Welcome to Life

Alice de Smith

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781843549840
• eBook ISBN:
  9781848873148
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction
• Index: Literature

In politically correct middle-class Cambridge at the tail end of the 1980s, Freya's nouveau riche parents are, well, different. Millie, her mum, doesn't have a maternal bone in her body. Self-obsessed, driven, and never far from a glass of Chardonnay, she seems to care more about her career than she does about Freya. Hugh, her dad, made his money as a property developer, but when the recession bites he slumps into what proves to be a terminal malaise. And things get even stranger when Edward moves in and it slowly dawns on Freya that he may sleeping in beds other than his own... Welcome to Life is a coming-of-age story with a twist - a sparkling, darkly humorous and provocative novel about family dysfunction, friendship and finding love in all the wrong places.

Ten

Next morning, Edward sat alone at the breakfast table. He sipped coffee and stared towards the back door, as if he was expecting someone to walk through it. He was wearing a dressing gown and pyjamas, even though it was almost nine. I'd never seen him in nightwear before. He should've thought twice about not being dressed in front of an impressionable teenage girl who wasn't a relation.

'Why aren't you at work?' I asked.

'Why do children die of cancer? Why does democracy and capitalism not lead to a stable monetary system?'

Clearly, he was in no mood for chat.

When I looked out front, I saw my parents' cars still parked outside. I wasn't very happy that no one out of Hugh and Millie and Edward was at work. If they didn't take work seriously, how were they going to pay for my school fees and university education and gap year in Florence studying Italian and History of Art? Even if it was a Friday, that was no excuse for standards slipping.

From the floor above, I heard a thud and the ghost of my mother's laugh. Edward winced.

Upstairs, the door to Millie's room was open, so at least she was up. But when I went to get her, she wasn't there, and her bed had that clean unmussed smell like it hadn't been slept in. Up on the next landing, the door to my parents' old room remained firmly closed. My parents were having a lie-in. Together. On a Friday. That could only mean one thing: my mother loved my father again.

I went back to my own room and waited for the day to pass.

That was when I saw it, lying on my dressing table by the mirror, a few scrawly lines etched on to the back of an old envelope in a ballpoint pen that was running out of ink.

FREYA, Re. Ball

1. No more than 2 units of alcohol (2 small glasses of wine).

2. No smoking.

3. No snogging boys. You are far too young to handle them. They are only after one thing.

I found it quite touching, just then, that my mother was concerned for my safety. It wasn't like her advice wasn't well founded. If anyone knew what boys were after, it was her.

'Jesus fuck!' Connie screamed when she saw her eyeshadow. 'I look like bloody Judy Garland. And I'm not talking about The Wizard of Oz. I mean the booze and barbiturate years.'

'Sorry.' Jessica seemed quite put out. She'd been copying a photo in 19 magazine, which was like Just 17, except it had articles about how to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. The smudgy evening style looked OK on the page, but in real life Connie's eyes stared out, punched and black.

'Jesus, Jessica!' Connie wiped the worst of the guck away with a moistened wipe. 'You were obviously a drag queen in your last life.' The colours bled down her face like she'd been caught out in the rain.

Since Millie was going to drive us to the ball, we were meeting at my house to get ready. My bedroom, which I'd always found quite large for my purposes, was now overstuffed with girl. Connie filled the place all on her own, while Jessica had brought so much make-up, she needed a suitcase to carry it.

'Don't boys prefer the natural look?' I asked. That's what it said on the Just 17 problem page. But then later in the magazine, it had a thing about 'sultry eyes for autumn', so it was a bit difficult to decide what was actually the truth.

Once, the publications I'd read hadn't told me how to act or what to look like. I used to read Bunty, which always had a picture story about a girl in an orphanage who'd been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Instead of telling the other orphans she was sick, she turned them against her, one by one, so they wouldn't be sad when she died. Then, in the last instalment of the story, she suddenly found out she wasn't dying and she could tell the other orphans that she wasn't a horrible person after all. I wasn't quite sure what the point of these stories was, except that maybe it was OK to lie, as long as you had your reasons.

Millie had made me put on my birthday dress, even though I wanted to take it back. She said I should wear it while I still could, before my boobs got too big and ruined the line. Shocking pink, she described the colour, which made me embarrassed. The satin was tight, but I could still move because it had 5 per cent Lycra. Lycra was new or newish that season, but I wasn't sure about it because I'd had to get special knickers with no side seams, which were nylon, not cotton, and gave me a hot crotch.

I didn't understand why we needed three hours to get ready. 'It's the main part of the fun!' Jessica insisted. I didn't find it fun. I stopped being nervous and got bored instead.

'I wonder,' said Connie, 'is it actually a rave? I got invited to one earlier this summer but I didn't dare go. I mean, you've got to take E, because if you don't, you can't have a good time. But it's supposed to do your brain in. What if I ended up too thick to do my GCSEs?'

'It's not a rave!' Jessica stood in her Mr Man bra and pants and unzipped her ball dress. Green silk, strapless, with frills round the hem, her frock was something Miss Piggy might wear for a Muppets' Christmas Spectacular. She stepped in, then wrestled to squeeze herself into the corsetry.

'Colour's nice on you,' I said.

'Thanks!' Jessica grinned. 'You know how I went on that Colour Me Beautiful course? Well, I'm an autumn, and this is on my palette. Will you zip me up?'

Connie appraised the dress with a critical eye. 'That's the trouble with strapless. Unless it's tight, the whole thing'll fall off. Just don't dance with your arms above your head. And don't drink anything fizzy, or your stomach will get bloated and you'll burst your seams.'

Ever since the fashion and beauty talk we'd had from Mrs Marks, the needlework teacher, Connie thought she was some kind of style expert. Mrs Marks' talk had mainly been about how we should never try and dress too old for our age. 'Lamb dressed as mutton – you'll only get yourselves into trouble.' Her wisdom was suspect, because Millie had spent her teens doing the whole mutton thing and it'd never done her any harm. But Mrs Marks did give us some useful tips as well. 'In an emergency, repair a ladder in your tights with nail varnish.' Only if we were wearing tights and nail varnish, we'd be looking old for our age. That was the trouble with advice – somewhere along the line, it always contradicted itself.

When we trooped downstairs the grown-ups were in the sitting room. The TV was on, but no one was watching.

Edward gave us a mock wolf-whistle which I considered to be rather inappropriate. 'Well, well, Charlie's Angels.'

Millie laughed. 'Lovely, darling. But I do think the blusher is a bit de trop.' She spat on to a tissue, stood up, then bore down on me. Before I could protest, she'd wiped away half my face. She scrubbed at my cheek till it burned.

'I must take a photo,' said my father.

He lined us all up in front of the sofa. As he snapped the picture, the flashgun went off, leaving little white fractures in my field of vision. I was worried that I'd blinked at the critical moment, but when I looked at the print the other day, my eyes were wide open, staring into the lens. My grin wasn't quite as large as Connie's or Jessica's – I'm more like a dog baring its teeth. Dogs in the wild only bare their teeth when they're up for a fight, but pet dogs, apparently, learn to grin when it's expected. That's what my smile looks like in the picture.

'What about you three?' I gestured for my father to hand me the camera.

Edward leapt up. 'Where d'you want us?'

Millie didn't look happy. 'Come on, darling. I haven't brushed my hair.'

'For God's sakes, woman, hair's hair. Don't worry about that.' Hugh gathered them all together.

In the picture, Edward and Hugh are sitting on either side of my mother, snuggled up to her. The men have the same cheery, camera-ready smile. My mother is squashed in between, looking grumpy and put-upon.

'Now you, Freya.' Jessica took the camera off of me. 'Just fit in with the rest of them.'

I sat down on the floor, my back against the sofa.

'Don't do that, darling,' said my mother. 'You'll snag your tights.'

I nuzzled between Millie's legs and my father's. Now that I'd skewed the family portrait, Edward was a little to one side. Even though the composition of this picture wasn't quite as good as the last one – the one without me – it was a better photo. Everyone is that bit more relaxed and, better still, all of the grown-ups are looking at me, like I'm really quite something.

Of course, at the time, I couldn't see their expressions, but I must have felt the warmth of the adults in my life, even Millie, because I left for the ball feeling candyfloss fluffy inside. My anger – that'd been sitting crouched in my brain, ready to pounce – dissipated. Nothing mattered any more – not exams or school or whether Jessica had managed to cover up my acne with her oil-free foundation. Tonight I'd have proper fun, like I'd been wanting.

Millie scooped up her car keys off of the coffee table, then jangled them in her hand. 'Taxi at your service.' She said it half like a joke and half like she was being put upon. But my mother was in no position t...

Table of contents

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements