The WAG’s Diary

‘What is it, doll?’ he asks, expertly performing a quick manoeuvre to keep the remote firmly within his grasp. If only he were as adept at keeping the ball at his feet, he might have had a half-decent international career. As it is, he has a less than half-decent club career. If it weren’t for me constantly pestering him to go training, get fit, eat healthily and wear bigger, golder jewellery, he’d barely be a footballer at all.

‘I was just wondering,’ I say, pouting my new, and let’s be honest, terrifyingly plump lips at him to such an extent that he actually flinches in his seat and murmurs something about pink slugs. ‘Why don’t you contact David Beckham or Wayne Rooney or something? You know, make friends with them.’

‘Eh?’ he says, his eyes not leaving the television for the merest second, and his left hand not moving from between his legs, where he is attempting, by assuming some sort of absurd yoga pose, to adjust the crotch of his tight, shiny grey trousers that I bought him from Dolce & Gabbana. He lifts his pelvis right up into the air in an effort to disentangle himself further, and I notice how narrow his hips look in their BacoFoil-type coating. If I wore trousers like that I’d look the size of the QE2, whereas he looks as narrow as the ridiculous silver tiepin he was presented with by the club last year. Is that why he’s not been selected for England for eight bloody years? Maybe if he were built like Frank Lampard instead of Frank Skinner he’d have had the call. Mmmm…Maybe I should do something to fatten him up. I’ll buy loads of steak tomorrow, and chips and cakes and lard and stuff. I’ll feed him till he explodes. It can be my new mission: OBUD—Operation Build Up Dean.

‘You know—why don’t you at least try to make friends with some England footballers? Some of them don’t look too bright—I’m sure you could become their new best friend without them even noticing. Then once the coaches see you out on the town with them, you might get selected to play for England again.’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ he says. ‘It’s not like school. They don’t pick you because you’re friends with the other players.’

‘It can’t hurt,’ I try. I’d love him to play for England again. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder than I was when he won his cap for his country. It was against Cameroon. They’re a really good side…I don’t think they’ve won the World Cup, but they probably came second or something. Dean was outstanding in the match. It wasn’t his fault that he only had four minutes to show how good he was. He got sent off, you see, then he was never picked again. No one knows why. I mean—it was only a little kick, and that guy deserved it. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I’m still proud of him. I display his cap in a large gold-rimmed frame. It’s back-lit, like all that naff old stuff in museums is, and it looks fantastic. I’ve got the match programme framed too, and my ticket for the game. Oh, and all the cuttings about the game from every newspaper that covered it around the world (except for the one where they described Dean as a ‘thug’—I threw that away). I’ve also got the precious squad list that the Football Association sent out with his name on it to confirm he was in the England squad. The annoying thing is that they’ve spelt his name wrong. Isn’t that ridiculous? To spell your star player’s name wrong! I rang them up at the time and screamed ‘It’s Dean Martin, not Martins’, but the woman on reception just kept asking me what department I wanted, then threatened to hang up when I called her a crazy old bat. Still, I had the last laugh because the squad list is now hanging on a red velvet background in a magnificent golden frame.

The mementoes from Dean’s international career cover an entire wall in the entrance hall. They’re perfect, especially next to the large statue of Dean in his football kit. It’s life-size. Actually, to be fair, parts of it are bigger than life-size. I don’t know what Dean had down his shorts when the sculptor was assessing all the dimensions, but the statue is very impressive indeed. It looks wonderful, especially now we’ve put the spotlights directly above it. People said we didn’t need spotlights, what with the three chandeliers lighting up the entrance hall, but I think it looks great.

I’d love Dean to have another chance to relive those four golden minutes and play for England once again. Above all, I’d like to be friends with Victoria, and go shopping and hang out with her and her Hollywood friends—and have a word with her about cutting her hair short.

Dean’s gone back to watching television again, and fiddling with the crotch of his trousers. He can’t hear a word I’m saying with the TV blaring out. I don’t understand why he has to have it on so loud—he seems to nudge the volume up until everyone’s shouting out at us from the large plasma screen on the far wall.

To be frank, I don’t need this right now. I’ve had one hell of a day. A dismal, horrific day in which I made a complete fool of myself at the beautician’s. Mallory normally tends to all my beauty needs—she’s practically full-time, hovering over me with tweezers and emery board day and night. But, for reasons that with hindsight I can’t begin to fathom, today I decided to pay a visit to the new salon in town for one of their oxygen facials. The beautician assigned to me was South African, which worried me from the start. I’ve only ever been to South Africa once and that was completely by accident. It was for our honeymoon and we ended up there after I told Dean that I really wanted to go to this fabulous club called En Safari in Ibiza. It never occurred to me that we’d go anywhere other than Ibiza for our honeymoon. I’m not sure I knew there were any other countries—just LA, where Mum had lived, England, where we lived, and Ibiza, where we went on holiday. Trouble was, Dean thought I’d said that I wanted to go ‘on safari’ so we ended up spending our entire honeymoon sleeping in a tent, covered in mosquitoes and watching a whole load of bloody animals. It was awful. I turned up on the first day wearing my specially chosen honeymoon outfit of little white hot-pants and fabulously high gold sandals with a gold halter-neck bikini top and a low-slung gold chain belt, and everyone was staring at me. They were all wearing plain, dull clothes. I had my gold-rimmed shades on and piles of bling that sparkled in the sunshine. I looked great and I knew it.

‘Hey, man. You’re gonna scare the animals,’ said this man with a rifle. He was all dressed in khaki. ‘And you need boots on your feet.’

I said the only boots I had were made of pink plastic and came up to the middle of my thigh, so he made me wear flat shoes belonging to some plain woman in our group. FLAT SHOES!—and they didn’t match my outfit.

It was the honeymoon from hell. No shops, no nice wine bars, no fancy cocktails, just a whole bunch of rhinoceroses and lions and stuff, and all these people going, ‘Aw, look—it’s a baby elephant…’ Don’t they have televisions? There are bloody nature programmes on all the time. I can’t get away from baby elephants when I’m flicking through to watch Britain’s Next Top Model, and I have to say that I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw a jungle animal again—baby or otherwise.

We left the safari in the end. Or, more accurately, they asked us to leave. We went to some place called Cape Town for a couple of days. That was strange, too. I had this horrible moment when trying to find the shops. You see, they call their traffic lights ‘robots’ out there. I asked how to get to the shops and was told ‘Turn left at the robots.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘The robots? I want to go to the shops, not into the future.’

Anyway, that’s why I was alarmed to have a South African beautician. Her name was Mandie.

‘Lie on the bed and take off your knickers,’ she said.

‘Pardon?’

‘I’ll need you to lie on there without your knickers on.’

It seemed an odd request since I was only having my face massaged and plumped up with some oxygen-containing creams, but I did as I was told, lying on the bed entirely naked below the waist.

The beautician turned round from where she’d been mixing lotions and potions and jumped back when she saw me lying there smiling at her, completely knickerless. She looked at me in the same way you might regard a lunatic running down the street, clutching a large knife—backing away from me, eyes wide and looking more than a little fearful.

‘What are you doing?’ she eventually asked.

‘I’ve taken off my knickers,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Mandie, pointing to my neck. ‘I said “Lie on the bed and take off your necklace.”’

Fuck! I scrabbled back into my Luton Town thong and slipped off my choker. I’m sure she was laughing at me. The facial wasn’t even that good anyway.

I rushed home afterwards to find Mum in the house—nothing odd about that,of course, she’s always there, snooping around to see what I’ve bought and to try on all my new clothes. Today, though, I just couldn’t handle talking to her and listening to all her criticisms of me.

‘These shoes are horrible,’ she said as soon as I walked in.

‘Not now, Mum,’ I said, walking right past her and going to look for Dean, hoping to have some sort of conversation with him. Now I’ve found him, though, he’s just locked in his own little TV world. He’s like a child when it comes to the goggle-box. He’s kicked the zebra rug out of the way and shifted the sofa forwards, so he’s practically nose-to-nose with the presenter. The only person I know who has the television on louder is Nell. She has it blaring out so much, you have to hold on to your ears in case your eardrums blow apart.

I once took Nell to the cinema and she complained all the way through the film about how loud it was. Eh? How does that work? I’ll tell you what also confuses me about Nell is that she has the fire on, the central heating on and wears a coat, hat and gloves in August, then complains frequently of hot flushes. God help me if Dean ends up like her when he’s older—I don’t think I could cope.

‘Can you turn it down, love,’ I say for the third time, as if I’m asking him to make the ultimate sacrifice.

‘It’s celebrity darts,’ he says, turning to face me. A wounded look had crept across his features. ‘It’s Syd Little against Ulrika Jonsson’s sister’s ex-boyfriend’s uncle.’

‘This is important,’ I persist. ‘Really important.’

Syd Little misses the dartboard completely and Dean spins round. ‘And you think this isn’t?’

‘Paskia Rose’s school report’s here,’ I say. ‘I found it screwed up in her underwear drawer. It turns out she’s really not doing very well at all.’

Dean shrugs and I feel like crying. For some reason I’m considerably more dismayed than I ever imagined I’d be at the sight of a bad school report—after all, it’s not as if it’s the first bad report I’ve ever seen. When I was at school I used to…never mind, that’s not important now. The fact is that my baby has not excelled at her beautiful prep school. I feel as let down as I did when she refused to wear the ribbon-bedecked school boater.

Dean, though, looks entirely unmoved. He mutters to himself in a manner that suggests he’s thinking, What the hell do you expect, you daft mare? We have neither a brain cell nor a qualification between us.

‘Despite possessing a considerable intellect, quite precocious debating skills and having a remarkable grasp and understanding of women’s liberation issues, Paskia Rose continues to let herself down in the core subjects,’ reads Dean. ‘Blimey, Trace. That’s a brilliant report.’

‘Women’s liberation issues!’ I say. ‘By that they mean she knows all about the lezzers that chain themselves to gates and burn their bras.’

‘Lezzers chaining each other to gates? What—you mean like in the videos they play on the team bus?’

‘No, Dean. They mean different women. Ugly women.’

‘Ah, that’s a shame. I like them videos. But it says she’s intelligent, love, and listen to this music report…’ He coughs gently and prepares to read: ‘Paskia Rose has managed to play her trumpet in time with the rest of the class on a couple of occasions this year. This is a great achievement for her, and a considerable relief for the rest of us.’

‘Ah, that’s nice,’ I say.

‘And there’s more,’ adds Dean. ‘Paskia’s footballing ability is staggering.’ He tails off, smiling to himself. ‘When it comes to football, she is the most talented pupil, of either sex, that I have ever had the pleasure of teaching.’

Dean screams with delight and tosses the report into the air in sheer joy. He’s running around the room now, with his shirt over his head. ‘Yeeeeesssss…’ he is shouting. I, conversely, feel like crying. I’m not exaggerating. If you asked me to list the dreams, hopes and ambitions that I have for my only daughter, playing football would be right at the bottom; below drug-pushing and just above prostitution. However, Dean is now doing a highly embarrassing Peter Crouch-style robotic dance to mark his joy and delight at his daughter’s prowess. ‘Oh yes,’ he is muttering. ‘Oh yes.’

It’s probably a combination of all the champagne at our anniversary dinner last night, the fact that I’m officially the oldest Wag who ever lived (well, not officially—but married for twelve years? I mean, that’s like—old—whichever way you look at it), and discovering my daughter is set to turn into a football-playing lesbian with really short hair and earrings all up her earlobe, but I feel like weeping like a baby.

‘Perhaps she’ll be good at darts too,’ Dean says opti-mistically, turning back to the television, adding a quick ‘ooo’ as Paul Gascoigne’s hairdresser prepares to take on a guy who nearly made it onto Big Brother. ‘The grand finale,’ he says breathlessly.

We watch the finale, in which neither participant appears to get their darts even remotely close to the dartboard, me thinking constantly about Paskia Rose’s problems. She’s just finished the prep school and next term will start at Lady Arabella Georgia School for Girls, THE poshest school in Luton. What if she can’t cope academically? Does it matter? I mean—does school have any bearing at all if you’re going to become a Wag one day, which, obviously, I hope with all my heart that Pask will. In fact, isn’t an education a disadvantage? Yeeesss! Now I feel like running around the room and doing strange mechanical dances myself. All that is happening here is that Paskia Rose is turning into a Wag! Perhaps when I write my Wags’ Handbook (which I will definitely start tomorrow—it’s been a busy day), I should have a section for young girls who hope someday to become Wags? Like career advice.

‘Deeeaaan,’ I say, and he does that thing where he drops his head forward and closes his eyes, as if to say, ‘Not now, woman.’ Obviously, I completely ignore him. ‘I’m going to write a handbook to help young Wags and make sure they know how to behave. What do you think?’

I’m asking him rhetorically—his views on this, as on most other things, are of no fundamental consequence. Even as I talk about it, I feel the pride bursting through my voice like a brilliant ray of sunshine.

He’s looking at me as if I’m insane but doesn’t answer the question in any way that could be described as helpful. ‘My fucking balls are going to explode in these,’ he says, standing up and walking towards the bedroom with the remote control still in his right hand and his left hand cupping himself in a rather obscene manner. ‘I’m gonna stick some old trackies on.’

‘Do you have to?’ I am absolutely sure that Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard never wander around the house in ‘old trackies’. ‘Why don’t we go out somewhere special?’

‘Nah,’ he says.

‘How about doing some training or something, then? Why don’t I give you a lift to the gym?’

‘’S all right,’ says Dean, quickly disappearing into the bedroom with a look that screams, no way am I going to the gym and no way are you driving me.

Good job really, because Doug, our driver, has gone home, and I’ve no idea where my car is. It had clean disappeared by the time I came out of the restaurant on Wednesday and I haven’t had the time to look for it, contact the police, or do whatever else you’re supposed to do when your car vanishes into thin air. God, life is so stressful sometimes. I bet Posh never has these sorts of problems.

Saturday, 4 August—first day of OBUD

2 p.m.

Bollocks. Where do they keep the cakes in these places? I’m pushing a shopping trolley with the sort of precision that I normally reserve for driving, crashing into the fruit section, then into the cans of soup, and then thundering into the bread products. Bread? Bread’s fattening. I reach out for a couple of white loaves that look fat- and calorie-laden and hurl them into the trolley with unnecessary force. They land with a satisfying doughy thump at the bottom and sit there, looking up at me all misshapen and sad-looking. Then I spot something…something that looks all chocolatey and delicious…perfect for OBUD. Swiss roll. Outstanding! What a find! This shopping lark’s not so difficult after all. Perhaps I should do it more often. I always do my shopping on the net. Or, rather, Alba, the Spanish au pair, does. She orders the same things every week—they’re the only items that Magda—the housekeeper—can cook. I tried to get Magda to do the ordering herself, but she did something wrong, and that intimidating timebomb thing appeared on the screen. Then Alba threw herself on the floor, mumbling something about ETA, whatever that is, and sobbing all over the tiles. She refused to get up until Magda promised never to go near ‘the violent machine’ again.

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.