by Jo Cotterill
I look back at Lennon. His eyes are closed as he sings, and the muscles in his arm flex as he changes chords. He exists in his own world, I think he’s even forgotten we’re here. In his world, he’s completely him. We can only watch from the outside.
When he opens his eyes, it’s not at me he looks but at Mom, and it’s almost like there’s a kind of silent fizz when their eyes meet, like electricity.
I don’t really want to go, but I feel I ought to, because there’s something private happening that I’m not part of. So I get up and go to my bedroom while they’re still looking at each other.
Chapter 18
A couple of days later, Mom says, “Lennon suggested we have a picnic on Saturday.”
I’m surprised. Picnics aren’t a thing we do normally. “Where?”
“I don’t know exactly. Lennon’s picking us up and driving us into the country.”
The country sounds exotic. We don’t leave the city much. “Will he bring his guitar?”
Mom laughs. “I expect so. He never goes anywhere without it.”
It’s not until later in the day I realize what was odd about the conversation. Mom’s laugh sounded different. Like a real one.
Saturday is a sunny day, and Mom spends ages getting ready. “This top?” she asks me repeatedly. “Or this one? I don’t want to get too warm. But on the other hand, Lennon said he liked the blue one when I wore it. Or should I ditch them and go for the gray dress?” She looks in the mirror and turns sideways, placing a hand on her tummy. “No, I can’t wear that. Look how my stomach sticks out!”
Her stomach does not stick out. No more than a stomach is supposed to—after all, there are major organs in there.
“What are you wearing?” she suddenly demands, switching her attention to me.
I glance down. “This?” I’m in purple leggings and a cream T-shirt with a glittery flower on it. The T-shirt says, “Pretty as a flower” in swirly writing. Mom bought it for me.
She frowns a bit. “I suppose it’ll do. Should I wear leggings too then? I don’t want to overdress. But I want to look nice.”
“You look nice in anything,” I offer. As soon as I’ve said it, I bite my lip because she hates it when I compliment her. I brace myself, expecting her to tell me off.
But instead, she reaches out to cup my chin with her hand, and her eyes soften as she says, “What a kind thing to say. Thank you, darling.”
I am filled with warmth. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my mom accept a compliment. I throw my arms around her. “You’re so beautiful,” I say. “You could wear a trash bag and still be the most beautiful mom ever.”
Her arms tighten around me. “Ah, sweetheart,” she says.
There’s a ping and I look down at her phone on the dressing table next to me. It says: “Message from Chris.” Mom reaches out and deletes the message without reading it. Then she goes back to her clothes dilemma.
I smile.
By the time Lennon arrives, Mom has finally chosen an outfit and done her makeup accordingly. I’ve had a second breakfast.
Lennon grins at me when I open the door. “You okay, Jelly?” He’s wearing a white shirt that reminds me of a pirate, with his usual brown jacket and jeans.
“Did you bring your guitar?” I ask.
“It’s in the car. You going to bring the harmonica?”
“Yes!” I run to my room.
He calls after me, “We’re going to need to find your mom a musical instrument to play.” Then I hear her say behind me in a soft voice, “I already have one, don’t I?” and he chuckles and I can tell they’re kissing, and even though I like him, that whole thing is still ugh, so I take longer than I need to find the harmonica.
Lennon’s car is eight years old and a VW Golf. Inside, the seats are covered in crumbs and there are a couple of discarded wrappers under the seat that I decide not to mention. He has an air freshener in the shape of cherries hanging from the rearview mirror. The car does not smell of cherries.
We drive out of town and Lennon plays some gospel music on the way. It’s lots of people singing, sometimes about God, and they sound pretty happy. “We used to sing this one in my school choir,” Mom comments suddenly.
Lennon turns to look at her. “Hey, I should get you to sing with me.”
Mom goes all red and flustered. “Oh no, I don’t do that kind of thing. My voice isn’t very good.”
“I bet you’re better than you think,” he says.
“I’d much rather listen to you singing,” Mom says, putting a hand on Lennon’s knee. He smiles, and then says, “Here we are.”
“Here” is a narrow street, in a village, with houses on each side. “Where’s the country?” I ask.
Lennon laughs. “Hiding. Don’t worry, we’ll find it. We’re going on an adventure.”
Adventure. I like the sound of that.
In the trunk of the car is a large backpack. I’m slightly disappointed it isn’t a basket. Aren’t picnics supposed to be with baskets? I read a book once about a bunch of kids who went on a picnic, and they definitely had a basket. But I suppose a backpack is more practical. Lennon hefts it onto his back and then picks up his guitar. He grins at me. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
He holds out his spare hand to my mom, who takes it. “This way.”
The houses on this street all look like they’re slightly squashed. The roofs aren’t straight, and the windows are a bit wonky. They look very old. In fact, one of them has a little plaque above the front door with the date 1743 on it. “Wow,” I say. Our block of apartments is only fifty years old. This house is ancient.
“I grew up in a house like that,” Lennon says. “They’re all good and well, but you do get a lot of spiders.”
Mom shudders. “Yuck. I can’t stand spiders.”
This is true. Whenever there’s a spider in the apartment, it’s me who has to hit it with a magazine. I know I should catch it in a glass and put it outside, but I can’t. I’m brave but not that brave.
Between two houses is a gap with a wooden stile. A wooden post stands next to it with a “Footpath” arrow at the top. “Off we go,” says Lennon.
On the other side of the stile is a narrow shady path. The hedges on either side are tall and thick. The path is stony and studded with weeds, and I step around the occasional nettle sticking out from the hedge. “I’m totally wearing the wrong thing,” Mom moans. She went for a long skirt in the end, with ballet flats. They are definitely the wrong thing, though I didn’t think of that when she was asking my opinion. I’m glad I’m wearing sneakers.
I like the strange narrow green corridor. It feels like there could be something exciting at the end of it.
Lennon is leading, and he steps back when he reaches the end of the path because there’s a clever swinging gate. “Kissing gate,” he says.
I wrinkle my nose. “Ew.”
He laughs as he goes through it. “Yeah, I guess it is a bit. I remember being your age and thinking everything like that was ‘ew.’ While secretly hoping one day I’d be able to kiss someone.”
My face goes red. “Shuddup . . .”
“Jelly’s a superstar,” Mom says, coming through the gate behind me. “She’s got such a big personality, she’ll have her pick of boyfriends.”
Big personality. Big personality to go with her big body. I shake off the sudden prickle of shame between my shoulder blades.
“Or girlfriends,” Lennon adds.
Mom raises her eyebrows. “Or girlfriends. Who knows?”
Beyond the kissing gate, the path opens out onto a field. Suddenly the sky is twice as big. I can see one house, far off in the distance, but otherwise there’s just field and hedges and sky. And . . .
“Horses!” I cry. Our footpath continues along the side of the field, but to our left a fence has been created out of posts and tape, and on the other side are three horses: one brown, one black, and one white. They are grazing on the grass a little ways off. I call to the
m. “Hello! Here! Come and say hello!” and make that clicking noise with my tongue that people always make to horses.
The horses look up but only one saunters over: the black one. “He’s hoping you have some treats,” Mom says. “It’s a shame we didn’t bring any carrots.”
“Aha!” says Lennon, and swings the backpack onto the ground. Then he starts rummaging through it.
“Did you bring carrots?” I ask him, reaching over the taped fence to try and touch the soft velvety nose of the black horse. I suppose it might be a pony, not a horse. There’s a difference, though I can’t remember what.
“No . . .” says Lennon, digging around in the bag. “But I did bring apples. Here you go.”
I hold it out to the horse on a flat hand. He whiffles his nose and then reaches out. My hand is covered in slobbery horse lick as he munches the apple from it. It tickles and makes me laugh.
“Oh, Jelly,” says Mom. “Your hand—that’s disgusting.”
I stroke the horse’s nose. “It doesn’t matter. Horses are really big, aren’t they? I mean, when you see them on television or something, they don’t look as big as they really are. How would you get on this one? Its back is higher than my head!”
“I always wanted riding lessons,” Mom says. “Maggi and I begged for them, but Dad said they cost too much and there wasn’t much point unless you were going to be a champion jockey or something, and girls didn’t do that kind of thing, so . . .” She gives a rueful smile. “Maggi wouldn’t speak to him for a whole week after that.”
“Well, maybe for your next birthday I’ll buy you a riding lesson,” Lennon says. “Because that sucks.”
Mom smiles, and I can see sunlight reflected in her eyes.
“Grandpa’s like that,” I say to Lennon. “He doesn’t want anyone to have any fun. Especially girls. He thinks girls aren’t as good as boys.”
Mom tells me off. “It’s not that, Jelly. He’s just from a different time, that’s all.”
“What—the eighteenth century?” I retort. “Mr. Lenck is practically the same age, and he doesn’t think like that.” I turn to Lennon. “You don’t think boys are better than girls, do you?”
He hesitates, and the breath catches in my throat. I’ve never asked a man that question, certainly not one of Mom’s boyfriends. I’m suddenly afraid of the answer.
“I don’t think that, no,” Lennon says slowly. He frowns at the horse. “But I think there are some things boys do better than girls, and some things girls do better than boys.”
I fold my arms. “Like what?”
“Jelly . . .” Mom sounds embarrassed. “Don’t spoil things.”
“No, no, it’s a good question,” Lennon says. “I don’t mind answering it. Hang on, let me just get my thoughts in order.” He stares at the ground for a moment and then says, “I think, for example, that girls are better at owning up when they feel sad. They’re good at asking their friends for help. But boys are better at switching off from worry stuff. You know, when we’re watching the soccer game or playing music, or . . . I dunno, going for a run, we’re not thinking about a million things at once. Girls and women have too much going on in their brains that they don’t seem to be able to switch off.” He pauses. “Well, the women I know, that is. I mean, not everyone is the same. I do have a friend—a guy—who worries about stuff all the time. But then he struggles with anxiety, so he finds it harder to get his thoughts under control.”
I stare at him. “Are you sure you’re a man?” I ask suspiciously.
He bursts out laughing.
“It’s only,” I say, “that I’ve never heard a man say stuff like that before.”
“No?” He smiles at me. “Well, maybe that’s because men aren’t very good at saying this kind of thing. There you go, another thing that girls do better.”
I turn to Mom. “Do you feel like you have too much going on in your brain?”
She is gazing at Lennon and her eyes are soft and wet. “All the time,” she says, before turning away and saying in a completely different tone, “Are we going to eat this picnic anytime soon?”
Chapter 19
We find a bench overlooking a dip in the fields for our picnic. Lennon says it’s not a proper picnic if you don’t sit on the ground though, and he unrolls a picnic blanket—one of those ones with fabric on the top and a waterproof layer underneath. Even Mom sits on the blanket, and we use the bench as a table.
Lennon says apologetically, “I didn’t know what you both liked to eat, so I brought way more than we need.”
I am delighted. There are cheese sandwiches, ham sandwiches, chips, breadsticks, chocolate fingers, cupcakes, grapes, apples (one fewer because of the black horse), olives, baby corn, and tomatoes. There’s one big bottle of water and three cans of different fizzy drinks.
“How did you fit all this in your backpack?” asks Mom, staring at everything in astonishment.
“With difficulty,” he responds, and she laughs. I choke on my baby corn because it’s a real laugh, not the fake one. I stare at her in surprise.
“What?” she says.
I eat and eat and there’s still food left, and I’m sure Lennon doesn’t want to carry too much back so I’m doing him a favor, and Mom eats much more than usual and doesn’t mention calories even once.
When we’ve finished, we all lie back on the blanket and stare at the sky and play the cloud game. “Dragon,” says my mom, pointing.
“No way,” says Lennon. “That’s an elephant dancing.”
“No,” I argue, “it’s a baby in a bath. You can see its head sticking out over the top.” I change voices. “Goo goo, ’ook at me. I’m in the bath, oops, I’ve fallen in, argh argh, noo, I’m drowning . . . !”
It’s a really lame impression, but Lennon starts laughing, and that makes me laugh, and then Mom giggles, and then Lennon starts coughing, and has to sit up because he can’t breathe properly, and then Mom stops giggling because she’s really worried about him, but I keep laughing and laughing because I can’t stop and eventually my sides start to ache and that seems funny too, and Lennon has stopped coughing and started laughing again because I’m laughing, and I don’t know how long it all goes on for but at the end, I feel as though someone has turned me upside down and shaken out all the bad stuff.
I lie on the grass (having laughed myself off the blanket) and stare up at the sky, and my body feels calm and light and warm, and I can almost hear the grass growing and the beetles scuttling and the sun sizzling.
Lennon starts to play his guitar. It’s a song I don’t know, about questions and answers that are blowing in the wind. It’s quite soothing. I close my eyes and lose myself in the song.
And then a second very, very quiet voice joins Lennon’s and my eyes jerk open.
My mom is singing.
Chapter 20
“Nearly spring break!” Kayma shouts in the playground as we meet up on Monday. We dance around together, shouting, “Spring break! Spring break! Spring break!”
“You want to come over?” Kayma says, and then adds hopefully, “Or I could come to you.”
I pull a face. “I’m going away. Sorry. Vacation-resort thing. It’s been booked for ages.”
“Oh, noooo,” moans Kayma. “That’s so unfair. I’m going to be stuck at home all week with Hula. Fliss can’t get time off work, and Mom says we can’t afford to go anywhere because we have to save all our money for our summer vacation in Corfu. Maybe Sanvi will let me come over.”
I try to cheer her up. “What, you don’t want to spend time with your adorable baby sister? But she’s so cute!” I put on Hula’s voice: “Kayma, what are you doing? Kayma, can I play with you? Kayma, give me all your toys, Mom says you have to!”
Kayma falls down laughing. “That’s exactly what she sounds like!”
Sanvi runs up to us, out of breath. “Oh, I haven’t missed the bell. I thought I was late!”
Kayma, still laughing, says, “You have to see this. Jelly, do it ag
ain!”
I do my impression of Hula again. Kayma squeals with laughter. Sanvi smiles doubtfully. “That does sound a lot like her. But, I don’t know, is it . . . um . . . ?” She shuffles her feet and glances around.
“What?” I ask, in my normal voice. Then I switch back to Hula. “Oh, come on, tell me! You lot are always leaving me out of things!”
“I just mean . . . What if she heard you? She’d be really upset.”
Panic grips me and I swing around, scanning the playground quickly. Hula is nowhere to be seen. “She’s not here,” I say boldly, relieved. If Hula were there, I’d feel bad . . . but she isn’t. “And anyway, I do impressions of the teachers in front of them all the time.”
“Well, actually, you don’t,” Sanvi points out. “When they come along, you stop and go bright red.”
“I do not!” I laugh. “Well, maybe a bit.”
“You so do,” Kayma agrees. “Like a tomato.”
“Or a watermelon,” says Sanvi.
“Or a strawberry.” Then Kayma remembers what started this conversation. “Sanvi! Can I come over during spring break? Please say I can. I’m going to go bananas if I can’t get away from Hula.” She grips Sanvi’s arms so tightly that Sanvi winces.
“Yes, you crazy person! Get off me!”
The bell rings and Kayma repeats “thankyouthank-youthankyou” as we go into school. My tummy feels all knotted up. I do impressions all the time. I’m not being mean, am I? It’s only because people are really easy to impersonate. They should find it funny that I’ve picked up on things they do and say or the way they walk or sniff or rub their nose. A thought occurs to me: Maybe it wouldn’t be right to impersonate Hula because she’s got a disability? I feel a bit queasy at that. In health class we’re told we shouldn’t stare at or make fun of people who are different from ourselves. Should I not do an impression of Hula simply because she’s only got one arm? But she’s so easy to mimic. . . .
While I’m thinking this, I walk slap bang into Marshall and knock him into the wall by mistake. “Oof!”