I know his name was Blue, but that’s all.
‘I don’t know who my dad is,’ I say.
Aisha shrugs. ‘I don’t know where mine is,’ she says.
I frown. ‘Isn’t he at home? Or at work, you know?’
‘No. He left us, six months ago. Mum thinks he’s gone back to India. That’s why we came here, so Mum could be near her parents. It’s weird, though. She won’t talk about it. It’s like she’s ashamed or something. And if anyone asks about Dad, everyone says he’s away on business, even though he’s not. Why can’t people just tell the truth?’
‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘Sorry, Aisha, about your dad. I never realized.’
‘What difference does it make?’
I shrug. ‘None, I s’pose.’
‘See? It’s you that matters in the end,’ she says. ‘Doesn’t matter who your dad was. Doesn’t matter about your mum and her ex. Doesn’t matter if your flat’s got fungus in the bathroom.’
‘It hasn’t,’ I protest.
‘Well then,’ says Aisha. ‘There you go. Could be worse.’
The bell goes for lessons and we leg it back up the playing field, but everyone’s inside and sitting down by the time we hurtle into the classroom, red-faced and out of breath.
‘Sorry, Miss McDougall,’ says Aisha.
‘Humphhh,’ says Miss McDougall. ‘Don’t let it happen again.’
Jo’s sitting by Aisha’s desk, beaming out a sparkly smile. ‘I got your stuff out,’ she whispers to Aisha.
‘Thanks.’
I slump down into my chair and wonder when the hurt will go away, but then Aisha dumps her bag on Jo’s old desk and flops down next to me, grinning. Miss McDougall shoots a withering glance at Jo, Aisha and me in turn.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ she booms. ‘But this musical chairs business stops – today. Understood?’
‘Yes, Miss McDougall,’ Aisha and I chorus.
‘Sorry, Miss,’ Aisha adds for good measure.
Jo’s silent, glowering, but I’m past feeling sorry for her now.
She’s not worth it.
And I have Aisha sitting next to me, who doesn’t fuss and flounce and play silly payback games. It feels OK.
Mum is ill for a week, maybe two. It may not be flu, but she’s ill all the same, and it’s scary. She sleeps a lot and she cries a lot, and often, when I get home from school, she looks like she’s just got out of bed.
Some days Misti is bathed and clean, and dressed in her spotty tights and her turquoise pinafore and her flowery top. She plays with her crayons and her collage stuff and her play dough, and she seems OK. Other days, I get home from school and she’s grubby and tear-stained, her face smeared with jam or Marmite.
Sometimes she’s still in her pyjamas, and sometimes she’s wet or dirty because Mum forgot to change her nappy. Those nights, I make beans on toast or cheese on toast for tea, then dump Misti in the bath with all her dolls and treat her to a squoosh of my peachy bubble bath and let her borrow my dolphin facecloth.
Jane comes every other night, sometimes with chips, sometimes with pizza, once with a Chinese takeaway that nobody liked. She makes sure there’s always cash in the emergency blue purse. She makes sure there’s always at least one spare powercard. She makes sure Mum gets dressed and the two of them talk and talk, and Mum promises not to ring Max again.
I don’t tell Jane about the nights that Mum sneaks out of the flat when she thinks I’m asleep. She’s never gone for long, maybe ten, twenty minutes, just long enough to walk down to the phone box. I lie awake, watching the minutes tick by, until I hear the door click shut and I know she’s home again, safe and sound.
Jane remembers to pay the rent before Mrs Green gets in a tizz, and then at last Mum’s money comes through and she seems a bit better. We do a big shop in the supermarket, bulk-buying nappies and pasta and peanut butter and jam.
We’re loading up the pushchair with carrier bags when we see Ian Turner, smart and smiley in his blue business suit, marching along behind the tills.
‘Hello, Mr Turner,’ I say, and he stops, grinning.
‘Ian,’ he corrects, pointing to a little red badge on his lapel.
Ian, Customer Services, it says.
‘I didn’t know you worked here,’ I say.
‘You do now! It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it,’ he jokes. He looks at Mum. You can tell he likes her, just from the way he looks.
‘Well, at least that flu’s gone,’ he says. ‘You’re looking great.’
Mum goes pink. She does look OK, though. Her hair is clean and shiny, drifting loose across the shoulders of her blue velvet top. Her old jeans, patched and faded, are tucked into the tops of her blue suede boots.
‘Can I give you a lift home with the shopping at all?’ Ian asks. ‘I can drop it off later, no hassles. Then this little lady won’t have to balance a bag of nappies on her knee…’
He produces a wrapped fudge from his pocket and pretends to magic it from Misti’s ear, making her giggle.
‘Bet you’re too old for tricks like that,’ he says to me. He fiddles about by my ear for a moment. ‘Yup, thought so. Nothing there.’
Why do people always think eleven is too old for magic?
‘We’ll be fine, Mr Turner – Ian,’ Mum is saying. ‘You’ve done so much for us already, I really can’t thank you enough. But we’ll walk home today – we’ll enjoy it, won’t we, girls?’
I nod, hooking Misti by the hand. She beams at him, her mouth already brown and sticky with fudge.
‘OK, then, see you around, Anna,’ he says.
‘Bye, Ian.’
As we walk away I find a wrapped fudge in my pocket. I turn to shout thank you, but Ian has disappeared.
When we get home, Mum makes up a bag of groceries to replace the stuff Ian gave us. She adds a bottle of cheap wine instead of the chocolate and gets me to leave it on the front doorstep with a big label attached.
As I’m sneaking away, the door snaps open and I’m collared by Mrs Green. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she says crossly.
‘Oh?’ I swallow hard. She smells of mint humbugs today.
‘Come inside.’
I feel like Hansel and Gretel in Misti’s book of fairy tales, wandering into the witch’s house. We creep across the tatty hallway and Mrs Green opens her door wide. Inside, her flat’s stuffed with lumpy, chintz-covered chairs and side tables piled up with china ornaments. The walls, papered in something swirling and mustard coloured, are crammed with old paintings in heavy frames, embroidered samplers and cute kitten-in-the-basket calendars for years long gone.
‘Sit down,’ Mrs Green commands, and I balance nervously on the edge of a hard, tweedy armchair with shiny polished arms. Is she going to tell me off? Offer me Earl Grey tea and cucumber sandwiches? Ask me why Mum was round the back of the house last Sunday morning, digging weeds out of flower beds, dressed in her nightie?
She scrabbles around in a drawer for a moment.
‘Ah, here they are.’
It’s photos. Mrs Green is showing me thick, creased, faded brown photos from a million years BC. One shows a frowny man in a moustache and top hat, sitting by a big potted plant. Another shows an older Mr Moustache, this time with a curly-fringed wife in a button-up dress with a skirt that sticks out at the back. Three frowny children, two boys dressed in white-collared suits and a girl in a ruffle-necked frock, stand stiff and still beside them.
‘Mr William Henry Poole,’ the old lady explains. ‘My great-great-grandfather.’
So that’s where she gets the frowny face.
Then she shows me a sheet of lined paper, filled with spidery handwriting. It’s a family tree.
‘Right,’ I say, baffled. ‘Very nice.’
Mrs Green points out William Henry Poole, hovering near the top of the tree with Matilda Johanna Poole (née Wilmott). Then she traces a path downwards to Audrey Louisa Green (née Poole).
‘That’s me,’ she says
.
‘Oh.’
Mrs Green puts the photographs and the family tree into a padded envelope and hands it to me.
‘For your school project,’ she says. ‘All the dates are there, so you can see exactly who lived here in Victorian times. Will it be useful, do you think?’
‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Green,’ I say, amazed.
‘Take care of it, now,’ she barks.
‘I will.’
Mrs Green offers me a mint humbug on the way out. She’s not so bad, I suppose.
One afternoon, I get home from a late rehearsal and find Mum and Ian Turner chatting and drinking mugs of coffee in the kitchen.
‘How’d it go?’ Mum asks, pouring me a glass of milk and shaking the biscuit tin. ‘Indie’s got the lead part in the school play, you know,’ she says to Ian. ‘She’s going to be Oliver.’
‘A star in the making,’ Ian Turner says. ‘When’s the big night?’
I tell him. Not so far away as it seemed before. Not so far away at all.
‘Get me a ticket, OK?’ Ian says. ‘I’d love to see it. I want a good seat, mind, in the middle, near the front, next to this very beautiful young lady…’ He ruffles Misti’s hair and breaks off a sneaky piece of biscuit for her.
‘OK.’
I think Mum’s feeling better.
*
Miss McDougall gives me a star for bringing in the photos of William Henry Poole, and helps me photocopy them in the school office. She tells me to copy out the family tree, underlining the Victorians in red gel pen. Mum suggests drawing a big, leafy tree-shape round it, plus a gnarled old trunk and wiggly roots.
I look at the photocopied image of William Henry Poole and Matilda Johanna Poole and their three frowny-faced kids (Albert, Edward and Julia). What did it feel like to be eleven years old 150 years ago? Miss McDougall says that life Wasn’t Easy back then. I wish someone would tell her that’s it’s not exactly a picnic now.
‘Think hungry,’ Miss McDougall says when Aisha and I are acting out the workhouse scenes. ‘Think lonely, think lost,’ she says when we’re trying to put some feeling into Oliver’s solo song. ‘Think scared,’ she says when we’re acting out the bit where Oliver gets stolen away by Bill Sykes, or the bit where Bill kills Nancy and Oliver can’t do a thing to stop it happening.
I can do all that. I can do hungry, lonely, lost, scared, and more.
‘Good girl, Indie,’ Miss McDougall says. ‘Good girl.’
We have rehearsals after school every Monday and Friday. It’s not so hard to learn all those words, not when you’re all in it together, scene after scene. It gets so it’s like a story running in your head, a Disney film you know by heart, a nursery rhyme you can say forwards, backwards, sideways.
We have singing practice with the whole class every afternoon, just for half an hour, till we know all the songs. Miss McDougall says we need more practice, but you can tell she’s pleased. Sometimes, Aisha and me have extra practice at lunchtimes, polishing up the solo song or going over some tricky scene.
Miss McDougall sets a competition to design a poster for the show, and Iqbal wins with a drawing of a sad-eyed boy holding out a bowl. Miss Kearns and Mr Leonie are painting backdrops for us, and Kai’s mum comes in and measures everyone for costumes. We get a letter home, asking if anyone’s parents can help with the sewing, and Mum says she’ll have a go.
Miss McDougall sends her acres of sugar-pink lining fabric and a sample dress, and she stitches ten girly frocks for the flower-seller scene in just one week.
Mum’s up every morning now, before I go to school, making porridge with a swirl of honey, pouring orange juice, tidying the flat. She sleeps, she eats, she even laughs. She keeps Misti clean and tidy, plays with her, goes to the park, takes her to toddler group. She gets the shopping every day, she washes and irons, she makes soup and stew and macaroni cheese and apple crumble with custard. She’s stopped crying the whole time, and she never talks about Max any more.
She never sneaks out late at night, when she thinks I’m asleep, to ring him.
Sometimes she fetches shopping for Mrs Green, or sits up late drinking coffee and laughing with Ian Turner.
Jane’s stopped worrying. I’ve stopped worrying.
We’re free.
Mum notices that I haven’t been to Jo’s house for a very long time. ‘It’s OK, you know, if you want to,’ she says. ‘I’m OK now, really. I know how wonderful you’ve been, keeping things together here, looking after Misti. I’m sorry I put you through that, Indie. But it’s fine now. Go and enjoy yourself a bit. Go to Jo’s.’
I shrug.
‘Or ask her here again, if that’s easier? We could have pizza, make popcorn…’
‘I don’t see Jo much any more,’ I say.
OK, I see her every day, but I can’t look at her. If she walks towards me, my eyes slide away and I turn my back. There are only so many times you can lie down flat and let someone walk all over you.
Mum looks stricken. ‘Oh, Indie, love, I had no idea…’
She puts her arms round me for a moment and we cling on, squeezing hard. Misti comes up, looking anxious, and burrows into the middle of us. We’re a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, messed-about sandwich.
When we break away, Mum makes hot chocolate and floats marshmallows on the top. Misti’s face is streaked with chocolate and goo.
‘Mum…’
‘Yup?’
‘Could I ask someone else? Gould I ask someone else to tea?’
Aisha walks home with me after rehearsals on Friday, and she doesn’t moan about how far it is or tell me I’ll have to go to Rathbone High. She likes 33 Hartington Drive.
‘It’s huge,’ she says in awe. ‘Really spooky, just like your drawing.’
When the curtain twitches and Mrs Green waves, I wave back, and Aisha joins in. ‘Is she the landlady?’ Aisha wants to know. ‘I thought you said she was mean and scary?’
‘Oh, she’d like to be,’ I say. ‘But she’s not. We keep the flower beds at the back weeded and buy her mint humbugs, and she’s a pussycat.’
‘Oh.’
Aisha likes the flat too.
‘Definitely no fungus,’ she says, eyeing the walls. ‘It’s huge! Oh wow, your room is so cool!’
Last week, while I was at school, Mum painted bluebirds all round the doorway, swooping and diving and dipping down towards the skirting boards. Once she’d checked I liked it, she added a scattering of bluebells growing up from the floorboards.
Aisha’s right, it’s cool.
We eat pizza and shop-bought cream cakes, and sip hot chocolate with melted marshmallows because Aisha’s never tried it before. Then we make popcorn and Ian Turner comes round just in time to share. Aisha and I steal a dish of hot, buttery corn and flop down in my room playing CDs. Misti charges in and we dress her up as a fairy, all pink net and fluffy wings. I make her a wand from card, silver glitter and a green garden stick, and Aisha makes a crown out of sweet wrappers, dried pasta and the back of the cornflakes box. Misti tiptoes away to cast spells on Mum and Ian.
‘She’s so cute,’ Aisha says. ‘Your sister. I wish I had a sister.’
‘You can have Misti…’
‘Nah. Really. So cute. And your mum is really nice, really young and pretty. She likes blue, doesn’t she? The colour blue?’
‘Mmmm. A fortune-teller told Mum that blue was her lucky colour, when she was sixteen. She always wears blue. Blue boots, blue skirts, blue jeans, blue tops, blue jackets. That’s why she called me Indigo, why Misti is Misti. I suppose we should be grateful she didn’t name us Ultraviolet and Navy, or Turquoise and Sky.’
We giggle. I don’t mention that I’ve often wondered if Mum fell for Blue because of his name. I couldn’t exactly have a dad called Red, could I? And Danny, he had blue-dyed dreadlocks. Even Max has a blue builder’s van and blue eyes. Scary-blue, piercing, ice-blue.
‘It’s so romantic,’ Aisha sighs. ‘Does it work?’
‘Does what work?’
‘Does it bring her luck?’
I pull a face.
‘What do you think?’
Mum has a job.
She’s working at the supermarket, part-time, so she starts at ten and finishes at three, just in time to meet me from school on the days when I’m not rehearsing. Misti gets to stay in the supermarket crèche while Mum works, and she loves it. Everyone is happy.
Mum looks very young and sweet in her little white cap, her hair scraped up into a bun or a spiral of plaits. She wears a candy-striped nylon tabard over her blue top and skirt, a red enamel name badge like Ian’s. It says, Anna, Store Assistant.
The first week, Mum stacks shelves and moves boxes around in the warehouse. She meets me at school every afternoon, her eyes bright, her cap and her tabard folded neatly in her blue suede shoulder bag. Misti curls up in the pushchair, pink-faced and happy.
Every time, Mum produces a different treat for the long walk home. An iced bun, a punnet of strawberries, French bread still warm from the bakery ovens.
The second week, Mum gets to work in the supermarket cafe, clearing the tables and wiping up spills and emptying the dishwasher. She likes that too. She brings home egg mayonnaise baguettes that didn’t sell in time, and chocolate muffins, Danish pastries, a whole cheese-and-onion quiche.
‘You wouldn’t believe the stuff they give away at the end of each shift,’ she tells me. ‘Just to make sure the food on sale is ultra-fresh. We can eat like kings.’
The third week, she’s put on the checkouts. It’s easy, she says. The computerized till does all the hard work, and she just has to scan the bar codes and say friendly things to the customers.
And when her pay cheque comes, at the end of the month, we’re going to be rich.
They ask Mum to work the morning shift on Saturday, pay day, to cover for a girl who’s off sick. Mum agrees.
‘Don’t let them take advantage,’ Ian tells her. ‘Tell them you need Saturdays for your kids.’
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