by Lotte Daley
She took a few steps back, clutching the tabloid protectively to her chest.
‘And another thing, how am I now supposed to get Jack away from her? How do you expect me to compete with a world-famous actress like Jessica Hilson with her dazzling white teeth and perfectly styled hair, when the whole world and their mother is now going to see your photo album of the two of us as bridesmaids, gap-toothed and podgy, at Aunty Fiona’s wedding back in 1997!’
‘Oh …’ Janice says, looking at her feet. Richard flicks his fag out on to the driveway.
‘What’s so wrong with that, Katie?’ Richard says. ‘You can’t have been all that old, the media aren’t going to chastise a teenager for having dodgy style sense now are they?’
Janice rolls her eyes in Richard’s direction. ‘You so don’t know anything, do you?’ She sighs, as though he was the most ignorant human being to ever walk this earth. ‘Don’t you read the style section of London Lowdown?’
‘Can’t say I do …’ he says, checking his reflection in the wing mirror.
‘Well, trust me, bubble perms and puffball dresses, although fashion statements of their time, are not in vogue any more.’
‘Were they ever?’ I ask. ‘But see, this is my point – I am going to be crucified in the press and it’s all your bloody fault!’ I spit at her.
Richard places his arm around my shoulders and squeezes me tight. I shrug him off.
‘Listen, Janice,’ Richard addresses my sister with the same twinkly eyes he uses on women he fancies, ‘why don’t you go on inside and pop the kettle on for a cup of tea?’
‘Milk one sugar, right?’ she says bashfully, cheeks ablaze. I always knew she fancied him.
‘Yes, darling,’ he coos, knowing he’s successfully wrapped her around his little finger, ‘and how about you pour a little shot of vodka for your stressed-out big sister?’
‘How about you just give me the bottle?’ I mutter under my breath.
‘No problem,’ she says, as she flashes him a lipglossed smile and wiggles her bottom towards the house.
‘The girl’s shameless,’ I say, shaking my head.
‘And cute,’ Richard adds, as Janice throws a lust-filled look over her shoulder.
As Janice opens the door, my mother Jo waltzes out towards the car, swinging her brightly coloured pashmina over her shoulders, long necklaces with jangly bits clashing against one another, making tinkling sounds. I open the car door and stand up, ready for the full force of her maternal bosom; her long brown curls bounce against her shoulders as she thrusts herself upon me for a smothering hug.
‘Darling!’ she says, relaxing her embrace. She holds me by the elbows at arm’s length, the way parents do when they haven’t seen you in a while and want to measure how well you have fared without their home-cooked shepherd’s pies.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she cries.
‘Jack dumped me!’ I throw my head back for effect and make loud gulping sounds as the comforting presence of my mother makes me cry big salty tears. Just seeing Mum again in this time of extreme crisis brought me back to 1988, aged four, with a skinned knee from playing leapfrog on the gravelled drive with Nicola Baxter from two doors down. Her mum owned a beauty salon in the village. Beauty being debatable, seeing as every time Mum goes for a makeover ahead of any family occasion, she always returns with so much rouge on her cheeks and cobalt-blue eye shadow you could easily mistake her for a transvestite. She cocks her head to one side, processing my tale of woe.
‘He did it in a text message!’ I blub. ‘He left me for a Hollywood actress with supermodel looks!’ I wail and launch myself back into her arms.
‘Darling,’ she sighs, ‘I know it feels like he’s left you for a supermodel, it always does, but I’m sure that’s not the case.’ She strokes my hair as I stand pitifully in the driveway, wiping my nose on my jumper sleeve.
‘I’m sure she has just as much cellulite as you do, perhaps even more!’
‘Oh God!’ I groan loudly as my knees buckle. Richard grabs hold of one arm and my mother takes the other.
‘Let’s get her inside,’ he says wisely, ‘we don’t know who may be watching …’
‘What do you mean by that, dear?’
‘The paparazzi! They’ve been camped outside her house in Bethnal Green since yesterday trying to get her side of the story. Katie isn’t being a drama queen, Mrs Lewis.’
‘For once,’ Janice sniggers, as she appears in the doorway, holding a shot of vodka. ‘It’s actually all true.’
The colour drains from my mother’s face as she realizes the gravitas of my mini drama.
‘Here, looks like you need it more,’ Janice says, as she passes the little plastic shot glass towards Mum.
‘I don’t want that!’ She pulls her ‘insulted’ face, as she snatches the shot and pours it on the flowerbed.
We go inside and position ourselves around the breakfast table and drink tea. I pour myself a triple vodka.
‘Our Katie,’ Janice announces in a stupid newsreader voice, ‘has made a terrible mistake in her choice of man … chiselled muscleman Jack Hunter has only gone and upped sticks and left her for size zero Hollywood actress Jessica Hilson!’
‘Wasn’t she the lead in Forever in my Pocket with Will Ferrell?’ Mum queries.
‘The very one.’
‘What’s she doing with your Jack?’
‘I wish I knew!’ I say. ‘He’s not told me anything!’
‘That’s right …’ Richard adds, ‘although if we want to know the latest gossip on Jack Hunter, a quick Google search throws up some impressive results …’
‘I know where he is based on which magazine has been stalking them with a long lens,’ I reply.
‘I never liked him anyway,’ Mum furrows her brows. ‘His eyes were too close together.’
‘So, Mum,’ Janice says gleefully, ‘there’s, like, a very good chance that the Daily Mail will be camped outside our front door in the flowerbeds trying to get shots of us all tomorrow morning! How exciting is that!’
‘It’s not exciting at all, Janice,’ I hiss, as Mum looks ready to collapse with shock. The Daily Mail to Mum is what Sizzle Stars is to Janice and Prada is to Jack. Our neighbours in Oxfordshire were even worse for snooping than the ones in Lauriston Gardens. If I thought a couple of deckchairs and a cheese and pickle sandwich was a problem in London, I knew that the residents of Little Glove would be ten times worse. There would be the local press for one, then the regional and so on and so forth. But that wouldn’t be the worst of it. Oh no! The gaggle of middle-aged busybodies who darned socks in their sleep and could recite passages of the Bible and then sugar lace them on to the tops of cakes were even worse than Mrs Bellamy and her cronies. We’d be confronted by a senior crowd fuelled by curiosity and organic jam tarts whenever we went anywhere in the village for the foreseeable future. We had lived in Little Glove for twenty-three years, but because my nan hadn’t been born and raised there like every other member of the geriatric generation, we were still considered newcomers, and as every newcomer to a village knows, getting into the clique is no mean feat.
‘Peter!’ my mother says breathlessly, and as if by magic, my father appears by her side. He can’t see a thing without his bifocal glasses, thick as milk-bottle bottoms, which means his other senses overcompensate, resulting in extrasensory perceptive hearing. My dad communicates with a series of grunts and hand gestures that only my mother can understand.
‘Paint the fence! Wash the windows! Mow the lawn!’ she squeals, whilst fanning her face with the dish towel. ‘We’re going to be famous!’
Richard, Janice and I all throw looks of sheer horror at one another. My mother, however, has scuttled over to the phone and, diary in hand, is booking us all in for trims and blow-dries down at Betty’s Salon, at their earliest convenience.
‘Christ,’ I say to Richard, ‘fag time.’
We push our chairs out and retreat into the back garden. Swinging back and forth
in the afternoon spring sunshine on the summer bench, I listen out for any suspicious rustling from the holly bushes. Nothing. Not a tweet.
‘If Betty Baxter gives me a wonky fringe again I will positively kill her,’ I laugh.
We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine and watching my father clamber up and down a ladder painting anything and everything so it looked shiny and new for when the media showed up. My mother, as mad as she was, was extremely house-proud and set about giving our house an industrial-strength super clean. I kept well out of the way. My head was already splitting from all the red wine Danielle and I put away the night before, and alongside the dramatic cupboard slamming, huffing, puffing and moaning about the state of our house (which was perfectly fine, trust me) it didn’t help that I was constantly thinking about Jack.
This was a zillion times worse than when I broke up with Matthew Robinson, aged eighteen. Back then I had no clue what girl he might have been with when we broke up, or what he was doing. There was no Facebook and therefore no internet stalking could take place. There were no updates on the progress of his day on a newsfeed nor were there any tagged photographs detailing his nights out.
The Little Glove Community Centre on a Friday night gave me every opportunity to check up on him, with his gelled hair slicked back and his designer gear with the massive logos that shimmered in the darkness of the dance hall. He could have been shagging any one of the girls I regularly saw him with in the months after we broke up. One minute he was with Tracey, a girl who had mastered how to style her fringe into swirly little patterns that stuck without movement down the side of her face, and the next he was with Debbie from the year below, with her ginger hair and her platform shoes. Nicola Baxter, my childhood partner in crime, and I would stand in the corner eating strawberry laces and necking vodka from the quarter bottles we’d snuck in our knickers. When we’d got the Dutch courage, we’d strut over to where Matthew was standing with his equally moody and brooding friends, and dance like strippers in a vain attempt to get their attention. Sometimes they’d throw a grunt and a nod of approval in our direction and as soon as we got that, we told them to piss off, spun on our high heels and strutted off.
‘Prick tease!’ Matthew and his friends would shout in unison after us. We’d laugh until we cried and then share a packet of cigarettes behind the bowling club before spraying ourselves with Impulse and chewing two packets of Wrigley’s to convince our parents that we’d remained on the Cola Pops all night. Those were the uncomplicated days of dating where the only sneaking about we did involved back doors, midnight returns and a bag stuffed full of make-up and flimsy outfits. I can’t imagine Matthew Robinson off gallivanting with Hollywood starlets. The last I heard of him, he worked for British Gas and drove a Ford Fiesta. He’s the kind of man who thinks he’s grand for holidaying in a caravan.
Eventually, Richard and I had eaten enough Battenberg to satisfy a small coffee morning, and had exhausted ourselves on the whys and wherefores of Jack’s behaviour. I stood next to his sports car as he sat in the driving seat, revving up the engine.
‘See how this week pans out, darling, I’ll be back for you in a couple of days,’ he purred. He loved being the knight in shining armour, and right now, I totally needed someone to just charge in and take control of my life.
‘I will report back on the haircut,’ I said gravely. Richard winked at me, blew an air kiss and drove off down the driveway and into the sunset. I stood there looking after him, hugging myself for warmth.
‘Brrrr,’ I said to myself – there was a chill in the air. I heard the gravel crunch as my sister walked up to join me. She looked at me with her puppy-dog eyes before wrapping her arms around my shoulders and giving me a hug.
‘You soppy thing,’ I playfully pushed her. She smiled gently and we walked arm-in-arm into the house, which had been disinfected to within an inch of its life and now stank of lavender-scented candles. I grabbed a packet of paracetamol for my headache and steered myself away from the drinks cabinet to go up to my old bedroom.
‘Night, Janice,’ I said, as I walked up the stairs. She smiled at me before heading off in the direction of the television.
I loved the safety of my old bedroom, and as I creaked open the door and peeked round the corner, I was pleased to see it was exactly the same as when I’d left home nearly four years ago, and had remained so with each fleeting visit since. It was almost like a shrine in honour of me, the eldest child who had absconded to the big smoke of London. My mother never tired of telling anyone who’d listen that I was a successful, hard-nosed city type. She made me sound like Hanna Frost, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t know why she makes such a fuss about the fact I only come home for family dos, because when I was living at home full time she never listened to a word I said anyway. She was forever muttering on about the state of the house, my dad’s piles, her piles and playing dominoes with Betty Baxter, before coming home and recounting tales about how wonderfully Nicola Baxter was doing in her two-up two-down semi in Little Glove that she shared with her boyfriend. This, apparently, is what I should be aiming for, before I become too old to marry someone suitable and end up turning into a bitter and twisted, childless, cat person. Methinks she’s been reading too much Bridget Jones. According to Mum, Janice was always out ‘gallivanting’ and my father barely lifted his head from the depths of his newspaper to communicate with her. He only put it down to fix something or other in the house at Mum’s request. Never mind, I thought, as I wrapped myself in my dressing gown. Photos of Nicola Baxter and me mucking about on the last day of term were pinned up on my cork noticeboard and old toys Matthew Robinson had won for me at the local fair sat happily on my shelves. I gently thumb-stroked a picture of us in a photo booth, tongues out and silly grins on our faces.
Nostalgia took over as I pressed play on my ghetto blaster and listened to an old Take That album. As the sounds drifted up and around my bedroom, I flopped on to my single bed and snuggled under the duvet. Oh, to be a teenager again, where my biggest worry was the spot on the end of my nose and whether my right boob really was bigger than my left. I drifted off into a deep sleep, clutching my teddy bear, as Mark Owen, my favourite member of the group, warbled ‘Babe’. I thought only of Jack, and imagined him sitting beneath my window sill, tears in his eyes, singing ‘Babe’ to me. I would launch myself from the window and into his arms, narrowly escaping death by trellis jarred in abdomen. A single tear trickled down my nose and landed on the pillow.
LOVE IN A TEACUP! screamed the Sun newspaper, in reference to Jack’s bartender job in Primrose Hill. I rubbed my eyes and surveyed the headlines of this morning’s tabloids as I stood half asleep at the breakfast table in front of a scene reminiscent of the very first moment I discovered Jack’s affair. Just like they do on TV, Mum had fanned out the morning papers across the breakfast table. Janice leant over the Mirror, which screamed:
SEX BOMB JESSICA HILSON IN MARRIAGE SHOCKER!
‘What!’ I squeaked. ‘He’s MARRIED?’
‘Calm down, dear, he’s not married,’ Mum said. ‘It’s the press sensationalizing the fact they were spotted dithering with intent outside Tiffany’s,’ she said, matter-of-fact. My heart leapt out of my mouth and into my cornflakes at the thought that my Jack could be on the point of making Jessica Hilson an honest woman! The pair of them intentionally scouting for engagement rings before skipping up the nearest church aisle was my ultimate Jack-themed nightmare.
‘Do you think this means he’s planning on popping the question?’ Janice asked, wide-eyed.
The next headline from the Star screamed salubriously:
THREE-WAY LOVIN’ FOR JESSICA AS SHE KEEPS MATRAVERS AND HUNTER DANGLING
‘Seems as though Miss Hilson has yet to give Italian guy the heave-ho,’ Janice said, as she spooned cereal into her gob. ‘Give me Fabio Matravers over Jack Hunter any day!’ she sang, as Mum busied herself with making cups of tea. Even Dad had succumbed to the soap oper
a unfolding within the family home and had lowered his newspaper to fully concentrate on our conversation.
I retreated into the back garden for a cigarette.
‘It’s not even eight o’clock,’ Dad harrumphed, as he came and stood beside me with a cigar in his mouth, ‘and they’re screeching at the top of their lungs. Normally, I get at least an hour or so of quiet. Janice can usually barely string a sentence together at this time of the morning.’ He sighed and lit up the cigar.
Dad only smoked cigars when something important happened, like a birth or his football team scoring a winning goal. Neither had happened since Janice was born, so this must be an occasion of sorts.
‘What’s with the cigar?’ I queried, staring at him.
Ignoring my question, he said gravely, ‘Sometimes in life we have to take these things on the chin. Hold your head up high, you’re a Lewis, my girl!’ He championed me with a shoulder squeeze as though I was about to step into the ring with Mike Tyson. I suppose I was in a way. Ready to fight for my dignity, which had been cruelly stolen the moment Richard flung me over his shoulder and I flashed my pants to the world. Dad sighed deeply.
And that was the end of the conversation. There seemed to be a ‘moment’ passing between us, and just as I was about to acknowledge that, my phone trilled loudly.
Richard flashed up on the screen.
‘I have you a proposition of sorts,’ he wittered down the phone.
‘Hang on,’ I said, as my dad turned and walked inside. I could have had a father/daughter communication breakthrough and Richard had gone and ruined it. It would take another cataclysmic family drama of epic proportions to evoke that level of emotion from my father again. I waggled a finger in my ear, and listened to what Richard had to say.
‘Magenta has called you into an emergency summit at Poets Field asap, so I’m sending a car for you now,’ he said, breathlessly.