Sarah May - The Rise and Fall of the Wonder Girls

The small, busy sounds stopped and she got quickly out of bed in the camisole and French knickers she still had the body to carry off.

Putting on the kimono Tom brought back for her from China, she went into the en-suite to check on her face. It really was unbelievable. She pushed up her sleep-ridden brown curls (L’Oréal colours 232, 141 and 303) pulled out some grey strays—and could have passed for Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman , on only £300 a shot. Given that Botox Heaven was so accessible, she couldn’t understand why there weren’t queues round the block for it. The number of her friends who hadn’t tried it yet—and who were in her opinion wilfully sabotaging their few remaining prospects—amazed her. Surely electing not to do Botox was as close to self-harm as a woman her age could come without actually drawing blood.

She smiled.

Her face, above her top lip, remained expressionless but she felt that this lack of expression gave her poise and a definitive sort of elegance; the sort the late Princess Diana used to have.

Sighing, she yelled, ‘Vicky!’ through her daughter’s bedroom door before going downstairs and into the kitchen. There was Bill’s milk glass by the sink, which meant he’d forgotten to empty the dishwasher again. She was half tempted to leave it until the evening, but that would only irritate her all day. Like that time he kept forgetting to empty the bin and she’d hauled it out into the middle of the kitchen floor, where it had stood, overflowing, and all he’d done was walk round it day after day—not getting the point.

‘Vicky!’ she yelled again, up through the ceiling this time, as she got the pan out the cupboard and started to make porridge.

Porridge was good for her. It had been good for Kate Winslet. The nutritionist had told her that. Sylvia had gone through a bad patch two years ago, just before they moved, skipping breakfast and living off crackers, bananas and emetics. The morning bowl of porridge had done just what the nutritionist promised: re-instated regular bowel movements and aided weight loss. The resulting weight loss far exceeded her expectations when she realised it wasn’t just her own jeans she could now fit into, but her seventeen year old daughter’s as well. She made a point of trying on Vicky’s jeans—her weight barometer—once a week.

She went to the foot of the stairs. ‘VICKY!’

There was the sound of a toilet flushing and water running.

She went back into the kitchen and laid out two bowls on the black marble surface she still wasn’t convinced went with the granite floors.

Vicky rounded the corner, bleary and grey.

Sylvia, concentrating, filled the two bowls with porridge before looking up. ‘What happened?’ she said, taking in her daughter.

Vicky hauled herself onto the bar stool and stared at the steaming bowl of porridge. ‘When?’

‘I don’t know when, but you look like shit.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Are you feeling okay?’

‘No.’

‘Ill?’

‘Don’t think so.’ Vicky stuck her spoon into the porridge then let it drop against the side of the bowl. ‘I can’t eat this.’

‘It’s what the nutritionist prescribed—plus it’s freezing out there.’

‘You’ve been out already?’

Ignoring this, Sylvia said, ‘So you need something hot inside you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’ll be hungry mid-morning, and end up buying a muffin.’

‘And?’

‘And—’ Sylvia faltered. ‘That’s no way to eat.’

‘That wasn’t what you were going to say.’

‘What was I going to say?’ Sylvia pulled herself up onto the other stool.

‘I don’t know—something about muffins and getting fat.’ Vicky paused. ‘You think I’m getting fat?’

‘I think you should eat your porridge—you need to eat properly…out all the time…takeaway pizza.’ She paused. ‘There’s no balance.’

‘Are we still talking about food here?’

‘What else would we be talking about?’ Sylvia started to eat. ‘It just occurred to me…’

‘What?’

‘That your jeans haven’t been through the wash much recently.’

‘So?’

‘So?’

‘So, I don’t like wearing jeans all the time and anyway we’re not even allowed to wear them to school.’

Sylvia nodded slowly. ‘Well, we all need to be careful.’

‘I don’t believe this. You’ve started already and it isn’t even eight o’clock.’

‘You’re the one who won’t eat their porridge,’ Sylvia observed.

‘I was diagnosed bulimic less than two years ago and you’re telling me I’m fat? I mean, I’m like no therapist or anything, but I’d say that’s dangerously counter productive.’

‘Is that a threat?’ Sylvia asked. ‘As I recall, you had symptoms of mild bulimia—that’s not the same as being diagnosed bulimic. It was to do with the depression and the binge eating and you’re over that now.’

‘Yeah—over that; all done and dusted with that one.’

‘Are you trying to initiate a conversation about depression, Vicky? Is this a cry for help?’

‘A cry for help? If I’d gone down that road I’d have fucking lost my voice by now.’

‘Are you trying to tell me you’re depressed again?’

‘I love the way you stress the “again”; like, here we go again , here’s Vicky getting all boring and time-consuming again.’

‘So are you?’

‘What? Still boring?’

‘Depressed—’

‘Noooo!’ Vicky shouted.

Sylvia waited. ‘Your porridge is getting cold.’

She watched as her daughter picked up the spoon and shoved in mouthful after mouthful, until the bowl was empty. ‘You want to watch you don’t get indigestion.’

Vicky stared at her, her mouth full.

‘I just need to know you’re on top of things. This is an important year for you. I know you’re hearing it from your teachers, but you need to hear it from me as well—and dad.’

‘Dad doesn’t even know what year it is—and you never made O Levels let alone A Levels. So what are you talking about?’

Sylvia resisted the instinctive urge to take a swipe at her daughter’s face—primarily out of respect for the fact that Vicky had actually made the effort to put make-up on this morning. She used to hit Vicky a lot as a child and was of the opinion that a ‘tap’ never hurt anyone. Vicky had—possibly—been tapped more than Tom, but then Vicky had been a difficult child, even as a toddler. ‘Curdled,’ her mother used to call it. Some children just came out like that—curdled. So, ignoring the reference to her lack of higher education, Sylvia said, ‘I just want you to know that your dad and me are behind you at this point, which means you’re free to focus on the opportunities ahead.’

‘Oh my God, you’re talking in platitudes. Did you take an evening class or something and not tell us?’

Sylvia drew herself slowly off the bar stool and Vicky instinctively flinched as she took a step towards her.

‘Why are you so angry?’

‘Because I’m sick of you talking to me like I’ve screwed up already when I haven’t even taken my mocks yet.’ Vicky stopped. ‘This is about me not getting Head Girl, isn’t it? You think me not getting Head Girl was because I’m not on top of things.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘God, it must have been awful for you having to break the news to all your friends—about me not getting Head Girl. How humiliating for you.’

‘So I thought you’d get it—what’s wrong with that?’

‘I keep telling you but you won’t listen—there’s no way anybody other than Grace was going to be Head Girl this year.’

‘So it was a foregone conclusion?’