‘Mum?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ she says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘It’s just I so hoped we might stay with Danny for a day or so, and that he’d be so thrilled to see what a lovely girl you are he’d maybe want to buy you stuff, be like a proper father to you.’
‘I’ve got a proper mother. I don’t want him for a father, not now.’
‘No, no, you mustn’t take that attitude, babes. Don’t blame him. If he’d realized you were there then he’d have been so thrilled. It was just that Suzy – and it’s clear that she’s really, really insecure.’
‘Really, really a prize cow,’ I say. ‘You know what, Mum? I feel truly sorry for Sunset. Imagine having Suzy for your mother!’
Mum gives me a wan smile. ‘Yeah, it beats me what Danny sees in her,’ she says. ‘OK, sweetheart, I’m off now. Try to get to bed early. You need to catch up on your sleep.’
She gives me a kiss. When I look in the mirror again I see a ghost red mouth on my cheek. I finish my toasted cheese and Mum’s portion too, and then I prowl around the house, too wired up to sit and watch television. I think about Sunset in her great big mansion. She’ll have one of those televisions as big as a cinema screen. Perhaps there’s one in every room in the house. There must be so many rooms. Would they really use them all? I imagine sitting for ten minutes on a huge leather sofa in one room, then walking to the next room and curling up in a big velvet chair, then two minutes later going to loll on a Victorian chaise longue, changing seats dozens of times throughout the evening, with kitchen intervals to fix myself snacks.
Perhaps she has a whole suite of bedrooms too – one for each day of the week, with individual themes and colour schemes. I think up an ultra-girly pink room with rosebuds in pink glass vases and pink teddies and a candy-striped duvet and Sunset’s very own pink candyfloss machine. Then I invent a blue room with blue fairy lights and a blue moon painted on the ceiling and an en suite blue bath with dark-blue dolphin taps. I decide on a sunshine room with a huge cage of singing canaries and big bowls of bananas and smiley suns all over the walls, and by contrast an entirely black room with a black velvet duvet and black satin sheets and an enormous black toy panther curled up on top. Then she might have a Victorian room with a four-poster bed and a scrap screen and a rocking horse, or an ultra-modern room with elegantly stark furniture and odd glowing lamps and a trapeze hanging from the ceiling. Best of all, she could have a round bedroom with a soft curved bed and shelves of round Russian dolls and a little trapdoor in the middle of the room, so that when she gets hot she can put on her swimming costume, open the trapdoor, and slide all the way down to a turquoise swimming pool in the basement.
I get my homework jotter out of my school bag, tear out a page, and do tiny drawings of each bedroom, so that I’ll remember each one.
Then I go into my own bedroom. I look up at the big damp patch on the ceiling (the roof leaks every time it rains). I look down at the fraying carpet squares on the floor. I look at my old bed with my faded duvet bears waving wanly at me.
I go to bed but I can’t get to sleep. I toss and turn for hours until I hear Mum’s key in the lock at last. I hear her tiptoeing about in the dark.
‘It’s OK, Mum, I’m still awake,’ I call.
‘You’re a bad girl then. Go to sleep at once!’ says Mum, but she’s not really cross.
She takes off her clothes and crawls into my bed, and we spend the night huddled together under Pinky and Bluey. Neither of us sleeps much, even though we’re exhausted. Mum gets up first and brings me a cup of tea on a tray – but I don’t want to wake up now.
‘I’ve set your alarm for eight. Promise you’ll get up then,’ Mum frets, sipping her tea as she gets dressed. ‘Destiny? Promise!’
‘Maybe,’ I mumble, sliding back down under the duvet.
‘You do as you’re told,’ says Mum, prodding me. ‘Come on, babe, promise me you’ll go to school. No bunking off. You’re going to get a good education if it kills me.’
She has to leave or she’ll be late for her cleaning job at the uni. It’s a good forty-minute walk to the campus but at least she’s not in her high heels now, she’s in her old trainers – though she’s still blistered from yesterday.
‘I wish you didn’t have to walk so far, Mum,’ I say, propping myself up on one elbow.
‘You’ll be walking there yourself in a few years’ time,’ Mum says. ‘Doing some fancy degree course. If you get a good education.’
I sigh. ‘OK, OK. Don’t nag.’
‘That’s what mothers are for,’ she says. She gives me a kiss goodbye. She sings the usual verse from a Danny song: ‘Goodbye, my babe, it’s time to go, don’t wanna leave, I love you soooo.’
I generally sing along with her but I shut up this time. When my alarm goes off at eight I shuffle around the house eating cornflakes straight out of the packet. I stop and stare at each Danny poster on the living-room wall. There are so many we don’t need wallpaper. I look at the biggest poster, a young Danny striking a pose, head back, singing into his mike. My Destiny is printed at the top.
I suddenly tug hard on the poster and it falls down with a crash, the edges tearing, lumpy with dried Blu-Tack.
‘I don’t want to be your Destiny, you silly old fart,’ I say, kicking the poster.
Then I pick up my school bag and slam out of the door, turning the key and then slipping its string down my neck, under my school blouse. I’d give anything not to go, but I promised Mum.
I go the long way round, of course. If I took the short cut through the estate, someone would be sure to spot me and they’d start chasing me. There are two major gangs on the estate, the Flatboys and the Speedos. They’re silly baby names but they’re not all little boys playing at being baddies. Some of the bigger guys carry knives, real serious flick knives, not kids’ penknives. Jack Myers is in my class and his eldest brother is the leader of the Flatboys. The Speedos captured him recently, and when he swore at them they cut him down his arm and tattooed him on either side of his eyes with a lead pencil to show he was a marked man. So then the Flatboys caught one of the Speedo kids and hung him by the ankles from the top-floor balcony and very nearly dropped him.
The Flatboys and the Speedos mostly pick on each other. They don’t often hurt girls, but you never know. Both gangs would go after me because I’m a Maisie. They call me that because our house is one of the maisonettes around the edge of the estate. Everyone hates the Maisies and thinks we’re snobs. You’re especially hated if you own your house instead of renting.
So I trudge all the way round the outside of the Bilefield Estate. My school shoes are too small for me and cramp my toes but I don’t want to tell Mum because she’ll only worry.
I hope she’s feeling better now. My own stomach cramps thinking about her. I try to remember Sunset’s seven different bedrooms to distract myself. I count them on my fingers. Then I make up different outfits for her. It’s almost as if she’s walking along beside me, keeping me company. She isn’t wearing any of her cool designer clothes, she’s in her pyjamas and huge fleece, and she’s a bit embarrassed about it too, but I promise I’ll flatten anyone who dares tease her. I can do that, easy-peasy, with most of the kids in my class. Well, I’m a bit wary of Jack Myers and Rocky Samson and some of the other boys already in Flatboys/Speedo gangs, but I’m just as tough as any of the girls, even Angel Thomas, and she’s twice my size and should have been christened Devil Thomas. I can fight and be really mouthy if I want, but most of the time I’m dead quiet at school. I don’t even talk to the teachers much.
I liked my last school more, especially the teacher I had in Year Five, Miss Pendle. She lent me storybooks and gave me a gold star in literacy and said I had a Wonderful Imagination. I didn’t even mind when the other kids teased me for being a teacher’s pet. I wanted to be Miss Pendle’s pet. But now I’m in Year Six at Bilefield and I’m still looked on as the new girl. I’m not really anyone’s friend. The Year Six teacher
is Mr Roberts. He’s very strict and shouty and is always giving us tests. He smells of tobacco and has a silly beard and gets damp patches under his arms, and no one in the world would want to be his pet.
He doesn’t shout quite so much now because we’ve finished all our tests and half the time we’re mucking around instead of doing proper lessons. Mum’s daft to think I’d be missing out on anything by bunking off school now, but she won’t listen.
I don’t listen much when Mr Roberts starts chuntering on about us being the top of the school – we’ll soon be starting a whole new scholastic life at secondary school and isn’t it exciting? Yes, very exciting to be going to Bilefield Secondary, where the big kids stick your head down the toilet and nick your mobile and your money as soon as you start in Year Seven.
Then he goes on about our Year Six end-of-year entertainment. I can’t get interested. He wants to call it Bilefield’s Got Talent – oh, very witty. Everyone groans and moans, especially when Mr Roberts says we’ve all got to do an act whether we want to or not. Jack Myers says he’s not poncing about on a stage making a fool of himself, but Mr Roberts suggests he might like to get together with some of the other lads and do some kind of street dancing – and that shuts him up. All the boys want to street dance. They divide up into Flatboys and Speedos, apart from silly Ritchie and Jeff, who want to dress up in frocks and do a daft ballet dance, and Raymond Wallis, who actually can do ballet properly and wants to do a special acrobatic solo. Most of the girls want to dance too, singing along at the same time. There are two groups of girls who want to do Girls Aloud numbers.
‘Fine, fine, but we could do with a little variety,’ says Mr Roberts. ‘Can’t any of you think of an act that’s a little bit different?’
‘Yeah, OK, I’ll do a pole dance, Mr Roberts,’ says Angel Thomas.
‘Well, maybe that’s a little too different,’ says Mr Roberts. ‘We’ll put that idea on hold, Angel. Perhaps you can do some kind of exotic dance, but a pole dance would get us both into a lot of trouble.’
Natalie and Naveen and Saimah and Billie-Jo are whispering together.
‘We want to do a play, Mr Roberts. Can we do our own play?’ asks Natalie.
‘That’s an excellent idea,’ says Mr Roberts. ‘But you’ll need to do it properly, write it out and rehearse it, and it can’t be longer than ten minutes maximum. I’ll help you rehearse, girls. And boys, you need to choreograph your street-dance routine. We’ll see if Mrs Avery can help you get started, choose the right music. I want you all to take this very seriously. We’re going to entertain the whole school and your parents, so I want you all to give a cracking performance. We’ll sort out some kind of voting system and give a proper prize to the overall winner, OK? Now, who hasn’t chosen their act yet?’
‘I can’t do nothing, Mr Roberts,’ says Hannah, sighing. ‘I can’t sing and I can’t dance.’
‘Maybe you could join up with Natalie and co. and be in the play.’
‘I can’t act either,’ says Hannah.
‘Can I do magic tricks, Mr Roberts?’ says Fareed. ‘My dad’s shown me how to do heaps of card tricks, and I can even pull a rabbit out of a hat. Almost.’
‘Excellent! Well, Hannah, perhaps you could be Fareed’s assistant. Magicians always have a lovely lady assistant.’
‘Yeah, you can saw her in half, Fareed,’ says Angel, laughing. She catches my eye. ‘And make Destiny disappear. For ever.’
I give her a little sneer, acting bored. It would never ever do to show Angel that I’m just like the others, dead scared of her.
Mr Roberts is looking at me too. ‘Yes, Destiny, what about you?’ he says in the same false bright tone he used for Hopeless Hannah. He obviously has me down as one of the sad thickos. Well, see if I care.
‘Perhaps you don’t want to sing or dance. Tell you what, how about doing a recitation?’
Oh, sure. Poetry. The other kids would have a field day, shouting, Off, off, off! And throwing tomatoes at me.
He doesn’t understand.
‘I could help you find a poem. It doesn’t have to be too long. Maybe you could read it if you find it hard to learn it. You’re a very good reader, Destiny,’ he says earnestly. ‘You just need to gain a bit of confidence.’
‘I’ll sing,’ I say, just to shut him up.
He looks surprised. I never join in his stupid music lessons. I hate Kumbaya and Lord of the Dance. I don’t even bother to open my lips to mouth the words.
‘Do you know any songs?’
Stupid question. I know every track, genuine or bootleg, of every single Danny Kilman album, from his debut songs with the defunct rock band Opium Poppy to his last recorded tracks six years ago.
I just nod vaguely, but he clearly doesn’t trust me.
‘Which song?’
It might as well be the obvious.
‘I’ll sing Danny Kilman’s song Destiny,’ I say.
Some of the kids snigger uncertainly. I don’t think they’ve even heard of Danny. Though Mr Roberts looks surprised but enthusiastic.
‘Of course! Brilliant choice. Actually I’m a big Danny Kilman fan.’
Oh God.
‘Tell you what. I could accompany you on my guitar if you like – do that little melancholy riff in the middle—’
No!
‘I thought I’d leave that bit out,’ I say quickly. ‘Just sing the word part. If that’s OK.’
‘Yes. Yes of course,’ he says, but he looks disappointed. I feel a bit bad but I’m not having him mucking up my special namesake song even if I’ve decided I don’t want Danny for my dad any more.
I don’t say anything to Mum when she comes home – but she sees I’ve torn the big poster down straight away. She gasps as if the real Danny is lying crumpled on the carpet. She kneels down and smoothes the poster out, wincing at the tear marks. She fetches the Sellotape and mends him very carefully on the back of the poster so that he doesn’t have to have shiny Sellotape bandages across his face. Then she gets a whole new packet of Blu-Tack, stands on a chair and puts him up in his place again, taking the greatest care not to stick him on a slant or give him any creases. She doesn’t say a single word to me while she’s doing this, but her lips are moving. I think she might be whispering to Danny.
She looks terrible. She hasn’t had time to wash her hair so she’s still got it pulled back in a ponytail and it droops lankly down her back. Her face is grey-white, with shadows like bruises under her eyes. I don’t know if it’s because her hair is scraped back so tightly, but her eyes look truly scary, as if they might pop right out of her head. When she raises her arms I can see all her ribs through her T-shirt, and the knobs of her elbows look as sharp as knives.
I go into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and look for food in the Aldi carrier Mum’s dragged home. I stick two big potatoes in the oven. Then I cut some bread and butter and bring it into the living room on a tray, with a cup of tea.
Mum is sitting down now, sifting through the post. I think it might be more bills. Her hands are shaking.
‘Here, Mum, have some tea,’ I say, sticking the tray on her lap.
‘Oh, that’s lovely of you, sweetheart,’ she says. She sips her tea but doesn’t touch the bread and butter.
‘Eat, Mum.’
‘I’ll have it a bit later, darling.’
‘No, we’ve got baked potatoes with cheese later – and maybe baked beans? But you need to eat something now, Mum. You look awful, like you’re starving to death.’
She flinches.
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean to upset you, it’s just that you’re scaring me. Look, you’ve not gone anorexic, have you?’
‘What? No, no, of course not.’
‘Because you’re way too thin as it is. You’ll be a skeleton if you carry on not eating.’
‘OK, lovey, I’ll eat. Look!’ She takes a big bite out of the bread and butter. ‘There now – and you’ve made a lovely cup of tea. You come and share the bread and butter with me
.’
She pats the armchair and I squash in beside her. I have a little peer at the letters. Yep, more bills. I pull a face.
‘It’s OK. We’ll manage,’ says Mum. ‘It’s worth having to scrimp and scrape so we can live here. Imagine if we were still stuck in that dump of a flat on the Latchford Estate. We haven’t done too badly, have we, Destiny? Our very own house!’
‘Yeah, Mum,’ I say, trying to sound enthusiastic, although there’s so much needs doing to the house, and I can’t help thinking the Bilefield Estate is almost as bad as Latchford, and it does your head in trying to avoid the Flatboys and the Speedos all the time.
‘It’s just – I wish we had someone here to look after us,’ says Mum.
‘We don’t need someone else. We look after each other,’ I say indignantly.
‘Yeah, but it would take all the pressure off if you had some kind of father figure around. I mean, we both know who your real dad is . . .’ We look at the poster and Mum sighs. ‘He’d have so wanted to meet you, darling. I know he’d be so proud of such a lovely new daughter.’
‘Mum. Stop it. He walked straight past me at that film thing.’
‘He didn’t understand.’
‘Suzy understood – it made her shout and scream at us. Mum, just shut up about Danny Kilman and his family. It all went wrong.’
Mum squeezes her eyes tight shut. ‘It was my fault. I made a mess of things and I so wanted it to be lovely. I always do that. I just seem to screw everything up. I mean, look at the time Steve came along. Remember his house, how lovely was that? Remember the four-poster?’
‘Yeah, and I remember him using you like a punchbag too.’
‘I just seemed to get on his nerves after a bit. Maybe I shouldn’t have kept arguing with him.’
‘What? Oh, Mum, stop that. Of course you argued. He was a total pig, you know that.’
‘But he did look after us for a while – and he was very fond of you, really. He was just narked if you got a bit lippy.’
Little Darlings Page 8