‘Never.’
But I don’t need to say any more, because out of nowhere, Dr Sara appears with a fist and properly lands one on Henry Cox’s chin. Christ, girl.
‘LET ME AT HIM!’ she shrieks. ‘YOU ABSOLUTE PIECE OF—’
I didn’t know the respectable doctor had it in her. They won’t let her back on kids’ TV after this. Becca the runner holds her back. That is some punch. I think that’s a tooth on the floor. Henry falls to the desk, dazed. My mum screams. The presenter throws his earpiece to the floor as more people run onto the set. Oh. Was that all on camera? I think it may have been, because the cameraman I was hiding behind before looks at me and puts his thumb to the air.
‘Crap,’ I mutter to Mum. ‘Maybe we should leave?’
‘You did that?’ she says, tears in her eyes.
I nod. Oh, crappy-crap-crap.
‘But Cameron,’ she whispers. Yeah, that too.
EIGHTEEN
‘I’m sending round some PR people, they’re troubleshooters, best in the biz. Ruby used them that one time her ex put all her nudes on Snapchat. Is she OK?’ Sonny asks.
I’m driving home from our rather eventful TV debut with Mum in the passenger seat. The look she has about her face is pure shock. I don’t think it’s shock from being abused by the turd-faced MP or even the fight that ensued after (turns out Dr Sara is also a black belt in ju-jitsu). I think it may be because I stepped onto that set. I was holding on to a lie, a charade to try to salvage a relationship with that man’s son, and I threw all of it out of the window for her, to defend my mother. In the moment, as much as I knew this would out all my lies to Cameron, that this would mark the end of our relationship, standing up for what was right, my mother and her honour, was what was most important.
‘She’s quiet,’ I reply. ‘I stopped off at McDonald’s and got her some nuggets and a milkshake.’
‘She’s a fifty-something-year-old woman, not a five-year-old child after losing a football match.’
‘I couldn’t think what else to do,’ I explain.
‘I’ve got Ruby here, she’s on her phone, it’s already trending on Twitter.’
‘Is it awful?’ I ask, my face scrunched up.
‘Everything’s mostly targeted at him. A few nice stills of you losing your shit. That’ll be a meme. Oh, no they’ve done it already, you’re a GIF, Josie.’
I don’t want to know what that means, but I’m making a mental note to use some BB cream and mascara as a minimum before I leave the house from now on.
‘Ruby and I have to go. Is he really Cameron’s dad?’ Sonny asks.
‘Yep.’
‘That’s mad.’
‘I know.’
‘Look, we’ll call back later. Get her home and just wait until the PR people get there. Draw the curtains. Maybe get some of the big lads from the warehouse to come down and do a bit of security for you?’ he suggests.
‘Maybe. I’ll catch you in a bit.’
Sonny hangs up and the Bluetooth reverts to the radio.
‘In other news,’ says a newsreader, ‘a TV debate went wild today when Dr Sara punched an MP for criticising a fellow panellist who works in porn.’
‘Workedin porn,’ my mum mutters.
I try to fiddle around with the radio stations. Boney M. She loves Boney M. This is better. I pretend to dance. There’s some strange nervous energy in my bones. Cameron will know now, for sure. My presence on that set would have connected all the dots and been the final piece of the puzzle. His sisters would have watched and told him. His mother. He now knows I’m not me. It’s over, it’s done. And I don’t know how I feel about that. There is embarrassment, sadness, but there’s a glimmer of hope that maybe he’ll see past it all. That what we had was enough. I keep waiting for my phone to ring, for a message to come through, but there has been nothing.
Mum sips on her milkshake. I didn’t know where else to go after we left the studio, but I remembered when we were sad when we were little, Mum used to get us Happy Meals. It would always do the trick. My mum doesn’t talk about her past a lot, but I know the route she took through life wasn’t because she was overly sexualised. It was because she was neglected – her mother remarried someone who ousted her out of the family home. It was having to navigate her teens on her own and probably being very misinformed about sex along the way, using it to validate her young self. It’s why she does what she does, so girls head down their chosen routes in life with information, with agency, with the knowledge that who they have sex with and how is not a measure of their self-worth.
As we pull into the drive, I already see Dad waiting tentatively by the front porch, and as my car rolls to a stop, he opens the door for my mum and offers a hand, looking at me strangely. You went to McDonald’s? She falls into his arms straight away. I think they both might be crying. He pushes her head away to give her a kiss on the forehead.
