Alice in Time (3 page)

‘Have anything you want,’ he informs everyone cheerfully, ‘it’s all on me.’ Joan looks thunderous and I can see that Trish is close to tears. Even Terry looks a bit embarrassed and I suddenly feel like sticking up for my dad. I know he’s doing his
best, and if it doesn’t come up to Trish’s standards, well, she should have organised it better. Even I could have organised a better wedding than this, for heaven’s sake. Why did it all have to be done in such a rush, anyway? They’ve been living together for about seven years, it’s not as if they even needed to get married.

Of course the food takes ages to arrive, and it doesn’t all come at once so some people finish before some have even started. My scampi and chips is nearly the last to appear and now Terry is talking to Dad, so I daydream my number one daydream of the moment, which is all the more exciting because there’s a chance that this one might actually happen.

It goes like this: when Dad and Trish move out of their tiny flat and into their new house, which has
two
bedrooms, they ask me if I would like to move in with them. Of course Rory can’t come, because he’s too young and ought to stay with Mum. They buy a lovely house which is near to my school so I can walk there in the morning and don’t have to go on the bus any more. The house has got a huge attic bedroom with its own en-suite bathroom, with a whirlpool bath and shower and a brilliant view of the park from the window. OK. This is stretching the truth a bit, because there’s no way Trish and Dad would let me have this room – I’d probably get the box room – and there’s no park near our school, but who cares, this is my daydream. Before I move in, Dad takes me to Ikea and says I can have anything I like, so I wander around all the lovely rooms that they have set up in there and choose something fun yet sophisticated. I choose the curtains
and the duvet covers and the towels to match to go in the bathroom. While I’m doing this Dad goes off to buy me a computer to have on the desk that stretches right across one wall. When he comes back, he’s really pleased and says that the shop was doing this really good deal and he got a flat-screen TV and a PlayStation as well.

After my room is finished, Trish comes in and opens the wardrobe and says, ‘Oh dear, I think we’d better go shopping for some new clothes.’

And then, instead of taking me to all the boring shops in town, we go to the city and spend hours shopping and have to go back to the car three times with our bags because Trish has let me have anything I want. Then we have coffee in one of those coffee shops with the sofas instead of chairs.

I’m really getting into this daydream and just wondering if perhaps my room has its own staircase that comes up from the garden on to its own balcony, when I’m brought back down to earth by Dad, who’s standing up and tapping his beer glass with his knife.

‘I want to thank you all for coming today,’ he says. ‘I won’t make a long speech.’ Thank God for that, I think, because I can tell that he’s slightly drunk. ‘I’d just like to say that today Trish has made me the happiest man alive.’ Trish manages a smile, just. ‘But before I sit down I must thank the bridesmaid and page boy,’ he’s grinning at me and Rory, ‘and I hope that my daughter isn’t as late for her own wedding as she was for mine.’

Late! What is he talking about? I missed it! Everyone is sniggering politely and, of course, I’ve gone bright red again.
‘Anyway,’ Dad continues, ‘here is a small token to show my appreciation,’ and he’s getting two parcels from under the table: a huge one for Rory and a tiny one for me.

Rory rips the paper off his parcel immediately. Inside is a remote control monster truck, which of course he wants to use straight away and can’t because it hasn’t got any batteries in it. Terry averts the inevitable tantrum by taking him out to the nearest shop to buy some and promising to let him play with it in the pub garden. I breathe a sigh of relief. That would usually be my job.

I hate opening presents in front of people, especially when life has taught me not to get my hopes up. So I wait for everyone to start talking again before opening mine.

I stroke the shiny paper that my parcel is wrapped in. I know it’s customary for the groom to give the bridesmaids some sort of jewellery at weddings, a locket or something, and I’m hoping Dad got Trish to choose it because he’s hopeless at that sort of thing.

I glance over at her to see if she’s watching, so that I can smile at her when I open it. She’s staring at me across the room and I’m shocked at the look she gives me. It’s horrid – all mean and spiteful. Then she turns away to talk to her mother and I convince myself that I was imagining it. I open the box and lift the tissue paper and there, nestling underneath, is a mobile phone.

I manage to ignore the fact that it’s pink. Why do people think that girls want everything to be pink? I hate pink, especially after today. But who cares what colour it is. The point is, I’ve got a mobile phone at last.

Dad’s there beside me. ‘Thanks, Dad. It’s brilliant,’ I say, and I give him a big kiss.

‘Only the best for my girl.’ He’s nearly as pleased as I am.

I can’t help worrying though about how much it cost him. And Rory’s monster truck can’t have been cheap either.

‘It’s got plenty of credit on it. You just let me know when it runs out and I’ll top it up for you.’

I give him another hug. He really is the best dad in the world.

Dad calls a taxi to take us home because he’s been drinking and can’t drive us back himself. The hall light is on, but when I open the door I know Mum’s not there because the house feels empty. There’s a note stuck on the fridge door.

Dear Alice
,

Sorry, had to go back into work. I shouldn’t be too long but if I’m not back by 7.30 please make sure Rory gets to bed.

Love Mum

I look at the clock above the cooker and it’s eight-thirty. This happens all the time. She’s always ‘having to nip into work’.

While I’ve been reading the note, Rory has turned all the lights on downstairs and the television and now he’s racing his truck up and down the hallway. He hasn’t quite got the hang of the controls yet and it keeps bumping into the skirting board, leaving great big dents. This doesn’t worry me particularly,
because basically our house is a dump. The hall floor is wooden, but not the sort of wooden floor you see in magazines, which have been laid and are all flat and polished and smart. Ours is just the floorboards which are all dusty and spattered with paint. Mum pulled the lino up years ago and said, ‘Look at those lovely floorboards. They’ll come up a treat when they’ve been sanded and waxed.’ Only they never have been.

We used to live in a lovely house. By ‘we’ I mean Mum and Dad and me. Then when Rory was born, Mum threw Dad out and we had to sell the house and me and Mum and Rory had to move. We couldn’t afford to buy another house so Mum rented this one – which is truly horrible. I don’t know what she was thinking when she chose to live here. It belongs to an old lady, Miss Maybrooke – a friend of Mum’s, who was moving into a nursing home down the road. Mum said we had to have it because the rent was so cheap. Well, of course it is – the place is a tip.

Mum said we’d just have to make the best of it and when she’d done it up, it would be fine. The only problem is she never has done it up because, she says, she hasn’t got the time or the money. As a result, most of the things in the house are really old-fashioned and might look all right if you’re about ninety years old with very bad eyesight. The front room has got a gas fire in it which smells even when it’s not on. The walls are covered in really hideous wallpaper, all green and brown. Mum says it looks Victorian and might actually be original. She says this in a sort of awed voice, as if that should mean we can’t paint over it or something. So what if it’s Victorian. It doesn’t make it nice.

Miss Maybrooke left some of her furniture behind and Mum says we have to keep it because it’s not ours to dispose of and there’s nowhere else for it to go. It’s all big and heavy and made out of dark wood. When I was younger, it used to scare me, the way it sort of loomed over me. Now it just irritates me because it makes the rooms feel cramped and dark.

The only room that isn’t completely hideous is the kitchen. Mum did get a bit of money when they sold the old house and she used it to fit a new kitchen. It can look nice when Mum bothers to clean it up. At the moment, all the breakfast things are piled in the sink and there’s a puddle of milk on the table (where Rory sits, of course).

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough money left over to do the bathroom as well. Mum says that Miss Maybrooke was very proud of the bathroom because she had had a new one fitted. But that was way back in the 1970s when, according to Mum, an ‘avocado’ suite was all the rage. So now we have to put up with a sludge-green bath, sink and loo.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a museum, but mostly I feel as though I’m living in someone else’s house, so I never really feel at home.

I’m dying to be alone with my new phone, so I take it up to my bedroom. First of all I have to get out of this dress. The relief when I’ve got it off and put my pyjamas on is bliss. I get the phone out of the box and look at it. To be honest, I’m a bit scared of it. We don’t have a lot of high-tech things in this house. We haven’t even got a microwave, let alone a computer, or a PlayStation. We’ve got a television but it’s not a flat-screen one or anything fancy and we can’t get Sky on it.

I decide to work out as much as I can about the phone by fiddling around with it, because the instruction book looks even scarier than the phone. I manage to get into the phone book and work out how to list people’s numbers. I start off with our home number, which I list under
Mum
, then I put in Dad’s number at the flat and wish that I’d asked him and Trish for their mobile numbers. If Imogen would get a phone then we could text each other all the time – it would be great. She says there’s no point in her having one because there’s absolutely no one she wants to talk to. Perhaps she’ll change her mind now I’ve got one.

I can’t believe I’ve only got two numbers to enter so I put in Mrs Archer’s number. She lives down the road and picks Rory up from school when Mum’s working. I usually have to collect him from her on my way home. After that I really can’t think of any more numbers I might need and I suddenly feel a bit depressed, sort of like
having
the phone isn’t half as exciting as
wanting
it.

It might be different if there was someone who could show me how it worked properly. The camera on it is great though, and I look around for something I can take a picture of.

I hate my room – like the rest of the house, it doesn’t really feel like mine. Even though I stick posters and postcards all over the walls it still manages to look like I’m camping out in someone’s guest bedroom. It’s a complete tip. There are clothes all over the floor and most of the drawers are hanging open. Mum’s always nagging me to clean it up, but I can’t see the point. It’s horrible anyway, whether I tidy it up or not.

The best thing in here is the strings of lights I bought once
when I went to Ikea with Mum. They’re hung all round my bed head (you guessed it, it’s big and dark and Victorian), and all round the fireplace. This is a big old fireplace. It’s got tiles down the side, which I quite like because they’ve got a blue and gold leaf pattern all over them. Other than that it’s useless and I have to stuff newspaper up it to stop the draughts and so that birds don’t fall down the chimney and end up in my room.

In the end, I point the camera at myself, but because I’m concentrating so hard on how it works I forget to smile and the flash goes off and the picture of me comes out looking like a ghost. A frightened, depressed ghost. I’m just fiddling around looking for the delete option when I hear a crash from downstairs. Damn, I forgot about Rory. It’s quarter to ten and he should have been in bed hours ago. Mum will probably be home any minute and I’ll be in serious trouble.

When I get downstairs it’s ominously quiet. I push the door of the sitting room open and peer inside. I can tell immediately what has happened, despite the fact it looks as though a small bomb has gone off. Rory has taken the throw off the sofa and tried to construct a tent with it between the sofa and the table. In order to stop it from slipping off the polished surface of the table, he has piled anything he could find on top of the table. Several heaps of books and DVDs plus a couple of chairs and a lamp, are now lying on the floor with the throw crumpled up beneath them. There is a suspicious-looking, Rory-sized lump beneath all of this.

‘Rory, get out of there immediately.’ I am aware of how like my mother I sound and hate myself for it.

The lump doesn’t move.

‘Rory, NOW.’

Still nothing. For one glorious moment I entertain the fantasy that Rory is dead. I gloss over the fact that I will be blamed and that my mother will be in trouble for leaving a fourteen-year-old in charge of a seven-year-old, and fast forward to the funeral, where I look stunning in black and have to be supported by one of the young, handsome coffin-bearers as a few artfully arranged tears roll down my pale but flawless cheeks without smudging my waterproof mascara at all.

This may seem a bit harsh, but let me explain. If it wasn’t for Rory my life would not have fallen apart. Mum would still be the old Mum that she was before he was born and she might not have thrown Dad out.

You see, after Rory was born, Mum suffered from really bad post-natal depression. It was so bad that some days she never even got out of bed. Gran was still alive then, and she did her best to look after us, but she had enough on her plate with Mum, so I had to help out a lot by looking after Rory. Gran used to joke that my little brother was well named and that it should have been spelt Roary instead.

All Rory ever seemed to do was scream and it was usually my job to make him stop. I’d go into his room and see him in his cot, his ugly, red face even redder and uglier than normal, all scrunched up in a scream, and somehow I’d have to stop him. Picking him up and rocking him was no good because it just made him scream all the louder. I discovered that if I picked up his toys and made them walk along the edge of the cot and gave them funny voices then he stopped crying. I’d start by making
the voice quiet so that if he wanted to hear it he’d have to stop making a noise.