Personally, I Blame My Fairy Godmother (11 page)

I make her a coffee using the fancy cappuccino maker for probably the last time (like so much else, it came with the house) and ask her whether she’d like the grand tour. It’s the first time she looks animated since she got here, so off we trot, me still in my pyjamas and dressing gown, her all eager to see the place, inquisitiveness on heels, scanning the place so thoroughly, you’d nearly think she was about to put an offer in on it. In fact, it strikes me that her real reason for coming over was to see where I live, but am I complaining? Hell, no.

So we start with the huge hallway and suddenly I get that sensation of seeing the house through someone else’s eyes. In all my time living here, I don’t think I ever really appreciated how beautiful it really is till now, just when I’m being flung out. Can’t believe I used to give out about all the pink marble floors; looking at them now, they’re just so elegant and classy. And the doric columns gracefully adorning each entrance off the main hall – breathtaking. Dear God, I actually deserve to be thrown out for not giving this fabulous mansion all the love and care it needed.

Joan pulls me out of my reverie. ‘And were there ever any celebrities here?’

I remind myself that she’s come all this way to help me; the woman is doing me a massive favour, so in return, the least I can do is tell her what she wants to hear. Yes, I answer. Loads of them. An actress who’s a household name once snogged a well-known and very married libel lawyer on the exact spot you’re standing on now. And a boy band member snorted a line of coke off the hall table, then was sick into the ivy growing on the steps outside. Then there was the
time I went upstairs while a party was in full swing to find a well-known model
in flagrante
with a property developer friend of Sam’s, whose wife was at home nursing their four-week-old baby boy.

It’s a good thing these walls can’t talk, because the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah would have nothing on some of the antics that went on here. The house would be packed to the gills with ‘celeb friends’ and ‘well-wishers’ and I’d be right in the middle of them, pouring the entire alcoholic content of my house down people’s throats. I don’t know who exactly I thought I was, the Great Gatsby? Living not just in any house; oh no, only the Elton John of houses would do me.
And where are all those so-called friends now?
I find myself wondering. Feck knows, but I can tell you this much: not a single one of them has as much as picked up the phone to even see how I am. Not one.

Anyway, Joan drinks it all in, gimlet-eyed, then goes back to wandering around, checking out the décor. ‘Well, I suppose a place like this is all very well and good if it’s the kind of thing you’re into,’ she says coldly, reaching into her handbag and fishing out a box of Dunhill. ‘But if you ask me, it’s all just a bit…sterile. Needs colour. And warmth. Not to mention wallpaper. The lovely polka-dot one I have in my hallway now would work very well here. Festoon blinds would be gorgeous too, give the place a bit of character. And I hope you don’t mind my saying, Jessica, but what in the name of God is that awful smell?’

I explain about the downstairs loo being, let’s just say, out of action, like, forever.

‘And why did you not just ring Dyno-Rod?’

‘Story of my life: no money.’

‘Hmm,’ she sniffs, disapprovingly and for some reason I
get the feeling that the story of my blocked, knackered loo is the one she’ll be retelling later on. ‘OK if I light up a fag to disguise the smell?’

I lead her through the dining room (‘A table that seats fourteen, Jessica? And where do you all sit when there’s something you want to watch on telly?’) and then on out to the massive conservatory. She wanders around, freely tipping cigarette ash everywhere, passing disparaging comments about how expensive every single thing must have been, all the while comparing and contrasting with the soft furnishings in her own house.

Anyway, I hasten to remind myself, the thing to remember is that she means well. She’s the one person who volunteered to give me a dig out and if it’s the last thing I do, I’m determined to build bridges with her. If nothing else, on the principle of divide and conquer; if I have Joan on my side, it should make life with Laurel and Hardy that bit more bearable. Shouldn’t it?

She plonks herself down on a wicker two-seater, wincing a bit at how uncomfortable it is, then asks me the one question calculated to reduce me to a blubbering wreck inside of four seconds. ‘So, what none of us can understand is…has that Sam Hughes really just broken up with you and disappeared off the face of the earth? Where, I’d like to know, is he in all of this?’

‘Dunno,’ I say weakly, slumping down beside her. Desperate to talk and yet knowing that it’ll only bring on yet another tsunami of tears.

My latest theory is actually way too painful for me to articulate out loud, but for the record, it’s this: you see, while Sam juggles so many balls in the air when it comes to his career, in his private life, he’s a pure minimalist. From
6 a.m. when he starts his day, he’s like a puppet master, buying this, selling that, hiring this person, letting that one go, taking this meeting, having a high-powered business lunch with some top executive then off again in a whirlwind of activity and money making and success and all the trappings. But when it comes to his private life, he doesn’t just crave, he
demands
peace, tranquillity and absolutely no hassles of any kind whatsoever. Ergo, the very second I became a problem, I was unceremoniously dumped so fast that my head is still reeling from it.

And the reason I landed on this particular theory? Because this is history repeating itself. It’s all happened before. Years ago, when I was still pointing to warm pressure areas on maps in the TV weather room and Sam was dating a high-profile politician who was never out of the papers. Anyway, big scandal at the time, but basically she lost her shirt on stocks that crashed, was forced to declare insolvency and ended up having to resign from her party on account of some mad rule that bars anyone bankrupt from sitting in government. Huge deal, headline news, the papers even called it ‘Stock-gate’. But I distinctly remember reading in the gossip columns not long afterwards that she and Sam had split up. Coincidence? I think not.

I say none of this to Joan, of course. In time, I’d like to think she would become a confidante, but right now, if I have to articulate these thoughts aloud, there’s a good chance I’ll have a full-blown breakdown. So I go for a gag instead, ‘Oh, you know Sam, out helicopter shopping, probably.’

‘Well, no Jessica, I don’t know him, do I? Only through what I read in the papers. We were never introduced. Or even invited here before you fell on hard times. Remember?’
There’s a hint of ice in her voice now, which wasn’t there before.

Shit. I was kind of hoping that wouldn’t come up. Right then. Nothing to do but deal with this head on. Build bridges, keep allies and at all costs, get her onside. ‘Joan, I know I haven’t exactly been a model stepdaughter in the past, but please know how much I appreciate you taking me in.’

‘Well I can’t say we’re exactly looking forward to it…’

‘I know, I know, we fight like Italians…’

‘Oh please don’t say that. It makes us sound so…garlicky.’

‘Come on, I know we’re family and everything, but let’s face it, Dad’s anniversary mass once a year on Christmas Eve is taxing.’

She just pulls on her cigarette and doesn’t answer, but I know she agrees with me.

‘But, the thing is, Joan, I want you to know that I will try. To make an effort, I mean. If it’s one thing the last few awful weeks have taught me, it’s that I’ve been completely wrong about everyone who was closest to me up until now and I’m really hoping that…’ The actual end of that sentence is’…that I’ve been wrong about you, Sharon and Maggie and that somehow we’ll all miraculously morph into the Waltons over the next few weeks, right before I get offered a fabulous TV gig that puts me back on top of my game again. And gets me out of Whitehall and back to a life of luxury, with luck. And then Sam will realise what a moronic gobshite he’s been in letting me go and will come begging for me to take him back, with an engagement ring tucked under his armpit to woo me with.’ Not too much to ask, now is it? But of course I can’t manage to get a word
of this out, so I settle for just sobbing my heart out instead. A real
cri de coeur
this time.

‘Oh Jessica, for God’s sake stop that right now, you’re getting carried away,’ snaps Joan, coughing on her fag now, but then this is a woman who hates all overt displays of emotion. Even at Dad’s funeral, the only way you’d have known she was having any kind of emotional experience was by the number of fags she chain smoked. ‘Do you know, driving here I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said “All men are bastards. Best you can hope for is to find a nice bastard.” Quite apt for you at the moment, I’d say.’

Through choked-up tears, I thank her for her pearls of wisdom courtesy of some bumper sticker, but as anyone on the verge of a breakdown will tell you, once the crying really starts, there’s just no stopping it. Next thing, Joan starts fishing around the bottom of her handbag, I’m presuming for a tissue, but no. She whips out a blister of tablets, pops out two, one for me and one for her and tells me to knock it back, that it’ll shut up my whinging. And that I can keep the rest of the pack.

‘Zanax,’ she explains. ‘Very mild sedative.’

‘Ah Joan, no,’ I sniffle, handing them right back to her. ‘The state I’m in, I doubt a sedative would know what to make of my central nervous system.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Jessica, these are no stronger than a glass of vino. That’s all. Gets you through the day. It mightn’t take away the pain but it’ll make you not give a shite about it any more.’

The funny thing is, she’s right. Because half an hour later, I’m loading all my boxes and bags into the boot of Joan’s little Toyota Yaris and for the first time in ages, I’m actually feeling…all right. OK, so I mightn’t exactly be dancing
on the rooftops singing ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’ but you get the picture. I’ve finally stopped whinging and from where I’m coming from, that’s a pretty big deal.

Joan’s defrosted a lot too; she even says that if I drop her off at the hairdressers where she works part-time as a receptionist, that I can have her car for the rest of the evening to keep moving the rest of my stuff into the house. ‘And don’t worry about where to put everything,’ she calls back to me as I drop her off at Curl Up and Die (the salon’s actual name; couldn’t make it up, could you?). ‘Plenty of room in the garage!’ Friendly as you like. Amazing.

Right then. By now, the tiny garage in our little corpo house looks like Ellis Island at high tide, with the amount of suitcases and bin liners belonging to me. I’ve done three runs back and forth to my house and am almost finished moving. Best of all though, the Zanax haven’t even begun to wear off and I feel wonderful. Blissed out and
totally
relaxed. So chilled, in fact, that I’m seriously considering joining Maggie on the couch inside, where she’s fast asleep and snoring, sedated after two Chinese takeaways and four tins of Bulmers. Sharon is working late tonight at Smiley Burger, so I know that for once, there might actually be room for me on the sofa too.

Next thing, the garage door trundles open and in thunders Joan demanding to know what the hell all my things are doing here and archly ordering me to get them out of her sight
right now.
You should see the vicious state of her; honest to God, it’s like she should be wearing a pointy Dracula cape with a dry ice machine behind her billowing smoke.

‘But…Joan…’ I stammer, momentarily taken aback at
the severity of her mood swing. ‘You said this was OK, remember? You said I could store everything in the garage…’

‘Did I say garage!’ she snaps icily. ‘Silly me, I meant to say
garbage.
Now clear that crap out of here to make room for my car. If you think I’m leaving it parked out on the road at night with Psycho Brady out on the loose, then you’ve another thing coming, missy.’

Bugger it anyway. I completely forgot that she could be like this. Mercurial. Lovely to you one minute, then would clip the side of your face off the next. Her moods are like the moon; they come in phases and are ever bloody changing. Right now though, I don’t particularly care. Because I’m on Zanax.

Having lived here in humanity’s petri dish of hatred for almost three long weeks now, I feel somewhat qualified to set the following down in stone:
The Heaven of my old life versus the Hell I’m sentenced to live in now.

It’s true what they say, you really haven’t a clue what you’ve got till it’s gone. For starters, in my old life, I never slept. Hardly at all. Dunno how I managed it, but I just seemed to whiz through the day, buzzing on the sheer adrenaline high of having a job I adored, a social life that wouldn’t quit and a boyfriend that even Angelina Jolie might gratefully consider trading up to. Now, I sleep all the time. Ten, sometimes eleven, hours at a stretch. And when I actually am up and about, I’m staggering around the place in a living coma, full of tears that I won’t let fall. Then there’s the small matter of where I’m sleeping. In my old life, I’d crash out in a four-poster bed, on two-hundred-thread Egyptian cotton sheets, wearing sexy nighties straight out of the La Perla catalogue, with my sex god of a boyfriend by my side, more often than not. Now I sleep under a duvet on a three-seater sofa with bum imprints embedded deep into it from my stepsisters. And as for nightwear, these days, I just sleep in the comfiest fleecy pair of pyjamas I can
find. Sleep in them, eat in them, go round the house in them, do all my chores in them, you name it. One outfit only. No need for anything else. No one sees me and no one cares. Least of all me.

In my old life, back in those long-forgotten days when I used to have energy, I’d bounce out of bed, zip into the TV studio and then spend most of my day having high-powered pre-production meetings about that week’s episode of
Jessie Would,
followed by a fabulous, expensive lunch in whatever restaurant happened to be hot at the moment. And lunch, by the way, would usually involve myself and Eva spending a minimum of two hours lingering over three courses, discussing men, clothes and beauty treatments, in that order. Taking the world apart, then putting it all back to rights again. Now, I think,
Lunch? Are you kidding me?
Between the marathon sleeps and the long To Do housework lists I get flung at me every day, I’m doing well if I can manage to grab a Pot Noodle and a Jaffa Cake in between unclogging plugholes or, I’m not making this up, hand washing the heavy-duty, double-gusseted tights that Maggie wears to work. You should have seen the state of them, honest to God, I picked them up off the floor and wondered where the hell she even goes to buy tights in that size. Harland and Wolff? That, by the way, was item number one on Jessie’s To Do list, which I think the bad bitch wrote purely on purpose to humiliate me. Yeah right, Maggie. Like I could possibly be humiliated any more?

Messing aside though, the housework list that she and Sharon handed me on my first morning here led to one of out bloodiest rows to date, and God knows that’s really saying something. And, yes, I’m fully aware that I’m a person who comes with no boundaries, but what they expected
me to do really was pushing things to the giddy limit. It would have taken three highly trained maids working round the clock to get through what they expected me to do in a single day. Gak jobs too, that you’d blush to ask a paid professional to get stuck into. Like clearing out all the drains on the outside of the house. Yes,
all
of them. Including one that would have involved me climbing up a ladder to the outside of the bathroom window, then trying to simultaneously pour bleach down a gulley with one hand, while clinging on for dear life with the other.

‘Are you kidding me with this?’ I confronted the pair of them as soon as I read the list. Or should I say, page one of the list, given that it ran to well over seven pages long. Double sided. ‘Trained circus performers would demand danger money for doing that.’

‘Think of it like just doing a dare on your TV show, except this time there’s no cameras pointed at you,’ Maggie coolly puffed back at me, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘Remember when you used to have a TV show? It was back around the same time you used to have a boyfriend. Oops, sorry, how tactless of me.’

‘Gee, thanks so much for that, Maggie. One of your kinder and more sensitive comments, may I add,’ I muttered at her as I stomped back to the kitchen, mop and bucket in hand.

The only household job I’m exempted from is cooking, which goes back to my first night here, when I tried to make a chilli con carne that ended up tasting like a cross between paint stripper and dog diarrhoea. Put it this way: with me at the cooker, Nigella Lawson’s job is safe. Anyway, no one really cared, given that this is the house where evening meals invariably come courtesy of Domino’s Pizza
or else the local Chinese takeaway down the road. (We’re far and away their best customers and even have the loyalty mugs to prove it.)

But to make up for that, they expected me to spring clean the garden shed, which still has stuff belonging to Dad inside and which I don’t actually think any of them have even set foot inside since he died. Well I took one look inside the cobweb-ridden door of it and could go no further. Because there, flung in a corner on top of a broken wheelbarrow was his favourite armchair, all saggy and torn, with bits of yellow foam and stuffing hanging off it. And beside that was his bookcase; I can still vividly remember him reaching down for my favourite book of fairy stories and reading them aloud to me when I was little. And over in a far corner was yet another container load of stuff belonging to him. Mum dying so young left Dad with a lifelong fear of losing things, with the result that he became a terrible hoarder. And here it all still was; except covered in dust and cobwebs with rain leaking down on top of everything that he’d treasured.

Funny, they say that grief takes two full years to heal but it’s not true. Because it never really does heal, just gets duller and more bearable, that’s all. Bad enough that every corner I turn in this house holds a ghost of his memory, but believe me, all the Zanax in the world couldn’t block out the searing pain of seeing all of his old things discarded into a manky, filthy shed and forgotten about. So I stand my ground and say no: the only job I’m prepared to do here is to bring all his things back inside the house again and restore them back to their rightful place. And that’s it. End of story.

So now, most of the time I settle for doing the bare minimum, which by the way isn’t laziness on my part; that
still amounts to several hours’ worth of washing, scrubbing and polishing, then having a fight with them about it when they all come in from work and make me justify what I’ve been up to all day.

Sharon works shifts in Smiley Burger, so you never know when she’ll be around, whereas Joan seems to swan to and from her job at the salon whenever it suits her and unlike either of her daughters, actually has a social life and occasionally goes out the odd evening. Usually only as far as the Swiss Cottage pub down the road, but at least she’s out of the house.

‘If anyone rings looking for me, you’re not to say I’m in a bar, you’re to say I’m out at a wine tasting,’ is her invariable warning to me as she clatters out the door, looking like a perfume ad from the 1970s. Blue eye shadow, flicked hair, the works.

Maggie, on the other hand, is always home first. She finishes work at 5 p.m. and has her bum on the sofa by 5.30. Could set your watch by her. So generally, the first big humdinger row of the day will tend to be with her. Anyway, one particular howler went something along these lines:

Maggie (plonking onto her favourite armchair and cracking open her first tin of Bulmers of the night): ‘Why is my ironing only half done? What the feck have you been doing with yourself all day?’

Me (in the middle of hoovering): ‘Why Maggie, how lovely to see you too. How kind of you to inquire so politely about my day. I’ve been out riding unicorns in Never Never Land. Can’t you guess?’

Maggie (lighting a cigarette and sprawling herself out on said armchair, like an uncoordinated hippopotamus):

‘Listen, you. I work for the Inland Revenue. I’m in the suspicion business. And right now, I suspect that you spend the whole day sitting on your bony arse watching my DVD box set of
Dancing on Ice.’

Me (knowing I shouldn’t rise to the bait, but not able to help myself): ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve actually spent most of today changing your bed sheets, washing your industrial strength tights, then picking up the empty tins and pizza boxes that you left strewn all over the floor last night. Now, I’m sure that you meant that last remark to be brimming over with gratitude and deep appreciation, so I’ll just assume that some of it got lost in translation.’

You’d want to see the pair of us squaring up to each other. Honest to God, we’re like a full-length episode of
Jerry Springer
just waiting to be Sky-Plused. But then, as I constantly remind myself to prevent me from losing my temper and flinging a scalding hot iron into her face, my stepsister has a heart condition. She doesn’t have one. I’d also like to add that, in my defence, I only did her disgusting gusset washing job once and then only because I was out of my head on the Zanax. But never again. Because, come on, even desperados like me have to draw the line somewhere.

Anyway, back in my old life, I would change outfits a minimum of three times a day. Funky designer jeans for work, something dressier for lunch and then I’d pull out all the stops for a night out with Sam. Which usually ended up being approximately six nights out of seven. Now I find it’s far easier to stay in my pyjamas all day. And if it gets chilly, I just throw a sweatshirt over them. Practicality and comfort all in one. In fact, if they made giant baby-gros for adults, then I’d just stay in one of those all day. Yes, the
garage is stuffed full with bin liners and boxes full of clothes that I could shoehorn myself into if I wanted, but I frankly couldn’t be arsed.
Waay
too much effort involved. Besides, who sees me now anyway? So, in other words, this season the devil’s wearing Primark.

In my old life, I was rarely home except to sleep, change, then run out the door again. On and on with the never-ending whirlwind. Now, I’m starting to think there’s agoraphobics out there who have better social lives than me. I hate this horrible house, I hate the polka-dot wallpaper, I hate the elephant ornaments on top of the TV, I hate the patterned cream Axminster carpets everywhere, I hate the peach festoon blinds in the revolting kitchen and I reserve special hatred for the people who live in it, but the funny thing is…I can’t bring myself to leave.

Weird, that this place I despise so much has now become my hideaway and sanctuary. So weird in fact, that I sometimes wonder if I’m suffering from depression. I even run a check list in my head just to be on the safe side. But no, I don’t feel like self-harming, and I don’t think that life’s not worth living any more. I’m just deeply sad, irritable and so, so unaccountably tired all the time. Like having flu but with no symptoms. Anyway, going outside the front door = meeting people = exposure to comments such as ‘Didn’t you used to be someone?’ = more misery, humiliation and heartache. No, total isolation from the outside world is a far, far better idea.

In my old life, my house was so ridiculously, ludicrously vast, that I had whole rooms dedicated just for storing all my shoes/handbags/coats etc. Now I’m reduced to having a sofa to sleep on and, get this, my own shelf in the fridge which Maggie allocated to me, telling me in no uncertain
terms that I wasn’t allowed to touch anything on anyone else’s shelf. Like I’m a flatmate that they’re all dying to get rid of. Her exact words, I recall, were, ‘Ever wondered what it would feel like to live somewhere where no one wanted you? Well, now you do know!’ Dear Jaysus.

Funniest of all though, is that in my old life, even though I made TV for a living, I never watched it. Ever. I’d see
Jessie Would
on tape, of course, but only a few days after a broadcast and always on a big TV monitor in the production office, along with Emma and Liz Walsh. Then the three of us would critically analyse every little detail of the show to flush out any gaps where there might be room for improvement, notebooks on our knees and constantly hitting the freeze frame button. But somehow that only ever counted as work, never entertainment. But now that I’m living in a house where the shagging TV is never off, I’ve become a complete addict. It fills a void. And frankly anything that stops me obsessing about Sam can only be a good thing.

By now, my days have settled in a kind of pattern, entirely revolving around the TV schedule. It usually starts at about 7.30 a.m., when Maggie comes into the living room and wakes me up by switching on breakfast TV while she eats a brekkie fit for a builder, wolfing it down in seconds. A truly astonishing sight to behold, take it from me. Then, she flings my day’s instructions at me, but the minute she’s out the door I drift straight back to my second sleep of the morning, thinking,
Great, only another two hours to go until Jeremy Kyle.
By mid-morning, Sharon and Joan will usually have surfaced, depending on how late Sharon’s shift was the previous night and how sozzled Joan was when she staggered home from the boozer. Sorry, I mean the ‘wine
tasting’. Then we move on to the morning repeats of last night’s soaps, which to be honest, I’m actually starting to get hooked on. So, after they’ve both left for work and when the bulk of my chores are done, it’s on to all the afternoon shows, magazine programmes aimed at a target audience of grannies, that kind of thing. Grannies or else people on sedatives like me. Not forgetting
Oprah,
which is fast turning into the highlight of my whole day. Then as soon as Maggie gets in, we watch the evening shows like
Xpose
and repeats of
Friends
which at this stage I’ve seen so often, I’m starting to say the words along with Jennifer Aniston.

What passes a lot of the time too is working out all the mini-civilisations that go on within families. Take Joan for instance. From the minute she stumbles down the stairs each morning, wearing the kind of fluffy dressing gowns that Barbara Cartland used to wear on her book covers, it’s a crap shoot trying to predict what her mood will be. You might as well try to predict the Euromillions lottery numbers in next Saturday night’s draw. Some days, she’s actually great company and will cook a big fry-up breakfast for myself and Sharon, while chatting happily away about whoever is on the cover of this week’s
Heat
magazine, required reading in this house. Well, that or else her second favourite topic of conversation: the neighbours on our street and whatever gossip happens to be going on with them.