‘Dan dropped round,’ Roz said, ‘and left something for you.’ She gestured to the table. ‘And can you talk some sense into my daughter? I’m offering her three weeks in the UK and she’s refusing.’
‘I can’t,’ Lizzie said. ‘I promised I’d spend New Year with Vince.’
‘Then fly out after…’ Roz said, then shrugged, but I could tell she was hurting. ‘You’re too embarrassed to be seen with me?’
‘It’s not that.’ Lizzie squirmed.
They had come on a long way.
They still fought a lot, but Roz was right: Lizzie kept turning up and clearly wanted a mother. She was just struggling a bit with the new one she’d suddenly got. The thing was, Karan made things easier. It wasn’t just that she shamelessly bribed Lizzie with free foils, it was more she was so assured and girly and ahead of the game with it all that she put everyone at ease with the gay thing.
And I think I helped too.
Lizzie seemed a bit fascinated with me really, but, as Lisa had said, watching someone else’s train wreck of a life can be quite a relief at times. But Roz had told me that Lizzie thought I was a bit glamorous.
Me.
Anyway, glamorous or not, I’d been seventeen for a very long time—about ten years, in fact—so I knew that scary place well.
‘I was the same when I found out about your mum,’ I said, and Lizzie looked over. I sort of knew when I caught the plea in Karan’s eye that I had to get this right. ‘I was so embarrassed; I thought everyone would think that I was as well.’
‘I did,’ Lizzie said. ‘I thought you were her girlfriend.’
And my throat was so tight I didn’t even try to swallow, because that had been what I had dreaded except it didn’t seem so important now. Maybe I was growing up, but she was still seventeen.
‘Really?’ Karan pitched in, perhaps seeing I was struggling. ‘It never entered my head that Alice was.’ Only she wasn’t saying it to appease me, she was giving me the words to give to Lizzie.
We all want to fit in. Even when we rebel we want the rebels to like us.
And if Lizzie was, or one day found out she was, gay, then she’d got the best mum to help her deal with it. But my guess was that she was as straight as an arrow and petrified of what her friends thought. I tried to help her with that.
‘I’m the same with Lizzie.’ I shrugged and spoke to Karan. ‘She’s so not gay.’ Out of the corner of my eyes I watched Lizzie’s cheeks pink, and it wasn’t a blush, it was relief. I thought about saying more, I thought about elaborating, but it was safer to just leave it there—leave the conversation right out in the open—the best place for it.
They were waffling on, but I wasn’t really listening. There were the forms I had shredded. Well, not the forms. Dan hadn’t rescued them from the shredder and spent the last few weeks piecing them together—no, he’d got some fresh ones, several sets of spare ones, and what was more he’d filled one in as best he could.
For personal reasons I emigrated to Australia. For those same reasons, despite passing, I did not achieve the results I had hoped for in my A-Levels.
I have missed music; I have missed exploring my talent and I feel ready to embrace it again.
Dan had stuck a Post-it note on them.
Do it, Alice. x
I looked over to Roz, who was watching me.
‘I can’t.’
‘You can,’ Roz said. ‘Just.’
‘Just?’
‘If you sell the car, spend time practising, getting ready for the entrance exam, you can survive for three months.’
‘On what?’
‘On nothing.’ Roz winced. ‘You might need to do a couple of casual shifts at the paper.’
‘And then what?’
‘You get a job for a few months and save up for being a poor student.’
‘Do you want some foils?’ Karan had finished wrapping up Lizzie’s hair.
‘I can’t afford them,’ I said in a martyred voice. ‘Actually…’ I had a wonderful plan coming together. ‘If I get the Brazilian keratin treatment…’ Roz was frowning, but I rapidly thought this through. ‘If Karan can do that for me, I can manage my own hair. I’ll save a fortune on blow jobs.’ (That’s what we call them.)
‘Foils or nothing.’ Karan smiled. ‘For free.’ And I guess she was thanking me for my words to Lizzie. ‘Seeing as you’re going to be a poor student.’
Ooh, I liked being poor.
Free foils. I bounced over like an eager puppy. All was okay—my friends would look after me!
‘If we put in a few at the part line…’ Karan was examining my hair ‘… just to take the edge off the roots.’ She was going through my hair like a mother monkey, like she was searching for nits. ‘And some around your hairline…’
‘Fine.’
It was free; she could do what she liked.
‘It will take a few weeks,’ Karan said, ‘and I’ll add more when I can. I’ll try and save a bit of product as I go—it’s going to take a while.’
And then I watched her squirt orange into a bowl and then she measured out two inches of a colour I don’t like that was called red—and where was the lovely pale blue peroxide? Why was she slicing great long strips of silver off when she was only supposed to be doing my roots?
‘You can’t afford to be blonde any more,’ Karan said.
I felt my stomach tighten. ‘Then I’ll be a brunette.’
‘Fine.’ Karan shrugged. ‘But I’m not doing it.’
‘I’ll do it myself.’
‘This,’ Karan said, ‘is a one-time offer. I’ll take you back to your roots.’ She smiled. ‘For free.’
‘Slowly?’
Karan nodded and I watched as she picked up a length of strawberry-blonde. I watched as the comb weaved through the sandy shade and picked up a few strands and laid them in foil and I felt sick—I swear, I felt sick as I watched her plaster it in red.
Lizzie didn’t even dash off when her free foils were done. I could see Roz shining with delight when her moody bitch of a daughter flopped on the sofa and asked for a drink.
Just a normal family, really (these days).
‘I thought you were doing this slowly,’ I said when Karan’s little tub ran out and she mixed up some more.
‘There are shades of red—lots and lots of shades of red,’ Karan explained impatiently. ‘I’m the colour technician!’ So she squirted out a nice safe caramel-looking colour and then I felt my throat dry as she added what was surely three inches of red while Roz sliced off more foil strips.
We sat for what seemed like ages. Roz and Lizzie were talking; Karan was painting her toenails. And while in the scheme of things I was just getting my hair done, for me this was huge. Karan refused to let me wash it off in the shower. Instead she did it over the kitchen sink and then she dried it off with a diffuser.
My knee was starting to bob up and down—I just wanted to see.
They were all cooing and nodding and murmuring about a great colour match, as Karan smeared dollops of product through my curls and finally I was allowed to look in the mirror.
I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light (it was dark by now), and I stared at my new reflection.
Think Ronald McDonald meets Shirley Temple.
The funny thing was this time around I kind of liked it.
Sixty-Three
From: Nicole Hunter ([email protected])
To: [email protected]
Subject: DELETE THE SECOND YOU READ THIS AND CAREFUL HOW YOU REPLY
Hi Alice,
Please don’t reply to this. Paul doesn’t check my emails or anything, but you know how paranoid I can be.
I haven’t been hearing from you much at all lately and I miss you a lot and can’t stand the thought of you not coming to my wedding.
I know we weren’t getting on so well before I left, and I’m sorry if I was moody—I know I was a pain but I had a lot of trouble at work and I can’t tell you how re
lieved I am to have left the Australia office.
I know you won’t believe this, I KNOW how old and sleazy he is, but a few months back, when I was in a bad place—well, I won’t go into detail, but Ice Pick Man and I…
I wasn’t with Paul then. In fact, we met just after that. It’s just been hell, fronting up to work each day since then. He’s never made mention of it, I just couldn’t stand working there and seeing him every day knowing what I let him do to me.
I wish I’d spoken to you about it at the time. I was so ashamed, though, I didn’t know how.
Please email me or, better, pick up the bloody phone when I ring.
I miss you.
Nicole
I wish she had been able to speak to me.
Or that I’d been able to speak to her.
There’s so much I want to say.
Do these men just know when we’re feeling like crap? Do we have some invisible sign that only bastards can see?
I could see now how she ran straight into a relationship with Paul. I don’t know that Paul’s a bastard, but I know Nic deserves better than him, and I am honestly not talking about money.
You went straight into a relationship with Hugh. I can almost hear Big Tits’ response if I talk to her about this, except I know Hugh’s not a bastard. For him, I kept up my façade too well—maybe his guard was down?
Maybe he was so confused about Gemma that he didn’t see the nice guys’ invisible sign that should have warned him this woman was trouble.
From: Alice
To: [email protected]
I’m sorry I’ve been quiet. I’m honestly not sulking. I’ve had some stuff…
Then I stop writing and I hit ‘Delete’.
I don’t know what to say. It’s not something I can put in an email and not something I can say on the phone. I don’t know, even if she was here, that I could tell her.
That I even want her to know.
She’s one of my best friends, yet I don’t want to tell her, so I fire back an email, taking care not to hit ‘Reply’ and making no mention of Ice Pick Man, just in case Wanker Paul checks it (I’m quite sure he does). I just say that I’m sorry for being a moody bitch too, and always glad to hear from her.
I don’t want to tell her.
‘You don’t have to tell anyone anything you don’t want to. Apart from me.’ Lisa gives her pussycat smile that means she’s just made a joke and I find myself smiling back, but she clarifies, because there are so many things I clearly don’t get. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’
Instead of dwelling on Nicole, though, I talk about my decision to cram for my music entrance exam and my hope of studying further.
It was going to be, I told Lisa, the hardest three months of my life.
But since when did she agree with me?
‘I think you’ve already done the hardest bit, Alice.’ She gave me a brief upturn of her lips. ‘And you survived it.’
And she wasn’t talking about Dad or Hugh, or my sort of breakdown, or the bank or the job loss or…
She was talking about Lydia.
Okay, that should sustain me, I decided as I paid the annoying, perpetually bubbly receptionist.
I would do this for Lydia; I would practise and practise and practise some more—and it did sustain me, for a few days.
Then dark clouds gathered and I took fifty minutes off to prepare two-minute noodles and pore through endless emails about Nicole’s shagging wedding. I was an expert in procrastination and the wedding proved an excellent distraction from advancing my future. She had a coffee theme. I thought at first she was joking. I truly did.
I fired back witty one-liners, or words like latte, cappuccino or frappucino.
And, bloody hell, suddenly the bridesmaids were to be dressed on that theme.
Yes, I knew I should practise more.
I had D-Day coming up soon after all.
Do it for Lydia!
This was my chance, my one chance I had fought so hard for, and I should practise.
And I often did.
Hour upon hour I did practise. Just not enough.
I saw some improvement, but I was a ‘mature student’ (bloody cheek), and I would be getting in on my ability rather than my results—I had to offer more than a technically correct piece.
There was one piece in my head, one piece that maybe I could play well enough. It was the piece I would rather curl under the duvet and hide than attempt again.
I hid under the covers for way too many hours.
Roz would come home from work—and she loved me and she wanted me to do well—but she was scared for me too.
She had the pep talk written for when I failed.
And my hair went redder, thanks to Karan, but Lisa never commented. She didn’t comment either when, red in the face, I handed over a copy of the picture of Little Alice. She just clipped it into my (rather thick) file and started talking about my father.
And nothing got any better.
Six weeks into my three-month retreat I knew that I’d left it too late.
‘January’ from Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons was the only thing that could possibly save me and I still hadn’t looked at the sheet music.
‘I can’t do it, Bonny.’ I sat on her sofa and she offered me wine and I said yes. ‘There’s no way I can play it. I haven’t practised it—I haven’t looked at it for ten years. I should be working. I should just give up now and get a job.’
‘Alice.’ She held my hand and as always she supported me. ‘Do you want me to speak to Lex?’
I shook my head; I had let so many people down I couldn’t stand to let him down too.
‘I put in an application at the supermarket,’ I said. ‘Look, it won’t be for ever…’
‘Just till you get your confidence back,’ Bonny said. ‘Alice, you’ve tried. I am so proud of you for trying, you’ve given it your best. You know I’m always here.’
I hadn’t given it my best, though. ‘Maybe I should give it one last shot?’ I swung back to hope. For a second I danced in my head, for a tiny minute I glanced at those examiners hearing my piece, hearing my soul, and then I turned to Bonny. ‘If I give it everything, I’ve got nothing to lose…’
‘Whatever you decide,’ she said. ‘Just don’t build up your hopes.’
I slept on her sofa and I felt like shit the next morning.
I always felt like shit after a night with Bonny.
As Dan had felt like shit after a night with me.
I called Dan and he came over, bearing double-shot coffee. He sat with me as, shaking, I told him how little I had actually practised. How the only piece that could really sway things was ‘January’—that, in the past, I had worked on it so hard that maybe, just maybe…
‘Play it,’ Dan said, ‘and let’s hear what we’re dealing with.’
I was shocking.
No kidding—it’s a lovely piece but there are some challenging bits (remember the hand crossovers?), and I stuffed it all. It isn’t even that hard, but it was one piece that I had excelled at and now I clearly didn’t.
‘I can’t.’ I shook my head at the hopelessness of it all.
‘Play something else,’ Dan said. (That was how bad it was.)
‘I don’t know anything else well enough.’ I screwed up my forehead (easily now my Botox had long since worn off). ‘Not at that standard.’
‘But you play other pieces so well.’
He didn’t understand but he tried.
I sell on emotion—that is what I do best—and, quite simply, I could no longer convey it. Even if I did, I was so far behind technically…
‘How often did you used to practise?’ Dan’s voice broke into my despair.
‘Every night.’ It was useless; it was hopeless; I wasn’t really listening to Dan. I knew I’d left it too late.
‘That piece?’ Dan pushed. ‘How long at night did you practise it for?’
‘An hour.’ There had b
een other pieces I had had to work on, but ‘January’ had always got an hour. ‘At least—maybe even two.’
‘Let’s call it an hour,’ Dan said, ‘because you have played it to standard.’
‘Not in a decade.’
‘Seven hours a week,’ Dan said and he still didn’t get it.
‘Sometimes I just played it for me.’
‘Okay…’ He took a breath. ‘Let’s say ten hours on that piece a week.’
‘Five hundred and twenty hours.’
He stared at my bleached skin. ‘But you already know it, so say four hundred.’
I had no idea what he was talking about.
‘If you work for ten hours a day and take one day off a week, then in six weeks you’ll be at three hundred and sixty…’
‘You can’t play for ten hours a day.’ He did not have a fucking clue.
‘Says who?’
Said everyone.
Roz had been reading a book on psychology and was worried I was tipping into mania (I had a peek at that chapter and rather hoped that I was—at least I’d get a lot done). Bonny—well, Bonny said that she was seriously worried now, that I should just let it go. And do you know who else didn’t think it was such a good idea?
Go on; guess who else wasn’t too keen on me giving it my absolute best?
From: Nicole Hunter ([email protected])
To: [email protected]
Subject: Worried
Alice
I don’t like the sound of this. I’ve really given it some thought. If you do get in, you’ve got three maybe four years of study and then what? You’ll be over thirty and just starting out. Maybe you should think about getting that job—how nice it will be to get on top of your finances—I know I’d love to have no debts. It’s scary the loan Paul’s taking on for the coffee shop—I am thinking of cutting down my hours to part-time to help out—early days yet. Anyway, enough of my stuff, this is about you. You have the chance for a clean slate—please think carefully.
I know you are probably thinking this is because I want you to come to my wedding—and, yes, of course I do, but it is not about that, Alice. This is about you.
Putting Alice Back Together Page 22