‘If you hadn’t gone the complete Howard Hughes, you’d remember that this afternoon is my niece’s christening and we are attending,’ Amy said, releasing her kung fu grip and rolling across the bed as she wrinkled her tiny nose. Her black bob was ruffled from over-exertion and her cheeks were flushed. She looked the very picture of health. She looked like my complete opposite. ‘So get up and get in the shower because we are on our way up north whether you like it or not.’
Those karma gods were not playing fair.
‘Tess! Amy!’
As was tradition, my mum leapt up from the kitchen table as though I was returning from the war and we hadn’t called seventeen minutes ago to say we were getting off the M1 and would be there in seventeen minutes. No hugs, though. We didn’t hug.
‘And Charlie.’
As was tradition, my boy best friend was met with a wildly inappropriate growl of a hello, as he had been ever since the first time I’d brought him home. The only person on earth who loved Charlie more than I did was my mum. I wasn’t sure if she wanted him to marry me or marry her. Of course she was already married and my stepdad was possibly the best man on earth, but that didn’t stop her from giving him a squeeze that was just half a heartbeat too long. They hugged. They always hugged.
‘Nice to see you, Julie,’ he squeaked as she copped a sneaky feel. ‘You look well.’
‘Isn’t it a lovely weekend?’ Once she had put Charlie down, Mum sat back at the table while Amy helped herself to everything in our fridge. ‘It’s going to be a lovely christening. Amy, you must be so proud of your sister.’
‘Yes, getting accidentally knocked up is quite the achievement these days,’ Amy replied, popping the top off a beer. ‘And two kids to two different men. She’s a living miracle.’
‘So proud,’ Mum beamed, stone cold smile on her face. ‘And what are you doing for work now? Are you still seeing that lovely coloured man?’
I shook my head and planted my face on the cool kitchen table. It smelled of disinfectant wipes and shame.
‘No, that was really just a sex thing,’ Amy said. She did love going toe to toe with my mum. And the worst part was that she was really only warming up for her own mother. ‘But you know what they say – once you go black—’
‘I haven’t, but that’s very interesting.’ Mum always got bored before Amy did and so she turned her attention to Charlie. ‘And what about you, love? How’s work? Tess still acting the slave driver?’
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.’