‘No I haven’t, Mum. She’s ever so nice. She says I’m special.’
‘Special needs, more like, gabbing away to that nosy old bag.’
‘She’s not nosy. You’ve got her all wrong, Mum. She’s just friendly.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Mum. ‘Now listen here, Lola Rose. You keep right out of her way. Don’t let her worm anything out of you, OK? Else you’ll be put into care as quick as a wink – and Kendall too.’
‘I don’t want to be put into care,’ Kendall wailed. He didn’t know what ‘care’ was but he spilled cornflakes all down his T-shirt in his anguish.
‘There. Now look what you’ve made him do!’ said Mum. ‘And we’re late for school as it is. Come on, mucky pup, let’s get you shifted.’
‘Lola Rose can change him and take him to school,’ said Jake. ‘We’re going to the doctor’s, Vic.’
Mum went red in the face. ‘You might be going to the doctor’s, matie. I’m certainly not going to waste my time sitting in some dismal surgery breathing in everyone’s germs. Come here, Kendall.’
My heart was thudding. ‘What’s the matter, Mum? Are you ill?’
‘Of course I’m not ill. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me,’ she insisted.
‘Victoria,’ said Jake.
‘Shut up, will you,’ said Mum.
I kept on at her but she wouldn’t tell me anything. I did as Jake said and took Kendall to school. I kept worrying about it all morning.
‘What’s up, Lola Rose?’ said Harpreet at lunch time. ‘You’re not in a huff with me, are you? Is it because my mum wouldn’t let you stay for dinner? She’s a bit funny like that. I’m ever so sorry.’
‘It’s not your mum I’m worrying about, Harpreet. It’s mine,’ I said. I stopped eating my half of Harpreet’s banana. ‘Jake was nagging at her to go to the doctor’s this morning. They wouldn’t tell me why. Mum kept saying she wasn’t ill but why else would she need to go?’
‘I know!’ said Harpreet. ‘She could be having a baby!’
I stared at her.
‘Don’t look so gobsmacked. Your mum could be having Jake’s baby, right?’
‘I-I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Though I don’t think she wants any more children.’
‘These things happen,’ said Harpreet, in a very worldly-wise way.
I tried to get my head round the idea of a baby. I pictured this little squirmy pink creature with Jake’s long hair falling right down to its toes. Maybe I could brush it and plait it and play hairdressers. Kendall wouldn’t always let me pick him up and baby him nowadays. Maybe it would be fun to have a real baby to play with. Mum didn’t have much patience with babies. I could look after it for her and pretend it was mine.
I gobbled up the rest of the banana and then got stuck into my six squares of Cadbury’s chocolate. I stroked the wrapping paper. Maybe we could dress the baby in purple? I could get Jake to help me make little purple dungarees with red flowers on the pockets. The baby could have a tiny purple teddy to match . . .
I spent the afternoon designing baby outfits on the back of my school jotter. I went arm in arm with Harpreet to pick up Kendall and Amandeep from their after-school club. We talked babies all the way home.
‘Who’s going to have a baby?’ Kendall asked.
‘Mum. Well, maybe she is. Harpreet thinks so,’ I said.
‘Mum!’ said Kendall, astounded. ‘She’s not! She hasn’t got a big tummy.’
‘Not yet. It’ll grow.’
‘Is our mum going to have a baby?’ said Amandeep. ‘She’s got a big tummy.’
‘I know, but she’s just fat. I hope I don’t get fat like her when I’m grown up,’ said Harpreet, rubbing her hands up and down her skinny hips. ‘My sister’s getting a bit fat around the tummy. If she’s pregnant our whole family will go bananas.’
‘I don’t want Mum to have a baby,’ said Kendall.
‘Yes you do. You like playing babies in the playhouse. I could show you how to bath the baby and feed it and change its nappy,’ I offered.
‘I don’t want to change pooey nappies!’ said Kendall.
‘I changed heaps of yours!’
‘Kendall wears a nappy!’ Amandeep exclaimed.
‘I don’t!’ Kendall shrieked. He punched me hard in the stomach. ‘Tell her I don’t.’
‘Ouch,’ I said, doubled up. ‘Will you give over punching, it hurts. Listen, you must never ever hit Mum in the tummy now. You could really hurt her – and the baby.’
‘Kendall wears a nappy, a nappy, a nappy!’ Amandeep chanted.
Kendall punched her too. She punched him straight back, her little fist as hard as a stone. Kendall howled. I ended up having to carry him half the way home.
‘It’s your own fault, stupid,’ I said, after I’d said goodbye to Harpreet. ‘You hit her in the first place. And she’s much better at fighting than you are. You shouldn’t take any notice when she teases you.’
‘But I don’t wear a nappy!’
‘I know. And she knows. She was just being silly.’
‘I don’t like her any more. I want George!’ Kendall butted my shoulder with his head, trying to turn me into turquoise plush.
George had been banished from school because he’d attacked too many children in the infants. He lurked behind Kendall and then bobbed out and gnawed their legs. Kendall’s teacher kept telling him off. Kendall said it wasn’t him, it was George, and sharks couldn’t help biting legs, it was their nature.
Kendall’s teacher had a word with me. I told Kendall to quit it. Kendall said he’d try, but he couldn’t always stop George.
‘Bitey bitey bitey,’ Kendall shouted, while George attacked a big boy called Dean who said Kendall was a nutter. George couldn’t really bite – but Dean could. He bent down and sank his teeth straight into Kendall’s skinny leg.
Mum was furious when she saw the bite marks on Kendall. She was all set to charge up to the school and have a punch-up with the teacher, big Dean and his even bigger mother. I told Mum the whole story and she backed down. She whacked Kendall over the head with George and said he had to stay shut up at home while Kendall went to school.
Kendall wept and wailed every morning when he had to say goodbye to George. Mum told him it was his own fault and wouldn’t give in.
Jake bought Kendall special shark-shaped turquoise jelly sweets to cheer him up on the way to school. Kendall sucked the shark sweets but howled just as hard. Turquoise drool ran down his chin and dripped onto his T-shirt.
I tried to turn Kendall’s bed into an aquarium for George, spreading Jake’s blue denim jacket over the cover and draping my green socks here and there like seaweed. I said George could be a basking shark, so he’d love lolling around all day doing nothing.
‘He’ll miss me terribly,’ Kendall wept.
‘If he gets a little bit lonely he can always snuffle into your pillow and pretend it’s you,’ I said.
‘What can I snuffle into at school?’ Kendall asked.
I suggested snipping a tiny sliver off George’s fin to go in Kendall’s pocket to use like a very tiny cuddle blanket. Kendall didn’t like the idea of a mini-amputation. He snuffled into me instead.
I sighed about it, but I quite liked being needed so much. I’d have to watch out for Kendall when the new baby came. I’d make a big fuss of both of them. I’d pick Kendall up from school and the baby from the nursery and take them for walks in the park. I’d find a proper park with swings and a duck pond and an ice cream van. I’d strap Kendall into one swing and then sit on another with the baby on my lap.
We’d feed the ducks. I’d hold the baby on one hip and hang onto Kendall’s T-shirt tight while he chucked bread into the water. Then we’d feed ourselves, an ice cream for me, a red lolly for Kendall and a little lick of ice cream for the baby.
I’d be utterly Lola Rose, my hair down to my waist, and much much much thinner. Maybe people would think I was the baby’s mother. Maybe I’d go ahead and have my own babies,
seeing I was so good with little children. Or maybe I’d start my own nursery and we’d make collages out of sticky paper and macaroni and fruit gums . . .
I played this pretend game all the way home. My arms ached holding Kendall but I didn’t care. I jiggled him up and down, singing the ‘Lucky lucky lucky’ song.
I’d stopped worrying.
I didn’t know that the worst worry was just about to start.
Mum and Jake were at home, sitting at either end of their new sofa bed. Mum’s eyes were red and puffy. She pressed her lips together, like she was scared she was going to start crying again. Jake kept looking anxiously at her. His eyes were red too. He hadn’t been crying, had he?
Mum looked at us. ‘What are you staring at me like that for?’ she said.
Jake reached out and tried to take her hand. ‘Tell them!’ he said.
Mum snatched her hand away. ‘Shut up!’ she said.
‘Tell us what?’ I said, getting really scared.
‘We know anyway!’ said Kendall.
‘What do you know?’ said Mum, looking startled.
‘You’re going to have a baby!’ said Kendall.
Mum gave one high-pitched yelp of laughter. ‘No I’m not.’
‘Yes you are, Lola Rose said.’
‘Well Lola Rose doesn’t know what she’s talking about,’ said Mum, folding her arms and glaring at me.
My new baby withered away inside its flowery dungarees until it was just a little purple smear.
‘So what is it then? Are you and Jake splitting up?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Mum.
‘No, we’re not!’ said Jake – but he didn’t sound certain.
‘Dad hasn’t found us, has he?’ I whispered. I looked wildly round the room, scared he was hiding, waiting to pounce.
‘It’s not your dad. It’s not anything,’ said Mum. She got up to fill the kettle, switching the tap on so fiercely she sprayed herself with water. ‘Bum! I’m having a cup of tea. Who wants one?’
‘Your mum’s got a lump,’ said Jake.
He mumbled it so I wasn’t quite sure what he’d said. And then when the words echoed in my head they still didn’t make any sense. A lump? I looked at Mum, trying to see this lump on her head, her arm, wherever.
‘I told you to shut it, Jake,’ Mum said furiously. ‘The kids don’t need to know.’
‘They’ll have to know if you’re going into hospital.’
‘I’m. Not. Going. Into. Hospital,’ said Mum, dabbing her wet front violently with the tea towel.
‘The doctor said—’
‘Yeah, well, he was probably just talking rubbish to scare me. I’m fine, I keep telling you. Do I look ill? There’s nothing wrong with me. And I’m not going into hospital so they can slice bits off me.’ Mum stopped jabbing her chest and wrapped her arms round herself.
‘Mum? What lump?’ I went to her and tried to cuddle her but she pulled away from me.
‘It’s nothing nothing nothing,’ she said fiercely.
It was something something something.
She’d had a lump in her breast for months and months. A lump that was getting bigger and bigger. She’d kept quiet about it, hoping it would clear up by itself. Then Jake felt it and said she should go to the doctor. We didn’t have a doctor here so Jake dragged her to his.
‘He says your mum needs to go to this clinic as soon as possible. He’s getting her an emergency appointment.’
‘Yeah, well, he can stick his emergency appointment because I’m not going. I’m not having some creep feeling me up and telling me I need my boob chopped off.’
I’d made the tea for Mum but she was shaking now. Her teeth clinked against the mug every time she tried to take a sip.
I started shaking too.
‘He said it might not come to that. It could just be a cyst or something,’ said Jake. ‘And anyway, if it is bad news then it’s just a little routine operation, that’s what he said.’
‘Little!’ said Mum. ‘I’m not having them cutting me, ruining my looks. Who’d want me then, for God’s sake?’
She looked at Jake. I willed him to say the right thing but he couldn’t come out with anything at all.
Kendall started to cry. I picked him up and hugged him tight.
‘There, look, you’re getting the kiddies all upset!’ said Mum. ‘Why can’t you keep your big mouth shut, Jake?’
‘I was only trying to help,’ he said.
‘Yeah, well, we don’t need your help. We don’t need you,’ said Mum.
She put her hand over her mouth as if she couldn’t believe she’d just said it. She looked at Jake, her eyes brimming with tears, just like Kendall. She didn’t mean it – she was just saying stupid stuff because she was so scared. She needed Jake terribly.
He sat there like a dummy, fiddling with a strand of his long hair, winding it round and round his finger. Mum started crying. Jake didn’t budge an inch so she had to crawl over to him. She leant on his chest and howled all over his shirt, making black smudges on the blue denim. Mum said she was sorry and Jake said it was OK and she was going to be fine. But he sounded like he was reading from the telephone directory and his eyes stared into the shadows in the corner of our living room.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I ate my way furtively through a whole big packet of fruit gums in bed, even though I’d eaten an enormous cheese and pineapple pizza for tea. I lay this way and that, my mouth stoppered with sticky gums, my hands clutching my swollen tummy.
Kendal snuffled in his sleep beside me, George clasped to his chest. Mum and Jake were awake for ages. I heard them whispering, on and on. Mum started crying and I sat up in bed, wondering if I should run to her. But then I heard Jake saying stuff and lots of sighing and then the bed started creaking.
I put my head under the pillow, not wanting to hear any more. I wanted to burrow right through the pillow into some sugar-candy sleepland where nothing bad ever happened and everyone lolled on great soft sofas and sucked sweets. I started to dream it, lying on a sofa, but it started tipping crazily, making me feel sick. A stream of strawberry-orange-lemon gushed out of my mouth. I was whirled round in this lurid water, hurtled out to a vast ocean where huge dark shapes were swimming.
Mum tried to act as if nothing were wrong the next morning. She wouldn’t talk about the lump. She kept it up for days, pretending she didn’t have a worry in the world. She sang loudly all round the flat but she wasn’t fooling anyone, not even Kendall.
One night I woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee. I walked into the bathroom. Mum was in there, nightie in her hand, staring at herself in the mirror. She had her head tilted, hands on her hips, breasts stuck right out as if she were posing for a glamour photo. She had a silly smile on her face but there were tears trickling down her cheeks.
She gasped when she saw me and covered her chest with her arms. I wondered if the lump stuck out and looked scary.
‘Knock, can’t you?’ Mum said crossly, turning her back on me and tugging her nightie over her head.
‘Mum, are you going to go to that clinic?’
‘Nope.’
‘But what if the lump gets bigger? What if—?’
‘Just shut up about it, Jayni.’
‘Lola Rose,’ I whispered.
‘Yeah, Lola Rose, whatever. Just go back to bed, now.’
So I went back to bed even though I badly needed to pee. I hunched up, holding myself, wishing I knew what to do.
I hadn’t told Harpreet. I’d let her burble on about babies. I didn’t want to tell her about the lump because it was so scary. I didn’t want to make it seem real. But it was getting so I couldn’t think of anything else. Harpreet caught me crying in the school toilets and kept on at me until I told her why.
‘Will you swear not to tell anyone?’
Harpreet swore solemnly on her little sister’s life. ‘What is it, Lola Rose? Is it about the baby?’
‘There isn’t a baby,’
I said.
Harpreet blinked at me with her beautiful eyes. ‘Did she lose it?’ she whispered.
‘No, she was never having a baby. You got it all wrong. She’s . . . she’s got this lump. Here.’ I gestured in the air above my own flat chest.
‘Oh help,’ said Harpreet. ‘Is it cancer?’
I jumped as if she’d said a very bad swear word. No one had dared say it before.
‘I don’t know. She’s supposed to go to this hospital clinic to find out. But she says she’s not going.’
‘She’ll have to go! Is she nuts?’
‘She’s always been a little bit nuts about stuff like that.’ I washed my hands in the basin very slowly, rubbing the soap until it made bubbles.
‘My great-auntie had breast cancer,’ said Harpreet.
‘Did she get better?’
There was a horrible pause. I rubbed and rubbed my hands until they wore white lather gloves.
‘Well, I don’t want to say this, Lola Rose, but actually she died.’
I clasped my soapy hands.
‘But she was much older than your mum.’
‘Does that make a difference?’
‘Well, it’s bound to. My great-auntie was an old lady. And she had all these strokes too. That’s how she got the cancer my mum said. She had a fall and hit her chest. She was bruised all over. And then she got the cancer.’
I stopped still, thinking about my mum’s bruised breasts. ‘Is that how you get breast cancer?’ I whispered. ‘Could you get it if someone hits you hard?’
‘Well. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just what my mum says and she’s not always right. Oh Lola Rose, don’t cry again.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. I knew Harpreet was totally wrong. But I still didn’t like her saying it. I rubbed my eyes fiercely and then screamed as the soap stung them.
Harpreet had to slosh water in my face and rub the soap away with the hem of her school skirt. It hurt horribly but I didn’t really care. Harpreet put her arms round me when she’d got the soap off.
‘I bet your mum doesn’t have cancer at all, Lola Rose. It’ll just be some silly old lump that doesn’t mean anything.’
Lola Rose Page 11