‘Great. Fucking ebola.’
I froze. Then I twisted around to say something cutting, or badass, but he was already pulling out his phone, staring at me.
I swished away from his muscular disdain, towards the oranges. He was telling me I was not welcome in such a place; that I should be at the Wednesday Picton Street market with the other darkskins; that farfalle pasta, refined homewares and organic semi-skimmed were nothing to do with me. All in a look: the most skilled racists know that it is an assault with a blunt weapon to wilfully confuse skin colour with a wholesale culture.
Not enjoyable, but he wasn’t the first.
Then he started talking louder, growling at his phone like he hated it:
‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Fuck knows.’
He turned towards the open doors again and his nape tattoo faced me straight on. Not many could have an eagle that size, right there. He was too heavy-set though, surely. And he should have thick, dark hair …
‘I’ll call you back.’ It was knowing, that voice, complicit.
My stomach seized; it had to be him.
I started away up the long aisle. Did he know me? He would follow. I took a few steps more, but walking on felt fearful, far worse; I had to turn back.
He was gone.
I looked around, towards the tills. Gone. I edged forward a few steps. Could not see him. I wheeled my trolley past the end of the first aisle. Not there. I walked along it, gathering a few items as I went, did the same in the next aisle and the next. When I had amassed enough to tell myself I was no longer afraid, I queued, paid and packed my bags.
Lola was going to sleep with Will. Of course, I knew that she had already slept with him once, but I overheard her on the phone making a song and dance of it, as though she had never told her friends about the first time. She was obsessed with the boy: this don of getting hot-tub nasty, touted about as a future lawyer-husband – amongst these demanding nubiles anyway. Lola planned to ‘get with’ him when his parents were out. I was in no doubt that this callow youth would be delighted to be got with. There were also some unsubtle mutterings: ‘bringing some stuff … or “the Wolfe” … yeah, in his dad’s old Something & Wolfe Criminal Law, bant … yup, let it snow’ as if no one over twenty-five would know slang for cocaine. I was in no doubt that I should forewarn, prevent, put a dirty great spanner in the teenage works or at least say something moderately wise … but what? She had made it quite clear that she did not want to hear anything that came out of my fat-lipped mouth. So, wrong though it was, I said nothing – and figured it might do her good to have a hobby outside of the house.
When Will day arrived, I knew it was Will day because Lola flitted around, birdlike, asking about her purple bra, a lacy, knowing, tart’s carnival of a confection that I had seen out drying and which had to be her best, meaning the one in which she might do her worst. She folded the bra, still damp from the clothes horse, and fluttered around the kitchen as if she might have something to ask, or say. She flew away from the dinner table after pecking at a few peas and a bite of fish, so that she could prepare for the party for at least an hour longer than usual; she would be staying the night at Jessica’s. She may as well have worn a ‘Today, I Will’ T-shirt.
I did not share my suspicions with Thomas though – What boys? What booze? What blow? There was no catastrophe-free way in which that could help. When she shut the door and soared off to dive-bomb some unmade (or housekeeper-sterilised) bed, we were alone at last. Just us newlyweds, give or take a six-year-old trying to rap the Ben 10 theme tune. However, Lola had been trying to liquefy our precious golden circle for weeks; I was pissed off about it, too. My brain rocked and fizzed, my temples were brewing a headache; I spent the rest of the evening on my muted laptop while Thomas worked in his study.
Lollapalooza, he called her. My Lolapaloo. It was starting to grate.
Dark
She needs to know the word. What is it?
‘Ten, nine …’
He had come into the kitchen, as usual, patted her head, given her a peach from the garden. Stroked her cheek, asked her how the day had gone.
Now he is in the toilet. Shouting numbers. A flush.
Specks of dust hang like babyweeny bugs in the sunlight, but they all jump as he shuts their loo door.
‘Seven, six …’
He is coming back. The pantry is waiting.
The front door is closed. The windows are closed. The roof is heavy and – strange – still on: even though everything has gone bad the house is not rising up, roaring open like a big dog’s bark to save her. The door to the pantry is open and it is the only place to hide that is not ‘out of bounds’. She goes in.
‘Two, one. Coming!’
(Ready or not.)
She has run out of numbers but he is here anyway, with his heavy lips and heavy words and red eyes – red as hell, robot lasers burning her back for all the time he smacks her – with nothing that looks right in them. And worst of all, the forced glass. The cold red smell.
What is it called, this thickness of the dark in the daytime? She has not yet learned any words that can describe what this is.
Lola
DONE LIST 4
Dad is spending so much time with me right now. He’s back again, there in my darkness; tall and solid like those old lighthouses that stop you from smashing yourself on the rocks. Hey, no way! I just worked it out – I should have played smart and thought ahead to avoid all this and set him up with AT. Dear old Alison! Bit of an age difference maybe, probably the wrong kind, it’s hard to tell her exact age because of whatever that thing is she does with her hair. Still, at least he could never say his wife didn’t understand him. #dadjokesrock
I think AT is married though, but she’s never actually said and Dad certainly doesn’t know. Maybe to someone symbolic. The gender wouldn’t matter but she would probably be happiest with a nice undertaker or midwife. She would need some life or death meaning to get all worked up about. I’ll never know – part of the whole shrink/psycho deal is probably to keep herself private and anyway I don’t really care about old people’s love lives. Enough of all that at home.
College is not what I thought it would be. It’s just not. I thought it would feel outstandingly grown up and a bit like a younger uni, but it is full of chavs (sorry, but it is) and the teachers are pretty bad. One guy’s classes make Bonesy Jonesie’s feel like they were the hottest, most fascinating date you ever had. Also, Anna had said she was coming here, a couple of people said they were leaving school for college, but what, did they all go and change their mind over the summer? I keep telling Dad that I think I made a horrible mistake. He keeps telling me that the college has a great reputation (what, is it No.2 in the finally-no-school-fees download chart?) I’ll get used to it, apparently.
But what happens if I never do? What then?
So, I googled ‘Chinese water’ meaning chestnuts, because I’ve been wanting to know how to make that stir-fry Bron’s mum used to make, but Chinese water torture popped up in the list so I clicked on that instead and read for ages and was sort of freaked out and forgot all about vegetables. I told Dad, but Darling was there too and she laughed really loud, although it wasn’t meant to be funny.
Drip, drip, drip. Some problems are exactly that. I am trying but I cannot overcome the rub of ever-flowing issues on to, right into, my head. Drip, drip, drip. Brutal.
Where’s Darling anyway when I need her? She’s off taking Stevie somewhere medical as usual, in the Merc I still can’t believe he bought her. She goes nowhere but to Stevie places. The boy has to go to the doctor’s a lot, like once a week, more. Poor little sod must be really sick.
So, I slept with Will again. Second time since 23 July and the tent at Mungojaxx. #virginholidayslol #woofrickinhoo. God, I had the giggles when we nearly kicked the tent down by mistake, but we had been drinking the vodka I’d nicked from home and smuggled in disguised as tonic water. This time was better. Less malcoordinated and not at
all funny and warmer. #happy2ndbangaversary
I should have felt changed straight after the first time, but I didn’t feel any different. But twice: does this time now officially make me a High Desford College hottie? At least I am no longer one of the epidemic numbers of virgin-but-legals at Harbrooke House and Dovington #sadfuckersareus. But I don’t feel different exactly. I may look different because Darling told me I looked ‘wired’ when I got in at eleven this morning.
This time was different. Will actually asked me over to his house, for a start – his parents were out. We went pretty much straight to his bedroom. He didn’t kiss me right away though, so I felt quite awkward and just chatted on too much for a bit, told him about all the ways that Darling was driving me completely batshit. I actually told him:
‘I act like it’s OK, for Dad, but it’s not. I can’t stand having her around the place. She is basically ruining my entire life!’
It felt really good to say it at last and better still, Will gave me this massive hug and agreed:
‘If you ask me, it’s totally out of order. Still want me to kill her?’
And I laughed, but then I said: ‘Seriously, if only there was a way we could break them up.’
And then we started to talk about what we should do, like I said, ‘Get her to start smoking again so that Dad dumps her’ (I’d already had a go at that one, of course), or ‘Steal money and credit cards and stuff so Dad thinks it’s her – and dumps her!’ He was great about it, he kept pulling me closer to him and then he pulled me right on to the bed – OMG I could hardly listen to him properly, but he was going:
‘Well, maybe we don’t even need to do that. Maybe we should just see what we can find out about her and go from there.’
I asked him what he was talking about and he was all, ‘Well, she’s black, isn’t she? And from Elm Forest? Bound to have nicked a car at some point, or to have a criminal record for something at least.’ I laughed and went, ‘You’re really not supposed to say that.’ And he said ‘Well, you know what they say – behind every racist joke there’s a fact.’
And then I was gutted because he got up off the bed and went to his desk to show me all these papers, this stuff he collects from some political group. I wanted him to lie back down but he got a bit into it, showed me things like black people are loads more likely, three or four times more, to go to prison. I didn’t know what to say to that. Then he carried on joking around and he was saying that with a stupid name like hers it would be easy to get the dirt on her and that he would talk to his dad because he’s a lawyer and it would be a piece of piss, he knows all the police in High Desford, everyone, and we’d soon have her banged up. I was so nervous that his parents might come back before we did anything that I just kept on nodding and laughing. He did lie back down in the end though and then he kissed me (and a lot more, obv).
So, everything on the Will front is looking amazing. And although only yesterday I was worried he would never want to do anything with me again, we totally did it. As for Darling, obviously I don’t really think we’re going to find a way to send her to prison, but it did also get me thinking. I mean, we still don’t know anything about her. No family showed up at the wedding and she hardly talks about her life at all – how weird is that? – and Dad walks around in a dream world like it’s all just ‘dandy’ #fakeModernFamily and everyone’s happy.
I am happy about Will and me at least. But it still doesn’t exactly feel like I thought it would. Maybe it will take some time to kick in …
Also, now I’ve started with all this sicking up.
Achievements
Will is my main achievement, without a doubt. It’s so great, he really does seem into us. Into me. #yayformiracles
Lost the easiest 4lbs ever, without even trying. The usual. Also mucho helped by the little leftover half-wraps of coc stuff someone’s been giving me. Burns mega calories. True dat!
Actually went to work with Dad, to a meeting in London anyway. We stopped off at Mum’s grave because it was nearby (she died exactly a decade ago, weird) and I waited for him at this all right café next to the cemetery. We loved it. Beat the shit out of most of the places around here; at least they played decent music. He said it was loud, but we loved it.
Made Stevie laugh for about an hour by blowing bubbles into milk through a curly straw. Darling’s face when I tried to do it through my nose … #grossouttheoldies
Spent a whole day without speaking to anyone I liked at college. Asked Dad straight out if it was too late to go back to Harbrooke House. He said I’d be just fine.
Darling
SATURDAY, 15 OCTOBER
Mid-October settled a better mood upon us. It brought Braeburns and the last of the beans to the garden and I started to feel more hopeful.
I might have been wide of the mark, but Lola seemed happier. Admittedly, not often when I was in the room. But surely she had to be coming around to the idea of me, or at least sliding into a muted resignation.
One, one coco full basket.
She would never treat me as a parent, I knew that; I had come to her when she was too old. But nor did I plan to be some big sister; I was too old for that, and too traditional. I also respected the unique place of her late mother. Once you had been raised by a Jamaican woman you were never in doubt of the power of a mother; not every one of my early days had been perfect, but I’d sure been mothered to within an inch of my life. However, I felt I might be accepted by Lola as a caregiver. Someone to nurture her. I knew by now that she needed me more than she would ever let on.
One morning, she said:
‘I’ll have some of that spicy chicken again for dinner, if you’re making it …’
Caught off guard, I overdid it:
‘Yes, sure! Good girl, you hungry then?’
‘Yeah, I really am, today.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I’ve still got all the spices … Good, great, I’ll cook you up some more; it might take a little while. What do you need right now?’
‘Oh, I’ll just make myself some eggs,’ she said.
‘Great,’ I said.
There now, yuh see – even hope taste like chicken!
And then, the strangest thing. Instead of heading to the kitchen she went back upstairs again. She had this pink towel turbanned around her head, and she stopped on the third or fourth step and turned to look back at me, just for a second before she went on up again, and I felt with both horror and relief that I might cry.
But I did not let tears fall and our day continued to unfurl, fine and quiet as a fern.
In the early afternoon, I started separating the spices into their little white bowls.
As I was measuring out the ground cloves, Lola came down again, still thin in her thin summer dressing gown, still a towel around her hair.
‘There you go, I’m making your favourite chicken!’ I said.
‘My what? Oh,’ she said. ‘Actually, I’m going out now, sleepover at Ellie’s.’
‘I thought you weren’t talking to Ellie.’
‘I am now.’
‘Oh, should I—’
‘Please don’t get stressy, I’ll eat it another time.’
‘I don’t “get stressy”. It’s fine.’
She wandered away, shouting: ‘Dad! Can I have a lift?’
So: not so much wide of the mark as a whole bus ride away. Whatever had been in Lola’s eyes when she looked back at me that morning had been lost by the afternoon.
She and Thomas left about half an hour later, and almost as soon as they’d gone, the phone rang. We usually ignored the landline but it had rung and rung as if it mattered. I picked it up and said ‘Hello.’ There was no sound coming from it. I waited for another second, nestling the weighty receiver closer.
‘Hello?’
Nothing. Or almost nothing; breathing, faint but there. There was someone on the other end of the phone.
‘Hi, hello?’
I was alone downstairs. Stevie was playing
upstairs.
‘Hello, can you hear me? Who’s calling, please?’
Only more breathing, heavier now, which made me feel that they were moving closer. I waited a moment more then went to hang up, but before I could, they were gone.
The next day, I found a parcel of poison. She let me find it. She made me find it: the paperclipped clutch of flyers – and what? Aide-memoires? – that she clearly needed me to see. She had asked for help, a brazen trick, as Thomas prepared to take her to another friend’s house:
‘Oh, Darling, sorry, I left my charger upstairs. Dad’s coming … could you?’
Unthinking, I had trotted off to her room – step-parents did that – and there lay her charger, sitting on top of the papers I had been sent to her room to see.
Such appealing colours, made to clash in such an ugly way! That dark red-pink and orange; the sun setting on kindness, perhaps, or a new dawn of bigoted fuckery. Of course the colours caught my eye, they were meant to, and I retreated with the charger prongs digging hard into my hand.
I said nothing. But after the two of them drove off, I bounced straight back up to her room, because sometimes it was just too tiring to resist the script.
Also, sometimes words spoke louder than actions. So, in that screwy bundle: every Bright New Britain leaflet I could remember seeing, untorn and untorched. Plus, bizarrely, a flyer for a Law taster day at Durham University. A photo of a boy, standing next to a man who looked as the boy might at fifty, leaning towards the battymout’-in-chief and clinking pint glasses, somewhere that looked like a hotel carvery that had been brightened up with a job lot of horse brasses. A copy of a newspaper article featuring women in matching dark red-pink and orange T-shirts, with what Lola might call ‘Alpha’ eyes and ‘headfuck dreamgirl’ hair and skin slapped in product to keep it fine-pored and clearly as white as possible. More newspaper cuttings from Bright New Britain praising those who had steered the country away from the Continent, away from the waiting immigrants (Migrant? Refugee? Tricksy, PC words!), away from darkskin disaster and deviousness and ruin. An actual photographic print of a selfie, complete with white border: Lola, and possibly the same boy, half turned away. A BNB flyer for local elections in Elm Forest, only fifteen minutes away.
Darling Page 10