Phosphorescence

by Raffaella Barker

  I can see myself in the mirror on the chest of drawers, my dark hair still in the plaits I did yesterday morning, before I knew. Now they are wispy and bedraggled, and my face is blotched red with crying, while my eyes are as round and sad as a cartoon of someone having a bad time.

  ‘I’d like to stay here all my life. Or at least for now. I don’t want to go with her.’

  I can’t call my mother ‘Mum’ right now, she has to be ‘her’. And even with that distance, I still clench my jaw, because I want to scream and hit out. Why can’t she go on her own to London? Dad and I could manage.

  I tried suggesting it to Dad last night, when he finally appeared in the house. I know he’d been hiding from me, and he came in holding his hat in his hands and looking apologetic and agonized. He reminded me of the vicar, Reverend Horace, when he turned up at the Christies’ house the other day to welcome them to the village. Reverend Horace stood on the doormat, watching Neoprene nodding to a battery-operated singing canary, and Sadie making small cakes with glitter icing, and he shifted nervously from foot to foot. Caroline made him a cup of tea, but whenever she sat down to talk to him, the telephone rang, so in the end he had to make do with me and Sadie. I was able to examine his expression closely, and Dad’s was the same last night.

  He shook his head when I made a perfectly good suggestion: ‘I can stay with you, Dad. Please let me. I don’t want to go away.’

  ‘You need to be with your mother.’

  Dad never smoked, but now he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. I gaped, astonished.

  ‘You don’t smoke.’

  ‘No, but I am now.’

  Dad’s odd smirk of defiance and embarrassment stayed in my mind until I fell asleep.

  ‘My parents have both gone mental.’

  Nell and I follow the path along the creek and through the marshes towards Salt. Cactus scuttles ahead, his tail revolving madly as he sniffs in the heather for rabbits.

  ‘My mum hasn’t stopped crying for a single minute since she told me. She’s supposed to be packing and starting a new life and all she can do is cry, which is useless and really annoying.’

  Cactus dashes up, proudly waving a stick in his mouth. I reach down for it and throw it across a small inlet and on to the opposite bank.

  ‘And anyway, I’m the one who should be crying because I’m being stuffed into a new school without any warning. I mean we are actually leaving the day after tomorrow—’ I break off to nudge Nell. ‘Look at Cactus. He’s mental too.’

  Wildly excited, Cactus hurls himself into the water and swims across the inlet, diagonally because of the current, yapping his enthusiasm for this brilliant game. Nell and I laugh together as Cactus leaps out and shakes himself, twirling fast to catch his tail and nibble it before bouncing onwards in search of the stick.

  ‘But he’s mental in a dog-mental way,’ says Nell. ‘Not like your parents. I wonder if you will come back to stay with your dad much?’

  ‘Of course I will, and if he’s away, I’m sure the Christies will let me stay with them. Or Jack and Grandma.’ I hook my thumbs into the front pockets of my jeans and walk on again, absorbed by a new thought. ‘Wow, I wonder what they will say. I can’t believe Mum is doing this.’ And I wonder how long she has been planning in secret without thinking what she is doing to everyone else.

  Jack and Grandma say nothing about Mum, although Grandma doesn’t draw breath through the lunch she invites me to on my last day. Just me, not Mum or Dad or both of them, which is a bit odd. I leave our house just after midday. Dad is warming up some baked beans. Mum is upstairs packing, and I feel as though we have already left.

  Grandma makes roast chicken and apple crumble, even though today is Wednesday and that is what we always have for Sunday lunch.

  I keep catching her glancing at me with narrowed, anxious eyes. When it’s time for me to leave, she hands me a basket containing a tin of flapjacks and three linen tea towels depicting the village church.

  ‘Here, take this for your mother.’ She looks searchingly at me. ‘People never remember about tea towels when they move.’ Her voice is steady; only her hands twisting around the basket handle reveal her distress. It is too much. I fling my arms around Grandma’s neck, breathing her familiar china-tea scent, my face soothed in her soft grey jersey.

  ‘I’ll come back soon, I promise.’

  ‘Of course you will, and I shall look forward to it.’ Grandma is so calm, her eyes are bright, but she stays calm and smiling when she waves me off from her front door.

  Jack walks back across the marshes to Staitheley with me. The tide is in when we reach the quay, lapping at the gangway, filling the village with the whisper of water.

  ‘There’s a bigger tide coming at the weekend,’ Jack says, ‘and I won’t have you to measure it for me this time, will I?’

  His cap is jammed down over silver-white hair, and his eyes are a paler blue than the sky. I tuck my hand in his arm.

  ‘I bet it’ll be as high as the window on that house. It’s got to be this time.’

  ‘No, not this year. We won’t see another flood like that for quite a while now.’

  I love Jack’s flood rescue stories.

  In the nineteen fifties, the water rose to the windows of Lilac Cottage where I live now. Mrs Stoddart, the doctor’s widow who lived there then, had been rescued by Jack along with her three poodles, Jessica, Barbara and Anne, a set of coffee cups and her wedding dress. I drew a picture of Jack rescuing her when I was about seven, the first time Jack told me the story, and it hangs in Grandma’s kitchen, next to the cat-shaped coffee pot I bought her when I was nine on a trip to London, and the three boats her boys made her when they were about the same age.

  Jack stands with me on the doorstep of my house, and I look past him at the marshes. Everything feels suddenly so big and important. I am the focus of everyone’s attention in the drama of my family. Suddenly all I want to do is go over to the Christies’ and curl up with Sadie on the sofa.

  Jack hugs me.

  ‘It’ll do you good,’ he says gruffly. ‘You should get away and find your own place in the world. Sometimes Staitheley is too full of ghosts and the people can be swallowed by memories. You will learn to lead your own life now.’

  I hug him back, amazed, because he never talks like this. It is the first positive thing I’ve absorbed since Mum told me the news. I watch him turn away to walk back across the marsh, and I stay looking after him until he is a small dot, swallowed by the dusk.

  Even leaving Dad, the next morning, is not as bad as it is saying goodbye to Sadie and Josh. Josh is cool. He just silently hands me a tape he has made.

  ‘It’s all sea shanties, and hymns,’ he says, his voice odd and intense.

  ‘Yes, like church,’ adds Sadie, her expression angelic.

  ‘Oh really, how nice. Ummm . . .’ I am gobsmacked. Josh is into drum and bass and rap. I can’t imagine where he found sea shanties. ‘I can’t wait to listen to them,’ I add.

  Josh suddenly bursts out laughing and picks up Sadie, swinging her around.

  ‘You should see your face.’ He grins. ‘You can’t have seriously thought I’d make you a tape of hymns and stuff, can you?’

  ‘Ha ha, tricked you,’ shrieks Sadie. ‘It’s all your favourite songs really, and I’m on it too. I sing “A sailor went to sea, sea, sea,” and I did it four times to get it just right.’

  Chapter 3

  The beeping of my phone wakes me. I read Nell’s message still half asleep: ‘Doing maths homework on bus. We’re doing hypotenuse. Susie thought it was a kind of African piglet. Mr Riggs is a psycho. Good luck 2day. Luv Nell.’

  Outside a bus rumbles and the swish of cars passing tells me that it is raining, warm spring rain in the city, a humid experience not much like anything back at Staitheley. I sit up and tap a reply into my new phone. I have no idea about a hypotenuse.

  ‘Tell Sooz I thought it was a vase. Wot is it? Mum got me wicked flares bx n
o uniform at scary new skool. Miss U XL.’

  How come Nell is at school so early in the morning?

  It has happened. Mum and I are living in Iverly Road in Kentish Town in North London. It takes ten minutes to walk to Camden Market and about four minutes to walk to the James Ellis Grammar School where term will begin today. Our flat is on the top floor of a big house and we face a street where buses grind and hiss and the traffic hoots and blares constantly. I have hardly seen any grass since I got to London, although there are trees covered in pink blossom in the road outside. I miss the sea, and I wish we had a house, not a flat with weird creaking sounds and the smell of the neighbours’ cooking in the hallway.

  The first time I walked into the flat I cried. It had nothing of home, even the smell was wrong, and being upstairs and not having downstairs makes me feel as though I have had a bit of myself amputated. Mum says she chose it because it is near school and near her office and we will move somewhere nicer when we have got settled in and she earns more. In fact, I heard her talking to her sister Jane on the phone, and I know she is waiting for the divorce to come through before she decides where to buy a flat. It sounds odd to have her talking like that – buying places to live has only ever happened for me in Monopoly. Dad and Mum lived in our house all their married life and Jack and Grandma have lived in theirs for forty years. I have never really thought about anyone moving house before; it just hasn’t been part of my life. I will probably have left home by the time Mum moves. I don’t know how long it takes people to get divorced, but Mum said to Jane that it took her four years to get up the courage to leave, so judging by that, I reckon I should get used to this flat with its porridge-coloured carpets and no fireplace.

  The school, James Ellis, is not as bad as I thought – well, it wasn’t when I went for a look round, but of course there were no pupils. Mum says it is more academic than my school in Flixby and there are nine hundred children so it is double the size. She reckons it will give me a better chance to excel. Fat chance is what I say to that, but not in front of Mum.

  There are compensations for our new miniaturized version of family life. Mum has been wildly exorcizing her guilt with shopping. It is beyond amazing. When we got to London, it was like Aladdin’s cave to me. I only had to say I liked something and Mum and I were on a bus heading for Oxford Street to get it. I succumb happily to the bribery, and not only because I like the stuff. Back in the flat, Mum deflates, and the red-eyed sad look returns, but out shopping she has been a real laugh, not like Nell, but differently excellent. My room is a sea of carrier bags and strewn garments, which are testament to the fun we have had. Mum has quite a good eye; she doesn’t get overwhelmed by the scale of the shops, and she picks the right stuff from a rail in seconds.

  Dressing for school, now on my first day, I have got as much camouflage as any girl could need, and I don’t mean the army pattern. I can hide behind the newness of my clothes and no one will be able to see what I am like or who I really am.

  Mum and I walk together to James Ellis. It is Mum’s first day at work too, and we both burst out laughing in the hall of our little flat before we leave. Mum, small and blonde, looks like a doll in her suit, with her laptop case in one hand.

  ‘You look like someone dressed up as a working mother.’ I laugh, as she locks the door behind us. ‘The only prop you haven’t got is glasses. You’re a cliché, Mum.’

  I link arms with her, suddenly aware of the two of us facing a new world together.

  ‘I like your new stuff.’

  Mum has to look up at me in my new clumpy shoes. I have never been taller than her before, and it puts her in a perfect position to notice my new dangly earrings which Nell gave me as a leaving present.

  ‘Are you allowed earrings?’ asks Mum. It is so typical of her to suddenly get all grown-up. I pull my arm away, prickling with irritation and mounting nerves as we approach the school.

  ‘I don’t know, but I wanted something to remind me I’ve got friends somewhere,’ I snap, deliberately shifting my new school bag between us, and walking on with my head down. We are silent now, and I am looking at the clean toes of Mum’s shoes, protruding into my vision with each step. Neat reminders that I am being accompanied, like a small child.

  The school gates are crammed with a steady flow of pupils, jostling, walking in pairs, slowing to greet one another.

  Stopping a few metres away, Mum kisses my cheek and whispers, ‘Good luck.’

  Still irritated, I twist my earring, and, without speaking, I step into the crowd, and immediately feel bad that I didn’t say goodbye nicely to Mum.

  I turn round and jump to be seen, shouting, ‘Bye, Mum, bye.’

  She is about to turn the corner, but she hears me and looks back, smiling and waving, standing on tiptoe to see me.

  I shout, ‘See you later,’ and then allow myself to be swept on by the throng, and become invisible. Just moments before, I was so aware of my shoes, worn for the first time, the movement of my earrings and the rustle of fabric as my legs swung in the new flares! But now, pressed in between two taller boys carrying on a conversation over my head, and slowed by a group of girls crowded over one mobile phone, I have the oddest sensation of having vanished.

  One of the boys has a handkerchief tied on his head like a pirate, and dreadlocks emerging from beneath it.

  ‘I dunno. I’ve got basketball at one fifteen,’ he says.

  ‘Aw, come on, man, it’s only gonna take five minutes.’

  The other one reaches across me and gives the dreadlocked boy a push. They both laugh and veer off towards a single-storey block, the sixth-form hangout.

  With Mum, I spent the morning at the school last week, and although it was empty of pupils and full of the holiday smells of wet paint drying, and polish and disinfectant building up in layers, I was determined to learn my way around. Now I hardly hesitate as I go, so desperate am I not to show my newness by being lost.

  My classroom is upstairs in the main building, and in it, sitting on the desks and leaning against the walls, are my new classmates. There are a lot of them, and their self-confidence radiates like heat.

  ‘Here, dude, catch this!’ a fair-haired boy yells, flinging something towards the door as I come in. Instinctively ducking, I just miss being hit by a rubber ball which is caught by a youth lounging behind me, a sarong wrapped over his baggy jeans. The quickest glance at him makes me feel prissy in my neat, close-fitting clothes. Shouting, ‘Ready, Carl? Pete, are you awake?’ he rubs the ball on his thigh and takes a short run-up like a bowler and dispatches the ball between two girls leaning on their desks to a couple of boys hunched over a phone by the window. The room is high, with big, old-fashioned windows and long rows of wooden tables. Everyone seems so at home here, wandering about, slouching to their places with enviable confidence. For some reason they remind me of lions, or racehorses.

  Hot, and horribly self-conscious, I look around for somewhere to sit. It takes every scrap of courage I possess, and the thought of my mum heading for her new job, so tiny and brave in her suit, not to turn round and walk straight out again. No one would notice, no one would know. Mum is at work. I could let myself into the flat and shut the door on this terrifying new prospect. It is so tempting. But before I have time to act, Mr Lascalles, our form teacher and the senior geography master, is in the room. The door has clicked shut and everyone is standing behind the desks. I slide into a space between Carl or is it Pete, and a willowy blonde girl whose expanse of deeply tanned stomach is on show, right to her hipbone, where a small pansy is tattooed. Nothing on earth could be cooler than that. I sigh to myself. How can that girl possibly inhabit the same universe as me? She can’t be real. She will never, ever speak to me.

  By breaktime it is clear that in the class pecking order I will be low-ranking, and the amazing girl is at the top. Jessie Tait, a sandy blonde with a down-turned mouth and freckles, is put in charge of me and is helpful, if a little detached. But nothing can alter the fact tha
t I am new, an outsider, and I have no idea what they are talking about, so I have no way of entering any group, even if I dared speak, which I don’t.

  ‘Christoff, he’s our maths teacher, is totally random,’ Jessie hisses to me as we wait for Mr Christoff to arrive.

  ‘Oh, right.’ I have no idea what ‘random’ means in this context, so I wait to hear more.

  ‘He confiscated Pansy’s phone for no reason for the whole of last term and when she got it back all the credit was used and he totally denied it and went into a massive freak-out. He’s just so rank.’

  ‘Is Pansy the girl I was sitting next to?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s going out with Aiden Black. He’s in the sixth form. He’s a Rastafarian and he’s the captain of the basketball team.’

  I remember the boys at the gate this morning, and that one had dreadlocks.

  ‘Does he wear a hankie on his head?’

  Jessie looked at me pityingly.

  ‘They’re not hankies. They’re our school colours. You know. For when you’re excellent at something. He is the only one here to have got colours for basketball.’ She tosses her hair back, swivelling on her chair. ‘Harry Sykes – he’s in the sixth form too – has just been given them for skateboarding. It is so cool. Apparently it’s the first time any school has awarded skateboarding colours, so he was in the newspapers. Everyone wants to go out with him now.’ She leans confidentially towards me. ‘I’ve snogged him in fact, but it was a year ago, so I don’t think it counts any more. Do you?’

  ‘Umm. Err, maybe,’ I mutter. Ohmigod, this is terrifying, just terrifying. I have never been much of a boffin, but I am beginning to wish that there was no gap between lessons, and no time for talking ever. I mean, how obvious is it that I have never kissed a boy, let alone gone on a date? Why didn’t I try to get Josh to snog me? I’m sure he would have done if we hadn’t become such good friends. Oh, why did I ever go and look after Sadie and become friends with his mum? I really needed that potential experience.