by Jean Ure
I didn’t waste any time. I said straight out, “Is it OK on Friday if I go to a sleepover?”
“A sleepover?” Mum seemed surprised and pleased. Peachy? Going to a sleepover? “Darling, how lovely! Of course it is.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Hooray! So that was it. I was about to go galloping off when Mum seemed to remember that there were things she was supposed to check. She wasn’t used to me going to sleepovers. Or anywhere at all really. Me and the nerds hadn’t ever seen one another out of school.
“Whose sleepover is it, exactly?”
“Just a friend,” I said. “A girl in my class.”
“Oh, yes, your gran said you’d made a friend. Who is she? What’s she called?”
“Millie,” I said.
”Millie. That’s a nice name! Where does she live?”
I hesitated. “Over Marketside?”
“Marketside?” I could see a slight ripple of doubt pass across Mum’s face. She is not at all a snob, but Marketside is this area that has a really rough reputation. It was one of the places where there had been riots, with buildings being set on fire and policemen having bottles thrown at them. Even I had been a bit taken aback when Millie said that was where she lived. She’d looked at me challengingly as she said it, though all I’d thought, to be honest, was that it must be a bit scary.
“Millie’s a high-flyer,” I said. I knew Mum would like that. “She got a scholarship.”
“Clever girl,” said Mum.
“She is,” I said. “Some of the others are a bit sniffy, cos, you know, they look down on people that have got scholarships?”
I wanted to make sure that Mum wasn’t one of them, but she said at once that that was ridiculous. “If anything, they ought to look up.”
Eagerly I said, “That’s what I think.”
As I was leaving for school on Friday morning, with my nightie and my toothbrush packed away in my school bag, Mum asked me what time I thought I’d be coming back.
“Some time in the afternoon?” I wasn’t sure about the rules for sleepovers.
“Well, give me a ring,” said Mum. “I’ll come and pick you up.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I won’t be late.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Mum. “Of course I’ll come.”
“But I can get the bus! Millie’s dad,” I told her, “is a bus driver.”
“So you think he’s going to get his bus out just to drive you back?”
“No, I meant—” What had I meant? I hadn’t meant anything. Except maybe to impress upon Mum that Millie’s dad was a perfectly respectable person even if he did live in a place where people threw bottles and set fire to buildings.
Mum just laughed and told me again not to be silly.
“I’ll wait for you to call.”
At the end of school me and Millie went to the bus stop to catch a bus to Marketside. I felt quite adventurous. Not only was I going to my first sleepover, I was going there on a bus. I’d hardly ever been on a bus. Either Mum or Dad, usually Mum, always drove us everywhere. Mum is not overprotective, but buses just don’t figure in her scheme of things. It is either the car, or a cab. There is a family joke that Dad once got on a bus and said to the driver, “42 Tay Hill, please.” He thought they actually dropped people off on their doorstep! Well, I don’t suppose he really did, but just the idea of Dad getting on a bus cracked everybody up.
I didn’t tell any of this to Millie. She was already surprised that I didn’t have a bus pass and didn’t even know how to get a ticket from the ticket machines.
“Your mum still drives you to school?” she said. She sounded almost accusing.
Quickly I told her that it was only because Mum had to drive the others and could drop me off on the way.
“I s’pose really I could use the bus.”
“It would be a lot greener,” said Millie.
And in any case it is good to be independent. Millie wanted to know where I lived, so she could tell me which bus to take. When I said, “Tay Hill,” she widened her eyes and said, “Ooh, posh!”
“Not really,” I said. “We’re not! I mean, some people are—”
“Like that MP man,” said Millie. “I read about him in the paper.”
The MP man lived just a few houses up the road from us. Dad sometimes played golf with him.
“Snotgrass,” said Millie. “Or whatever his name is.”
“Snodgrass.” I giggled. Dad said he was a buffoon, even if they did play golf together.
A number 10 bus came and we got on, me clutching my newly purchased ticket.
“Is this the bus your dad drives?” I said.
Millie said, “No, Dad’s the 234. He goes all the way to London.”
She sounded really proud. I thought that driving a bus in and out of London was probably a lot more important than just driving locally. Like driving a long-distance lorry was more important than driving a little local truck. What Mum would call the crème de la crème.
“The cream of the cream,” I said.
“You what?” said Millie.
“Your dad! Driving all the way to London every day.”
Millie grinned. “I’ll tell him.”
“Oh, no, please,” I begged. “Don’t!”
“Why not? He’d like it. My friend Peachy says you’re the cream of the cream. Oh, look!” She pointed out of the window. “That’s where I used to go to school. See? St Jude’s Primary. It’s where they go – the Diddy People.”
She meant her little sisters.
“Over there – ” she pointed straight ahead – “is where the riots were. They burned a whole row of shops. I could see the flames from my bedroom window. And this one boy that lives in our street? He was done for nicking stuff. Police found loads of television sets in his house. Stupid or what?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I hadn’t even known the riots were happening till I heard about it on the news next morning. Millie had been there in the thick of it.
“Went on all night,” she said. “Gangs of people walking up and down the street. All going to join in, like going to a party. Then a bit later on you’d see them come back, carrying stuff.”
I nodded knowingly. “Stuff they’d nicked.”
“Crazy stuff. I mean, just anything they could lay their hands on. Like they’d see a shop smashed open and they’d go rushing in and grab whatever was there. Like cans of lager, for instance. Who’d risk going to prison for nicking cans of lager?”
I shook my head. I wouldn’t run the risk of going to prison for nicking anything. I’m not brave enough! Not to mention the fact that stealing is wrong, unless maybe your children are starving and you don’t have any money. That, I think, would be understandable, though Dad would not agree with me. Dad is very hard line. He says there is never any excuse for antisocial behaviour.
“Some of them,” said Millie, “were only kids. Like our age, roaming the streets at two o’clock in the morning. Dad said they let themselves get all whipped up by what was happening. He said most of them weren’t really bad.”
I didn’t tell him what my dad had said. “Horsewhip the lot of ’em if I had my way!”
“I guess it’s different if they’re setting things alight,” I said.
“Oh, well, yes,” said Millie. “There isn’t any excuse for that.” She sprang up. “This is our stop!”
Millie lived in a street just a few minutes away, in the smallest house I’d ever seen. It was in the middle of a whole row of houses, all the same. There weren’t any front gardens, and I think they must have been really old as they had chimney stacks tottering up into the sky, though Millie said the chimneys weren’t actually used any more.
“They’re all blocked off. Couldn’t get a fire going even if you wanted to.”
I thought that was a shame. It has always seemed to me that a roaring big fire would be far more cosy than central heating. Millie, however, seemed doubtful.
&nbs
p; “Not according to my gran. According to her, they were nothing but a load of hard work.” She opened the front door with her own key and called up the stairs, “Mum! We’re here!”
A voice with an Irish accent called back: “With you in a minute!”
“Come through,” said Millie.
We went along this tiny narrow passage and into the kitchen, where three small girls, standing in a row, solemnly stared at us. They all had jet-black hair cut short with a fringe, and the same bright, inquisitive eyes as Millie. They were so alike they could almost have been triplets, except that they were obviously different ages.
“These are the terrible trio,” said Millie. “I’d introduce you, but I can never remember which one is which.”
“You so can!” they chorused indignantly.
“I so can’t!” said Millie.
“So can!”
“So can’t! Ow.” The three of them had started pummelling her, pounding at her with their fists. It was obviously a game they played. “All right, all right!” Millie backed away. “Let me see. I think this one is… Katy?”
“That one!”
“That one? OK! So if she’s Katy, you have to be… Kimberley?”
“She’s Kimberley!”
“She’s Kimberley? OK, OK, I’m getting there! That just leaves… Kaylee! Right? Now I can introduce you. This is my friend Peaches.”
The oldest girl, Kaylee, gravely held out her hand. Equally gravely, I took it. So then the other two held out their hands, and I had to take them as well.
“Otherwise known,” said Millie, “as the Diddy People. Ow!”
Millie’s mum came into the kitchen at that point. She looked just like an older version of Millie and her sisters.
“Well, now,” she said, “isn’t that lovely? Only a short time at the school and already you’ve found a friend. I knew you would! Peaches, is it? Lovely to meet you, Peaches. That’s a beautiful name you have. Now, you three, hop along into the other room while we sort out some food for these two. You can take it upstairs, if you like? If you’d rather be private.”
Millie said private would be nice. “There’s not a lot of it going on in this house,” she said, as we went upstairs carrying a tray of food. “Those Diddy People get everywhere.”
She said it like she was complaining, but she obviously loved them.
“I think your sisters are really cute,” I said.
“They’re OK,” said Millie. “But does one actually need three of them?” And then she remembered and said, “Of course, you’ve got even more. I don’t suppose you have any privacy at all.”
I said, “Well…” and let my voice sort of trail away. Lack of privacy is not a problem I have ever had to face. Our house is quite big and we all have our own rooms, so it’s easy to shut yourself away if that is what you want. But Millie’s house was like a dolls’ house, and I noticed immediately that there were bunk beds in her room, so I guessed she had to share with one of her sisters.
“Kaylee,” she said. She screwed up her face, making her nose go all crinkled. “That’s hers, the top one. But it’s all right – she’s in with the others for tonight. We’ve got one of those bedroll things.” I must have looked blank. So many things I didn’t know about! “You roll them out and sleep on them? Be nice if she always slept there, but there’s not really enough space.”
There wasn’t any space in Millie’s room, even without a bedroll thing. We sat companionably on the floor, on a woolly rug, to eat our tea.
“How d’you manage about homework?” I said. We get quite a lot of it at Sacred Heart. “How d’you concentrate?”
“Front room,” said Millie. “Me mam’s put a desk in there, and the computer. Nobody’s let in till I’ve finished. Me mam – oops!” She stopped, and clapped a hand to her mouth. “Shouldn’t have said that, should I?”
Said what? Me mam? I looked at her, puzzled, as I inserted the straw in my carton of juice. “Why shouldn’t you?”
“Not proper use of English. Sister Agatha told me off about it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sister Agatha.” She was one of the strictest of the nuns. She took us for English and made us all quiver and quake. The only other nun who actually took classes, Sister Marie Clare, who took us for music, was really sweet and gentle. We loved Sister Marie Clare. She would never have told Millie off for saying “me mam”.
“My muthah,” said Millie, sounding like the Queen. “Thet is the way one should speak.”
I giggled. “What were you going to say about your muthah?”
“Oh, just that she reckons if I’ve been lucky enough to be given a scholarship I’ve got to really work hard and show that I deserve it. She was the one that pushed me into it. Her and Mrs Hennessy at primary school. I didn’t want to! I wanted to go to Winterbourne with all me friends. My friends,” she corrected herself.
“I wanted to go to Winterbourne,” I said.
“Really? Why didn’t you?”
“Mum thought it was too big and I’d get lost.”
“How about the others? Where do they go?”
“Well, the twins are still at primary. Coop and Charlie—” I sucked vigorously on my straw. “They’re at this place where my dad used to go.”
“Is it posh?”
I said no, though in fact it is, quite. It’s where the MP sends his son.
“So why didn’t you go there?” said Millie.
I tried to think of a reason. “It’s got boys,” I said. “I have enough of boys at home.”
“I have enough of girls,” said Millie. “Not that I’m boy crazy or anything. I think it’s pathetic when girls can think of nothing except boyfriends. I mean, yuck! But you want to try living with three Diddy People.”
I thought that I wouldn’t mind if they were as sweet as Millie’s little sisters.
“They are just so cute,” I said. “And it’s amazing, how they all look so alike – they could almost be triplets. And if you were photographed with them,” I said, “you could even be…” I couldn’t think of the word. “What’s it called when people have four babies all at once?”
“Quadruplets.” Millie did the thing with her nose, making it go all crinkled. “How about your lot? Do you all look the same?”
I shook my head as I sucked again at my straw, glugging up the last few drops from the bottom of the carton. I don’t look like anyone in my family. Charlie and Coop are quite big, like Dad, with dark hair. The twins are smaller, and more gingery, like Mum, with pale skin and freckles. I am a bit big, which is to say I am not small, and I do have pale skin, but my hair is blonde and I’m the only one with blue eyes, so that nobody ever says, “Oh! Aren’t you like your dad?” or, “Ooh, you take after your mum!” like they do with the others.
When I was little I used to have this fantasy that I’d been kidnapped from royalty and then abandoned, and that Mum and Dad had found me in an orphanage. I think I must have read a story where this had happened. When I got a bit older I stopped thinking that I was royalty but still felt that I had to be someone – someone different, that is. I even (eek!) used to wonder if Mum had had a secret love affair and that Dad wasn’t my real dad at all. But they are so much in love that I don’t honestly think this can have been the case. I am just odd, and that is all there is to it.
Millie was looking at me expectantly.
“So what are they like?” she said. “Your lot?”
“Mm… well.” I busied myself unwrapping a Kit Kat. “They’re OK. I’m sort of… in the middle.”
“Better than being the oldest. At least you don’t have to act as babysitter. Or do you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have to do that.”
I nibbled on my Kit Kat. Millie sat waiting. I had to tell her something, it was only fair. It’s what friends do: they ask about each other’s families. I’d heard all about hers, about her mum being a school dinner lady and her dad driving his bus all the way up to town. Now it was my turn.
“Y
ou don’t have to tell me if you don’t want,” said Millie. “I expect I’m just being nosy.”
But she wasn’t. She was just taking a normal interest. With fierce concentration I started folding my Kit Kat wrapper into a concertina as I told her about Charlie having played Gwendolen in a musical version of The Importance of Being Earnest and how it was Coop that had written the music.
Millie said, “Wow!” Her eyes widened. “He wrote the music?”
“It’s what he does,” I said. “He’s like some kind of musical prodigy.”
“Like Mozart!”
“Dunno about that,” I said.
Sister Marie Claire was into Mozart. She was always playing us bits in the hope that some of it would rub off on to us and stop us listening to nothing but pop, but to me it just sounded tinkly. Not a bit like the sort of stuff that Coop wrote.
“He did this thing called Holes,” I said. “All crashing and banging. The reason it’s called Holes is cos every few bars there’s, like, total silence? Like a row of knitting with dropped stitches.”
Actually, as far as I was concerned, the silences came as a relief cos the music itself was just noise. Well, that was how it seemed to me. It didn’t have any tune. It didn’t have any rhythm. You couldn’t sing to it; you couldn’t dance to it. But I’m not musical, so what do I know? Mum says he’s a genius, and she is probably right.
“You ought to tell Sister Marie Clare,” said Millie. “She’d be well impressed!”
I wriggled uncomfortably. “That’d be like boasting.”
“It wouldn’t if I told her.”
I bent my head over my concertina, carefully folding it in half, and then half again, only second time round it was too thick and wouldn’t fold properly. Millie sat watching me. I looked up and saw that she was frowning.
“I won’t tell her if you’d rather I didn’t,” she said. “Not if it’s supposed to be a secret.”
I said that it wasn’t a secret, it was just…
“What?”
“Just…”
“It’s all right.” Millie said it kindly, like she’d taken pity on me. “’Tisn’t any of my business. Let’s get this stuff downstairs and I’ll show you where I do my homework.”