Alison Kervin - The WAG’s Diary

It all got me so cross, especially since the only reason we employed Alba in the first place was because I wanted a Spanish member of staff. I kept thinking that Dean might be transferred to Real Madrid or something. You know—like Becks was.

For OBUD, though, I need to take full responsibility myself—no delegating the details to Barcelona’s finest. So that’s why I’m stumbling round Marks and Spencer’s food section on a Saturday afternoon, instead of going to pilates with Gisella and Sophie—mums from Pask’s school. Not that I’m bothered—bloody pilates bores me to tears—all that business with the stretching and breathing properly. I feel like shouting, ‘I’m here because I want to be as thin as Posh, not to prepare for childbirth.’ I read that Coleen does it—that’s why I registered for the twelve-week course. This is week ten. I’ve only been once.

Oil. Perfect. I’m not sure quite how I’m going to get him to drink it, but I stick four large bottles into the supermarket trolley. Lard!!! Eight blocks of it. Fairy cakes, chips, meat pies, jam, ice cream, chocolate, cream horns, rump steaks, filled potato skins, ready-made curries, pizzas, salami, cheese (six large blocks), twenty-four cans of beer…Out they all come onto the conveyor belt towards the cashier. I throw in handfuls of chocolate bars from the till point as I watch fruit-cake, a block of marzipan, nuts, syrup, spotted dick, bread and butter pudding, pasties and sausage rolls trundling along…

‘Tracie, Tracie? I thought it was you.’

Before me stands Mindy, clutching a wisp of silk in her dainty fingers as she watches the conveyor belt with undisguised horror. ‘I’m just underwear shopping,’ she says slowly, still observing the copious amounts of food being shoved into carrier bags.

‘Do you want all this oil and lard together?’ asks the assistant, holding up blocks of the stuff. ‘There’s a lot of it. Might break the bag.’

‘Two bags, please,’ I say, through gritted teeth, my eyes never leaving Mindy’s as she tries to stop herself looking down at the beer, pizza, cakes and steamed puddings passing before her eyes.

‘Well. You’re obviously busy here. I’ll leave you to it. Nice to see you. I’ll see you for the first fat—I mean, first game.’

I smile and she’s gone. She lets the silk underwear flutter onto a nearby clothes rack as she exits onto Luton High Street, and gets straight on her mobile phone, no doubt, to tell the world about my serious eating disorder…

Bugger, bugger, bugger.

5 p.m.

‘Mum!’ cries Paskia Rose in horror and amazement. ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’

‘Don’t use words like “hell”,’ I instruct, as I take the swiss roll out of its packaging and lay it on a plate.

‘But this is ridiculous,’ she continues. ‘You never, ever go in the kitchen. I’ve never seen you even touch food with your bare hands before. Why are you here? What’s going on?’

‘I’ve decided to cook something delicious for your father.’

‘Right,’ she says, picking a chocolate clump out of the top of the swiss roll and eating it. ‘What are you going to cook with swiss roll?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, and that’s the truth. I just figure that anything I cook with chocolate and fondant icing as its base will probably taste nice, so Dean will eat it, put on weight and be all muscly and manly come the start of the season. He’ll then immediately capture the attention of the England selectors, who will probably make him England captain, and I’ll be on the cover of every magazine and be sent free shoes from every designer in the country. So Paskia Rose can scoff all she likes—there is method in my madness.

‘Why don’t you fetch an apron and help me?’ I suggest. ‘We could cook together—two little women in the kitchen, mother and daughter bonding over the cooker?’

‘Yeah, right,’ she replies. ‘Or I could throw myself under an express train. Man, this is way too weird. Way weird.’

When I was a ten-year-old girl like Pask, I would have loved, adored, just worshipped the idea of cooking with my mum. Just being with Mum was wonderful. I couldn’t get enough of it. Unfortunately, Mum never felt the same. Dad left when I was a few months old and she devoted the rest of her life to finding a replacement. My childhood memories are coloured by the images of men coming and going. Most of them were rich and much older than her. When there was a new man on the scene, she’d dance and sing and sweep me into her arms. I’d love those moments—moments when I’d feel warm and loved. Then she’d be dumped and take it all out on me. How could she ever find a man with a brat like me at home? The sound of her singing was replaced by the sound of her crying. And I knew—throughout my childhood—that I was causing all the pain. It was all my fault.

At the door to the kitchen, Pask, Alba, Marina (the live-in cleaner) and Magda are standing, hands over their mouths, as if they’ve just seen a flock of sheep cooking in the kitchen.

‘And?’ I say. ‘Your problem is?’

‘Oh, Mrs Martin, Mrs Martin. This is a kitchen—a kitchen,’ says Marina, attempting to guide me out of the room with an arm around my shoulders, as if I am a little old lady who has just wandered into a gay bar. ‘You shouldn’t be in here. This place is not for you. Is dangerous. Come, come. Let me help.’

‘No,’ I say bravely, standing up straight and pushing her arm off. ‘This is my kitchen and I will cook in it.’

I walk back to the swiss roll with my head held high, and reach into the cupboard to pull out the lard and the oil. I have no idea what to do with these, but I know they contain the necessary fat to build up Dean. There’s a collective intake of breath from the doorway and the sound of three women and a girl muttering ‘Lard?’

‘I want to be alone,’ I say to my spectators. ‘I need peace and quiet.’

Okay, so it turns out that it’s harder than I thought it would be. The swiss roll covered in lard looked terrible—as though it were preparing for a cross-Channel swim. Maybe I should have made it some teeny-weeny chocolate goggles and thrown it into the sea—it wasn’t good for much else. In the end I decide to roast it in olive oil, so I squash it into a saucepan, pour olive oil over the whole lot and put it into the oven with the heat turned up as far as it will go. I don’t know what temperature is right for pan-roasted swiss roll because there don’t appear to be any recipes for it, but I’m guessing hottest is best—like with curling tongs. You’re wasting your time on the half-heat settings, the curls fall out straightaway.

While my swiss roll is roasting in two bottles of olive oil (is that roasting or deep-fat frying? Must be roasting if it’s in the oven), I decide to make custard to go with it. I have a sachet of powder, so I read down the instructions. Not fattening enough, so instead of using milk I decide to use melted cheese and I shove three blocks of cheese into the microwave.

Next thing to happen is the smell—kind of sickly and pungent, like car tyres, sort of rubbery. In the microwave nothing untoward is happening—just cheese melting everywhere. It strikes me that I probably should have put it on a plate or in a bowl first, but besides that everything is going according to plan. No, the smell is definitely coming from the oven.

I peel open the door and look inside. Shit. The handle of the saucepan has completely melted off and is dripping onto the bottom of the oven. Fuck. I slam the door shut and try to waft away the acrid smells with the skirt of Magda’s apron, which thankfully I put on to protect my skinny jeans. I switch the whole thing off at the mains, indiscriminately pulling out plugs until the lights on the cooker go off.