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I’m a good party animal because I like people—I like seeing other people and being seen by other people. I like football parties best of all because I LOVE being in the football world. Although I’d prefer to be in the England team’s football world—with Victoria, Coleen, and the one who always wears crop tops—but until Dean gets his act together that’s not going to happen.
I squeeze into a chair next to Michaela and Suzzi—the loveliest people in the world. I’ve known them for ages and they both always look great, with shiny white teeth and permanent tans. I always say you can tell things about someone’s soul by how shiny and white their teeth are.
The waiter puts the menus down before us, and in one great synchronised move we all push them away quickly. The last thing you want to do is look at the menus, in case you see something really yummy on there.
There are twelve of us round the table—one girl has dark hair, all the others are blonde. The dark-haired girl is Michaela and she is not, strictly speaking, a Wag. All the blonde girls are. I’m not saying that for any other reason than to state the facts as they stand, but it does rather confirm my long-held belief that the real key to a footballer’s heart is a head full of bleached hair. Mich has luxurious long dark hair that tumbles over her shoulders. It’s glossy and healthy-looking and people stop her in the street to compliment her on it. Trouble is—it’s not blonde. I’ve told her a million times to stop worrying about whether it will suit her or whether it will wreck her hair and just dye it—only then can she be sure of attracting a football-playing man.
While Mich has devoted her life—rather unsuccessfully, it has to be said—to attracting a footballer, and has gone through players from most clubs in the London region in the process, Suzzi is very much a one-man woman. She married her childhood sweetheart—Anton Chritchley. They’ve got three kids so far—Bobby and Jack (named after the Charleston brothers, who I assumed were a comedy duo but it turns out they were footballers) and Wayne. No need to tell you who the last one is named after!
Sometimes I’m envious of Suze. I’ve just got one daughter and I think I’d like to have had more. Then I go round to her house and see these boys crashing round the place and making a real mess and I think ‘Wooooaahhhh…Trace—you got off lightly there.’ I’m from a one-child family and so is Dean, and though I’d have loved to have brothers and sisters when I was growing up (and a father!), I’ve found myself repeating the pattern and only having one child myself. Odd, isn’t it?
Still, I’ve got an extended family here at Luton Town, so I never feel lonely, and my daughter, Paskia Rose, loves watching the football (she does—seriously—she actually loves watching the football, whereas I only go to watch the other women and see what they’re wearing, who they’re talking to and what they’re saying).
Some of the girls have gone to town today and, as predicted, they’re really dressed up. I think the total cost of clothing around the table would pay off the debts of most third-world countries. Twenty-four eyes flicker around the room, taking in the assortment of clothing on display. The predominant colour is baby pink, of course, with white in second place. No change there then. We have a peculiar relationship with fashion, I guess, in that we have to be bang up-to-date on all the latest styles, but we still like to have them in the same shades of soft, girlish colours. So, in that latter respect, you could say we have our own distinctive take on fashion.
I recognise most of the outfits around the table.
‘Mindy, you went for the Pucci swirls,’ Suzzi says sarcastically. ‘How brave of you. I saw that blouse but thought it looked just a little bit too much like Mum’s shower curtain so decided against it.’
Ooooo…nice one, Suzzi. An early goal to us: 1-0.
Suzzi’s pregnant at the moment but she manages to look great all the same, in a white Lycra sheath dress. The lovely thing about it is that it’s so tight you can see her belly button through it where the Lycra’s stretched over her bump at the front. Ahhhh…sweet! I’m so proud of her for continuing to look so great. You can tell just by looking at Suzzi that she’s a Wag, and that’s more than can be said for some of the girls I see on the terraces. Some would-be Wags last season didn’t have a hope of bagging a footballer. One of them had trousers on with flat shoes. FLAT SHOES!!! At a football match!! I thought I’d die laughing when I saw her. Someone needs to do something to help these poor lost souls.
‘Tracie, you’ve gone for pom-poms,’ says Mindy. ‘How last year!’
I smile, and they smile, and we all drink. 1-1. Shit.
Our group divides into the newer Wags (we call them the Slag Wags), and the more experienced Wags. Mindy is the leader of the Slag Wags in the same way as I would be considered leader of the Old Nag Wags—that is,the Wags over twenty-five. We’re a bit outnumbered these days, to be honest. Most Wags are just out of their teens. It’s only me, Mich, Suzzi and Loulou who are over twenty-five, and Loulou’s husband is injured so she’s off the scene at the moment.
There’s a certain amount of bonding between all the Wags and a great deal of competing. I guess it’s like the players themselves. During a game we’re a close-knit group, but away from matches we’re all jostling for position. We all want to be the number one in the team. The situation at Luton Town, though, is that I am the number one. My husband, Dean, is the captain. He’s a former international player and the most experienced player in the side. That makes me the most experienced Wag, and I don’t think there’s a person round this table who would dispute that while I may not know much about Middle East politics or quantum physics, when it comes to matters of a Waggish nature I know all there is to know.
I’m pleased to see that no one round the table today is the colour of normal human skin. We’re all shades of shoe polish—mainly orange tan, but with a few cherry browns from the girls who don’t know when enough’s enough at the spray tanner’s.
‘How’s Nell?’ asks Mich. ‘Still crazy?’
Nell is Dean’s nan and Mich thinks the world of her. I do, too—she’s one of my favourite people in the world. I’ve no idea whether she was always so mad, or whether the ravaging effects of age actually cause more damage than wrinkles. Perhaps she was perfectly normal forty years ago? It’s hard to believe.
Things have a tendency to go wrong around Nell. You know how some people are like that—they’re always just three minutes away from the next crisis? (Luckily I’m not like that.) Nell went to have a gentle wave put in her hair a couple of weeks ago—she was after the sort of body that Elle Macpherson has but in her hair (like that was ever going to happen), but the hairdresser insisted on giving it a perm and now she looks more like Tammy Wynette.
‘Nell’s great,’ I say. ‘Mad as usual.’ Then I tell them all about the hair. Mich and Suzzi are really upset about the perm until I explain that Nell’s not bothered at all. The thing with Nell is that nothing really bothers her. She shrugged off World Wars and not seeing her husband for four years while he was away fighting the Germans, so I suppose a bad haircut’s not going to affect her in the same way as it would cripple me. If I ever had a bad haircut it would be a drama of epic proportions, probably resulting in a suicide attempt and certainly ending in a flurry of threatening legal letters. Nell just pulls out the afro comb and gets on with life.
I can see some of the girls on the far side of the table making mock yawning signs. I ignore them. This is Nell we’re talking about, she’s not like other old ladies—she has the heart, if not the wardrobe, of a Wag. She’s the life and soul of the nursing home she lives in. She used to be the social coordinator of the place until she invited a Barry Manilow look-alike to play there, and her best mate Gladys tried to get off with him. Barry’s agent complained and Nell got an official warning. Then there was the time she was told off for chasing some old man down the corridor. ‘Only having fun,’ she said. But she nearly gave the poor guy a heart attack. She has a cat living in her flat, too, which is strictly against the regulations. Coleen (I named her) lives under the sink where no one can see her.
‘I couldn’t bear to spend so much time with an old lady, but I guess you’re that much older than me,’ Mindy says. ‘And me,’ say Debbie and Julie in harmony, before collapsing into fits of giggles.
‘Not that much older,’ I counter, smiling through the pain.
‘Aw, come on,’ says Mindy. ‘How many of these lunches have you been to?’
A grin has spread across her pinched and painfully thin face. The others stare with open mouths. They’re all rude, these Slag Wags, but even they can’t believe the viciousness contained in the question I’ve just been asked. Their faces are registering utter disbelief. I can see they’re dying to hear what I will say, and who can blame them—I’m dying to hear what I’ll say, too. Right now, I have no idea. How can I answer a question like that—more loaded than the mini pizza starters we’ve just ordered but that no one will touch?
This is the Wag version of starting a brawl. It’s like a footballer turning to a fellow player and asking him if he wants to go outside for a fight. No, it’s worse than that—it’s like one of the footballers punching another player in the ribs when he’s not looking. I just stare back at Mindy. She knows what she’s done and so do the others. Even though we are rival groups of Wags around this table, there is still a Wag bond, and she has just broken it. Certain topics are strictly off-limits. It’s like the rule about not mentioning politics or religion at dinner parties. In Wag Land it’s weight and age.
The thing is, we all lie about our ages all the time, so in order to answer questions likely to reveal your age, you first have to remember how old you said you were, and thus, with that age in mind, what the answer to the question might be. So, a simple ‘How long have you been watching football?’ demands the mathematical brain of a genius to work out the answer. I can’t tell Mindy that I’ve been a Wag for exactly twelve years (it’s my anniversary tomorrow!!!!), and that this is my eighth time at a Luton Town’s pre-season ladies’ lunch. I simply can’t say that, because it’s the truth, and the truth is outlawed. My world is a complex one…let me explain why:
Assuming Mindy can add up, which isn’t guaranteed, me telling her that I’ve been married for twelve years will make it extremely unlikely that I am the twenty-six that I claim to be, unless it turns out that Dean’s a bloody paedophile, or a podiatrist as Suzzi once said (as in: ‘There’s this child abuser in Luton advertising that he can get rid of veruccas!’).
Still, she’s asked the question, and I need to answer it. She fired a penalty at me when I was tying my shoelaces, and I have to work out whether I should leap up and defend it, or just let it go into the net and accept that we’re 2-1 down against the Slags before the starters have even arrived.
Everyone’s looking at me. There are glances and giggles, but I ignore them. I just offer a strained and unconvincing smile and down my Bacardi and Cherry Coke without answering. I’ve let the opposition score. Mindy had an open goal, and even if she did use dubious genital-grabbing tactics the fact remains that she scored. 2-1.
I call the waiter over and order myself a glass of champagne. I thought I could do this sober but, as ever, I can’t. I also order a selection of fattening nibbles for the girls on the other side of the table. ‘Deep-fried brie and tempura. Oh, and potato skins,’ I say. ‘Do they come with cheese and bacon? Do you have any deep-fried avocado?’ I shove a twenty-pound note into his hand and whisper to him: ‘If they don’t eat the fried food, put dressings on their salads and sugar in their coffee.’
This is not an unusual state of affairs. This is what we do.
‘You all right?’ asks Suzzi.
I nod, but I’m not.
I’m the oldest person here and I don’t want to be. I want to be like Mindy—a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old with the world of Wagdom at her pedicured feet and a beautiful striker from the Ivory Coast in her bed. I don’t feel pretty and indestructible any more—I feel old. In a minute, and with one barbed comment, my world has come crashing down. This happens to me far too frequently these days—my grip on positivity becoming more tenuous as time passes and the wrinkles spread. I’ve gone from thinking my glass is half-full to being able to see, quite clearly, that it’s almost empty.
I knock back my drink and try to think happy thoughts about my lovely daughter, Paskia Rose, and the great relationship I have with Nell. I try to think of Dean himself and how much I love him, but that makes it worse and it becomes a fight to stop the tears that threaten to spring forth and wreck my carefully and heavily applied eye make-up. The thought of my false eyelashes coming off in a torrent of tears makes me feel even more like crying. While I sit there, having a battle of wills with my tear ducts (do tear ducts have wills? Probably), the girls have moved on to talk about their holiday destinations. Mich went to the Seychelles with a guy she was seeing for a while. ‘He had a yacht,’ she announces, but she doesn’t dwell on the subject because he wasn’t a footballer so she really doesn’t want people asking too many questions.
‘We went to Spain,’ announces Mindy, with a predictable,‘Olé!’ Then she climbs onto the table, much to the delight of the waiters who gather round to watch this drunk woman in a very short pink skirt negotiating the climb. ‘Viva L’Espana,’ she shouts, while clicking her invisible castanets. She begins to undo the few buttons that are not already open and throws back her pink Pucci blouse to reveal a bikini full to the brim with fake breast.
‘Good lord,’ says Suzzi, as the Slag Wags cheer. They’re all used to this behaviour on the youthful side of the table, except for Helen—the new girl in the group. To her credit, she is open-mouthed and looking very uncomfortable with the way the lunch party is developing. Mindy is simply unable to whisper discreetly, ‘I’ve had my breasts done.’ She has to put on a strip show at the ladies’ lunch.
‘Anyone for melon?’ asks Mich.
‘No, you mean anyone for football?’ asks Suzzi, and they fall about laughing. Suze is so funny. Actually, though, in all honesty, each of Mindy’s new breasts is roughly the size of a heavily inflated football.
My caesar salad comes, without croutons, cheese, anchovies or dressing, and I move the lettuce around the plate. Pudding arrives. I didn’t order it. I haven’t eaten pudding for years, certainly not since I started wearing a bra. The pudding is clearly part of the sabotage techniques of the Slag Wags, designed to test my willpower. I delicately smash up the creamy-white mound sitting in the centre of an icing-dusted plate and move it around without tasting it. I don’t even know what it is, I just know that it’s full of calories that I cannot possibly consume. I wonder whether Mindy has realised that I changed her order so she’s drinking sweet white wine and normal lemonade! She doesn’t seem to have noticed that it’s not diet, not the way she’s throwing it down her throat.
Julie’s noticed, though. She’s making funny faces as she drinks her cocktail. I guess it wasn’t subtle to request it loaded with double cream. The sad thing is, though, that a few extra calories isn’t going to make a difference to those girls—they’re young, skinny and pretty…unlike me. I suddenly feel so obsessed by the thought of the passing years and the desperate, wrinkle-filled, grey-haired world towards which I’m clearly on a fast train, that I can’t think properly, or take any joy from their sabotaged drinks.
In the end, I resort to testing myself by guessing the number of calories in every item on the menu. I work out all the various combinations. Christ, I can do calorie calculations in my sleep. I often think to myself that if they’d done sums at school in calories, I might be lecturing at Harvard now, instead of devoting my days to ensuring I look ten years younger than I am.
I’m so absorbed in the calorie-counting business that I don’t see a burly man in a fluorescent jacket enter the restaurant and indulge in a heated exchange with one of the restaurant’s waiting staff. The waiter walks over to the table, but I’m too busy wondering how much vanilla and caramel custard you’re likely to get with the cinnamon whirl, and thus how many calories it’s likely to be, to hear him ask,
‘Does anyone have a four-by-four?’
Everyone at the table simultaneously says, ‘Yes.’
‘Is anyone’s car parked illegally?’ asks the waiter.
‘Yes,’ chorus the women.
He walks away, shaking his head, and tells the man in the fluorescent jacket that it’s impossible to identify the driver.
‘You’re quiet,’ Suzzi says to me, her voice full of concern. I’m normally the life and soul of these things.
‘Sorry, just a bit tired,’ I reply. ‘Looking forward to the season, though.’ I try, valiantly, to pull myself out of my morbid daydreams where the wrinkles and creases on my forehead are coming alive and starting to eat me up. ‘I’ve got some fabulous new clothes. I went up to Liverpool for the weekend.’
‘Ooooooooo,’ they all coo, because they know what ‘going up to Liverpool’ means. All except Helen, our token newcomer—poor girl. She’s sitting over with the Slag Wags, but she’d be better off over here with me so I could have a word with her about her clothing (her skirt’s so long it’s covering her knickers!!).
‘What’s in Liverpool?’ she asks, her big blue line-free nineteen-year-old eyes twinkling like crazy.
‘Cricket,’ says Mich, leaning in to join the conversation.
She’s two years younger than I am, but everyone thinks she’s four years older because she’s been honest about her age. It’s a shame because she could get away with saying she was much younger. She’s got these incredible pale green cat-like eyes. She’s not as skinny as the rest of us (she’s a size 8-10), but still manages to look great because she’s very curvy and has these full, sensual lips that men seem to adore.
Helen is looking at Mich with such confusion on her face, you’d think Mich had just announced that she was planning a sex change.
‘What—like bowling and batting and that?’
‘Cricket’s the ultimate Wag’s shop,’ Mich explains, delighting in the ignorance of a Slag Wag. It’s clear that Helen is providing us with an open goal, and I can see Mich preparing for the kick. ‘Fab clothes there. Have you really never heard of it?’
‘No,’ says Helen. ‘To be honest, I really don’t know anything much about this whole Wag thing.’
Not only does that make it 2-2, but the happy turn in the subject of the conversation means that I find myself on comfortable ground now and so I feel myself relax. There is nothing—NOTHING—that I don’t know about being a Wag. It’s my thing. I threw myself into the world as soon as I met Dean. When he played for Arsenal there was no one watching who was more tanned or more blonde.
‘Yes, I got loads of new clothes at Cricket.’ I’m peacocking now. ‘I even got the Roland Mouret Moon Dress—you know, the limited-edition one that Posh wore when she and David arrived in Los Angeles.’
‘No way,’ says Julie, clearly impressed. Julie is wearing a tight leather corset dress in caramel, which is completely wrong for the time of year. As Suzzi said: ‘She must be sweating like a pig.’ She’s wearing quite funky calf-length, shaggy-haired boots with it, and has a tan so orange it would put David Dickinson to shame, so she’s redeemed herself in that department, but the dress itself is not at all Wagalicious. It certainly didn’t come from Cricket, let’s put it like that.
‘If you’ve got a Moon Dress, why aren’t you wearing it?’ asks Mindy.
‘It’s being delivered,’ I explain.
‘Oh,’ says Mindy,‘so you haven’t actually got a Moon Dress then, you’ve just got one on order like everyone else.’
Bitch.
‘And guess what?’ I say quickly, pretending not to notice Mindy’s spiteful comment. ‘I had a red-carpet facial—you know, the one with the six-month waiting list and the oxygen injections.’
Helen’s mouth has dropped wide open so I can see that she has absolutely no fillings—just beautiful neat pearly-white teeth. She has perfect alabaster skin and a little upturned nose. She looks like a young model, just about to take the world by storm. No surprise there, really, because a young model with the world at her feet is exactly what she is. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone quite as much as I hate her right now.
‘I’ve never heard of a red-carpet facial,’ she says. ‘Don’t the injections hurt?’
Oh dear, I think. You have so much to learn, girl-friend. I want to say, ‘Yes, they hurt. Of course they hurt, but it’s my anniversary tomorrow and I HAVE to be line-free for it. Anyway, the injections don’t hurt half as much as Botox, skin peels, breast lifts, liposuction, eyelid surgery, lip-plumping injections or collagen injections.’ Of course, I don’t say that. She’s such an innocent and I don’t want to scare her. ‘They don’t hurt too much,’ I say. ‘Anyway, the pain’s worth it.’ I think back to the time when I had fat removed from my bottom and injected into my lips. I’d thought it looked great until Dean said, ‘Now you are, quite literally, talking out of your arse.’
Everyone’s smiling in a half-drunk sort of way, and I can see they’re pleased to have me back—their leader, the Queen Wag, the one who knows more about being a Wag than anyone. Even the Slag Wags look relieved. If there’s one thing Wags don’t like, it’s change. Unless it’s a change of clothes.
‘Could you take me to Cricket one day?’ Helen asks.
‘One day,’ I say, thinking how much fun it would be to help this poor girl—to take her under my wing and let all her Waggish beauty shine. I think of how lovely she will look once I’ve trowelled on her makeup, shortened her skirts, organised a boob job for her and covered her in jewellery. I order two bottles of champagne from the waiter. I’m in my element now—all thoughts of wrinkles and grey hair banished forever.
The sound of sobbing is coming from Suzzi’s direction. She’s been so emotional since she got pregnant.
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.
‘I still can’t believe Victoria’s gone to LA,’ she says. ‘I’m going to miss her so much.’
‘I know, I know,’ I say, trying to comfort my dear friend. ‘We’ll all miss her, but we’ll still have her in Heat and Hello!.’
Suzzi calms down a bit, then Tammie, one of the Slag Wags, starts to cry. Oh god, what now?
‘Her hair. I still can’t bear it,’ says Tammie.
We were all upset when Victoria went for a short hairstyle, no one more than I, but you have to move on from these things. You have to let the pain go.
‘Don’t cry,’ I say patiently. ‘She didn’t have all her hair cut off; she just had the extensions taken out. She can easily have them put in again.’
There’s an audible sigh of relief from everyone present, and, not for the first time, I wonder whether I’m the only one who thinks these things through logically.
‘You’re amazing,’ says Helen encouragingly. She wants to be my friend. I see Mindy sit back in her chair in disgust and I realise that young Helen has scored an own goal. 3-2 to us.
‘Wags should have long hair and be done with it. ’Til death us do part. A Wag should be buried with her extensions attached. That’s the way it should be—long nails, long hair, long legs…’
‘And tans,’ adds Julie.
‘Of course,’ I say dismissively. ‘Of course, tans, and big handbags, and large accessories, and…’ I could keep going for the rest of my life and they all know it. There’s no one who understands Wags like me.
‘You should write a book,’ says Helen suddenly.
‘A book?’
‘Just for Wags. Telling people how they should dress and behave at matches…you know, a kind of Wags’ Handbook.’
‘Ooooo,’ says Mindy sarcastically. ‘That would be great. Really helpful.’
But so enthused are the others by the suggestion that Mindy’s sarcastic tone is missed altogether, and they assume she’s encouraging me. If I’m not mistaken that’s the no-way-back victory goal to us.
I say nothing. They’re all looking at me but I can’t focus on any of them. In that minute, that second, I feel my life changing forever. I can sense my calling as I can sense a new trend in knitwear. This must be how Shakespeare felt when someone said to him, ‘You should write a play, mate.’ Perhaps it’s how Churchill felt when someone said, ‘You should be in charge of the country.’ They would have known immediately, as I do now, that that was what they were born to do.
You see, I know the rules of Waggishness inside out and back to front. This is what I should do—use my age and experience to advantage instead of forever wishing I were younger and more innocent. It’s my destiny.
I picture myself standing high on a mountain, addressing thousands of future Wags. I look down at my audience and am greeted by the sight of yellow hair extensions and black roots as far as the eye can see. It fills me with pride. Great pride. I raise my arm and the cheers ring out around the world. ‘I have a dream…’ I say, and the women fall silent, listening intently. ‘I have a dream that one day all Wags will rise up and live out the true meaning of their creed.
‘I have a dream that the tanning studios, hair-extension salons, beauty parlours and wine bars of Luton will be filled with desperately undernourished blonde women with large handbags, small poodles and long nails. I have a dream that Victoria Beckham will be put in charge of the world, with me and Coleen covered in expensive jewellery and working as her special envoys.
‘I dream of colleges for Wags so they may learn about this art, and courses in spray-tanning and drinking obscene amounts of alcohol. I dream of every little girl being given my book for her birthday. I dream of a world in which sunglasses are compulsory, Cristal comes out of the taps and all shoes have colossal heels on them. I dream of orange legs, yellow hair, white teeth and heavy make-up. I dream of cat-fights, small rose tattoos and large lips. That, ladies, is my dream…’
‘Yes,’ I say, but my voice is barely a whisper as my mind is preoccupied by my daydream, in which my followers chant my name on the mountainside, and cast off their flat shoes and smart trousers for platform wedges and micro-shorts. I’m so lost in thought that I don’t see my car disappearing past the window on the back of a clamping truck.
‘I will do it,’ I say. ‘Yes, I will do it.’
Thursday, 2 August—our twelfth (ssshhh) wedding anniversary (#ulink_b2cfcc10-a38b-5cf3-8082-74d72d11a7c5)
