Page 81 of Great Sexpectations
‘Antiquated?’
‘I like that one.’
‘Just use it properly. Sonny says hi, by the way. He wishes you luck,’ I say, glancing at my phone.
She holds a hand to her heart and picks up a lipstick again, nervously reapplying it.
A girl with a headset, a high ponytail, dressed head to toe in black suddenly rushes in. ‘Hi! OMG, I’m Becca. I am so sorry, it is mad this morning. Thank you for being so patient with us. OMG, you look amazing, like proper OMG.’
Mum smiles at her while I try to work out how many times someone can OMG in one sentence.
Becca runs a finger down a clipboard. ‘We’ll wire you up on set. Are you her assistant?’ she asks me.
‘Daughter,’ I reply.
‘OMG, that’s super cute.’ She’s five thousand words a minute, but I like the energy.
‘Breathe, Becca,’ Mum says, putting a reassuring hand to her arm.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just one of the other guests is down the hall and between you and me, he’s a proper dickhead. Nothing will give me greater pleasure if you give him what for today.’
Mum looks to me when Becca says that. We haven’t been told about the other panellists, but already I can see the fear in the whites of her eyes. I turn and swish a finger under my neck to tell Becca she has to stop.
‘I mean, he’ll be no match for you, though, I’m sure. When you’re ready…’ Becca mumbles.
Mum pauses by the door and stares into space. ‘Josie… Maybe this was a stupid idea…’
‘Mum, I’ll be there the whole time. Nothing bad can come of this. You’ll have that doctor there too, the nice TV doctor – we like her – and the presenter will have your back.’ I reach down to take her hand and she squeezes it, so hard that I can feel her rings pressing into my skin.
We start walking along a corridor lined with photos of minor TV celebrities. There’s a lot of hustle and wires and people clutching clipboards for their lives. I feel mildly excited if nervous for my Mum. She’ll be fine. I watch as she makes her way onto the sound stage to get mic’ed up and I wave at her, like I’m waving a child off on their first day at school. She goes to take her seat and talk to a director.
‘She’s so glamorous,’ Becca tells me, looking me up and down. I’m the opposite of glamour, I’m reality-show realness right here. ‘She’ll be brilliant, I hope she takes that other bloke down,’ she says, her voice trailing off.
‘Who is he?’
Becca looks down her clipboard. ‘He was a last-minute call-in. Umm… Henry… Henry Cox. OMG, that’s a funny name! He’s a proper cox-sucker,’ she says, sniggering at her own joke.
O.M.CRAPPING.G. I stand there, glued to the spot. ‘WHO?’
Do you have many slow-motion moments in your life? I can think of a couple. The time I nearly got run over once in a supermarket car park when someone reversed into my trolley, when Mike left me and shattered my heart into splinters of nothing, and a time on holiday when I got pushed into a pool with a tray of drinks. But this, this is rating up there as one of those moments where I want to run slowly in the direction of my mother and push her out of the way. Noooooooo. Ruuuuun. This can’t be happening.
In my head, I race through the possibilities of what this means. I was hedging my bets on Cameron not watching this as he’s just gone back to work so there’s no way he would be stopping in his office to watch random mid-morning TV. His family dynamics are pretty fractured so there’s a very slight possibility he won’t see this, this will all slip through the cracks and the dots won’t be connected. But there’s also the very huge chance that this is all going to come out, now. Here. Without any help from me. Maybe I should message Cameron, attempt some form of damage control.
Panic sits in my soul. What do I do? Do I pull a fire alarm? Tell Mum there’s an emergency? Plus, what if I bump into Henry Cox now? He was deeply unpleasant and I was mildly abusive to him in his own house, so who knows what he’ll do if he sees me in the light of day. I should just steep in my terror and stay in the shadows. Maybe I should find a hat to wear. I stand behind a large man in shorts, Timberland boots, operating a large camera, waiting, watching, making him slightly nervous so I step away and find a curtain to hide behind. I think I might stay behind here forever.
‘Can you leave my hair alone please?’
Crap. That’s the first I hear of Henry Cox and I allow him to walk right past my curtain, not before peeking out and hissing. Look at your shiny grey suit and tie. I see him walk up to my mother and she extends her hand. Did he just totally ignore it? Slap him, Mum! Mum doesn’t look too bothered and everyone takes their seats. However, she does stop for a moment to look at him. Mum is far better with faces than myself and as soon as she sees him, I see fire. She knows who it is. Not that she knows that’s Cameron’s dad at all; I’ve never told her that much. She knows him as the man who litters her letterbox with propaganda political nonsense. He recently voted in favour of the closure of two support centres in our area for new single mothers and has just started his petition to change the nature of sex education in schools. This is someone she wants to take on. This is something she’s not scared of. However, it scares me. It scares me for many reasons. All these separate universes are colliding. We’ve crossed the streams. Please let us leave here unscathed. Please please please.
‘And welcome back to the show!’ The presenter has been doing these sorts of phone-in debate shows for years now, doling out his own brand of TV justice and pop psychology nuggets of wisdom. However, according to Sonny, the presenter also attends many awards shows completely coked up where he usually spends his time in backstage toilets with women who aren’t his wife.
‘So, the next topic we wanted to cover today is SEX! Cover your ears, Jean, if this is too much for a Thursday morning but there are some new programmes coming into schools today about sex education and here to discuss those new curriculums are Dr Sara Hafeez, MP Henry Cox, and Susie Jewell, who works for a charity called INTI-MATE which promotes sex education and body positivity in schools. Welcome, all. Let’s start with you, Dr Sara…’
We like Dr Sara. She’s the resident doctor in a show where she helps people with body shame and health problems they’ve lived with for years. She also does a nice line in kids’ health shows with puppets, still works for the NHS and I think most women would agree, we’d all kill for her hair. If I could applaud her, I would.
‘…which is why it’s important these lessons are in place for children as young as five years of age…’ she says to the host.
‘Five years old?’ Henry Cox says, humphing and blowing out his cheeks. ‘At five years old, children should be climbing trees.’
