daughters just a few years older than me.
Joan, I should tell you, is one of those women with the hair permanently set, the nails always done and never off a sun bed, even in the depths of winter. She looks a bit like how you’d imagine Barbie’s granny might look and can’t even put out bins without lipstick on (by the way, I’m NOT making that up).
With a chronic habit of talking everything up as well. Like when she first met Dad, she’d introduce him as ‘Senior Manager of a Drinking Emporium’. Whereas, in actual fact, he was a humble barman. How they first met in fact: she used to go into the Swiss Cottage pub where he worked for the Tuesday poker night games, only she’d insist on telling everyone she played ‘bridge, not poker’.
I’m not even sure how long Dad was seeing her for before they got married; all I knew was that one miserable, wet day, when I was about ten, he took me to the zoo for a treat, to meet his new ‘friend’ Joan and her two daughters. That in itself was unusual and immediately set alarm bells ringing; because he never took a day off work, ever. Poor guileless Dad, thinking we’d all get along famously and would end up one big happy family.
I was the only one who actually enjoyed the zoo; to the twelve-and thirteen-year-old Sharon and Maggie everything was either ‘stupid’ or else ‘babyish’. By which of course, they meant that I was stupid and babyish. I can still remember the two of them ganging up on me behind the reptile house to slag me off for not wearing a bra. Then, in that snide, psychological way of bullying that girls have, they said I was so immature, I probably still believed in Santa Claus.
Which, right up until that moment, I had.
I can date my childhood ending back to that very day.
Nor did things improve after Dad remarried. Turned out Joan’s first husband had been a chronic alcoholic who’d left her with even less money than we had, which of course meant that right after the wedding, she and the Banger sisters all came to live with us in our tiny corporation house. Me, Sharon and Maggie all under the one roof? A recipe for nuclear fission if ever there was one.
So Christ alone knows what tales they’ve told the film crew about me. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got a Jessie doll somewhere in the house with pins and needles stuck in it. But if it comes to it, I’ve a few choice anecdotes I could regale them with myself. The innumerable petty tortures they’d inflict on me were worthy of the Gestapo; like using my maths homework as a litter tray for their cat, or else, a particular favourite of theirs, hiding my underwear so I’d have to go to school either wearing swimming togs underneath my uniform or else nothing. Then the two of them would gleefully tell the other kids in the playground, so they’d all point at me, roar laughing and call me Panti-free. I’m not kidding, the nickname stuck right up until sixth year.
And there was never anyone to defend me, only myself, as Dad was always off working morning, noon and night, seven days a week, to support the whole lot of us. Bless him; in the days after he remarried I think he honestly believed we were a reasonably happy, if slightly dysfunctional family. Mainly because I didn’t tell him a quarter of what went on behind his back, on the grounds that it would only upset him. It wouldn’t be fair and hadn’t the poor man been through enough already?
Then one fateful day, not long after they first moved in, Maggie made a devastating discovery: we had no cable TV in the house. I’ll never forget her turning round to me and sneering, ‘So, what did your mother die of anyway? Boredom?’
Well, that was it. Break point. I lunged at her, punched her smack in the jaw and even managed to pull out a fistful of her wiry hair before Joan pulled us apart. There was murder, but I was actually quite proud of my scrappy behaviour, considering that Maggie was then and is now about four stone heavier than me.
Then, the same year I turned eighteen, three life-altering events happened in quick succession. I finally left school, got a place on a media training course in college and, just when I thought my life was finally turning a corner for the better, my darling dad, my wonderful, loving, long-suffering dad, suffered a massive coronary attack when he was in work and died instantly. It was Christmas Eve and he was only fifty-two years old.
So that was it for me. Toughened and hardened, I got the hell out of that house, or the Sandhurst of emotional emptiness, as I like to call it, moved into a flat with Hannah and now only ever see my stepfamily on 24 December, at Dad’s anniversary mass in our old, local parish church, purely for the sake of his memory and nothing else.
I try to get through it as best I can by treating it as a penance for all my sins throughout the year. I’ve even tried my best to drag Sam along with me for moral support/ back-up in case a catfight breaks out, but he always seems to have something else on. Mind you, I think the real reason is that he’s too terrified to leave his Bentley parked outside the church in case it gets stolen. Our corporation estate = not posh and I happen to know for a fact that Sam refers to it as ‘the land of the ten-year-old Toyota’.
It’s astonishing; even ten short minutes of tortuous small talk with my stepfamily on the church steps inevitably descends into a row. Honest to God, it’s like Christmas Eve with the Sopranos. It’s eleven years now since Dad passed away and they’ve never as much as invited me back to the house – to my house – for a cup of tea and a Hob Nob after the anniversary mass.
Well, you know what? Good luck to them. Whatever crap they’ve told the TV crew about me, I’ll do what I always do: laugh, smile and deal with it. And in the meantime, I choose to take the mature, adult approach; complete and utter denial of their very existence. Those people are firmly part of my past and I have nothing whatsoever to do with any of them. End of story.
The ‘At home’ part of the interview thankfully wraps up as soon as Katie cops that there’s just no drawing me out on the painful subject of my stepfamily, so the documentary crew pack up and get ready to tail me for the day’s feature presentation…me actually doing a bit of work for a change. Now, technically, I’m not really supposed to know what each week’s dare is; the idea is that when I’m told live on camera, the audience see me react looking shocked/terrified/ready to bolt for the hills/whatever. But the thing is, half the time you’d need to be a right eejit not to cop on to what’s coming your way.
So when the production office call me and tell me to be at the Mondello Park racing track in an hour, I’m guessing the dare won’t involve tightrope walking over the River Liffey. Which, by the way, I did have to do once and of course, much to everyone’s amusement fell into the gakky, slimy, rat-infested water below.
Anyway, my point is, working in TV is brilliant, but glamorous it ain’t.
‘Are you driving yourself, Jessie?’ Katie calls over to me as the crew clamber into the unit minivan, just as we’re all getting ready to leave my front garden and hit the road. Next thing, I can physically see her getting a ‘light bulb over the head’ eureka moment. ‘Oh, wait now, I’ve a fabulous idea! Why don’t we get a shot of you driving through the gates on your way to work? Where do you keep your car anyway? Do you park it in the garage? I’m sure you must drive something zippy and fabulous!’
Please, please, please dear lovely God, please don’t let them ask me to open up the garage door and see that it’s empty.
‘Actually…emmmm…I’m afraid…the thing is…well, you see, there’s a bit of a problem with my car…’ Stolen car story, remember the stolen car story…
‘In for a service, is it?’
Oh wait now, that’s miles better.
‘Yes,
