Holly practically had smoke coming out of her ears from sheer bafflement and frustration. “She’s a model! Auntie Jackie said!”
“She isn’t even that. The girl was on a bloody poster for some yogurt drink. There’s a difference.”
“She’s a star!”
“No she’s not. Katharine Hepburn was a star. Bruce Springsteen is a star. This Celia chick is a great big zero. Just because she kept on telling people she was a star till she found a handful of small-town morons who believed her, that doesn’t make it true. And it doesn’t mean you have to be one of the morons.”
Holly had gone red in the face and her chin was sticking out ready for a fight, but she kept a hold on her temper. “I don’t even care. I just want white boots. Can I?”
I knew I was getting way more pissed off than the situation warranted, but I couldn’t dial it down. “No. You start admiring someone who’s famous for actually doing something-imagine that-and I swear to you I will buy you every item in her entire wardrobe. But over my own dead body will I spend time and money turning you into a clone of some brain-dead waste of skin who thinks the pinnacle of achievement is selling her wedding shots to a magazine.”
“I hate you!” Holly yelled. “You’re stupid and you don’t understand anything and I hate you!” She gave the bench by my leg a huge kick and then flung herself full-tilt back towards the swings, too furious to notice if her foot hurt. Some kid had taken her swing. She thumped down on the ground cross-legged, to fume.
After a moment Jackie said, “Jaysus, Francis. I’m not telling you how to raise your child, God knows I haven’t the first clue, but was there any need for that?”
“Obviously, yeah, there was. Unless you think I go around wrecking my kid’s afternoons for kicks.”
“She only wanted a pair of boots. What difference does it make where she saw them? That Celia Bailey one is a bit of an eejit, God bless her, but she’s harmless.”
“No she’s not. Celia Bailey is the living embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the world. She’s about as harmless as a cyanide sandwich.”
“Ah, cop on, will you. What’s the big deal? In a month’s time Holly’ll have forgotten all about her, she’ll be mad into some girl band-”
“This is not trivial shit, Jackie. I want Holly to be aware that there is a difference between truth and meaningless gibberish bullshit. She’s completely surrounded, from every angle, by people telling her that reality is one hundred percent subjective: if you really believe you’re a star then you deserve a record contract whether or not you can sing for shit, and if you really believe in weapons of mass destruction then it doesn’t actually matter whether they exist or not, and fame is the be-all and end-all because you don’t exist unless enough people are paying attention to you. I want my daughter to learn that not everything in this world is determined by how often she hears it or how much she wants it to be true or how many other people are looking. Somewhere in there, for a thing to count as real, there has got to be some actual bloody reality. God knows she’s not going to learn that anywhere else. So I’m going to have to teach her all by myself. If she occasionally gets a little stroppy along the way, so be it.”
Jackie raised her eyebrows and primmed up her lips. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “I’ll just keep my mouth shut, will I?”
Both of us did that for a while. Holly had got herself a new swing and was painstakingly turning in circles to wind the chains into a snarl.
“Shay was right about one thing,” I said. “Any country that worships Celia Bailey is just about ready to go down the tubes.”
Jackie clicked her tongue. “Don’t be calling down trouble.”
“I’m not. If you ask me, a crash might not be a bad thing.”
“Jaysus, Francis!”
“I’m trying to bring up a kid, Jackie. That alone is enough to scare the living daylights out of any sane human being. Throw in the fact that I’m trying to bring her up in a setting where she’s constantly being told to think about nothing except fashion, fame and body fat, ignore the man behind the curtain and go buy yourself something pretty… I’m petrified, all the time. I could just about stay on top of it when she was a little kid, but every day she’s getting older and I’m getting scareder. Call me crazy, but I kind of like the thought of her growing up in a country where people occasionally have no choice but to focus on something more crucial than dick-replacement cars and Paris Hilton.”
Jackie said, with a wicked little grin pulling at the corner of her mouth, “D’you know who you sound like? Shay.”
“Sweet jumping Jesus. If I thought that was true, I’d blow my brains out.”
She gave me a long-suffering look. “I know what’s wrong with you,” she informed me. “You got a bad pint last night, and your bowels are in tatters. That does always put fellas in a mood. Am I right?”
