Putting Alice Back Together (27 page)

‘Stay a bit longer,’ Bonny said.

‘I can’t. I’ve got an appointment.’

‘With your counsellor?’ (She didn’t like the word ‘psychologist’.) When I nodded she gave me a worried little smile. ‘Surely you can reschedule it? Come to the gym with me.’ Her face lit up. ‘You should join!’ she said. ‘Exercise is supposed to be good for depression!’

‘I’m broke,’ I reminded her.

‘You can pay as you go.’

‘I can’t afford to.’ Except she wouldn’t hear otherwise. She would pay for me, buy me some gym gear. We were the same shoe size. On and on she went, but I hate the
gym, even the thought of the gym makes me feel ill. Even with my obsession with staying slim I couldn’t bring myself to go there. Oh, I know she meant well, I am sure that for most people it is great for depression and that exercise is good and all that—it’s just not for me.

‘I don’t want to go to the gym, Bonny. I want to go and see Lisa. It helps.’

‘Alice.’ Bonny took my hands, ‘Don’t you think…? Well, aren’t you seeing a bit much of her? I mean, I’m glad you can talk to her and everything, but…’

‘She helps.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ Bonny said. ‘You had a shit experience ten years ago. And, yes, Mum and Dad got divorced. All this self-analysis, I think it gives you problems that aren’t even there.’

I didn’t go to the gym. I was very good and went to see Lisa, but privately I was starting to think that Bonny was right.

Nothing had gone well since I’d started seeing Lisa.

If anything, my life was just a whole lot worse.

Sixty-One

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

I hadn’t come to see Lisa to talk about Roz moving in—I was there today to talk about Hugh, but the second I mentioned it in passing, she jumped in, uninvited.

‘Roz is moving in?’ She sat there peering at me for a long time and then asking if I had thought this through.

I had. It was a brilliant idea, on so many levels.

Roz was a friend, one who supported me. It showed how much I’d come on—I couldn’t care less that she was gay (well, occasionally, I did, when we were out and I just knew people were assuming we were partners). She gave me unconditional love and I was grateful for it and, apart from that, I needed a flatmate!

And I told Lisa the same.

‘Another injured bird,’ Lisa said. ‘You’ve amassed quite a collection. And what do you mean by “unconditional?”’ Still Lisa peered. ‘What exactly do you mean by that, Alice?’

‘What I said.’ I was flustered. ‘And I give the same back.’

‘Till they leave you.’

Bonny was right—Lisa saw problems when there were none.

‘You love people with problems, don’t you, Alice? And the juicier the better, because it makes you feel better about your own. You pour all your energy into helping them, but the funny thing is, when they start to get better, you resent them.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Roz is finding her feet. She has to come to terms with being a gay woman, a mother. She is dealing with her family’s rejection of her. She’s in a relationship, and soon she won’t need you as much, Alice, and you will resent her.’

She was wrong—there was nothing I wanted more than to see Roz happy.

‘After all you did for her,’ Lisa said, and for a second I thought she was impersonating me. ‘After all the times you were there for her.’

Er, actually she was impersonating me!

‘All the support you gave her—’

‘I’m not like that now,’ I interrupted.

‘Roz will leave, Alice,’ Lisa said. ‘Just as Nicole did, just as Dan came out of the closet and moved on. Now, you can be stuck in that flat resenting her, or you can be so busy with your own wonderful life that you’re able to be genuinely happy for her.’

I didn’t respond, but bloody Lisa did.

‘If not, I guess there’ll always be another little bird to take in, another little broken thing to fix,’ Lisa said, and she looked at me. I think she was waiting for me to
say something or ask a question, to ask who, but I just sat there.

Didn’t want to go there.

‘If Roz moves in, there have to be conditions.’

‘Conditions?’

‘That you allow the other to grow and that, at any time, you are both free to leave.’

And then she went round and round the houses, spoke about sodding boundaries. Nicole was building them now, apparently, Lisa said, and Dan was just starting to.

‘And Roz?’

‘Roz,’ Lisa said, ‘arguably has a greater self-loathing than you—which is why you can so easily manipulate her.’

‘Oh, so I’m manipulative now?’

‘I find you extremely manipulative, Alice.’

What?

‘When?’

‘Consistently. You try to control the universe with your wishes and your cosmic orders, and when that doesn’t work you turn your attention to the human race.’

What the hell was she talking about?

‘You try to manipulate everyone.’ She stared at her pad as my cheeks burnt. ‘Well, almost everyone.’

I didn’t ask who she was referring to.

The strange thing with Lisa is she doesn’t really give out answers. Oh, she’s extremely delighted to voice her opinion when asked, but generally she questions things, questions me, which in turn makes me question myself.

She sort of leads me, not to conclusions, but to a place where I can see.

And often I don’t want to.

‘As you grow,’ Lisa said, ‘as you change, there are people who aren’t going to like it. People you think will automatically support you are actually going to do everything in their power to hold you back. They like having you around, Alice. They like watching the train wreck of your life, because they get to feel better about themselves.’

Sixty-Two

‘Hey.’ Roz was lounging on my sofa (she’d practically moved in anyway), looking as fed up as I did. Karan wrapped Lizzie’s hair in foil. ‘How was it?’

‘Enlightening.’ I rolled my eyes and Lizzie giggled.

‘You’ve got roots,’ Karan warned, as if I didn’t know.

Two inches of ginger roots, and my straggly, half-straightened hair was tied back in a ponytail and I was also, as Roz kept telling me, completely broke.

I was (and this shows how far I had come) thinking of buying a mid-brown hair dye from the supermarket. Blonde was bloody hard work, and anyway all the celebs went brown when they got serious.

‘Dan dropped round,’ Roz said, ‘and left something for you.’ She gestured to the table. ‘And can you talk some sense into my daughter? I’m offering her three weeks in the UK and she’s refusing.’

‘I can’t,’ Lizzie said. ‘I promised I’d spend New Year with Vince.’

‘Then fly out after…’ Roz said, then shrugged, but I
could tell she was hurting. ‘You’re too embarrassed to be seen with me?’

‘It’s not that.’ Lizzie squirmed.

They had come on a long way.

They still fought a lot, but Roz was right: Lizzie kept turning up and clearly wanted a mother. She was just struggling a bit with the new one she’d suddenly got. The thing was, Karan made things easier. It wasn’t just that she shamelessly bribed Lizzie with free foils, it was more she was so assured and girly and ahead of the game with it all that she put everyone at ease with the gay thing.

And I think I helped too.

Lizzie seemed a bit fascinated with me really, but, as Lisa had said, watching someone else’s train wreck of a life can be quite a relief at times. But Roz had told me that Lizzie thought I was a bit glamorous.

Me.

Anyway, glamorous or not, I’d been seventeen for a very long time—about ten years, in fact—so I knew that scary place well.

‘I was the same when I found out about your mum,’ I said, and Lizzie looked over. I sort of knew when I caught the plea in Karan’s eye that I had to get this right. ‘I was so embarrassed; I thought everyone would think that I was as well.’

‘I did,’ Lizzie said. ‘I thought you were her girlfriend.’

And my throat was so tight I didn’t even try to swallow, because that had been what I had dreaded except it didn’t seem so important now. Maybe I was growing up, but she was still seventeen.

‘Really?’ Karan pitched in, perhaps seeing I was struggling. ‘It never entered my head that Alice was.’
Only she wasn’t saying it to appease me, she was giving me the words to give to Lizzie.

We all want to fit in. Even when we rebel we want the rebels to like us.

And if Lizzie was, or one day found out she was, gay, then she’d got the best mum to help her deal with it. But my guess was that she was as straight as an arrow and petrified of what her friends thought. I tried to help her with that.

‘I’m the same with Lizzie.’ I shrugged and spoke to Karan. ‘She’s so
not
gay.’ Out of the corner of my eyes I watched Lizzie’s cheeks pink, and it wasn’t a blush, it was relief. I thought about saying more, I thought about elaborating, but it was safer to just leave it there—leave the conversation right out in the open—the best place for it.

They were waffling on, but I wasn’t really listening. There were the forms I had shredded. Well, not
the
forms. Dan hadn’t rescued them from the shredder and spent the last few weeks piecing them together—no, he’d got some fresh ones,
several sets
of spare ones, and what was more he’d filled one in as best he could.

For personal reasons I emigrated to Australia. For those same reasons, despite passing, I did not achieve the results I had hoped for in my A-Levels
.

I have missed music; I have missed exploring my talent and I feel ready to embrace it again
.

Dan had stuck a Post-it note on them.

Do it, Alice. x

I looked over to Roz, who was watching me.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can,’ Roz said. ‘Just.’

‘Just?’

‘If you sell the car, spend time practising, getting ready for the entrance exam, you can survive for three months.’

‘On what?’

‘On nothing.’ Roz winced. ‘You might need to do a couple of casual shifts at the paper.’

‘And then what?’

‘You get a job for a few months and save up for being a poor student.’

‘Do you want some foils?’ Karan had finished wrapping up Lizzie’s hair.

‘I can’t afford them,’ I said in a martyred voice. ‘Actually…’ I had a wonderful plan coming together. ‘If I get the Brazilian keratin treatment…’ Roz was frowning, but I rapidly thought this through. ‘If Karan can do that for me, I can manage my own hair. I’ll save a fortune on blow jobs.’ (That’s what we call them.)

‘Foils or nothing.’ Karan smiled. ‘For free.’ And I guess she was thanking me for my words to Lizzie. ‘Seeing as you’re going to be a poor student.’

Ooh, I liked being poor.

Free foils. I bounced over like an eager puppy. All was okay—my friends would look after me!

‘If we put in a few at the part line…’ Karan was examining my hair ‘… just to take the edge off the roots.’ She was going through my hair like a mother monkey, like she was searching for nits. ‘And some around your hairline…’

‘Fine.’

It was free; she could do what she liked.

‘It will take a few weeks,’ Karan said, ‘and I’ll add more when I can. I’ll try and save a bit of product as I go—it’s going to take a while.’

And then I watched her squirt orange into a bowl and then she measured out two inches of a colour I don’t like that was called red—and where was the lovely pale blue peroxide? Why was she slicing great long strips of silver off when she was only supposed to be doing my roots?

‘You can’t afford to be blonde any more,’ Karan said.

I felt my stomach tighten. ‘Then I’ll be a brunette.’

‘Fine.’ Karan shrugged. ‘But I’m not doing it.’

‘I’ll do it myself.’

‘This,’ Karan said, ‘is a one-time offer. I’ll take you back to your roots.’ She smiled. ‘For free.’

‘Slowly?’

Karan nodded and I watched as she picked up a length of strawberry-blonde. I watched as the comb weaved through the sandy shade and picked up a few strands and laid them in foil and I felt sick—I swear, I felt sick as I watched her plaster it in red.

Lizzie didn’t even dash off when her free foils were done. I could see Roz shining with delight when her moody bitch of a daughter flopped on the sofa and asked for a drink.

Just a normal family, really (these days).

‘I thought you were doing this slowly,’ I said when Karan’s little tub ran out and she mixed up some more.

‘There are shades of red—lots and lots of shades of red,’ Karan explained impatiently. ‘I’m the colour technician!’ So she squirted out a nice safe caramel-looking colour and then I felt my throat dry as she added what
was surely three inches of red while Roz sliced off more foil strips.

We sat for what seemed like ages. Roz and Lizzie were talking; Karan was painting her toenails. And while in the scheme of things I was just getting my hair done, for me this was huge. Karan refused to let me wash it off in the shower. Instead she did it over the kitchen sink and then she dried it off with a diffuser.

My knee was starting to bob up and down—I just wanted to see.

They were all cooing and nodding and murmuring about a great colour match, as Karan smeared dollops of product through my curls and finally I was allowed to look in the mirror.

I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light (it was dark by now), and I stared at my new reflection.

Think Ronald McDonald meets Shirley Temple.

The funny thing was this time around I kind of liked it.

Sixty-Three

From: Nicole Hunter ([email protected])

To: [email protected]

Subject: DELETE THE SECOND YOU READ THIS AND CAREFUL HOW YOU REPLY

Hi Alice,

Please don’t reply to this. Paul doesn’t check my emails or anything, but you know how paranoid I can be.

I haven’t been hearing from you much at all lately and I miss you a lot and can’t stand the thought of you not coming to my wedding.