Chapter 1 #3
Lily breathes the sigh of a woman who has become used to being roundly patronized.
‘Well, luckily for you, I’m not too busy to remember the football kits.
They’re already in their PE bags by the door.
I think I’ve been doing this long enough to know that Friday is football day,’ she titters, tightening her kimono round her waist. ‘I can’t believe you’re still taking Dad a cup of tea in the morning. ’
Olivia hears the click of the kettle announce that it has boiled. ‘How do you know that’s what I’m doing?’ she says, grabbing a mug from a cupboard.
‘Because it’s what you always do, and it’s kind of tragic. It’s enabling him, babes.’
‘If you weren’t taking my kids to school for me, I might point out the hypocrisy of telling me off for enabling Dad.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Lily says it in a sing-song way that suggests she knows exactly what it means.
‘Oh I dunno, just how me coddling Dad isn’t all that different to you allowing Mum to treat you like a baby.’
‘I am her baby, Olivia.’ Lily puts on the condescending voice of a parent talking to their toddler. ‘I’m her baby girl.’
‘You’re about to turn forty!’
‘Imagine how insufferable she’d be if I didn’t allow her to perform this vital function of still being loved and needed by a member of her family.
She might start bothering you. I’m being of service to us all.
Taking one for the team.’ Lily approaches Olivia at the kitchen counter, takes a sip of her smoothie, and sticks her tongue out in horror.
‘Urggh, still gross. Oh, speaking of the parents, Mum asked me to remind you to RSVP to my party.’
Olivia pours the hot water on to the teabag and feels her blood run cold.
Her mother’s judgement is always there, even if the same cannot be said for her actual mum, who still seems to see Olivia as a sort of annoying adjunct to Lily, a kind of pointless vice president you are forced to invite along to things out of formality rather than any actual desire to be with them.
She is the JD Vance to Lily’s kimono-clad Trump.
‘Ah, yeah,’ Olivia murmurs as she adds milk to her dad’s tea. ‘I’ll get back to her once I’ve got today out of the way.’
‘I’m excited for you,’ smiles Lily, heading towards her makeshift bedroom in the living room. ‘Mum’s going to lose her shit getting to tell everyone that her daughter’s the next Selina Martin.’
‘I feel like …’ Olivia gazes into the middle distance in a sort of reverie. ‘Like after all this time playing the game, I’m going to get my prize. Finally.’
‘Go get ’em!’ Lily blows her sister a kiss, grabs her bag from the living room, where she sleeps without complaint, and heads upstairs to the dribbling shower.
Olivia squishes her toes into the ballerina shoes, and ventures into the patio area she likes to describe as a garden, to knock on the door of the shed she would like to be able to describe as an annexe.
There is no answer.
There never is.
She clears her throat, thinks about the man who once returned from a work trip to Dunstable with a mini-pinball machine he’d somehow won on a night out.
It was always this memory that had stuck with Olivia, for its pure comi-tragedy, its crisp, neat ability to sum up their childhood.
The innocence of youth had allowed her to paint their father as a Disney Dad, a man who returned from glamorous business trips away laden with gifts and hugs and declarations that he had missed his girls with all his heart.
It was only in adulthood that Olivia and Lily had come to realize that their Disney Dad had also been a pretty Half-Arsed Husband (at best), a man who made up for his absences with gifts he couldn’t really afford, given that their mother had actually been the main breadwinner, a successful marketing executive to his travelling salesman, a role that he had vastly exaggerated so as not to upset the traditional eighties status quo of the man being the master of the house.
It was at uni that Olivia had clocked on to the fact that Dunstable was a dreary market town in Middle England, and not the centre of the universe.
She coughs theatrically, or pathetically – she’s never sure which. Still nothing. She waits, admiring the large pile of fag ends that sit at the bottom of a vodka bottle he has hidden badly by the plant pot.
‘Lily,’ she calls, hoping that if she shouts into the house it might wake up her father without causing a scene. ‘Can you make sure that Jack and Saskia are ready to go in three minutes?’
There’s a mish-mash of noise from the house, but nothing from the shed.
She knocks again, feels her right big toe already throbbing in the faux-ballerina pump.
‘Dad?’ She tries to bat away the ever-present anxiety that exists like the low thrum of her heartbeat, the worry that one day, he simply won’t be able to answer.
‘I’ve made you a delicious cup of tea to counteract all the delicious vodka you seem to have enjoyed last night!’
If she is passive-aggressive and cheery and speaks like a Matalan Mary Poppins, then everything will be OK. Everyone will think they are a normal family. A normal family who keep their elderly stashed in the back of the garden.
‘Leave it on the step,’ her father finally croaks from within. ‘I’ll come and get it before I start my chores.’
Olivia places the cup down, aware that when she returns in twelve hours’ time, there’s every chance that the tea will still be there, and that the chores – whatever they might be – will still not have been started.
‘OK, well have a good day, Dad. Maybe take it easy so you don’t burn out.’
She wonders if she has veered from passive-aggressive into aggressive-aggressive territory, waits a moment or two for him to respond.
Then she notices the time on her Apple watch, an accessory that she mostly uses to berate herself for not exercising, and realizes she is going to be late for work.
She heads back into the house, scoops up the heaving stack of post from the hallway table and shoves it in the Waitrose tote bag that seems to be doubling as a handbag.
Then Olivia Greenwood strides headfirst into the first day of the rest of her life.