A Royal Mess (12 page)

Sarah wore a Chanel suit to Mass the next morning. Not that there weren’t other mothers in Chanel suits that morning. In fact it’s a virtual mother’s uniform at Saint Augustine’s School for Young Ladies. What scared me was that Sarah does not wear Chanel suits, ever. I didn’t even know she owned one. The only suits Sarah wears are track suits. I don’t know how she used to dress when she grew up in England, but since living in LA she had definitely clung to the casual dress code – like latex shorts to an athlete.

Her hair, blonde like mine, was normally tied back in a ponytail, just in case she suddenly had an urge to jog somewhere. But now here she was in the chapel as we filed in, pink Chanel suit, matching pink Chanel shoes and bag and hair arranged artfully in a chignon. At six foot tall she looked like a pink stork.

As soon as my year began to file in, she began to jump
about and wave frantically. Presumably she was worried I might miss her loud cries of ‘Calypso! Calypso! Darling! Boojems! Over here!’

Throughout Mass, she kept putting her arm around me as if I might escape (the thought did occur to me). She sang her hymns louder than anyone else, cuddled me like I was two and called out ‘Ah-men,’ twice during the sermon. Honey, who was sitting in the row in front, kept turning around and giving her little smiles and winks of encouragement.

I pinched Sarah on the arm over a dozen times to pull her into line. It was as if she had totally forgotten what a toxic witch Honey was. It was only about six months ago that Sarah and Bob flew over from LA to rescue me from one of Honey’s poisonous pranks.

As if reading my mind, Honey cast me a look of smug, evil intent, which Sarah totally missed because she was singing reverently with her eyes tightly closed.

After Mass, Sarah swooped down on Sister Constance. ‘Oh, Sister!’ she cried ecstatically, grasping both Sister’s hands and clasping them to her bosom. ‘I just want to say how super it is to be back here. It is as if time has stood still. Frozen in that moment of pure joy that defined my years here at Saint Augustine’s. It really is just like old times.’ She spoke so loudly that Sister Constance could have heard her from a mile away. Everyone stared. Even the Year Sevens. I wanted to shrink up and die of embarrassment.

‘Is your mother on medication, darling?’ Honey asked in faux concern.

‘Shouldn’t you be running along, Honey?’ Star said, giving her pinch and a shove. ‘You wouldn’t want to be late for your black mass now, would you!’

‘Oh, Star,’ Honey replied, still managing to ooze sarcasm while rubbing her pinched arm. ‘Has your hilarity no end, darling?’

Star gave her a wrist burn, and Star is famous for the brutality of her burns. ‘Guess not,
darling,’
she replied mildly, as Honey wrestled back her injured wrist.

‘Ouch! Sister! Star just burned me –’ Honey wailed, but Sister Constance didn’t hear her cry for help because Sarah was moving into her conversational third gear.

‘Sarah does seem on madly good form for a woman who’s brokenhearted after running off on her husband,’ Star whispered in my ear.
‘Is
it possible that she is on medication, darling? My mother is, so I’m soooo not judging or anything.’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ I whispered back. ‘But she’s been reverting since she got here and that’s why I don’t want to bump into Freddie while I’m with her,’ I explained. ‘If you see Kevin can you make up a lie about how I couldn’t make it into Windsor because I had to, erm –’

‘Darling, you shock me. Of course you can meet Freddie, and anyway, you can’t ask someone to lie in the house of God!’ Star teased as she put her arm around me supportively. ‘Besides, Freddie’s a big boy, he’s going to
be king one day, so I’m sure he’ll be able to manage Sarah even if she is a bit more bonkers than usual.’

That’s Star’s philosophy with boys. She considers them charming fools, like circus tumblers placed on this earth for the amusement of girls. I wish I was more like Star, strong and unimpressed by the opposite sex. But I wasn’t. Freds made my knees knock, my face redden and my hands shake. I didn’t want to risk his feelings for me by exposing him to Sarah in the state she was in.

‘Besides, Sarah’s a laugh,’ Star assured me, giving me another supportive hug. ‘I bet he’d love to meet her.’

Sarah had hired a car, a horrible chav car, a true vehicle of shame. Not just because it was a chav-mobile but because after all her years in LA, Sarah had lost the art of using gears. As we crunched and bunny-hopped into Windsor, she cursed all the cars behind us leaning on their horns. She was just like a true American.

‘Aw, shut up you Limey arseholes!’ she bellowed out the window.

It was the first time I’d seen her criticise the English since she’d arrived. Suddenly things weren’t so ‘super.’ I took a strange comfort in this and relaxed into my seat. Maybe she wasn’t on medication, after all.

We decided to have lunch in the pizza place I’d first gone to with Freddie. I knew it was too early for Freddie to eat. In fact it was probably the safest place to hide from him in Windsor. I flashed back to the last time I’d been
there with him, and remembered how he had kissed me under an awning as we took shelter from the rain. Today it was crisp and bright.

‘What a super day. I love the sunlight of England, don’t you?’ Sarah asked passionately, looking up as a feeble ray of light broke through the sullen grey sky.

‘Erm, well, it’s a pretty rare occurrence, but yaah, I guess.’

She clutched my hand and looked into my eyes like a child that’s had too many E-numbers. ‘Let’s both have a large-size, thick-crust pizza with lashings of cheese and pepperoni.’

‘What about the carbs!’ I cried out in shock. My parents view carbohydrates with the same suspicion other parents view drugs.

‘Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Boojie. How often do I get to have my baby all to myself, hey?’ she asked as she reached out and pinched my cheek.

‘Ow!’ I rubbed my cheek. ‘Look, Sarah could you
not
call me Boojie?’ I insisted a little more brusquely than I meant to.

Sarah looked like she might cry.

I softened my tone. ‘At least not in public. It’s kind of babyish and, well, you haven’t called me Boojie since I was a baby.’ I have never felt soooo horrible. I could see she was about to tear up and, after all, this was a difficult time for her.

‘I haven’t done a lot of things since you were a little girl,
Calypso,’ she almost sobbed. That’s why I’m here. Your father has oppressed me for so long, and now I feel like I have a second chance. Bunny thinks this could be an opportunity to find the
real
me.’

‘The
real
you?’

‘Yes, the
real
Sarah!’

‘I don’t understand. If
you’re
not the
real
Sarah …’ I stopped myself before I said, ‘you’re barking.’ ‘And who on earth is Bunny and why would you listen to anything someone with a name like Bunny has told you?’ I demanded crossly.

Sarah looked at me then like / was the mad one. ‘Oh darling, try and understand please. I know it’s hard on you, losing your father, but it’s hard on me too.’

‘Hang on, we haven’t lost Bob. You’ve run off on him! Because of his Big One.’ (I lowered my voice as I said the words). ‘And what’s this about him oppressing you? The only person in our family who’s been oppressed is me, and you are just as much an oppressor as Bob. Remember the navel-piercing incident?’

‘I was completely supportive of your navel piercing. It was Bob who made all the fuss.’

I opened and closed my mouth in shock. Parents are such liars. And the truth is I think Sarah actually believed that she
was
all chilled and up for navel piercing. But I was there the day she’d attacked the hapless navel piercer like a rottweiler. I remembered, all too clearly, her threat to have him incarcerated. Sure,
Bob had been there finishing off sentences for her, but she’d been part of the act.

‘Have you even called Bob to tell him where you are and how you feel?’ I asked. ‘He told me he’s almost finished the script. Maybe if you talked to him –’

‘I don’t wish to discuss that man. Let’s just enjoy one another, darling. Let’s have some real mother and daughter time.’

Her overuse of the word ‘real’ was really starting to bother me, almost as much as her use of my baby name.

Well, he’s still my father even if he is a slow writer.’ I sulked. ‘And what do you mean by
real,
Sarah? What other sort of time would we have?’ I asked her even though it was all feeling a bit
surreal
to me.

Well, you know, real as in,
real.’
She struggled a bit more to explain what ‘real’ actually meant, and then she went quiet and looked dazed, almost dopey, just like a woman on medication.

I had to ask. ‘Look, Sarah, Mummy, can I ask you something? Something, well, personal?’

Sarah looked dementedly excited by this prospect. ‘Oh, Calypso, ask me anything!’ She gestured wildly, almost knocking a passing waiter off his feet. ‘I don’t want any secrets between us. I want us to have a really, really close mother-daughter bond. I don’t want you to feel that you need to speak to a counselor when I’m here for you. Mummy’s here for you now!’ She held out her arms expansively. ‘Ask me anything.’

The whole restaurant had gone silent and was waiting for me to speak. I bottled out and began fiddling with my napkin. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Have you got your period, darling?’ she yelled – well, at least it seemed as if she yelled it, and people
were
looking.

‘No!’ I replied, horrified.

She patted my hand. ‘Well, one day we’ll have a special little mother-daughter talk about your pink cycle and how it will change your life forever and turn you into a
real
woman.’

‘No, we won’t. And anyway, I’ve been having my period for a year!’

Sarah grabbed my hands and squeezed them. ‘Oh, Calypso, how wonderful. You’re a real
woman
now!’ She reached out and squeezed my hand. I thought she was about to break into song but instead she set her mouth in a bitter teenage grimace Honey would have been proud of.

‘See, this is what Bob has done to us, don’t you see?’

I shook my head, briefly wondering if it was even worth contradicting her. Okay, Bob might be a bit wrapped up in his script, but that didn’t make him the root of all evil. Despite a sane little voice inside my head that said to let it go, I blurted, ‘I don’t think you can blame Bob for
that,
Sarah. Besides, I got my first period at school, so what was I supposed to do, send you an e-mail? “Dear Sarah and Bob, I am having my period today”?’

‘Can’t you see, you should have been able to share
something as momentous as that with your own mother? But no, Bob always
had
to be the centre of attention. Bob and his Big …’ she paused, about to say ‘One,’ but after a short hesitation she said, ‘Opus. Your father was like a vacuum of need, and I was always too focused on him when I should have been more focused on you, Calypso. That’s what my therapist taught me.’

Therapist? You’re seeing a therapist?’ I don’t know why I said this when Sarah was giving every indication that she was going gah-gah and in need of professional help. I guess it was a shock, Sarah being so totally boring, grown-up and happy with Bob. Also, it’s never easy to find out your own mother is in therapy. Your parents are meant to be rocks of solid purpose in a sea of turmoil.

‘Of course I am. Everyone in LA is in therapy,’ she declared.

‘But you’re not gah-gah!’ I lied.

‘Oh, don’t be so English, darling. It was Bunny who suggested I leave Bob and come here to spend more time with you. I still talk to her every day on the phone. She’s awfully good, Calypso. She’s made me realise how I have always put Bob first and how I have allowed his needs to oppress me all these years.’

‘Who is this Bunny woman and how would she know whether or not Bob’s oppressed you, Sarah? This is mad. Bob couldn’t oppress a fly. He’s got his faults, I’ll grant you what with his appalling dress sense and those horrible
noises he makes when he eats, but that can’t be classed as oppression, even by Hollywood standards.’

‘Bunny is my therapist. She warned me that you might become hostile at the news of losing your father so suddenly.’

‘I haven’t
lost
him. I e-mailed him the other day. And he e-mailed me straight back. He’s still my father even if he is annoying.’

She glared at me and I glared right back, and then I realised the waiter was standing there, and I went bright red.

Sarah took charge, slipping seamlessly from gah-gah loon to her mother superior bossy boots. We’ll have two large thick-crust pizzas, thank you, double the cheese, double the pepperoni –’

‘But I don’t want pepperoni,’ I interjected.

Sarah ignored me, waving my words away as if I were the mad one. ‘Double everything in fact, and triple the carbs!’ she insisted, glaring at me in a very oppressive way.