About a Girl (7 page)

‘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?’

‘OK.’ I groaned and stood up straight, ignoring the looks and smirks around the room. ‘I’m going to go out for a walk. Get some fresh air. Are you all right? I saw you dancing for Mrs Rogers earlier. Nice moves.’

‘Can you stop worrying about me for one minute and worry about yourself?’ she said, brushing down her in-appropriately tiny red dress and straightening out her glossy black bob. ‘When am I not fine?’

It was true. She was always fine. So I gave her a smile and, ignoring all my Cloverhill classmates, I pushed my way over to the fire escape and escaped.

CHAPTER FOUR

Behind the Millhouse was the mill pond, a tiny body of water just big enough to have a good side and a bad side. Naturally, the bad side was where all the cool kids hung out and drank cheap, rank booze, while the good side was where the nanas brought their grandchildren to throw bits of old Hovis at the scabby ducks. I had spent so many hours throwing Hovis at those ducks, with and without my nana. After a slow and steady lap of the pond, I found a bench somewhere in between the two poles, my confused ensemble not really fitting in with either crew. The kids had clearly clocked me as too old to hang out with them and too uncool to buy them more bargain vodka, and the grandparents did not want their precious children talking to a lady dressed as a stripper on her way to work in a call centre. I didn’t care. I didn’t really feel anything. My brain was so full of so much, I couldn’t do anything but sit on the bench, try to ignore the splinters in the backs of my thighs and make occasional squeaking noises. I wondered if there was some terrifying astrological event I didn’t know about, if all Capricorns were going through something equally traumatic, but it just wasn’t possible. Kate Middleton was a Capricorn ? there would have been something on the news if her life was turning as all-encompassingly shitty as mine. There would have been a tweet.

Stretching out my fingers, I stared at the backs of my hands as though I had a laptop in front of me and tried to switch into work mode. I was best in work mode. If I were still an employed, functioning member of society and my shambles of a life was a campaign, how would I pitch it?

The biggest problem was the sheer number of problems. I didn’t have a job, I hated my flatmate, my mum hated me, I was in love with my best friend, my best friend was not in love with me, and on top of everything else, even when you peeled away those key issues, I had absolutely no life. Not a single quirky characteristic that could be spun into an adorable side project. As a brand, I was less desirable than Skoda; even I would struggle to spin me. But it wasn’t impossible ? I needed rebranding. All the successful companies struggled at some point. Even Apple nearly went bankrupt once. And if someone could make Old Spice cool again, I could certainly save myself.

But what was the Tess Brookes brand?

This was why I’d never had an online dating profile ? it was too hard to describe yourself. I was loyal, conscientious, creative and logical. I could always see the solution to a problem; I always knew how to make a client happy. Unless the client was me, apparently. Visually, I didn’t have a signature look unless you counted bad hair and massive boobs. (Hopefully no one did.) There was no one thing that would make someone sit back and go, ‘Oh, that’s
so
Tess.’ I didn’t have a favourite band, a favourite book; I dipped in and out of whatever was on the TV when I turned it on. I could describe every single demographic out there, I could tell you what made someone buy Coke over Pepsi and then switch back again, but I couldn’t tell you whether or not I preferred polka dots over stripes. I knew too much about everyone else and nothing at all about myself. How could I convince someone to buy me when there was nothing to buy?