by Jane Asher
I cleared my throat again. ‘Morning,’ I volunteered, nodding casually at the girl.
‘Hi.’
‘No Stacey then, this morning, I see,’ I went on, feeling sure I was bright red and grinning like an ape.
‘No, not s’morning.’
Oh, Christ – the scones were scanned and the till was showing my total. I had only a few more seconds while I paid and took my change before I would run out of excuses to talk to the girl.
‘On holiday, is she?’
She looked up at me and I swear she was smirking. In spite of my studiedly casual tone I could tell she sensed the urgency behind it, and it made me feel a fool. It suddenly seemed obvious that my constant visits to the supermarket and my use of one particular till had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the staff. It might have been only recently that I had become aware of my addiction to Stacey, but I now felt certain that to everyone else it had been crystal clear for some time. My body prickled with the humiliation of it and with the feeling of being watched: apart from the other checkout girls eyeing me right now, I could just imagine the dreadful Chipstead having a laugh about it with them all in the staff room, or whatever they call it in supermarkets.
‘Nah. She’s off sick. One seventy-two.’
‘Oh, dear. Poor thing,’ I managed to mutter, as light-heartedly as I could, as I pulled a couple of pound coins out of my pocket. ‘Expecting her back soon, are you?’
‘Dunno.’
I quickly shoved the scones into a carrier, picked up my change and made my way out into Victoria Street. I felt almost unbearably sad: I knew that my life really had irrevocably turned some sort of corner, and even though I couldn’t yet begin to see what might lie ahead on my new and unexpected path, it was clear that it was not going to be an easy one. I looked for something to ease the distracting ache inside, and found myself gazing into the window of a greetings card shop. A get well card – that was something. An excuse to think about Stacey while I picked out a pretty, extravagant card to lift her spirits.
I chose something very pink and flowery. It reminded me of her – the roses and sweet peas pictured had a fleshy, blushing, luscious look to them that made me think longingly of her cheeks and of the hints of enormous bosom that always peeped out of the top of her overall. Roses in her cheeks, I thought to myself as I gazed at it soppily, but the phrase conjured up the delicate blush on the pale skin of a Victorian heroine. No – my girl’s cheeks had room for a whole vase of the things. Plus a few giant chrysanths. My love is like a red, red sofa, I mused. And yes, of course – newly sprung. How very suitable. I laughed to myself as I paid for the card and watched the young man slip it, together with a fuchsia-coloured envelope, into a paper bag. She’s going to love it, I thought happily. How many cards is that poor gigantic creature going to get when she’s ill, apart from this one from a demented guy who’s going through some sort of mid-life crisis? It didn’t occur to me at that stage to wonder how on earth I was going to get it to her. I think I was just delighted to have found a small way of distracting myself from the deep sadness that was still threatening to well up inside.
I stopped outside the store, put my briefcase and SavaMart carrier down on the pavement beside me and pulled the card out of the paper bag – it made me smile again, just to look at it. What kind of madness was this? I shook my head and took my fountain pen from my upper breast pocket, then, before I could think too carefully and end up abandoning the whole idea, wrote ‘just hoping you get better soon’ at the bottom of the inside page. I hesitated as I wondered how to sign it: ‘Your checkout friend’? ‘Mr Baguette’? but, utterly unable to make a decision, left it blank, hoping I’d be able to hand it to her personally in any case. I slipped it back into the paper bag, then paused as I saw the bright-pink envelope. I pulled it out and stared at it. Another nightmare. How would I address it without knowing her surname? ‘Stacey’ seemed intrusively intimate, but ‘Miss – or Ms – Stacey’ sounded patronising and hierarchical. I stood dithering for a moment or two, then popped it into the carrier bag and went on my way to work.
Stacey
‘I don’t feel too good, Ma,’ I said. It was true; I’d felt right rough since I woke up. It wasn’t like me not to go into work, neither. I had this pain on my left side and every time I tried to get up out of the chair it fucking killed me.
‘You sit there, Stace,’ said my ma. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea and a slice.’ She’s good to me like that. We may have our problems, her and me, since my dad left, but we don’t do too bad. At least I don’t have to worry about what she’s thinking when I’m sitting having a relax. Not like at work, when I’m always wondering about the others. They think I don’t see them looking at my legs and bum and all that when I come in the canteen. Mind you, I’m careful about when I go there: if Mr Chipstead’s already in there I’ll wait. I don’t like him to see me moving around more than I can help. It’s better when he finds me already in my sideways position, then I can tuck as much of myself behind the table as possible. I kind of twist round and drape my arms on top of the table and try to hide the other bits and let him concentrate on my boobs. I’ve seen him looking at them and I can tell he’s interested. And I never get up from my till when he’s looking, neither – not unless I can help it.
I was watching Jerry Springer to take my mind off the pain. It always cheers me up that programme, in any case, seeing all them other big people. I’d like to live in Florida, really. I’d be more like all the rest there: Crystal told me my kind of size is quite common out there, and there are stores and places just meant for big girls. When I read her letters I get to feel as if I’m not that bad, really – but then I see myself in the mirror and I know I’ve got beyond the kind of thing that could ever look normal. And, anyway, Crystal’s gone over the other side now, so she’s not like me any more. Or she won’t be soon. That’s really hard to think about: she’s been my friend for so long and now she’s going to be just like all the others. I won’t be able to tell her stuff like I used to.
‘Come on, Stace!’ said my mum as she put my mug and plate down next to my chair. ‘You’re all right, love, you know you are. You’ll be right as rain by tomorrow, sweetheart. You’ve had these kind of pains before, haven’t you, love?’
Now I ain’t usually much of an emotional type. Denisha says I’m as cold as a block of ice, but then she never did have much in the way of a brain, if you ask me. But when I watch Jerry and all them screaming women on his show it’s true I feel right embarrassed: I mean, I like watching them ’cos it’s so weird, but I can’t imagine letting go like that, let alone slugging some bloke in front of twelve million people. But maybe I was feeling sorry for myself or something, having just thought about Crystal and how she wasn’t gonna understand me no more. And then with my mum’s being so sweet like she always is – well, I dunno, but it all just got to me somehow. And I suddenly burst into tears and howled.
My poor mum. She didn’t know where to put herself, I could tell. I couldn’t stop crying, but all the while I was thinking: I’ve gotta stop this, ’cos my mum just don’t know where to put herself. She’s ever so clingy to me, is my mum, and I’ve never minded ’cos she’s not a bad old thing and she had me ever so young so in some ways we’re more like sisters, I sometimes think.
‘You gotta get yourself back down the doctor’s, Stace, love,’ she said. She tried to get herself down next to me on the floor so she could put her arms round me. That made me feel like crying even more, ’cos the thought of her poor old knees trying to manage on the floor was awful: her arthritis is even worse than what mine is, you see. The doctor says they might have to give her new knees one day, but my mum says she ain’t never gonna let them do that to her. She managed it, anyway, even while I was trying to raise myself up a bit out of the chair so she wouldn’t have to go down so far, but I was still sobbing so hard it was making me shake and I couldn’t get the energy to give myself the heave it takes to get me up. A right old pair, we are, when
we’re waddling around together, I always say. She reached her little arms out and got them round me a bit and it felt really good as she gave me a hard squeeze.
Dunno what I’d do without my mum, I really don’t. I slag her off a lot to the girls ’cos that’s what they all do about their mums, but I don’t mean it. She’s the only one that loves me. That’s the problem. They always say you just need love and it’s true. If my mum wasn’t here there’d be not one person that loves me. Except maybe my dad. I think he loves me, wherever he is, but when you ain’t seen someone for twelve years and you don’t really know what they look like except by the old photos and you was just a kid anyway then you can’t really tell, can you? I mean, he may have loved that kid, but who’s to say whether he’d love the grown-up Stacey? Especially since she’s grown up so big.
I don’t like to think of that, though. That he might hate the sight of me if he saw me. I like to pretend that he knows I’m still big but he loves me anyway. And it ain’t so stupid to think that, because my mum was big when he loved her – he liked a good handful according to my mum.
‘Did he go because he didn’t like you being fat?’ I used to ask her.
‘No, Stacey – if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times, it wasn’t to do with that. He liked a good handful, did your dad.’
That’s how she always said it, and it made me feel right cheerful. I could picture him from the old photos, and in my mind I’d put him on the beach with my mum and he’d be grabbing a big handful of her backside, and smiling like anything, and she’d be looking all pretend cross and loving every minute. That’s what I want. A man who’ll love me just the way I am.
‘You gotta get yourself down the doctor’s, love,’ she said again, and I stopped crying then and tore a piece off the loo roll that was with all my other things on the table next to my chair and I blew my nose. It was really loud and that made us laugh – I blow my nose like a navvy, my mum says – whatever that is.
She’s right. It’s about time I went to the surgery again. My joints are hurting like buggery, and, in any case, I want to ask him something.
Ben
I had this really strange dream last night. I was a computer protocol. Don’t ask me how the fuck I could be a protocol because you wouldn’t think you’d know you were one, really, as it’s impossible to begin to imagine what one would feel like. If they could feel, that is – which they patently can’t. No, I can’t explain how I knew, but not only was it definite that I was one – and it wasn’t at all unexpected or surprising, just the way those truly odd things never are in dreams – but I was a particular type. I was a TCP/IP protocol: the thing that connects up to the internet or whatever. And my friend – it could have been Holly or Maxim or anyone I know, really: it didn’t seem to have anything as identifiable as a sex or name – was an IPX/SPX protocol. So to make any sort of contact with my friend, this other protocol, I had to work out how the TCP/IP protocol communicates with the IPX/SPX networking one. And I just couldn’t begin to work it out or remember how to set up a way of them understanding each other.
It must be from listening to Hol going over the stuff she’s been doing on JavaScript. She’s been constructing a website for her dad’s golf club and taking courses on loads of computer stuff. She’s way beyond anything I can understand, but what she was saying must have reminded me of the time I was studying networking and all that in the IT class at school, and although I didn’t think of it when I was with Holly, all the protocol business must have been dredged up while she was talking. Emerging from the depths of my memory and getting ready to invade my head in the night.
This guy at school says it’s all about trying to communicate with my family. He would. It’s only because I was telling him about my dad the other night and how strange he was. I don’t think dreams are so obviously symbolic, myself.
There are times when I think we must be one of the most dysfunctional families around, but then I listen to my friends and we seem pretty average. From the outside I suppose we look relentlessly middle class, boring and normal: barrister father, ex-teacher and Ofsted inspector mother and two children both privately educated. But the way we can sit round the table and talk about nothing when half the world is starving and the other half is wrecking the planet with its greed really gets to me sometimes. I’m going to volunteer in Africa for my gap year. And I may stay out there and not bother with uni at all. But I haven’t told anyone except Hol yet – and she just says I’ll never go unless she goes with me. I have to say women do have an inflated idea of their importance.
Mum had one of her migraines this morning. She was still in bed when Dad left for work – really unusual that, as she’s normally the first down. Mind you, Dad was up and dressed very early, and he looked a lot more positive this morning. He was humming to himself as he made his toast, and, after he’d taken Mum up a cup of tea, he bounced off to work looking really quite jolly.
It was when he came back that things went a bit pear-shaped again. I was doing some homework at the kitchen table – I normally do it in my room on the computer, but I was starving and while Mum made me a sandwich I thought I’d make a start – and he came in looking a bit depressed. He kissed Mum in that absent-minded way he does without saying anything and then plonked his things on the table and walked over to put the kettle on. I could see his manner had irritated her – she clanked the knife into the butter dish and then threw it down onto the worktop as she moved over to the table.
‘Yes, thanks, Charlie – I am feeling a bit better. Thank you for asking,’ she said as she picked up a plastic supermarket bag he’d brought in and tipped the contents out onto the table. ‘I don’t see any Paracetamol,’ she went on. ‘Is it here or –’
‘Oh, bugger!’ said Dad, and he turned quickly round looking quite shocked. He rushed to the table and reached out almost as if he was going to snatch the bag out of her hand. ‘Oh bugger, Judy! It’s not in there – I didn’t –’
‘No, I can see that,’ said Mum. ‘You forgot it, I’m sure, didn’t you? And why on earth have you bought all these scones?’
‘I went in there to get the Paracetamol, darling – what an idiot I am – I just saw those scones and –’
But Mum suddenly smiled and picked up a flowery card that was under the packets of scones. How easy it is to make a woman happy – they’re right in the mags when they tell you to buy something for them every now and then. I’ve seen Holly when I get her some tiny present – it’s ridiculous how much it seems to mean to her. I felt quite embarrassed for Mum when I saw how she changed when she picked up the card. Dad had completely forgotten to get the one thing she really wanted, after all – and now she’d gone all forgiving just because he’d bought her a pathetic card.
‘Oh, Charlie – thank you, darling. What a wonderfully ghastly card – I love it!’
She opened it and read out loud, the way she always does when she gets cards. Most people just skim through the verse or don’t even look at it at all, but my family likes to read the verses out and have a laugh. It’s pretty patronising really. I’m sure some people take them seriously.
This one finished with something like, ‘And days of health restored for ever’.
‘Wonderful poetry!’ she said, laughing up at us, then she looked down at the card again. ‘Just hoping you get better soon,’ she continued. ‘Very formal, darling! Glad to see you’re not letting your emotions run away with you. No – only joking,’ she added, as she saw Dad’s expression. ‘Thank you darling, it’s really sweet. I almost forgive you for not getting the Paracetamol. Luckily for you I’ve got a couple left, or I’d send you straight out again right now.’
Dad was being weird again. He wasn’t laughing, or even smiling, really. He was just looking at her. ‘I said I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll go out and get you some now.’
‘No, darling, I said – it’s OK, I’ve got enough to manage. I’ve taken plenty of the migraine stuff and I only wanted the other as
a back-up in case it went on. But it’s much better and I probably won’t need anything more tonight.’
‘Sorry about the scones.’
‘What on earth made you get them? You know I hate the shop-bought ones – if you wanted me to make some you only had to –’
‘You don’t like the card, then?’
‘What?’
‘You said it’s – what did you say? – that it’s wonderfully ghastly, was that it?’
‘For God’s sake, Charlie – are you serious? You’re not really offended about that, are you? I love it, I said so. I only meant –’
‘I know exactly what you meant. It’s obviously not the right card for you, is it?’
Mum glanced over at me, but I looked away quickly. No way was I going to get involved in this. I knew I ought to defend her really – he was being fucking stupid about the whole thing and he knew exactly what she’d meant about the card, but I couldn’t bear to join in. It always annoys me the way my family sends everything up and I’d hated the way she read that poem out – it’s like she’s back to being a teacher when she does that sort of thing. I wasn’t going to help her by taking her side. She could get out of this one on her own. Fuck knows why he was taking it so seriously, though. I even wondered for a moment if he was joking and was pretending to take offence to give us all yet another family laugh, but it was going on too long for that.