Margot & Me

by Juno Dawson

  I looked inside myself before looking up at her. I dug around in search of an ember in the ashes, some glimmer of warmth. ‘I think it’s beyond healing,’ I whispered.

  ‘Aw, sweet girl, don’t say that, pet. I just know some other man is going to sweep you off your feet, and on that day you won’t even remember Rick Sawyer’s name.’

  I did not believe her. I still don’t. I am so cold and so numb like I’m pumped full of morphine. I have to think out and orchestrate every laboured moment and force my body to comply. Left to its own devices, I think it would find a dark, hollowed tree trunk in which to lay down and die.

  Monday 12th May, 1941

  Having slept for much of the weekend, I’m now mildly embarrassed to read my last entry. Such doleful histrionics are beneath any of us. I sound like some thinly sketched Brontë heroine, struggling across a metaphorically windswept moor.

  It’s with shame I’m reminded of the people who are actually dying both at home and overseas. Those vast, faceless legions of soldiers and civilians. And here I am, wallowing in my trivial misery. Well, it just won’t do at all.

  I went into work today. Since Agatha died we have been rudderless and we need all hands on deck, as it were. Truth be told, I welcomed the distraction. There was so much to do I honestly haven’t thought about Rick all day.

  Even writing his name is painful though. I’m so bruised, but I am now feeling the stab of pain, which I hope means I may one day heal. Just like Glynis said I would.

  My friends are being very sweet, indulging my little bereavement. Yesterday Andrew, Doreen and Bess came around with a freshly baked batch of scones and some blackberry jam. I had little appetite but they’d pooled their rations and I forced myself to pick at one out of gratitude.

  Bess is angry on my behalf, almost as angry as when Reg was exiled. Andrew seemed sad. Doreen exuded a hint of smugness that her suspicions about soldiers being a bad sort had been proved right. It seemed the only person without an opinion was me.

  I wish I was angry. I wish I was sad. Instead I feel entirely flat, like someone’s been over my insides with a rolling pin.

  I am no doctor or scientist, but I have often wondered if there’s a delicate chain connecting the head and heart. Some link that enables matters of the head to be warmed with feeling and our heart’s desires to be tempered by reason. Just at present I’m starting to question if the chain has been severed.

  Chapter 24

  I read the next couple of entries in the library. Poor Margot. She writes about work at the listening station, and Bess’s attempts to track Reg down and Andrew and Bill’s secret tryst, but you can tell her heart’s just not in it. Her writing is flat and, for the first time, a little boring. She’s keeping the diary up, but there’s no mistaking what she really wants to be writing about. Rick is there, plastered in the gaps between the words and the space between the lines.

  I watch Thom go about his business, seething with white-hot jealousy when other pretty girls come in. I’m lucky, to be honest, in that most of the girls who come in here would rather shag a book than they would a human, and that suits me fine.

  The library is packed today. It’s teeming down with rain outside, properly bouncing off the pavements, so everyone is looking for something to do inside. It smells slightly of damp BO – that bin-bag-full-of-grass odour. Thom looks torn between being thrilled to have actual kids borrowing books and horrified at having them trash his library.

  I don’t wanna be that girl, the one who is all about boys and nothing else, but the fact of the matter is I don’t feel for anyone else the way I feel about Thom. Love is like a box of Cadbury’s Roses – there’s all different types. The love I have for Mum comes from just below my heart and it’s warm and orange. My love for Danny and Bronwyn and my friends back home comes from my throat, from laughter, and that love is magenta pink. What I feel for Thom, however, comes from a cavern below my tummy and it’s darkest blood red. It feels thicker in my veins than the other types.

  If that’s what Margot felt for Rick, I totally get it. What are you meant to do with that once they’ve gone? I’m guessing it clogs and clots in your body, breaking down slowly. She must have felt so awful. My old science teacher once showed us a smoker’s lungs in formaldehyde – all black and tarred and shrivelled. I wonder if that’s what a broken heart looks like.

  I’m so angry at Rick. I wonder if he’s still alive so I can track him down and kill him. I searched for him on the library computer – under both ‘Rick’ and ‘Richard’ – but I can’t find him.

  ‘What’s up?’ Danny asks. He’s giddily flicking through the Argos catalogue because his mum and dad are letting him get a mobile phone for Christmas. He wants one with snap-on covers. I’m, like, what’s the point? Who’s he gonna ring when no one else has one?

  ‘This diary is like totally scrambling my brain.’

  ‘Man, you’re a slow reader.’

  ‘I’m savouring it, philistine.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘She fell madly in love with a sexy pilot.’

  Danny’s eyes light up. ‘Is it like steamy and stuff?’

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘Well, maybe a tiny bit, but that’s not the point. He ran off and left her. He already had a girlfriend.’

  ‘Ooh, love rat.’

  ‘Totally. And now she’s heartbroken and I think my grandad might be gay. Or bi.’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ Danny hushes me. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a guy called Andrew, which was my grandad’s name. They met in Llanmarion when he was an evacuee too, but I don’t know if it’s the same Andrew or not.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Oh, as if! How many Andrews must there be in the world?’

  ‘I know. That’s what I thought too. I’m still sad for her though. She was head over heels. He left her a letter. Here.’ I slide the envelope out and hand it to Danny. ‘Be careful. That thing is like fifty years old.’

  Danny sets about reading it and I flick to where I’ve left my bookmark. I turn the page and find it blank. I flick ahead and find the last quarter of the diary is empty. My heart skips and I start to panic. How can it be over?

  I turn back and see there’s one entry left. Just one. What? ‘Oh my God!’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s only one entry left.’ There’s only one thing to do.

  Friday 30th May, 1941

  Oh, diary. For a week I’ve avoided writing, because once it’s in ink, it’s sealed as truth. I write with a trembling hand, more scared than I have ever been, but I can avoid it no longer. It’s not a question of if, but when.

  I don’t know what to do, and as much as a comfort as you have been, you’re only a book. I need help and have no idea which way to turn.

  You see, it seems I am with child. Oh there’s no ‘seems’ about it … I am carrying Rick’s baby.

  And thus, in black and white, now it is truth.

  Chapter 25

  I gasp and drop the diary. Danny looks up, still reading the letter. ‘Dramatic much?’

  ‘Oh my God.’ I read the last entry again to check I’m not daydreaming. Nope, I read it right the first time. Some of the girls on the next table look over with disdain.

  ‘Fliss? Are you OK? You look like you’re throwing a whitey.’

  The library lurches forward, like that bit in Titanic where it rears up out of the sea. I grip the table for support. Wow, I feel drunk, like the time we stole a bottle of Tia Maria from Marina’s sister and drank it on Clapham Common. The cogs in my head clank around, trying to process the information. If Margot was pregnant in 1941 … Mum wasn’t born until ’57. What the …?

  I turn the pages, flicking through them frantically. There’s nothing else. Not a prologue or addendum or note or anything. Not a single further word is written in the book. That’s all, folks.

  ‘Fliss, you’re freaking me out. What’s going on?’

  I close the book. ‘Nothing,’ I li
e. ‘It just ends.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s, like, no more.’

  ‘OK, slight overreaction there. I thought you were having an embolism or something.’ He rolls his eyes.

  ‘Sorry. It’s just so abrupt. Now we’ll never know what happened.’

  Danny laughs kindly through a mouthful of Jelly Tots. He’s segregated the green ones and made a little pile of them on the table. ‘But, Fliss, we do! She became a bitter old crone who lives on a farm and everyone except her lived happily ever after.’

  I can’t deal with the news and Danny at the same time. The drunk feeling has much too quickly become like the hangover I had the day after the Tia Maria. ‘I need the loo. I’ll see you in English, yeah?’

  ‘Sure.’ He hands me back the letter.

  I go to the girls’ toilet and let freezing cold water run over my hands at the sink. I’m actually mourning the diary. I didn’t realise I was so close to the end, and I wasn’t ready. It feels like it’s been torn away from me. How can it be over? As crazy as it sounds, I haven’t had a chance to say goodbye – to Bess, to Glynis and Ivor. I’ve come to … well … love them.

  From out of nowhere, a fat tear runs down my cheek. It’s hot and salty as it hits my lip. I bat it away with the back of my hand. Margot was pregnant? Mum has a brother or sister? Was abortion even around in 1941? I so should have paid more attention in history lessons.

  I know I went into the diary with the aim of finding ammunition I could use against Margot somehow, but that’s not where it ended up. It’s probably the best book I’ve ever read, including Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, and that’s really saying something.

  I go to my afternoon lessons, but I can’t concentrate at all. There’s a huge splinter in my brain and I can think of nothing else. I feel twitchy, unable to sit still for a second, writhing in my seat. When Miss Tunney calls on me to answer a question, I just stare at her blankly and she makes a snide remark, suggesting I should spend as much time on the reading as I do my nails. Maybe if she spent more time on her nails she wouldn’t be a ‘Miss’ at forty-six. I keep that thought to myself.

  The rain is still coming down when I get home, and it feels like the sun didn’t bother to come up at all today, one long daynight. The long driveway to the farm is a minefield of vast, murky puddles I have to skirt around. I hang my dripping coat and umbrella at the foot of the stairs and head upstairs to change. I’m soaked all the way to my underwear so I change into my Little Miss Naughty pyjamas. ‘Mum?’ I hear sounds coming from her bedroom.

  ‘It’s me,’ says Margot. ‘Your mum’s downstairs.’

  It’s now or never. It feels like the universe has given me an opportunity and I have to grab it. Urgh, I might vom. Green Jelly Tots and Diet Cherry Coke churn in my tummy. Can I really do this?

  I have to know.

  I take the diary out of my school bag. I kept it safe from the rain in a Miss Selfridge plastic bag. I lurk in the doorway of Mum’s bedroom, where Margot’s stripping the bed.

  She doesn’t look up. ‘Your mum’s making dinner tonight. Sausage casserole for us. I imagine vegetarian sausage casserole for you. I don’t know how you stomach that Linda McCartney muck – it tastes like something that’s been scraped out of a vacuum bag.’

  It feels like the words are being strangled. ‘Margot?’

  ‘What is it?’ She slips a pillow into a pillowcase.

  Just do it. ‘Please don’t be cross, but I read this.’ I hold out the diary and Margot stops what she’s doing. At first she frowns, and then realisation spreads over her face: a wave from her eyes, spreading south until her mouth goes slack, lips parting in surprise. ‘I know I shouldn’t have done. I found it in my room,’ I fib, ‘and I wondered what it was, so I looked. Then I just couldn’t stop … It was so … interesting.’ I falter.

  Margot says nothing. She’s frozen, staring dumb at the diary. Her jaw clenches but she doesn’t even blink.

  ‘I … I need to know what happens.’ My voice is wafer thin. I whisper, ‘What happened to the baby?’

  I’m not expecting the slap. Margot’s hand whips out and strikes my face. My teeth rattle in my skull before a red-hot sting burns my left cheek. She snatches the book from me and I press my hand to my face. I exhale, too shocked to speak.

  ‘How dare you?’ Margot’s eyes blaze through the dim amber lamplight of the bedroom. A gust of wind throws rain against the window. ‘How dare you?’ she says again.

  ‘I … I just—’

  ‘You will not breathe one word of this to your mother, is that understood?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Is. That. Understood?’ Her eyes widen to manic proportions and her nostrils flare.

  I dip my gaze, so weak, so compressed by her glare. ‘Yes,’ I say feebly.

  ‘This is the end of the discussion.’ She sweeps past me, the diary in her arms. ‘Finish making your mother’s bed and come downstairs for dinner.’

  I wait until she’s gone before I start to cry. I curl up on Mum’s bed and sob silently, too scared to make any noise.

  Chapter 26

  Margot’s slap didn’t actually leave a mark on my face, but the next day I wore Sleeping with the Enemy levels of blusher to try make her feel bad. If she did, she didn’t show it. I scowled at her over breakfast as she thumped plates and mugs down with fire-and-brimstone intensity.

  Worst part? I felt guilty. Whatever else, I had no business reading her diary. Fact. I probably deserved the slap.

  Somehow, for the last week before autumn half-term, we manage to avoid each other. When she enters a room, I make an excuse and leave. If Mum notices the frostiness, she doesn’t comment on it.

  Second worst part? I miss the diary. I’d so looked forward to curling up in bed with it every night. It was as comforting as Horlicks and Hobnobs. I miss Past Margot. I hear her clipped voice in my head, passing barbed comments on stupid things teachers say.

  I guess that Margot died when the diary finished.

  ‘What shall we do today?’ Mum says quite unexpectedly. Now it’s Tuesday in the half-term holidays and I’m bored already. It’s Halloween this Friday and we’re watching Halloween at Danny’s, but that’s AGES away.

  ‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘I’m supposed to write an essay on The Woman in Black.’

  ‘No!’ Mum rises off the sofa with purpose. ‘Let’s go shopping.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s go into Swansea and do some proper shopping. I think, just this once, we can relax our “we do not speak of Christmas until November” rule.’

  I cast an eye over her familiar old towelling robe. That ugly thing is practically a second skin. ‘Are you feeling well enough?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Yes, Fliss, I am fine. I am so bored of being a sick person. Some days it feels like I’m a walking, talking illness. I swear I used to do something other than sleep. I look at that BAFTA and wonder how I ever got it.’ She gestures meekly at the bronze mask on the mantelpiece. ‘Can we just have a nice, normal, mother–daughter shopping day?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ I gulp down the last of my tea excitedly. ‘Can we go to Miss Sixty?’

  ‘We can go wherever you like. My treat.’ Wow. Usually I have to save up for stuff.

  ‘Does Margot have to come?’ I can’t keep a sullen top note out of my voice.

  ‘Today is just you and me.’

  It feels like shards of sunlight bursting through months and months of cloud. This is it. This is where real life starts up again. Me and Mum, back to London. ‘This is gonna be so cool. I’ll get in the shower.’

  By the time we’re both ready, Margot still hasn’t returned from the auction mart. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind if we take the Land Rover,’ Mum says, grabbing the keys off the hook in the kitchen. On the drive, I see Margot must have taken the truck – and with it some of Peanut’s brothers and sisters. ‘Oh, it feels so good to be out of the house.’ Mum turns her face to the sun.

 
She still looks a little gaunt and pale, but at least she doesn’t need to wig it up any more. Her hair now resembles Winona’s new pixie crop and it kinda works on her. I like it.

  All the way to Swansea we listen to Take That at full volume and sing along at the top of our lungs, the way we used to BC. Swansea high street isn’t exactly Oxford Street, but it has actual, recognisable chains with real-life fashion in.

  First stop is Virgin Megastore to stock up on CDs. I get the latest from the Backstreet Boys, but also the new Prodigy and No Doubt. I think the Spice Girls might be deeply uncool already, but I might ask ‘Santa’ for their new one as a stocking filler, then I can blame him if I get any flak. Who am I kidding? I can totally just tape it off Danny – I suspect he’ll have it.

  After that, Mum treats us to a ‘nice’ lunch at the Conservatory. It’s a gorgeous restaurant, unsurprisingly featuring a big glasshouse on one side. We’re seated next to an ornamental indoor pond filled with huge white-and-orange koi. It reminds me of our ‘Girls’ Days’ BC. Sometimes when Mum got back from filming abroad, she’d treat me to a spa day, or a manicure, or a West End show or a fancy lunch. This is as lovely as anywhere I’ve eaten in London, even if the menu is a little, erm, shall we say ‘provincial’. There’s a lot of jacket potatoes and steak sandwiches on offer. I play it safe and go for minestrone soup.

  ‘Shall we have dessert?’ Mum says as the waiter hovers over us. His much too small white shirt can barely contain his pecs. It’s all a bit Peter Andre for my liking.

  ‘I will if you will …’

  ‘Why don’t we share a sticky toffee pudding?’