Old School Ties - rewriting the past!
I thought it might be fun to post the two different versions of the opening chapters of Old School Ties, from the 2003 edition and now the 2009 edition. A kind of chick lit Spot the Difference... I do hope you prefer THIS one, though!
Old School Ties
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy, 1960
Do you really want to hurt me?
Boy George, 1982
Tracey Mortimer rules the skool and the world 4ever and ever! OK!
(Tracey Mortimer,
The door of Cubicle 3, girls’ toilets, Humanities Block,
Crawley Park Comprehensive, June 1984)
Chapter 1
27 Sunnyside, Bracewell New Town, Berkshire, April 2001
Last night, when the third gin and tonic finally knocked the sharp edges off my 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…’ One parents’ evening, a teacher took my mum aside and said, ‘We’re all hoping that Tracey’s year is a bit of a hiccup. Half the staff room would be applying for early retirement if we thought this was the way kids were going to behave from now on.’
If we’d had a yearbook, like they do in America, I’d have had a mention on every page, and I’d definitely have been voted the girl most likely to succeed. I’m not boasting. Look at me now – plain old Mrs Dave Brown – and maybe it’s hard to believe, but I really was top dog. Not swotty – I would never have been head girl, but then we didn’t have a head girl, it wasn’t that kind of school.
What I had was the knack of being at the centre of everything, without pissing people off. Saying what everyone else was thinking, but making it loads funnier. Knowing how short we should be wearing our school skirts, or how thick we should be tying our hideous ties, way before the latest trends 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… And I even made detention fun.
Those were the bloody days. They really were.
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 girl 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 mystery, but then I’ve been busy marrying a bastard and having two of his kids. Life’s like having no grey hair. You only know what you had once you’ve lost it.
I sat up in bed, trying 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 apart from my mother shouting at me.
As for the fulfilment of motherhood, it’s a con. Sure, my two are the most beautiful children alive. But the other mums? OK, I had a few laughs in the antenatal group, though they were 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 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 would 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 again, recruiting 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…
Smart Alec Productions, Beak Street, Soho, Central London
Jenny had known even before it started that this was going to be one of those meetings.
Alec hit pause on the remote control, then threw it across the table. A still frame of a bespectacled man with receding 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. ‘Can you explain why this is so hard? Reunions are the new sex, aren’t they? Everyone’s at it, shuffling around to Spandau Ballet and eating Spangles. It’s not rocket science to find me a single decent case we can follow, is it?’
Jenny bit her lip. ‘Alec, we’ve got half a dozen reunions in the file—’
‘Yes, but I’m not looking for dysfunctional retards with issues. I want feel-good people. This isn’t Panorama, you know.’
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 knew it was a rhetorical question. Annabel, the new 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 seemed to be blinking back tears.
Jenny took a deep breath. ‘Alec, I know you’re frustrated, but you’re being a bit harsh. Annabel and I have been out every night meeting candidates. We’ve got one tonight, four 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. I thought kids would get less dependent, 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, Mummy. I want to read you a story.’
Well, that’s tempting, isn’t it? I know it’s what you’re meant to do as a supportive parent, and I do my duty once a day, make encouraging noises, but can’t school send home a book that isn’t about kittens and 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 on to my leg to stop me leaving. His fingers are covered in banana yogurt, so my one pair of decent glossy black tights is smeared with yellow stripes.
My mum’s babysitting but she’s no help.
‘Poor little Callum,’ she coos, and he reacts the way any toddler does to unexpected sympathy. He milks it without shame.
‘Maaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmy.’ He starts quietly but builds up towards a high-pitched ending, which hurts my ears and makes me nearly lose my balance.
I somehow manage to escape from the house, and when I look back I can see Mum standing in the front window, giving me a dirty look. I can hear her tuts, despite the double-glazing. But after thirty-three years of practice, it’s easy enough to ignore her disapproval.
Until now I haven’t had time to worry about the meeting. But while I wait for the bus – I daren’t drive because I need a drink or two to get through this – it finally hits me.
I can only remember feeling this 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 convinced that when the big moment came for us to take our vows, he’d still be sleeping off his hangover, or be tied up in a mail sack on a sleeper train to Aberystwyth, courtesy of his ‘fun-loving’ mates. Now, of course, I do wonder occasionally whether the humiliation of being stood up at the altar would have been better than what’s happened since, but there you go.
Second time was before I had Kelly, and that was partly fear of the pain, but mainly the fear that she’d be an ugly baby. Ugly people have a harder time in life, it’s a fact. I’d waddled off the week before to see a girl from antenatal, and her bundle of joy looked like Mr Potatohead; not that she seemed to realise. Kelly’s not quite what I’d expected in many ways, but she’s been a looker ever since she emerged, a bit squashed, from my tattered nether regions.
So I guess the nausea I’m feeling now puts this meeting right up there with two of the most significant events of my life. Which I admit is ridiculous. Or rather, the boring Tracey Brown grown-up bit of me admits it’s ridiculous.
But the girl who used to be Tracey Mortimer reckons this could be as big as the wedding and birth thing in the excitement stakes. Bigger even, because this is not about Dave in his tux, or Kelly in her Moses basket.
This is all about me.
I pay the bus driver, and the newspaper cutting flies out of my purse. My denim skirt feels too tight as I kneel to pick it up. I know the advert off by heart now, but 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 like one of those scam cures for baldness or impotence, and I nearly didn’t read on, but then there’s nothing else in our local paper except letters about dog shit and corrupt local councillors so I kept going.
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.
‘If your reunion’s under way 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.
