The show is the most humiliating experience of my life, aside from pissing myself on the Lawns when I died.
Three million people watched me make a tit of myself on TV today.
Afterwards, my mother drags me to the gallery so she can network. I need to sit down like an invalid, while she air-kisses the producer and director – ‘Sweetheart, I still haven’t forgotten our close shave with the Mafia when we were filming Holidaymaking in Sicily in ’97, but what fun!’ – and congratulates the interviewers on their latest BAFTA.
The cab pulls up outside The Ivy, and the driver tries to manoeuvre Mrs Palmer’s wheelchair out, but Tim has to take over. He’s strong and I’m weak and I hate it.
I’ve only been out of hospital for three weeks. The doctors said I was young and otherwise healthy so I should get my fitness back super-fast. Their idea of fitness must be different from mine. The box is the worst thing of all. I see its hard edge every time I shower, like an alien under the flesh of my belly.
‘You all right?’ Kerry asks as we wait to go into the restaurant behind my mum and Kerry’s, who is buzzing at the idea of going somewhere so showbiz.
‘Looking forward to going home. You?’
She shrugs. ‘I want to emigrate. All that stuff about never kissing anyone before? I don’t think I can ever go back to school after this.’
That bit did surprise me. Like everyone at school, I always thought that Kerry and Tim were together. What surprised me even more was how knowing they’re not an item felt like . . . well, something good.
‘People will forget about it soon,’ I lie.
It must have been Mum who made the presenters ask that question. There’s nothing she won’t do to get in with the right people. We’re only at The Ivy now so she can be seen. I’d rather be at Pizza Express. Neither Dad nor I like showing off his wealth, but I guess that’s because we’ve both always had money. His family bankrolled the TV production company he started when he was twenty-two, never doubting that he’d be a success.
When he and Mum fell in love – and I think they did love each other once – they were the golden couple, and Mum created an on-brand life. She dressed them both in the right clothes, decorated and sold their Camden flat, and then oversaw the refurb of Curlews, our ridiculous gated house, while she was eight months pregnant with me. I was another project. She even tried to persuade my dad I should go to private school instead of the local primary, but he was having none of it; thought I needed something to keep my feet on the ground.
It was the right decision. The only time I didn’t feel lonely was kicking a football around the playground or Dyke Road Park. And that’s where I was scouted and the rest is history . . .
‘Dom Perignon, I think,’ Mum tells the waiter, and I see Mrs Palmer clock the price and her skin goes from off-white to blue. My mother insists it’s her treat.
‘To our three extraordinary children!’ Mum raises her glass and we all follow suit.
‘You got that right,’ Kerry’s mother says. ‘For years, I’ve been convinced they gave me the wrong baby to take home from the hospital, with the rest of us such noisy gobshites. Turns out she had her own special talents. She’s our star!’
Kerry looks as if she wants to hide under the table. I know the feeling.
‘I see star quality in my boy, too.’ Mum nudges me. ‘A footballer’s career is short, but he’ll make a brilliant pundit when the time comes. He’s got the looks, right, Kerry?’
Kerry’s face turns red and she stares down at the shepherd’s pie Mum ordered for all of us because it’s what you have at The Ivy.
Does that mean Kerry fancies me?
‘Handsome is fine, but you want a man to have a brain,’ Mrs Palmer says, winking at Tim.
OK. That means I’m not Kerry’s type. And she’s definitely not mine.
My mother scowls. ‘Joel is extremely bright. If it hadn’t been for his Dolphins apprenticeship, he’d be off to university.’
This is news to me. I never took school seriously. I already knew what I was born to do. ‘Stop embarrassing me, Mum!’
‘Oh dear, they never change, do they?’ She laughs but her eyes look . . . what is that? Afraid? Hurt? It’s harder for me now to read faces or say the right thing. Sometimes it’s like some of the kinder bits of the old me didn’t come back when the rest of me did.
But I do know she and Dad went through hell when I got sick. I can’t imagine how it’d feel to have your kid lying there, not knowing if he’s ever going to wake up or not.
The doctors still can’t say what made my heart stop, but they’re leaning towards some faulty gene I might have inherited from Mum or Dad.
They say it doesn’t change anything right now, but told us I could see a genetic specialist when I’m older and want kids of my own.
I may not know what my future holds, but I’m certain about one thing: I will never be a dad because I wouldn’t wish what’s happened to me on my worst enemy, never mind a kid.