At home, I had just sat down and switched on the TV, thinking I’d chill out for a few minutes, when I heard Mum’s key in the front door. She came storming into the sitting room and flung her jacket on the back of the couch any old way. I watched as it slid onto the floor. Mum didn’t bother picking it up, just flung herself onto the couch instead.
‘Bad day at work?’ I asked sympathetically.
‘You could say that, darling,’ Mum said, sighing theatrically.
‘Is it that computer program again? Or Chris?’ I asked. Chris was Mum’s boss in the office where she worked.
‘Neither. The program’s going just fine now, and Chris thinks I’m fabulous. It’s your dad!’
My heart sank. ‘What’s he done this time?’
Mum sighed again. ‘What hasn’t he done? He keeps emailing me and texting me promotional photos from the new film, asking me to choose one, and when I ignored his call on my mobile he rang the office. Honestly, darling, doesn’t he understand that I’m in work? I can’t keep dropping everything to answer his silly questions.’
‘Why is he in such a rush with the photos?’ I asked, trying to fight a sense of foreboding. I wondered if Mum had seen the ‘Tinseltown Talk’ story. Probably not, I decided, or she’d be even angrier.
‘I really can’t imagine,’ Mum said. ‘The film isn’t due out for months! I simply can’t see what the panic is. And then he starts up again about wanting you to go back out to California. Can’t he accept we just want a quiet life for a little while?’
Mum looked exhausted by the stress of it all. I went and sat beside her, giving her a clumsy one-armed hug.
‘Do you want me to talk to him?’ I asked. ‘Maybe he would listen to me.’ I didn’t really think that he would, but I badly wanted to try to make Mum feel better.
But Mum shook her head emphatically. ‘Absolutely not. I’m not having you used as a pawn between us.’
‘I know you wouldn’t,’ I said, though for a moment I wondered. Sometimes my parents acted like couples are supposed to act when they’re getting divorced – using the children for information and to pass on messages, trying to win them over to their own side. Surely though my parents weren’t going to get divorced? They were always fighting like this – and then they’d make it up again and be so lovey-dovey with each other that it was absolutely sickening. I’d always figured this was just the way it was when you had two such highly-strung artistic temperaments coming up against each other. Sometimes I thought I was the sanest one of the three of us.
‘Let’s put it out of our heads,’ Mum said. ‘I don’t much feel like cooking dinner after the day I’ve had. Let’s see what’s in the freezer, will we? There should still be some of Sadie’s casserole left. I knew that would come in handy.’
* * *
Next day in school, Tracey kept whispering to me in class about what she thought we should do for the School Centenary show.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but Jamie and I got started without you,’ she whispered. ‘We’re going to be the two X Factor judges and you can be the pop star who we think is rubbish.’
‘Uh, Tracey …’
‘You can do some really terrible singing, right? Something awful and screechy, and we’ll make fun of you and then you get thrown off the show.’
It didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun for the poor pop star, I thought. At least Cinderella had a happy ending.
‘I’m just not sure …’ I started.
‘Enough talking, you two!’ Miss Brennan interrupted. ‘Get on with your work please!’
I turned my attention back to my work, glad of the interruption. I knew I needed to tell Tracey I wasn’t going to do it, but she was so forceful, it was hard to find the right words.