by Jane Asher
‘It’s very kind of you,’ I said, then stopped myself moving away as I remembered my original excuse for talking to her. ‘Oh – I was going to ask if you had any pancakes with the chicken filling?’
Brenda gazed at me for a few seconds without speaking and I tried to decide whether the smirk that still twisted her mouth was one of wry insight or utter lack of understanding. She wiped her smeared glasses once again with the back of her sleeve and returned my dimpled envelope to her pocket. I pictured wistfully the state it would be in by the time it reached my adored Stacey.
‘Nah,’ Brenda at last replied, ‘only cheese.’
Stacey
I made myself go back into work this morning, even though I still felt bad. They was picking the employee of the month today, see, and if you don’t show up for work you can’t be picked. I know I ain’t never going to win it – goes without saying – but I can’t stand the others to think I’m not there just so’s I can use that as an excuse for not being chosen again. Mr Chipstead did tell me once that I had as good a chance as anyone, but I’m not that stupid. They’re not going to have a picture of me in Sava News, are they? Not even in close-up, not even with all the rolls round my neck cut out. I’d still look like a pig, and that’s not going to raise company morale or whatever they call it, is it? Look at our lovely Stacey – this month’s pin-up girl. No chance.
It’s secret how they do pick them, mind. I used to think it was how much money you’d taken on the till, but then that Jeb boy got it that time, and he’d never been on a till at all. Just shelf-stacking and sorting stuff in the back, like what Andy does now. Denisha said Mr Chipstead fancied him, but I never believe those things about him. He only likes girls, I’m sure of that. And he says the picking ain’t nothing to do with him anyway.
Mr Chipstead was manager of the month once. He looked wicked in Sava News – he takes a lovely photo. His hair was a bit too short, mind; he’d cut it specially and I like it when it curls a little over his collar. But he had such a cute smile on him. ‘Warren Chipstead runs a lively store in the heart of London’s Victoria,’ it said. ‘Popular with his staff and appreciated by local customers, Warren regularly initiates innovative fundraising schemes and has raised over £525 in the last year for Children in Need.’ I cut it out and put it in my knicker drawer. Not so sure about the ‘popular’ bit though. Although we all fancy the pants off him, some of the girls are right bitchy about him; and he’s very sharp when he wants to be. I wish I didn’t like him so much really – I wish I liked someone I stood a chance with, someone who’d be kind to me, if you know what I mean, and like me for who I am. In all the mags it says over and over how it’s inside that’s important and it don’t matter what you look like and my mum always says it too and I try ever so hard to believe them but then I see the way Mr C looks at Sheila and I know it ain’t true. Not for a fucking minute, it ain’t. On one page the mags are telling me how it’s my inside what counts and on the page opposite they’re telling me how to get a perfect fucking lip line. You don’t fool me. I says to me mum, they don’t fool me; they think we’re stupid ’cos we’re ugly, but it don’t make us stupid. I got just the same brain behind all this fat, you know – no, a better brain than that Denisha for a start.
I tried to buy myself a new bra after work. I swore I wouldn’t let it upset me like it did the last time but it ended up making me cry again. It’s just so humiliating the way they treat you. I swear they get a kick out of it: ‘Oh, no, I’m afraid that doesn’t go up to a 46EE’, they shout across to the cubicle. I try to look as if I don’t care, but they know I do. At least I managed not to cry until I was out of there. I’ll just have to send away again to the OS place, but their stuffs all so dreary. It looks more like medical contraptions than pretty sexy underwear.
It made me so depressed I went straight to the internet café near our store and I typed in ‘weight-loss surgery’ in the Yahoo thing to see if there’s a place that does the weight-loss op over here. Took me hours to find it – I can see why Crystal got hers so easy: if I’d wanted it in America or Australia or Mars or somewhere I’d have been spoilt for choice. There’s only one or two here – pathetic, ain’t it? We never do catch up with the Americans. One of them’s up north, but it’s not like that’s the end of the world. They give all kinds of info on the site and it’s just like Crystal said – they do that Roux-en-Y thing. Staples and Y-shaped intestines and all that sort of weird crap. I’ve wrote down the number, anyway, so I’m getting nearer. Mind you, I’ve got about as much chance of the doctor sending me up there as one of Crystal’s bleeding angels landing in my cornflakes, but I ain’t gonna give up.
I saw that old bloke that fancies me today. He was in the store again and looked ever so nervous as he came through my checkout. Denisha told me the day he came in and gave Brenda that card for me he was stood outside the front of the store looking in for about half an hour. He’d been in earlier as well, she says, and asked where I was. Janet was on the till in the evening and she says he looked a bit peculiar, but then what else is new, I says. I hate it when the girls talk about him, ’cos it’s like they’re pretending it’s a good joke this crappy old gent having the hots for me but I know they think it’s ’cos no one normal would wanna know. Well, fuck them, that’s what I say. Still, it is a bit creepy. I wish I didn’t have to go home on my own every night – supposing he’s watching me, like them stalkers?
I don’t think he means no harm though. Denisha says I should be careful but I think he looks OK. I feel quite sorry for him, in fact – he can’t get up the courage to say anything to me except all the boring stuff about prices and that. I know he’s dying to stop and chat; I can see it in his eyes and the way his hand gets all shaky as he puts the stuff on the belt, but he just can’t do it. I’d even laugh now if he tried to bring up that bogof stuff he used to, just to make him relax a bit, but he don’t do that now.
‘Good morning,’ he said as he put down his basket. He never looked at me though, he was just looking down at the food. I waited for him to say something more – I was sure he was going to ask me if I’d got the card, but he never. I s’pose I shoulda thanked him for it, but I couldn’t quite do that, somehow.
‘Oooh, these peas are cold,’ he said, or something like that as he took out the frozen stuff. I said ‘yeah’ or something. I mean what else can you say? Frozen peas ain’t gonna be hot, are they? I’m not gonna help him to say whatever it is he wants to say – that’s his problem. Specially with Mr C and the girls watching – I’m not letting them think I’m sad enough to let some old weirdo chat me up.
Charlie
I can’t stand it any more. When I saw her again today I couldn’t even get a smile out of her. I can’t stand being here at home and having to make conversation with Judy and the children when all I want to do is to sit and think about her and how I can get to see more of her. I couldn’t go in to work this morning. I set off but I couldn’t face having to read the briefs and put up with David’s awful jokes and pretend everything’s normal. I phoned in sick again and said I had to take a few days off. I hung about the store a bit, then sat in the park and thought about it all. I know what I have to do now.
I’m only a burden at home, I’m sure of that: they’ll all be fine without me – it’s better for them. I’ll get out of their way.
Next
Sally
The night Dad left was truly terrible. So many of my friends’ parents have split that I’d always thought it would be quite easy to accept – and he and Mum had been so strange with each other lately that you’d think I’d have seen it coming.
But I had no idea how bad things were until I took the call from Dad’s office that morning. I was lying on the sofa watching Neighbours and thinking I ought to start planning the famous trip abroad I keep saying I’m going on, when the phone rang. It was David thingummy – Stevenson – Dad’s clerk of chambers or whatever he is. It was so strange to hear him asking where Dad was – it was like a mir
ror image or something, ’cos usually it’s us asking him the same question: he always knows Dad’s schedule and is brilliant at organising him.
‘How d’you mean?’ I said, or something equally dim. ‘Isn’t he at work?’
‘He hasn’t been into work regularly for some time, Sally,’ he answered, and I felt a tiny little quiver of panic – not just because of what he was saying, but the way he said it was scary, like a headmaster, as if he was going to have to expel me or something. ‘He’s hardly been here at all, with all the sick leave he’s been taking, and the unexplained absences – and today is especially difficult, as we had an important appointment fixed up. Have you any idea where he might be?’
‘No – no, I haven’t.’ I didn’t like to let on that I hadn’t even known he’d been ill – what the hell was going on? ‘I mean – I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose I assumed he was with you. I’ll – get Mum to ring you, shall I?’
‘If you would, please, Sally.’
When I rang Mum on her mobile (Dad always said they were a waste of money so he’d never bothered to get one) I was still in a bit of a panic and I asked if I should start calling round hospitals or ring the police or something. She was just weirdly calm about it and said it didn’t surprise her a bit and that I should do nothing and we’d talk about it later. So his going that evening shouldn’t have been that unexpected now I look back on it. But it was – both Ben and I were utterly shocked by it. I felt like a little girl again – no, that’s not right; I felt horribly adult, but I remembered how it felt to be a little girl, and that’s what made it so sad and so frightening. Because Dad had just always been there, and always been so kind and so funny – I wanted to be able to talk to him in the way I did when I was seven or eight, in the way that always made him laugh and pick me up and tease me. He’d get that amazingly proud look on his face when Ben and I did things or said things – just anything, really. I hadn’t realised how much that meant – Dad’s being so ridiculously proud of anything we did. All the little things like learning to swim, or speaking a couple of crappy lines in the school play or having a smart-arse argument over the kitchen table – he’d get really turned on by it in a way I used to think was pathetic. Mum always loved us, of course – they both did – and it was her we went to when we hurt ourselves or needed help with sorting out arrangements for things, but it was Dad who kept us feeling we were truly special.
It began with yet another row. Ben and I were in the kitchen and I was peeling some potatoes because I wanted to watch something on TV – I can’t even remember what it was now – and Mum had been up in her bedroom again and I could see it was going to get late so I thought I’d make a start on the supper. Then suddenly Dad came home and slammed the front door behind him as if he was trying to break it or something. I went out into the hall and I was going to tell him about David ringing because that seemed like a good way of bringing up the fact he’d been missing from work. And I wasn’t just being nosy and wanting to let him know that I knew about his being off work – I really thought I might be able to help if he was having a problem. But he just kind of brushed past me.
‘Dad?’ I shouted up the stairs. ‘Are you OK?’
He yelled back something like, ‘What does it look like?’ and went into the bedroom. He’d come home in bad moods before – specially in the last few weeks – but this was different.
I went back into the kitchen and spoke to Ben, who was sitting at the table with his homework in front of him looking as scared as I felt.
‘For Christ’s sake, what the hell is going on?’ I said. ‘We’ve got to do something, haven’t we? Or say something? Did you know he’s been taking time off work?’
‘What? Dad has?’ said Ben, and I felt quite relieved to see I wasn’t the only one to be surprised.
‘Yeah – I wasn’t going to tell you until I’d talked more to Mum about it – or at least told Dad. It seemed a bit disloyal somehow, because I’m not sure he’d want us to know. But if he’s just going to push past me and shout at me like that – then, what does he expect? This is like a bad TV soap, all this door-slamming and Mum disappearing into her bedroom for hours. We can’t let them go on like this; it feels like this is happening to someone else. Mum and Dad don’t do this stuff, do they?’
I knew Ben was trying not to let me see that his eyes were watery. Poor guy – I know how he felt – all this was just so scary. It was like living with aliens or something.
‘What can we do, Sal? If you try and say anything, it’ll only make them worse, you know that. They prefer it if we pretend it isn’t happening. I can’t believe he’s been off work – that’s just amazing. What’s he been doing? Did Mum know where he was? When he was off, I mean. Is he having an affair or something, do you think?’
‘Christ knows. They said he’d been on sick leave – but I’m sure he hasn’t been ill. And I’ve no idea if Mum knew – she’s being almost as weird as he is. But I don’t care what they prefer. I’m not letting them carry on like this, for God’s sake. It’s not fair on us, for one thing. How do they expect us to cope with this hell going on? I’m going up to talk to them.’
I do so so much wish I hadn’t done that, now. I always think I’m so clever, that’s my trouble. I was so sure I could bring them to their senses, kind of thing, that I never thought twice about going up those stairs and confronting them, but I can see it was really stupid.
As I reached the landing I could hear the shouting going on behind the bedroom door. It had been bad enough when I heard it downstairs, but up here it was terrifying. I wonder if kids whose parents row all the time get used to it, if they don’t get frightened any more by the loud voices and the horrible anger in them? Maybe it’s easier for them. For Ben and me it was just so different from anything we’d known, and I was very frightened – I don’t mind admitting it. I felt like rushing downstairs again and asking Ben if he’d come up with me instead of doing it on my own, but then I remembered his tearful face and thought better of it. I’d always looked after him and I wasn’t going to let him down now: big sister would sort things out, like she always did. I walked across to the door and leant my forehead on it for a second or two, with my hand on the doorknob. I could hear the words now.
‘I know it’s my fault, you stupid woman,’ Dad was saying. ‘Don’t you see I’m not denying that for a second? But it’s not going to change – that’s what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘You can’t just expect me to accept this – you can’t possibly expect me to carry on as if –’
‘I’m not expecting anything. Do listen, damn you! I AM NOT EXPECTING ANYTHING – I’m merely stating the facts, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Well, don’t! Don’t just “state the facts”.’ She was mimicking him now, half crying but still managing to mock him in that unbearably irritating way she had when he started using his barrister voice. I knew this simply meant more trouble.
‘SHUT UP, WOMAN! SHUT UP AND LISTEN!’ I squatted down outside the door and covered my face with my hands as he went on. ‘I thought I could go on living here even though I’m going through this catharsis, but –’
‘Ooohh – going through a catharsis, are we? You shit!’
Oh God, this was so awful. I’d never heard Mum talk like this. I just wanted to die. But something gave me the bravery to stand up and turn the familiar flowery china handle and push open the door. As soon as I saw their faces I knew it was hopeless. They had turned at the sound of the door catch, and the anger and hate that I saw on both their faces made me cry out. I can’t even remember what I yelled at them – something like, ‘Oh, do stop it, both of you’ – but it didn’t help. Now I think it was probably the worst thing I could have done. If I’d only left them alone to get through it maybe he wouldn’t have gone.
But my entry into the bedroom did do something. It changed things in a flash – if not for the better at least for the different, if you see what I mean. The anger sort of crumpled away from the
ir faces and they stared at me in – oh, how shall I describe that look? I can still see it now, and it makes me want to cry all over again. A sad horror – that’s the best way of putting it, as if they’d unexpectedly come across an unspeakable accident. A child who’d been run over or something – well, in a way they had, but then that’s just me being self-pitying, I suppose.
It certainly stopped them shouting, that’s for sure. Dad collapsed in a heap on the bed, holding his head in a way that reminded me of the way I’d sat outside the door a few seconds earlier, and Mum moved towards me with her arms open. Dad was muttering, ‘I can’t – I can’t – I can’t’, or something, and Mum put her arms on my shoulders and then turned to look back at him. Then she said something that was more unbearable than anything that had happened before (and I know things can’t be more or less unbearable: you can either bear them or you can’t, as Dad would say in his corrective moods – but they can in my book, as all of this was unbearable to me, but some was worse than the rest). She turned to look at Dad, still holding me by the shoulders so she had to twist her head right round on her neck, and said, ‘I love you so very much, you see, Charlie. That’s what makes this impossible. I can’t live without you.’
I’d never heard anything like that before. Never. Yes, of course they often said they loved each other, but in that casual ‘I love you, darling’ way that was about as meaningful as saying good morning. Kind of comforting but not ever embarrassing or emotional. Like the way they kissed – very loving and all that, but not (oh Christ, I hate even saying the word in the context of my mum and dad), not sexy. Just quick dry-looking brushes on the cheek, or quick meetings of pursed lips. The way she told him she loved him that horrible evening was like seeing her French-kiss him. It made my insides shrivel up in a spasm. Not because I was embarrassed; things were far past that stage by then, but because it made me so – so stricken. It was utterly wrong that I should be seeing into her heart in this terrible way, and I wanted out. But her hands were gripping my shoulders so tightly I couldn’t move, and she was controlling me with her feelings just as much as with her muscles.