Red Ink (17 page)

“Wash your hands!” The face mask is setting and Mum can’t move her mouth properly. The words come out all rigid.
Wah yer hans.

“I was going to anyway.”

“
Tan coo
,” she goes.

“I’m turning the music down,” I tell her on the way out. “It’s scaring Kojak.”

Mum has had the same song on repeat for an hour, blasting out from the CD player in her bedroom, loud enough to fill the bathroom with music. Some slurring, Latin rubbish. Something about a tall, tanned girl who does nothing but walk. I reckon Mum thinks she’s the girl in the song, the one everyone stares at, the one that makes everyone go
aaah.
She was dancing around her bedroom to it earlier, weaving her feet about, clicking her fingers, flapping her elbows like a chicken, flirting with her reflection in the mirror.

“It’s like the sad fuckers’ salsa club in this house.” I dry my hands.

“
Meyo, du nu si dis eff wud
,” Mum grunts over the music.

“So-rree,” I say. I leave.

In Mum’s room, there is a burgundy dress on the bed. She has laid it out with tights poking out the bottom, shoes at the end of the tights, a bra and pants on top, and a necklace, bracelet and earrings all in the right place. It looks like someone has stretched out on her bed and then evaporated, leaving their stuff behind. There are still tags on the dress. It’s new. I finger the fabric. I’ve never seen this dress before. I walk round the bed to her CD player and turn down the volume so it’s just a mumble.

In the hallway I give Kojak a rub behind the ears. He’s is sitting outside Mum’s room with his ears pinned back, squinting. He is standing his ground – making a protest against crap Latin music. He hadn’t worked out that he could just leave. How lucky is Kojak? He can just pop out the catflap and escape. I have been told I must stay here and not go to Chick’s house because I am getting my first proper introduction to Paul when he comes to pick up Mum. Cannot wait.

People go on dates all the time, every single day of the week, but Mum is acting like Paul and her are Adam and Eve. This isn’t even a first date. She’s been knocking about with Paul for weeks. Tonight is far from monumental. It is the Social Services Christmas Ball. Calling it a ‘ball’ makes it sound like some glamorous thing in a castle in Vienna, but really it will be a crappy buffet in a municipal hall in Barnet. Mum has built it up to be the red carpet event of the year. I’m not allowed to spoil the illusion.

“You are spoilsport,” Mum yells from the bathroom, now that the music’s gone. She must have cracked her face mask because she sounds normal again. As normal as Mum ever sounds.

Mum suggested we have a ‘pampering afternoon’ to get ready for tonight. It’s what they tell you to do in sappy magazines. I wonder if anyone in real life actually has ‘pampering afternoons’. I bet the women who write those articles have chipped nails and stubbly legs like the rest of civilisation. I told Mum I didn’t want to do it.

“I’m not going out, am I?” I said.

“So? You join in with me. Just for fun. Help your skin.”

She’d licked her thumb and rubbed at the concealer on the spot on my chin. I yanked my face away, told her to get off. I try really hard at feeling good about myself and she has the power to take it away with one wipe of her thumb.

“You are looking much better without this stuff on your face. Makes it worse. All cakey. You prettier underneath.”

Mum knows nothing. You have to keep covering up. You have to keep battling. The last thing you must do is admit defeat. An ugly disease gets hold of you at about thirteen years old and turns you spotty and lumpy and greasy and if you don’t fight it you’ll never come out the other end. You have to keep concealing and hiding and disguising and hoping for something a tiny step nearer to perfection. You have to tell yourself that it’s a good thing that you have curvy thighs and not bamboo canes for legs like Chick. And you have to tell yourself that your frizzy hair is interesting, while Lucy Bloss’s perfect, perfect hair is just fake. And you have to tell yourself that you are lucky to have only a few spots and not a big, mad rash of acne, like Georgina Holcroft, who has it across her cheeks and – even grosser – her shoulders. At least no one stares at your manky back when you’re getting undressed for PE trying to work out where the spots start and where they end. It’s cruel to think of your classmates like that, but you have to focus on their weaknesses to survive. You have to make their problems and insecurities seem worse than your own, otherwise how can you live with yourself?

Especially when you have a mum like mine.

Mum walks out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, trailing the smell of her bath bubbles. She’s done that thing with her hair where she twists it round and round on top of her head and it just stays there in a bun by itself. All so easy. I think about the jokey stuff Mum says about Auntie Aphrodite.
Flowers they are growing wherever she is walking, birds they are flocking wherever she is flying!
Those words are about Mum really. Mum is the elfin fairy queen and I am her lumping great monster offspring. How did this happen? Was she cursed, or am I? Either way, I never inherited her cheekbones. I got dark hairy arms as extra punishment.

No.

She is the one who’s the embarrassment. This is how I have to think about it, or else I will die of self-hatred. Mum is the one who dresses like a scabby student. She is the one who collects cheap jewellery like a thieving magpie. She is the one who accidentally on purpose forgets to put on make-up and comb her hair because she thinks she’s all floaty and poetic. She is the one who insists on speaking like she just came over on the last plane from Greece even though she can write English perfectly, better than me. She is the one who laughs that little bit too loudly in public and makes everyone stare and stare. She is the one with the problem.

“Come, help me choose what I am wearing,” Mum goes, dripping water along the hallway. Kojak feels crowded out and legs it down the stairs. I get up from where I’ve been crouching next to him. I throw a look into Mum’s bedroom.

“Looks like you’ve already decided.”

“Is not fixed.” She’s lying. That dress is like nothing else she owns. That dress is especially for tonight.

“S’okay, I’m going to write my Christmas cards.”

“Oh.” she looks disappointed. “Okay then.”

I head back down the hall to my room and close the door.

Writing Christmas cards is a political business. It’s best to write too many and include the people you don’t really like. This is insurance. If someone gives you a card and you don’t give them one straight back, it’s awkward. You just stand there not knowing what to say, your gob opening and shutting – goldfish lips. If you have the back-up card ready and written, you’re safe. In the same way, you must never give a card to someone unless you are absolutely sure they are going to give you one back. Otherwise, you’ll be on the receiving end of the goldfish lips. Total shame.

I start by writing a list. Lists make you feel better. It seems like you’re doing something productive when really all you’re doing is making a list. They work with everything, not just Christmas cards.

I
AM BETTER THAN MUM BECAUSE
I . . .

• SPEAK PROPERLY
  
• DON’T DRESS LIKE A GYPSY
  
• DON’T TELL STORIES ABOUT MYSELF ALL THE TIME
  
• ACT MY AGE
  

This makes me feel better for all of a nanosecond. Then I feel like a bitch for actually writing it down. I am a bad person and therefore not as good as Mum after all. Mum wins.

On my Christmas Card List, I put:

C
HICK

E
LAINE
W
ILKIE

G
EORGINA
H
OLCROFT

C
ARA
M
ORAN

F
REYA
N
IGHTINGALE

L
OUISE
S
HINE (
J
EWISH, BUT STILL SENDS CARDS.
W
EIRD)

P
OOJA
V
ARMA

S
HAKIRA
A
NWAR

K
ALEIGH
B
ARNES (
I
NSURANCE)

E
MILY
W
INTERS (INSURANCE)

D
IONNE
A
GU (INSURANCE)

L
UCY
B
LOSS (
O
NLY FOR AN EXTREME EMERGENCY)

I put no boys on the list. Boys don’t send you anything – unless they’re your boyfriend.

I take the pack of cards out of my school bag. They have a picture of a snow-covered house on them. The house is perfect – door in the middle, four symmetrical windows, a garden fence. Other people have houses like this. Other people also have perfect, symmetrical lives. I turn the pack over. It says there are only ten cards inside. Two people will have got to go from my list. Who won’t bother to send me a card? Lucy and Kayleigh are the obvious ones to ditch. They could come over all ‘season of good will’, but it’s unlikely. I’d be less surprised if a new baby Jesus turned up in East Finchley.

I’ve bought a silver ink pen for the writing. I saw a really lovely one in the shop that wrote in shimmery red, but I couldn’t use that for my cards, even if I was writing one to Lucy Bloss. I don’t hate her enough to want her dead. I give the silver pen a shake, listen to the ink mixer inside rattling up and down. I take off the lid and give it a quick sniff. Kayleigh Barnes reckons you can get really high with one of these things if you put your mind to it. Can kill you too though, make your heart stop.

D
EAR
C
HICK,

I write,

H
APPY
C
HRISTMAS.
H
AVE AN AMAZING NEW YEAR,
L
OVE
M
EL.
XXX

Next year will be amazing, because our GCSEs will be done and finished. I lick the envelope, seal it up, write ‘Chick’ in curly letters on the front. I’m just about to start writing Elaine’s card when Mum cranks the music back up, ear-splittingly loud. I am being attacked by salsa. I put down the silver pen and go out into the hall.

“Turn. The. Music. Down,” I yell over the plinking and plonking of a deafening piano.

The music dips. Mum wobbles out of her room on high heels. She’s finished getting dressed. She is a different person. Neat. Chic. The burgundy dress clings to her. It says,
look, here are my boobs and here is my bum
. The dress has raised seams running up the side of Mum’s thighs, criss-crossing over her belly and under her chest. It looks expensive. I should have checked the price tag when I was in her room. Her hair looks different too. It’s scraped back and twisted tight at the back of her head. It’s tidy for the first time in history. Her make-up is heavy, immaculate, smoky. Perfect. Mum has been promoted. She’s no longer the elfin fairy queen, she’s a goddess. I want to tell her how nice she looks, but I feel too winded to talk. This is my mum – a woman who has sex. I hate her. I hate her.

She watches me looking her up and down, then breaks into a cackle.

“What’s so funny?” I go. The laugh makes me feel small, left out. I don’t get the joke.

She’s holding her belly, putting her hand up to her mouth.

“What’s so funny?” I try to find some laughter in me too, but there isn’t any.

“You.” She can’t get her breath for laughing.

“What?” I look down at my baggy T-shirt and my joggers. The same old me. Nothing new, nothing funny.

“We the wrong way round,” she splutters. “Should be me telling you ‘shush’.” She lets the cackle take over, crosses her legs like she’s going to wet herself. She comes up for air and speaks again. “And this,” she sweeps a hand up and down herself, “this should be you.”

Now, that really creases her up. Doubles her over. I watch her laugh. The hand covering her mouth again. I look down and notice the tomato sauce stain on my T-shirt. I look back at Mum, gift-wrapped in burgundy lycra.

It should be me.

I try to picture myself going on a date. I have to borrow a corny scene from an American movie. A boy with perfect teeth and slicked-down hair arrives at our house with a corsage for me to wear on my arm. Mum has on one of those prim, fitted dresses with a sticky-out skirt and a dainty apron tied on top. Her hair is in big curls around her face. Mum makes sure that my date measures up by asking what his parents do for a living.
What car does your father drive?
she inquires.

Mum is still giggling.

This is never going to happen to me. I will never meet anyone. I will never leave home. I’ll be stuck here, watching Mum go on date after date, listening to music getting louder and louder. I will get grumpy and more and more bitter as the days go by. I have fallen under an ancient curse. I am doomed to grow old too quickly, while Mum will miraculously grow younger. I will sit back and watch while she lives my life instead of me.

“I’m going to watch TV,” I say. I go downstairs and leave her giggling on the landing.

Mum comes into the living room while I’m flicking through the channels. She’s pulled herself together. She wants to be ‘serious Mum’ now.

“I wish you could come too,” she says. The TV light flickers against her face in the dark of the room. “Is so exciting,” she says.

I give her a quick, pitying look.

“You’re acting like you’re fourteen years old or something!” I try to make this playful and teasing but my heart isn’t in it.

A rich girl on TV is arriving at her own birthday party in a horse-drawn carriage.

“I quite like the chance to be fourteen again, actually,” Mum says. She is grinning in a meaningful way. I know where this is going. I burrow my body into the corner of the sofa.

The rich girl’s friends are whooping and cheering as she steps out of the carriage.

“When I was fourteen . . .” Mum goes, “I was . . .”

I stop listening. I tune Mum out and concentrate on the birthday girl on TV. I know how it goes. This is The Story. When Mum was fourteen she was young and innocent and everything was perfect down on Tersanas beach. Then she got up the duff with me, and Babas said ‘pah’ instead of goodbye and the final slivers of her childhood slipped away.