been very impressed – they can’t wait to see you and hear all about it.’ Mum wore my achievements like a badge. ‘Your sisters will be at the christening.’
Joy.
‘Where’s Brian?’ I asked, looking around the house I grew up in for signs of my stepdad, aka the only sane member of my family. It made perfect sense that he wasn’t genetically related to me in anyway. ‘Hiding?’
‘Hiding,’ Mum confirmed. ‘He’s playing golf. He’ll be back by two.’
I nodded and tried not to worry. It seemed like Brian was playing a lot of golf lately.
‘Oh, Tess, Amy’s mum dropped by earlier and asked if you could take some pictures this afternoon?’
‘I would, but I didn’t bring my camera,’ I said, biting my lip and hoping she wouldn’t ask where it was.
It was last summer, when I’d been short on money due to a ridiculous last-minute weekend away with Charlie that I couldn’t afford and which had ended in him copping off with a twenty-two-year-old blonde girl while I sat in the B&B sulking, that I’d traded my camera to Vanessa for a month’s rent. The camera I’d begged my mother to buy me. The camera I had taken with me everywhere until work had got in the way. The camera that sat on my ‘photographer’ roommate’s desk and never moved.
‘She’ll just have to manage without, then, won’t she,’ Mum shrugged. ‘I told her it wasn’t fair to ask anyway. You’ve been working all week and then she expects you to take photos of her bloody granddaughter’s christening? I mean, you’re a bloody director now, for Christ’s sake. And it’s not like there won’t be another one, the way she goes on. No offence, Amy.’
‘None taken,’ Amy replied. ‘My sister is a bigger slag than I am, I know.’
‘Hadn’t we better go and get changed?’ I stood up and grabbed my hastily packed weekend bag, wondering what sartorial treats Amy had shoved in there while I was showering. ‘We don’t want to be fighting for the bathroom.’
‘Fine.’ Mum feigned disappointment that we were trying to escape so quickly, but I knew she was relieved. ‘Be down here by quarter to three. We’ll walk down to the church together.’
I just prayed I wouldn’t burn up on entry.
The christening went as well as a small village christening could go. Babies cried, mums cooed and the twenty-something children who had run away at the age of eighteen stood awkwardly at the back fielding questions from their former Brownie leaders about why they weren’t married yet.
‘We can’t get married,’ Amy was explaining to our septuagenarian Brown Owl. ‘Because we’re a triad. Me, Tess and Charlie. Society doesn’t understand our love. It’s a polyamory thing.’
‘Pollyanna-y?’ Mrs Rogers looked very confused. ‘I don’t quite follow, Amy, love.’
‘Just what we need,’ Charlie whispered in my ear as he fell into the seat next to me. The post-baptismal celebrations were taking place in the pub, ‘the true church of the village’, as it was written. Almost everyone I’d gone to school with was crammed into the conservatory of The Millhouse, putting back pints and taking pictures of Amy’s new niece, Katniss, with their phones and posting them straight to her Facebook page. I had assumed Amy was taking the piss when she’d told me the baby’s name, but no. I should have known. Her big sister was called Bella, after all.
‘What’s that?’ I clinked my Diet Coke against his pint of bitter and took a sip. As predicted, Amy had struggled with my wardrobe of sensible work separates, so I was sitting in a Yorkshire pub at my best friend’s sister’s baby’s christening in July wearing black leather knee boots, a gold sequinned miniskirt I’d worn one New Year at uni, and a white cotton shirt that really needed ironing. It was quite the outfit.
‘Amy is going round telling everyone that the three of us are a couple,’ he said, undoing his already loose tie. ‘I think she got bored of people asking about Dave.’
‘Amy was bored of people asking about Dave seven seconds after she broke up with him,’ I replied, imagining the fun conversation I’d be having with Lorraine from the library and Donna from the post office before the night was out. ‘Now she’s just bored. Why did she even make us come to this?’
‘I’m fairly certain it was to remind you why you left in the first place. Is it working?’ Charlie drained his pint and nodded towards my half-empty glass. ‘What are you drinking? I’m going to the bar.’
Reaching over, I wiped a frothy moustache from his top lip and smiled. ‘Just Diet Coke. I’m not in the mood to drink.’
‘God forbid you should make a scene.’ He looked over to where Amy was performing a jazz tap routine for the pensioners who lived in the bungalows near her mum.
‘I’m not nearly so entertaining,’ I replied. ‘Thanks for coming with us, anyway. I know it’s a ball-ache.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘Any family is better than no family, remember?’
‘And the grass is always greener,’ I said. ‘Remember?’
Charlie half laughed as he walked away, towering over everyone else in the bar while I watched. It was Christmas in the third year of uni when he first came home with me. His parents were getting divorced, and since I’d been there, done that, I’d told him to come home with me. Never in a million years did I think he’d say yes. Now, eight Noels on, he had a stocking embroidered with his name and a permanent spot at our Christmas dinner table. Just like me, he didn’t really see his dad, and his mum had moved to Malta with his stepdad a couple of years ago. Without any grandparents or siblings, as soon as the Boots Christmas catalogue dropped, he was an honorary Brookes.
‘Tess! You came! We were worried you might be too busy!’
Only a full-blooded Brookes could be that passive-aggressive. I tore my eyes away from Charlie’s arse to the far less pleasant sight of my two younger sisters standing before me, arms full of babies and faces full of judgement.
‘Are those new boots?’ Melanie asked.
‘Your hair is so long,’ Liz said.
‘And you both look well,’ I said, looking down at my niece and nephew and giving them each a curt nod. ‘Hello, babies.’
‘Here, hold her.’ Melanie, twenty-six, married, mother of two, handed me baby Tallulah. ‘She doesn’t even know who you are. Isn’t that funny?’
I bit my lip to avoid pointing out that Tallulah was only nine months old and barely even knew who she was and took the baby with a strained smile.
‘Please don’t be sick on this shirt,’ I whispered to my niece. ‘It was a present.’
‘Look, you’re a natural!’ Liz, twenty-two, engaged, mother of one but desperately trying for another by all accounts, thrust out a second baby. ‘Take Harry while I get us a drink.’
‘I can’t hold two babies,’ I squealed, taking the even tinier bundle in my other arm and looking around in desperation. ‘What if I need a wee?’
‘You’re
