‘Could you not have gone on that one with the host with all the camp outfits?’
‘The Traitors?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I’m not sure I’m that good a liar.’
‘Don’t knock yourself. I just don’t understand why you’d go on a show where they don’t pair you with women. You’ve been telling me which girls you think are pretty since you could talk.’
‘I can’t have been that bad.’
‘You came out the womb waving that pink, orange and white flag, girl.’
We both laugh because yeah, that’s probably accurate. I resist the urge to correct her that the lesbian flag wasn’t designed until 2018, but my teen bedroom was covered in posters of women, hung and admired in ways that the straight girls could never begin to understand.
‘And I’ve always been so proud of that part of you. Proud to be your mum. You’ve always known exactly who you are, Doll. That’s why I don’t understand why you’d throwthatDolly awayjust because you think it might help me.’ There’s a tiny pause, barely more than an intake of breath, before she asks ever so lightly, ‘Were there not any nice girls you met on the show?’
I can always sense the baited hook in front of me when it comes to Mum. ‘Why?’ I ask cautiously.
She chuckles to herself and sips her tea. ‘I don’t think that the production team understand what they have on their hands. I see how that little redhead girl looks at you.’
My stomach drops. ‘Oh.’
I know I should feel scared that it might be obvious, that I should be panicking about the show outing me accidentally. But there’s something particularly disarming about my mum seeing that the girl I can’t stop kissing wants me.
Mum lowers her voice, reaches out her hand and takes mine. ‘And I know you, so I know you’re spending all your time trying not to look at her. That’s why I don’t understand.’
I glance at the door.
‘You think he doesn’t know?’ she asks, and I shake my head. ‘The man has two good eyes.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Carys and I squashed it.’ Mum doesn’t even look at me while she sips her tea. ‘Warren and I are a team. I can’t go risking that for a girl who had her queer awakening because of me.’
‘Oh, she did, did she?’ Mum snorts. ‘Why am I not surprised something happened? You always were a little heartbreaker.’
‘I am not.’
‘I had half the girls from all the unis’ LGBTQ+ societies milling round my front door when you were nineteen, Dolores. A few times I had to send Jas out to offer them tea and tissues.’
I swipe at her, my hand landing in the fluff of her big dressing gown she wears no matter the weather. ‘You did not.’
‘I did! I was running an unofficial branch of the Lesbian Line phone service for all the counselling I was doing. So what’s she like then?’
‘Getting married to a man, Mum,’ I say pointedly.
She scoffs. ‘I think we both know that doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.’
‘I think it means a lot this time,’ I say, a little taken aback by how sad I feel about it. ‘Plus she hates me.’
‘Didn’t old Willy Shakes say there’s a thin line between love and hate?’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Oh, actually, maybe that was a Pretenders song.’
‘My only love sprung from my only hate,’ says Jas, dramatically swooning in the doorway. ‘Juliet innit. We did that in year eleven.’
‘Did you have fun using my husband for your algorithm?’
Warren reenacts the apple dance. Clearly he did.
‘That’s pretty much whatyou’redoing, though,’ Jas says. ‘That’s what Mum and Auntie Moira said.’
