The Real Rebecca (7 page)

‘And how do you know you’ll be embarrassed?’ she went on. ‘You haven’t even read it yet! It’s fun! Your
friends will like it!’

‘I don’t need to read it,’ I said, ‘to know that it will be embarrassing.’ She looked genuinely confused and I started feeling a bit bad.

‘But I thought …’ she started to say, but then one of her writing pals ran up.

‘Rosie!’ she cried. ‘I can’t believe it – I never thought you’d start writing for kids!’ She looked at us in a
patronising
sort of way. ‘Although I should have known you’d want to write something for your little ones.’

I stopped feeling bad for Mum then. And she must have realised that the looks on my and Rachel’s faces meant we couldn’t hold in our rage much longer.

‘Hmm, yes,’ she said. ‘Hey, have you met Conor
Hamilton
? He’s over there, come on …’ And she sort of moved the annoying friend away.

‘I’m going home,’ I said. ‘Coming, Rachel?’

‘Yeah,’ said Rachel. Then we both kind of paused. ‘Um,’ said Rachel. ‘Can we have bus fare, please? I didn’t bring my wallet.’

‘No you can’t,’ said Dad, sounding genuinely cross, which is rare for him. He hardly ever loses his temper. ‘And
I can’t believe you’re acting like such silly babies. You’re too old for this. Now, all your mother’s friends and
colleagues
are here and I don’t want you making a show of yourselves in front of them, it’s not fair to her.’

‘It’s not fair to us, more like,’ I muttered.

Dad glared at me. He’s surprisingly good at glaring when he wants to. ‘I understand you’re a bit surprised,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean you have to act like a pair of five-year-olds. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Rachel, but she rolled her eyes so he would know she didn’t mean it. ‘Can I at least have a glass of wine?’

‘No,’ said Dad. ‘Oh, all right. Just one. And NOT you,’ he said, looking at me. Not that I wanted wine anyway. I’d probably start trying to drown my sorrows straight away and then I’d become an alcoholic. That’d give Mum
something
to write about, I suppose. A waiter came along with a tray of drinks, so Rachel took her wine and I took an orange juice and then we went and sat in a corner and ate canapés.

‘Just look at her,’ said Rachel. ‘Look at her talking to her ridiculously dressed mates (seriously, what is that man
wearing? Is that a velvet bow tie?) like she hasn’t a care in the world.’

‘She hasn’t,’ I said. ‘She’s not the one who’s going to be publicly humiliated as soon as everyone she knows reads that stupid book.’

‘I can’t BELIEVE I was feeling sorry for her,’ said Rachel. And we sat and glowered at her and tried to eat the canapés without getting bits of diced tomato all over
ourselves
(all the little tarts and things are surprisingly messy) until at LAST Dad took us home (Mum was staying on, probably so she didn’t have to face us). And then I went to bed and woke up hoping it was all a horrible dream and … well, you know the rest. So that’s it.

I just rang Alice to tell her my troubles but she was at her mad auntie Fran’s house and her mobile went straight to voicemail so I couldn’t talk to her. And Cass was at her piano lesson so I couldn’t get through to her either. I am both enraged and bored. What a terrible life I have. Also, I am still really, really hungry. But I don’t want to go downstairs.

Mum just came to the door.

‘Rebecca?’

‘Go away,’ I said. Was that toast I could smell? Does she have toast? Is she trying to lure me out with food?

‘Look, I’m going to leave the book outside the door. I think you’ll really like it. It’s not really about you,
seriously
. No one will think it is.’

‘Huh!’ I said. I wish I could have come up with a more witty riposte, but in fairness I was practically dying of starvation.

I heard her go downstairs and then, I’ll admit it, I opened the door. There was a copy of the stupid book with a plate of scrambled eggs on toast sitting on the top.

I took the whole lot inside and ate the eggs on toast in about two seconds. I felt a bit better after that. It seemed like I’d been starving for ages so I thought it must be about two o’clock at least but when I looked at the clock it was only half eleven. It just feels like this day has been going on forever. Anyway, the stupid book is now sitting on my head. I have read the blurb and it looks awful. Apparently
it is about a girl called Ruthie (oh my God, my mother is pathologically obsessed with the letter ‘r’ – she can’t even call a fictional child by a name starting with another letter. What does it mean? A psychologist would have a field day with her). Anyway, Ruthie really wants a boyfriend and comes up with all sorts of schemes to meet a boy. And then she meets one on holiday. Yawn. I’m going to start reading it now.

Oh my God. I have read nearly the entire book and unless it improves dramatically in the last thirty pages I am never talking to my mother again. Well, actually, I’m not talking to her again anyway. But still. Ruthie is horrible. She and her equally horrible friends are obsessed with boys. Now despite what Rachel may say about my pure and holy love for Paperboy, I am not obsessed with boys. I may be slightly obsessed with Paperboy, and a few very
good-looking
guitarists, and a couple of actors, but I’m not obsessed with boys in general. But Ruthie just thinks about boys and nothing else. She doesn’t, like, read anything, or
listen to music apart from boy bands. She would never take part in a spontaneous synchronised dance session. Also, she and her friends are really annoying. They say things like ‘you go, girl!’ and are really sassy. Sassy people are always obnoxious in real life. Ruthie and her friends never laugh about anything. They just give each other makeovers and go shopping. Where do they get the money to go shopping? It’s not like Mum hands over loads of cash to me. Far from it, in fact.

Anyway. Basically the book is all about how Ruthie and her friends have a competition to see who will get a
boyfriend
first. Also, they are in a girl band together and sing drippy songs into their hairbrushes. They do all sorts of stupid sad things like pretending to like football so random boys will like them. And at one stage Ruthie follows a boy into a toilet! That sounds kind of filthy but THANK GOD there are no sexy goings-on in the book. I’d have to emigrate if there were. Anyway, they are all really
competitive
and their crappy girl band breaks up because they play lots of tricks on each other and I actually can’t understand why they’re friends at all as they all secretly seem to hate each other. In the end they all go and eat pizza together and
realise the virtues of friendship and how it’s more
important
than boys, but frankly if I had managed to escape from the society of these horrible cows for five minutes it would take a lot more than a pizza to make me see any of them ever again.

Just after I wrote that last line there was a knock on the door. I shouted, ‘Go away!’, but it turned out to be Rachel so I let her in. We are no longer enemies. We are fellow
sufferers
. Rachel has also read the book. She is almost angrier than me, which I didn’t believe was possible, but she really really is because there is something in the book which
actually
did happen to her. She won’t tell me what it is, but she says it is pretty tragic (of course, she said that this
mysterious
INCIDENT took place when she was ‘your age’, as if girls my age are automatically stupider than sixteen-
year-olds
, which is obviously rubbish, as one look at Rachel and her friends will prove). Anyway, she also said that she never told Mum about it, but she did, of course, tell Jenny about it on the phone, and as there is sadly no privacy in our
house Mum must have overheard her. She says there’s no chance that this is a coincidence because of ‘certain details’ (I have to admit that this all makes this book a lot more
interesting
– I must figure out what this story is).

‘So not only is she embarrassing us, she’s SPYING on us. Or she was in the past,’ said Rachel. The last time I saw her so angry was when Bumpers did a poo in Tom’s bag when he was in our house (Tom, of course, not Bumpers, who is always here). ‘And the worst thing is that this … incident doesn’t just involve me, it was Jenny as well. So she’s going to think I’ve been telling Mum about stuff and she’ll kill me.’

‘Surely she won’t,’ I said. ‘She’ll understand that our mother is an evil spy.’

‘Yeah, well, I hope so,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m going round to her house now to warn her in advance. What are you doing?’

I told her I was planning on hiding myself away and that I needed something good to read to remind myself that all literature is not totally evil and life-destroying, but I didn’t know what I was in the mood for.

‘I know,’ said Rachel, and she went to her room and
came back with a copy of
Pride and Prejudice.
‘There you go,’ she said, ‘read that.’

I told her I didn’t know if I was in the mood for
something
old-fashioned right now, but she said, ‘Trust me, Bex. The heroine has a very, very embarrassing mother. Jane Austen understands our pain.’

Oh my God, Jane Austen DOES understand my pain! Well, the pain of having a mother you kind of want to shoot, anyway. At least Mum isn’t trying to marry off me and Rachel. Unless that’s what happens in the next Ruthie book.
Pride and Prejudice
is about a girl called Lizzie with lots of sisters whose mother wants them all to get married and embarrasses them every time they leave the house,
especially
in front of Mr Darcy, who is this annoying rude but hunky man who’s just turned up in the neighbourhood.

I am imagining Mr Darcy looking a bit like Paperboy.

Although I can’t imagine Paperboy on a horse. But who knows what he gets up to when he’s not delivering papers? He could be quite the horseman for all I know.

Finally got through to Cass, but I wish I hadn’t now. Some friend she is. I told her about what Rachel said about Mum putting something from her own life in it. Cass seemed more worried that there’ll be something about
her
in the book rather than about
my
public humiliation. She was so annoying I told her that there’s a bit in the book about that time she took off her glasses when we were in Tower Records so she’d look better in front of a very cute boy who was looking at some music magazines. She was posing away by the magazine racks until she realised she was
staring straight at the porn section. I let her rave on for a while before I told her it wasn’t true (although I will have to be careful what I say on the phone from now on as
apparently
the walls have ears in this house of spies. Well, one spy. Unless she’s got Dad doing her dirty work and
reporting
to her on our conversations. You never know). Anyway, she calmed down a bit then and was a bit more sympathetic. For about five seconds. She said the photo of me in the paper was nice.

‘Your hair looks very shiny,’ she said.

‘That’s because I stole Mum’s conditioner,’ I said.

Cass said, ‘So she’s good for something, then.’

‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘But anyway, I’m making a stupid face in the photo.’

And then Cass who, lest we forget, is meant to be
comforting
me in my hour of sorrow, said, ‘But you always look a little bit funny in photos.’

And she is supposedly my friend! She says she meant it as a compliment because I look much better (or as she kindly puts it ‘quite normal’) in real life. But it is not what I want to hear right now when that hideous photo is in newspapers all over the country. So I said, ‘Well, thanks a
million’ and hung up. She texted back straight away and begged for my forgiveness (as well she might) so I texted her and said she was forgiven and I suppose she is, but I’m still very annoyed with her.

I rang Alice, who was much more understanding than
selfish
Cass. I feel a bit better now I’ve talked to her. She said that no one at school will care that much about the book, and no one reads the paper anyway. She said I amworrying about something that MIGHT happen rather than something that has already happened. She sounded so wise that for a while I actually forgot all about the hideously
embarrassing
Paperboy incident from this morning, which
definitely
did happen. But still. I don’t feel quite as bad as I did earlier. I am going to have to leave my room now. I want to have a shower and I’m starving again. But I’m still not
talking
to my horrible evil mother.

Sunday

I am still not talking to Mum. Neither is Rachel. Well, we kind of grunt when spoken to, but that’s about it. I made my own dinner last night (scrambled eggs and sossies, which I suppose is quite a lot of eggs in one day. Unfortunately it turns out that everything nice I can cook is somehow egg-related) and took it up to eat in my room. Rachel just went off to Jenny’s house. Dad gave us a lecture this afternoon about acting like babies but he doesn’t understand our shame. I feel sick to my stomach whenever I think of Paperboy seeing that photo of me. And seeing me looking like a lunatic in my pyjamas. Oh, the whole thing is too awful to think about. I’m going to go to bed, to read more
Pride and Prejudice
.