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I don’t fall for April Fool’s jokes anymore. I’m a hard, cynical, streetwise girl, but gee, it’s been a very long, hard road getting here.
I, you see, was born missing my sceptical gene and for years I’ve been doing battle with life to acquire it. This defect in my make-up became apparent when I was six. At that time, somebody somewhere realised that Tina Reilly believed everything she was told. I believed, for instance, that my some of my friends were exiled princess only here under sufferance. I believed it when they said they’d send for me once they’d regained their rightful inheritances. Indeed, many of my friends did disappear in the early years but I refused to believe my mother when she told me they’d just moved house. “No,” I’d insist, “Jane’s gone back to Abertania, she’s sending for me and we’ll be able to ride through the streets in her golden carriage.”
Needless to say, the letter never came.
Another time a friend assured me that she had bought me a wonderful Christmas present. “It’s huge,” she giggled, “and I can’t tell you what it is.” I really hoped she’d bought me a mannequin - that way I could dress her in all my clothes and wouldn’t have to spend masses of money on tiny little Sindy dresses. Everyday, this Christmas present grew in my imagination and everyday I fretted because I hadn’t a present of equal magnitude to reciprocate with. I ended up buying her a tube of glitter and on Christmas day, feeling very ashamed I gave it to her. Her gift to me? A book.
Another girl told me she had been given fifty names on her christening day because she was so special. Each day after school, I’d get her to recite her litany of middle names. The fact that these names changed all the time only added another dimension to her special-ness. What did it say about me that I’d only two names?
In later years I’ve been offered wonderful jobs on television and on radio, only to accept breathlessly and hear the sound of one of my sisters eating themselves laughing at the other end of the phone. The day my first book was accepted for publication, I was downright rude to the editor thinking it was one of my sisters on the other end of the phone. Needless to say, I curled up and died when the call was genuine. Before celebrating for a week, of course.
And today, I am proud to state that I haven’t fallen for one cheap trick. Not yet anyhow.
I mean, the agent from Hollywood was the genuine article – wasn’t he????