a certain amount of bonding between all the Wags and a great deal of competing. I guess it’s like the players themselves. During a game we’re a close-knit group, but away from matches we’re all jostling for position. We all want to be the number one in the team. The situation at Luton Town, though, is that I am the number one. My husband, Dean, is the captain. He’s a former international player and the most experienced player in the side. That makes me the most experienced Wag, and I don’t think there’s a person round this table who would dispute that while I may not know much about Middle East politics or quantum physics, when it comes to matters of a Waggish nature I know all there is to know.
I’m pleased to see that no one round the table today is the colour of normal human skin. We’re all shades of shoe polish—mainly orange tan, but with a few cherry browns from the girls who don’t know when enough’s enough at the spray tanner’s.
‘How’s Nell?’ asks Mich. ‘Still crazy?’
Nell is Dean’s nan and Mich thinks the world of her. I do, too—she’s one of my favourite people in the world. I’ve no idea whether she was always so mad, or whether the ravaging effects of age actually cause more damage than wrinkles. Perhaps she was perfectly normal forty years ago? It’s hard to believe.
Things have a tendency to go wrong around Nell. You know how some people are like that—they’re always just three minutes away from the next crisis? (Luckily I’m not like that.) Nell went to have a gentle wave put in her hair a couple of weeks ago—she was after the sort of body that Elle Macpherson has but in her hair (like that was ever going to happen), but the hairdresser insisted on giving it a perm and now she looks more like Tammy Wynette.
‘Nell’s great,’ I say. ‘Mad as usual.’ Then I tell them all about the hair. Mich and Suzzi are really upset about the perm until I explain that Nell’s not bothered at all. The thing with Nell is that nothing really bothers her. She shrugged off World Wars and not seeing her husband for four years while he was away fighting the Germans, so I suppose a bad haircut’s not going to affect her in the same way as it would cripple me. If I ever had a bad haircut it would be a drama of epic proportions, probably resulting in a suicide attempt and certainly ending in a flurry of threatening legal letters. Nell just pulls out the afro comb and gets on with life.
I can see some of the girls on the far side of the table making mock yawning signs. I ignore them. This is Nell we’re talking about, she’s not like other old ladies—she has the heart, if not the wardrobe, of a Wag. She’s the life and soul of the nursing home she lives in. She used to be the social coordinator of the place until she invited a Barry Manilow look-alike to play there, and her best mate Gladys tried to get off with him. Barry’s agent complained and Nell got an official warning. Then there was the time she was told off for chasing some old man down the corridor. ‘Only having fun,’ she said. But she nearly gave the poor guy a heart attack. She has a cat living in her flat, too, which is strictly against the regulations. Coleen (I named her) lives under the sink where no one can see her.
‘I couldn’t bear to spend so much time with an old lady, but I guess you’re that much older than me,’ Mindy says. ‘And me,’ say Debbie and Julie in harmony, before collapsing into fits of giggles.
‘Not that much older,’ I counter, smiling through the pain.
‘Aw, come on,’ says Mindy. ‘How many of these lunches have you been to?’
A grin has spread across her pinched and painfully thin face. The others stare with open mouths. They’re all rude, these Slag Wags, but even they can’t believe the viciousness contained in the question I’ve just been asked. Their faces are registering utter disbelief. I can see they’re dying to hear what I will say, and who can blame them—I’m dying to hear what I’ll say, too. Right now, I have no idea. How can I answer a question like that—more loaded than the mini pizza starters we’ve just ordered but that no one will touch?
This is the Wag version of starting a brawl. It’s like a footballer turning to a fellow player and asking him if he wants to go outside for a fight. No, it’s worse than that—it’s like one of the footballers punching another player in the ribs when he’s not looking. I just stare back at Mindy. She knows what she’s done and so do the others. Even though we are rival groups of Wags around this table, there is still a Wag bond, and she has just broken it. Certain topics are strictly off-limits. It’s like the rule about not mentioning politics or religion at dinner parties. In Wag Land it’s weight and age.
The thing is, we all lie about our ages all the time, so in order to answer questions likely to reveal your age, you first have to remember how old you said you were, and thus, with that age in mind, what the answer to the question might be. So, a simple ‘How long have you been watching football?’ demands the mathematical brain of a genius to work out the answer. I can’t tell Mindy that I’ve been a Wag for exactly twelve years (it’s my anniversary tomorrow!!!!), and that this is my eighth time at a Luton Town’s pre-season ladies’ lunch. I simply can’t say that, because it’s the truth, and the truth is outlawed. My world is a complex one…let me explain why:
Assuming Mindy can add up, which isn’t guaranteed, me telling her that I’ve been married for twelve years will make it extremely unlikely that I am the twenty-six that I claim to be, unless it turns out that Dean’s a bloody paedophile, or a podiatrist as Suzzi once said (as in: ‘There’s this child abuser in Luton advertising that he can get rid of veruccas!’).
Still, she’s asked the question, and I need to answer it. She fired a penalty at me when I was tying my shoelaces, and I have to work out whether I should leap up and defend it, or just let it go into the net and accept that we’re 2-1 down against the Slags before the starters have even arrived.
Everyone’s looking at me. There are glances and giggles, but I ignore them. I just offer a strained and unconvincing smile and down my Bacardi and Cherry Coke without answering. I’ve let the opposition score. Mindy had an open goal, and even if she did use dubious genital-grabbing tactics the fact remains that she scored. 2-1.
I call the waiter over and order myself a glass of champagne. I thought I could do this sober but, as ever, I can’t. I also order a selection of fattening nibbles for the girls on the other side of the table. ‘Deep-fried brie and tempura. Oh, and potato skins,’ I say. ‘Do they come with cheese and bacon? Do you have any deep-fried avocado?’ I shove a twenty-pound note into his hand and whisper to him: ‘If they don’t eat the fried food, put dressings on their salads and sugar in their coffee.’
This is not an unusual state of affairs. This is what we do.
‘You all right?’ asks Suzzi.
I nod, but I’m not.
I’m the oldest person here and I don’t want to be. I want to be like Mindy—a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old with the world of Wagdom at her pedicured feet and a beautiful striker from the Ivory Coast in her bed. I don’t feel pretty and indestructible any more—I feel old. In a minute, and with one barbed comment, my world has come crashing down. This happens to me far too frequently these days—my grip on positivity becoming more tenuous as time passes and the wrinkles spread. I’ve gone from thinking my glass is half-full to being able to see, quite clearly, that it’s almost empty.
I knock back my drink and try to think happy thoughts about my lovely daughter, Paskia Rose, and the great relationship I have with Nell. I try to think of Dean himself and how much I love him, but that makes it worse and it becomes a fight to stop the tears that threaten to spring forth and wreck my carefully and heavily applied eye make-up. The thought of my false eyelashes coming off in a torrent of tears makes me feel even more like crying. While I sit there, having a battle of
