Lucky Girl

by Fiona Gibson

  I find a box in the shed, bring it into the living room and fill it with the magazines. Upstairs I haul out bundles of Alex’s shirts from beneath my bed. They still smell of him, like warm bread, even though they’ve lain here for months. Here’s his party shirt—dazzling orange with a black floral pattern—bought when he wanted to create a stir at Jen’s thirty-fifth party. But most are pale blue, cream or washed-out yellow: faded and wilting and not, I suspect, the Quality Clothing required by the PDSA shop.

  Here is his zip-up bag, pushed so far under the bed I have to slide on my stomach to retrieve it. It’s filled with summery things: battered Birkenstocks, flip-flops, cheap sunglasses, a raffia mat for the beach. Alex enthused about traveling to Goa, Mexico or Guatemala—he’d buy the Rough Guides—but could only get it together to come on one holiday with me, to Nice, and several solo excursions to his aunt Gina’s boarding house in Weston Super Mare. I pile up his stuff in the corner of my bedroom, like some challenging art installation entitled My Ex-Boyfriend’s Old Crap, then wish I’d left it under the bed where I wouldn’t be able to see it.

  There are more of his things in my bottom drawer: a cracked leather wallet and a pair of miniature binoculars in a rigid case, the only remaining evidence of his bird-watching fad. And here’s something that isn’t Alex’s, but Mum’s: a quilted cream bag sprigged with daisies. Inside is a black kohl pencil with a silver lid and two colors of eye shadow—shimmery cream, for highlighting the brow bone, which women did then, plus chestnut-brown. Her lipstick is frosted pink—Elizabeth Arden’s Rose Blush—her face powder Cussons’s Palest Ivory. There’s a black mascara, a tiny bottle of Jean Patou perfume and a tortoiseshell comb.

  I lay out her things on my duvet, all her colors and smells. Attached to the comb are a few pale brown hairs. The lipstick is barely used. I touch its smooth silver case and twist it up to its full length. Years ago, feeling sorry for me being without a mother, Elona would buy me copies of Jackie magazine. One issue had a feature about the shape of your lipstick revealing your hidden personality. If yours wore down to a sharp angle you were inquisitive and enjoyed new challenges. I grabbed Mum’s lipsticks from the dressing table drawer that Dad hadn’t got around to emptying and pulled off all their lids.

  They were all perfectly rounded. ‘On the surface you’re loving and giving,’ the Jackie article said, ‘but tend to nurture a secret side.’ It suddenly felt wrong, examining her private things, and I stuffed them back into the drawer.

  I pack her makeup back into the quilted bag and lift the bedside phone.

  ‘Hey, Stella,’ Alex says, ‘how’s things?’ It sounds like a voice I don’t know.

  ‘Fine, Alex. I’m just…clearing out. Going through your old stuff.’

  ‘Not moving, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not. I just need the space.’ My voice is emotionless, as flat as cardboard.

  ‘Okay,’ he says gently. ‘What have you been up to, anyway?’

  I want to get off the phone and bundle the rest of his stuff into bags. The art installation glowers at me.

  ‘Working lots,’ I say briskly.

  ‘Nothing’s changed, then.’

  Alex once said I was too busy for him. ‘You’re so full of your damn flute and your music,’ he announced, and stormed upstairs, perhaps to write a poem entitled ‘My Girlfriend Loves Mozart More Than She Loves Me.’ I found him later, fully clothed and asleep, as if he’d been waiting for me to come up and say sorry and I’d taken too long.

  ‘I have to earn a living,’ I remind him.

  ‘Are you going out much?’

  ‘Of course I go out! I’m not a recluse.’ My heart quickens. Don’t be defensive. Just make arrangements and finish the call.

  ‘We could meet up,’ Alex adds. ‘Haven’t seen you in months.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t. That’s what happens when people break up.’

  ‘We could still have a drink, when you’re not working. It’d be good to catch up.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say carefully.

  ‘I’ve been past your place,’ Alex adds. ‘Saw a couple of girls sitting on your doorstep.’

  ‘My new neighbors. I’m teaching the older one flute. She’s amazing—’

  ‘Stella,’ he says, ‘it’s lovely to hear your voice.’

  I could give his stuff to Midge to add to her Evian bottle missile. The Birkenstocks could be leathery wings.

  ‘Have you met anyone?’ Alex asks.

  ‘I need you to collect your stuff.’

  ‘Well, have you?’

  ‘No, Alex.’

  A pause. ‘Are you sure?’

  There’s a face, indistinct apart from the eyes, which are startling green with pale flecks like sand. Beautiful woman savaged by bonkers hound.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. What about you?’

  ‘I was…’ he pauses, ‘seeing someone for a while. Nothing special.’

  Was Nothing Special the reason he left me? ‘That’s nice for you,’ I murmur.

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  ‘I’ve got to go, Alex.’

  ‘Listen, I read something about your dad joining Friday Zoo.’ Alex always enjoyed Frankie stories. Dad’s kind of job—seemingly easy, not quite real—appealed to his dubious work ethic.

  ‘I can’t really believe it. Never thought he’d work in TV again.’

  ‘Remember that time we went to Cornwall, and his fence—the one he’d just put up—blew right across the fields?’

  I remember, and a small laugh escapes. ‘Dad was chasing bits of stick in his dressing gown….’

  ‘And his girlfriend…’

  ‘Maggie.’

  ‘Maggie with the veggie casseroles…she was scared he’d get pneumonia.’

  ‘They liked you,’ I tell him. Alex had come to Silverdawn Cottage several times, and charmed Dad with his knowledge of sea fishing, which he’d picked up from Coarse Angler magazine.

  He sighs, then says something that sounds like, ‘I miss you.’

  And he waits for me to say, ‘I miss you, too.’

  10

  Friday Zoo

  … And a huge welcome to Dirk, Chuck and Johnnie, our fabulous wildmen… Let’s unleash them, open the cage now…it’s Friday Zoo!

  At the word zoo, the cage opens and the presenters tumble out. ‘Tonight,’ says the one with swathes of silken dark hair, ‘we have some incredible guests…’ He names a soft-porn actress who’s launched her own underwear line. An elderly actress who plays a fearsome café owner in a soap. A young singer who grins tensely as he’s steered toward a pink leather sofa that looks like a vast, squishy bottom.

  Katy was due for her lesson at seven but hasn’t shown up. The presenters fire questions and the boy singer can’t respond fast enough. He keeps tugging at his fringe. He’s outnumbered three to one. ‘I know the female contingent here,’ the ginger-haired presenter says, ‘is dying to know if young David here is available….’

  ‘I’ve been too busy,’ he manages to say, ‘for a girlfriend.’

  The ex-porn star is showing her collection of gel-filled bras designed to give ‘oomph’ to the cleavage. I could do with one of those. My cleavage lacks oomph. When I’m not working I don’t even bother with a bra. ‘Even flat-chested women should wear bras,’ the girl chirps, ‘or they’ll be hitting the floor by your thirties.’

  She’s an unsettling combination of highly tanned face and silver hair. She looks unreal, as if she’s made of plastic or wax. You might expect her to pop, or start melting under the studio lights. Dad used to alert Charlie and me to the dangers of the lights’ fierce heat. ‘It’s tough out there,’ he said, as if preparing Beef Cobbler before 200 well-behaved housewives posed similar risks to maintaining oil rigs in the North Sea.

  The soap actress reveals that the man she lives with is precisely half her age. ‘You’re as young as the man you feel,’ she cackles, and her outsized hoop earrings collide with her cheeks. I check the street, but there’s sti
ll no sign of Katy’s mum’s car. I want to turn off Friday Zoo but can’t force myself to press the button on the remote. I try to look away but my eyes keep sliding over. Like peering into other people’s houses, I just can’t help myself. I lose control of my eye-swiveling muscles.

  I peel a cherry-flavored Chewy Jewel off the rug and pick up my flute to play, but can’t focus with the presenters guffawing with the ex-porn star. She’s pretending to love the attention but is only here to sell gel-filled bras and highly flammable camisoles. The soap actress has just published an autobiography; the boy singer released a solo album of ballads. Dad has nothing to sell except himself. Maggie has confided that the Friday Zoo fee will enable them to have the roof fixed.

  ‘Put your hands together,’ says the startlingly handsome presenter—he looks like someone who’d be rude to waiters and barmen—‘to welcome our new regular guest. He’s responsible for clogging millions of arteries, wrecking billions of hearts…’

  The audience roars. The ex-porn star is clapping, as if she knows or cares who he is.

  ‘A big hand,’ the presenter commands, ‘for the kitchen sensation of yesteryear…’

  Dad’s eyes look more bulbous than usual, as if they might actually fall out and roll like marbles along the work top. Maybe he always looks like this—startled and moist-lipped—and TV just emphasizes everything. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him onscreen. ‘Thank you,’ he says as the applause fades. ‘Tonight, ladies and gentleman, we’re cooking up a forgotten classic.’

  Forgotten classic, like Dad himself. Only he’s not forgotten. Occasionally, at the doctor’s or dentist’s, I’ll flip through a magazine and come across an article called something like Where Are They Now? After several failed attempts to revive his career, Frankie Moon retired from television and lives quietly in a ram-shackle cottage on the North Cornish coast with his partner, Maggie, and their two mongrel dogs….

  Dad is making Baked Alaska. ‘Something nice and chilling for winter,’ the ginger presenter jibes, peering over Dad’s shoulder.

  Dad is wearing a pale blue shirt, a darker blue tie and a red-and-white PVC apron emblazoned with the Friday Zoo logo—the words bursting through the bars of a cage. ‘What I’m doing,’ he continues gamely, ‘is placing the ice cream on the sponge, which I made earlier—

  ‘Which we bought, actually,’ the presenter cuts in. ‘Ninety-nine pence for three. Special offer at Tesco.’

  ‘And I’m covering it with a thick layer of meringue, which will act as an insulating layer so the ice cream…um…does everyone know how to make meringue?’

  ‘Eggs, sugar?’ suggests the presenter.

  ‘Beat the egg white until stiff, fold in the—’

  ‘Ever been to Alaska, Frankie?’

  ‘Can’t say I have, Dirk.’

  ‘Johnnie,’ the presenter corrects him. ‘Dirk’s the good-looking one. Know what they used to call me at school, Frankie? Gingernut. Gingersnap. Did you ever bully ginger people at school, Frankie?’

  ‘I, um, can’t, um—’

  ‘Course you didn’t,’ Johnnie cuts in, ‘nice guy like you.’

  Dad forces a tight smile. His hair looks freshly cut, clippered into respectability. I imagine Maggie watching on their ancient TV, trying to feel proud. He swirls on the meringue with a palette knife. The screen is filled by the top of his head where his hair’s thinning. ‘Sure it won’t melt?’ Johnnie asks. ‘Like, run out all over the oven and start burning… Is this a fire hazard, Frankie? You’re worrying me now.’

  Dad tries for a quick response but is left hanging, his lips undulating wildly. He didn’t used to do this. He’d know what to say when strangers stopped him in the street and said, ‘I thought it was you. It is you!’ blinking at him as if expecting him to do something terribly clever with aspic.

  ‘We’ll come back to Frankie,’ Johnnie announces, ‘at the end of the show. Can’t wait for a taste of that Baked Alaska.’

  The phone rings.

  ‘So sorry,’ Katy’s mum pants. ‘Car won’t start. We’re walking to your house. Hurry up, Katy—we’re already late. Sure you can you still fit her in, Stella?’

  ‘No problem,’ I say.

  ‘Hope we haven’t messed up your evening.’

  ‘No, not at all.’ I can still hear Johnnie’s braying voice rattling out of the TV. I try to busy myself by wiping out the fridge, even though it’s perfectly clean. When I peek back into the living room, Johnnie is saying, ‘We’ve had a bit of an incident here.’ He peers into the oven, as if it’s a cave from which a ferocious bear might burst out. It’s a setup of course. A joke. Anything can happen on Friday Zoo. That’s the whole point. Dad probably knew, and why should he care? He’s working again. He’s somebody.

  The camera closes in on the Baked Alaska. It looks like a smoldering slipper. Johnnie pokes it, then bashes it with his fist. The handsome one strides onto set clutching a chisel and mallet. He whacks the pudding, sending it bouncing off the work top and skidding across the floor like shrapnel. The audience is laughing, and Dad’s laughing, too. His mouth has formed the right shape, at least.

  The doorbell sounds. I let in Katy, who is pink-cheeked and gasping from being marched up Briar Hill by a vexed mother. ‘Can I stay here while she has her lesson?’ her mum asks. ‘I’ll just read my magazine. I won’t get in the way.’

  ‘Of course you can stay,’ I tell her.

  Friday Zoo’s credits are rolling. The presenters are jostling with the ex-porn star and her armful of bras. ‘What are you watching?’ Katy’s mother asks.

  It’s so awful, seeing Dad’s big, fake face, trying to bluster this through—really trying, the way he’d occasionally try to be a good dad to Charlie and me.

  ‘Just some rubbish,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, it’s Friday Zoo. Isn’t that your father, Stella? Brought him out of retirement, have they?’

  ‘Yes, that’s my dad.’

  ‘I remember him from when I was a kid. You must have had an amazing time as a child, with him being so well-known and respected.’

  I nod, busying myself by extracting Katy’s pieces from the pile of music on the table.

  ‘Weren’t you a lucky girl?’ she gushes, beaming at the screen.

  ‘Yes, I was.’ I fix on my widest smile and click off the TV. Dad’s hollow laughter still rattles between my ears.

  11

  Moon Pie

  When Dad tried to be Good Dad, that’s when Charlie and I started to worry. We’d grown used to rattling along in our own cack-handed way. We didn’t welcome interference.

  ‘Good news,’ Dad announced one morning over breakfast. ‘I’ve found someone to look after you.’ I thought he meant somewhere else—that Charlie and I were being sent away to a home or a distant relative’s house.

  ‘Where?’ I asked, picturing an attic filled with scuttling spiders and a growling water tank.

  ‘Here, of course. We’ll have to clear out the spare room because the nanny will need it.’

  ‘We don’t need a nanny,’ Charlie retorted. He was fourteen and sprouting so fast he’d taken to having daytime naps in his room with the door locked. I was tall like Charlie—the loftiest in my class—but conscious of too much energy buzzing inside me, sabotaging any hope of concentrating on my work. I felt as if my head was full of bees.

  ‘There’s no point arguing,’ Dad said. ‘Someone’s got to cook, clean, take care of the house. She’ll make life easier for all of us.’

  I realized then that it was our house or—more accurately, Dad—who needed nannying. She must be coming cheap, I decided, because he was hardly making any money by then. Woman’s Life had replaced him with a chef-cum-nutritionist who grinned from her page in a scoop-necked top. ‘I cook,’ I protested. ‘I clean the house.’ It was true. Around twice a year I’d drag the Hoover around and maybe extract a soggy hairball from the plug hole in the bath.

  ‘It’s all arranged,’ Dad said. ‘She’s very efficient. She’s starting on
Monday and I’ll expect you both to be nice to her.’

  I stared at him, gulping air. What would Mum think? I wondered, certain that she would have been proud of the way I’d run things this past year. Yes, the sink was perpetually piled high with dirty crockery, but none of us were starving, or running around naked. We were managing. ‘Tell her she can’t come,’ I begged Dad.

  ‘It’s too late, Stella.’ He pulled on his old corduroy jacket and headed out to the allotment, leaving the prospect of Efficient Nanny lingering in the air.

  ‘What d’you think?’ I asked, tipping my untouched Rice Krispies into the bin.

  Charlie shrugged. ‘It’s up to him.’

  ‘You really want someone—some stranger—living with us?’

  ‘Of course I don’t. She won’t last long, you’ll see. She won’t be able to stand it.’

  ‘We’re not that bad.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ I snapped at him, just like Mum used to say. Nothing to worry about, darling, okay? No, we’re not poor. We’re just going through a difficult patch. Charlie pulled on his blazer, picked up his grubby Adidas schoolbag and headed for the front door. ‘What shall we do,’ I called after him, ‘when this woman starts on Monday?’

  Charlie paused in the doorway. ‘Don’t know about you,’ he replied, ‘but I’m going to do whatever I like.’

  And so Melody Hunt—age undetermined, although probably between eighteen and twenty-five; distinguishing features: a vast, pale forehead that reminded me of an ice rink—came to live with us. She had faint yet perpetual body odor and engaged in energetic Jane Fonda workouts in her bedroom.

  Charlie and I went to great lengths to avoid contact with her. We paid ourselves pocket money from the coin jar on the shelf in Dad’s study, awarding bonuses for doing our own laundry, as Melody refused to acquaint herself with our temperamental washing machine. I’d try to iron my clothes dry and hurry to school with steam rising from my navy boxpleated skirt.

  Melody did, however, cook our dinners. Her bolognaise quivered with raw-looking lumps, like a wound, and her fried eggs could be dissected only with our sharpest steak knives. Charlie and I would delve into the chest freezer in the garage, unearthing Black Forest gâteaux that we’d defrost on a chair in front of the blazing gas fire. ‘Bloody loonies,’ Melody muttered, hurrying up to her bedroom. Feel the burn, we could hear. Feel the burn.