Chapter Thirty Dolly
Transcript of a video from reality TV content creator @missgoss
Wow, what a wild episode! But I couldn’t help but notice some editing shenanigans happening – using proper wine glasses means they can’t hide from me!
Do we think the show is trying to give Zack a more sympathetic edit than he deserves?
Carys and Dolly disappearing over and over suggests Frankenscene to me!
Being back in Liverpool, just for the day, is like breathing fresh air. I suppose compared to the air quality in London, it is.
I finally called Mum, obviously. It was, well, a very short phone call in which I told her I was home, which she apparently already knew because production had been in touch about arranging to film Warren and me coming up to visit.
Initially, production wanted her to come all the way down to London to meet Warren’s family at the same time, but I said it was either we met my mum where she was at in a way that wouldn’t nuke her energy levels for days or weeks, or none at all.
I want her there on the wedding day, and that’s what we have to energy budget for.
Production didn’t put up a fight. After all, they wanted the shot of my giant husband meeting my tiny Scouse mum.
Warren is polite, incredibly gentle and very deferential even when Mum is bossing him around no end. Even though he’s physically massive, it feels like he fits as if he’s been here a million times.
We get what we needed, and Mum even hammed things up for the camera without asking.
And now that the cameras are gone, I can tell The Talk is about to happen.
I get up to make us fresh cups of tea, so that I have something to do with my hands. A bollocking is imminent, I can feel it.
‘Baby Jas, didn’t you want Warren to go film something with you?’ Mum suggests. Mum’s never really got out of the habit of calling her ‘Baby Jas’ even though she’s almost a legal adult and has been caring for my mum a lot the last few years.
Jas bats her eyes at Warren. ‘Please? It’ll get me so many followers.’
‘Is this for school?’ he asks, pretending to be serious.
‘… Yes.’
‘Don’t listen to her,’ I say. ‘She’s doing all the sciences so she can be a microbiologist.’
‘Yeah, and maybe I want to use the platform to educate people about science and stuff.’
‘And stuff? Dead convincing, there, Jas.’
‘It’s cool, I’ll do it,’ Warren says, getting up from the table and taking the dirty cake plates with him.
‘He’s on athletic rest!’ I call after them. ‘Be gentle with him.’
Jas bounces on the balls of her feet. ‘I’ll pick an easy one.’
They disappear into the back garden, leaving Mum and me finally alone. The saying ‘you could cut the tension with a knife’ was not designed with us in mind. It’s so thick it strangles.
‘He’s nice,’ she says. ‘Good lad.’
‘He is,’ I say with a little too much pride. ‘I like him a lot.’
She harrumphs but says nothing.
‘Come on, Mum. Let’s hear it.’ I sigh. ‘I know you weren’t happy with me going on—’
‘Why exactly are you doing this, Dolores?’ Her uncharacteristic use of my full name is a shock to the system, and she fixes me with unimpressed eyes.
‘I explained it all to you before. Influencing, it’s just not stable enough as a long-term business. I needed to put some roots down into other industries. Make a name for myself. I can’t go back to the kitchen, Mum. You know that.’
I wonder how much she and Auntie Carol have been talking about this in my absence. I want to ask her if she’s been tuning in. What she thinks of everyone.
She stares at me over the steaming cup of tea. ‘And he’s fine with this all being a business arrangement, as you put it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what if you’re found out?’
I circle the handle of my cup with my finger.
‘There’s always a way to spin it. Like, we say we wanted to keep dating but had to get married for that to happen.
Or that we realised late on there were differences we hadn’t accounted for.
People have been doing it for years. We wouldn’t be the first couple from reality television to milk it for our collective gain. ’
The problem with being something of a professional bullshitter is that there’s always one person who can see right through you to your core, and unfortunately for me, that person happens to be my mother.
‘I didn’t raise a liar, Dolores.’ She says it so flatly, looking right at me, that I think I might crumble.
‘Mum?’ I try to reach for her hand, but she moves hers, sitting back. I swear she looks at me like I am a stranger. After so many weeks away, I feel like I might be. ‘Are you feeling alright?’
She scoffs. ‘Oh, because I’m narked at you there must be something wrong with me? I’m grand, actually. Apart from being vexed by your personal and professional decisions, but what would I know? I’m only your mother.’
I feel the urge to explain myself, but how do you do that when the person who disagrees with your decisions is the person you did it all for? ‘Mum—’
‘Come on, Doll. I’m pissed off with you. Let me be annoyed about it.’
‘I know you don’t like what I do for work but—’
‘I couldn’t give a hoot what you do for your job, and if we had to survive on less, we’d manage it. We’ve always found a way to make do. I’m the mother in this house, it’s supposed to be my burden.’
‘Is that what you’re upset about? That you’re not in charge?’ That’s a bit over the line, even I can see that. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I didn’t ask you to do this,’ she continues, and I really hear the anger in her voice. ‘I would never have asked you to give up your life in this way.’
‘It’s not giving up my life,’ I groan, trying to resist the teenager-ness that sets back in when I’m under this roof and being needled. ‘He’s a nice man.’
‘I know he is. That part is not in doubt. But you two now have to get married and entwine your lives for years. Do you understand what that means?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ It comes out a little too haughty.
‘You think? Shouldn’t it be a little more than you think? Baby Jesus, save us. And if you think I can’t lecture you because I divorced your dad when you were a pup, you’ve got another thing coming. I know more than anyone what can happen when you make a bad choice.’
I try not to sigh, but school my breathing. ‘I know, Mum. That was so hard for you. But I need you to trust me that I’m going into this with someone I care about, who I trust. And I actually think the fact we don’t love each other is a good thing. Fewer feelings to get hurt.’
She snorts. ‘Don’t say that too loudly around Jas. I think she’s taken with the man. You’ll encourage the girl.’
I look out the window to see her teaching him a dance move that takes him a few goes to get right. Jas is in her element, bossing him around, like every other woman in our family. ‘A true Doherty there,’ I murmur.
I think for a moment that the heat of the argument has dulled, but I’m wrong.
‘What I’m hurt about,’ Mum says, and my throat catches as she says hurt, ‘is that you didn’t ever present this as something for us to talk about.
You went and applied without talking to me.
You decided it might be a good idea. You decided that we needed the money, and let’s be real, you were too chicken shit to talk to me about it because you felt guilty. ’
‘I didn’t feel guilty,’ I lie.
‘No, you did. You felt guilty that you didn’t ask in the first place, and you feel like it’s some kind of moral duty to protect me from thinking about the hard things in life.’
God. I hate that she’s right. ‘I just want things to be easy for you. You’ve got so much on your plate—’
‘Aye, but I thought we were a team?’ It’s so much worse now I can see the tears in her eyes. ‘You’ve had to step up far earlier than I’d ever have asked for, and you have done it – most of the time – with grace. I’m so thankful for you.’
She takes my hand, and I realise that I’m shaking.
‘If you’d brought this to me as an idea, we could have hashed it out. But you didn’t tell me until it was a done deal. You took that choice from me, Dolly,’ she says quietly.
Fuck. I did. I really did. How did I not notice this whole time that that was what she was obviously upset about? Mum’s autonomy has been so decimated since she got sick, and I was just another in a long list of people who stomped all over her, making decisions for her.
‘I love you, and there will come a time when you will have to make decisions for me about a lot of things,’ she continues, her voice calm and steady. ‘But now is not the time. And I don’t think going on a reality show qualifies as power of attorney.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry I hurt you.’
‘The hurt will pass, but I need you to understand that this has got to be my choice too. I’ve got to be part of the team. You can’t be thinking you’re the hero taking it all on – that just takes something else from me. It was bad enough when you gave up the kitchens for me.’
I sigh. ‘We both know that the endo would have stopped me from being there sooner or later.’
‘Another reason you shouldn’t be taking all this on. Have you heard from your doctor about surgery yet?’
‘Not yet.’ I’ve been on the waiting list for over a year for a laparoscopy that will slice away all the endometriosis lesions in my body.
And that’s after years of gynaecologists who knew less than fuck all and told me just to get pregnant, or that passing-out levels of pain were normal.
Then more years of trying different birth controls with doctors who kind of got it.
I’ve spent so much of my twenties being curled around a toilet, just like the other night.
‘Hmm,’ Mum murmurs. She knows what a state the desperately underfunded NHS is in better than many. ‘It is probably best you left the kitchens or you’d have punched one of the male chefs out for being a chauvinist pig,’ she says with a laugh.