three mornings a week, the house was a monument to wear and tear. ‘I’d have to get the place painted.’
‘You’d have to get the place cleaned.’ Rionna was always the voice of reason. ‘One of those crack-squad teams.’
‘There are specialist companies that clean up crime scenes …’
Rionna laughed. ‘They get rid of all traces of blood and gore. Grand so. I’ll find you one.’
‘I’d have to get the dogs groomed, wrestle the kids into clothes the magazine wants to promote …’
There wasn’t a hope of cajoling Ferdia. Quite apart from his habitual hostility, his third-year exams were starting on Wednesday week and it would be a mistake to eat into his study time.
But most important of all was TJ. Her decision to dress as a boy would be highlighted by a photo spread. Jessie felt fierce protectiveness and almost unbearable love for TJ. At nine years of age, she understood herself enough to express her wants: she knew she was a girl but she wasn’t sure she liked it.
She wasn’t sure if she’d like being a boy either. But she was already aware of the limitations of being female and didn’t want them. Instead of being called Therese, she wanted to go by her initials TJ (the J referring to her middle name, Jennifer). Jessie and Johnny immediately enforced this. When TJ said she wanted to have her hair cut off, Johnny promptly took her to the barber.
Right now TJ didn’t know what was going on for her and Jessie reassured her that it was okay not to know. But commentators and strangers hiding behind social media could be horribly cruel. It cut Jessie like a knife. (Johnny thought she didn’t read the comments under any articles about her, but of course she did.)
‘I say you should do it.’ Mason, their intern, a twenty-two-year-old business-studies graduate, called across the office. Smart and social-media savvy, the rest of the – significantly older – staff tended to treat him as the oracle. He would go far. Not with PiG, sadly: his placement was only for eight months. Much as they’d love him to stay, Mason was bound for bigger and better. ‘I can give you demographics, percentiles, readership reach …’
‘No, no, you’re grand,’ Jessie said hastily.
‘Anyone interested in my opinion?’ Johnny didn’t even look up from his screen. ‘Considering I’ll be wrestled into some paterfamilias jumper and slacks and made to smile like a gobshite for eight hours?’
‘Nope,’ Jessie said. ‘Listen, Rionna. I’m going to pass.’
‘But –’
‘No. It’s okay for me to do publicity but it’s not okay to involve the kids.’
‘Right. Gotcha.’
The office lapsed into silence. All that could be heard was the clicking of keyboards and the occasional sigh.
The decision to turn down the photoshoot sat well with Jessie. Last month’s article in the Independent, when her old boss had been quoted as saying that not everyone always liked her, well, it had hurt. All Jessie had ever wanted, as a kid, was to be one of the gang. But she missed cues, misunderstood phrases and seemed to be the last to know about trends. It was as if she’d missed bits in life’s script – the ‘How To Be Cool’ page, perhaps.
Her mother had been forty-two when she’d had Jessie, her father fifty-one. As their only child, she wondered if she’d inadvertently absorbed too many of their mannerisms. Maybe that was why adults tended to like her – teachers and other parents. Which, of course, was the last thing she needed.
As a lonely teenager, she had jumped on motivational quotes. Be yourself, she was advised. But that didn’t work, and the problem was, she didn’t know how to be anyone else.
In college, the role she carved out for herself was Miss Dependable. In shared houses, she did the cleaning and organized the bill-paying. Though her pristine Nissan Micra was scoffed at, no one turned down a lift. As for men, not one fancied her. She would get wild crushes on tormented boys who smoked hash and loved Jeff Buckley. If they noticed her at all, it was only to scoff.
Then she’d got a job. She still wasn’t sure what had happened with Rory and Johnny but it was the first time in her life that sexy, good-looking men had taken an interest. The ones who usually glommed on were a lot older than her and tended towards prissiness or pomposity. They liked Jessie’s reliable, respectable ways. More than once, she’d been praised for not being ‘a ladette’.