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Because the atmosphere wasn’t tense enough already.
During the two-hour drive up into the seventh circle of hell, Amy and Charlie had been thoroughly briefed on the situation. They knew that I had not told my mother about my newly unemployed status, and they knew I was not planning to do so. Originally I just hadn’t been able to face it. And then I had convinced myself I’d be able to get a new job so quickly that there wasn’t any point in telling her. And then I’d spent three days under the duvet eating packet after packet of Hobnobs.
Charlie thought I should tell her. Charlie thought my mum was nicer than Mary Poppins on Xanax. Charlie loved my mum because my mum loved Charlie. Amy did not think I should tell her. Amy thought my mum was a word I’d only ever said out loud twice in my entire life. Amy did not love my mum because my mum did not love Amy. And while no one wants to think badly of their parents, Amy’s opinion of my mum was probably closer to the truth than Charlie’s. It was comforting to know there was someone out there who knew everything about me and wasn’t genetically or legally required to love me but did so anyway. Unfortunately, it also meant that Amy had witnessed all the rows, all the shouting and all the tears, and, as was right and proper for a best friend, she held all the grudges I was biologically denied.
I loved my mum and I knew that she loved me. I also knew that she loved me more when I was doing well. If I got ninety-eight percent in a test, she wanted to know what had happened to the other two percent. If I got a pay rise, she wanted to know why it wasn’t a promotion. If I got a promotion, she wanted to see a business card to verify it. She was a pusher. She was a pushy mother. Whenever I got upset about it, I tried to remind myself I should be happy that she focused her efforts on shoving me up the academic and professional ladders, and even happier that reality TV didn’t exist when I was a kid. I would almost certainly have ended up on X Factor, dancing to Kelis’s Milkshake in a diamante bra-and-knicker set at the age of six. It wasn’t her fault, I reminded myself for the thousandth time that year; she just wanted the best for me. She just wanted me to have the things that she didn’t. And she’d watched Working Girl too many times in the eighties. It wasn’t a coincidence that I was called Tess.
‘Oh, you know Tess doesn’t work in my team,’ Charlie replied with careful diplomacy. ‘And thank goodness. She’s so good at her job, she’d just show me up.’
He always knew the right thing to say. Mum and I sat across from each other and smiled in tandem. Her hair was shorter than mine and starting to go grey, but we had the same colour eyes and identical gigantic rack. I’d got my Big Bird height, overanalytical mind and physical inability to hold a tune from Dad, but the rest of me was pure Julie.
‘So what’s the news?’ she asked, eventually turning to me. ‘How’s that fancy office? Have you got your new business cards yet?’
‘Not yet,’ I said, trying very hard not to tell any lies. ‘And really, the creative director job isn’t that different from what I was doing before. It’s just a different title.’
I actually assumed that was true. Everyone knew you ended up doing the new job for at least a year before you actually got the title.
‘Everyone’s been very impressed – they can’t wait to see you and hear all about it.’ Mum wore my achievements like a badge. ‘Your sisters will be at the christening.’
Joy.
‘Where’s Brian?’ I asked, looking around the house I grew up in for signs of my stepdad, aka the only sane member of my family. It made perfect sense that he wasn’t genetically related to me in anyway. ‘Hiding?’
‘Hiding,’ Mum confirmed. ‘He’s playing golf. He’ll be back by two.’
I nodded and tried not to worry. It seemed like Brian was playing a lot of golf lately.
‘Oh, Tess, Amy’s mum dropped by earlier and asked if you could take some pictures this afternoon?’
‘I would, but I didn’t bring my camera,’ I said, biting my lip and hoping she wouldn’t ask where it was.
It was last summer, when I’d been short on money due to a ridiculous last-minute weekend away with Charlie that I couldn’t afford and which had ended in him copping off with a twenty-two-year-old blonde girl while I sat in the B&B sulking, that I’d traded my camera to Vanessa for a month’s rent. The camera I’d begged my mother to buy me. The camera I had taken with me everywhere until work had got in the way. The camera that sat on my ‘photographer’ roommate’s desk and never moved.
‘She’ll just have to manage without, then, won’t she,’ Mum shrugged. ‘I told her it wasn’t fair to ask anyway. You’ve been working all week and then she expects you to take photos of her bloody granddaughter’s christening? I mean, you’re a bloody director now, for Christ’s sake. And it’s not like there won’t be another one, the way she goes on. No offence, Amy.’
‘None taken,’ Amy replied. ‘My sister is a bigger slag than I am, I know.’
‘Hadn’t we better go and get changed?’ I stood up and grabbed my hastily packed weekend bag, wondering what sartorial treats Amy had shoved in there while I was showering. ‘We don’t want to be fighting for the bathroom.’
‘Fine.’ Mum feigned disappointment that we were trying to escape so quickly, but I knew she was relieved. ‘Be down here by quarter to three. We’ll walk down to the church together.’
I just prayed I wouldn’t burn up on entry.
The christening went as well as a small village christening could go. Babies cried, mums cooed and the twenty-something children who had run away at the age of eighteen stood awkwardly at the back fielding questions from their former Brownie leaders about why they weren’t married yet.
‘We can’t get married,’ Amy was explaining to our septuagenarian Brown Owl. ‘Because we’re a triad. Me, Tess and Charlie. Society doesn’t understand our love. It’s a polyamory thing.’
‘Pollyanna-y?’ Mrs Rogers looked very confused. ‘I don’t quite follow, Amy, love.’
‘Just what we need,’ Charlie whispered in my ear as he fell into the seat next to me. The post-baptismal celebrations were taking place in the pub, ‘the true church of the village’, as it was written. Almost everyone I’d gone to school with was crammed into the conservatory of The Millhouse, putting back pints and taking pictures of Amy’s new niece, Katniss, with their phones and posting them straight to her Facebook page. I had assumed Amy was taking the piss when she’d told me the baby’s name, but no. I should have known. Her big sister was called Bella, after all.
‘What’s that?’ I clinked my Diet Coke against his pint of bitter and took a sip. As predicted, Amy had struggled with my wardrobe of sensible work separates, so I was sitting in a Yorkshire pub at my best friend’s sister’s baby’s christening in July wearing black leather knee boots, a gold sequinned miniskirt I’d worn one New Year at uni, and a white cotton shirt that really needed ironing. It was quite the outfit.
‘Amy is going round telling everyone that the three of us are a couple,’ he said, undoing his already loose tie. ‘I think she got bored of people asking about Dave.’
‘Amy was bored of people asking about Dave seven seconds after she broke up with him,’ I replied, imagining the fun conversation I’d be having with Lorraine from the library and Donna from the post office before the night was out. ‘Now she’s just bored. Why did she even make us come to this?’
‘I’m fairly certain it was to remind you why you left in the first place. Is it working?’ Charlie drained his pint and nodded towards my half-empty glass. ‘What are you drinking? I’m going to the bar.’
Reaching over, I wiped a frothy moustache from his top lip and smiled. ‘Just Diet Coke. I’m not in the mood to drink.’
‘God forbid you should make a scene.’ He looked over to where Amy was performing a jazz tap routine for the pensioners who lived in the bungalows near her mum.
‘I’m not nearly so entertaining,’ I replied. ‘Thanks for coming with us, anyway. I know it’s a ball-ache.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘Any family is better than no family, remember?’
‘And the grass is always greener,’ I said. ‘Remember?’
Charlie half laughed as he walked away, towering over everyone else in the bar while I watched. It was Christmas in the third year of uni when he first came home with me. His parents were getting divorced, and since I’d been there, done that, I’d told him to come home with me. Never in a million years did I think he’d say yes. Now, eight Noels on, he had a stocking embroidered with his name and a permanent spot at our Christmas dinner table. Just like me, he didn’t really see his dad, and his mum had moved to Malta with his stepdad a couple of years ago. Without any grandparents or siblings, as soon as the Boots Christmas catalogue dropped, he was an honorary Brookes.
‘Tess! You came! We were worried you might be too busy!’
Only a full-blooded Brookes could be that passive-aggressive. I tore my eyes away from Charlie’s arse to the far less pleasant sight of my two younger sisters standing before me, arms full of babies and faces full of judgement.
‘Are those new boots?’ Melanie asked.
‘Your hair is so long,’ Liz said.
‘And you both look well,’ I said, looking down at my niece and nephew and giving them each a curt nod. ‘Hello, babies.’
‘Here, hold her.’ Melanie, twenty-six, married, mother of two, handed me baby Tallulah. ‘She doesn’t even know who you are. Isn’t that funny?’
I bit my lip to avoid pointing out that Tallulah was only nine months old and barely even knew who she was and took the baby with a strained smile.
‘Please don’t be sick on this shirt,’ I whispered to my niece. ‘It was a present.’
‘Look, you’re a natural!’ Liz, twenty-two, engaged, mother of one but desperately trying for another by all accounts, thrust out a second baby. ‘Take Harry while I get us a drink.’
‘I can’t hold two babies,’ I squealed, taking the even tinier bundle in my other arm and looking around in desperation. ‘What if I need a wee?’
‘You’re not allowed to have a wee,’ Mel said, smoothing out her wrinkled-to-buggery dress and sitting down beside me. She picked up a glass of wine that did not belong to her and swigged it back. ‘Welcome to my world.’
‘I think I read something on the way in about overpopulation, so I can’t stay,’ I said. I really wanted to give her one of the babies back, but with my arms full, I had no idea how to offload one. They smelled weird. ‘Are they OK? I can’t see their faces. How do you do this?’
‘Don’t overthink it, you’ll drop one,’ she advised. Her hair, identical to mine, sprang all around her face. While I kept my copper mess carefully tethered in a long ponytail, Mel had clearly decided to embrace the curls for the christening. It was a controversial gamble that had not paid off. ‘Although I realize that telling you not to overthink something is like telling Liz no.’
Mel was the poor put-upon middle sister. While Mum was busy forcing me up an imaginary ladder of success and our stepdad was spoiling little Lizzie with his unwavering attention, the true child of divorce and official Band-Aid baby Mel sat quietly in the middle of it all, shaking her head and counting down the days until she could get out, get married and fuck up a family all of her own. So far, so good. She had a house, a husband, a Rav 4 and two kids. As far as she was concerned, she was winning. And despite her open disapproval of me, I actually liked Mel. She was funny, dry and desperately honest. We didn’t see each other terribly often, mainly because I avoided the village like the plague and she couldn’t exactly come gallivanting down to London with two babies under three. It might seem like a strange thing to say about your sister, but if we weren’t related, I’d want to be her friend.
‘Wiiiiiine.’ Liz returned from the bar and handed Mel a glass bucket of suspiciously green-tinged white wine. ‘So, Tess, tell me everything. You never update Facebook. Have you got a boyfriend?’
Liz, on the other hand, not so much.
‘Me and Jamie are moving at the end of the month, has Mel told you? Right around the corner from her. Isn’t it brilliant? All our babies will get to grow up together. Well, all our babies apart from your babies. You really need to get a move on, you know – you’re not getting any younger.’
There was nothing like being reminded about your tick-tick-ticking biological clock by your six-years-younger half-sister to put the icing on this shitty cake of a week. And cake should never be shitty.
‘Is Charlie going out with anyone?’ she asked, tightening her blonde ponytail. Liz was the only one of the three of us who had escaped Mum’s dark-hair-big-boob genes. ‘He might be up for it now if he’s getting desperate. I could talk to him for you?’
‘Or I could kill you,’ I offered, desperate to offload one of these babies. Preferably whichever one was starting to smell like poop. ‘Charlie isn’t desperate.’
Liz and Mel shared a not-very-furtive glance.
‘And neither am I,’ I added.
‘You know there’s a rumour going round that you and Amy are lezzers.’ Liz sipped her wine and narrowed her eyes. ‘But I told Karen you weren’t. Because you’re not. Are you?’
‘No, Liz, Amy and I are not lesbians. We’re very busy career women who have other things to worry about than babies and boyfriends.’ Didn’t matter how true that was, it still sounded like an excuse. ‘And I think you’ll find Amy probably started that rumour to make Karen look stupid.’
‘So the new job’s going well?’ Mel took over the interrogation and one of the babies. Unfortunately, it was not the smelly one. I gave Tallulah the filthiest look I could muster but she just blew a raspberry back at me. No respect, that girl.
‘Yes?’ I was the worst liar.
‘Because I emailed you and it bounced back.’
Bloody email. She couldn’t have sent flowers?
‘Uh, there was a problem with the server.’
‘But not on Charlie’s email? Because I emailed Charlie and that was fine.’
So much for her being the nice sister. Along with her hair and boobs, Mel had also inherited our mum’s ability to sniff out blood, and once she got a whiff of something not right, she did not let go.
‘I didn’t want to say anything at the christening’ – Amy always told me it was good to start a lie by making yourself look good – ‘but I’m not actually working there any more.’
‘Then where are you working?’ The two of them stared at me as though they already knew the answer but just really, really needed to hear me say it.
‘I’m not working anywhere,’ I said quietly. ‘I got made redundant.’
Mel gasped. Liz reached out and snatched Tallulah from my arms in case unemployment was catching.
‘You know that one isn’t yours, don’t you?’ I asked.
‘Mum!’ Liz grabbed our passing mother’s arm, her face completely white. ‘Tess lost her job!’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ I pressed my hand against my forehead and prayed to whoever might be listening to strike me dead on the spot. I could not handle this right now. Silently I cursed Amy for dragging me up here and wished a plague on Charlie’s house for driving the car. My mother stopped dead in her tracks, her face frozen in horror, and just in case people hadn’t heard Liz, she dropped a full glass of red wine onto the tiled floor. It shattered into not really that many pieces (definitely not crystal) and splattered everyone around us with cheap red plonk.
‘Tess, what is she talking about?’ Ignoring the fact that she’d just ruined about seven people’s tights, my mum looked as though she’d just had a stroke. I really hoped she hadn’t. ‘What does she mean you lost your job?’
‘I was going to tell you after …’ I waved my hand around the very quiet room. ‘I got made redundant.’
And with that, the whispering began. Everyone knew someone who had been made redundant, but Tess Brookes? Her who had moved away to That London? With her fancy job? Scandalous.
‘But your promotion?’ Mum’s face was still a very worrying shade of grey.
‘No promotion,’ I replied. Thank goodness I hadn’t overreacted. This was exactly as horrible as I had thought it would be.
‘I cannot believe you would embarrass me like this,’ she said through gritted teeth as she looked around at anyone but me. ‘I cannot believe you would come here and announce that like it’s nothing. I cannot believe you wanted to embarrass me in front of all my friends.’
I dipped my head, pretending my eyes weren’t stinging, and watched the puddle of her spilled wine bleed across the floor towards a white paper napkin and slowly stain it a dark ruby red. There were so many things I wanted to say. I hadn’t planned to tell her like this. I hadn’t wanted to embarrass anyone. Liz told her! It was just like being fifteen again; Liz was such a grass. But just like when I was fifteen, I knew there was no point answering back. She wasn’t finished.
‘Don’t just sit there crying. What did you do?’
Damage done, Liz got up, switched babies with Mel and flounced away, muttering something about needing to change Harry. Mel gave me a quick supportive squeeze on the shoulder and followed. Just like being fifteen. Where was Amy when I needed her?
‘I didn’t do anything – they were just laying people off,’ I explained. It didn’t help that I didn’t actually know what had happened myself. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Well, people don’t just lose their jobs for no reason, Tess,’ she carried on while a random sixteen-year-old who probably went to my old school started mopping up the mess around us. ‘I should have known something was wrong when you came out dressed like that.’
She had a point there. She should have known.
‘I can’t believe this. After all I’ve done for you.’
‘What? After all you’ve done what?’
Ahh. There was Amy. And as my best friend stepped up to my mother, the whispering was replaced by a low clinking of glasses, occasionally punctuated by the popping open of packets of McCoy’s.
‘What exactly have you done?’ she asked, forcing her way in between me and my mother, hands on skinny hips, and stamping a very little foot. ‘Aside from bully your daughter for the last twenty years?’
Amy and my mum were exactly the same height. For years I’d wondered who would win in a fight, and at last it looked like I might find out.
‘I know this is going to be hard for you, Amy, but please don’t involve yourself where you’re not wanted,’ she replied. Ahh, interesting. She was playing the responsible mother card.
‘Can we not do this?’ I asked as calmly as possible. ‘We can talk about this at home. This is … Katniss’s day?’
Nope, that just did not sound right.
‘Oh, we will talk about this at home,’ Mum replied, giving Amy the frowning of a lifetime. ‘We’ll talk about when you decided it was all right to start lying to your mother. And Amy, I think it would be a good idea if you stayed at your house tonight.’
Before Amy could reply, my mum turned on her sensible heel and marched away. As the door to the pub slammed, the silence broke and the party went back to full volume with a new lease of life now they had something scandalous to talk about. Thank goodness me losing my job had served a purpose.
‘Sorry.’ Amy dropped into my lap and rested her head on my shoulder. Because that would quiet those lesbian rumours. ‘I couldn’t listen to her going on at you.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you only made it marginally worse,’ I said, patting her on the head. ‘She was going to find out sooner or later.’
‘I suppose. Sorry I made you come in the first place, then,’ she sniffed. ‘I thought coming back and checking out all the losers would remind you how awesome our lives are.’
I looked at her in disbelief. She shrugged. ‘How awesome my life is?’
