According to a hastily scribbled note on the back of a Domino’s Pizza napkin, Amy was out at a job interview when I got back to the house and where her other five flatmates were, I didn’t care to know. Seizing my chance, I grabbed a semi-clean towel from Amy’s radiator and ran into the bathroom, locking the door. Sharing a bathroom with six other people, even temporarily, was enough to do terrible things to your sanity.
‘What am I going to do about Charlie?’ I asked my liberated rubber duck, who had insisted on accompanying me into the shower as I turned on the blessed hot water. ‘I do want to go to Milan but I really want to try for the pitch too.’
‘Can’t have it all,’ he replied with a silent quack. ‘But shouldn’t you try to clear your messes up here before you go gallivanting off to Italy? Are you moving in with Charlie? Why haven’t you called your mum? And how long has it been since you shaved your legs?’
‘I don’t think me or Charlie are ready to move in,’ I said, wondering whether or not that was actually true. It was only now that I realized how long it had been since I’d shaved my legs and he hadn’t complained about them once. ‘And my mum hasn’t called me, has she?’
It was fair to say my mother and I hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms the last time I’d been to visit.
‘You need to call her and you know it,’ the duck said.
Annoyingly, he was right. She might be a passive-aggressive pain in the arse but she was my passive-aggressive pain in the arse and the fact that we hadn’t spoken since our argument was starting to weigh on me.
‘And of course,’ Rubber Ducky wasn’t finished with his truth bombs, ‘you’re still thinking about Nick. Even though he hasn’t called you back.’
‘I am not!’ I snapped before realizing I was lying, not only to a rubber duck but also to myself. ‘But so what if I am? He told me to call and now he won’t speak to me. What if something has happened to him?’
‘Is that what you’re telling yourself now?’ he asked.
‘Fuck off.’
The ‘he must have died or he would have called’ rationale. Keeping single women delusional since the invention of the telephone.
‘I just don’t understand why he would ask me to call him and then not call me back.’
‘Could always move in here,’ Rubber Ducky suggested, changing the subject. ‘There’ll be a free room at the end of the month.’
‘I can’t live here.’ I shuddered at the thought as the water began to cool without me touching the thermostat. With still unshaven legs, I conceded defeat and turned off the shower. ‘No one should have to live here. Amy should have moved out years ago.’
‘I’m not arguing with that,’ he said. ‘This bathroom is disgusting. You’re going to have to make a decision about something and soon. I’m not showering in here again.’
Wrapped in my not-really-big-enough towel, I opened the bathroom door, trying to keep my vagina covered, and gave the rubber duck my best side eye.
‘Duly noted,’ I replied. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Hello?’
Somewhere on Parsons Green high street, en route to meet Paige on a shoot, I found the courage to call my mother. But my mother didn’t answer. Even though their voices were almost identical, I knew at once it was my younger sister, the eternally put-upon middle child, Mel.
‘All right,’ I said with a cough. ‘It’s Tess.’
‘Well.’
The ability to put that much weight behind that one word was a skill she had learned from our mother. I only got the boobs and the hair; Mel had inherited the whole passive-aggressive package.
‘Is Mum there?’ I was trying to keep my voice light in the hope that they had all forgotten me storming out of the house two weeks ago. Of course, it would have made more sense to hope I would bear witness to the second coming of Jesus but still, it was nice to be an optimist.
‘She is.’ She quickly switched to a yell that was entirely unnecessary given the size of my mother’s house. ‘Mum! It’s Tess!’
‘And what does Tess want?’ I heard Mum yell back.
‘She wants to know what you want,’ Mel relayed faithfully.
‘Can I just speak to her, please?’ I asked. My tolerance levels were dropping with every passing second. ‘It’ll be quicker.’
‘I’m very well, thanks for asking,’ she said. I had not caught my favourite sister in a good mood. ‘She says she wants to speak to you!’
‘Maybe I don’t want to speak to her,’ Mum replied, sounding very pleased with herself. ‘I haven’t forgotten what she said when she walked out of this house.’
‘She says—’
‘I heard what she bloody said.’ I cut Mel off before she could finish, wondering whether it wouldn’t be easier to just throw myself off the Westway and hope a passing bus was there to finish me off. ‘And I haven’t forgotten. I’m sorry for losing my temper and I shouldn’t have walked out without explaining what was going on but I was upset.’
‘She says she’s really sorry and she shouldn’t have walked out.’
‘That’s not exactly what I said, is it? Put her on the bloody phone, Mel.’
‘Don’t swear at your sister,’ my mum said, finally on the line without an interpreter. ‘You’re not in the position to be calling my house and being all high and mighty.’
I closed my eyes and rubbed the spot in the middle of my forehead that felt a tiny bit like it might actually explode. Still, better an aneurysm than an apology – that was the Brookes motto. Or at least it should be.
‘I wasn’t swearing at my sister—’
‘Yes, you were. I’ve got ears, you know.’
Breathe, Tess, breathe.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I corrected myself. ‘How are you?’
‘As if you’re bothered,’ Mum huffed audibly down the phone. ‘After that scene you caused.’
The scene she was referring to wasn’t so much ‘a scene I had caused’ as a scene caused by my sisters hanging me out to dry by telling my mother I had lost my job at Donovan & Dunning, at which point she had chucked a glass of red wine across the room and got into a screaming row with Amy. In the middle of a christening. Amy had of course diffused the situation by climbing onto a table and holding the baby aloft while singing The Circle of Life. Amy was wonderful.
‘And you’re the one who walked out and said you were never coming back.’
It was good to know she’d run everything through her own filter and come up with her own version of events. History was written by the winner. The winners and their mums.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said as calmly as possible. There was no point in getting into another row; the only thing that would work here was blanket apologies. ‘I didn’t mean it. I was being stupid.’
‘Yes, you were.’ Clearly not enough apologies yet. ‘You sounded like you were off your head. Charlie says you’re not doing the heroin, though.’
And if Charlie said so, it must be true. The only person who had had a bigger crush on Charlie for the last decade was my mum. Mostly, it only manifested itself in overly maternal smothering when he went with me to visit, but I always felt a bit bad for my stepdad whenever she started pawing my best friend. Poor, lovely Brian. Patience of a saint, that man has.
‘I’m not doing heroin, I was just made redundant,’ I explained, the words still sticking in my throat. Me. Redundant. Bleurgh. ‘And it wasn’t only me, the whole company went under, so it wasn’t anything I did.’
‘There’s no need to be defensive,’ Mum sniffed. ‘No one said it was your fault.’
Another historical revision: that was exactly what she had said. Loudly, while throwing wine glasses around at a christening.
‘Hang on, if the company has gone under, what is Charlie doing?’
Deep, cleansing breaths.
‘Charlie is fine, Mum,’ I said. She was practically hyperventilating on the end of the line. ‘He’s setting up his own agency. We’re actually talking about doing it together.’
‘Oh, Tess!’ And just like that, her tone of voice altered completely. ‘Your own business? With Charlie? Well, that sounds like a very good idea. Would he be your boss, then?’
‘No, Mum, we’d be partners,’ I said as calmly as possible. Why had I called her again? Was I worried that my inevitable stroke wasn’t coming on quick enough? ‘He would run the client side and I would do the creative.’
‘I’m sure Charlie knows what he’s doing,’ she said, entirely turned around. ‘Mel, have you heard this? Charlie is starting his own advertising agency and giving Tess a job. She’s going to be the head of his creative.’
I heard some approving, disinterested noises in the background and decided it was time to wrap things up while I was, relatively speaking, ahead.
‘OK, that’s really all I called for,’ I started. ‘To say sorry and—’
‘You should both come for Sunday dinner,’ Mum declared, cutting me off mid-escape. ‘You should drive up and tell me all about it.’
‘I can’t Sunday.’ Oh, there was that throbbing in the forehead again. I stopped short on the edge of the pavement to let the number 85 bus go by.
‘And why not?’ she asked.
‘I won’t be here,’ I said, wondering whether or not throwing myself under the number 85 bus might not have been a bit easier than having this conversation.
‘Not here? What does that mean?’
Don’t tell her about Milan, don’t tell her about Milan, don’t tell her about Milan …
‘I’m going to Milan.’
Oh, fuck me.
‘What are you going to Milan for?’ Mum shrieked so loudly that even the nice old lady coming out of Costa could hear her. ‘You haven’t got time to be gallivanting around on holiday when Charlie’s trying to start a business.’
‘I’m actually going for work,’ I said, taking a deep breath and trying to work out how to phrase this. ‘I’m taking some photos for someone.’
‘What have I told you about this photography nonsense, Tess?’ she said after one too many moments of silence. ‘You don’t let a hobby get in the way of a career. We had this conversation a long time ago.’
In truth, there had never really been much of a conversation. I had loved taking pictures when I was growing up – it was one of the few things I had shared with my dad before he left us to have another go at starting a family – and I’d begged my mum to buy me a camera of my own when I turned eighteen. But whenever she found me poring over photography books, or looking at my pictures, she would pop up with a snide comment or a stark reminder of how hard it was to make it in a creative field, that a proper job was much more secure and the right thing to do. I’d believed her, of course, and put my camera to one side to concentrate on my marketing degree, but the passion had always been there. Maybe it was buried deep under PowerPoint presentations and the desire for a company pension, but it was there.
‘And they’re paying you to take photos, are they?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, hoping for another number 85 bus.
‘With what, magic beans?’
‘Honestly, Mum, it’s a long story.’ At least she couldn’t accuse me of lying on that one. ‘And I really have to go now but I’ll call you later and tell you all about it, yeah?’
As if it was going to be that easy.
‘I’ve got to say, I think you’re making a very big mistake. Charlie’s offering you a job on a plate and you want to fanny off to Italy and take photos. Italy!’
She applied the same emphasis to ‘take photos’ as someone else’s mum might to ‘sacrifice virgins’.
‘But if you want to waste your time on silly adventures, you go ahead and do it,’ she said with a cluck, apparently done with the conversation. ‘Give my love to Charlie.’
As if it was going to be that easy.