entire honeymoon sleeping in a tent, covered in mosquitoes and watching a whole load of bloody animals. It was awful. I turned up on the first day wearing my specially chosen honeymoon outfit of little white hot-pants and fabulously high gold sandals with a gold halter-neck bikini top and a low-slung gold chain belt, and everyone was staring at me. They were all wearing plain, dull clothes. I had my gold-rimmed shades on and piles of bling that sparkled in the sunshine. I looked great and I knew it.
‘Hey, man. You’re gonna scare the animals,’ said this man with a rifle. He was all dressed in khaki. ‘And you need boots on your feet.’
I said the only boots I had were made of pink plastic and came up to the middle of my thigh, so he made me wear flat shoes belonging to some plain woman in our group. FLAT SHOES!—and they didn’t match my outfit.
It was the honeymoon from hell. No shops, no nice wine bars, no fancy cocktails, just a whole bunch of rhinoceroses and lions and stuff, and all these people going, ‘Aw, look—it’s a baby elephant…’ Don’t they have televisions? There are bloody nature programmes on all the time. I can’t get away from baby elephants when I’m flicking through to watch Britain’s Next Top Model, and I have to say that I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw a jungle animal again—baby or otherwise.
We left the safari in the end. Or, more accurately, they asked us to leave. We went to some place called Cape Town for a couple of days. That was strange, too. I had this horrible moment when trying to find the shops. You see, they call their traffic lights ‘robots’ out there. I asked how to get to the shops and was told ‘Turn left at the robots.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘The robots? I want to go to the shops, not into the future.’
Anyway, that’s why I was alarmed to have a South African beautician. Her name was Mandie.
‘Lie on the bed and take off your knickers,’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘I’ll need you to lie on there without your knickers on.’
It seemed an odd request since I was only having my face massaged and plumped up with some oxygen-containing creams, but I did as I was told, lying on the bed entirely naked below the waist.
The beautician turned round from where she’d been mixing lotions and potions and jumped back when she saw me lying there smiling at her, completely knickerless. She looked at me in the same way you might regard a lunatic running down the street, clutching a large knife—backing away from me, eyes wide and looking more than a little fearful.
‘What are you doing?’ she eventually asked.
‘I’ve taken off my knickers,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Mandie, pointing to my neck. ‘I said “Lie on the bed and take off your necklace.”’
Fuck! I scrabbled back into my Luton Town thong and slipped off my choker. I’m sure she was laughing at me. The facial wasn’t even that good anyway.
I rushed home afterwards to find Mum in the house—nothing odd about that,of course, she’s always there, snooping around to see what I’ve bought and to try on all my new clothes. Today, though, I just couldn’t handle talking to her and listening to all her criticisms of me.
‘These shoes are horrible,’ she said as soon as I walked in.
‘Not now, Mum,’ I said, walking right past her and going to look for Dean, hoping to have some sort of conversation with him. Now I’ve found him, though, he’s just locked in his own little TV world. He’s like a child when it comes to the goggle-box. He’s kicked the zebra rug out of the way and shifted the sofa forwards, so he’s practically nose-to-nose with the presenter. The only person I know who has the television on louder is Nell. She has it blaring out so much, you have to hold on to your ears in case your eardrums blow apart.
I once took Nell to the cinema and she complained all the way through the film about how loud it was. Eh? How does that work? I’ll tell you what also confuses me about Nell is that she has the fire on, the central heating on and wears a coat, hat and gloves in August, then complains frequently of hot flushes. God help me if Dean ends up like her when he’s older—I don’t think I could cope.
‘Can you turn it down, love,’ I say for the third time, as if I’m asking him to make the ultimate sacrifice.
‘It’s celebrity darts,’ he says, turning to face me. A wounded look had crept across his features. ‘It’s Syd Little against Ulrika Jonsson’s sister’s ex-boyfriend’s uncle.’
‘This is important,’ I persist. ‘Really important.’
Syd Little misses the dartboard completely and Dean spins round. ‘And you think this isn’t?’
‘Paskia Rose’s school report’s here,’ I say. ‘I found it screwed up in her underwear drawer. It turns out she’s really not doing very well at all.’
Dean shrugs and I feel like crying. For some reason I’m considerably more dismayed than I ever imagined I’d be at the sight of a bad school report—after all, it’s not as if it’s the first bad report I’ve ever seen. When I was at school I used to…never mind, that’s not important now. The fact is that my baby has not excelled at her beautiful prep school. I feel as let down as I did when she refused to wear the ribbon-bedecked school boater.
Dean, though, looks entirely unmoved. He mutters to himself in a manner that suggests he’s thinking, What the hell do you expect, you daft mare? We have neither a brain cell nor a qualification between us.
‘Despite possessing a considerable intellect, quite precocious debating skills and having a remarkable grasp and understanding of women’s liberation issues, Paskia Rose continues to let herself down in the core subjects,’ reads Dean. ‘Blimey, Trace. That’s a brilliant report.’
‘Women’s liberation issues!’ I say. ‘By that they mean she knows all about the lezzers that chain themselves to gates and burn their bras.’
‘Lezzers chaining each other to gates? What—you mean like in the videos they play on the team bus?’
‘No, Dean. They mean different women. Ugly women.’
‘Ah, that’s a shame. I like them videos. But it says she’s intelligent, love, and listen to this music report…’ He coughs gently and prepares to read: ‘Paskia Rose has managed to play her trumpet in time with the rest of the class on a couple of occasions this year. This is a great achievement for her, and a considerable relief for the rest of us.’
‘Ah, that’s nice,’ I say.
‘And there’s more,’ adds Dean. ‘Paskia’s footballing ability is staggering.’ He tails off, smiling to himself. ‘When it comes to football, she is the most talented pupil, of either sex, that I have ever had the pleasure of teaching.’
Dean screams with delight and tosses the report into the air in sheer joy. He’s running around the room now, with his shirt over his head. ‘Yeeeeesssss…’ he is shouting. I, conversely, feel like crying. I’m not exaggerating. If you asked me to list the dreams, hopes and ambitions that I have for my only daughter, playing football would be right at the bottom; below drug-pushing and just above prostitution. However, Dean is now doing a highly embarrassing Peter Crouch-style robotic dance
