After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby

by Natasha Farrant

  ‘How could you do it?’ cried Jas, meaning how could Joss be so cruel to the rats. She has decided she hates him, even though she has never actually spoken to him.

  ‘How did you do it?’ asked Twig.

  ‘Don’t encourage him,’ said Flora.

  ‘But I really want to know!’

  They all crowded round him except Zoran, and Joss looked as relaxed as if he was in his own home surrounded by his oldest friends. ‘We did loads of planning,’ he said. ‘But they’re obviously very well trained.’

  ‘I always said they enjoyed the car rides,’ nodded Twig. ‘Didn’t I, Zoran? And you never believed me.’

  ‘I’m going to make lunch,’ said Zoran.

  I invited Joss to eat with us but he said he couldn’t because he was theoretically grounded for the rest of his life and had to get back.

  ‘There wasn’t enough food anyway,’ said Zoran when he had gone.

  Joss texted me as soon as he got back to say his grandparents had gone out and did I want to go and watch a movie. Flora came with me. She said Joss might have saved me from Dodi’s bullying but she didn’t trust him further than she could throw a cat.

  ‘Which is also cruel to animals,’ I told her. ‘And you sound like Zoran. I don’t think he likes Joss either.’

  ‘Zoran is not entirely devoid of sense,’ said Flora.

  She decided we should watch Twilight.

  ‘But he’s a boy,’ I said, and she said duh, of course, and that this was a test.

  ‘He’ll hate it!’

  ‘Its why he hates it that’s important.’

  I haven’t been inside Mr and Mrs Bateman’s house for ages. They used to have a party every Christmas but they stopped a few years ago, Dad says because a lot of their friends died or moved away and they found they didn’t really like the people who were left. Not even us, he says, and no wonder because we are so noisy, what with Flora’s music and everybody shouting all the time. So now there are no parties and at Christmas they just give us jars of homemade marmalade, but their house hasn’t changed a bit.

  It should be exactly like ours, but it isn’t. I mean the layout is the same, but our house feels quite cool and dark and echoey because the floor in the hall is these old marble tiles and in the other rooms it’s all wood Mum had painted black to show off the carpets they bought in Anatolia when they went back-packing there with Flora when she was a baby. We have to stuff cushions and scarves on our windows to stop them from rattling when it’s windy, and we have these massive thick curtains because of the draughts, royal blue velvet with random crimson flowers Mum started embroidering then gave up. Joss’s grandparents’ house is very quiet and warm, because they have pale green carpet everywhere and these new windows that don’t let in draughts. All their furniture matches. Mr and Mrs Bateman have grey hair and wear beige cardigans and do a lot of gardening. It seems quite extraordinary to me that Joss is their grandson.

  Joss passed the Twilight test. He laughed out loud at the sparkly vampire bit and he squirmed through all the love scenes, but he liked the camera work and he thought Victoria, the beautiful evil she-vampire, was awesome.

  ‘The other one, the little female vampire, she was cool too,’ he said when it was finished.

  ‘Alice,’ said Flora. ‘I love her hair.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Joss, ‘but I liked the way she ripped that psycho vampire’s head off at the end.’

  Flora looked almost approving, but then she frowned and asked him what he thought about the film’s anti-feminist message and the way it reinforces gender stereotypes. Only Flora can ask questions like that and not sound like a nerd.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Joss. ‘Think about it, I mean.’

  ‘The weak and feeble woman, the strong dominant male!’ cried Flora.

  ‘I thought women liked dangerous men,’ said Joss and Flora went pink. And then I asked Joss if he wanted to see the footage from yesterday and he said ‘Hell, yeah!’ and we all huddled up on the sofa to watch it and Joss laughed and laughed.

  ‘It’s brilliant!’ he said. ‘And doubly amazing seeing as you were filming in secret.’

  ‘It wasn’t very secret by the end.’

  ‘Blue’s always filming stuff,’ grumbled Flora, like what she meant was ‘the amount of filming she does, she b****y well should be good’.

  ‘Well it shows.’ Joss smiled at me and Flora’s grumbling didn’t matter so much. And then we all sat on the sofa a bit more and Joss flipped through other things I had filmed before. He laughed at the one of himself climbing over our garden wall, and then he said let’s have a drink and Flora said no.

  ‘I don’t drink,’ said Flora. ‘And Blue’s too young.’

  I said I’d like a drink, Joss said ‘That’s my girl’ and gave me a hug, but Flora ignored us.

  ‘We have to go,’ she said, and I have never heard her sound so prim. ‘We’re having dinner with our parents.’

  ‘Woohoo,’ said Joss.

  Flora went pink again.

  ‘Come on, Blue,’ she said. ‘We’re going home.’

  I wriggled out from under Joss’s arm.

  ‘You could come too,’ I told him.

  ‘I’m not sure I could bear the excitement,’ he whispered.

  ‘You’ve got a crush on him,’ said Flora on the way home.

  ‘I do not!’ I told her.

  ‘Yes you do. You’re falling for him big time.’

  ‘We’re friends!’

  ‘Well I don’t think you should hang out with him,’ said Flora. ‘He has a very dodgy attitude towards women.’

  ‘Just because he didn’t agree with you about gender stereotypes,’ I mumbled, but we were already home and she swept into the house without listening to me.

  People who think that being friends with a boy is the same thing as having a crush really annoy me.

  And so now here we all are, waiting for the parents. We laid the table, and Jas decorated it with some late roses from the garden and ivy which she trailed around the plates. Flora got out Mum’s recipe books and she and Zoran are learning how to make chicken casserole and dumplings, because Flora has said she will scream if she ever so much as sees another sausage. They are listening to the Rolling Stones as they cook, and even though Flora says the Stones are ancient she is singing along just as loudly as Zoran. Dad has called from Paddington and Mum has called from Heathrow and they are both on their way home. The Babes are dancing round the kitchen, and I am going to join them.

  Sunday 23 October: Early Morning

  Dinner was hopeless. I mean properly hopeless, as in all the hopes we had that it was going to be a lovely evening were dashed almost immediately. If I had filmed it, which I didn’t because Flora wouldn’t let me, it would have gone something like this (after everyone had kissed, and Mum had exclaimed over the table decorations, and Dad had poured wine for him and Mum and Zoran, and we had started to eat and got over the surprise that dinner was actually nice, and Jas had told the parents all about Friday and the rats):

  MOTHER

  (turning wistfully to Blue)

  Darling, I wish I had known all this was going on at school.

  BLUE

  (wimping out of what she really wants to say)

  That’s all right, Mum.

  FLORA

  (not wimping out of what Blue really wants to say)

  How could you possibly have known since you’re never here?

  ZORAN

  Flora, I don’t think that’s very fair on your mother.

  FLORA

  (snarling)

  Shut up, Zoran.

  MOTHER

  Darling, please don’t speak to Zoran like that. He’s quite right. I am not the only parent round this table who is often absent.

  FATHER

  (looking startled)

  Don’t bring me into this.

  FLORA

  Why on earth not?

  MOTHER

  I Skype every day! Or at
least I did, until the connection stopped working.

  FATHER

  How can the connection not be working? I only just installed it!

  MOTHER

  YOUR FATHER DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THE CONNECTION WAS BROKEN!!!

  FLORA

  You’re both behaving like children.

  TWIG

  I want to have my birthday party at the Natural History Museum.

  Which at least stopped the Battle of the Skype Connection, but started another one about What Parents Should or Shouldn’t Be Prepared to Do for Their Children’s Birthdays. Twig’s friend Jason had a birthday sleepover party at the Science Museum last weekend, and now Twig wants to do the same thing in the Natural History Museum for his birthday next month, because ever since our trip there with Zoran it is his favourite museum.

  ‘But where do you sleep?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Under the diplodocus,’ said Twig.

  ‘That doesn’t sound very comfortable.’

  ‘It’s not supposed to be comfortable,’ said Twig. ‘In fact, you’re not really supposed to sleep. They take you round the whole museum by torchlight, and you play games.’

  ‘What, all night?’

  ‘At Jason’s party,’ said Twig, ‘we went to bed at half-past four in the morning. Or rather, we got into our sleeping bags. We didn’t have beds, or even mattresses. I would also like a sleeping bag.’

  ‘We have lots of sleeping bags, son,’ said Dad. ‘From our old back-packing days.’ He sort of grinned at Mum but she ignored him.

  ‘I don’t think I can do all-night parties,’ she told Twig. ‘Not while I’m living in different time zones.’

  That was when Zoran bundled Flora and me away from the table and made us do the washing-up.

  ‘But you sleep right underneath the dinosaur!’ Twig began to cry, and Flora balled her fists in the soapy water. ‘He’s a hundred and fifty million years old!’

  ‘Get the ice cream out of the freezer,’ Zoran told me. He took Flora by the shoulders.

  ‘I can’t stand them,’ she whimpered. ‘I mean it. I hate them.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Zoran.

  There’s only one thing that stops Jas crying, and that’s if Twig beats her to it. ‘You take us,’ she ordered Dad. ‘If she’s too tired.’

  ‘I, um, well,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, son. I’m going to be a bit tied up for your birthday.’

  Flora walked out, slamming the door.

  Nobody ate the ice cream.

  Sunday 23 October: Late Evening

  Dad has gone again, after another argument, this time over Christmas. Mum, who has now agreed to sleeping with dinosaurs, tried to make up for the fact that she ever hesitated by suggesting that we all spend Christmas in New York, where she has a friend who can lend us her apartment, and the plane tickets would be our present. Even Flora was excited. Mum asked me if I thought it would be good to get away this Christmas, and even though I would rather be at home, I said yes because it was so lovely to see her smile. And then she looked at Dad and said, ‘What now, David?’ And he looked sheepish and she sighed and said ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, not that again.’ Because Dad is terrified of flying, and has vowed that he will never set foot on an aeroplane ‘unless he absolutely has to’.

  ‘Well,’ said Flora, ‘you absolutely have to now.’

  ‘I don’t see why your mother can’t come home for Christmas,’ said Dad, and they argued until he left.

  Mum went to bed straight after dinner. We all pretended to go at the same time as her, but then snuck into Flora’s room.

  ‘Are they going to get divorced?’ Jas curled up against Flora in her bed with the covers pulled over them. I sat on the sheepskin rug on the floor with Twig.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Flora.

  ‘What will happen?’ asked Jas.

  ‘They’ll live in separate houses and never see each other,’ said Twig.

  ‘So no change there, then,’ said Flora.

  ‘Jason lives half with his mum and half with his dad,’ said Twig. ‘Do you think we’ll have to do that?’

  ‘Live in China?’ said Jas. ‘In New York? In Warwick?’

  ‘There is no way I’m moving to Warwick,’ said Flora.

  ‘We should run away,’ said Twig. ‘That would show them.’

  ‘Show them what?’ I asked, and Twig admitted he didn’t know.

  Monday 24 October

  What with one thing and another, we had all almost forgotten about the incident with the rats, except Zoran.

  ‘You have to make it count,’ he said this morning. ‘Otherwise it will have been no more than a prank.’

  ‘She deserved it!’ I protested, but Zoran was on a roll.

  ‘You must show that you are better than her. You must put a stop to it, before she retaliates. Violence only begets violence.’

  ‘It’s not a blooming war, Zoran,’ said Flora.

  They all cheered when I came into class this morning. Jake Lyall had woken up long enough to lead them, standing on the teacher’s desk with Tom Myers and Colin Morgan. Then Cressida asked if I wanted to sit next to her. Everyone pretended not to notice when Dodi came in, just a few seconds before Mr Maths.

  They ignored her all day. I thought they would tease her. I even imagined myself making Zoran proud and telling them to stop teasing her. But it was like the enormity of what she had done – peeing all over the classroom floor – was too much for them to take in. So they did what they always do when they don’t know how to behave with someone. They just pretended she wasn’t there. And I guess Dodi knows the score because she didn’t even try to talk to them. She walked in calmly in her tightest skinny jeans with violet All Stars and a pink batwing sweater, and when she saw what was happening she just went blank, and ate lunch alone, like she knew this was always coming to her even though she had ruled the class for the past year. It was actually quite impressive.

  Dodi kept up her dignified silence until the end of the day, when we were the last two to leave Art. This term we are working on environmental catastrophe, and I am making an anti-oil-spill collage with a sun shaped like the BP logo and dolphins made of silver foil dipped in black paint. I stayed behind because I’m making the sea out of ring pulls, which is much more time-consuming than I thought it would be. Dodi had finished her project but hung around for ages, watching me. I tried to ignore her, and then suddenly she said, ‘I’m not surprised you hate me.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I went on ignoring her and focused like mad on my ring pulls and then Mr Watkins, who is teaching us Art this term, came back in and told us he had to lock up, and I started to tidy up.

  Dodi followed me out of the art room.

  ‘Do you remember how cross Iris used to be if she had to wait for us?’ she said as we walked out into the playground. ‘Even though she was always late for everything?’

  At Iris’s funeral, when the curtain fell over her coffin at the crematorium, I didn’t realise it wouldn’t be coming back. That is the only time I have cried in public since she died. Literally. Nobody has ever seen me cry since then, but when Dodi said that about her always being late, my eyes started to sting.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t you dare talk about Iris.’

  For a moment I thought she was going to cry too, but I guess Dodi still has her pride. We stared at each other, and part of me wished she would say something, but after a while she just turned round and marched off. For a moment I was sorry. I almost called out for her to wait, but then I remembered everything that has happened between us and I just couldn’t.

  On the way home tonight, Joss nicked a Kit-Kat from the corner shop. He just asked me ‘What’s your favourite chocolate?’ and then he went in to Mr Patel’s and slipped it into his pocket and came out and gave it to me.

  ‘To cheer you up,’ he said, and then he added, ‘I don’t have any money’ because I think I must have looked a bit shocked.

  ‘I’ll buy two tomorrow,’
he said. ‘To make up for stealing today. I’ll give him a quid and tell him to keep the change. Just, right now you look like you need chocolate.’

  I think Iris would have liked Joss. One time, when we were little, she stole all of Flora’s Halloween candy and gave it to a girl in our class whose parents wouldn’t let her go trick or treating.

  ‘Poor Mabel without any sweets,’ she said. ‘And anyway, Flora is getting spots.’

  Joss nicked a bar of my Kit-Kat and swallowed it in two bites. ‘Just call me Robin Hood,’ he grinned.

  Iris would definitely have liked Joss.

  Thursday 27 October

  Mum is staying home all of this week. On Monday she gave Zoran a long list of shopping to do, with masses of fruit and vegetables and wholegrain cereals and absolutely no sausages, and she has made dinner for us every single evening. She also helps us with our homework while she cooks, and when we go to bed she comes in to each of our rooms in turn and sits on the end of our bed to talk.

  ‘She could get an Oscar for playing Perfect Mum,’ Flora grumbled. Flora is cross because Mum won’t let us stay in London with Zoran for half-term next week and is insisting that we go to Grandma’s.

  ‘What is the point of having an au pair if he doesn’t look after us?’ she shouted at Mum, and Mum said even au pairs need a break and anyway we always go to Grandma’s for half-term.

  ‘I’m sixteen,’ Flora said. ‘I’ll die of boredom in Devon,’ and then she ran out of the room screaming when Mum said it would be a good chance for her to catch up on her homework.

  Mum has told Bütylicious that she can’t travel this week, and what’s more that she has to leave the office by seven o’clock at the latest, except yesterday and today when she told them she was going to the doctor and the dentist when in fact she was picking Jas and Twig up from school.