About a Girl by Lindsey Kelk Page A

efforts on shoving me up the academic and professional ladders, and even happier that reality TV didn’t exist when I was a kid. I would almost certainly have ended up on X Factor , dancing to Kelis’s Milkshake in a diamante bra-and-knicker set at the age of six. It wasn’t her fault, I reminded myself for the thousandth time that year; she just wanted the best for me. She just wanted me to have the things that she didn’t. And she’d watched Working Girl too many times in the eighties. It wasn’t a coincidence that I was called Tess.
    ‘Oh, you know Tess doesn’t work in my team,’ Charlie replied with careful diplomacy. ‘And thank goodness. She’s so good at her job, she’d just show me up.’
    He always knew the right thing to say. Mum and I sat across from each other and smiled in tandem. Her hair was shorter than mine and starting to go grey, but we had the same colour eyes and identical gigantic rack. I’d got my Big Bird height, overanalytical mind and physical inability to hold a tune from Dad, but the rest of me was pure Julie.
    ‘So what’s the news?’ she asked, eventually turning to me. ‘How’s that fancy office? Have you got your new business cards yet?’
    ‘Not yet,’ I said, trying very hard not to tell any lies. ‘And really, the creative director job isn’t that different from what I was doing before. It’s just a different title.’
    I actually assumed that was true. Everyone knew you ended up doing the new job for at least a year before you actually got the title.
    ‘Everyone’s been very impressed ? they can’t wait to see you and hear all about it.’ Mum wore my achievements like a badge. ‘Your sisters will be at the christening.’
    Joy.
    ‘Where’s Brian?’ I asked, looking around the house I grew up in for signs of my stepdad, aka the only sane member of my family. It made perfect sense that he wasn’t genetically related to me in anyway. ‘Hiding?’
    ‘Hiding,’ Mum confirmed. ‘He’s playing golf. He’ll be back by two.’
    I nodded and tried not to worry. It seemed like Brian was playing a lot of golf lately.
    ‘Oh, Tess, Amy’s mum dropped by earlier and asked if you could take some pictures this afternoon?’
    ‘I would, but I didn’t bring my camera,’ I said, biting my lip and hoping she wouldn’t ask where it was.
    It was last summer, when I’d been short on money due to a ridiculous last-minute weekend away with Charlie that I couldn’t afford and which had ended in him copping off with a twenty-two-year-old blonde girl while I sat in the B&B sulking, that I’d traded my camera to Vanessa for a month’s rent. The camera I’d begged my mother to buy me. The camera I had taken with me everywhere until work had got in the way. The camera that sat on my ‘photographer’ roommate’s desk and never moved.
    ‘She’ll just have to manage without, then, won’t she,’ Mum shrugged. ‘I told her it wasn’t fair to ask anyway. You’ve been working all week and then she expects you to take photos of her bloody granddaughter’s christening? I mean, you’re a bloody director now, for Christ’s sake. And it’s not like there won’t be another one, the way she goes on. No offence, Amy.’
    ‘None taken,’ Amy replied. ‘My sister is a bigger slag than I am, I know.’
    ‘Hadn’t we better go and get changed?’ I stood up and grabbed my hastily packed weekend bag, wondering what sartorial treats Amy had shoved in there while I was showering. ‘We don’t want to be fighting for the bathroom.’
    ‘Fine.’ Mum feigned disappointment that we were trying to escape so quickly, but I knew she was relieved. ‘Be down here by quarter to three. We’ll walk down to the church together.’
    I just prayed I wouldn’t burn up on entry.
    The christening went as well as a small village christening could go. Babies cried, mums cooed and the twenty-something children who had run away at the age of eighteen stood awkwardly at the back fielding