Telling Lies to Alice Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the olden days, how you could get things “on approval”—I don’t mean like a leg of lamb, but a dress or a hat or something—and then if you didn’t like it, you could take it back. I thought it was sad for the things if people didn’t want them and they had to go back to the shop—well, I was only little—but I think it was because of feeling a bit like that about myself.
    My mum’s always been a difficult person. She prefers living alone and she likes animals better than people—including me—so most of the time I stayed with Granddad and Grandma. Mum didn’t get on with them, so when I was born Granddad bought a field and put a caravan in the middle of it and she moved in there . . . he couldn’t afford to get her a house and anyway, she wanted the grass because she had a sheep and a goat. Not for milk or anything, they were her pets. The goat had a collar and lead and she used to take it for walks up and down the lane. I think that’s one of my earliest memories, picking flowers and trying to stop Maisy eating them . . . that and lying in bed in the caravan and listening to the rain on the roof.
    A lot of people thought Mum was off her head. There’d be the odd funny remark about me not being born on the right side of the blanket, but my granddad was the stationmaster and everyone liked him so it was more a case of “Poor old Mr. Conway, his daughter’s a bit peculiar,” and wondering behind their hands if I’d go the same way. I can’t say Granddad was thrilled when I told him what job I’d got. I hadn’t gone to live in London with the intention of becoming a bunny—just as well, because if I’d told him that he’d probably have locked me in my bedroom for good. One of my friends showed me this ad for the club in The Stage, and she said she was going for the audition and asked me to come with her, and I thought, why not? I only did it for a giggle, but she’d told me the money was good and on the way there I started thinking, maybe I could do this, because I’d done a bit of waitressing, you know. . . . But when we got inside the door there was this stunning girl there—just gorgeous—and I said, “Well, if they all look like that, we might as well turn round and go home,” but my friend said, “Oh, rubbish,” and pushed me in front of her. . . .
    I don’t remember much about it—you had to wear a swimsuit, and there was an interview, and that was about it, really. But I remember next time I went to see Granddad, I was on the train and all I could think of was, how on earth am I going to tell him? Like I said, he wasn’t exactly delighted—in his mind, the club was some sort of bordello, and nothing I said could persuade him it wasn’t. I think that was mainly because of Mum—the shame of having a baby when you weren’t married, and he was bothered about it happening to me, but in the end he said, “Well, if you’re happy . . .” Which was quite progressive of him, really, because I know he used to worry about me. He never wanted to know anything about my work. The only question he ever asked me was whether I’d remembered to look at my pay packet to check they’d given me the right money. I never dared tell him I was making more in tips than I got in wages. . . .
    He didn’t tell any of the neighbours, either. The first time I came back to visit I was determined to show him how well I was doing and that I was looking after myself. So I got dressed up in all my new clothes—showing off, really—and put my face on. I’d hardly worn makeup at home—Horsham not being exactly the height of sophistication—but I’d been getting tips from the other girls, watching how they did it, and of course it was a very made-up look then, very artificial . . . Anyway, I went to Granddad’s house and walked up the front path dressed to the nines, and I was standing in the porch feeling like the cat’s whiskers when I heard “Will you look at that? Now we know what she does in