A Tiny Bit Marvellous (9 page)

Dora

Got a letter this morning. Well not an actual letter, but a kind of appointment card thing to tell me the date – omigod – of the first round of X Factor auditions in London!! This is like, so boom! This is it, baby. Stage one. Passed it. I can continue on in my goal of my dreams towards becoming Britain’s Next Top Singer.

I so cannot tell Mum and Dad about this. They just don’t understand. They are both old and they’ve like totally given up on their dreams now. All they do is their jobs. Whatever they are. Well, Mum does therapy with teenagers and families and stuff and Dad … has a job too. On computers or something?

Not me, I’m not going to waste my life on a bloody job where you just go to the same place 24/11 and die of boringness. I just can’t for God’s sake. I’ve got a talent and it would be oh so wrong not to let it out, not to let other people hear me. How would I feel if I just go to uni, get a degree, get a job, get a family, get a dog, get a house? It would kill me. Proper dead. I want to LIVE. I want to sing, sing, SING! ‘I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky …’

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Mo

Interesting day. Am feeling somewhat unsettled, but not unhappy. Little bit muddled. Nothing serious.

I agreed to give some time to Noel at the end of the day, so that he could fire any questions at me. Thus far he has been the perfect shadow – hardly ever in my line of vision and taking up very little of my time. Of course George’s experience with Veronica seems to have been rather different – but then, George is only too keen, isn’t he, to find time to answer the slightest query and to assuage any doubts his needy protégée might have. Ho hum.

Noel is practical and, frankly, more professional. He is fascinated by the fact that I am amongst the very few who still keep session notes in longhand. I have always taken minimal notes during the sessions, otherwise essential eye contact is lost, and frankly it’s just a bit rude. But I don’t think anyone is put off by my occasional scribbles in my lovely battered old pad holder. As long as I write up my notes after each session verbatim, I see no reason to log everything on the computer. I also feel that, ironically, the files are safer in this tangible form, where they are filed out of sight, securely. The computer seems so dangerously accessible somehow. George is constantly telling me that passwords and suchlike are fierce protectors but I prefer to stick with my old tried and tested system. Until someone can prove me wrong, I will continue to do that.

Noel seemed fascinated by all this when we sat down together. I thought for a moment he might be suppressing a scoff, saving up a snigger for later, but I realized I was wrong, he was genuinely interested in my methods, which for a young buck in his thirties is fairly impressive. He was attentive and curious and his subsequent questions proved that he was listening. I suspect he’s a bit frightened of me. George is forever telling me that I am regarded as a Jekyll and Hyde figure – calm and patient with my clients, but rigorous and brusque with everyone else. Fine by me. Totally true. Ask my family – none of them are my clients and consequently I’m sure they’d agree that their mother is chiefly evil Mrs Hyde. A little bit of nominal fear from a trainee is no bad thing, it keeps them on their toes. In Noel’s case, though, he seemed to be bravely battling his misgivings in order to find out more, and so I felt inclined to be helpful. Even though I have very little time.

Actually, I am completely snowed under, a fact I was describing to him when he tentatively asked if I would like to continue our talk in the pub since Lisa seemed to be actively kicking us out of our own offices. She has taken to violently jangling the keys as she stomps up and down loudly announcing the end of the workday. Lisa has assumed the role of warden. More baffling is that we have all willingly assumed the roles of inmates. Or rather, outmates, since we aren’t permitted to be ‘in’ past Lisa’s strict curfews. I’m pretty sure this is the wrong way round.

Anyhoo, I didn’t see much amiss with the idea of a quick drink since George and Veronica are regularly to be found in The Keys after work. Not, it seems, on this occasion.

Noel bought the drinks, I had a half of cider, he had a pint, and we sat by the door on the only available and very draughty table. Initially, he continued his line of questioning about various aspects of work, and he was extremely engaged. There’s no doubt that he is bright and he is definitely confident about his prospects for a career in psychology. He is less of a Jungian than me, more Kleinian, more interpretive, but nevertheless, he’s clever, I think. Even a little argumentative when pushed, which I like. We had quite a rewarding wrangle over confidentiality, and he became quite heated:

‘The fact is, Mo, that if I get a kid in front of me who finally opens up and admits he is feeling suicidal tendencies, what am I going to do? Not tell the parents? Or what about criminal activity? Not tell the parents then? Or the police? Or you? It’s bloody difficult …’

It was really invigorating. Great. It was nearly time to leave when the conversation turned to our own families. He seemed amazed that I have been married for twenty-six years. No more amazed than me, I assured him. I genuinely am amazed. Twenty-six years with one man. Even at the altar, when I was happily pledging my whole
life, I didn’t really mean as much as twenty-six years. I suddenly realized that I have been married for more of my life than I haven’t been married. I felt alarming, ferocious waves of degeneration. I have been closing down for more years than I was opening up.

Noel said that he ‘admired’ me for ‘sticking with it through everything’. What ‘everything’ does he mean? He doesn’t know me from Eve. He has had no part whatsoever in my ‘everything’ – yet oddly I was grateful for his appreciation. He can’t possibly know any specifics, can’t possibly. Surely he was being general, meaning my general ‘everything’. That must be what he meant. Yet his comment has stayed with me, and I’m wearing his admiration like a favourite cardi.

I’m still enjoying it, now. Why? Maybe it’s because I don’t feel I’ve been admired for a long time. Not ‘admired’. It’s a professional word, I know it, but it’s taken me a little bit by surprise how quickly I wrapped it round me, how pleased I was to hear it. He’s a sweet chap, Noel. Easy to be around and easy to teach. The time whizzed by and before I could ask him anything about his family, I realized it was late and I’d missed picking Oscar up from chess club. I’ll hear about that for weeks no doubt … pretty sure there will be a monumental lack of ‘admiration’ coming at me from that department.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Dora

Lottie was sooo late coming over this evening, she was supposed to be here at like six or something but she didn’t show up ’til after nine. I could tell Mum was stressing but she put on that fake thing for Lotts, sort of like pretending that our house is some kind of easy-come easy-go sort of place where you can drop in any time you like coz we’re all so relaxed. ‘Open-house’ she called it. That is 108% so not true.

Mum hates people coming over, coz it means she’s got to pretend all evening, and she gets tired from it. She even came up to my room with a tray of hot chocolate and like snacks and stuff … crisps and stuff. She NEVER does that but she was acting like this happens all the time. Yeah she just brings up trays of nice drinks and snacks all the time because, hey y’know, ‘these kids are working sooo hard for their exams’, and like, ‘what is it with all this endless measuring and assessing of kids these days’ – it’s ‘monstrous’ and ‘inhibiting’, they should be allowed to just ‘be kids’ instead of ‘exam robots’ apparently. Then, when people have gone, she goes right back to like, ‘Have you done your coursework?! It’s due in by half-term. You’ve got to do it by yesterday! Switch the TV off immediately!’ And she’s back to being this like totally freaked out stress queen. Like, why don’t you decide who you are and stick to it you psycho.

Lottie was well happy with the hot chocolate though and when I said it was all fake she said her mum does exactly the same and anyway, who cares because we’ve got hot chocolate so – YAY! That was a bit weird, because every time I’ve been round hers, I always think her mum is like, so cool. I never thought she was faking it atall. She’s just like a normal natural lovely kind person who I wish my mum was more like.

Think Lotts is just saying that to make me feel better. She’s sooo kind like that. Today I said she was my sister from another mother and she sooo like agreed. I really love her. We’ve got no secrets atall. We share everything. I so know that like, if someone was going to shoot her, like in a bank robbery or something – I would sooo say like shoot me instead, and I would jump on her so no one could hurt her. And she says she would do the same for me. She says that if one day I like, can’t have a baby or something, she would have one for me? That is sooo precious. Like she would use her womb for me?

We tried to figure out how it would actually work and it seems like she would have to get my husband’s sperm or something somehow. I said I’m not sure I would like that and she said it wouldn’t actually mean anything, she would, like not even look at him or get drunk or something and they would like totally have to promise not to actually feel anything when they do it, and the thing to remember is that they would both be doing it for
me. Like a sort of present kind of thing. It wouldn’t mean anything for the two of them atall with each other, not at all, it would only be for me.

I feel a bit weird about it though, because like I would so love him and I would so think he would totally fall in love with her instead, especially if they’re always doing it, even if it is just to give me a baby. And then, when the baby happens, and I took it home, I would have to keep looking at a baby with her face on it all the time? It kind of creeps me out, so I might say no to that. I didn’t want to tell Lotts that though because she was just being kind.

She thinks I’ve lost weight, and she’s right because I haven’t been eating any main meals atall, just snacks, so I think it’s gradually coming off now, especially around my hips. I noticed, because my jeans are sitting back down on my hips where they are supposed to because they’re hipsters, but when my belly is bigger the waistband goes under the belly and the flab goes over the top and they hurt. I don’t think jeans should hurt. And anyway, no one cares about hipsters any more, they are like so gone. Lindsay Lohan has got these really great high-waisted blue trousers that are like so cool so I want a pair of those now, so I’ll have to look for that type. No hope in Pangbourne, I’ll have to go into Reading. Maybe me ’n’ Lotts can go at the weekend. Dad will give me the cash and drop us off. Mum will say we can only go if we do our work and ‘earn’ it.

Maybe I shouldn’t get the trousers now coz I’m obviously going to lose loads more so maybe I should just wait, or at least wait ’til just before the X Factor auditions. That way the trousers will be new and I’ll be thin so it’ll be perfect? I’ll wear them to the audition.

Omigod, me ’n’ Lotts had to act like we were so doing our coursework but really I was practising my song and she was being Dannii Minogue and like telling me what to do. She loves the Christina song and she thinks I do it even better than Christina because like, Christina actually is beautiful but when I sing it, it’s more true coz I say, ‘I’m beautiful – no matter what they say,’ and that’s more like real life coz no one could say Christina Aguilera isn’t beautiful. But they could say that about me.

Which reminds me, I’m not going to wear my glasses on the audition day. Lotts says my eyes are my best thing, so I’m going to show them. She’s def going to come with me. I so can’t wait but we’re not telling the parents coz they’ll just freak out. Anyway, we’ve got loads of time coz the exams and the prom and my party happen before that. I am now thinking that maybe two prom things in a row might be a bad thing, so I might change my party to a Bunnies party instead, where all the girls have to dress like cute bunnies type of thing? That would be, like so hot. After Lotts left, I Facebooked everyone and told them about the Bunnies thing. No replies yet but it’s ages away.

Soooo tired. Going to sleep to dream about Simon Cowell doing that big-eyed surprised face when he hears me sing for the first time and saying, ‘Omigod Dora. You are like, so the best singer we’ve ever heard. You are what this show’s about. You are gonna be a star, little lady. And what’s more, you’ve got gorgeous eyes and Dora, you are beautiful, no matter what they say.’

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Mo

I’m so glad Dora has Lottie. For a while she didn’t seem to have any real friends, then up popped Charlotte who broke ranks from the dreadful ‘plastics’ to support Dora when there was a massive fuss about which of the American TV vampire shows was the best. The entire lower sixth form came to a shuddering halt one lunchtime whilst the incendiary stand-off took place. Dora was in a group of one, until cheeky Charlotte took up her cause, and argued the case for Moonlight against the behemoth juggernaut of vampire triumph that is True Blood. Only when Lottie also pointed out that both factions were in total agreement about the unquestionable supremacy of Twilight the movie did the whole brouhaha dissipate, with relatively little collateral damage on either side.

No lives were lost on that occasion, although many confessed that death via Robert Pattinson’s fangs would always be a welcome end. I sort of get it … but then I don’t. He’s too girly for my liking, as if Jude Law, Orlando Bloom and Bela Lugosi had been melted down to create a wispy vampire offspring from their combined smoke.

Anyway, Lottie was, and still is, Dora’s advocate and the only one that has hung in there. It’s sweet when she comes round so that they can study together. Not that they study at all, but at least they are together, hatching plans and whispering and giggling, exactly as you’re supposed to when you’re seventeen. Lottie seems an unlikely amigo for Dora at first sight. She is petite and fragile-looking. The type of girl with indeterminate but interminable asthma. She is the physical opposite of Dora and they both, endlessly, pointlessly, wish they looked like the other. Lottie wishes she was tall and strong with Dora’s blossomy skin and sheets of rain-straight hair. Damaged, but straight. Dora wishes she was smaller and more feminine with the mixed-race mocha beauty of the fabulously freckled Lottie. Lottie has the most audacious hair I’ve ever seen, an afro-tousle of tight curls that shoots out in all directions like a firework. She hates it, and complains about how uncontrollable it is, whilst Dora can’t wait to get her hands in it and play – tying it up, plaiting it, slicking it down, putting thirty different-coloured shiny butterfly clasps in it. Anything Lottie will let her do, hairwise, Dora delights in. Dora wants more hair, Lottie wants less. Lottie always wears funky hats or big fabric flowers in her hair, and Dora falls asleep every night dreaming of such opportunities to be so casually exotic.

If they were blooms, Dora would be a yellow sunflower and Lottie would be a fuchsia orchid. Of course, neither of these typically adolescent beauties can see the beauty in themselves, only in each other. For this, I am so grateful because Lottie’s bountiful praise is the only type Dora allows to land on her, so it is such a nourishment when I hear Lottie piling it on. Long live Lottie and her generous wonder-working spirit.

I can’t help it, and I know it winds Dora up, but when the two of them are together, I am overcome with the desire to nurture their friendship with plenty of motherly gestures. I like nothing more than to prepare a tray of treats for them and slide the goodies into Dora’s bedroom. This is what Pamela used to do for me during the dreaded uni revision, and I’ve never forgotten the delicious comfort of it. I suppose I’m trying to pass on some of the care she showed me back then. It’s not entirely altruistic of course. The sense of satisfaction I get from providing like this is enormous and I suppose really, at the heart of it, I’d love them to invite me in to share it all with them. I wouldn’t go in of course, but it would be lovely to think Dora might want me to …

A Tiny Bit Marvellous