Massive

by Julia Bell

  She pauses for breath. ‘And I bet she didn’t tell you,’ she pauses spitefully, ‘that you look fat in that top.’

  She ignores me until we get back to the flat. ‘You know why I left your father? I was bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored.’ She looks at me sideways. ‘I thought we could spend the night at home together. Just you and me. Get a takeaway and a video.’

  ‘But, Mum, you said I could go.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, then.’ She stands in front of me, her arms folded. ‘Reckon I could still cut it? Will there be any older people there?’

  ‘But, Mum, you said,’ I repeat, pleading.

  ‘But it’s hard for me, meeting new people at my age. You have much more chance than me.’ She sighs. ‘I thought we were going to be like sisters.’

  ‘You wouldn’t enjoy it.’

  ‘Why not? It’s not a jelly and ice-cream party, is it? Not dressed like that.’

  I shrug. ‘It’s a girls’ party.’

  ‘Oh, and I’m not a girl any more then?’

  I don’t answer.

  14

  Paisley’s house is old. Semi-detached, Victorian, wide stone steps and a glass porch. When Mum pulls up outside she’s impressed.

  ‘Well look at that,’ she says, sounding surprised. ‘Looks like you’re making friends in high places. I knew that school was the right place for you. What do her parents do?’

  I shrug. ‘Dunno,’ I say.

  ‘Well find out.’

  She’s going to come back at half-eleven. ‘If you insist on dressing like that then you’re not giving me any option,’ she says, and waits in the car, the engine idling, until Paisley has opened the door.

  ‘Wow, Carmen. You look cool.’ Paisley is stoned; her eyes are narrowed to slits. ‘We’re getting ready.’

  Maxine is in the lounge drinking a bottle of Pink Grapefruit 20/20; there’s half a joint smouldering in the ashtray. Paisley says her parents are cool with her smoking. ‘They’re hippies,’ she says. ‘They do it all the time.’

  Her house is a proper home. Squashy sofas, rugs on the walls and bare floorboards.

  ‘Where d’you get your nails done? They’re, like, totally cool.’

  Paisley touches my hair, my tattoos. I tell her about Lisa’s stall. ‘Ooh, will you take me there? Please.’

  Maxine looks at me, takes another swig of her drink. ‘I want to get changed now, I look crap compared to Carmen,’ she whines.

  ‘No you don’t,’ Paisley says.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I say. But I know that when she twists her mouth like that, all mean and jealous, Maxine looks a mess.

  ‘Come upstairs and help me do my make-up.’ Paisley grabs my hand and leads me up the big, sweeping staircase to her bedroom.

  She shuts the door and moans about Maxine, tells me in whispers how she’s too clingy, how they never have fun any more. ‘I’d rather be your friend.’

  Paisley’s room is cluttered with girly things. On her dressing table there’s a row of Barbie dolls. Roller-Skating Barbie, with tiny roller skates and shiny tights; Horse-Riding Barbie in jodhpurs and tweed jacket; Ballet Barbie in a pink tutu and silk pumps, and a Girl-About-Town Barbie complete with mobile phone and glittery handbag.

  Paisley giggles when she sees me looking at them. ‘I collect them,’ she says.

  I pick up Roller-Skating Barbie and bend her legs behind her ears.

  ‘Yoga Barbie,’ I say, showing her.

  She squeals. ‘Oh you’re so funny, Carmen.’

  While Paisley puts on some mascara, I undress Girl-About-Town-Barbie. Her pink plastic body looks perfect: big tits, thin hips. I wish I looked like that. I pick out a pearly bead necklace from the jumble of Paisley’s accessories and tie it around her long Barbie neck.

  ‘Suicide Barbie,’ I say, holding her up so she swings like a hanged man.

  Paisley looks scared. ‘Carmen, that’s disturbing.’

  The boys arrive, bringing a gang with them. Trev, Rich, Dunc, Matt and Pete. I lose track of which one’s which. Paisley puts Craig David on the stereo, turns down the lights. She sits on the sofa, holding Carter’s hand. Maxine is in the corner, checking out Dean’s tonsils. The gang hangs around, cracking cans, casting furtive glances, sitting with their legs splayed like they’ve got something uncomfortable between them.

  ‘I brought a few mates,’ Carter says. ‘Hope you don’t mind. There’s more coming later, after the pub.’

  I perch on the sofa next to Paisley, feeling conspicuous.

  ‘Who’s yer mate?’

  ‘Carmen,’ Paisley says, ‘the new girl.’

  ‘Oh, aye, didn’t recognize you there.’ He sticks his hand out and stares at my chest. ‘Gorgeous.’ He grabs my hand tight, squeezing my knuckles.

  A few more girls from school turn up. Carter puts a seventies compilation CD on to try and get people dancing but no one’s drunk enough yet. He offers us some pills. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘this party’s getting me down, man.’

  Paisley takes one, but I refuse. He shrugs. ‘Your loss,’ he says putting one on his tongue and swallowing it with a swig of beer.

  Carter is the kind of boy who likes his girls meaty. He tells me this as he slides his hand across my breasts. I’m waiting in the corridor outside Paisley’s posh bathroom and I have to clench to stop myself from peeing. Suddenly the house is packed. Loads of people that no one knows have come down the road from the pub. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire on a Saturday night.

  ‘Geddoff,’ I say, my arm flailing against the air.

  ‘Come on, honey.’ He puckers his lips and presses them against my cheek. ‘Get loved up.’

  There’s a flush and the sound of a door unlocking. I try to squirm away from him, but I’m drunk, woozy and I lurch forwards into him.

  His hand slides up my jeans. It tingles where he touches me. He tries to push his hand between my legs.

  ‘You’re gorgeous,’ he says. ‘Anyone ever tell you that before?’

  He scratches my cheek with his chin; I can see where glitter has stuck to his stubble.

  One of the blokes, Dunc, or Matt, staggers out of the toilet. Carter reaches out a hand to steady him, stop him going headfirst down the stairs. I seize my chance and run into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

  Someone’s been sick in the bath and the shower curtain’s pulled down, ripped off its hooks. Paisley’s parents will go mad. I saw someone stubbing a fag out on the carpet earlier. I lean forwards trying to pee, I want to but I can’t. I’ve drunk too much 20/20, I can taste the sticky pink grapefruit round my lips.

  ‘Come on, bab, ‘urry up. I’m busting out here.’ It’s Carter. ‘Come on, I’ll be pissing in a plant pot in a minute.’

  One of my knots of hair is coming undone. I fix it in the bathroom mirror, shoving the grip in really tight.

  When I open the door he surprises me, pushes me backwards with his hand over my mouth. He rubs his other hand roughly across my breasts.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ he says, fumbling with the zip of my jeans.

  Then a rush of arms and screams. Someone slaps me. I look up to see Maxine, her face twisted into a sneer. ‘You bitch,’ she says, standing in front of me, breathing hard through her nose. She swipes at my hair, yanking out a hairgrip. ‘You bitch.’ Her eyes are huge and her cheeks are glowing. I think she’s done an E. ‘I’m gonna tell Paisley.’

  Carter is leaning against the wall, hands in the air as if someone is pointing a gun at him.

  ‘Weren’t me,’ he says. ‘She was all over me.’

  I sit on the wall outside waiting for Mum. It’s freezing. I’ve left my denim in there somewhere but I’m not going back in to get it.

  ‘This where the party is?’

  Two dreadlocked men, tattooed and pierced, are looking at me.

  ‘Yeah.’

  They shuffle down the path, one of them calls his friend on his mobile. ‘It’s just down the road, mate, yeah . . . big house on the right. Musi
c’s shit though. Yeh, yeh, we brought some tapes.’

  Someone opens the door and music thumps out into the street.

  Take me awaaaay, to your fantasyyyyy

  More groups of people are arriving, walking down the hill from the pub. The music stops abruptly and is replaced by heavy metal rock. Then shouting, the sound of glass breaking and thrash guitars screeching. It goes on for a bit, then suddenly it stops. There’s a pause, but only for a second, as if everyone is catching a breath, finding their second wind, then the thumping goes on, only now it’s louder. The duff duff duff duff of bass turned up too loud.

  People spill out on to the front steps. Boys pissing in the bushes behind me. A police car crawls past. I spark a cigarette. I wish Mum would hurry up.

  Paisley laughed when Maxine told her about Carter, she looked at me with her eyes huge and far away. It was Maxine who banned me; she pushed me out of the door and told me to piss off. I didn’t want to stay anyway. Bunch of losers.

  ‘Carmen! Get in the car. NOW!’ When I get in she makes me look in the mirror. My hair is undone and falling around my shoulders in untidy straggles and lipstick is smeared across my face, my chest.

  ‘No point in asking what happened to you, is there?’ she says, triumphantly. I sit in the front seat and listen to her going on. ‘I thought her parents were going to be here.’

  ‘So did I,’ I lie.

  When we get round the corner, she pulls up on to the kerb and calls the police.

  ‘That’ll sort them,’ she says, snapping her phone shut. ‘And honestly if I’d known it was going to turn into one of those parties I’d never have let you go.’

  15

  I lie on my bed, listening to the wind rushing around the tower. It hisses angrily through the gaps in the windows, making the curtains flap and twitch. I can still feel the mark of Carter’s hands across my chest, down my legs. I squeeze my thigh with my fingers until it pinches. I wish I wasn’t so fat. If I was thin and beautiful, Carter wouldn’t have dared to touch me.

  I flick through a copy of More! that Mum bought for me, although I’ve read it a thousand times already. The problem page is full of girls whose boyfriends have left them for their best mates. I’ll tell Paisley on Monday that I don’t want Carter, that it was all a big mistake. She’ll have to believe me. All the answers say that mates are more important than boys.

  At the bottom of the page is one short letter that says:

  I’ve always had a problem with my weight. A few months ago I started to make myself sick after meals and I’ve got really thin, but now I can’t stop and I throw up even when I don’t want to. Please help.

  The answer tells her to talk to someone, to phone a helpline, to write to a support group.

  I read the letter over and over. I don’t know what she’s moaning about. At least she got thin.

  Dad has phoned to say that I can stop with him over half-term. I won’t come back, I’ll stay there for ever. Once he’s got used to me in the house it’ll be fine. I’m sure of it. He says we can play Gran Turismo and Tekken.

  Mentally, I pack my bags, even though there’s still a week to go. I’ll get Lisa to do my nails specially so I can show him.

  Mum says she’s pleased. ‘It’ll be a blessed relief to get some time to myself.’

  ‘Slag!’ Maxine says it like she’s spitting.

  I turn the corner down the corridor towards the cloakrooms. But Maxine’s in front of me already, Paisley behind me, like they did to Kelly. They’re both in loads of trouble. Paisley’s house got trashed and Maxine’s mum found out that she’d done an E. And they’re both on report until the end of term for smoking in the toilets.

  ‘Bitch.’

  Pain in my side, something poking me in the back. Maxine’s got a compass in her hand. My fists clench.

  I look at Paisley, pleadingly. ‘I don’t want him,’ I say. ‘I never did.’

  ‘Liar!’ Maxine sneers. ‘I saw you trying to cop off with him.’

  Paisley won’t meet my eye. ‘Belly,’ she says, ‘cry baby.’

  ‘Yeah, fat cow.’

  ‘Carter reckons you’re a slapper.’

  ‘You never had a chance with him anyway.’

  ‘Don’t know why you bothered.’

  ‘Slag,’ they say together.

  Another punch and this time the point of the compass grazes my skin, a long, thin scratch, that will leave a jagged scar along the back of my hand.

  She says that I shouldn’t dress like a firework until I know how to control the explosion. ‘You’re only fourteen,’ she says. ‘You just have to learn to be more poised. And you’re banned from seeing Lisa. D’you hear me? Banned.’

  She’s bought me a dress. Red Indian style, with feather and bead tassels and embroidered trim. Same as the one in the catalogue, except close up the material is scratchy, see-through, flimsy, like the crêpe paper we had at primary school for making Christmas decorations.

  ‘It’s horrible.’

  ‘C’mon, try it on.’

  I pull off my top reluctantly while she unpacks her bags and spreads the dress out on the bed. I’m shivering, though I’m not especially cold. I wrap my arms around myself, try to stand behind her, waiting for her to turn round and look.

  ‘Pfffft.’ She blows out through her teeth. I pull my stomach in. ‘You’re not getting any thinner are you?’ She rummages in her bags. ‘If you try this on underneath, it will hold you in, give you a nice shape.’ She holds up a box. Support Girdle it says on the front.

  It’s made of hard, shiny elastic. ‘It’s like having an extra muscle,’ she says. ‘And so discreet. Come on, I’ll help you put it on.’

  I step into it as she holds it open, sprung apart like a trap.

  ‘Don’t struggle,’ she says, as it starts to stick at the top of my thighs. ‘There.’ She lets it snap into place over my stomach.

  ‘Owwww.’

  I wriggle uncomfortably in my new skin. It makes my stomach like a trampoline.

  ‘You could bounce rocks off that now,’ my mother says, as if reading my thoughts.

  To go with the dress, she’s bought me a pair of moccasin-style shoes. Brown suede with blunted ends and no heels. They look kind of trendy, but not on me. When I look in the mirror my legs, already cut short by the skirt of the dress, seem to end in flat, clumsy stumps, the flesh in between pasty tree trunks. I put my baseball cap on again, just to ruin the effect even more.

  ‘Put your legs together, that’s better. You’re not wearing trousers, you know, and come on, take your cap off. I want to brush your hair.’ And we’ll have to do something about those nails. They don’t match at all.’

  My hair is too long. I want it cut shorter but Mum says I’ll regret it. She pulls a nylon brush down hard through the tangles.

  ‘Owww. Mu-um, it hurts.’

  But she’s on a mission. Glitter falls out like dandruff across my shoulders.

  ‘I don’t care if it hurts. You’re my daughter, and I’ll have you looking nice. Not like some fifty-pence slapper, like that sister of mine.’

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ Lisa touches the scratch with the end of a paintbrush.

  ‘Fell over,’ I say.

  ‘How was your party? Did you knock ’em dead?’

  I shrug and tell her that I’m going to visit Dad for half-term. ‘He’s coming to get me tomorrow.’

  She raises her eyebrows. ‘Brian’s coming all the way down here?’

  I nod. ‘I wanted you to do my nails to show him.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  She takes off the beige polish that Mum put on. ‘What kind of thing d’you think he’d like?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know him very well, you know. Your mother would never introduce us to him properly. I think she thought we were too scummy.’

  ‘You’re not scummy,’ I say, indignant. I don’t know why Mum’s so cross with Lisa, she’s nice.

  She smiles. ‘Don’t you worry, she’s just having a funny turn. We’ll all
still be here when she comes back round again.’

  She does my nails a glittery camouflage, with swirls of olive green and silver.

  ‘There you go,’ she says. ‘Little soldier.’

  16

  The first day of half-term and it’s raining. Pissing it, Grandad said, before he went to the pub. I’m at Nana’s with my homework, watching telly in the gloom. Dad cancelled yesterday afternoon. An urgent order had come in, he said. ‘I’m going to be working all week. I won’t be able to spend any time with you, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You see,’ Mum said, ‘it’s that Moira. Do anything for her he would.’

  When I spoke to him on the phone Mum stood behind me, rubbing her hands, chin nearly on my shoulder.

  ‘What’s he saying? What’s he saying?’ she whispered so loudly I could hardly hear his voice.

  ‘How’s my favourite teenager?’ he said.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, my voice a squeak, trying not to cry.

  ‘Really?’ He didn’t sound convinced. ‘I’ll be down your way in a couple of weeks. I’ll bring you something nice. I’m sorry. OK, sugarpuff? You keep smiling. OK?’

  Mum snatched the receiver back off me.

  ‘I won’t have you giving her false hopes, Brian,’ she said. ‘You promised to have her at half-term. And now my mother’s got to look after her. At her age.’

  He said something I couldn’t hear and my mother laughed too loudly, sarcastically. ‘Trouble with you Brian, is you’re a bloody liar.’

  Grandad’s hedge has become a public nuisance. A man from the council has been round, told him to cut it down.

  ‘I pay my taxes, same as everybody else,’ he said. ‘I have rights, you know. Rights.’

  Nana’s given up nagging him because it doesn’t do any good. ‘He’ll cut it down soon enough,’ she says. ‘He’ll have to.’

  It’s Dynasty week on UK Gold. The whole series from start to finish in one week. ‘Love this programme,’ she says, cracking a humbug between her teeth. ‘I thought we could go to the shops in a bit, get some treats.’

  She shifts in her seat, her thighs rippling under the thin material of her dress. She pushes her glasses up her nose and leans closer to the TV, reaching over for the bag of sweets and sitting them on her lap like a cat.