Page 17 of Am I Allergic to Men?
‘Lucy, you know who this is, right?’ she asks me.
I shake my head.
‘It’s Tess… my daughter. Tess?’ Meg says, almost like I may be joking.
I still stare blankly. Tess comes over to squeeze my hand and I burst into tears. ‘But… you’re a baby. The last time I saw you. You were a baby.’
Emma and Meg don’t utter a word. Tess runs back and hides in her father’s arms, distraught. Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to scare her.
Jag comes to the end of the bed. ‘Lucy, do you know what time of year it is?’
It must be the summer. The sky is blue. Meg’s in shorts. She’s not shaved her legs but I won’t bring that up. It’s the summer. I remember it being the summer. I still can’t say anything. Why can’t I remember?
Jag approaches the side of my bed as Meg stands to hug Emma, both of them lost for words. For once. This is normally not the case.
‘Spit it out, you guys. Is this some sort of really bad joke? This is not funny. Who is that girl? Tess is, like, tiny. She has really fluffy hair. She looked like a duck.’ Jag puts an arm to mine, trying to calm me down. ‘I don’t even know who you are. Where’s Simon? Emma was going out with some other doctor called Simon?’
Emma looks absolutely mortified that I’m saying his name out loud. Jag smiles and shakes his head.
‘Emma divorced Simon,’ he explains to me. ‘Emma and I got married a few months ago. In Bristol? You were there?’
I don’t even remember her marrying Simon. She’s been married twice? I bury my face in my hands. I love a wedding. I’d remember a wedding.
Jag takes my hands gently. ‘Lucy, I want you to take some really deep breaths. Do you know your full name?’
‘Lucy Victoria Callaghan.’
‘And when were you born?’
‘August twenty-first, 1992.’
‘And how old are you?’
‘I’m seventeen. I’m pretty sure I’m seventeen.’
4
My name is Lucy and this much I know. I’m seventeen years old, a few weeks off my eighteenth birthday. I’m off to study Theatre Studies and English at Birkbeck University come the autumn. The last thing I remember is Mum telling me to get my accommodation forms in order otherwise they’ll put me in a leaky bedsit in East London above a minicab office that doubles as a meth lab. We were having conversations about saucepans. She said she’d treat me to a trip to Ikea to buy clothes pegs and frying pans and I told her I wouldn’t need such things. She laughed. What would I fry eggs in? I told her I would buy my fried eggs from the many London cafés and she told me this is why I would end up with no money. But Mother, I told her, I will have my looks, my smarts and my spunky outlook on life. That doesn’t fry eggs, Lucy, she replied. And she laughed and exhaled in both despair and adoration because I’m her favourite daughter. We all know it.
What else do I remember? Lady Gaga? Obama is President. David Cameron is the Prime Minister. My life’s ambition is to, one day, snog Robert Pattinson or join the cast ofGlee. I left sixth form a few months ago so I’m in some in-between stage of working and partying, spending days as a waitress and behind the bar at The Shy Fox, which is a crappy gastro pub that’s managed by Fergus, who sits in the storeroom in his breaks and watches porn on a laptop. I have my mates at school. Farah’s my girl. My go-to party mate. And I have four sisters. One brother-in-law. One niece. A boyfriend.
These are all answers to questions that people keep asking me. The psychologist, the neurologist, the phlebotomist, they all end in -ist and someone needs to help them find better shoes. They ask me to talk at them, draw circles, show them that I know my left from my right, my blues from my reds. I sing and spell and I’m a fricking queen at their flashcards. They poke and prod me.Right, they say.I’m just going to call in another specialist who may be able to advise, and I get passed along to the next person like the bowl of peas at a roast dinner.She was always quite tricky to work out, Dad jokes with a pained expression. Mum thinks I’m faking and keeps telling me to stop messing about.This isn’t funny at all, Lucy. Grace cries with worry. Emma seems fascinated, like I’m a science experiment to her. Because I’m not seventeen. Apparently, I’m nearly thirty and, fuck me, I can’t remember any of it.
When you’re the youngest of five girls, you get used to being talked about a lot. I am the baby of this clan and, as such, I’ve been forced to grow up far quicker than most. I found out about periods before I was ten (I walked in on Meg changing her pad; I thought she was bleeding to death), I found out about sex from reading Beth’s diary (she lost her virginity to some boy called Christian who she thought looked like Orlando Bloom, but he didn’t know where to put his willy) and I first got drunk with Grace after being insanely jealous that our sisters were going out clubbing without us. We got hammered on Bacardi and Ribena. Ribena is not a suitable mixer by the way. My mother will tell you that because we both threw up. Grace didn’t make it to the toilet in time either and chucked up purple in the hallway over a basket of freshly washed laundry. Dad had to repaint.
As the youngest, you become the butt of the jokes. You’re the accident.Mum and Dad never really wanted you. The one on the end. To combat that you acquire the best of skills, the loudest of voices, the snark is off the scale. You’re the one who has to shout the loudest to be heard otherwise you’ll be forgotten. You think that’s an exaggeration but it isn’t. When I was ten, I went to the supermarket with everyone and was tasked with wheeling the trolley back. THEY DROVE OFF WITHOUT ME. I’m not even joking. They only noticed when the car hit the dual carriageway and they had cracked open some crisps and realised there was an empty seat.
Am I a rebel? Maybe I’ve done more at a younger age than most. I mean, I had four sisters at university. I’ve heard all the sisters’ stories. I’ve been invited to visit and partake. It’s been a running theme my whole life.Let Lucy tag along. And I did. I absorbed all that experience into my soul. Because of this, people talk about me.
She’s overly confident, Mrs Callaghan. She defies authority and is abrasive in her manner.
She threw a full can of Coke at my daughter’s forehead.
I am afraid we will have to ban you from the village hall after the party you held here last week. We have not seen carnage like it.
I think Lucy slept with Danny’s brother-in-law at my wedding.
MUM! LUCY STOLE MY SHIT AGAIN!
