Chapter 5
Petey
Come Sunday lunchtime, I was sitting around the table in the dining room of my childhood home in Pinner, in posh, suburban North London, sharing an awkward meal with my parents, my brother and sister, their spouses, and my gran.
My father was droning on, lecturing the whole table about some boring detail of law.
My gran’s shoulder pressed into mine, no weight behind her birdlike frame.
“Fetch us the gravy, will you, Petey Boy,” she said.
I reached across for the gravy boat. “Do you want me to pour it for you, Gran?”
“Pour it?” she whispered, loud enough for only me to hear. “I’ll pay you ten quid to hold me head under in it until the bubbles stop.”
I had to smother my laughter with my napkin.
Gran winked, eyes full of mischief. Except for Gran and me, everyone around the table was a lawyer.
It was the family trade. My father, Sir Edward Topham, was a renowned barrister and King’s Counsel, and he’d been an unbearable snob long before he got his beloved knighthood.
My mother was a youth court judge who lamented nothing so much as the abolition of hanging.
My brother and sister were barristers in the family chambers.
Their partners were soulless corporate lawyers.
It was like having lunch in the Old Bailey canteen.
Sunday roast was practically a staff meeting, and the conversation almost never shifted from legal industry gossip.
Which is why I rarely turned up. Well, that and the fact I was usually either too hungover, still too drunk, at a drag brunch with the boys, or still trying to prise myself out of a Vauxhall sling.
I was only here now because I was going away and it was my last chance to see my gran for a month. Plus, I had exciting news to share.
“A what, sorry?” my father said.
“A reality TV show,” I replied. “I start this afternoon, actually. Totally gassed for it.”
“Oh, Peter!” My mother was visibly horrified, as if I’d revealed I’d been slaughtering schoolchildren instead of landing an opportunity that could make my career. “Why must you consistently degrade yourself like this?”
I’d known it was going to be like this, but somehow, I always held out hope my parents might at least be pleased for me, if not impressed.
“It’s a real opportunity, innit?” I said, trying to stay upbeat, trying not to sound like I was pleading. “If this goes well, I could get my own show.”
“Good God!” my mother cried.
“Will you stop talking like a bloody barrow boy,” my father roared. “You had a very expensive education.”
My brother nearly choked on his wine. “Your own reality show? What’s the concept? Stick a dozen of your bum buddies in a room, turn the lights out, and use contact tracing to work out who had the super gonorrhoea?”
His wife dug him in the ribs and winced apologetically in my direction. I’d long since given up on my brother’s appalling homophobia, and misogyny, and insert-outrage-here.
My father shook his head. “You could be a mid-level associate by now. Instead, you’re wasting your life on this.”
Under the table, Gran squeezed my knee. Gran was born in Bethnal Green Tube station during an air raid.
She and my late grandad had spent their entire lives grafting on a market stall in London’s East End, selling fruit and veg, saving every penny they could to send their two sons to university and give them a better life.
Unfortunately, the result was my emotionally stunted father.
Fortunately for me, my parents being so busy with their careers when I was a kid meant, after my brother and sister went to boarding school, I spent all my time at Gran’s house in Tower Hamlets, where love was never in short supply.
Unsurprisingly, I grew up wanting to be more like Gran and Grandad, and less like Sir Edward and Angelica.
I belonged in the gritty East End, not in comfortable, suburban, middle-class Pinner.
The way I chose to speak was the outward expression of that.
It didn’t hurt that it drove my parents bananas.
My parents looked furious. Mum was gripping her napkin like she was wringing the blood out of it.
“Have you even thought for a second of the damage you’re doing to the family name?”
“Quite!” my father said. “When you begged me to give you permission to read ‘media studies’ at university—”
My brother scoffed. “I don’t think they ‘read’ at Leeds, Dad. It’s not a real university.”
I rolled my eyes. This was old ground too.
“—you stood on the carpet in my chambers and you promised me a brilliant career in journalism awaited you,” my father continued.
“You would be the next Dimbleby, you said. A journalist with the intellectual heft of a Paxman or an Andrew Neil. Instead, you’ve wasted your life making breakfast television—a concept so ghastly I can barely conceive of its existence—and now this? ”
In my fantasy version of this lunch, my father would have raised his glass to toast my success, my mother would have leapt up and hugged me, and my siblings and their partners would have all begrudgingly nodded and smiled and said they were proud of me, while secretly hating their own life choices and seething with jealousy I was doing something so wildly exciting with mine.
“Millions of people watch reality shows every single week,” I said, going on the defensive. “It’s an incredible opportunity, innit?”
“Too right,” Gran said, throwing up her arthritic hands and pulling my face to hers for a kiss on the cheek. “Well done, Petey Boy. You’ve made your old gran very proud.”
“Proud!” My father almost choked. “Your grandson is wasting his potential. Look at him! He’s twenty-seven.
He’s hungover. He’s dressed like he works in a factory.
He speaks like a South London gangster. He’s a miscreant, leading a totally wanton lifestyle and showing absolutely no signs of settling down.
He’s throwing his life away making trash entertainment for the kinds of people who eat dinner off a tray on their lap in front of the television.
If he doesn’t get serious, he’s never going to amount to anything. ”
My throat tightened. This was exactly why I never came to Sunday lunch. I bit my bottom lip to stop it quivering—as I always did—and swallowed my rage. I am the way I am, I thought, because the alternative is to be like you.
“That’s a bit rough, Dad,” my sister, Kathy, said.
“You all know I’m right,” he said, wrapping his sausagey fingers around his glass of Bordeaux. He took a swig to wash down the bile.
Gran was indignant. “I eat my tea off a tray in front of the telly!”
“Do you, Gran?” Kathy said, without looking up from her carrots.
“It’s not too late, Peter,” my father barked. “You could go back to law school now. I’ll pay for it. I’d be willing to let you specialise in media law, if you like. Best of both worlds. What do you say?”
I could feel tears trying to well, but I would have died before I let my family see me buckle. I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. No one else said anything either. The table was unbearably quiet.
Finally, my sister cleared her throat. “What’s the show about, Pete?”
I explained the Regency dating premise. The whole table fell about laughing—except for my mother, who looked like she’d found a turd in her Riesling. Gran, forever Team Petey Boy, loved the idea.
“It’s being filmed at Buckford Hall in Leicestershire,” I added, hoping this detail might appeal to my parents’ entrenched snobbery. “I’m going to be living in a real-life manor house for the next month, how cool is that?”
My father’s eyes boggled. “The family are letting you film this… this… nonsense… in their ancestral home?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“This country is going to the dogs,” my mother declared.
My father shook his head, poured himself another glass of red, and turned to my brother-in-law. “Did I tell you we’re taking the Jag’ Club on a drive up to Chatsworth House for the annual Father’s Day run next month? Now, there’s a stately home…”
And just like that, the conversation moved on.
After a few minutes, my mother got up and started clearing the table.
I sat there in silence, stewing inside, listening to my father witter on about his beloved North London Jaguar Car Club—the only subject on which he was more tedious than the law.
My sister, apparently also bored by the subject, turned to Gran.
“How’s the new home, Gran? Are you settling in all right?”
“It’s marvellous, Kathy,” Gran said. “The lads in the kitchen are magicians with a blender. It’s so secure too. I ain’t seen security like that since I used to visit your Great-Uncle Frank when he was doing seven years in Wormwood Scrubs.”
“Well, that’s… good,” Kathy said, unsure.
The noise of my family babbling away washed over me.
The faint clattering and clanking of my mother stacking the dishwasher drifted through from the kitchen.
I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I stared at the clock on the mantel.
Every second was a minute, every minute an hour.
I couldn’t bear it. Mum hadn’t even come in with the coffees when Gran leant over and whispered in my ear.
“You do whatever you have to do to prove ’em wrong, Petey Boy,” she said. “You show them.”
My jaw tightened. A rod of steel seemed to slide up my spine and click into place.
I sat taller. Gran was right. Nothing was going to stop me getting my own reality show and proving my family wrong.
Nothing. It was my first and last priority.
My family might not approve of what I did for a living, but I was going to make bloody sure they had to at least respect me for it.
“And get me out of here, will you, Petey Boy?” Gran said. “Before I lose the sodding will to live.”
Gran was right. Even prison was better than this. I had to get to work.