скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Oh,’ I say, my mind ticking over with thoughts, plans, an idea of how I might be able to help my husband. ‘And did you make friends with her?’
‘Of course,’ says Mum breezily.‘We’re off for organic grass and dandelion-stalk tea now. It’s easy. Honestly, you Brits are so funny—everyone else has put their names down on Leaf’s pilates list and they are all just waiting patiently for a gap to open up. They don’t stand a chance. If you want to be friends with someone just go and “bump” into them. It’s not rocket science. Right, must go—need to balance my chakras and chant my Buddhabhivadana.’
‘Chant your what?’
‘Salutation to the Buddha, silly girl. Don’t you know anything?’
Saturday, 25 August (#ulink_8fa3c3a1-0d1d-506a-b250-c64cc8277328)
10 a.m.
Oh dear. Very difficult situation. Very, very difficult situation. It’s 8 a.m. on Saturday morning and I’m pacing around the bedroom in a state of considerable distress. Today it’s not even the prospect of Dean scoring eighteen own goals and getting booed off the pitch that’s distressing me…though I have to say life would be altogether more pleasant if he just went out there and kicked it into the right net like the others manage to do. No, the real problem today is that I think I might have to sack Mallory. Can you imagine it? The thing is—I can’t see any way round it. She’s committed a cardinal sin and it would be unforgivable of me not to punish her in some way. I feel like Sir Alan Sugar as I spin on my heels and point at the mirror. ‘You’re fired,’ I growl, with all the seriousness that a woman with her hair in Carmen rollers can muster. ‘You, Mallory. You’re fired.’
Okay, let me think about how I can word this as I explain to you what happened. Mallory came round at 6 a.m., as she usually does on match days, but she forgot to bring her fake-tan spray with her!! Can you imagine? A beautician, going to see a Wag before a match and forgetting the fake tan! It would have been less disastrous to me if she’d forgotten to bring her head.
This is how the whole sorry scene played itself out. Sensitive readers may choose to look away at this point.
‘Mallory, darling, how lovely to see you,’ I said in my best, most welcoming voice. ‘In you come. Have you got everything there?’
Note, please, how I managed to spot immediately that she was less encumbered than usual. Note, please, also, that she did not notice at all that she was carrying significantly less gear than is usual or, as it turns out, desirable.
‘Yes, everything I need is here,’ said Mallory. Or, should I say, ‘lied Mallory’, because that’s what it was—a damned lie.
‘Can I do the fake tan first?’ I asked, peeling off my top and kicking my Jimmy Choos to one side.
‘Sure,’ said Mallory (lying). Then began the fumble through all her bags as she searched in vain for her fake-tanning stuff.
‘I’m sure it’s here somewhere,’ she muttered, throwing things out of her enormous shopper as she did. ‘Mmmmmm…that’s strange.’
More instruments of the beautification process were hurled outwards and upwards as Mallory scoured her bag. A small pot of wax rolled across the carpet. Tea-tree oil, tweezers and nail files tumbled out. Facepacks, toner, moisturiser, creme bleach, a pumice stone, hot stones for massage…no fake-tan sprayer though. No sign of a spray-tan machine anywhere.
‘Oh Tracie,’ said Mallory, clutching her hands around her face in horror. ‘Tracie, I’m so sorry.’
I squawked. I know it was a squawk and I know it was extremely loud, because a horrible grimace descended onto Mallory’s face—the same look she’d had when she’d stepped back and put her stiletto heel through my cashmere cushion. For one horrible moment she thought she’d skewered the cat.
‘How could you possibly forget it?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said for the twenty-fifth time. ‘I’m really sorry.’
The trouble is, ‘really sorry’ isn’t going to make me the colour of a rusty nail by 3 p.m., is it?
I got Mallory to do all the other essential treatments. My fingernails were long and blunt at the end and painted with white tips. Nail extensions had been applied to my toenails and not a stray hair remained anywhere. My body was soft, my nails were tough and my hair was long and thick. But my skin? White.
‘I’ll drop you at the tanning shop on Luton High Street if you want,’ says Mallory, and not for the first time I wondered whether she’d forgotten the spray tan on purpose. I know she doesn’t like doing the spray business. She’s been a bit funny with the whole thing since the unfortunate incident with another Wag and a white Chihuahua. No amount of pleading would convince the woman that her dog looked fine the colour of a ginger-nut biscuit.
I think the fundamental problem that Mallory and other women like her face in a spray-tan sense when working with Wags, is that most Wags have entirely white furniture in their homes, which means that there’s every chance of a major disaster happening.
‘I’ll wait outside,’ says Mallory, as I walk into the salon and request a double spray tan. It goes well to start with. Once I’d got over being told to wear paper knickers, which were entirely unflattering in every respect.
‘Okay, turn round,’ says Debbie, the tanning lady. ‘And back again…Great…Nearly done. Just need to spray your face now. Breathe in when I say, then hold your breath until I’ve finished spraying. Okay?’
Breathe in. How hard can that be? Normally breathing comes to me as easily as applying mascara, driving and drinking a cappuccino at the same time, but suddenly I don’t know how to hold my breath. And just as Debbie sprays a fine mist of cocoa-coloured skin dye, I take a massive gulp in.
‘Great—that’ll be my lungs nicely tanned then.’ I’m choking and straining and feeling like I’m about to be sick.
‘I’ll get you a drink of water,’ says Debbie, swinging open the door leading directly to the reception area, and thus to the main door to the salon, where around a dozen people got an eyeful of a choking Luton Town Wag in paper knickers and a fetching shower cap. I was a lovely shade of mahogany though.
Tuesday, 28 August (#ulink_376d2133-ab0d-5342-9ee1-b25a0812aaa5)
8 p.m.
My mother and Dean are staring at me, utter confusion registering on their familiar faces. I’m not really listening to them any more. I’m peeling off the small rose tattoos that Mallory fixed onto my fingernails on Saturday morning as an apology for not having her tanning system with her. God, Saturday seems like a long time ago—before I was arrested for causing criminal damage…
‘Are you listening?’ Mum says. ‘I asked you what on earth you thought you were doing?’
Mum had turned up at the house as soon as she heard the news. She was dressed in a cream Lanvin dress that she’d had specially altered for the occasion. It was so short I could see that she’d had her bikini line specially done for the occasion, too. She wore the dress with sky-high Christian Louboutin shoes and looked fantastic, with her make-up professionally applied and her hair styled like Farrah Fawcett Majors’. She’d obviously feared there would be photographers camped out in the driveway. Luckily she was wrong. When I came home in the taxi at lunchtime the place was deserted and I had just Mum and Dean to contend with. Neither can quite believe the turn of events.
‘I mean, what possessed you?’ Mum is asking.
‘I was trying to help,’ I say.
‘Help?’ says Dean. ‘Help? Tell me how causing over two thousand pounds’ worth of damage in Faux Fur in Bishop’s Stortford helped anyone.’
Mum puts her arm round Dean’s shoulder and hugs him into her massive bosoms. ‘What possessed you today?’ she asks, turning to face me aggressively, while stroking his thinning hair affectionately.
‘Nothing possessed me,’ I answer, and I feel like screaming. You see, it was all her fault. It was Mum telling me that you should just go and bump into someone if you want to befriend them that started me off on all this in the first place.
It was after the call with Mum that I started to think about the ways in which I could help Dean, and I became convinced that if he were to become friends with some of the England players, he’d be more likely to get a good transfer deal. I knew Dean would never go and knock on Beckham’s door so I thought, I know, I’ll befriend Victoria. She’ll understand after all she went through when Becks kicked that bloke in the Argentina game, and the Daily Mirror did a David Beckham dartboard in the paper the next day; she’ll know what it’s like to live life as a piranha, or was that a pariah?
I knew she was in England because I’d seen her in the Daily Mail yesterday, and I knew where she lived because when they had their World Cup party there were pictures of the house (which I cut out and kept in a scrapbook) and it said that the house was in Sawbridgeshire. So I woke up at 7 a.m. this morning, dressed, and left the house to head for Beckingham Palace…
Flashback to 9 a.m.
Shit. The gates are opening. Fuck. What do I do? Perhaps I should have thought this through a bit more carefully first. I’m sitting in a tiny orange car in the middle of Essex, outside an enormous mansion belonging to David and Victoria Beckham, wondering what to do next. I should be at home, looking after my daughter and my husband, and preparing for a morning at the hairdresser’s with Mich. She’s agreed to have just a few blonde highlights weaved in at the front of her hair because we’re now ten days into the season and she still hasn’t bagged a footballer. Andre’s shown some interest but there’s no real sign of commitment. It must be her hair. It’s just so…dark. I feel awful for abandoning her to face the bleach alone, but I think she’ll be able to cope. She knows it’s the right thing to do. She knows that blonde hair is the key to unlocking the heart of a footballer.
I’m paranoid that someone’s going to see me and realise I’m hanging around, so I drop myself down in the driver’s seat and peer up over the windscreen—all that can be seen ofme now is the black headscarf wound tightly around my head and the top halfmoon of my massive sunglasses. To be honest, I’d look far less suspicious if I just sat there, smiling, but I’m so determined not to be seen that I opt for this ridiculous semi-reclining position that just screams ‘Stalker!’. I hear the gates start to close behind me and I ease myself up a little, just as a fabulous car glides out and sweeps majestically onto the road in front of me. There are two women sitting in the back. I am absolutely sure that one of them is Victoria Beckham. My heart starts pounding and my hands are shaking a little, sweating inside the leather driving gloves that I am wearing so as not to leave fingerprints anywhere.
I start up the engine and drive up behind them, still reclining a little but able—just—to see over the steering wheel. I’m in a rented car (I’m having horrific problems getting my car back. I went to the Croydon place on Sunday and was told it was shut. Great! So it’s fine for them to come and steal my car off the road but they can’t be bothered to stay open on Sundays for me to pick it up. It’s almost enough to make me want to park properly in future. I could see the car through the railings on Sunday. It was like I was visiting it in jail. As I walked away I swear I heard it sobbing). Anyway, I went for the plainest rental car I could find—just so I wouldn’t be easily spotted by Vic. This fabulous yellow Lamborghini was screaming at me in the showroom last night, but even I realised some musclehead driver, bouncer or security guard would notice if a banana-coloured sports car tailed him for more than a couple of minutes. I don’t think I realised, at the time, just how orange this car is, though. It looks like a little tangerine rolling down the road after them.
Victoria’s car is moving at a nice gentle pace, so obviously they don’t realise they’re being followed. Great. The fact that the Mercedes is not going very fast means that I can keep up with it in my little Fiat Punto. I’m better at this stalking lark than I thought I’d be.
The car is heading towards Bishop’s Stortford. I know this not because of any prior knowledge of the backstreets of Hertfordshire, but because there are great big road signs everywhere. Eventually, the driver pulls over and out he gets—fucking brilliant!—it’s Victoria, and—double fucking brilliant!—she’s with Geri Halliwell, who is clutching an extraordinary-looking basket containing two tiny poodles. This is sooo much better than I thought it would be.
I dump the car on the side of the road and jump out, crossing over to where V & G are, so that I’m in the slipstream of the two most famous Spice Girls. They stop and peer into a window. I do, too. They continue. I follow. On we go, down the road in procession, until Geri suddenly spins round with a terribly aggressive look on her face.
Is she looking at me? I’m not sure. I immediately dive into the nearest shop, just in case…It’s a butcher’s…fuck, what the hell am I supposed to do in a butcher’s shop? I can hardly browse through the chops.
‘Tracie?’
Oh god, please tell me it’s not Mindy. I couldn’t bear it if she saw me out stalking. Bad enough that she should see me buying baskets full of lard, but this is a whole different level of madness.
‘Tracie Smegglesworth?’ repeats the voice, louder this time.
Shit. Who on earth would know my embarrassing maiden name?
‘It’s me.’
The face is vaguely familiar—a plump blonde girl with messy hair.
‘Sally. Don’t you remember…we worked together at the hairdresser’s on the High Street years ago. You used to live above it.’ She takes off her glasses and I find myself momentarily transported back in time to a simpler world—when brushing hair and sneaking out for a cigarette were the only things that concerned me.
‘You look fantastic,’ says Sally, and I suddenly realise that this chubby, unremarkable woman is how I would look without Dean’s money and the wisdom of Wagdom on my side. She’s roughly the same height as me, but I’m wearing four-inch heels so look considerably taller. She’s a good three stone heavier, her hair’s all over the place and she doesn’t have a scrap of make-up on.
‘Don’t you get cold in that skirt, though?’ She’s pointing at my thighs as she speaks.
‘It’s a tulip skirt,’ I say stupidly.‘Dolce and Gabbana.’
She smiles. ‘Must get cold, though.’
‘Not really.’ I’m wondering what cold’s got to do with anything when you’re wearing £500 of the very latest clothing to come off the catwalks of Milan.
Sally is wearing jeans beneath her blood-splattered white coat and she has on these clumpy trainers that remind me of Cornish pasties. Still, she looks happy.
‘It all turned out all right for you, didn’t it?’ she says, eyes wide. She looks genuinely pleased to see me, which is quite touching. ‘Yes—you landed right on your feet, didn’t you? You know—after that trouble at Romeo’s—marrying Dean Martin. Great! I followed it all in the magazines and papers. It was so grand—the wedding and that. I was so pleased for you, mate. So pleased and proud. I was telling everyone that I knew you.’
I hadn’t invited Sally to the wedding, just as I hadn’t invited any of my old friends. I had brand-new, gleaming, exciting, beautiful friends by then. Mum told me who to invite. She said it had to be a new start for me, and a whole load of wedding designers, lifestyle coaches and style advisers descended on me to make sure everything was done with the necessary Wag-like aplomb. Dean told me to invite my old mates and have some fun, but I was so obsessed with becoming a great Wag that I just did what Mum and the design team advised. I never saw Sally again from the moment I’d walked out of the hairdresser’s that day.
‘What are you doing round here?’ she asks, and I mumble something about seeing friends. I can’t meet her eye because I keep thinking of all the fun we had together and how I just never called her again, never checked she was okay. I’m worried that she thinks I can’t meet her eye because I’m embarrassed about knowing a common butcher, but I don’t know what to say to make it all right. She’s desperate for me to say something friendly and I’m desperate not to say anything offensive.
I keep thinking of all the stupid things we used to get up to, like when we did highlights for the first time—using a plastic cap. We pulled the hair through the tiny holes with those little crochet needles, lathered on the bleach and left the lady for twenty minutes. Trouble is, we forgot all about her. The two of us had gone out to the pub for a lunch of crisps and cider when Romeo’s daft assistant from Czechoslovakia came galloping in.
‘Quick!’ he cried. ‘Mrs Johnstone agony is in.’
‘Who’s Mrs Johnstone?’ we asked.
‘Lady bleach head. Funny hat wear.’
‘Oh shit!’ We raced back over the road to be greeted by the sight of a lady parading round the salon with a scalp the colour of sun-dried tomatoes. Patches of beetroot-coloured skin were appearing on the top of her forehead and the sides of her face where the bleach had leaked through the cap. She was in considerable distress, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Sally pulled off the cap with an almighty tug and half the bleached hair came off with it. We had to tell Mrs Johnstone that she only had three blonde highlights and considerably less hair than when she had come into the salon because she’d made us take the cap off too soon.
‘Can I have some bacon, please, Sally?’ I finally ask.
‘Sure. How much?’
Sally starts slicing and I stop her when there’s a small pile. She wraps it all up, I pay her, tell her how nice it was to see her again and leave. I’m out on the street before I realise that I never once asked her how she was, where she lives or who with. I didn’t make any effort to try to see her again, take her number or leave mine. Shit. Shit. I run back into the butcher’s, throw my carefully crafted card at her and say, ‘Stay in touch, Sal.’
Sally strokes the lipstick-pink embossed writing and looks at me as if I’ve just given her my kidney. ‘I will,’ she whispers.
I run out of the shop and look around. There they are—V & G…wandering down the street arm-in-arm giggling and chatting like teenagers. Right, concentrate—back in pursuit again.
My targets have wandered into a shop calling itself Faux Fur. It looks predominantly like a fur shop, fake of course, but there are bags, shoes, jewellery and all sorts of other stuff in there. It looks gorgeous through the window. I’ll wait until their backs are turned before I go in.
There are gales of laughter as four assistants descend on V & G and I find myself bursting with envy—how can it take four assistants to help them? Three of the assistants appear to be just standing around laughing at their jokes, while the other is pulling clothes off the rails and hanging them up in a small changing room. Once V & G wander into the changing room (together—in the same small changing room—bizarre. I’m making a note of all this über-Wag behaviour. It takes going to the toilets at the same time to a whole new level…),I enter the shop, help myself to a couple of items (note—there are no assistants to help me!) and push my way through the heavy curtain into the changing room next to theirs.
There’s something really strange about coming so close to your role model. I find myself wanting to know all about her: what bag is she carrying (Chloé), what shoes is she wearing (Gucci), what size is she? She looks tiny, but it’s hard to guess whether she’s a size zero, or whether she’s made it down to that all-important double zero. On the floor of her changing room lies a camisole top. If I could just look at the label on it, I’d know what size she is. On hands and knees, I lean under the thick curtain that separates us and stretch out as far as I can. It’s no good, I can’t reach it. What can I use? The only thing I have with me is a large packet of streaky bacon. With the pig produce in my hand I can just about touch it, so I push the bacon out as far as I can, then drag it back along the floor towards me, pulling the camisole top with it. Things are going perfectly—the top is just within grasp, then—quite suddenly—there’s an almighty yapping sound and one of Geri’s dogs leaps from its basket and charges towards me, biting into the meat with his silly little gnashers. I realise, in that moment, how much I dislike Geri Halliwell—I think her solo songs are hopeless and her dress sense ridiculous. Now her dog’s attacking me just when I was about to see what size Posh Spice is. I yank the bacon back before anyone realises what’s going on, but I don’t realise just how attached the dog is and I pull the stupid, curly-haired pooch, too. He comes zooming under the curtain, attached to the bacon, causing me to stagger back, go tumbling out of the changing cubicle and straight into an elaborate display of clothes, shoes and bags. There’s a loud crunching sound beneath me.
‘Vic,’ screeches Geri.‘Look who it is! It’s that woman who was following us earlier. I think she’s killed my dog.’
‘Right,’ says the manageress, locking the door. ‘I’m calling the police.’
Wednesday, 29 August (#ulink_a9f36674-0143-5a07-a43b-64f898f86bb6)
11 a.m.
Mum and Dean must have such sore necks. They haven’t stopped shaking their heads for almost twenty-four hours now. Mum’s the worst, though. ‘Bacon?’ she says. ‘Why did you even have a packet of bacon on you?’ So I go through the whole sorry tale again.
‘Faux Fur?’ she replies. ‘I don’t understand why you would have been in a shop called Faux Fur.’
So I tell her that bit again too. It’s like being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman. I feel like I’ve run through the whole sorry saga more times than is of any use to anyone. Now we’re awaiting the arrival of Magick PR—specialist celebrity PR agency to the stars—and I know I’ll have to go through the whole thing again…and again…Bringing in a PR firm was Nell’s idea (I ended up calling her last night when I tired of watching the nodding dogs failing to come up with any ideas of remote value or help to anyone).
It was such a relief to talk to Nell because, unlike anyone else I’d spoken to that day, she found the whole thing funny. Funny! Imagine how refreshing that was, after all the ‘Why does everything have to end up in such a total fiasco with you?’ comments. Take this as an example: Mum said, ‘You are shameful. You have embarrassed your man. There are times when I dislike you intensely.’
I know she doesn’t really mean it quite as nastily as it sounds. She’s always saying things like that—like she used to when I was little. All this ‘children should be seen and not heard’ has now become ‘a footballer’s wife should be seen and not heard’.
Nell, though, just collapsed into laughter when I’d finished telling her. ‘I love you, you great banana. That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Tell me about the bit with the dog and the bacon again.’
I told Nell everything about ten times, and it never once felt like she was judging me.
‘Look, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Just don’t worry about it. Things like that happen all the time.’
Perhaps they do in Sunnyside Sheltered Accommodation, but they certainly don’t in most people’s worlds.
‘You should have seen us in the war…’ continues Nell. ‘We used to have such a laugh. Did I tell you about the time we bricked up the air-raid shelter and five families nearly died?’
If you have a grandmother like Dean’s, you’ll know that any mention of the war, air-raid shelters or having a laugh is the beginning of a very heavily romanticised trip down Memory Lane that goes on for about three days. It’s a trip that involves Nell laughing in a high-pitched and quite hysterical fashion at some frankly very unamusing things like near-death experiences and the day that old Mr Simpson was bombed as he sat on the loo in the shed at the bottom of the garden on Christmas morning.
‘You know what you should do, don’t you?’ asks Nell, pulling herself back into the same century as the rest of us with unaccustomed speed.’Ring one of those glossy magazines and tell your side of the story to them. Get some good publicity for you and Dean and everything will be fine, don’t you worry.’
So that’s exactly what we did.
There’s the distinctive sound of the bell (it plays the theme tune from Match of the Day) and the equally distinctive sound of footsteps padding down the hall to answer the door. ‘Cccchello,’ says Alba. ‘Ccccchhow can I ’elp you?’
When Alba first came to work with us, with her beautiful Spanish accent, we spent all the time trying to get her to say words beginning with ‘h’ because her pronunciation of them was out of this world. That deep guttural ccccc sound that preceded every ‘h’ was great.
‘Can you do that?’ I’d say, pointing at the hoover.
‘Cccccchoover?’ Alba would reply, and Pask and I would roar with laughter. Mum thought it was all very juvenile, and that I was setting a bad example, but we did it in a nice way, we weren’t being nasty.
While Alba leads the guys from Magick PR into the house, Mum doesn’t move at all—in fact she’s still too busy shaking her head and muttering some sort of Buddhist chant. If she’s not careful there’s every chance that her head will come off altogether.
