CHAPTER ONE
I'm going to tell you a story that you are not going to believe. And that's okay, you don't have to. I can hardly believe it myself. So, treat it like a fairy tale, or a fable. Take it with a pinch of salt. Doesn't matter to me either way, because I know it's true. It's happening to me, after all.
The real beginning of the story started about ten years ago, when I thought I was one person but then suddenly became another—you don't need to know about that for now.
Just come with me to yesterday evening, on the night before my thirtieth birthday. Imagine you are on the back of a gull and you are flying over the North Yorkshire moors, which are covered in purple and golden heather. The North Sea is on your left: a blue and sparkling wide-open horizon that promises to take you anywhere you want to go—but you are coming to see me. From a distance you see all the little houses of the seaside town of Scarborough lined up in neat little rows like row upon row of a string of pearls, and at least a dozen church spires reaching for the sky.
You whoosh around the ruins of the castle on a hill and swoop down into the curl of busy South Bay, where the Ferris wheel turns on the seafront and colored lights are looped between the lampposts like it's Christmas all year-round.
The streets are crowded with holidaymakers, their overtired children and dogs in tow. The once great Grand Hotel sits proudly above the casinos and amusement arcades like a stately old lady who found herself at a rave by accident. If you take a left by the statue of Queen Victoria and then another at the crossroads, you will arrive at Scarborough's premiere (and only) Mexican restaurant, where I am having birthday-eve dinner with my loud, annoying, beautiful family. Hop off the back of that imaginary bird and come inside, where it's noisy and warm. Just like any other normal Friday night. At least that's what I had thought.
There's music pumping from a speaker positioned just above our table. I am six margaritas in and the fairy lights that crisscross the ceiling have all gone a bit floaty as if they might actually have wings. Sure, I am a bit tipsy, but, hey, it is almost my birthday, after all, and I will be thirty and a proper grown-up. Maybe even old enough for my parents to stop treating me like I am five, and not capable of knowing what I'm doing or why. This happens to be true, but there's no way I'm going to admit that to them.
My mum and dad are so in love, genuinely and enduringly, that it makes you question everything, but most specifically, Am I the third wheel at my own birthday dinner?
(Oh, and I'm the younger, dark-haired woman at the table: dark eyes, short, sitting opposite the parental pheromone fireworks display, wondering how long I have to wait until I can go home to my dog, and if I can escape before the sparkler-packed dessert arrives and the singing commences.)
But I won't be the first person that you notice. It won't even be my parents' ostentatious bliss that catches your eye. No, the first person you will notice is my grandmother, Nanna Maria, as she likes to be known in the Maltese matriarchal tradition. You will notice that there is nothing remotely nanna-ish about her, as she sits at the head of the table flirting with a young waiter who, make no mistake, flirts right back.
Impressive cleavage, jet-black hair, a laugh like a sailor's, and an accent that becomes more Maltese the more she drinks—that's the version of Nanna Maria at my birthday dinner: sexy, sultry, and queen of all she surveys. Though, as I will later find out, she contains multitudes.
Most of my friends, who I'll be having a birthday-night celebration with tomorrow, are in full panic about turning thirty. Behaving like it's some kind of deadline to have your life together by.
Not me; I learned early on that this is it. Life is hard, you get into debt, and then you die. Having dreams are just a gateway to disappointment. Once I used to dream about being the next Vivienne Westwood. Now I realize that big ambitions only lead to big fails. That might make me sound miserable, but I'm not. I'm fine because I'm resigned, and that's a whole different ball game. Every now and then my friends and family will encourage me to dream big and reach for the stars. I always tell them I'm in my chill era. Where enough is literally enough.
Unfortunately, everyone I love cannot get their heads around the fact that I am okay with this. Especially not my nan, who also happens to be my boss.
I complain often and loudly about working for Nanna Maria in her seafront fortune-telling parlor, but everyone knows I don't really mean it. I love Nanna Maria and the weird, never-the-same-two-days-in-a-row job I do running the behind-the-scenes show while she dishes out prophecies to passersby or summons up spirits from the netherworld for only £15.99 per twenty minutes.
Every day might be different, but it's different in exactly the same way, and that's how I like it—me rolling my eyes at all the gullible fools who part with their cash for some of Nanna Maria's wisdom. Well, look who's laughing now.
Nanna Maria finally releases the waiter from the thralldom of her bosom and summons me to her side with a crook of her perfectly manicured finger. It's time for the annual birthday interrogation, which, like death and taxes, is one of the only things in my family's life that cannot be avoided.
