Lottie Biggs is Not Mad

by Hayley Long

  The other SCREAM day was just a couple of years ago on 24 December, when Cerys, my pet rabbit, died. She was a Netherland Dwarf with a whitish body and smoky-grey ears and feet. She also had a smoky-grey nose. I’d had her for more than EIGHT years, which is an epic age for a Netherland Dwarf rabbit. If she was a human person, she’d probably have had a birthday card from the Queen. I know that it might seem a bit wet to be emotionally devastated by the death of a rabbit, but I was really attached to Cerys and I am not ashamed to admit it. It is also a very nasty thing to have happened literally just before Christmas. This is a picture of what she looked like in her prime.

  I had to lie on the grass for absolutely ages to get this photograph. Seeing it now makes me feel fractionally better. Cerys was a very happy and independent little rabbit, who used to live in a hutch at the bottom of our garden. Even though she was little, she wasn’t at all frightened of cats. If anything, they were more terrified of her because she could be surprisingly fierce when she wanted to be.

  One day I did see her really scared though. I looked out of the window and she was standing on her back legs in the middle of the lawn with her ears all alert and a look of total panic all over her furry little face. I looked around the garden but I couldn’t see anything and then, for some reason, I looked up into the air. Hanging really high in the sky was a great big kestrel, just flapping its wings and looking right down at my little Cerys and probably licking its lips.13 I screamed and ran out into the garden, and Cerys broke out of her petrified panic and legged it for the bushes. The great big kestrel hung there in the sky for a few more seconds and then it circled a couple of times before finally flying off. The moral of this story is that YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT DANGERS COULD BE LURKING OVER YOUR HEAD. One minute you could be lying in the sun, happily eating grass and twitching your little nose, and the next minute you could be attacked and eaten by a kestrel. Life mings.

  And don’t I know it.

  Because today has been the most hideous day of them all. Even that poet woman Stevie Smith could not have experienced a day any worse than the one I’ve just had and she wrote a poem that starts:

  My life is vile

  I hate it so

  I’ll wait awhile

  And then I’ll go.

  This poem is called ‘The Reason’. It makes a lot more sense to me than any of her other poems. I sat on the floor of my bedroom and read this poem just a couple of hours ago and it had a very powerful effect on me. To begin with, it made me smile because its bluntness is kind of funny and it doesn’t exactly seem like she killed herself trying too hard to write anything clever, and then I really started to laugh at the fact that such a rubbish and pointless poem could ever have been printed in a book for me to read. But then, as I was laughing, I noticed that my face was all wet and my nose was all slimy and I realized that I needed a box of tissues very urgently, and while I was wiping my eyes and blowing my nose I began to feel extremely desperately sad for Stevie, because when you think about what she is saying you soon realize that something REALLY AWFUL must have happened inside her head to make her say anything so tragically hopeless and then I started feeling extremely sad for myself as well. My mum heard me crying and knocked on the door and asked if she could come in, but I was so talked out by then that I told her I needed to be on my own for a bit, and my mum must have been all talked out as well because I heard her sigh heavily and go back downstairs. And I sat there all curled up on the floor of my bedroom feeling miserable for ages and then, finally, I picked up this project again and started writing some more.

  Just like that other SCREAM day six years ago, today was also rubbish from the outset. I got up this morning when my mum banged on my door at 7.45. She’s been banging on my door every morning this week because my alarm clock has weirdly disappeared out of my room. Don’t think I’ve been having lovely lie-ins though because, as I’ve already explained, I blatantly cannot sleep. I am actually about as awake as the most awake person in the whole of Awake Land. That is how wide awake I am! But even so, I’ve been experiencing one or two problems getting out of bed. It just seems to involve more effort than I can be bothered to make.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m getting up,’ I shouted, and then under my breath I muttered, ‘No need to get your knickers in a knot.’

  I forced myself into a standing position and put on my dodgy skirt and blouse for work. In a way it was almost a relief to be doing something other than lying in bed going nuts. I still wasn’t feeling good though. I had a really massive headache.

  I couldn’t be bothered to have a wash so I just went downstairs and ate a Pot Noodle and then left the house quickly before my mum could start moaning at me.

  When I got to work I had my first nasty surprise of the day. Gina was in. She was standing at the till surrounded by rolls of YOU PAY stickers and black plimsolls. When she saw me, she said, ‘Good of you to join us, Missy Biggs. You’re late.’

  I said, ‘No, I’m not. I’m five minutes early.’

  Gina gave me one of those smiles that doesn’t involve anything friendly happening around the eyes and said, ‘As Head Saturday Girl, you should really be here in plenty of time to help prepare the shop.’

  ‘Prepare the shop for what?’ I asked.

  ‘For the day ahead,’ said Gina, very loudly and very slowly as if I had hearing problems and learning difficulties. ‘Customers want to walk into a bright vibrant shop with bright vibrant staff, and preparation is the key to good sales figures, young lady. To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail.’

  I looked Gina right in the eye and said, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ and then I walked over to the door at the back of the shop so I could get away from her and hang my coat and bag up. Before I left the shop floor though I hesitated and said, ‘Why are you in today, Gina, and what time are you off?’

  Gina smiled just from the mouth again and said, ‘Dionne’s under the weather and I’ll be in all day.’

  ‘Terrific-horrific,’ I muttered and shoved my backpack on to a hook before disappearing off to the furthest corner of the stockroom so that I could climb up the stepladder to sit and think.

  I was still up the ladder when first Emily and then Goose arrived. I heard Gina tell them they were late and I heard Goose make up some story about her front door being jammed and then I heard the hoover being switched on. I didn’t hear Goose and Emily speak to each other so I guessed that they were still not on speaking terms. After a while I heard the door to Dionne’s office close and the muffled one-sided conversation of Gina on a telephone. Guessing it was safe to move, I went back out into the shop. Both Goose and Emily looked quite grateful to see me. It’s not nice being confined within the same space as someone you’d rather not speak to. I should know because I have this experience whenever I’m in a classroom with Mrs Rowlands. I pulled some laces out of some shoes and then I stuck a few YOU PAY stickers on the wall and then I wasted some time spying on Keith Bright, who was wandering around his empty optician’s and having a long conversation with somebody on his mobile phone. Every now and then he’d laugh and run the palm of his hand over his bouffant grey hair and check himself out in a mirror in the corner of his shop. I think he’s got bored of me and Goose and is in love with somebody else. I must be the only person left in the entire world who doesn’t know what love is. Except for Gina, obviously.

  After a while of watching Keith, me and Goose went back out to the stockroom and sat on the ladders and had a chat. Goose told me that I needed to re-do my hair because my beige roots were showing, but I told her I couldn’t be bothered. After all, what’s the point of colouring your hair when you’ve got a face like a smashed potato? Then we pulled some shoeboxes off the shelf which were called CHARLOTTE ladies lace-ups in brown and Goose laughed a bit at how hideous the shoes inside were, and I tried to laugh but I was feeling so tired and terrible that nothing seemed very funny. Slowly the minutes ticked away until lunch. And all in all it would have been a very average and boring morning indeed
had it not been for the danger which was lurking unseen over my head, just waiting for the right moment to swoop down and mess up my life.

  as i was takiNG MY BaG Off the hOOk

  Art is my favourite subject. English is my second and history is my third. If it wasn’t for the fact that my school is forcing me to study the rise of Communism and the onset of the Cold War, history would possibly be even higher on my list. The thing I really like about history has nothing to do with dates of wars or any of that stuff. Those are just random facts to memorize pointlessly to impress examiners. What I really like to think about is the impact that one second in one person’s life can have on the whole future of the world. Take King Harold I, for example. Everyone knows that he got an eyeful of arrow at the Battle of Hastings. But what if, while he was fighting his battle against William (the Great Duke of Normandy), he’d decided that second to look down and not up just as the arrow flew through the air on course to take his eye out. If he’d looked downwards, the arrow would have bounced off his metal helmet and he wouldn’t have been killed and the battle would have continued. Maybe he’d then have fired an arrow that killed William instead. Or maybe the Normans would have eventually got fed up with fighting and decided to go back home to France. Harold would have remained as King of England. The English language wouldn’t be full of French words, and Wales wouldn’t be full of Norman castles. Maybe, without the castles, the Welsh would have grown stronger and stronger and driven out the English. Maybe the Welsh would have invaded England and everybody round the world would be speaking Welsh today. Just think! Rugby would be the biggest sport in the world. Shirley Bassey would be the queen. Cardiff would be the biggest city in Great Britain. All this is PERFECTLY POSSIBLE if Harold had just looked down and not got an arrow in the eye. But he looked up.

  And as I was taking my bag off the hook to go for my lunch I looked down when I should have looked up. One second would have changed everything. I would have looked up just in time to see that a pile of shoeboxes filled with CHARLOTTE ladies lace-ups in brown were in the process of toppling forward and were now on a fast-moving crash-collision course with the top of my head. And then I would have made a quick darting move to the left or right and I would have been spared the hideous trauma which followed. But I didn’t look up.

  As I was taking my bag off the hook, nine boxes of CHARLOTTE ladies lace-ups in brown finally lost their battle against gravity and came raining down on me. My hands flew upwards to protect my head, and my backpack, full to bursting point with shoes I can’t even remember rescuing, fell to the floor and spilled open. And at just that same moment, Gina walked in.

  aND theN i GOt stuCk DOwN a MeNtaL MaNhOLe

  Gina looked down at me as I squatted on the floor with my head in my hands. And then, without saying a word, she stooped over, picked up my bag and looked inside it. Slowly I stood up. The nine boxes of CHARLOTTE ladies lace-ups in brown hadn’t really hurt me, but my head was banging from the inside as if my brain was trying to burst its way out. I suddenly felt very wobbly and very panicky. For no reason at all, I did the worst thing possible. I started to laugh. A few little squeaks escaped nervously from the side of my mouth and then, just as if there was a whole army of amoebas tickling my insides with feathers, I opened my mouth and started to howl with laughter. Seriously howl. I was rocking. Tears were streaming down my face and I was laughing so hard that I could barely breathe.

  Gina said, ‘Do you think this is funny?’

  Something about this question made the amoebas inside me shift up a gear and start tickling me even harder. I gave a massive snort and laughed so hard that my body collapsed inwards at the waist and I was temporarily incapable of standing up straight.

  Gina said, ‘Your bag contains a pair of Sole Mates shoes and . . .’ she broke off to look back down at my offending backpack which was still in her hands five pairs of Sole Mates tights. I’m also well aware of the three cans of Leather Shine that rolled across the floor as I came in. And the two cans of foot-odour spray. Were you planning to pay for any of these?’

  I breathed in and out slowly and concentrated hard on not laughing.

  Gina said again, ‘Were you planning to pay for any of these?’

  I don’t like being put on the spot. I am not a person who answers well when placed under pressure.

  Gina said for a third time, and there was by now a definite hint of something nasty in her voice, ‘Were you planning to pay for any of these?’

  I looked down at the stuff on the floor and then I looked at my bag, which was still in Gina’s hands, and a big heavy lump of confusion hit me on the head. I wasn’t really sure what I’d been planning to do with it all. I couldn’t actually even remember taking any of it.

  I slowly puffed out my cheeks. ‘I don’t know.’

  Gina’s voice grew a little nastier still. ‘Just lately, our stock levels don’t seem to be tallying with the records. Have you been helping yourself to other things?’

  I frowned and tried to think back to the previous Saturday, but my head was still thumping and banging and the strain of thinking too hard was starting to make me feel really sick and dizzy. It had gone completely black inside my head. The air felt hot and stuffy and I realized for the first time ever that there wasn’t a single window in the stockroom. All of a sudden, I felt really panicky. It was just as if I’d fallen down a deep manhole that had been left uncovered in the street.

  I said, ‘I don’t know.’

  Gina narrowed her eyes till I couldn’t look at her any more. I looked down at my feet. I was wearing LAYLA ballet pumps in size four. Even now, I have no idea whether I ever paid for them or not.

  Gina said, ‘Come with me, young lady.’ Still firmly grasping my bag, she turned and opened the door to the office, pausing for me to enter ahead of her. My feet did as they were told. The rest of me was feeling lousy. ‘Sit down,’ she said.

  I did. Gina crossed over to the desk, picked up the phone and punched some numbers into the keypad. I sat on the chair and stared helplessly at my LAYLA ballet pumps. I don’t know why I was wearing them; I’ve never liked them. After a moment Gina said, ‘Hello . . . Yes . . . It’s Gina Jones from Sole Mates shoe shop, Whitchurch. One of my Saturday girls has been caught stealing from us . . . Charlotte Biggs . . . Yes . . . Yes. That would be helpful. Yes . . . OK, thank you.’

  Gina put down the phone and said, ‘You just sit there and think about what you’re going to say. The police are on their way to pick you up.’

  aLOft iN the LOft

  My mum works for South Wales Police in the Crime Investigations Department. She is based in a big concrete building right in the middle of the city centre. I’ve often seen this building on the news when reporters speak from the steps outside and wait for glimpses of criminals in orange boiler suits as they are bundled into the backs of big black vans. My mum has been a police officer for as long as I can remember. In fifteen years and five days I never once got to visit her place of work. On the first Saturday – the sixth day – of my fifteenth year, I am sorry to say that this situation has changed.

  The corridor was dimly lit and smelt of something nasty. It wasn’t vomit or wee or anything obviously horrific; it was a smell that was harder to put your finger on. Like the inside of a boy’s boot bag. Or the bottom of a hamster’s cage. Screwed on the wall, just to the left of my head, was a huge metal sign which said:

  Underneath this sign, with a red marker pen, somebody had written:

  Underneath that, with a black pen, somebody else had written:

  On a wooden bench, bolted into a recess in the wall, I sat, rocking. I’d been rocking, ever so slightly at first, for over an hour. Now I was starting to rock fairly hard. I’d built up quite a momentum, which began in my thighs and continued up the small of my back as I propelled my upper body backwards and forwards with increasing energy. Somewhere along the way I’d slipped into a faultless rhythm accompanied by the sound of a fast-paced creak of the bench as I rocked forward
s and a dull thud from my back as I rocked backwards against the wall.

  It went like this:

  It was nearly loud enough to cover the muffled and distant sound of the scary man who was shouting and swearing at the top of his voice from behind one of the mustard-yellow metal doors lining my corridor. But not quite. Not quite loud enough for that.

  Opposite my Recess of Shame was an office which was surrounded by big glass windows and brightly illuminated from within. Inside it was a policeman with grey hair and a grumpy face. He had spoken to me once when I’d arrived. He now opened up a little window inside his big window and said, ‘Can’t you sit still?’