A WAG Abroad

Oh, good. I didn’t make a fool of myself. That’s a relief, and a pleasant change.

‘Were you OK after the fall?’ she asks.

Oh, no.

‘Fall?’

‘Yes, you know – when you went flying across the kitchen floor while showing us your Pussy Cat Dolls impression.’

‘I did what?’

‘Do you not remember? I guess you must have tripped on one of your shoes when you got up after the back spin.’

Oh God. Back spin. Why?

The news of my little performance certainly helps me to understand why my hair’s so matted. I don’t remember anything after about 11 p.m. It was all one big, happy blur as far as I was concerned.

I move my hand to my hair, and subconsciously comb my fingers through as Sian chats on, reminding me of the ‘fun’ party guest that I was. ‘Then you climbed onto his shoulders and started singing a Kylie Minogue song!’

A large clump of hair comes off in my hand.

‘Oh my God,’ shrieks Sian. ‘Do you have alopecia or something?’

‘No. Just the extensions,’ I say. ‘I must have been sick in my hair last night. I do that quite a lot, then the acid eats through the glue holding them in, and they start to come loose. No big deal.’

‘Oh my God. You were sick? Have you taken supplements? Why were you sick? Let’s take you to the ER.’

‘Because I was off my trolley,’ I say gaily, adding, ‘A champagne chuck. The very worst kind of sick!’

‘You drank so much last night that it made you sick? You need to be more careful,’ she says, stretching so far backwards I think she’s going to topple off the chair.

‘Whooah,’ I say, leaping up to save her.

‘I am totally balanced. I have a strong core.’

And I think, Sian, I really, really like you, but you don’t half talk some bollocks at times. I mean, if she lived anywhere but LA they’d be locking her up.

‘Do you not ever think, Sod it, I’m just going to drink all night and sleep all day, and sod the exercise?’

‘No!’ she says. ‘Your physical and spiritual well-being must be your primary concern as a responsible adult. If you don’t look after yourself, no one will.’

I kind of see what she means, but it’s all so boring having to exercise and take herbs and stuff. This whole hippy world reminds me of Mum too much. She went off to live in LA for ten years, but even before that she was obsessed with anti-ageing remedies and covering herself in absurd potions. I grew up in a house with a kitchen that had thousands of pounds worth of supplements in the cupboards, and no bread. There were all sorts of lotions and potions in the fridge, but no milk. I’d wake up to the sound of chanting and go to sleep at night to the sound of the treadmill. Mum’s spiritual and physical well-being was perfect. Trouble is, she never smiled. I’d take a bundle of good times and loads of happy drinking over daily yoga and soya bean soufflé any day.

3 p.m.

Paskia-Rose has gone out all excited because she’s meeting up with the LA City Raiders Ladies team for the first time. Meanwhile, Dean’s come back in from the club and he’s all fed up. He says that everything’s going really well, and he’s confident that he can turn around their fortunes very quickly with some simple adjustments (don’t ask me what they are – I have neither interest in nor understanding of what he does), but what he’s finding hard is the fact that everyone drives in LA. Everything’s so far away from everywhere else that there isn’t even the same cab mentality that you get in London or New York. Or Luton. For Dean, who can’t drive and has never driven, it’s proving a bit of a strain.

‘You’ve got Gareth,’ I remind him.

‘I know, but I wanted him to take Paskia-Rose to the Ladies’ training session, and there’ll be times when you need him. No, the truth is that I need to be able to drive myself, then I can just come and go as I please.’

‘OK,’ I say, reaching for my keys. ‘Then, my lover, I shall teach you.’

5 p.m.

Ladies and gentlemen, praise be to God, for I am not the worst driver in the world. Oh, no – that honour goes to my dear husband. He’s useless! In fact he’s so useless that I’m in fits of laughter all the time, and that, of course, is not making things go any more smoothly.

‘I’d be able to do it if you weren’t here,’ he says angrily. I try desperately to choke back the laughter as the car hops down the street like a great metal bunny rabbit. I’m doing that terrible schoolgirl thing of trying not to laugh and thus snorting and crying and jamming my fist into my mouth, which makes me laugh all the more.

‘I don’t understand why it’s bouncing like that,’ he says, looking all confused.

‘Are you in the right gear?’ I manage to say, leaning over to check.

‘Tracie, it’s got nothing to do with clothes,’ he says. ‘The gear I’m wearing is fine.’

‘The gear that the car’s in, you doughnut. Look, it’s in third, that’s why it’s bouncing around like a fucking kangaroo.’

I tell him to pull over, and he kind of lurches to a stop, right in the middle of the road.

‘You can’t stop here. Go to the side,’ I instruct. I want to run through the gear thing with him again.

He turns the key and the car pounces forward like it’s on springs.

‘It’s in third,’ I squeal.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he howls back. ‘I don’t even know what ‘it’s in third’ means.’

I move the gear stick for him and he turns the key in the ignition. Then, for reasons that I’ll never understand, he slams his foot down on the accelerator and zooms across the street faster than Michael Schumacher. The car mounts the kerb the other side and, just when I’m thinking that things can’t get any worse, it heads onto the plush green lawn in front of us, accompanied by screams from Dean, who is by now entirely out of control. Eventually I manage to do the only practical thing I’ve done in my life, and I yank on the handbrake, forcing the car to skid and come to a stop just before hitting the small fountain in the middle of the grass.

‘Phew, that was close,’ he says, as we stare up into the genitals of a little boy who is fashioned entirely from marble. He’s weeing into the fountain as we sit there.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say to my depressed-looking husband. ‘We’ll get you some lessons.’

‘Yes,’ he says despondently, and we decide that’s enough for one day, and I’ll drive back. We slip out of our seats and walk silently past one another on the grass. Then, as I’m approaching the driver’s seat, the sprinkler system kicks into operation, showering us both with a gentle spray of water containing some sort of foul-smelling weedkiller.

It’s all too much for Dean.

‘This is not meant to be,’ he says, his spiky hair horribly flat and wet. He has an unfortunate mixture of weedkiller and Brylcreem sliding down his forehead and dripping into his eyes, and I feel like running round to the other side of the car and wrapping him up in my arms and holding him tightly. But I also feel like jumping into the car, out of the wet, and driving away as quickly as possible before the owners of this house come out and arrest me.

‘Let’s go,’ I say, starting the engine and reversing off the grass. I zoom down the road at top speed, with Dean mumbling, ‘It looks so easy when you do it, but I just couldn’t stop it jumping.’

9 p.m.

‘Wake up, doll. Wake up,’ says Dean.

‘Mmmmm …’

‘You’re asleep on the sofa love,’ he says, as I lift my head and look around. I was dreaming of Spangles – my favourite nightclub in Luton. It was karaoke night, and me and Michaela had just been singing ‘I will survive’ at the tops of our voices. Now I open my eyes I can see that I’m in LA – a whole new country that isn’t Luton at all. A feeling of homesickness washes over me. ‘How was training this evening?’ I ask.