‘Well, people don’t just lose their jobs for no reason, Tess,’ she carried on while a random sixteen-year-old who probably went to my old school started mopping up the mess around us. ‘I should have known something was wrong when you came out dressed like that.’
She had a point there. She should have known.
‘I can’t believe this. After all I’ve done for you.’
‘What? After all you’ve done what?’
Ahh. There was Amy. And as my best friend stepped up to my mother, the whispering was replaced by a low clinking of glasses, occasionally punctuated by the popping open of packets of McCoy’s.
‘What exactly have you done?’ she asked, forcing her way in between me and my mother, hands on skinny hips, and stamping a very little foot. ‘Aside from bully your daughter for the last twenty years?’
Amy and my mum were exactly the same height. For years I’d wondered who would win in a fight, and at last it looked like I might find out.
‘I know this is going to be hard for you, Amy, but please don’t involve yourself where you’re not wanted,’ she replied. Ahh, interesting. She was playing the responsible mother card.
‘Can we not do this?’ I asked as calmly as possible. ‘We can talk about this at home. This is … Katniss’s day?’
Nope, that just did not sound right.
‘Oh, we will talk about this at home,’ Mum replied, giving Amy the frowning of a lifetime. ‘We’ll talk about when you decided it was all right to start lying to your mother. And Amy, I think it would be a good idea if you stayed at your house tonight.’
Before Amy could reply, my mum turned on her sensible heel and marched away. As the door to the pub slammed, the silence broke and the party went back to full volume with a new lease of life now they had something scandalous to talk about. Thank goodness me losing my job had served a purpose.
‘Sorry.’ Amy dropped into my lap and rested her head on my shoulder. Because that would quiet those lesbian rumours. ‘I couldn’t listen to her going on at you.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you only made it marginally worse,’ I said, patting her on the head. ‘She was going to find out sooner or later.’
‘I suppose. Sorry I made you come in the first place, then,’ she sniffed. ‘I thought coming back and checking out all the losers would remind you how awesome our lives are.’
I looked at her in disbelief. She shrugged. ‘How awesome my life is?’
‘OK.’ I groaned and stood up straight, ignoring the looks and smirks around the room. ‘I’m going to go out for a walk. Get some fresh air. Are you all right? I saw you dancing for Mrs Rogers earlier. Nice moves.’
‘Can you stop worrying about me for one minute and worry about yourself?’ she said, brushing down her in-appropriately tiny red dress and straightening out her glossy black bob. ‘When am I not fine?’
It was true. She was always fine. So I gave her a smile and, ignoring all my Cloverhill classmates, I pushed my way over to the fire escape and escaped.
Behind the Millhouse was the mill pond, a tiny body of water just big enough to have a good side and a bad side. Naturally, the bad side was where all the cool kids hung out and drank cheap, rank booze, while the good side was where the nanas brought their grandchildren to throw bits of old Hovis at the scabby ducks. I had spent so many hours throwing Hovis at those ducks, with and without my nana. After a slow and steady lap of the pond, I found a bench somewhere in between the two poles, my confused ensemble not really fitting in with either crew. The kids had clearly clocked me as too old to hang out with them and too uncool to buy them more bargain vodka, and the grandparents did not want their precious children talking to a lady dressed as a stripper on her way to work in a call centre. I didn’t care. I didn’t really feel anything. My brain was so full of so much, I couldn’t do anything but sit on the bench, try to ignore the splinters in the backs of my thighs and make occasional squeaking noises. I wondered if there was some terrifying astrological event I didn’t know about, if all Capricorns were going through something equally traumatic, but it just wasn’t possible. Kate Middleton was a Capricorn – there would have been something on the news if her life was turning as all-encompassingly shitty as mine. There would have been a tweet.
Stretching out my fingers, I stared at the backs of my hands as though I had a laptop in front of me and tried to switch into work mode. I was best in work mode. If I were still an employed, functioning member of society and my shambles of a life was a campaign, how would I pitch it?
The biggest problem was the sheer number of problems. I didn’t have a job, I hated my flatmate, my mum hated me, I was in love with my best friend, my best friend was not in love with me, and on top of everything else, even when you peeled away those key issues, I had absolutely no life. Not a single quirky characteristic that could be spun into an adorable side project. As a brand, I was less desirable than Skoda; even I would struggle to spin me. But it wasn’t impossible – I needed rebranding. All the successful companies struggled at some point. Even Apple nearly went bankrupt once. And if someone could make Old Spice cool again, I could certainly save myself.
But what was the Tess Brookes brand?
This was why I’d never had an online dating profile – it was too hard to describe yourself. I was loyal, conscientious, creative and logical. I could always see the solution to a problem; I always knew how to make a client happy. Unless the client was me, apparently. Visually, I didn’t have a signature look unless you counted bad hair and massive boobs. (Hopefully no one did.) There was no one thing that would make someone sit back and go, ‘Oh, that’s so Tess.’ I didn’t have a favourite band, a favourite book; I dipped in and out of whatever was on the TV when I turned it on. I could describe every single demographic out there, I could tell you what made someone buy Coke over Pepsi and then switch back again, but I couldn’t tell you whether or not I preferred polka dots over stripes. I knew too much about everyone else and nothing at all about myself. How could I convince someone to buy me when there was nothing to buy?
‘There you are.’
I looked up to see Charlie striding along the edge of the pond, a frown on his face. His pretty, pretty face.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘To be fair, I didn’t get that far.’ I glanced around. I wasn’t more than five minutes away from the pub. I was sad, but I was also very lazy. ‘You missed an awesome scene.’
‘I know, I heard. I was in the gents.’ He sat down beside me, took off his jumper and draped it round my shoulders. ‘But afterwards you missed Amy grabbing hold of the baby and singing “Circle of Life”, so I think we’re square.’
‘Jesus, I’ve only been out here half an hour,’ I laughed, trying not to be upset that I’d missed what sounded like an incredible Lion King homage. I did love a Disney movie. There! That was something I knew about myself. I was a twenty-eight-year-old unemployed single woman who loved animated movies made for children. If we were at work, I’d be trying to sell me some cat food and a lovely cardigan
