like Barbie. Only slightly less natural-looking.
Mum just adored Dean from the moment she met him. He really took a shine to her, too, giving her the money to buy a house and a car and some staff. She’d come round in tiny little shorts, poking her 32DD bra-less breasts at Dean, and he’d be like putty in her hands. Nothing’s changed there, really.
‘How’s it feeling now?’ I ask.
‘Fine,’ he says, still holding his head. ‘Hey, I’ve got something for you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I’ve just got to remember where I hid it.’
Sock drawer, I think. Look in the sock drawer.
‘Gosh, I can’t remember.’
‘Well, put some socks on first, then try to remember,’ I say.
‘Don’t be silly. I want to find your present for you, not put socks on. Now let me think.’
‘I really think you’d be more comfortable with socks on,’ I insist.
‘No, I need to…’
‘Put socks on.’
‘But I…’
‘SOCKS!!’
So off he goes, confused and agitated, still clinging on to his head. Off to put socks on because it’s easier to do that than to keep opposing my absurd but heartfelt request. Bless him.
‘Ah…’ he says all of a sudden, the joy in his voice discernible through the wall of the dressing room. ‘You won’t believe what I just found in the sock drawer…’
7.30 p.m.
‘Deeeeeaaan…’ I lean into my man, fluttering my eyelashes at him adoringly and thrusting my breasts at him provocatively as I attempt to wrestle the remote control from his grip. He’s having none of it.
‘What is it, doll?’ he asks, expertly performing a quick manoeuvre to keep the remote firmly within his grasp. If only he were as adept at keeping the ball at his feet, he might have had a half-decent international career. As it is, he has a less than half-decent club career. If it weren’t for me constantly pestering him to go training, get fit, eat healthily and wear bigger, golder jewellery, he’d barely be a footballer at all.
‘I was just wondering,’ I say, pouting my new, and let’s be honest, terrifyingly plump lips at him to such an extent that he actually flinches in his seat and murmurs something about pink slugs. ‘Why don’t you contact David Beckham or Wayne Rooney or something? You know, make friends with them.’
‘Eh?’ he says, his eyes not leaving the television for the merest second, and his left hand not moving from between his legs, where he is attempting, by assuming some sort of absurd yoga pose, to adjust the crotch of his tight, shiny grey trousers that I bought him from Dolce & Gabbana. He lifts his pelvis right up into the air in an effort to disentangle himself further, and I notice how narrow his hips look in their BacoFoil-type coating. If I wore trousers like that I’d look the size of the QE2, whereas he looks as narrow as the ridiculous silver tiepin he was presented with by the club last year. Is that why he’s not been selected for England for eight bloody years? Maybe if he were built like Frank Lampard instead of Frank Skinner he’d have had the call. Mmmm…Maybe I should do something to fatten him up. I’ll buy loads of steak tomorrow, and chips and cakes and lard and stuff. I’ll feed him till he explodes. It can be my new mission: OBUD—Operation Build Up Dean.
‘You know—why don’t you at least try to make friends with some England footballers? Some of them don’t look too bright—I’m sure you could become their new best friend without them even noticing. Then once the coaches see you out on the town with them, you might get selected to play for England again.’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ he says. ‘It’s not like school. They don’t pick you because you’re friends with the other players.’
‘It can’t hurt,’ I try. I’d love him to play for England again. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder than I was when he won his cap for his country. It was against Cameroon. They’re a really good side…I don’t think they’ve won the World Cup, but they probably came second or something. Dean was outstanding in the match. It wasn’t his fault that he only had four minutes to show how good he was. He got sent off, you see, then he was never picked again. No one knows why. I mean—it was only a little kick, and that guy deserved it. Ridiculous.
Anyway, I’m still proud of him. I display his cap in a large gold-rimmed frame. It’s back-lit, like all that naff old stuff in museums is, and it looks fantastic. I’ve got the match programme framed too, and my ticket for the game. Oh, and all the cuttings about the game from every newspaper that covered it around the world (except for the one where they described Dean as a ‘thug’—I threw that away). I’ve also got the precious squad list that the Football Association sent out with his name on it to confirm he was in the England squad. The annoying thing is that they’ve spelt his name wrong. Isn’t that ridiculous? To spell your star player’s name wrong! I rang them up at the time and screamed ‘It’s Dean Martin, not Martins’, but the woman on reception just kept asking me what department I wanted, then threatened to hang up when I called her a crazy old bat. Still, I had the last laugh because the squad list is now hanging on a red velvet background in a magnificent golden frame.
The mementoes from Dean’s international career cover an entire wall in the entrance hall. They’re perfect, especially next to the large statue of Dean in his football kit. It’s life-size. Actually, to be fair, parts of it are bigger than life-size. I don’t know what Dean had down his shorts when the sculptor was assessing all the dimensions, but the statue is very impressive indeed. It looks wonderful, especially now we’ve put the spotlights directly above it. People said we didn’t need spotlights, what with the three chandeliers lighting up the entrance hall, but I think it looks great.
I’d love Dean to have another chance to relive those four golden minutes and play for England once again. Above all, I’d like to be friends with Victoria, and go shopping and hang out with her and her Hollywood friends—and have a word with her about cutting her hair short.
Dean’s gone back to watching television again, and fiddling with the crotch of his trousers. He can’t hear a word I’m saying with the TV blaring out. I don’t understand why he has to have it on so loud—he seems to nudge the volume up until everyone’s shouting out at us from the large plasma screen on the far wall.
To be frank, I don’t need this right now. I’ve had one hell of a day. A dismal, horrific day in which I made a complete fool of myself at the beautician’s. Mallory normally tends to all my beauty needs—she’s practically full-time, hovering over me with tweezers and emery board day and night. But, for reasons that with hindsight I can’t begin to fathom, today I decided to pay a visit to the new salon in town for one of their oxygen facials. The beautician assigned to me was South African, which worried me from the start. I’ve only ever been to South Africa once and that was completely by accident. It was for our honeymoon and we ended up there after I told Dean that I really wanted to go to this fabulous club called En Safari in Ibiza. It never occurred to me that we’d go anywhere
