Shit.
Next thing, there about eight kids all clustered around me, demanding to know whether or not I’m your one off the telly?
‘Go on,’ says one. ‘Take off the baseball hat and sunglasses till we can get a decent look at your face!’ says another one, while a third, who can’t be more than about eight, whips out a camera phone, shoves it right under my nose and starts taking photos.
“Cos if you really are Jessie Woods,’ he says cheekily, ‘then I’m emailing this to the Daily Star. Might make a few quid.’
Which serves me right of course. I should have remembered that round here the only safe, harassment-free time to walk down this street is in pitch darkness, preferably between the hours of 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., when it’s a kid-free zone. They really should have a sign up, warning people.
‘Leave the poor girl alone, you ignorant shower of pups!’ says Mrs Foley, shooing them away with her apron. ‘How would you like it if you got the sack and then your fella dumped you, all in the one week?’ Then she realises that I’m still standing right beside her and claps her hand over her mouth, mortified. ‘Oh, Jessie love, I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t embarrass you, pet. It’s just that it’s been all over the news ever since yesterday. About you not going out with that good-looking businessman any more, what’s-his-name.’
‘Imagine getting dumped and the first thing your ex does is go running off to the papers,’ sneers a third neighbour who’s just joined us. She’s leaning on a yard brush and has a perm so tight that it’s almost as if someone poured a tin of baked beans over her head. I haven’t the first clue who she is, but she seems to know more about my own private life than I do myself. Sam and his bloody, bollocking press release included. He warned me he was going to do it, ‘Put a full stop to this,’ as he’d said during our last, nightmarish phone call, so I knew it was inevitable. But it still somehow feels like someone’s physically taken a shovel to my insides. Right. Officially had enough. Got to get outta here.
‘Sorry, but I’m afraid I really should get going…’ I say lamely in an attempt to make a run for it. No such luck though.
‘You should have married that Sam Hughes when you had the chance, Jessie,’ pontificates Mrs Brady. ‘Then at least you’d have a few quid to show for yourself. Or you could have had a baby with him, then maybe he’d think twice about running to the press to tell everyone it’s all off with you. Plus you’d have the child maintenance coming in every week, which would have come in very handy, now that you’re jobless…’
‘The secret to a long and happy marriage’, says Baked Bean Head, leaning on her yard brush, ‘is that the man has to be scared shitless of the woman. They only really respect you when they’re completely terrified. You must have gone far too easy on him, Jessie…’
OK, it’s at this point I officially can’t take any more. ‘I’m really sorry, ladies, but I have to get going.’
They turn to glare at me, like I’m being rude to just walk away when they’re all busy throwing out their pearls of relationship advice, but at this point I’m beyond caring. I take a deep breath and turn into our tiny front yard. And almost fall over when I see the state of it. I’m not messing, there are actual statues of stone angels blowing into trumpets dotted around the tiny grassy bit, the original agony in the garden. Trying my best to keep my stomach from dry-retching at the very sight of it, I knock firmly on the front door.
And wait.
And wait again.
A kafuffle from the TV room inside, followed by a clearly audible row about who’s going to get up and answer the door. Which is followed by another glacier-slow wait before the door is eventually opened. By Joan, my stepmother. Dressed, and I wish I were joking here, pretty much like Cher on the Reunion tour. It’s almost scary the way everything matches; her suit is deep purple and so are the nails, lipstick and shoes. With, the final touch, tights the colour of Elastoplast. Honest to God, there are mothers of brides out there who’d blush to be seen in this get-up.
‘Jessica!’ she says, with a horrified, icy smile so fixed that it almost makes her look embalmed. That’s another thing about her; she’s the only person in the northern hemisphere who calls me Jessica. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here? It’s not Christmas Eve, is it?’
‘Emm, I did phone to say I was calling today, do you not remember, Joan? About an hour ago? You told me to be sure to call after Britain’s Got Talent but before American Idol.’
Now coming from any other family, that might sound pig rude, but the thing about these people, certainly when I lived with them, was that their lives entirely revolved around the TV schedules. And clearly that hasn’t changed.
‘Oh, did I? I really have to start writing things down. I also have to have a drink. Right then,’ she sniffs, looking down at me like I’m about as welcome as a fungus. ‘Seeing as you’re here, I suppose you’d better come through to the drawing room.’
By which I’m assuming she means the TV room, which is the only reception room in the house, apart from the tiny kitchen. But then that’s Joan for you, everything gets talked up. In fact, I’m surprised she doesn’t refer to the minuscule patch of grass in the front garden with the ludicrous gakky stone angels as the ‘meditation and contemplation’ area.
So in I go and am instantly struck by just how garish the place looks. So utterly different to when it was just me and Dad living here. The hallway, which is minute, dark and poky, now has a patterned cream Axminster carpet with loud polka-dot wallpaper in pink, blue and green. The overall effect of which is to make me feel like I’m trapped inside a bottle of prescription pills. No trendy, ‘less is more’ minimalism going on here; this has turned into the house that taste forgot. Joan catches me staring gobsmacked into the kitchen, which is straight ahead of us, and completely misinterprets my dropped jaw.
‘Oh yes,’ she waves airily, brightening a bit. ‘You’ve noticed the dining area. Elegant, isn’t it? I’ve just had the vinyl flooring redone in liquorice and marshmallow.’
This, by the way, would be Joan-speak for ‘black and white’. Now while that might sound reasonably tasteful, factor in the bright peach fake festoon blinds in oceans of nylon draped over windows that you can barely see out of, the net curtains are that thick, along with peach stripy wallpaper and you’ll get the picture. Dear Jaysus, it looks like a Mississippi paddleboat from Mark Twain’s time washed up in a tiny little kitchen in Whitehall. Put it this way, you wouldn’t want to be sitting there with a minging hangover. Gak, gak and gak again.
Anyway, to the right of us is the TV room, nerve centre of the whole house, where I wouldn’t be surprised if they all eat, drink and sleep rather than, perish the thought, actually miss a TV show. Joan flings the TV room door open, says, ‘Girls? Finish up your takeaways and watch your language, we’ve a visitor,’ and I follow her. Into the portal of hell. May God help me.
‘Well, well, well,’ says Maggie looking at me with her stony, dead, grey eyes. ‘Look who took a wrong turn on her way to the dole office.’
Pure, vintage Maggie; she always fancied herself as a bit of a one-woman Morecambe and Wise Christmas special.
‘What the FUCK are you doing here?’ is Sharon’s stunned opener. ‘And would you look at the state of you? Jeez, you look like you’re on life support.’
‘So it’s the traditional warm, friendly welcome then,’ I fire back at them, attack always being the best form of defence with my stepsisters, as I learnt a long, long time ago.
It’s been eleven years since I’ve set foot in this room and I’m astonished at how little they’ve changed. You should just see the pair of them. The Borgias on a bad day. They don’t even budge when I come in, but then lethargy was always pretty much the theme of this house. Maggie is sprawled out on what still appears to be her favourite armchair, which is positioned so that it faces the TV exactly head on, with a cider tin clamped to one hand and a forkful of takeaway Indian curry in the other. And if pulling the tabs off tins was a recognised Olym
pic sport, I would now be saying, ‘Ta-da…Let me introduce you to the world champ.’
Now that I get a good, decent look at her, two things strike me; has this girl ever met a tracksuit she didn’t like? Including the beaut she has on her today which is a shade of Hubba Bubba pink so nauseatingly sickening that no girl over the age of eight should ever go near it. The second thing is that she actually seems to be ageing in dog years. Maggie’s only thirty-three, but could nearly pass for twenty years older; the wiry, woolly hair is now almost completely grey and what’s more, she doesn’t even seem to care. Plus, and there’s no politically correct, sensitive way of saying this, but she and Sharon are both BIG girls. Legs the approximate size of tree trunks with necks roughly the same circumference as my waist. Nasty thought, but I remember as a kid looking at the pair of them and wondering who exactly their biological father had been anyway. A circus freak, perhaps?
Meanwhile, Sharon is stretched out on the sofa beside Maggie like she’s sedated, with a Cosmo magazine balanced on her belly, opened on the quiz page, ‘Is Your Guy a Stud or a Dud?’ She’s still in her brown serge uniform from Smiley Burger, where she works as ‘food preparation and hygiene manager’ (don’t ask). There’s also a big, roundey badge on her lapel that says, ‘Hi! I’m Sharon and I care about your experience here!’ Oh, that a cheap bit of plastic could contain so much blessed irony.
Anyway, unlike Maggie, Sharon always was at least aware of the directly proportional relationship between the amount of food she shovelled down her gob and the size of her arse. When I lived here, she was one of those people perpetually on a diet and yet whose weight never fluctuated by as much as a single gram, either upwards or downwards. And again, plus ça change. I’m guessing she’s on yet another one of her crash diets right now, judging by the Low Fat Smiley Chicken Caesar Salad she’s wolfing down. As opposed to Maggie, who’s horsing into the remains of her Indian, eating straight out of the tinfoil container, like the fastest way to get food into her is to completely bypass all kitchenware. God Almighty, I’m astonished she’s even using a fork.
With only a year between them, Sharon and Maggie are what’s known as ‘Irish twins’ but at least Sharon manages to look in her early thirties, mainly because she hasn’t let grey hair get the better of her. At least not yet, she hasn’t. Trouble is, her hair is cut into a style so bizarre, it looks like it’s in talks to play the Jane Fonda role in Klute.
Something else catches my eye; the Saturday supplement of today’s paper on the coffee table, lying open on one of those ‘What’s hot/What’s not’ pages. No prizes for guessing which category I fall into. Bastards.
Anyway, this is not a social call, so nothing for it but to say what I came to say then get the hell out of here before the law of the sibling jungle kicks in and we all start killing each other. I plonk down on the far end of the sofa and switch off the TV, this being the only sure way to get everyone’s full attention.
‘If you value your miserable life,’ Maggie snarls at me, with enough venom to wither a city, ‘you’ll turn the telly back on. I was watching that!’
‘It was the ads,’ I smile back, as politely as I can.
‘Drinkie?’ says Joan, trying to diffuse the tension that’s ricocheting off the walls like ions before an electrical storm. ‘Girls, one of you go into the fridge and get your sister a tin of Bulmers.’
‘She is not our sister,’ the two of them growl, both sitting back and lighting fags in such perfect synchronicity, you couldn’t rehearse it.
‘Besides,’ says Sharon, all brave and feisty because she has Maggie right beside her for moral support, ‘if her majesty wants a tin, she can get up off her skinny arse and get it herself.’
‘I don’t actually drink cider,’ I say to Joan, trying to block out Pattie and Selma from The Simpsons. I will not let them get to me. Instead, I’ll just do what I always do whenever I’m in their company. Lock my voice into its deepest register and remain cool. This also being the surest possible way to piss them off.
‘But if you had a glass of wine please, Joan, I’d love one.’
Feck it, alcohol is about the only thing that’ll get me through this. Joan disappears off to the kitchen, and the second she’s out the door, Maggie and Sharon immediately start chanting, like a pair of bullies in the kids’ playground, ‘OH, I DON’T DRINK CIDER…I’M TOO FAR UP MY OWN ARSE.’
I totally forgot they could be so horrible. Dear Jesus, how did I edit this out? I must be off my head doing what I’m about to do, but then my accountant’s words from yesterday come floating back to haunt me. I. Have. No. Choice. Besides, this was my family home long before the bloody Addams family ever moved in and took over. Dad bought this house, Mum died here, I grew up here. I legally own half of it. If I have no choice in this, then neither does anyone else.
Joan totters back in on her scaffolding heels with a bottle of Chardonnay, my least favourite wine in the whole world, but it’ll just have to do. Then she pours a thimbleful for me and a full to the brim glass for herself.
‘Wine with a cork?’ mutters Maggie. ‘What is this, Christmas Day?’
‘Thanks,’ I say, taking it from Joan. ‘Now will you sit down please?’
‘Would if I could but I can’t. I’m going out tonight and this suit creases if I sit in it. Besides, I look thinner if I stand and then the Spanx don’t cut off circulation.’
Right then. I take a huge gulp and launch into my semi-prepared speech. ‘OK, I’ve something to say to you all, so I need you to listen. As I’m sure you know, seeing as how the dogs on the street seem to, this hasn’t been an easy week for me.’
‘I see,’ says Maggie, slooooooowly. Scarily slowly, as she picks up the paper with my name plastered all over it and thrusts it at me. ‘Would this perchance have anything to do with the reason why her majesty is gracing us with her presence today?’
I’m in mid-patter though, and determined not to let her pointed jibes get to me.
‘I slipped up at work and lost my job—’
‘You call what you did a “slip-up”?’ sneers Sharon, sucking on her fag so deeply it’s like she’s inhaling all the way down to her feet. ‘Should have taken the bloody car and run, you gobshite. A Merc like that would go for eighty grand on the black market, easy.’
‘Hmm,’ says Maggie dryly. ‘Now if only there was some mechanism in your head that controlled the shite that comes out of your mouth.’
It’s as if they know exactly why I’m here and are toying with me now, like starving rottweilers teasing a kitten just before going in for the kill. So I’ll just give them the last sentence first. Easier and far, far quicker. ‘I’ve lost my home and until I get another job and get back on my feet again, I’m coming to stay here. Believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s happening, so suck it up.’
Stony silence.
Then, all of the sudden the tension that was hovering over the room earlier breaks like a storm and now everyone’s jabbering viciously over each other.
‘Sure what’s that to do with us?’ says Maggie. ‘Go and stay with one of your celebrity friends. How do you spell celebrity if your name is Jessie Woods? Oh I know, L. O. S. E. R. Or you could stay with your boyfriend. Oh wait a minute, I forgot, you don’t have one. At least, not any more you don’t. Oops. Silly me.’
Bloody ouch. That comment cuts to the quick, like Maggie’s comments have been cutting me most of my whole life. Meanwhile Sharon sniggers so hard at this that cider actually comes down her nose.
‘Nice one,’ she smirks over at Maggie, grabbing a Smiley Burger paper napkin and wiping her face with it.
‘Thank you, gag copyrighted to Maggie Woods.’
Christ alive, there’s so much about the pair of them I’d completely blanked out. That Maggie has by far the tougher, stronger personality for starters and where she leads, Sharon, who’s that bit weaker, will invariably follow. But the trick with them is never, ever to react, so I just gulp back yet more revolting vino a
nd eyeball them, waiting to see who’ll blink first.
‘Well, I’m terribly sorry to put a damper on this,’ says Joan, sounding panicky, ‘but it’s out of the question. We have…emm…visitors coming to stay…emm…from Canada. For ehhh…three months.’ ‘Fine, then we’ll just all be a bit crowded, won’t we?’ I say firmly. Joan always was a crap liar.
‘You can’t stay here! This is our house, not yours!’ snarls Sharon.
‘Technically, no it’s not. It’s half mine. Dad left it to Joan and me equally and my name is on the title deeds.’
‘Excuse me, your majesty, but has it occurred to you that we don’t actually get on? I mean, you’re sitting there now, drinking our wine and looking down your nose at us like we’re cave dwellers.’
‘No I’m not! Besides you’re looking at me like you want to have me…diagnosed.’
‘She can’t stay here and that’s all there is to it. Besides, it’s not a runner because there’s no room for her,’ says Sharon triumphantly to the other two and completely ignoring me. Like the Chardonnay has suddenly made me invisible.
‘This house only has three bedrooms and I’m fucked if any of us are going to share with her.’
‘So? I’ll sleep on the sofa. Not a problem.’ Funny, the more they protest, the more I’m digging my heels in, mainly because I know this is the surest way to annoy them even more.
‘I don’t see why you can’t just check into a hotel until you get back on your feet again,’ says Joan, nearly spitting out the words. ‘Far easier and far less stressful all round.’
‘Do I have to spell it out to you? Gimme a B, gimme an R, gimme an O, K, E.’
‘Hang on one minute,’ says Maggie, leaning forward in her armchair like a sumo queen squaring up for a fight. ‘I hate to be the fingernail in the salad here, but we all pay the mortgage on this house, as we’ve done ever since the happy day when you first fecked off. Even Ma and she’s only working part-time. All the bills are split equally between us and we pay for our own food, booze and fags.’
Personally, I Blame my Fairy Godmother Page 9