by Gwyneth Rees
That’s probably why Dad’s so strict about us finishing everything on our plates,’ Janice joked. ‘Cos he’s scared of Mum getting any fatter.’
Personally I think I’d prefer it if my own mother was a bit more relaxed about what she ate. She’s always on a diet, which she’s always breaking and blaming me for: ‘I thought I told you to hide these chocolate biscuits! It only took me two minutes to find them at the back of that cupboard. If you can’t hide them properly then we’re just not going to buy any and that’s that!’
I looked at my watch. Mum was usually here by now.
Mrs Bishop was telling Janice to go and change out of her school uniform. ‘You know how cross Daddy gets if you’re not changed by the time he gets home.’
I knew how cross he got. I’d seen him blow up at Janice once. I’d have to have spray-painted all the walls in our house to make Mum yell at me like that. I’ve always been quite scared of Janice’s dad. He is tall and skinny with a short greyish beard and eyes that never quite settle on yours when he’s talking to you. Whenever I see him he’s generally on his way to or from work wearing the same very smart grey suit and highly polished (by his wife) shoes. I once asked Janice what he worked as and she told me he had his own business. I’d argued that he couldn’t have, because if he did he’d be able to wear what he liked to work instead of that horrible grey suit, which looked to me about ten times more uncomfortable than our school uniform.
‘Well, at least he doesn’t go to work looking like he’s going to a fashion show, which is more than can be said for some people’s parents!’Janice had retaliated.
I didn’t rise to that. Knowing Mum, she’d take it as a compliment anyway. That morning she’d gone off to the hospital in the purple skirt she’d originally decided was too short to wear to work, but had changed her mind about after spotting Hamish in the casualty department. (‘If I waste any more time one of those nurses will snap him up!’)
The doorbell rang.
That’ll be Mum!’ I followed Mrs Bishop out into the hall.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Mum gasped. ‘I had to go and see a patient in Casualty. I thought I was going to be stuck there all night.’
I scowled. You don’t need half a brain to work out why every trip to the casualty department takes Mum twice as long as it used to.
Mum reached for my hand. ‘Has she been good?’
‘She’s always good. She’s been helping eat my chocolate cake, haven’t you, Laura? I offered to give her the recipe but she says you don’t have time to bake cakes these days.’
Mum laughed. ‘Poor Laura’s had a lot to put up with recently, haven’t you, pet?’ She squeezed my hand. ‘I promise I won’t make porridge for breakfast ever again. How’s that?’
Encouraged, I embarked on what I’d been trying to tell her that morning. ‘Mum, I’ve got a message from my dance teacher. I told Cheryl when she picked me up from class last night. Did she tell you about it when you got in?’
She shook her head. ‘What was she supposed to tell me?’
‘They can’t get the hall on a Tuesday any more, so they’re going to change the night to Wednesday. That means I’ll have Tuesday nights free now and that means I can go to Guides with Janice.’
Mum let go of my hand abruptly.
‘I know I didn’t want to go that much before, but I’ve been thinking about it – and about that barbeque they’re having—’
‘The biggest sausage sizzle in the whole of Britain,’Janice chipped in. ‘All the Guide companies in Birmingham are going to be there.’
‘Yes, and I really want to go, but you’ve got to actually belong to a Guide company, so if I join Janice’s now—’
‘I think not,’ Mum said coldly.
‘But that’s not fair!’
‘I’m not about to discuss it, Laura. I do not approve of Guides and that is final.’
‘But it isn’t fair—’Janice began.
Janice,’ her mother warned, but I could tell Mrs Bishop didn’t think it was particularly fair either.
I stared at Mum. It was as if a mask had crept over her face, shutting everybody out, including me. I suddenly felt sick. Mum was looking just how she had looked after Dad left and I had spent days stomping round the house, crying, ‘It’s not fair!’
‘You’re right, Laura,’ she had said stonily. ‘It isn’t fair. It especially isn’t fair on you. I’m afraid that’s something you’re just going to have to get used to about life – that it isn’t always fair.’
I pushed past Mum, out through the door and down the front path. I wasn’t even looking where I was going. If I’d looked I might have seen Mr Bishop’s car instead of running out into the road in front of it.
Chapter Five
I stood absolutely still, inches away from the car bonnet.
What happened next was so crazy I could hardly take it in. This shouting, screeching, unrecognizably mad woman threw herself at me, grabbing hold of my arms and shaking me until I thought part of me was going to snap off. I got such a fright I started to cry.
‘For God’s sake!’ Mr Bishop probably saved my life at that moment by climbing out of his car and shouting at both of us.
Mum stopped shaking me, but I continued to tremble anyway. My legs felt like the legs of a ninety-nine-year-old woman who’s just run the London Marathon. If Mum hadn’t been gripping my arms so tightly I think I’d have collapsed in a heap on the ground. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. My nose was all blocked up. I could hardly breathe. Mum’s grip on my upper arms was so tight it felt like it was cutting off the circulation.
‘Are you trying to get yourself killed, young lady?’ Mr Bishop’s face was bright red. ‘If I’d been going any faster—’
‘Yes,’ Mum interrupted, so hoarsely there was almost no sound there at all. ‘Thank you.’ The next minute she was propelling me at top speed across the road towards our house.
I found my voice. ‘Mum, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m really sorry’ I tried to stop her dragging me forwards, but she was too strong for me.
She fished her key out of her bag with one hand – the other still gripping me tight – and fumbled to fit it in the lock. Giving up, she hurled the keys at me. ‘You do it!’ Her face was pure white.
Inside, she let go of my arm. My immediate instinct was to run away from her, but I resisted, not wanting to seal my fate before I even knew what it was. My arm ached with pins and needles. I stood clutching it while she took off her coat, drew the curtains and switched on the lamp in the front room, fumbling through each of these tasks like someone with twice the usual number of fingers on each hand.
When she finally turned to look at me her eyes were huge and very dark.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘I’ve got loads of homework,’ I gasped, turning and fleeing up to my room.
I sat on my bed, hugging myself, praying that she wouldn’t come upstairs after me.
What had happened out there? In my whole life Mum had never acted like that, not when I fell out of the tree in our back garden and broke my arm, not when I got stuck on the roof after climbing the ladder she’d been using to clean the upstairs windows, not even when I set my shoes on fire by trying to dry them under the grill. I’m not saying she didn’t freak out on all those occasions – far from it – but it had definitely been my mother, Sylvie Rorison, freaking out. This time had been different. This time I had been accosted by a complete stranger.
I suddenly badly wanted to phone Dad.
It wasn’t that I wanted him to help. Dad’s far too far away to be any real help whatsoever. I know that. It would be torturing myself to start wishing he was here. I only ever let myself do that when I know I’m just about to see him again (and he’s only been able to come back to see me once since he left, because the flights from Australia are so expensive). I just wanted to hear his voice, that was all. I wanted to check that he was still there, still the same. I wanted him to tell me one of his rude jokes so I could rep
eat it to Mum and watch her screw up her face in disgust: ‘Laura, I’m so glad to be reminded of just how awful your father’s jokes are.’
As quietly as I could, I slipped through to Mum’s bedroom to use the extension. I didn’t have to look up Dad’s number. I was proud of the fact that I knew it – including the code for Australia – off by heart. I picked up the phone.
‘Maybe I should prescribe myself a tranquillizer!’ Mum gave a hollow little laugh at the other end.
‘Sylvie, do you want me to come over?’
The other voice was Marla’s. I haven’t really told you much about Marla yet, except that she’s the only person I can think of whose advice Mum actually listens to. I can’t imagine anyone else but Marla managing to persuade Mum to have her hair cut short. Marla lives in Birmingham too and she and Mum see each other almost every week. Marla got divorced the year before Mum and was the chief person Mum used to phone when all the legal stuff started with Dad. She’s got one son, called Oliver, who’s just gone away to college and she spends all her time worrying about whether he’ll remember he’s allergic to fish – I think I would if I came out in a great blotchy rash and nearly died of an asthma attack every time I ate the stuff – without her there to remind him.
‘Marla, I completely lost control.’ Mum was sounding really shaky. ‘It was a complete flashback, like it was happening all over again.’
‘Listen, pour yourself a gin. I’m coming over.’
‘God knows what my poor little Laura must be thinking—’
I suddenly felt too guilty to keep on listening.
The instant I’d replaced the handset I regretted it. I wanted to find out more. Mum had mentioned a flashback – a flashback to what?
I picked up the phone again.
It was the dialling tone.
Frustrated, I went downstairs and stood in the hall for a while, listening. I couldn’t hear anything at all. That was unusual. Mum usually switches on some music or the news or the microwave or all three as soon as she gets in from work. I’m always having to yell at her to turn down Rachmaninov – which I can’t even pronounce – or Beethoven or the Beatles because I can’t hear myself think to do my homework.
Tentatively I pushed open the door of the living room. ‘Mum?’ I whispered.
She was sitting curled up on the sofa, her shoes kicked off in the middle of the floor. She was staring down at something in her lap – a large flat book.
‘Mum.’
She heard me that time and looked up. Her eye make-up was all smudged. Hastily, she ran her fingers under her eyes and put down the book. ‘Laura.’
I badly wanted to run to her.
She stared at me for a couple of seconds. Then she held out her arms.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated over and over again, as if stopping saying it would stop her hugging me.
When finally she extricated herself, she held me before her at arm’s length and said, very sternly, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’
I couldn’t say anything. Relief was making my eyes fill up; relief that Mum was back again, my mum, the person I knew.
‘When’s Marla coming?’ I mumbled.
‘What?’
I could have kicked myself. ‘I mean, is Marla coming? I mean, sometime? To see us soon?’
‘Pretty soon,’ Mum answered, staring at me hard. ‘In about ten minutes, I should think.’
I blushed and looked down at my feet. I was treading on Mum’s book. I saw then that the book wasn’t really a book, not the kind you read, anyway. It was a photograph album.
I swooped down on it immediately. It was the album Mum hardly ever got out, the one with all the pictures of her when she was a little girl. I grinned as I found my favourite photograph. ‘You look so funny with your hair in pigtails. Tell me again what happened when you let your hair out on the way to school and Kathleen told on you . . .’ I stopped, sensing from her face that I’d said something wrong.
She tried to take the book. ‘Not now, Laura.’
I held on to it, flicking the pages over to find the other photo I really liked, the one of Mum and her sister, Kathleen, standing side by side in their school uniforms, looking incredibly solemn and formal. Whenever I look at that picture I always feel especially drawn to Kathleen, maybe because I know it was the last photo taken of her before she died.
‘Laura, please . . .’
I snapped the book shut and handed it to her. Mum always found it difficult to talk about Kathleen without getting upset, which was a pity, because I’d really have liked to have known more about what happened to her. I knew she was two years younger than Mum and that she was killed in an accident when she was ten. I knew that nobody, not Mum, not Granny and not Grandpa before he died two years ago, could ever say her name with a steady voice.
I looked up at Mum now, starting to think. Killed in an accident? A road-traffic accident? Knocked down by a car, maybe? I longed to ask questions, but if you’d seen the look on Mum’s face right then you’d realize why I just couldn’t. I was frightened I’d make her cry.
I was really glad when the doorbell rang.
That’ll be Marla.’ Mum looked relieved too. ‘Now go and get changed out of that school uniform. Do you realize you’ve got chocolate icing all down the front of that blouse? Here. Put this away for me.’ She gave me the photo album.
As I got changed I hoped Marla was doing a good job of cheering Mum up. Marla usually had a whole stack of stories about Oliver that make my escapades seem trivial in comparison. With any luck she’d be relating a particularly awful one right now. Maybe Oliver had eaten some fish as part of a student demonstration and been arrested by the police and had a hypersensitivity reaction in the police cell. He might even have been rushed to hospital in an ambulance. What if a special fish antidote had had to be rushed in from Alaska at the last minute to save his life? I imagined Mum trying to follow this by reminding Marla, ‘Laura nearly got run over by a car today’ and Marla snorting, ‘Is that all? You’re lucky!’
I sighed. I really envied Oliver. At least he was old enough to eat as much fish – and risk as much death – as he wanted. I longed for the day when I could run out in front of as many cars and spill as much chocolate icing down my front as I liked, without getting all this hassle about it.
I undid the clip I always wear to keep my hair off my face at school and turned my head upside down to brush it. I wondered what was going on downstairs. Usually when Mum and Marla get together they make so much noise talking and laughing I can easily hear them up in my room. Right now I couldn’t hear a thing. Was that a good sign or a bad one? What if they were keeping their voices low because they were talking about me?
I decided if they were talking about me I had a right to know what they were saying.
Sure enough, as I put my ear against the living-room door I heard my name.
‘Doesn’t Laura know the truth?’ Marla sounded very serious, not at all her usual self.
‘How can I possibly tell her? She’s far too young to understand. She’d probably hate me.’
‘But you say she’s pushing this Guides thing . . .’
I accidentally knocked the door with my foot. The voices inside stopped. I had no choice but to go straight in.
‘Here she is.’ Marla gave me an exasperated look. ‘Honestly, Laura, is the Green Cross Code out of fashion these days or what?’
‘It’s scaring your mother to death that’s in fashion these days,’ Mum answered drily. (Like I said, she hates sarcasm, but that doesn’t stop her using it herself.)
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ I protested.
They sighed and gave me a tell-us-something-else-we’ve-never-heard-before look. I lost no time in backing out of the room. I hate it when Mum and Marla gang up on me like that. It really makes me wish I wasn’t an only child. I’m sure there must be safety in numbers.
I waited outside the door to listen. I wanted them to go on with the conversation they’d been having bef
ore. What was it that Mum was keeping from me that she thought I was too young to understand? And what had Guides got to do with anything?
They started talking again, but now it was about Marla’s son. Apparently he’d spent the whole of his first term’s grant in his first three weeks at college. ‘He’s begging me for a loan, Sylvie. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Let him starve.’
‘Yes, I told him that. But what shall I do?’
Bored, I trudged back upstairs. I wished I could find out what was going on. It wasn’t like Mum to be this mysterious. She always talked to me, told me things.
I guessed I ought to get on with my homework, or Mum and Marla would start on at me about that as well. Mum’s bedroom door was open and I caught sight of the photograph album lying on her bed where I’d left it. She’d told me to put it away, hadn’t she? Maybe if she came upstairs and found it flung down on her bed she’d use that as an excuse to stay cross with me too. I knew she kept all the photograph albums in a pile on top of her wardrobe. I dragged her wicker chair across the room and used it to stand on so that I could reach. As I lifted the book upwards I lost my grip and just managed to keep hold of the spine to stop it falling. All the pages splayed out like a fan. A loose piece of paper fluttered out. Impatiently I jumped off the chair and picked it up.
It wasn’t a piece of paper. It was a loose photograph that at some time had been ripped down the middle and stuck back together with Sellotape. It was a photo of Mum and her sister that I’d never seen before. They looked sulky, as though they’d just had a fight. I stared at their clothes. Even though the style had changed, the Girl Guide uniforms were unmistakable.
Chapter Six
The next thing that happened is not something I’m exactly proud of. In fact, it’s something I nearly made up my mind not to tell you at all, but then I decided that it’s sort of essential to what happened afterwards.
The thing is, I got into trouble at school for bullying.