Diary of a Chav

by Grace Dent

  SUNDAY 17TH AUGUST

  Still no word from Cava-Sue. I texted her a few times today but she never texted back. Then I rang her phone and it went to voicemail. I don’t know how Cava-Sue will pay for any top-up credits on her cell as she has no money. I wish she would call me. I have moved into her top bunk. Penny has the bottom one. It is much comfier up here but it doesn’t quite feel right as I never sleep this high. I wonder how Cava-Sue is coping with sleeping so low?

  TUESDAY 19TH AUGUST

  THIS HOUSE IS DOING MY HEAD IN. Today I asked where everyone reckons Cava-Sue is. Dad just made one of his “don’t start trouble” faces and Murphy just pretended to be deaf. My mum just lit up a ciggie and picked up the Sun.

  “Are you not bothered where she is?! It’s been a week!” I said to Mum.

  “She’s the one who left,” muttered my mum from behind her paper. “I’ve devoted my whole life to doing my best for that girl and all she does is throw it back in my face. When she wants to apologize to me she can. I certainly won’t be.”

  Cava-Sue will NEVER apologize. Once, when we were little, Cava-Sue pushed a yellow crayon right up my nose and it got stuck. She never said sorry. Even when we got to the hospital all she did was ask the nurse for the crayon back ’cos she’d not finished coloring in her rainbow.

  FRIDAY 22ND AUGUST

  I hate these summer holidays. It’s crap without Carrie and Cava-Sue. Got the bus to Nan’s house. She made me a pork chop and some mashed potatoes and a glass of purple soda. Then I sat on Granda’s old chair and we ate Fox’s Glacier Mints and played Beggar My Neighbor, which is a card game only me and her seem to know. I told Nan I was quite depressed ’cos I’ve fell out with Carrie and Cava-Sue has going missing. Nan sat quiet for a bit. She said she could help with one bit. Nan said she knew where Cava-Sue was. Nan says she’s been trying not to get involved ’cos my mum already says she’s an interfering old bag. Nan says that Cava-Sue is in London. I felt sick when she said that, imagining Cava-Sue sitting at an ATM with a scabby face and a begging cup, being homeless. Nan says it’s not as bad as it sounds. Nan says Cava-Sue and Lewis are staying at a friend’s in Kentish Town in northwest London. A FRIEND CALLED PIXIE?!!! Nan says Cava-Sue came to her house last week and was upset and says she hates Mum and she’s never coming back to Goodmayes ever, but Nan reckons it might all blow over. Nan lent Cava-Sue £100 so she’s not broke.

  I stared out of the window all the way home on the bus and thought about Cava-Sue. I miss her loads. I wish there was something I could do. What do I do?

  Carrie would know what to do. “She who dares wins, Shiraz,” that’s what she’d say. Carrie was the one with all the good ideas.

  TUESDAY 26TH AUGUST

  Cava-Sue has been gone two weeks. I lay in bed most of today with the dog, reading OK! magazine and the last chapters of Jane Eyre again. I like the bit at the end when Jane Eyre gets together with that Mr. Rochester geezer who she fancies and they live happily ever after. Jane Eyre had a right old crap life up until then ’cos she’s small and unlucky and plug-ugly too, just like me. It’s nice to think that there is love out there for people like me and not just Carrie and Collette Brown.

  I told Mum today that Cava-Sue is in London and Mum should bloody do something about it. Mum said I should go and bloody join her then she can turn our room into a sun room.

  Mum is only pretending to be not bothered. At night I sometimes hear her downstairs crying.

  SUNDAY 31ST AUGUST

  Something PROPER STRANGE happened today. I was sitting in my bedroom listening to the Radio One Dave Pearce’s Sunday Night Soundclash Bender and sharing a packet of biscuits with Penny (who has fallen off her diet big style) when Mum shouted up the stairs that I had a visitor. I looked out of the window and I nearly died. Standing by our garden gate was Wesley Barrington Bains II! He spotted me looking down at him and smiled. I put some lipgloss on and my gold hoops and stuck some chewing gum in my gob and went downstairs.

  “All right Wesley,” I said, like it was totally normal he was at my front door.

  “Y’all right Shiraz? Nice day, innit?” he said.

  “’Spose,” I said. We stood and stared at each other for a bit.

  I love you, I thought.

  “Got a favor to ask,” he said.

  “Go on,” I said.

  He took me over to the trunk of the banana-yellow Golf and flipped it open. In the trunk was a trash bag.

  “Will you be seeing Carrie at school next week?” he said, looking a bit awkward.

  “Well, she’s in my class,” I said. “Suppose so.”

  “Can you give her this?” Wesley said. “It’s all her stuff that she left round at Bezzie’s house, innit. Presents and clothes and stuff.”

  “What?” I said.

  “He’s dumped her, innit?” said Wesley. “Bezzie wants me to go over and chuck it all over the fence at Draperville, but I don’t wanna.”

  Poor Carrie! She must be bleeding devastated, I thought.

  “What’s he dumped her for?” I said.

  “’Cos Carrie got back from Dominican yesterday with a big love bite on her neck,” said Wesley. “Then Bezzie found this picture on her phone of her sitting on the knee of this big bloke with dreads called Raphael who did the boat trips, innit.”

  My mouth fell open. Carrie!

  “What’s Bezzie sayin’?” I said.

  “He says she’s a skank and a ho and she’s dumped, innit,” said Wesley.

  For some reason that made me quite mad. Bezzie might have got it all wrong. I didn’t like him dissing Carrie.

  “Well why don’t Bezzie go throw the stuff over the fence at Draperville himself if he’s such a big man?” I said, folding my arms and doing that rudegirl head wobble that Uma’s dead good at.

  “He would,” said Wesley, “but he’s too busy rewriting all of the lyrics to his concept album, innit.”

  We both looked at each other. Then Wesley smiled and I couldn’t help myself a little bit too.

  I looked at the bag again and rolled my eyes at him.

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll take it for her.”

  “Awwww thanks Shiz, you’re an angel,” Wesley smiled, looking dead relieved. “Look I owe you one, innit? If I can do anything for you at any time. Just give me a call.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “Honestly, Shiz, anything,” he shouted.

  I took the bag and walked back into the house and didn’t bother with any more small talk, ’cos I’m sure he needed to be somewhere. Like with bloody Dee-Dee.

  SEPTEMBER

  TUESDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER

  Back to school for the first day of Year Eleven.

  I got up this morning at 7 AM and I ironed my school uniform and packed my new pens into my new pencil case and packed the bag of Carrie’s stuff into a posher plastic bag and walked to school with Uma Brunton-Fletcher. Uma’s been in Portsmouth for the summer, living with her real dad and his new girlfriend, Mica. Uma was going to stay there for good but it didn’t work out. Uma says she’s not bothered or nothing. Uma says her dad’s girlfriend Mica is only five years older than her so she’s not acting like her bloody mother when she’s not even her real mother. Uma says Mica is a slut and she needs a proper slap. We walked up the driveway to Mayflower and there were cement mixers and scaffolding poles everywhere and a load of blokes building a new extension where the overflow parking lot used to be.

  “’Ere, bruv, what’s happening?” shouted Uma at one of the builders.

  “It’s the new sixth-form wing, sweetheart,” said this bloke in an orange jacket and a hard hat.

  Uma just tutted. “Oh right, it’d have to be something for the freaks and swots, wouldn’t it, Shiz?”

  “Mmm . . . yeah,” I said.

  “They get everything in this world,” sneered Uma, then she flicked her cig butt into the rubble and stormed off. I stood and looked at the construction for a minute and felt a bit excited.

  C
arrie wasn’t at school today. Maria sent a message saying she’s ill. I had a whole speech planned out to smooth over all the grief that’s happened and then she didn’t even show up.

  WEDNESDAY 3RD SEPTEMBER

  Carrie came to school today. I didn’t get to say any of my speech. It all went arse up. I walked into homeroom and there she was at the back with Uma and Chantalle and Kezia. At first I thought she was proper ill or something ’cos she was so pale, then I realized it was the first time since June I’d seen her without her Onyx spray tan. Carrie was clutching a pile of tissues and her eyes were proper red. She looked at me pathetically and then looked away. Chantalle had her arm round her shoulder saying stuff like, “They’re all bastards Carrie, that’s what my mother said when she got divorced the second time!” Kezia was telling a story about some geezer who got her sister knocked up then it turned out he had another wife and kids in Leytonstone. Uma grabbed the arm of my pink trackie top and pulled me away.

  “Carrie’s Bezzie has dumped her!” she said, like it was suddenly all Uma’s business.

  “I know,” I said, quite grumpy-like.

  “She says her life ain’t worth living no more,” said Uma.

  “Oh,” I said.

  The bell went soon after and we all walked out to the lockers.

  “’Ere, Carrie, wait up,” I said as she passed me. Carrie stopped. She looked proper small and thin like she’d been on one of her silly celery-only diets again.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’m, like, well sorry about you and Bezzie,” I said. I totally meant it but even I knew how fake it sounded. Last time I spoke to Carrie I said he was well butterz and a knobhead or something equally shady.

  “Thanks . . .” said Carrie, then her lip started to wobble.

  “I got something for you,” I said. “I got something from Bezzie.”

  “What?” she said. “What is it?” Carrie’s face suddenly looked really hopeful. What a mess I was making of this.

  “Hang on,” I said, then I opened my locker and brought out the plastic bag. Carrie opened it and peered inside. She put her hand in and brought out a small plastic frog with its foot smashed off. She stared at it, then she stared at me.

  “Where d’you get this?!” she said.

  “Wesley brought it to my house,” I said.

  “He brought it to your house?!” Carrie said, staring at the frog. “Why? What’s this got to do with you and Wesley?!”

  Carrie was getting all up in my face now, proper mad and that. I chucked my shoulders back to front her out.

  “’Ere don’t you get the hump with me!” I said. “Bezzie wanted Wesley to chuck all your stuff over the fence at Draperville. I stopped him.”

  Carrie opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  “Oh I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you?” she said.

  “No I’m not,” I said, totally straight up ’cos honestly I am totally NOT.

  “Yeah you are. You always hated Bezzie and now we’ve split up,” Carrie shouted.

  “Well if you’ve split up it’s not my fault!” I shouted back. “You’re the one who got off with the guy who did the bloody boat trips.”

  Carrie looked proper outraged then.

  “Who told you that?!” she fumed.

  “Everyone knows that!” I said.

  “That’s not even true!” she snapped. “I didn’t bloody get off with anyone! It wasn’t a love bite, it was a bleeding mosquito bite. I only sat on that bloke’s knee for ten seconds. Why does no one believe me?”

  I looked at her and felt proper bad then.

  “I believe you,” I said, but she wasn’t listening at all now.

  Carrie threw the bag into her locker and slammed the door.

  “It’s a good job your life is so bloody perfect, isn’t it?” sobbed Carrie, then she walked off blowing her nose. I wanted to shout after her that my life wasn’t perfect at all. That I had lost my best friend and Cava-Sue had moved out and I was proper lonely and I wanted everything back to normal, that I was sorry about everything. But I ain’t bloody apologizing to her. Us Wood women never do.

  FRIDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER

  Uma Brunton-Fletcher has told Kezia and Chantalle that I am somehow to blame for Carrie and Bezzie splitting up. They were all sitting on the back row of homeroom today being all off with me, so I just did a “whatever” face at them, got my stuff, and moved to another desk. In religious studies today we were learning about the Muslim celebration of Eid. We were using this bleeding boring old textbook with pictures of folk praying, so I told everyone about Tariq’s big brother’s Eid firework party with the good buffet that Murphy goes to. This made everyone who wasn’t Muslim understand it all a bit better. Mrs. Radowitz was well pleased with me. This made Uma and Kezia even more moody ’cos I was being a “kiss-ass.” I reckon I could pass GCSE Religion as well as English. I’m going to have a shot at Geography and Math too. I wish I could tell Cava-Sue.

  SUNDAY 7TH SEPTEMBER

  I went to Nan’s for Sunday dinner today. When I got there she’d turned her hearing aid off by mistake and she couldn’t hear the phone so I had to bang on the door like a proper nutjob for ages. All the neighbors came out and stared at me like I was a criminal. I wanted to scream, “It’s only a flaming pink hoodie! I’m not breaking in to nick anyone’s pension money! Hoodies have nans too, y’know, you prejudicial bloody stigmatizing weirdos!”

  Nan had done a roast leg of lamb with some roast potatoes and mint sauce and gravy. I ate it in about five gulps without even breathing ’cos it was so gorgeous and the food is crap at my house at the moment. Even crapper than it normally is.

  I told Gran that my mum has stopped cooking dinner. Mum says she’s fed up being “everyone’s bleeding gopher.” Mum says we can all help our bleeding selves. I told Nan how Mum comes in from work and changes into a big cardigan and track pants and watches her Sky+ recording of Fast-Track Family Feud on ITV2 and smokes ciggies and doesn’t want to laugh about anything. I think she’s depressed about Cava-Sue.

  “Mother,” I shouted at her the other day, “Cava-Sue, my big sister and your daughter, is sharing a room in a flat in Kentish Town with a girl called Pixie and they’ve been busking for money. IN CASE YOU CARE.”

  My mum just looked at me. She pressed pause on the Sky+.

  “Does she want to come home?” Mum said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know nothing else,” I said, even though I knew that was a double negative and Ms. Bracket would’ve red pen circled it. My mum looked at me then she looked back at Fast-Track Family Feud again.

  “That’s the problem with Cava-Sue,” said Mum blankly. “There ain’t no magic wands for folk like her. She’s got to want to change. She needs to give me some respect. She don’t give me no respect. I always gave my mother respect. I didn’t agree with my mother’s ideas but I gave her proper respect.”

  My mum pushed play on the TV show where two brothers who both got the same girl pregnant were having a big fight. Reuben Smart, Fast-Track Family Feud’s presenter, sent them both backstage to speak to someone called “Kirsten, who is trained.” I wish Kirsten-who-is-trained would talk to my mum and Cava-Sue.

  “They need their heads banged together,” said Nan, when I told her all of this. Then we both had some apple crumble.

  FRIDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER

  In lunch today I hid in the computer lab at school ’cos me trying harder in lessons is going down proper badly with Uma, Kezia, and Luther. I dunno what Carrie thinks. She’s on another bloody planet. Her heart is totally broken. I logged on to my MySpace and there were no messages from anyone important. I looked at Cava-Sue’s page again but it hasn’t been updated for months. Neither had Lewis’s either. Then I began clicking through Cava-Sue’s friends’ pages, not really concentrating or anything, and pretty soon I found PIXIE007. Pixie! Who my sister is living with!

  Pixie is eighteen and she has black bobbed hair with blue streaks in the front and her photo is o
f her with a rose in her mouth holding a glass of red wine. Her page is full of arty drawings and poetry. She is obsessed with this old group called The Libertines. Her pictures are all of house parties full of people who look just like her and Cava-Sue. One photo — that I couldn’t stop staring at — was of Pixie and Cava-Sue and Lewis in the living room of a house and there was about three hundred people crammed in and a band playing in the middle and everyone was jumping up and down going mental. I looked at that for ages and felt a bit weird. Cava-Sue looked well happy. I looked through all of Pixie’s MySpace comments. One comment from a girl called Esmerelda really caught my eye. It said this:

  Hey Pix — Just got tickets for DIY Taxidermy at Milo on 20th!! See U and Cavasoo and Lewy at the front again??!

  I typed “DIY Taxidermy” into Google and found out that they are playing a nightclub called Milo on Oxford Street, London, on September twentieth.

  I’ve got a plan, but I don’t know if I dare do it.

  WEDNESDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER

  Went to the computer lab again today at lunch. I’m getting less weird looks from all the computer nerds now. At first they thought I just wanted to thieve one of the laptops, ’cos in Year Nine, Uma once got caught down at Cash 4 Trash with one up her school sweater. “I need to print out some street maps,” I told Sanjay Biswas from Year Nine, who was at the computer beside me.

  “Use this site then,” he said, tapping out a Web address on the keyboard. “Do you have the postal code of where you’re going?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Sanjay helped me with the printer. I’ve got the maps now. All I need now is some transport.