‘Breakfast?’ I suggest. ‘We’ve got cornflakes and I saw the bowls and spoons a minute ago – they’re in here.’
Mum looks hopeless. ‘No milk,’ she says.
‘I’ll get some,’ I offer, even though I’ve no idea where I can buy milk because I don’t know this part of town and, what’s more, I don’t want to.
‘Will you? There’s a corner shop down at the other end of the street. I’ll get Misti dressed and have a wash and set the table…’
‘She’s wet,’ I say.
‘Poor love.’
Mum gives me a pound coin and a shaky smile. ‘Yesterday was awful, Indie, but we’ll be OK,’ she says. ‘We’ll get this place sorted, see if we don’t. It’s better this way.’
‘What about Max?’ I make myself ask.
‘Max won’t find us here,’ Mum says firmly. ‘We’ll be safe. We’ll be OK.’
She gives me a quick hug and I see close up how the bruises are mellowing to a rich, mottled purple, and how her face is streaked with dried tears.
Things might be better, but they don’t feel that way. Not yet.
The corner shop is a bit like Singhs, the kind of place that stays open all hours and sells everything you can think of, but for a price. I buy two litres of milk, full cream, and a plump lady with a Scottish accent hands it over and counts out my change. I buy a tube of Smarties for Misti, to cheer her up. In case she feels as bad as I do. I’d get something for me and Mum too, but there’s not enough money unless I break into Miss McDougall’s emergency bus fare cash, and I’m not about to do that.
‘No school today?’ asks the Scottish lady as I turn to go.
‘No. I – I’ve hurt my ankle.’
I limp out of the shop and halfway down Hartington Drive, just in case she’s watching.
Things get better. We eat two bowls of cornflakes each and write lists, planning what we have to buy to make this dump into a home.
‘It’s got potential,’ Mum says.
‘It’s got mould in the bathroom,’ I remind her.
‘It’s got fashionable, stripped-pine floorboards…’
‘With built-in creaks and woodworm!’
All three of us collapse in fits of giggles. OK, so it’s not like we have much to laugh about, but it makes us feel better.
Our gloomy basement flat has two small, damp bedrooms, a large damp living room, an ice-cold, mouldy bathroom and a long, narrow kitchen with mustard-coloured walls and brown lino full of ciggy burns. It’s dark, even in the daylight, because the windows are high up and on a level with the ground outside. If we watch out for long enough, we’d probably see Mrs Green’s feet in tartan slippers with pom-pom trim, shuffling past up there on the gravel. We’re like hobbits, moles, rabbits.
We’ve gone underground.
We are the proud new owners (renters?) of two brown easy chairs, a three-bar electric fire with fake coal and dirty chrome trimmings, one soggy double bed (Misti and me), one dry single bed (Mum), a wardrobe with no door and a rickety table with four wooden chairs that don’t match. In the kitchen there’s a greasy old cooker, a stained enamel sink with a tap that drips and a swirly Formica worktop with four built-in cupboards underneath.
We have a beanbag, a pushchair and a dozen bin bags full of clothes, shoes, books, toys, CDs, saucepans, dishes and assorted junk. It’s going to take more than that to make the transformation.
‘Today,’ Mum says, ‘is a rainy day. Quite possibly the rainiest day we’ve ever been up against.’
I frown. It was dry half an hour ago, when I skulked down the road for milk and Smarties. Cold, but dry.
‘Luckily,’ Mum pushes on, ‘I’ve been saving. Saving for a rainy day.’
So we pull on our coats and hats, we strap Misti into her pushchair, stuff in a few soft toys to keep her happy and head off for town.
I feed Misti Smarties, one by one, making her name the colours while Mum queues up in the bank and makes a cash withdrawal.
‘One hundred quid, cash,’ she whispers when we get outside. I whistle under my breath, impressed, and Misti scoffs another Smartie.
‘It sounds like a lot, but we have to be careful… it won’t go far. It took me months to save this, stashing odd pounds and pennies away. Once it’s gone, that’s that – we have to spend it wisely.’
Mum takes us to a carpet warehouse and buys a vast offcut of speckly blue carpet for £25. It’s thin and nylon and scratchy, but it’s also big, cheap and blue. Blue is Mum’s lucky colour, so there’s no way we’re about to complain.
The carpet is too big to carry, but the bloke in the shop winks at Mum and says he’s got a delivery later near Hartington Drive, and he’ll drop it off, no problem, no extra charge.
In a side street, just behind the sports centre, Mum discovers a junk shop selling a chest of drawers and a wide, wobbly bookcase for £10 apiece. For an extra £2, the lady will arrange to get them delivered.
They’re seriously grim, but Mum promises she can make them cool and gorgeous.
We go to a shop that sells wallpaper, and Mum finds loads of little tins of paint in a big basket, reduced to 50p each. We pick every colour we can stand the sight of, then Mum splashes out on a huge tin of emulsion in cornflower blue.
‘Kitchen,’ she says, grinning. ‘Bathroom too, if there’s enough left over. Ooh, we’ll need a roller…’
We grab a packet of cheap brushes, because the rollers are too pricey, and Mum hands over £16 for the lot.
Next we go food shopping. We trudge to a funny supermarket just out of the town centre where the tins and packets are stacked up on the floor instead of on shelves. You can buy twelve tins of baked beans for a quid.
We stock up on beans, pasta, peanut butter and cereal like we’re expecting some kind of siege. Then we add washing powder, soap, shampoo, Marmite, cheese, milk, bread, bananas.
Misti’s asleep by the time we’re on to the cleaning gear, cruising the aisles of a cut-price hardware store, grabbing bleach, washing-up liquid, candles, scourers.
I’ve glazed over, bored, tired. I think about what I’m missing at school. Games this afternoon, maybe netball, loping about the playground trying to avoid the ball and Miss McDougall’s sharp tongue at the same time.
I wonder if Jo’s missing me. Is she sorry she was so moody yesterday? Does she believe me now? Or is she hanging out with Aisha Patel, slagging me off and asking Aisha over to play after school?
I scowl horribly to stop myself from getting sniffly.
Mum remembers the powercards and sprints off to stock up on a few so we’ll have light, heat and a hot meal later. My arms are aching from the heavy bags and I’m sick to death of shopping, walking and trying to get excited about a damp, greasy cellar in a tatty, crumbling old wreck of a house.
I push Misti over to a bench and sit down wearily, avoiding the chewing gum. It’s starting to drizzle, so it looks like Mum has her rainy day after all.
She comes up behind me and we’re huddled together before I know it, snuggled up like ragamuffin gypsies in the rain.
‘You must be tired, Indie. I know I am. Starving too. And poor old Misti – she’s been an angel. God, you don’t deserve this.’
I frown hard and wipe my face. It’s just the rain, honest. Mum doesn’t deserve this either. Not the bruises, not any of it.
‘Hey!’
Mum’s on her feet, waving a £20 note in the air and ploughing through the crowd with the pushchair. ‘Look at us – faces like a wet weekend! We’re hungry, we need cheering up – how about Pizzaland, one last blowout? What d’you say?’
‘Yes! Yes, please… oh, yes!’
It’s not finished exactly, but it’s a whole lot better.
We have scrubbed the floors, washed the walls, wiped the grime and mould off doors, windows and skirting boards. We have scoured the grease from the kitchen tiles and doused the cooker, the bath and the loo in bleach cleaner. For days, all I could smell was bleach.
Now all I can smell
is paint. We painted the kitchen walls cornflower blue – Misti did the low-down bits, I did the middle bits, and Mum stood on chairs and worktops to reach the high bits. We worked on a different wall each and moved round, so as not to drip paint all over each other. We still got speckled with blue. Blue fingers, blue splattered clothes, blue freckled faces, blue streaks in our hair.
Misti had stiff blue palms, cornflower-coloured face-paint and a solid blue fringe. We decided the blue footprints she’d made across the ratty old lino could stay.
When we’d finished we had bubble baths to soak off all the stains and streaks and blobs, then flopped down in the brown easy chairs and toasted our toes with the three-bar electric fire going full blast.
Misti and I fell asleep curled up, and when we woke Mum was painting the bathroom blue too. It was three in the morning. The fire was still blazing, the lights were still on and Mum’s favourite Oasis CD was playing quietly on my totsy CD player. It felt safe and warm, so I wriggled around a bit and went back to sleep.
We’ve been here five days now, and the flat is no longer brown and dark and cold.
The new carpet, not as scratchy as I thought, almost fits the room, and the floorboards that still show have been painted cornflower blue. The wet mattress is scrubbed and dry, and carefully disguised with a rumpled duvet and a scattering of soft toys.
The bookcase is rainbow-striped now, and loaded with paperbacks, board games and little baskets, boxes and bundles of pencils, brushes, scissors, beads, threads, wools and stacks of coloured card and paper. Misti has already produced a pasta/sequin/tinsel collage, pinned in pride of place above the leccy fire.
The doorless wardrobe is stuffed with freshly ironed clothes, the squeaky chest of drawers is scarily polka-dotted and packed with knickers, socks, tights, T-shirts.
Misti’s dolls are scattered across the carpet in a way they never were at Max’s, and it’s spaghetti for tea.
When the doorbell rings – thin and reedy and unfamiliar – we all jump. Then Mum laughs and says it’s only Jane, and I run to open the door.
Jane is Mum’s friend. They’ve known each other since we first moved here from Wales – she’s just about the only friend Max hasn’t stopped Mum from seeing. He tried, I think, but Jane is too sensible and determined to let herself be sidelined.
Jane works in an office and wears perfectly pressed suits in navy, grey or black with T-shirts or polo-neck sweaters in pale pastel shades. She wears high-heeled shoes that click when she walks and her hair is cut into a short, layered bob with expensive chestnut streaks among the mousy brown.
It’s just the turquoise and silver dangly earrings and bracelet and the small tattoo on her shoulder blade (only visible when swimming – Jane doesn’t do skimpy clothes) that betray the fact she’s not as sensible as she seems. Jane and Mum can talk for hours about dodgy music from the dim and distant past, about men, fate, reincarnation and whether feng shui, aromatherapy or meditation can save the world. Flaky. Seriously.
‘Wow,’ Jane says, stepping inside and looking around. ‘How long have you been in? Five days? What a difference!’
Mum rang Jane and told her we’d moved, the day of our mega shopping trip and the Pizza-land blowout. Jane was round an hour later with a bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine and a card that said ‘Good Luck in Your New Home’ above a picture of the roses-round-the-door cottage I’d dreamed about that last day at school, waiting for Mum and Misti.
The night after, she appeared with an Indian takeaway, a big box of jelly babies and a vast, faded pink and sky-blue carpet that she claimed she was throwing out. (We put it down in the bedroom Misti and I share.)
Now she’s coming to tea, for our official house-warming, and she’s brought chocolate cake, lemonade, more wine and a bin bag full of curtains in midnight-blue velvet that she swears were going cheap in a charity shop.
We scoff spaghetti and cake and drink too much lemonade, and talk and laugh and turn the CD player up as loud as it can go so we can dance. Misti crashes out on the brown squashy chair, cake crumbs all round her mouth, and Mum lifts her gently and carries her to bed, tucking her in with the old pink rabbit whose ears she loves to chew.
Then Mum and Jane crack open the wine and start talking grown-up stuff, so I stretch out on my beanbag with a sketchbook and a bundle of felt pens.
I draw the dream cottage with roses round the door, a mum and two little girls skipping through gardens that are filled with flowers. I draw a rainbow, a crock of gold and lots of green, rolling hills, more like the ones near Gran’s house in Wales than anything in our grimy northern town.
I draw a doodle in the corner that looks suspiciously like Max, then scrawl a big cross right through the middle to show he’s not wanted here. That makes me feel guilty, because it’s not like Max ever did anything mean to me. He could be good fun sometimes, bringing home pocketfuls of penny sweets and giving me two quid every Saturday to wash the big blue builder’s van. It looks like he’s history now, though.
I yawn and lie down for a while, and when I wake, stretching lazily and pushing felt pens across the carpet, Mum is crying quietly into her wine and Jane is handing her tissues and patting her hair.
‘He’s a loser,’ Jane says gently. ‘He’ll never change, Anna, you know that.’
‘I know, I know…’
‘You’re better off without him. Look at you all, you can breathe here – you’re not all creeping around scared to make a noise, say the wrong thing.’
‘I know,’ Mum sobs. ‘It’s just…’
Just what?’ Jane wants to know.
Mum pushes a curtain of fair hair back from her tear-stained face and smiles sadly. ‘Oh, Jane,’ she says. ‘I know you’re right, I know. It’s just that – well, I still love him. I can’t help it.’
Mum writes me a note to say I’ve had a bad cold and packs me off to school. I’m glad to escape the smell of paint and the wimpy electric fire and the big double bed that still smells faintly of pee. I have been dreaming of spelling tests and the nine times table and school stew for five days, but I feel oddly nervous as I mooch through the streets.
I’m not early – not early enough, anyway.
Getting lost in the graffiti-walled estate doesn’t help. I walk around for ages through rabbit-warren streets that look identical, my feet crunching on glass. A gang of small boys follow me for a while, shouting rude things about my blue fleece bobble hat, but I blank them and they melt away, bored. In the end, I emerge somewhere near the chippy, which means I’ve trudged right round in a circle. I have to skirt round the estate, instead, sulking furiously.
The bell is ringing as I slip through the gates, and long jaggedy lines of kids swarm around the doors, pushing and shoving to get inside. It’s taken me a whole hour to walk here, all because Hartington Drive is in the back of beyond.
I’m last through the classroom door, and Miss McDougall clocks me as I try to sneak invisibly to my seat.
‘Ah, Indigo,’ she booms, so that just about every head in the room swivels to stare. ‘Everything all right? How is your grandmother?’
‘Um, fine, I think…’
‘Do you have a note? Did you remember your topic homework?’
I give her the letter, return the emergency bus fare from last week and mumble something about dropping my topic book in a puddle, which doesn’t go down too well. Then Miss McDougall turns her attention to Shane Taggart, who makes a late but spectacular entrance on his skateboard, school bag flying out behind him. He gets a hundred lines for his trouble.
I edge along to my desk, then stop, the colour draining from my face. Aisha Patel is sitting in it, and she and Jo are so busy chatting and laughing they don’t even see me turn from white to pink to deep, dark red.
‘Had a brilliant time… your mum’s so nice… swimming club was excellent… do you think it’s too late for me to start gymnastics? My mum and your dad could take turns with the driving…’
I shuffle past and park my stuf
f at Aisha’s desk, because I know that if I say anything to her or Jo right now I’ll live to regret it. And Aisha Patel might not live to regret it.
I sit down, feeling sick and shaky. I make a big deal out of rummaging in my bag, because I’m scared that I might cry, and there’s no way I want anyone to see.
‘Hey, Indie, you’re back! How’s your gran? Is she OK?’
Why the sudden interest in Gran?
Aisha is fussing round my desk (her desk), beaming and telling me how much everyone’s missed me, how they were all so worried in case I’d gone forever.
‘What exactly are you talking about?’
Aisha says it’s OK, they all know, because Kevin Parker’s dad met Max in the Fox and Squirrel a few days back, and Max told him we’d gone down to Wales because Gran was ill.
‘He thought you’d be away quite a while,’ Aisha gushes, all sympathy and concern.
‘Well, I’m not,’ I say coldly. ‘I’m back. And, yeah, I can see you’ve missed me.’
Aisha looks crushed, and for a moment I feel bad, like I’ve stepped on her pet hamster or something. Then I remember. She’s the one who’s pushed me out of my seat. She’s the one who’s stealing my best friend.
‘I’ll get my stuff,’ Aisha says in a small, hurt voice, and I want to slap her for being so weak, so wimpy. If she were tough and mean and spiteful, she’d be easier to hate.
Still, I’m doing my best.
She scoops up her books and her bag and we swap seats. Jo pinches me hard as I flop down, and I giggle and swat her back and I can breathe again, because somehow, at last, everything is going to be OK.
‘So… how was Wales?’ Jo whispers later as we plough through a shedload of fractions. Miss McDougall can be really spiteful on a Monday morning.
‘Wales?’
‘You know, your gran, all that stuff. I don’t suppose you had time for postcards.’
Jo, we didn’t go to Wales,’ I tell her. ‘My gran’s fine. Really. That was just some line Max gave out to Kevin Parker’s dad.’
Indigo Blue Page 3