mess carefully tethered in a long ponytail, Mel had clearly decided to embrace the curls for the christening. It was a controversial gamble that had not paid off. ‘Although I realize that telling you not to overthink something is like telling Liz no.’
Mel was the poor put-upon middle sister. While Mum was busy forcing me up an imaginary ladder of success and our stepdad was spoiling little Lizzie with his unwavering attention, the true child of divorce and official Band-Aid baby Mel sat quietly in the middle of it all, shaking her head and counting down the days until she could get out, get married and fuck up a family all of her own. So far, so good. She had a house, a husband, a Rav 4 and two kids. As far as she was concerned, she was winning. And despite her open disapproval of me, I actually liked Mel. She was funny, dry and desperately honest. We didn’t see each other terribly often, mainly because I avoided the village like the plague and she couldn’t exactly come gallivanting down to London with two babies under three. It might seem like a strange thing to say about your sister, but if we weren’t related, I’d want to be her friend.
‘Wiiiiiine.’ Liz returned from the bar and handed Mel a glass bucket of suspiciously green-tinged white wine. ‘So, Tess, tell me everything. You never update Facebook. Have you got a boyfriend?’
Liz, on the other hand, not so much.
‘Me and Jamie are moving at the end of the month, has Mel told you? Right around the corner from her. Isn’t it brilliant? All our babies will get to grow up together. Well, all our babies apart from your babies. You really need to get a move on, you know – you’re not getting any younger.’
There was nothing like being reminded about your tick-tick-ticking biological clock by your six-years-younger half-sister to put the icing on this shitty cake of a week. And cake should never be shitty.
‘Is Charlie going out with anyone?’ she asked, tightening her blonde ponytail. Liz was the only one of the three of us who had escaped Mum’s dark-hair-big-boob genes. ‘He might be up for it now if he’s getting desperate. I could talk to him for you?’
‘Or I could kill you,’ I offered, desperate to offload one of these babies. Preferably whichever one was starting to smell like poop. ‘Charlie isn’t desperate.’
Liz and Mel shared a not-very-furtive glance.
‘And neither am I,’ I added.
‘You know there’s a rumour going round that you and Amy are lezzers.’ Liz sipped her wine and narrowed her eyes. ‘But I told Karen you weren’t. Because you’re not. Are you?’
‘No, Liz, Amy and I are not lesbians. We’re very busy career women who have other things to worry about than babies and boyfriends.’ Didn’t matter how true that was, it still sounded like an excuse. ‘And I think you’ll find Amy probably started that rumour to make Karen look stupid.’
‘So the new job’s going well?’ Mel took over the interrogation and one of the babies. Unfortunately, it was not the smelly one. I gave Tallulah the filthiest look I could muster but she just blew a raspberry back at me. No respect, that girl.
‘Yes?’ I was the worst liar.
‘Because I emailed you and it bounced back.’
Bloody email. She couldn’t have sent flowers?
‘Uh, there was a problem with the server.’
‘But not on Charlie’s email? Because I emailed Charlie and that was fine.’
So much for her being the nice sister. Along with her hair and boobs, Mel had also inherited our mum’s ability to sniff out blood, and once she got a whiff of something not right, she did not let go.
‘I didn’t want to say anything at the christening’ – Amy always told me it was good to start a lie by making yourself look good – ‘but I’m not actually working there any more.’
‘Then where are you working?’ The two of them stared at me as though they already knew the answer but just really, really needed to hear me say it.
‘I’m not working anywhere,’ I said quietly. ‘I got made redundant.’
Mel gasped. Liz reached out and snatched Tallulah from my arms in case unemployment was catching.
‘You know that one isn’t yours, don’t you?’ I asked.
‘Mum!’ Liz grabbed our passing mother’s arm, her face completely white. ‘Tess lost her job!’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ I pressed my hand against my forehead and prayed to whoever might be listening to strike me dead on the spot. I could not handle this right now. Silently I cursed Amy for dragging me up here and wished a plague on Charlie’s house for driving the car. My mother stopped dead in her tracks, her face frozen in horror, and just in case people hadn’t heard Liz, she dropped a full glass of red wine onto the tiled floor. It shattered into not really that many pieces (definitely not crystal) and splattered everyone around us with cheap red plonk.
‘Tess, what is she talking about?’ Ignoring the fact that she’d just ruined about seven people’s tights, my mum looked as though she’d just had a stroke. I really hoped she hadn’t. ‘What does she mean you lost your job?’
‘I was going to tell you after …’ I waved my hand around the very quiet room. ‘I got made redundant.’
And with that, the whispering began. Everyone knew someone who had been made redundant, but Tess Brookes? Her who had moved away to That London? With her fancy job? Scandalous.
‘But your promotion?’ Mum’s face was still a very worrying shade of grey.
‘No promotion,’ I replied. Thank goodness I hadn’t overreacted. This was exactly as horrible as I had thought it would be.
‘I cannot believe you would embarrass me like this,’ she said through gritted teeth as she looked around at anyone but me. ‘I cannot believe you would come here and announce that like it’s nothing. I cannot believe you wanted to embarrass me in front of all my friends.’
I dipped my head, pretending my eyes weren’t stinging, and watched the puddle of her spilled wine bleed across the floor towards a white paper napkin and slowly stain it a dark ruby red. There were so many things I wanted to say. I hadn’t planned to tell her like this. I hadn’t wanted to embarrass anyone. Liz told her! It was just like being fifteen again; Liz was such a grass. But just like when I was fifteen, I knew there was no point answering back. She wasn’t finished.
‘Don’t just sit there crying. What did you do?’
Damage done, Liz got up, switched babies with Mel and flounced away, muttering something about needing to change Harry. Mel gave me a quick supportive squeeze on the shoulder and followed. Just like being fifteen. Where was Amy when I needed her?
‘I didn’t do anything – they were just laying people off,’ I explained. It didn’t help that I didn’t actually know what had happened myself. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘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