Chapter 1: Old School Ties 2003 version
Last night, when the third gin and tonic finally knocked the sharp edges off the day, I dared to look in the mirror. And there, just below the problem family of white hairs breeding in my fringe, were the eyes of Tracey Mortimer. The most popular girl in the school.
I thought she’d gone for good.
When I was Tracey Mortimer, the whole year group belonged to me. Kids gossiping on the bus would say, ‘Guess what happened in Tracey’s year…’ Once a teacher told my Mum, ‘we’re all hoping that Tracey’s year is a bit of a hiccup. Half the staff-room would retire tomorrow if we thought this was the way children were going to be from now on.’
If we’d had a yearbook, like they do in America, I reckon I’d have been on every page, and would definitely have been voted the girl most likely to succeed. I’m not boasting. You look at me now – plain old Mrs Dave Brown - and maybe you can’t believe it, but I really was top dog. Not swotty – I would never have made it to head girl, but then again we didn’t have a head girl, it wasn’t that kind of school.
What I had was the knack of getting right in at the centre of things, without pissing people off. Saying the stuff everyone else was thinking, but making it funnier. Knowing what we should be wearing, way before it hit the pages of Jackie or Just 17. And, of course, giving the teachers just enough of a hard time to wind them up, but not enough to get detention more than once a month….
I poured myself another drink, and took it to bed with me (unlike Dave, a G and T doesn’t answer back). I propped his pillows on top of mine, nestling down in the hope that some tipsy memories might send me off into sweet dreams. His smell drifted up from the pillowcase, and I imagined him lying alone in his lodgings, a sad smile on his face, thinking of me…
But I wasn’t drunk enough. Before I could stop it, my imagination revealed the freckly back of some Irish tart lying asleep next to him.
And as the taste of the tonic turned chemical on my tongue, I realised. Everything since school has been shit. How I failed to notice for so long is a bloody mystery, but maybe life’s like wrinkles. It creeps up on you.
Sitting up in bed, as I tried to compare the good bits in my first sixteen years to the good bits in the last sixteen, it was so obvious. The sodding Youth Training Scheme, the endless nights on a fruitless quest for Mr Right, and the getting excited about getting engaged and getting married and then getting wise to the reality that all it means is more ironing, and having someone different to shout at.
As for the fulfilment of motherhood, what a con. Sure, my two are the most beautiful children alive. But the other mothers? OK, I’ve had a few laughs in the antenatal group, that’s almost like the old days, only they’re a bit of a dopey bunch compared to Class 1G, too easily led for my liking. I used to enjoy a challenge. The only challenge that gets the new Mums going is the race to finish knitting another pair of pink bootees. And now Kelly’s started school, it’s like salt in the wounds. She’s not like I was, too shy, and I want to take her place. She hangs on to me like a strip of Velcro in the mornings. I try to shoo her off, but she hates every minute of it.
You know those films, Big and Freaky Friday? That’s my dream, to swap places like Tom Hanks or Jodie Foster. Kelly’d love to sit at home doing the dusting, watching daytime telly, eating biscuits and playing with Callum, and I’d give anything to be at school, surrounding myself with a little gang, kissing the boys and making them cry. I want to go back in time. And I bloody can’t, and I bloody hate it.
At least, I didn’t think I could. And now, you know, I reckon there might just be a way…
Alec hit pause on the remote control, then threw it across the table. A still frame of a bespectacled man with ginger hair hovered on the widescreen TV at the end of the production company meeting room.
‘What an idiot. Do you think he’s actually got any old school friends who’d want to meet him ever again?’ Alec sighed deeply. ‘I don’t see why this is proving so hard. Reunions are the new sex, aren’t they? Everyone’s at it, shuffling around to Spandau Ballet. It’s not rocket science to find me one single decent case we can follow.’
‘Alec, we’ve got half a dozen reunions in the file-’
‘Yes, but I’m not looking for dysfunctional retards. I want feelgood people. This isn’t Panorama, but judging from this lot, you want to make some sort of gritty documentary.’
Jenny bit her lip. Better to let him finish when he was having one of his hissy fits – she’d learned that much in the last year at Smart Alec Productions.
‘The clue –’ he was now banging the file up and down on the desk to emphasise certain words ‘- is in the commissioning document. It’s entertainment. Go on, hazard a guess. What do you think that means we want the programme to be?’
He waited, but Jenny really couldn’t tell if it was a rhetorical question or not. Annabel, the researcher, had her mouth open to answer, and Jenny kicked her under the table.
‘It means…’ Alec had dropped the file on to the floor, and was speaking as if to an ill-disciplined child ‘…that it should be entertaining!’
Annabel gulped. She seemed to be blinking back tears.
Jenny took a deep breath. ‘Alec, I know you’re frustrated, but you’re being a bit hard. Annabel and I are meeting another possible tonight, and a couple more over the weekend. But getting the right people takes time.’
Alec stared at her. ‘Time, Jenny, is precisely what we don’t have. If the BBC get their reunion show on air before us, it’ll be my head on the block.’ He paused before giving her a vindictive look. ‘And yours, of course.’
There are times when I don’t think I’ll ever get out of the house. You’d think kids would get less dependent as they get older, but it’s just not like that. Kelly acts as if I’m about to go on a year-long Space Shuttle mission instead of down to All Bar One.
‘Don’t go now, Mummy. I want to read to you.’ Like I want to listen. I know it’s what you’re meant to do, and I do my duty once a day, make encouraging noises, but frankly it’s no great thrill listening to the same old rubbish about bunnies and fairies. She’s a much better reader than I was when I was six, but it’s not exactly EastEnders.
Meanwhile, Callum’s hanging off my leg to stop me leaving. His fingers are covered in banana yoghurt, so my one pair of decent glossy black tights now look like part of a wasp fancy dress costume.
My Mum’s babysitting but she’s no help.
‘Poor little Callum,’ she coos, and he reacts like any toddler getting unexpected sympathy. He milks it without shame.
‘Maaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmy.’ He starts quietly but raises his voice to a high-pitched ending which interferes with my ears, and makes me nearly lose my balance.
But I manage to stagger out of the house, and when I look back, I can see Mum standing in the front window, giving me a dirty look. After thirty-three years of practise, it’s easy enough to ignore her.
At least all the domestic grief has stopped me thinking too much about the interview. But while I wait for the bus – I daren’t drive because I’m going to need a drink or two - I finally have time to get wound up.
I can only remember feeling nervous twice in my life. First time was on my wedding day, because Dave did the traditional thing, had his stag do the night before, instead of months in advance like any sensible person, and I was terrified he’d oversleep or be tied up naked in a mail sack on a sleeper train to Aberystwyth, when we were meant to be taking our vows. Mind you, I think the humiliation of being stood up at the altar would have been preferable to what’s happened since, but you can’t predict the future, more’s the bloody pity.
Second time was before I had Kelly, and that was partly fear of pain, but mainly the fear that at the end of all that agony, she’d be ugly. I’d waddled off the week before to see a girl from antenatal, and her baby boy looked like Mr Potatohead; not that she seemed to realise. Kelly’s hardly the life and soul of the party, but she’s been a looker ever since she emerged, a bit squashed, from my tattered nether regions.
So I guess this adrenalin-induced nausea puts my meeting right up there with two of the most significant events of my life. Which I admit is faintly ridiculous. Or rather, the boring Tracey Brown grown-up bit of me admits it’s ridiculous.
But the girl that used to be Tracey Mortimer reckons this could be even bigger than the marriage and birth thing, in the excitement stakes.
I pay the bus driver, and the newspaper cutting flies out of my purse. My denim skirtfeels too tight as I kneel down to pick it up. I know the advert off by heart now, anyway, but I have a feeling that this meeting might make everything different, and it’s nice to keep souvenirs of the stuff that changes the course of your life.
Dear reader, it says, are you itching to head back in time to those days when the worst thing you had to worry about was double Maths? We could make it happen.
This sounds a bit bonkers, and I nearly didn’t read on, but it made a change from the usual stuff that fills the letters page in my local paper, all about dog shit and corrupt local councillors.
So then it says: We’re making a programme for Channel 5 about school reunions, and if you think it would be fun to organise one, we’d like to hear from you. You supply the friends and the memories - we pay for the party!
Now you’re talking.
The last bit goes on about nostalgia and remembering the 80’s and all that, before it finishes: if your reunion’s underway then it’s thanks, but no thanks - we want to be in at the beginning. So, if that trip down memory lane is still just a glint in your eye, get in touch with Jenny or Annabel at the address above!
I haven’t thought about anything else for two weeks. And tonight I’m going to charm Jenny and Annabel, like I haven’t charmed anyone since I set out to snare Gary Coombs in the first year.
Just hope I haven’t lost my touch.
The barman had poured too much red wine into the glass, and it splashed over the rim as he placed it next to the mineral water.
‘Four-fifty, please.’
‘Can I have a receipt?’ Jenny said, handing over a £20 note.
‘You’re not going to claim for my wine on expenses?’
‘Oh, Annabel, my love, you’ve got a lot to learn.’ Jenny picked up the drinks, and led the way through the empty bar, towards the plate-glass windows. The table she chose had the number 13 stencilled in black paint on the top. ‘This one’s got a good view of anyone walking in. And don’t worry, I’m sure the number’s not an omen. We’ve had enough bad luck on this programme to last a lifetime.’
Annabel took a huge glug of red wine before speaking. ‘It’s fucking pants, isn’t it? I really thought that Sandra woman was going to be the one.’
‘Yeah, well, she could have been, if it wasn’t for Alec’s irrational hatred of people from Coventry. So all we need now is a Page 3 stunner who isn’t ginger, who isn’t too boring or too interesting, who lives South of the Watford Gap, unless Alec’s now decided that northern warmth is what’ll make the film. Oh, and if she’ll shag him, then even better…’
Annabel took another gulp of wine.
‘Oh, Annabel, you haven’t?’ Jenny shook her head, but she wasn’t that surprised. Alec hadn’t really embraced the idea that these days the casting couch was too politically incorrect even for Hollywood, never mind for a low-rent production company in East London. Fortunately for him, most would-be researchers hadn’t realised either.
‘I haven’t had sex with him.’ But she was looking away.
‘What, like Bill Clinton never had sex with Monica? Come on, Annabel, wise up, don’t you think twenty-two’s a bit old to pretend to be a bimbo?’
Annabel sniffed, raised the glass to her lips and drained it.
‘OK, there was a blow job involved. But it’s just how things are, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you haven’t occasionally done things that the careers officer wouldn’t have recommended?’
‘Um, excuse me. I’ve never used sex to get a job.’ Then Jenny grinned. ‘Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t still be an associate producer at the ripe old age of twenty-nine.’
Annabel smiled, but it was clear she expected to be an executive by twenty-five, and given her enthusiastic approach to job-hunting, it could well happen. She looked down into her empty glass, and the smile disappeared. ‘I suppose we ought to wait until this Tracey gets here before we can get another drink.’
Jenny looked up towards the windows, where a woman with wavy blond hair was pretending to study the menu, but kept sneaking looks inside the bar.
‘I think this is our girl.’ said Jenny. ‘Well, she’s not ginger, so that’s one point in her favour. Let’s just hope she’s as committed as you are to keeping the producer happy!’
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Chapter 1: The Starter Marriage
Chapter 1: Old School Ties 2003 version
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NEW - Old School Ties 2009 (the director's cut!)
Chapter 1 - Brown Owl's Guide to Life
The Story behind Brown Owl's Guide to Life
The Story Behind The Starter Marriage
Chapter 1 - The Self-Preservation Society
Chapter 1 - The Secret Shopper's Revenge
Chapter 1 - The Secret Shopper Unwrapped
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