Darling: The most shocking psychological thriller you will read this summer. Rachel Edwards
AT wants me to deliver some serious goods, aka ‘exploratory homework’ #cantbearsedwithfuckedupgirls #fundingmytibetanyogaretreat.
Still, £14,000 says something. It tells me two major things about Dad.
First thing: he has a lot more money than you might think to look at his car. Even I, who deleted all his lame old-guys-in-flying-jackets-speeding shows, know a Volvo’s too safe a choice. Alfa, Dad? Audi? Merc?
Second thing: he is an optimist.
He wants to cure you. Aka me. But none of us – especially not Alison Thoroughgood BSc, PG Dip whatever – is sure of What Underlies The Problem. All my mouthing off may be suppressed sadness, ask AT. So what’s my issue? My Dead Mum blues, no doubt. My stinking attitude. That ‘horrible’ obsession with hotness (is this really a fault? If you have to live your shitty life, you might as well look good). Bra fetish?
I probably am crazy, but point me to a teenage girl who isn’t. ‘Talking therapies?’ Chemo = therapy. Talking = fuck off, I’m watching YouTube, right? Just saying.
Make yourself comfortable, Lola, and I hope you have plenty of biros.
This is a piss-poor introduction to my head, but then who likes saying what they’re supposed to say? It’s tragic. Long story short: I will make the Notes every week or day or month or whatever and make my long list of five Achievements, as instructed, because as I have mentioned, I am a good girl. Not four Achievements (four’s for losers), not six (arsewipe show-offs) but five, as in ‘high five, AT, woop-woop!’ But basically these will be no more than DONE LISTS. I told her straight ‘No thanks, I’m more of a Nike kind of girl: just do it’ but that Alison, she needs to see where I’ve been – she’s always looking backwards. Isn’t that a bit lazy, or nostalgic, or even romantic for a therapist? Obviously I don’t think AT is actually in love with me though, thank Christ. Scary old geezerbird when I first met her. Now I think she’s more straight and tough than butch. Whatever. She won’t be reading any of these lists either, she just wants me to keep telling her whatever the hell I want in our sessions – an important part of the process she says – but at least she will get me to spend my whole time looking backwards too #timewasters101. I think the idea is that I am to feel I have got somewhere, DONE something just by making it to the end of the week without pausing to blow my brains out. Or something. Still, better than the sad-sack page-a-day diary with spaces to note your mood and that weird teddy on the front she tried to shove on to me a couple of months back. I didn’t mind giving her what she wanted to hear for a while: ‘Dear diary, I’m so fat and why can’t I get anyone to screw me blahblahblah … Mood: So Very Sad …’ I aimed for devastatingly sincere with a tiny hint of piss-taking, but I guess she didn’t buy it which is why we’re now doing this. ‘I won’t read these lists, Lola. You decide how much and when, Lola,’ in her ever-hopeful voice. Touching. I suppose I do owe her a brief go at this thing, although the diary fail was definitely not my fault – don’t give me some fat teddy holding carnations and expect me to spill my guts like you’re doing me a huge favour.
Notes
First off, I don’t get it. I just don’t. So three even four times I offered to give him Viv Halston-Jones’s mobile. Pretty, freshly divorced, perfect. Lizzie HJ’s a laugh too so if the parents hooked up it would be exactly like some cheesy old sitcom, brilliant. Him – ‘I’ll think about it.’ That usually means ‘yes’. Next thing, he comes back with her?
I don’t fucking think so.
I strongly suspect I have failed all my GCSEs. Why not? Screw A*s – nothing you really expect to happen happens. Things you don’t want: boom. Who needs it?
OK, massive dilemma – how best to slut-shame Caro Francis?
1 FB? Might actually be that much of a loser, but everyone would think I was joking. Who takes those posts seriously any more?
2 SnapChat? Yaas! Snap of me with my tongue poking way into my cheek, nice. Will try not to send it to Eli C instead of Ellie this time. #bloodydisaster
3 Old school … Yes! Scream with laughter around the Dovington boys then shout to Anna about what is so piss-yourself funny. Bingo. (Hey, Dad, you were right! Sometimes life is better without a digital trail.)
Seriously – who the hell gives someone a blow job in a hot tub? At a party? When it’s Will Benton? Caro Francis is rancid. Caro bloody Francid. She must secretly have been a total ho this whole time when we thought she was just a bit of a dick whose mum massively over-Bodens. It was probably because everyone reckoned they had holed themselves up in the parents’ en suite doing all that blow first. Anna was too drunk to freak. Lucky her mum was on another cruise with Tobias (the dilf to end all dilfs) and not just out. Someone’s hot tub – since when is that OK? Other people went in there afterwards as well. Ewwww (add ws. Ad infinitum. Rocking that Latin revision a little too late, Lola Waite). No wonder Anna was so pissed off in the morning that she cried, what a way to start the summer. I think she is planning to drain it just in case (sperm swims, right, but does it float? Maybe the filter got it all. Caro certainly did lol). How does that even work: why didn’t she drown?
I want to know all of these things, now. Sooner.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
He saw her again. Until after 1.30 a.m. last night, ‘dinner round hers’, and apparently she’s ‘quite a bit more than just a date’. I mean … what?
For a start, let’s get the obvious thing out of the way. Since when was he into black women? I mean, Mum was it for him – the bomb – natural blonde, like me; she was your genuine Alpha², your total headfuck dreamgirl. I’ve got the photos to prove it. Dad’s always said: they simply went together. Tall, slim; him dark, her fair. All that genetic pay dirt I would get on my knees and thank God for every day if I believed in all that crap. Then Mum dead, nothing and no one for years, a few pointless dates, and now Darling. Is she his change that is as good as a rest? I doubt it. She must have been some kind of sexual accident. But then AT always says there are no such things as accidents. This does not make any sense.
Listen up, Roxie McFoxy. Stop torturing us with yet another tragic end-of-year routine … Rrrrring! The Eighties called, they want their Electric Slide back (told you – YouTube never lies). And why is Jane Forte in the front row? Her arse alone will eclipse us all.
Darling. She’s kidding, right? She tried, I’ll give her that. Obviously right out of her depth, nice enough, just wrong. Wrong for us, anyway. Nothing intelligent over dinner – except how lovely the pasta was, how lovely the daughter was, and had she mentioned she loved the pasta? Just rolled her eyes at Dad and laughed the whole bloody time. Some sucking up to The Lovely Daughter (that’s me, kids), all a bit obvious. Pretty sure Dad was finding her painful too because he wasn’t bothered when she sloped off early. That’s old people for you: need to get their rest.
Did she really think I’d find her lovely, what with her rolling her eyes and dragging her minging feet all over our poor house (hello, tights? Pedi?). Plus, she kept sniffing and coughing all over the wine, all like ‘Why do you people drink this dusty old crap?’ It’s true, they don’t like wine. Ellie went to Antigua and all her parents could drink was rum and beer, so her mum spent ten days with a massive air-conditioned migraine. True story.
Darling White is rude and I was angry. So – a little chill-out time for her in our cellar. Only for a few seconds and I was right there outside the door the whole time, but she screamed the goddamn place down. Lola! Lola! You’d