartfelt, that it made me nervous.
“Mum?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
There was a slight pause – a two-second window that helped me to prepare, allowed me to see the guilt on her face.
“I’m sorry, Remy,” she mumbled. My heart dropped.
“You’ll be sorry, all right,” Dad sneered. “And you can jump straight on that plane and piss off back to Australia with him, because Remy’s still MY daughter!”
“It’s not as simple as that,” Mum protested.
“Yes it is. We made a deal. And she’s not eighteen yet.”
Deal? Eighteen? I thought. WTF?
“But she’s only a few months off,” Mum argued. “She might as well do it now.”
“Do what now?” I demanded, starting to panic.
As I said that, a black Range Rover pulled up across the road. Robbie. How embarrassing – we must have looked like a family on The Jeremy Kyle Show. Bad enough for him to realize that it was not the time to get out of his car, anyway. Now I wish I’d run to his car and driven off with him. But I had to know the truth.
“Well?” I persisted. Mum and Dad were now dead silent, looking at each other awkwardly. “Do. What. Now?”
Dad’s eyes dropped to the pavement. Mum couldn’t look at me either – her eyes went everywhere except to my face.
“A test,” she said reluctantly.
“A test FOR…?”
Then Mum’s face softened. Became the most loving I’d ever seen it. She walked up to me and gently put her hands on my shoulders.
“Listen, Rem,” she said. “We’re not sure, but…”
“Alan thinks he could be your real dad,” Dad blurted out.
Just like that. My whole world crushed with a few little words.
Scan the code to watch a video
of Michelle Gayle reading from this book:
Friday 17 October – 10 a.m.
Haven’t felt like writing for ages. But today I finally got the urge. I think it’s because I’ve settled into my new routine. Well, almost – some things still need getting used to. Still find it hard to believe that I live here, for a start. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. Actually, I almost did when Robbie told me he didn’t want me to leave.
“I know I said you should stay for a few days, till you sorted your head out about your parents,” he said, “but I know I want to be with you. So what’s the point in you looking for a flat?”
There was no way I was going to live under the same roof as Mum. Not after she’d said she wanted to be with Alan. So I’d been searching for accommodation in my local papers and, I admit, cringing at what I could afford to rent on my crappy wages. Still, I had my pride. “That way there’s no pressure on you,” I told Robbie. “I don’t want you to feel like you HAVE to put me up.”
He ran his finger along my eyebrows and said, “That’s exactly why I like you, princess. You don’t expect anything. But trust me, I WANT you to stay. Because I’m crazy about you.” Then he kissed me. Not any old kiss. This was an MTV Movie Award-winning kiss. And no one – not Leonardo, nor Robert Pattinson – could have kissed me better. Then he took my hand and led me to the bedroom. That’s the first time we went all the way. It was perfect. His body, his touch, his EVERYTHING, and I’ve been here ever since.
Sometimes I think, Wow! I used to sit at home dreaming about moving out of the box bedroom at Mum and Dad’s, and look at me now – four bedrooms, four bathrooms and a massive garden with a pool, in a private road in the posh part of Essex. And all thanks to Robbie.
Even though it’s been three months now, I’m still careful about not breaking cups and plates, as if I’m in someone else’s house. And I suppose technically it is Robbie’s house – but he likes to say that it’s ours.
“Look at me now.” That’s what Deborah Gordon says at the start of The Entrepreneur, just before they show her huge glass building. Except she earned that building, and I suppose the only thing that makes me feel uncomfortable is knowing that I didn’t really earn this house – not through working, anyway. Although I am starting to realize that what the other wives and girlfriends (I hate saying WAGs now) tell me is true – I’ll earn it in other ways.
My new routine felt weird at first, but Robbie was right when he said I should give up work. Doing that two-hour journey to and from Kara’s, then the washing and cooking once I’d got home, only made me knackered all the time. What’s the point in that? Besides, it was the least I could do for him after all he’d done for me. Now he actually has a girlfriend who’s around when he finishes training so we can go for lunch or out shopping (if he doesn’t play golf with his team mates). And I’m not knackered any more, so I can concentrate on keeping the house how he likes it and learning how to cook as well as his mum. It was obviously the right thing to do, so I can’t work out why I miss Kara’s so much – the girls, the banter, even the Feminazi herself sometimes. Doh! I must need my head checked. Or probably just a little more time to adjust.
James and Kellie seem to need double, triple adjusting time. If I hear either of them say “You’ve changed” one more time, I think I’ll scream. James hardly phones and has said that he can’t make it every time I’ve invited him to watch Robbie play. And just when I finally have a credit card and the budget to buy whatever designer thing I like, Kellie never wants to come shopping with me.
“I haven’t got any money,” she said the last time I was going to Selfridges. So I offered to buy her something and she replied that she’d rather pay her own way in life – which was a definite dig.
Malibu says I should drop her because she’s jealous. But Malibu’s all right. She loves living with Gary in Surrey and has really thrown herself into the Chelsea WAG set. (I know I just said the “w” word but it saves so much time.) Surrey is bloody miles away, so I feel like I’ve lost Malibu as well – and I do
n’t fit in that well with the girls here. I’m trying v. hard, but Essex is like a separate country, with its own way to dress and behave and talk. So I’m really looking forward to seeing Malibu today. We’re taking Dad to lunch. Yay! I haven’t seen him for two whole weeks!
10.30 a.m.
Dad just called. He said Malibu had told him to prepare for a surprise and he wanted to know if I knew what it was. (He hates surprises.) I joked that Gary’s probably bought her a jumbo jet (thinking, To go with the Rolex watch, Cartier bracelet and Chanel handbag).
“Essex hasn’t stolen your sense of humour then,” Dad joked back.
“Nope. Still alive and kicking,” I replied.
He said he was going to look at a flat before he came for lunch. (Methinks three months on Uncle Pete’s sofa has done his head in.)
“Bye…” I said. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” he said before ringing off.
Before, I would rather have walked barefoot on burning hot coals than say anything so Disney – but I try to end all my calls to Dad like that now. I want him to know how much I appreciate him, because I learnt a lot when I was waiting for the results of that bloody DNA test: mostly that Dad is a full-blown saint. He has to be, to have forgiven Mum for what she did to him. She was the one who slept with Alan – his BEST FRIEND – during the weekend when Dad went away to have a break from all their arguing. She was the one who took Dad back and kept quiet when she realized she was pregnant. And she was the one who would probably have taken her secret to the grave if Alan hadn’t told her that he loved her and wanted to be with her, when I was ten.
If she’d been a good person, she’d have told Alan where to go. But she didn’t – she decided to tell Dad everything … even that I might not be his child. That’s why Dad left and went to live with Granny Bennet. And THAT’s why Grandma Robinson hated Alan so much. There I was thinking she was jealous about not being in control, when she had it right all along – Alan had poisoned the mind of her daughter. Mediator my ass!
I’d have a little more respect for Alan if he’d run off to Australia and STAYED there when Mum took Dad back. But no. Alan only left after making them sign a letter granting him a DNA test when I was eighteen. Imagine the pressure Dad must have been under – the bloody ticking bomb in his head – yet he still brought me up as his own, never once treating me differently. Never. EVER. Not even when I used to parade Alan’s half-birthday and birthday cards.
After it all came out back in July, it didn’t take long for me to work out that Dad hadn’t turned clean-up mad and accidentally thrown away my last half-birthday card. He’d had enough and snapped. So the one good thing to come out of this mess is the DNA test proving that I’m NOT Alan’s child but one half of Reg Archibald Bennet.
3.30 p.m.
Great news. I’m going to be an auntie! Malibu announced her surprise over lunch. She’s three months pregnant. Dad looked chuffed to bits. “Have you told your mum?”
“No chance,” Malibu replied.
“Too bloody right,” I agreed, glad she was sticking to her guns.
“Now, girls,” Dad said, and then he gave us his lecture about needing to forgive her. “Because, believe me, I wasn’t perfect,” he told us.
I was about to reply, “Yes, you bloody well were,” when Robbie phoned and interrupted. He couldn’t find a top he thought I’d washed – and when he realized I hadn’t put the washing in the machine yet, he started to have a go at me.
“I don’t ask for much. I mean, what the hell do you do with your time?” he asked.
Instantly I knew he mustn’t have been picked for the game tomorrow (he’s always in a right mood when that happens), so I told him I’d hurry home.
I got back about half an hour ago and he’s still sulking. He’s on the phone to his agent now, saying that he hates his manager. Personally I don’t think it’s that bad. He hasn’t been completely dropped for the game – he’s a substitute.
Oh well, I’ll be treading on eggshells for the rest of the night!
To cheer him up, I’ll try that shepherd’s pie recipe that his Mum dropped round yesterday.
Saturday 18 October – 9.30 a.m.
I pretended I was asleep while Robbie was on the phone to his mum, telling her my shepherd’s pie wasn’t half as good as hers. And I don’t know why – I’ve never even wanted to be a good cook – but a hot tear dropped out of the corner of my eye and rolled down my cheek.
I couldn’t bear to hear any more, so I tossed and turned to make him think I was waking up.
“Anyway, Mum, don’t worry, I’m just gonna show what I’m about when I get on the pitch,” he said, changing the subject.
She said something back and then he told her, “All right. See you for Sunday lunch, yeah?”
Oh no, not again, I thought. Not another chance for her to show off her perfect Sunday roast with the roast potatoes cooked just how Robbie likes them – in goose fat, crispy on top. So bloody what! The way she panders to him you’d think Robbie was her only child, but he isn’t – he has two lovely but seriously neglected sisters. And I don’t want to sound like I hate his mum, because I don’t, she’s actually a nice woman. But she has a big problem – she thinks the sun shines out of her son’s ass.
1 p.m.
Robbie’s dressed. I’ve still got the hump with him, and he’s still being a miserable git, but I have to admit that he looks absolutely top-drawer today. He’s wearing a black suit with a pink shirt and tie.
I’ve decided to wear the D&G polka-dot dress he bought me. You have to make a real effort when you go to watch home games because all the wives and girlfriends check you out – and they snigger behind your back if they think you’re wearing something cheap. It doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as it’s bloody expensive. This dress cost £800! Robbie got it for me to wear to the second home game of the season (he hated what I wore to the first one), and when he picked it out and I looked at the price I literally started to shake. I couldn’t believe it. But I’m used to it now.
“For fuck sake,” he’s just called up the stairs, “we ain’t got for ever, you know.”
I remember when he wouldn’t swear in front of me – that changed bloody quickly. (Except for the “c” word – he won’t say that when I’m around.)
I’d better go.
6.30 p.m.
Yay! Robbie scored!! Netherfield Park Rangers: 1, Everton: 0. Thank God. He looked miserable sitting on that bench during the match. Probably as miserable as I felt sitting there watching – I still don’t understand the first thing about football, so watching a game is even more boring if your boyfriend isn’t actually playing.
Will Travis, who is to Robbie what Kellie USED to be to me, was the one who nudged me when Ivan Oyenko, one of the Netherfield strikers, got injured. I looked over at the substitute’s bench and, sure enough, the manager was telling Robbie to get out of his tracky bottoms – he was substituting Robbie for Ivan with twenty minutes to go. My stomach churned because I knew how much Robbie wanted to score.
Will kept jumping up out of his seat and shouting, “Different class, mate! Different class!” whenever Robbie did something well. “It’s confidence, Rem,” he explained to me every time he sat back down. “That’s all he needs.”
When Robbie made a run back and tackled an Everton player, I thought it was a mistake because he’s supposed to score goals, but Will clapped and said, “He hasn’t changed a bit since the Rockingham Wanderers days.”
I took a deep breath, expecting Will to harp on about their time playing together (from the age of six to eleven in the same Essex Sunday League team, etc., etc.) but he spared me. Or should I say Darren Hargreaves (the Netherfield Park Rangers goalie) did, when he dropped the ball and it almost landed over the line.
Will clapped his hands to his head. “What a muppet!” he yelled. And Darren’s wife Anna, who had been quite nice to me up until then and happened to be sitting two rows in front, turned around and gave me
the filthiest look ever.
Seriously, I would rather have watched paint dry than seen an extra four minutes of the match, so I groaned when the extra-time board flashed up. It was still nil–nil at that point – and it didn’t look like it was going to change, either, until Robbie won a free kick. He decided to take it himself, and he struck it so hard that it whizzed past the Everton goalie and into the top of the net. Even I jumped to my feet that time. It was Robbie’s first goal of the season and it felt like a cloud had been lifted from over both of our heads.
When we got into the car to drive home, Robbie leant over and pecked me on the cheek. Will, who was sitting in the back seat, went, “Oi, you soppy git.” But Robbie told him I deserved it.
“I’ve been a right ‘c’ to live with lately,” he said. “Haven’t I, princess.”
“Um… You haven’t been that bad,” I lied.
Wednesday 22 October – 10 a.m.
Robbie’s gone to training and I’m bored. So when Terry’s girlfriend Paris called to ask if I wanted to go shopping with her, I said yes straight away. Paris isn’t as bad as I first thought. She’s still crazy, I admit – and she’s still majorly orange – but she’s the only one of the team’s wives and girlfriends who ever invites me shopping.
The rest of the girls prefer to shop alone. I reckon it’s because they want to make sure they buy the very latest designer gear before anyone else does. Someone like me still gets a kick out of being able to afford the clothes in the first place, but they’ve moved way past that. They get a kick out of having things first. And the smart ones put their names down on waiting lists months before things actually come into the shops.
Paris either has a solid-gold heart or thinks I’m no competition, but I don’t care. I’m just grateful that someone will hang out with me in this bloody foreign country of Essex, where everyone is style crazy and dressing down means wearing a full face of make-up, a French manicure and designer jeans or tracksuit – with REAL Ugg boots. A place where wearing Fuggs (fake Uggs), like I used to, will make people gawp as though you’ve just murdered someone.
Pride and Premiership Page 11