Living Life the Essex Way (17 page)

I hadn’t realised how much work it was to get the place in order though – I hired people to help and all my family chipped in. But it’s been great having my own space, as well
as my friends around all the time. Billie always comes over, and she loves the place, but it hasn’t made her want to save for her own. She just spends what she has. Billie is much more
someone who lives in the moment. So she is happy to live at Mum and Dad’s for longer, if it means she can enjoy her life.

I am closer to Dad than Billie though. I am a real daddy’s girl, whereas he and Billie argue a lot. Don’t get me wrong, they love each other to bits, but they clash.

We did have a really happy childhood, despite any tough times we might have had – we just got on with it. I think too many people blame their upbringings for mistakes they make in their
own lives, and become worse people because of it, but Billie and I don’t. You would never have seen us rebelling at school, or being selfish, and then going ‘Oh, it’s cos
it’s hard at home’ like some kids I knew did when their parents split up or whatever. No one is perfect, but we were always taught we made our own paths for ourselves.

But don’t get me wrong, it is not all happy families between me and Billie – I can get pretty competitive with her!

I competed at swimming when I was younger – and when I was up against Billie, my competitiveness really came out! I remember that one year it was the last race of the season, and we were
up against each other in the front-crawl race, and I won. To this day, she brings it up, and reckons I only won by a fingertip.

To be honest, I am probably too competitive at times. Whereas she was cool about who won in those situations, and would just be like ‘Yeah, I’ve let the little sister win.’
I’d go off to my room and sulk if I ever lost at anything to her – even silly things like board games!

Also, we can row. Like properly row. We have fewer rows now that we are older, but we used to really go at it like cat and dog. And I mean that literally – I used to bite her!

As I’ve said, I’m a really calm person and you won’t get a reaction from me easily. But Billie will wind me up on purpose, just for a laugh. She will sit there and kind of
mentally poke at me, until finally I’ll snap. In the past that is when I would bite or punch her or throw a hairbrush at her. And you know what? Despite all the tormenting she did to get me
to that point, once she got the reaction, she would be straight to Mum complaining, and I would look like the bad guy, because Mum wouldn’t have seen the build-up.

Billie was smarter than me in rows, even when she was in the wrong. I remember her breaking my lava lamp once, and before I could get mad, she started crying, so then she got all the sympathy.
Very clever, Billie!

Usually though, I know my limit, and when I should stop arguing.
Usually
. I remember one time when I was about 13 and she was annoying me. She kept on and on – I can’t even
remember what it was about – and I just kicked her to the floor and jumped on her back. Oh my God, she screamed, and I really thought I had broken her back! I was so scared that I had gone
too far. It still didn’t put a stop to our arguments though!

Neither of us like to apologise after a row. Billie might, if she realises she caused the argument by antagonising me, but I never say sorry. I refuse to! Normally what happens is we both just
go off and sulk for half an hour and don’t talk. Then we just go back to normal.

Our arguments when we were teenagers were never over anything important, just silly things we would get annoyed about. It was never over boys or anything – we never fancied the same guys
luckily, and one of us was pretty much always in a relationship anyway. I can see why she fancies the guys she does, but they are never my type. Anyway it’s one of those proper no-go areas,
so you don’t even think about it.

There were times when Billie and I shared a bedroom. It wasn’t cramped or anything – we had a double bed each, and our own bathroom – but it still meant that we were on top of
each other and didn’t have our own space. We also started sharing the same friends around this time, so we just weren’t getting any time alone. Even when we were at friends’
houses, we were together, so we were literally with each other 24 hours a day. Even the best of friends and closest of sisters are going to fight in that situation.

I remember one time Mark Wright came round, and Billie and I had a row and were screaming all sorts of abuse at each other. I think he was pretty shocked by it – shocked enough to tell his
sister Jess about it anyway, and she still remembers him talking about it. I have stopped biting now though, I promise!

We have kind of grown out of the fighting now – at least the physical fighting anyway. The last time I can remember that happening I was about 15, and we had a proper scrap at my friend
Ferne’s house. I can’t even remember what it was over. We were there for a sleepover, and I reckon Billie must have been showing off or something. We ended up punching each other,
pulling each other’s hair and really going for each other. It started off upstairs, and ended up downstairs. I think all our friends were shocked, and after that we realised that we had to
grow out of this sort of thing.

Nowadays we only tend to argue about clothes and fashion. I believe in sharing clothes and shoes, whereas Billie is much more protective of her belongings. It drives me mad sometimes – why
can’t I borrow her things?!

I remember when I was 17 I was going to an Asian wedding, and I had no shoes to wear. She had these gold strappy ones that were perfect with my outfit, but she wouldn’t let me borrow them,
so I just took them. She went mad and it escalated into a huge row. I remember pushing her, running into the street and lobbing her shoes down the road. All over a pair of shoes. Like really?! I
think – at least I hope – we are past that now!

We are quite different shapes anyway, so I guess it’s not a bad thing that she doesn’t like to lend her clothes to me. Billie’s boobs are much bigger than mine. She’s
really conscious of them and tries to cover up her cleavage, which is mad – loads of people would love to have her boobs!

At least we’ve always really got on with each other’s boyfriends over the years, which has been good. Billie has been with her current boyfriend, Greg, since September 2011. Before
that she was with a guy called Dave for years, who was lovely, but the pair of them were so fiery, I couldn’t keep up with whether they were madly in love or fighting! She’s much calmer
with Greg.

My last boyfriend, TJ, and Greg work together at a ticket agency and are best friends, so it was even better. The four of us would go out together all the time. We’d do everything together
really, and it was a great set-up. I hope my next man gets on just as well with Billie’s boyfriend!

Keeping my body in good shape is really important to me – but doing regular exercise and eating healthily is not something I am good at, so this chapter is a bit of a
hard one for me! I always say I should be the last person to give advice on diet and fitness, but then again, I am generally quite happy with my figure, and I get a lot of compliments about it, so
I guess I must be doing something right . . .

As a kid, I was a little chubster. I had a really fat face and stocky legs, and even though I was well into sport at primary school, it was only when I got to about 14 that my weight suddenly
fell away. I guess it was just puppy fat.

Now my weight varies a bit, but I try to keep a close eye on it. The most it will vary, between my lightest and heaviest, is a stone, and that is at my most extreme, and it doesn’t go up
and down like a yo-yo or anything. I don’t do anything to the extreme – like I don’t spend every day in the gym, but nor do I veg in front of the TV all day, every day. It’s
the same with food – I’m not living off carrot sticks, but I’m not eating ten Mars bars a day either.

I am not self-conscious about my weight – I reckon so long as it is within reason, it is not some thing to overly worry about. It was weird seeing myself on screen for the first time
though, because at certain angles you suddenly think you look fat, even though that might never have occurred to you before.

It definitely had that effect on Lydia – after series one she became really serious about getting into shape, and hit the gym hard, using a personal trainer to help her drop from a size
ten to an eight, and she became really toned. The change in her was amazing, and she has kept in shape ever since. Sadly I didn’t feel the same motivation!

Anyway, as I’ve said, I was really into sport as a kid. The main one was probably gymnastics – I was actually training for the Olympic squad when I was at my best. That came about
after Billie and I started going to a recreational gym class on Friday nights at Havering Gym Club.

It was just for fun in the beginning, but then they held trials for the club’s training squad. Both Billie and I got through the trial, but as happens when you are kids, we didn’t
have time to do all the after-school activities we wanted, and had to pick and choose – and whereas I chose gymnastics, Billie chose Brownies. So when she went off to her weekly meetings in
her little brown dress, I was back-flipping my way around the gym. Although, I have to say, Billie definitely made the wrong choice. She hated Brownies, and thought the other girls bullied her. She
had such a big row at a Brownie camp in Hastings once, over my mum’s shepherd’s pie – don’t ask! – that Mum had to go and pick her up early. Not that gymnastics was
easy – in fact it was pretty hardcore. We had sessions three days a week, for three hours at a time. An hour of that would be completely given over to strength work – sit-ups,
press-ups, that kind of thing. I had a proper little six-pack back then! I think that’s why I still have a pretty flat stomach today, because my muscles have retained some of their tone.
Luckily for me!

Bearing in mind that I was probably only about nine at the time, the training was full-on. Girls would quite often end up in tears at the sessions, as although we really enjoyed it, there was a
lot of pressure on us.

We were entered for competitions, and I was doing pretty well, but I had broken my arm twice and sprained it once, so it was weak and started to cause complications.

The first time I broke my arm, I was about five. I was standing on the kitchen counter, and my mum told me to get down. Of course, being strong-minded even then, I didn’t! And, as if to
prove that mums always know best, a minute later I fell off the counter backwards, got tangled between two chairs and my arm got caught and snapped. It was awful. I went to hospital and they put it
in a cast for six weeks.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, when I went back to have the cast taken off, it turned out that it had been done wrong, and they had to break my arm again and reset it, so it was in a cast
for another six weeks. How bad is that? So really, while you can blame me for the first break, the second was definitely not my fault . . . The upside, for me anyway, was that it was my right hand,
and I am right-handed, so I got six weeks off school, as there was no point me going in when I couldn’t write. Then, when I was doing gymnastics, I sprained the same arm on the trampoline,
and put it out of action for a few more weeks. So, all in all, my right arm was not destined for gymnastics, even if the rest of me thought I was!

I remember that at one point I trained with two Bulgarians called Buba and Svet, who were lovely, and I was actually supposed to go to Bulgaria for five weeks for training. I think that is when
it would have moved up a gear – if I had done that, I’d have been into even more serious training, and to be honest, I wasn’t up for it. I was getting into life at secondary
school by then, and was starting to want to go out. I wanted to spend my weekends seeing friends, not putting time into even more training. Also, with my weak arm, I knew I was never going to be at
the top. Mum was happy for me to stop too – she never pushed me into doing it, although she was really happy and overwhelmed when I was doing well. She knew that if I wasn’t enjoying it
so much anymore, my time was up.

I was so glad I did it for that time though. It was a great experience, and I met some of the world’s best gymnasts. I still kept it up at school afterwards, along with plenty of other
sports. I did PE as one of my GCSEs, and was also in the netball and swimming teams, and I loved rounders. I don’t understand why, but no one takes rounders very seriously in this country,
which is a shame as it is probably my favourite sport.

I also did diving classes outside of school, and swam at a club called the Killer Whales in Hornchurch. Netball was pretty funny at primary school – because my mum was the coach! Raphael
Junior School was so tiny that practically the whole class was in the team in each year! Mum came in and coached us on a voluntary basis. I have to say, I was one of the best players, and was
always Goal Attack or Wing Attack because I was fast and whippy.

I quite miss playing netball actually. My friends and I are always talking about setting up a team now, to play just for fun. It’s great in the winter. I’d never want to go out in
the cold for a run, but netball is different. Netball really works all your muscles, with all the turning and stretching, and I reckon it’s one of the best sports for keeping fit. I played a
match a year or two back for a team of models, and I ached for days afterwards, as I was out of practice. I’d also forgotten how vicious it can get! Don’t let any boy claim it is not a
tough sport – they have clearly never seen a game when really competitive girls are on the court!

But all the exercise I was doing was very tied in with school. Once I left at 16, I suddenly found I wasn’t doing any sport at all, so instead I began to walk a lot. I would catch the
train to work from Brentwood every day, and it is about a mile and a half’s walk from my house to the station – uphill on the way back! It meant that I was doing 50 minutes of exercise
every day, and actually I found that was enough to keep me in shape, so for a while I was getting away with it.