Meg raises her eyebrows. She digs through the cupboards to find more boxes of books and lecture notes, intermingled with receipts and the like. I continue to look at myself in the mirror, holding a sunshine yellow Belle dress up to my frame, swishing the skirt.
‘Did you ever see me do the parties, Meg? Was I good?’
She turns from the mess that is my wardrobe to look at me, smiling.
‘You came up to do Eve’s sixth birthday party as Elsa. You made her year. Kids still go on about that party in her class. They thought I paid hundreds of pounds for a proper impersonator, they didn’t realise you did it for a bottle of wine and a tube of Fruit Pastilles. I think you also shagged one of the dads from that party but we don’t go there.’
‘Was he at least fit?’ I enquire.
‘Builder, divorced, you told me he had a dick that pointed due north-east when erect, still asks about you at parents’ evenings…’
I should cackle loudly at this but Meg senses me staring blankly into the mirror, my mood low.
‘Smile, Belle. Remember you end up with the Beast and have a French candlestick as your best mate.’
‘Yeah, maybe. Just feels like a slightly shit job to be having at my age. Did I tell you when I was at the posh rehab gym, I bumped into that girl who wrote me the thank you note. Ophelia. Apparently, I was quite the hit at her party too. I taught her some excellent turns of phrase.’
‘I can imagine.’ We both sit down on the edge of my bed. ‘Look, I can’t picture being in your line of work is easy but you were very good at what you did. You were born to entertain, to dance and sing. You worked very hard, you did all sorts of rubbish jobs to supplement it, put yourself through courses. All I ever saw was someone who grafted.’
‘But what do I have to show for it, Meg? Half a wardrobe of costumes? I can’t even remember the songs, the routines. If this is what I was doing to build a career then it feels a bit crappy. And now what do I do, start again? Do this for another ten years? Who wants to see a forty-something princess prancing about?’
‘I would. Anyway, by the time you’re forty, you’re not a princess any more. You’re a queen.’
I smile and rest my head on her shoulder. Queen. The best sort though. She rules alone, she takes on many suitors, she throws the best parties and wears killer gowns.
‘We’ll take some of this paper home and sift through it. It’ll give Grace something to do. She can get out her highlighters. Maybe it will give us some clues. To Oscar, to everything. It’s not just wigs though, is it? It’s a master’s hidden on your desk. You were much more than a wig, Lucy Callaghan.’
Only the biggest sister could bolster me in such a way. That said, I may take the wigs home, for the fun, to cover up my in-between hair and annoy our mother. Meg shuffles where she sits and reaches beneath her to pull out something bulky from under my duvet. She reveals a pair of men’s pants that must have been lurking there for at least two months, so much so they’re stiff like cardboard. She shrieks and throws them in the air then wipes her hands down on my sheets.
‘Lucy, who the hell left here without any pants? That’s so gross.’
‘Maybe they’re Nigel’s.’
‘I really hope not. I feel that naked image is etched onto my retinas now.’
She bends down and also finds a usedStrong as Titsmug that has an inch of cold tea in the bottom. I like that I have a set of them for every day of the week.
‘It’s grim that this is still here but this is you, all over. Strong as Tits. It’s even yellow. You always said that was your favourite colour…’
‘…As the others were far too dull and sad.’
Strong as Tits. Look at how I inspired pottery. Look at all the photos on the wall, all those costumes and joy. I glance down at the mug. Let’s take you home too as a reminder of who I was, who I still am. I open the window to my room and throw the remaining tea out of it.
‘What the hell… FERAL! ABSOLUTELY FERAL!’ I look down and it’s our good neighbour again, the tea landing on his laundry drying on an airer outside.
‘Time to leave?’ Meg asks.
I nod, very very quickly.
12
One of the unfortunate side effects of living at home is that my mum does the laundry, meaning she washes all of our underwear. From Beth’s giant comfy maternity knickers, to Meg’s llama-print specials, to my thongs. Oh, the thongs. Mum doesn’t get the thongs and she doesn’t just wash them, she throws them away because, in her own words, There are no gussets in some of them. I assumed them to be leftover bra straps that didn’t seem to match anything. Knickers need gussets. Otherwise, what is the point? There are hygiene matters to consider. Your vulva can’t just be hanging out in the wind.It was a rant that she made over one of her beef casseroles at the dinner table. Beth started giggling at the word ‘gusset’ and Meg laughed so hard that she spat out a carrot that landed on Pussy (the cat). Once the word ‘vulva’ was mentioned, Dad excused himself from the dining room table to go eat his beef off the kitchen counter.
Mum has always been very open about these things with us. She was a sixties feminist who encouraged all her girls to go out, conquer the world and make informed choices about our bodies and fight our corners. It was an empowering parenting stance that came with its sharp edges but it meant that from a young age we knew about things like consent, sexual agency and could tell vaginas from vulvas. In any case, this leaves me with no knickers and Mum is on a mission to go through all our drawers (quite literally) and sigh and shriek at the sight of our undergarments. Dad says it gives her a project and takes her mind off the fact I nearly died but she and Meg have knocked heads quite badly over it.I’m nearly forty, you know who still buys underwear for their kids when they’re forty? The mothers of losers and serial killers.
And so to try and keep the peace, three of us sisters, Grace, Beth and myself, stand here today in the lingerie department of Marks & Spencer, ye old faithful place to buy one’s underwear, while our mother sifts through the shelves and pegs looking for suitable solutions for her adult daughters. Oh, Marks. You’ve not changed much, eh? Still so reliable, still so dull. It’s well-lit, well-fitting T-shirts, well-meaning people buying ordinary clothes that wash well and go with anything while an inoffensive acoustic soundtrack plays in the background.
‘What about these, Mum?’ I say, picking up a thong and flinging it at her like a catapult. It lands on her head and she reaches up and pulls it down, not looking mildly impressed.
