After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby

by Natasha Farrant

  Zoran looked bemused.

  Three rows behind us, Joss’s friends started to snore. The old lady behind us hissed at them to be quiet. One of them burped at her.

  And then Snow White herself burst on the scene.

  I could see why Flora liked her. Snow White is a complete drip normally, but not this one. Craig had set the whole performance in the 1920s, and this Snow White didn’t spend her time mooning about with birds and squirrels and baby deer. This Snow White tried on make-up and clothes as she got ready for her party, she minced around in the Wicked Queen’s stilettos and made everyone laugh. She lit up the stage, she really did.

  Only she wasn’t Flora.

  Flora came on just before the interval, dressed as one of the Seven Dwarves.

  *

  Mum and Dad just about managed to stay in their seats until the interval, but as soon as the house lights came on again they were up and raring to get backstage.

  ‘I don’t think that would be such a good idea,’ said Zoran. He stood in front of them. He is so slight and they were so determined I was sure they were going to push him out of the way, but Zoran was wearing his do as I tell you look and unbelievably they obeyed.

  ‘Something’s happened!’ cried Mum. ‘She must be sick!’

  ‘She is not sick,’ said Zoran.

  ‘There must be some mistake,’ shouted Dad. ‘I’m quite sure I remember Flora saying she was playing Snow White.’

  ‘There is no mistake,’ sighed Zoran.

  Flora was fired because she kept missing rehearsals. Zoran explained that Craig was going to bar her from the show completely, but then one of the Seven Dwarves broke her foot, so he made her do that instead. And he didn’t fire Joss because Joss never actually missed any of his run-throughs.

  Zoran looked straight ahead as he said all this, like he couldn’t quite meet Mum and Dad’s eye. We all watched with interest as Dad, who is so good with words, struggled to find anything to say at all.

  ‘But you must have noticed!’ cried Mum.

  ‘She went almost every night. She just didn’t necessarily – get there.’

  And then all hell broke loose, with this whole torrent of how could this happen and how could you not realise from Mum, and a lot of silence from Dad until she kicked him and he said, ‘We are very disappointed in you Zoran, because she was your responsibility while we were away’. And then Zoran said, ‘With all due respect she is not my daughter and perhaps you have forgotten, with all your travels, just how difficult it is to manage four children especially when one is a wayward teenager’, and Dad said ‘Who are you calling wayward?’, and Mum said ‘Well if you feel like that perhaps we should reconsider our arrangement’, and Zoran said ‘Fine, as soon as you find some other poor mug willing to act as cook, babysitter and surrogate parent I’ll be on my way.’ And then Jas wailed NOOOO! and Mum said ‘For heaven’s sake, Blue, can’t you go and get them some ice cream or something’ but it was too late because the interval was over.

  ‘She’s not pregnant,’ I said to Zoran as we sat down again. I felt a lot of things right then. Relieved, of course, and stupid, but also sad. Really, really sad.

  ‘Thank heaven for small mercies, eh?’ Zoran attempted to smile, but I couldn’t smile back.

  Without being nasty I have to say that even Flora failed to look good in leather shorts and a pointy hat, but she really did try her best as a dwarf. I’m sure if you didn’t know her, and how much she would mind not playing Snow White, you wouldn’t have noticed how miserable she was. Or probably you would just think she was meant to look like that. And it wasn’t fair that her clothes were far too small, especially for the Charleston.

  Oh, the Charleston.

  Snow White’s wedding party.

  The wicked queen danced, as promised, in a pair of burning slippers (though there was no smell of burning flesh).

  Snow White waltzed in her prince’s arms.

  Little Red Riding Hood strode about in a wolf’s pelt. The Three Little Pigs were not, after all, roasted for the feast. Hansel and Gretel turned up with a load of gingerbread, their hearts still beating in their breasts.

  The Seven Dwarves danced the Charleston.

  Nobody should ever dance the Charleston in tight leather shorts. Particularly when they have to end the dance with a forward bend, presenting their bottoms to the audience. Not when there’s a chance of the fabric ripping.

  Not when the shorts are so tight you couldn’t even wear your knickers underneath.

  *

  ‘Well, that was different,’ said Grandma. ‘I must come to London more often. It makes such a change from Devon.’

  Mum and Dad went backstage after the show to find Flora and also to apologise to Craig. The rest of us waited in the foyer. It’s amazing how many people from school there were in the audience.

  I didn’t see the girl until the end, when almost everyone had come out. I found a photograph of her on Joss’s Facebook page. You can’t mistake her: she has this sharp black bob and green eyes and lots of red lipstick. In the photo she is laughing with another girl who’s all fair and wispy and super-pretty, but Trudi – that’s her name – is the picture of sophistication. When I saw her she was leaning against the wall by the ticket office in a pink leopardskin coat, and all I could think was how drab everyone looked compared to her.

  Flora and Joss appeared just as the last of the audience left the theatre. She was crying. He had his arm around her and was trying not to laugh.

  ‘I’ll never be able to show my face in public again!’ wailed Flora. ‘My acting career is over!’

  Joss started to say hey, come on, you were fantastic but then Trudi was peeling herself away from the wall to walk towards them and Flora was saying who is this and Joss was looking completely confused.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘We have to talk,’ said Trudi.

  ‘Right,’ said Joss.

  He gave her this look, sort of blank, like he just didn’t know what to do. Flora clung to him, but he said he had to go.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ he said. And then he left with Trudi. Flora cried for him to stay, but he didn’t look back.

  Saturday 3 December

  Outside the camera, there are no limits. There’s you and the person you’re with, and the room you are standing in, and outside the room there is the street, and beyond the street there is the town, and beyond the town the countryside, and then there is the sea, and more land, Africa or Europe or America, and there are more cities and prairies and mountains and cars, and they’re all places and people you don’t know but which exist anyway. Inside the camera, the world is limited to what you can see through the viewfinder. If you don’t like it, you can change it. Or, with the flick of a button, you can switch it off. You just say goodbye world. Time to go. Like dying, but not quite so final.

  That is why I love it.

  Sunday 4 December: Early Morning

  Today I am not leaving my room. I hardly left it yesterday either.

  It’s difficult to know who Mum and Dad are most angry with. At first they kept shouting at Zoran, then Flora leaped to his defence and yelled that at least Zoran was here, unlike them, and then the parents started to go on about trust and responsibility and how she has no idea how difficult everything is for them. Then Mum started to cry about how this family was falling apart and how Dad should do something about it, and Dad said Flora wasn’t allowed to finish the play and Craig had found another dwarf to replace her. Then when he saw how relieved she was he took away her phone and told her she was grounded.

  On and on they went, missing the point.

  Grandma left at tea-time. Flora went to her room to check her emails (she told the parents they can’t stop her using her laptop because she needs it for school) and discovered Joss’s friends had filmed her Dance of Doom – as Twig calls it – on their phones and posted it on YouTube.

  More tears. More tantrums. More missing the point.

/>   I went up to my room as soon as dinner was over. I sat by the window. I didn’t film, or think, or look at the stars. I literally just sat, and when Joss knocked on the glass I wasn’t even surprised.

  I opened the window.

  ‘Thanks, Bluebird,’ said Joss. ‘Let me in? It’s freezing out here.’

  I didn’t let him in. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked instead.

  ‘Flora’s not answering my texts,’ he said.

  ‘Mum and Dad took her phone.’

  ‘That’s not very nice of them.’

  ‘Flora has seen the YouTube video,’ I told him. ‘She says she will never forgive you.’

  ‘Yes she will,’ said Joss. He was so cheerful.

  ‘Who is Trudi?’ I asked.

  ‘Trudi,’ said Joss, ‘is ancient history.’

  ‘She didn’t look like ancient history,’ I said, and Joss said whatever, she was gone now and he wanted to see Flora so please would I go and get her, and I said no.

  I tried to close the window but he grabbed my wrist.

  ‘Come on, Blue,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t you want to help us?’

  I tried to laugh. I think I wanted to show him that I really couldn’t care less about him and Flora but that’s not how it came out. My whatever laugh sounded more like a sob.

  ‘Blue?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Blue, look at me.’

  I did, because I didn’t have a choice. He held my chin in his hand and he forced my head back until I looked him in the eyes, and he must have seen that mine were full of tears.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s the third of December,’ I told him.

  He should have guessed what I was talking about. I know I never told him when, but he should have guessed. The old Joss would have. I twisted my head so that my cheek lay against his hand and closed my eyes.

  ‘What’s going on, Bluebird?’

  I didn’t answer. He sighed. Not loudly, but I heard him.

  ‘I really do need to talk to Flora,’ he whispered.

  I shook my head. I didn’t watch him go.

  *

  Dodi answered her phone on the first ring.

  ‘I miss her,’ she said, before I even spoke. ‘I miss her so, so much.’

  Three years ago last night, Iris left our house, alone.

  I was reading The Hobbit and didn’t want to stop. Dodi was at her house watching The X Factor semi-finals. It was raining and it was cold and somehow Iris had heard that even though it was winter and not at all the time for breeding a vixen had given birth to a litter of cubs under the old shed in the bit of the park where no one is allowed to go, and she had decided we had to rescue them now.

  ‘It’s so cold!’ she pleaded. ‘They’re so little!’

  ‘Their mother will bite us,’ I said. ‘We have no idea how to look after baby foxes, the park is locked, it’s raining and I’ve got to really good bit in my book.’

  ‘IT’S THE SEMI-FINAL!’ said Dodi when Iris rang her. ‘And anyway, you know how I feel about wild animals.’

  Iris hated reading almost as much as she hated The X Factor. She loved animals and she was always in a rush. She never looked where she was going.

  We were her almost partners in crime, her faithful lieutenants. We were supposed to look after her.

  The florist’s van hit her exactly halfway between our two houses, by the entrance to the park.

  The driver was distraught.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ sobbed Dodi on the phone last night.

  I hate the stupid Hobbit.

  The Film Diaries Of Bluebell Gadsby

  Scene Thirteen (Transcript)

  Door

  DAY. BLUE’S ROOM.

  Camera focuses on window, which is half open. Curtains flutter. The sky is the cold pale grey of a London winter.

  The door creaks and FLORA tiptoes into the room. She holds her finger up to her lips, opens the window and slips out. CAMERAMAN (BLUE) sighs and turns. Camera catches feet in a pair of monster slippers, a corner of candy-striped duvet, floor covered in clothes. Cameraman sighs again and slips to the floor. Camera focuses on door and does not move.

  Minutes pass, or maybe hours. Door eventually opens, and ZORAN enters.

  Sunday 4 December (Cont’d)

  Sunday 4 December (Cont’d)

  ‘Your parents have gone to the park with Jas and Twig,’ said Zoran. ‘They thought you were asleep. Where is Flora?’

  I pointed at the window. ‘She went out there,’ I said. ‘Hours ago. To see Joss.’

  Zoran sighed and looked discouraged.

  ‘Three years ago last night,’ I said, ‘my twin sister Iris was hit by a van.’

  Zoran sat down next to me on the floor.

  ‘Nobody said anything,’ I whispered. ‘They were all too busy shouting at Flora about her stupid play, and they never said anything.’

  Zoran held my hand.

  ‘Joss Bateman,’ I said after a while, ‘is not as lovely as I thought he was,’ and Zoran said that people rarely are.

  ‘I have only just realised,’ I said,

  ‘I wish I had known your sister,’ said Zoran, and I wanted to say ‘I wish you’d known her too,’ except I couldn’t speak because my throat hurt. Zoran squeezed my hand harder.

  ‘I have a sister,’ he said. ‘But I never see her.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Have I not told you about my family?’ said Zoran and I said no, and he said it was a sad story and I said well, today was a day for sad stories.

  So then Zoran told me how when he was six years old his parents travelled through their country which was at war, all the way from the town where they lived to the coast, where they put him and his sister on a boat.

  ‘To England? All the way from Bosnia?’

  ‘To Italy, and then we took a train. We were lucky, we had passports and some money and Alina’s address in Putney to give to anyone who asked us. My sister was older than me, she spoke a little English.’

  ‘Why didn’t your parents go too?’

  ‘They meant to, but then there wasn’t enough room for them on the boat, or rather not enough money to pay for them too. They said they would come after us. That was the story at the time. Looking back on it, I think they always knew we would be going alone.’

  I had a vision then of a young Zoran crying on a rickety old ferry, with every deck crammed full of people trying to catch one last look at their loved ones on the quayside, and six-year-old Zoran waving to his mother, with his big sister standing behind him holding his hand. In my head the sky was blue and the sun was hot and there were gulls circling overhead. The boat pushed away from the quay and everyone was crying and the people on the quayside were growing smaller and smaller, including Zoran’s mother whose heart was breaking into a million little pieces even though she was waving back and smiling.

  ‘You never saw her again,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Zoran. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘How did they die?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And your sister?’

  ‘She went back after the war. She is married to a Bosnian man, they have two sons and she works as a paediatric nurse. She was always good at looking after people. She doesn’t like to come to England, because it reminds her of leaving our parents. And I don’t like to go to Bosnia, for the same reason. Sometimes we meet up in Paris.’

  We stayed there, not talking again, and I thought of his parents doing what they thought was right for their children, and his sister helping children who were sick, and then I thought of Iris.

  ‘It seems to me, Blue, that you are lost,’ said Zoran after a while. ‘And yet also that you do not wish to be found.’

  Zoran and his cryptic comments.

  ‘You should go and see her,’ I said. ‘Your sister.’

  ‘Maybe I will, soon,’ said Zoran.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

  ‘Le
na,’ he said. ‘My sister’s name is Lena.’

  I started to cry then. Zoran put his arms round me.

  We sat there for ages not talking, and the tears just kept on coming, as together we watched the light outside my window fade from grey to blue then black.

  The Film Diaries Of Bluebell Gadsby

  Scene Fourteen (Transcript)

  The Lecture

  NIGHT. THE GADSBY LIVING-ROOM.

  The entire Gadsby clan is gathered in the living room. The blue curtains with the unfinished embroidery are drawn. A coal fire burns in the grate. FLORA sits ramrod straight and stiff in the low green velvet chair. JAS and TWIG sit squeezed together on the sofa, with ZORAN beside them looking unhappy. MOTHER and FATHER stand side by side on the hearth rug. Mother’s eyes are red. Father looks uncomfortable.

  FATHER

  (apologetically)

  Blue, we would rather you didn’t film right now.

  (Picture wobbles as CAMERAMAN shrugs)

  MOTHER

  (in a low voice, speaking very fast and looking at the fire)

  This has been a difficult time for all of us. We’re not angry and your father and I want you to know we love you very much, and we both hate being away from home so much.

  FLORA

  Don’t do it then. Nobody’s forcing you.

  MOTHER

  (ignoring Flora)

  Friday night’s fiasco has made us realise that things are getting out of hand. They can’t carry on like this. We need some ground rules.

  FATHER

  (clearly reciting a list they prepared earlier)

  Twig and Jas: no running off to school on your own. Blue: no skateboarding in the park at night. Zoran is to know where you all are at all times. Flora, no hanging around with the boy next door.