‘Oh yes,’ she waves airily, brightening a bit. ‘You’ve noticed the dining area. Elegant, isn’t it? I’ve just had the vinyl flooring redone in liquorice and marshmallow.’
This, by the way, would be Joan-speak for ‘black and white’. Now while that might sound reasonably tasteful, factor in the bright peach fake festoon blinds in oceans of nylon draped over windows that you can barely see out of, the net curtains are that thick, along with peach stripy wallpaper and you’ll get the picture. Dear Jaysus, it looks like a Mississippi paddleboat from Mark Twain’s time washed up in a tiny little kitchen in Whitehall. Put it this way, you wouldn’t want to be sitting there with a minging hangover. Gak, gak and gak again.
Anyway, to the right of us is the TV room, nerve centre of the whole house, where I wouldn’t be surprised if they all eat, drink and sleep rather than, perish the thought, actually miss a TV show. Joan flings the TV room door open, says, ‘Girls? Finish up your takeaways and watch your language, we’ve a visitor,’ and I follow her. Into the portal of hell. May God help me.
‘Well, well, well,’ says Maggie looking at me with her stony, dead, grey eyes. ‘Look who took a wrong turn on her way to the dole office.’
Pure, vintage Maggie; she always fancied herself as a bit of a one-woman Morecambe and Wise Christmas special.
‘What the FUCK are you doing here?’ is Sharon’s stunned opener. ‘And would you look at the state of you? Jeez, you look like you’re on life support.’
‘So it’s the traditional warm, friendly welcome then,’ I fire back at them, attack always being the best form of defence with my stepsisters, as I learnt a long, long time ago.
It’s been eleven years since I’ve set foot in this room and I’m astonished at how little they’ve changed. You should just see the pair of them. The Borgias on a bad day. They don’t even budge when I come in, but then lethargy was always pretty much the theme of this house. Maggie is sprawled out on what still appears to be her favourite armchair, which is positioned so that it faces the TV exactly head on, with a cider tin clamped to one hand and a forkful of takeaway Indian curry in the other. And if pulling the tabs off tins was a recognised Olympic sport, I would now be saying, ‘Ta-da…Let me introduce you to the world champ.’
Now that I get a good, decent look at her, two things strike me; has this girl ever met a tracksuit she didn’t like? Including the beaut she has on her today which is a shade of Hubba Bubba pink so nauseatingly sickening that no girl over the age of eight should ever go near it. The second thing is that she actually seems to be ageing in dog years. Maggie’s only thirty-three, but could nearly pass for twenty years older; the wiry, woolly hair is now almost completely grey and what’s more, she doesn’t even seem to care. Plus, and there’s no politically correct, sensitive way of saying this, but she and Sharon are both BIG girls. Legs the approximate size of tree trunks with necks roughly the same circumference as my waist. Nasty thought, but I remember as a kid looking at the pair of them and wondering who exactly their biological father had been anyway. A circus freak, perhaps?
Meanwhile, Sharon is stretched out on the sofa beside Maggie like she’s sedated, with a Cosmomagazine balanced on her belly, opened on the quiz page, ‘Is Your Guy a Stud or a Dud?’ She’s still in her brown serge uniform from Smiley Burger, where she works as ‘food preparation and hygiene manager’ (don’t ask). There’s also a big, roundey badge on her lapel that says, ‘Hi! I’m Sharon and I care about your experience here!’ Oh, that a cheap bit of plastic could contain so much blessed irony.
Anyway, unlike Maggie, Sharon always was at least aware of the directly proportional relationship between the amount of food she shovelled down her gob and the size of her arse. When I lived here, she was one of those people perpetually on a diet and yet whose weight never fluctuated by as much as a single gram, either upwards or downwards. And again, plus ça change.I’m guessing she’s on yet another one of her crash diets right now, judging by the Low Fat Smiley Chicken Caesar Salad she’s wolfing down. As opposed to Maggie, who’s horsing into the remains of her Indian, eating straight out of the tinfoil container, like the fastest way to get food into her is to completely bypass all kitchenware. God Almighty, I’m astonished she’s even using a fork.
With only a year between them, Sharon and Maggie are what’s known as ‘Irish twins’ but at least Sharon manages to look in her early thirties, mainly because she hasn’t let grey hair get the better of her. At least not yet, she hasn’t. Trouble is, her hair is cut into a style so bizarre, it looks like it’s in talks to play the Jane Fonda role in Klute.
Something else catches my eye; the Saturday supplement of today’s paper on the coffee table, lying open on one of those ‘What’s hot/What’s not’ pages. No prizes for guessing which category I fall into. Bastards.
Anyway, this is not a social call, so nothing for it but to say what I came to say then get the hell out of here before the law of the sibling jungle kicks in and we all start killing each other. I plonk down on the far end of the sofa and switch off the TV, this being the only sure way to get everyone’s full attention.
‘If you value your miserable life,’ Maggie snarls at me, with enough venom to wither a city, ‘you’ll turn the telly back on. I was watching that!’
‘It was the ads,’ I smile back, as politely as I can.
‘Drinkie?’ says Joan, trying to diffuse the tension that’s ricocheting off the walls like ions before an electrical storm. ‘Girls, one of you go into the fridge and get your sister a tin of Bulmers.’
‘She is notour sister,’ the two of them growl, both sitting back and lighting fags in such perfect synchronicity, you couldn’t rehearse it.
‘Besides,’ says Sharon, all brave and feisty because she has Maggie right beside her for moral support, ‘if her majesty wants a tin, she can get up off her skinny arse and get it herself.’
‘I don’t actually drink cider,’ I say to Joan, trying to block out Pattie and Selma from The Simpsons.I will notlet them get to me. Instead, I’ll just do what I always do whenever I’m in their company. Lock my voice into its deepest register and remain cool. This also being the surest possible way to piss them off.
‘But if you had a glass of wine please, Joan, I’d love one.’
Feck it, alcohol is about the only thing that’ll get me through this. Joan disappears off to the kitchen, and the second she’s out the door, Maggie and Sharon immediately start chanting, like a pair of bullies in the kids’ playground, ‘OH, I DON’T DRINK CIDER…I’M TOO FAR UP MY OWN ARSE.’
I totally forgot they could be so horrible. Dear Jesus, how did I edit this out? I must be off my head doing what I’m about to do, but then my accountant’s words from yesterday come floating back to haunt me. I. Have. No. Choice.Besides, this was my family home long before the bloody Addams family ever moved in and took over. Dad bought this house, Mum died here, I grew up here. I legally own half of it. If I have no choice in this, then neither does anyone else.
Joan totters back in on her scaffolding heels with a bottle of Chardonnay, my least favourite wine in the whole world, but it’ll just have to do. Then she pours a thimbleful for me and a full to the brim glass for herself.
‘Wine with a cork?’ mutters Maggie. ‘What is this, Christmas Day?’
‘Thanks,’ I say, taking it from Joan. ‘Now will you sit down please?’
‘Would if I could but I can’t. I’m going out tonight and this suit creases if I sit in it. Besides, I look thinner if I stand and then the Spanx don’t cut off circulation.’
Right then. I take a huge gulp and launch into my semi-prepared speech. ‘OK, I’ve something to say to you all, so I need you to listen. As I’m sure you know, seeing as how the dogs on the street seem to, this hasn’t been an easy week for me.’