Chapter 3
I rethought Will’s question about calling someone. The only person I could think of was my sister, Lacey. Blake, my younger brother, lived in New Zealand. We hadn’t exchanged more than a few WhatsApp messages in months, and after everything we’d been through, he was only interested in good news.
Lacey was two years older than me. She’d been my confidante for most of our childhood, as well as protector, provider and fount of wisdom.
Then, age seventeen, she’d had enough of being a stand-in mum and moved in with her twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend.
His promise to take care of her proved irresistible.
She overlooked the drug deals and other dodgy activities and focused on pleasing herself for the first time ever.
The fun stopped when, after a couple of years, she became pregnant with her now eighteen-year-old, Bronte.
Refusing to expose her child to that lifestyle, she moved back home, but by then our relationship was already in tatters.
I’d forgiven her for abandoning me and Blake – she’d sacrificed more for us than any sister should have to – but I never quite trusted her again, given her chosen means of escape.
She conceived another child a few years later with a one-night stand who vanished faster than she could say ‘it’s positive’.
She then moved in with a new partner, tolerating his spiralling drinking problem and having two more kids until one vodka-fuelled night he threw her down the stairs.
Now, she was once again living with my parents, trying to manage them alongside single motherhood.
While I worried for her children and felt frustrated at her ending up back home, Lacey resented me for breaking free from the Nixon mess.
She constantly accused me of trying to ‘life-coach’ her, reminding me I had no clue what raising four children was like.
I could only do so much to help because going home felt like winding an old childhood scarf around my neck, pulling tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe.
If only I could life-coach my parents, I mused as the limo glided south-west along the motorway.
I’d tried, but that was an insurmountable task even for a TV-expert.
I’d arranged private health care for Mum to get her knee replaced, but she’d not turned up to the appointment, or the rescheduled one, despite me booking a taxi to take her.
I signed them up for recipe boxes, hoping Lacey’s kids would never know what it was like to lie awake at night with hunger clawing at their belly. After a few weeks, Lacey told me Mum kept swapping them for cigarettes with her neighbours.
When Lacey had moved home eighteen months ago, I’d even got permission from the landlord to fund a loft conversion so Bronte and her eleven-year-old brother Lennon could have their own bedrooms. The last time I’d visited, Dad had stuffed it with boxes of fake nutritional supplements he’d failed to sell.
After that, I had drawn a firm boundary. I visited every few months, bringing basics like teabags, cereal and spaghetti bolognaise. I did the washing-up, took the kids out for a treat, ignored the grumbles and requests for money from the adults, then got the heck out of there.
I didn’t hate my parents. No one plans to end up like them.
From the snippets I’d gleaned, they’d spent their younger years scraping, scrapping and scrabbling to survive.
I think one day Mum simply got too tired to try any more, while Dad coped by living in perpetual denial.
I walked a constant line between trying to feel compassion for the state they’d ended up in while protecting myself from being dragged back into it.
While I was still debating whether to give Lacey a call, providence answered when she phoned me.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about you. How’s it going?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Lacey’s casual reply instantly had my guard up. ‘We’re doing our best, but it’s not the easiest time of year, is it?’
I took a slow breath. Lacey and I rarely agreed on the definition of ‘doing our best’.
‘What, the middle of November?’
She huffed. ‘It might be the middle of November for someone with a super-fancy job and no one else to worry about spending their piles of cash on. For single mothers, it’s six weeks to cobble together enough money for presents, food, treats, outfits for the school Christmas parties and plays.
Do you know how much teenagers expect in their stocking these days? ’
I’d already confirmed my visit on Christmas Eve.
I’d buy us all an Indian takeaway, as always, with enough leftovers for a couple more meals.
I’d bring Christmas dinner and presents for the kids, as well as an artificial tree, because Lennon had destroyed the last one.
I’d probably give Bronte the Christmas tree dress.
It would need taking in a few inches, but that girl never shied away from attention and she was bound to have a party or five to wear it to.
‘I’m sorry you’re finding it tough, but I’ve got the list of presents you sent and will be bringing all the usual food.’
‘Yeah, look, can we forget the list and just do money instead? Only, you know what the kids are like, always changing their minds. I think they’d really enjoy choosing presents themselves. And if we go in the sales, they can get more for their money.’
For my money.
My whole body stiffened.
Lacey’s youngest children were four and three.
As well as spending a few hundred pounds on gifts, I supplemented the toys with ‘useful’ items like clothes and shoes, a lunchbox, school equipment and last year a new pushchair.
I’d bought Bronte a laptop. There was no way those children would rather have money in their stocking than a load of presents to unwrap.
‘What, is it a bill you can’t pay? Or have you reached your credit card limit again?’ I asked.
There was a brittle silence.
‘Are you implying I’d use my own kids’ Christmas money to pay off my credit card?’
‘Well, I don’t think you’d go so far as to steal the money from someone else’s kids,’ I said, my voice a practised calm, even as irritation sizzled through my system.
This was my big sister. My one-time hero.
But I was done playing along with my family’s games.
‘But you just said how tough things are.’
‘Yeah, they are. So how about you don’t make me beg my stuck-up little sister for a few quid to tide us over until the New Year?’
Because then it would be Kaylynn’s birthday, followed by Easter, and then another reason, and another.
It was hard for Lacey to even think about a job while she had two little ones, and Lennon’s additional needs brought extra challenges.
However, when I’d offered to help with childcare costs, hoping a job might open her eyes to a world beyond the Nixon dysfunction, she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested.
I knew it was complicated. I used to live there, too.
She’d been through so much, of course she was worn down and feeling hopeless, back in survival mode.
But I couldn’t fix that by throwing money at her.
Especially when she wasn’t ready for it to be fixed.
‘Let me know what you need and I’ll sort an ASDA delivery.’
‘Screw you, Alexis.’
She hung up.
By the way, I’ve just come from the doctor’s because I might have cancer… Oh, and I’m on my way to the British TV Awards! By myself, because Nico dumped me. Again.
I knew my problems seemed trivial compared to hers. But in that limo, the lights whizzing past, I couldn’t help wishing that, just once, my big sister would treat me how she used to – give me a hug and tell me it would be okay.
From the second I stepped out of the limo, the evening was a blur – as if I was spinning on one of those fairground rides that randomly slowed down and sped up, meaning I had no chance to properly take in my surroundings.
It began with cameras flashing and journalists clamouring with questions as I made my way down the red carpet, people with headsets and taut smiles steering me through the melee.
Everywhere was festooned with Christmas lights, pale blue baubles, fake snow and ice sculptures.
Someone thrust an elaborately wrapped gift-box into one hand and a frosted glass containing a sparkling blue drink into the other.
It felt like watching someone else, this woman who smiled, nodded, waved, walked confidently into the main arena and took her seat at a round table along with the rest of the Winning at Life crew. I tucked the silver gift-box under my seat and promptly forgot all about it.
‘No Nico?’ Harry, who helped the show’s participants reorganise and redecorate their houses, asked, nodding at the empty chair next to me.
Harry was excellent at his job, oozing warmth and kindness with a charmingly self-deprecating humour. When the cameras turned off, he acted as though he hated everyone, including himself.
‘Something came up.’ I shrugged.
He raised one eyebrow before leaning past his own date to share this nugget with Carly, the show’s director.
Carly slid into Nico’s empty seat a few seconds later.
‘For a life coach, you’re weirdly tolerant of your boyfriend’s phobia.’
‘Being completely uninterested in commitment myself, I prefer him that way,’ I said, with a nonchalant smile.
Carly was a few years older than me. This evening, she looked stunning in a tiny dress made entirely of gold tinsel.
Her usual outfits included baby food smeared on her shirt or a pasta necklace, her hair a wild mess.
She was constantly distracted by her nanny reporting yet another problem at home.
Why would I want commitment when it resulted in being incessantly frazzled?
‘Except when it means he misses the biggest night of your life.’
My smile faded slightly after she patted my shoulder then went back to sit with her husband.
Throughout the evening, there were more drinks, food, photos, various people I didn’t know – although some of whom I recognised – approaching me with air-kisses, sweaty hugs and always loud exclamations about how much they loved me, my dress, the show. Talk about Winning at Life!
It all felt like a surreal dream.
For the first time in years, my composure was wobbling.
When Harry joked to a daytime presenter that he was worried a dog would cock its leg up against my dress, beneath my smile the wobble became a crack.
As an actor from Eastenders read out the Rising Star nominees, Carly back in Nico’s seat so both her and Harry could grip my arm and beam for the camera in response to my name, I still couldn’t shift this new feeling of being utterly alone.
That wasn’t true. I’d often felt alone. I’d chosen aloneness.
Now, as the crack grew, spreading through my body into countless fissures, I had never felt so lonely.
For a weird moment, I wished the man from the doctor’s surgery had come with me after all.
‘And the winner is… Alex Nixon, from Winning at Life!’
I froze. If I moved, surely I would shatter like a broken vase.
‘Go,’ Carly muttered out the side of her smile. ‘Get up and walk to the stage. You’re a winner, remember?’
She nudged me, then stood up and pulled me out of my seat, handing me my present-shaped bag.
‘Oh, and take a breath before you pass out,’ she muttered as she leaned in to kiss my cheek.
I walked up the fake-snow-covered steps, shook hands with the actor whose name I couldn’t remember and then, as my head swam, forced myself to take a slow, shaky breath.
‘Thank you,’ I said, in what must have been the shortest acceptance speech in the history of the awards.
‘Um.’ The actor looked bemused, searching for a prompt to get at least another few words out of me. ‘Can you reveal the secret to such a successful year? How do you manage to run a business, become a national treasure and look this amazing? Is there anyone else you’d like to thank?’
I thought about all of this for about five seconds, as the truth buried me like an avalanche. I stood there in front of a giant Santa’s sleigh, clutching an award shaped like a TV remote that suddenly meant absolutely nothing to me, and I told him.
Unfortunately, three million people also heard it. Plus, the millions more across the world who watched the clip in the days to follow.
‘No,’ I said, with an air of slight mania.
‘I have no one else to thank. Because, the truth is, the secret to my so-called-success is that I have no one. I have time, Freddie – is it Freddie? Frankie, I’m so sorry – I have time to do all that stuff, because I have no friends.
Zero social life. I rarely see my family, who mostly can’t stand me, my mediocre boyfriend just dumped me for the sixth time, and that’s it.
I’ve come to the British TV Awards alone.
Not because I’m a kick-ass independent woman.
Because I am, in fact, alone. Yes, I’ve got money, an amazing company and I am now officially a star.
I’ve even got an “arresting beauty”, according to one magazine article.
However, I think I’ve just realised all that counts for nothing.
Because what I haven’t got is anyone who gives a damn.
So, thanks to everyone who voted, I guess, for helping me realise that I am, in fact, utterly losing at life. Have a great evening.’
There were about four slow claps from someone in the audience. I’m pretty sure it was Harry. Apart from that, the entire arena sat in dumbstruck silence as I forced my numb legs to jerk down the steps, heading straight off to a side-exit instead of back to my seat.
An arena security guard had the door open by the time I’d reached it.
‘Thank you,’ I said, stumbling past, bursting into tears the second it closed behind me.
‘Alex!’ Someone opened the door as the phone in my bag started vibrating.
I gave an imploring glance to the young security guard, who grabbed my hand, opened another door and dragged me down a dingy corridor before propelling us through a fire-exit into a filthy alleyway.
‘Do you want me to call you a cab?’ this angel in an XXL bouncer’s uniform asked.
Before I could reply, another brawny figure appeared at the end of the alleyway.
‘Ms Nixon,’ Gregor said, calmly. ‘If you would follow me, please.’
I splashed through the freezing-cold puddles, clambered into the waiting limo, turned off my phone, sagged back into the seat and then, proving once and for all that he was an outstanding chauffeur, Gregor stuck on the Frozen soundtrack and the two of us sang along the whole way back to Sherwood Forest.