Sometimes, I try to ignore the mess, not to let it get to me. Or I try telling myself that it could be worse, that Bonnie could be what is known as a ‘dirty’ hoarder and the house could be full of used sanitary towels and human excrement, so aren’t I actually quite lucky? Occasionally my pep talks work. Not tonight though. Tonight, every single scrap of paper makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs, until my voice is hoarse and my throat red raw.
I brace myself and push open the living-room door. Bonnie is sitting in the one available spot – a floral armchair with a broken footrest and lumpy seat cushion, the fabric discoloured from years of occupation. A large glass of red wine is balanced precariously on the stack of old newspapers acting as a makeshift side table.
Bonnie.
Never Mum or Mummy or Mother.
Just Bonnie.
We look nothing like each other. While Bonnie is tanned (albeit out of a bottle) and blonde and comic-book curvy, I’m pale and mousy and straight-up-and-down. The only feature that’s vaguely similar is our eyes – big and rain-cloud grey and exactly the same shape, drooping down ever so slightly at the sides.
‘Sad eyes,’ my gran (my dad’s mum) once remarked with more than a hint of disapproval. ‘Just like your mother’s.’
I spent ages in the mirror after that, smiling inanely at my reflection in an attempt to fight what nature had given me. But it was no good. My gran was right. Even with the biggest, toothiest grin on my face, my eyes can’t help but tell a different story.
Bonnie is wearing one of her stage outfits – a low-cut red sequinned dress with a split up the right thigh. From afar, it looks great, but up close it’s difficult to miss the loose threads and numerous sequinless patches. Her shoes, a pair of matching glittery heels that she has to respray before every gig, lie abandoned on the floor, the soles scored with scissors to prevent her from slipping on stage. The red clashes with her brassy blonde hair, hard and crunchy to the touch from all the backcombing and hairspray she subjects it to before each gig.
I don’t know for sure, but I’d hazard a confident guess that when Jamie imagined the sort of person who might live in place like this, he wasn’t picturing Bonnie.
My eyes fall on the half-smoked cigarette smouldering in an ashtray on Bonnie’s lap.
‘You do know that if that goes over, this whole place would go up in flames,’ I say. This entire house is one massive fire hazard – a big fat bonfire just waiting for a match.
‘Sorry?’ Bonnie says, her eyes flickering with annoyance at the interruption.
Both the television and radio are blaring – ‘Sweet Talking Guy’ by The Chiffons battling to be heard over an episode of a reality TV show I don’t know the name of.
I swear under my breath as I search for the radio, eventually locating it nestled amongst the pile of junk covering the sofa. I turn it off, and repeat what I just said.
‘Don’t get at me, Ro, not tonight,’ Bonnie says, lifting the cigarette to her lips and taking a hungry drag.
‘Why? What happened? I thought you had a gig,’ I say, looking for somewhere to put the radio before giving up and tossing it back where I found it.
‘Ha!’ Bonnie says, stubbing out the cigarette.
On the TV, a group of bronzed and bejewelled women are gesticulating wildly as they screech at each other. Bonnie appears enthralled, but it makes my head hurt.
‘Can you turn that down a bit?’ I ask, pointing at the screen.
Bonnie sighs, lifting the remote like it’s made from lead and reducing the volume by a few notches.
‘What happened to your gig?’ I ask, finally able to hear myself properly.
‘It was cancelled,’ Bonnie replies, peeling off her false eyelashes, each of them thick with layers of old glue. Discarded on the arm of her chair, they look like a pair of dead spiders.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘Oh, booking cockup at their end. Bloody bastards rang me when I was halfway up the pissing M1 and told me not to bother turning up.’
‘Are they still paying you?’
She tuts. ‘I wish.’
‘But that’s not fair.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Have you spoken to Pip? What did he say?’
Bonnie removes her chandelier earrings, draping them next to her eyelashes. The cheap glass catches the light.
‘Bonnie, did you hear me? Have you spoken to Pip? It’s his job to sort out stuff like this.’
‘Pip’s not working for me any more,’ Bonnie says, not quite meeting my eye as she massages her red earlobes.
‘Why not?’
‘I sacked him.’
‘You sacked your manager?’ I splutter. ‘When?’
‘Just after Easter.’
All I can do is stare. She sacked Pip over three months ago and didn’t think to say anything. Even now she’s acting like it’s no big deal, humming as she reaches for her wine.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask.
She breaks off from her humming. ‘Because I knew you’d only go and make a big deal out of it.’
‘What happened?’
‘We had a falling out.’
‘Over what?’
‘He was rude about my set. And I can’t work with someone who has no faith in me. It stifles my creativity.’
‘But we’re skint!’
Over the past few months I’ve opened our bank statements and watched our balance steadily fall. Now I know why.
‘Oh, don’t be dramatic. We’re fine,’ Bonnie says.
‘We’re not “fine”!’ I cry. ‘We’ve been overdrawn for ages now. I keep telling you, but you never listen!’
Bonnie closes her eyes and rubs the bridge of her nose. ‘Please don’t get at me, Ro, not tonight. I’ve just driven halfway to Manchester and back for sweet F.A. I’m tired and I’m fed-up and all I want to do is have a glass of wine and watch a bit of telly and forget about the whole bloody fiasco for a few hours. Is that really too much to ask?’
‘Yes! We’ve got a load of bills coming out of the account next week. If we don’t top up it up we’ll be even more in the red!’
‘So, we go a bit further into the overdraft. Isn’t that what they’re for?’
‘How would you even know? You haven’t opened a bank statement in about five years.’
‘Attitude!’ Bonnie cries, pointing an accusing finger towards my face.
I shake my head. ‘Attitude’ is Bonnie’s go-to reprimand when she has no other defence left.
‘Look, I never asked you to deal with the banking,’ she says.
My eyes bulge. Is she for real?
‘Fine. I’ll stop doing it then. Just don’t come whining to me when the bailiffs come knocking. Which they will, if you have anything to do with it.’
Bonnie responds by picking up the remote control and turning up the volume to maximum.
‘Nice!’ I yell over the racket. ‘Really mature, Bonnie!’
Bonnie pretends not to hear, her gaze fixed stubbornly on the TV screen.
‘Oh, grow up!’ I snap.
I stamp out of the room, acutely aware of how topsy-turvy this all is. I’m the child, not Bonnie. And yet every one of our exchanges these days seems to slip into this messed-up dynamic.
You’re a weird girl, you know that, Ro Snow? Jamie’s words echo in my ears as I stomp up the stairs.
Jamie Cannon, you have no idea.
3
On the landing, I pause to catch my breath. I need to calm down. I close my eyes and count to ten and will the pent-up anger to vacate my body. When I open my eyes again, although I still feel furious, my breathing has at least calmed down a bit and my hands are just trembling now instead of full-on shaking.
I take a long deep exhalation and concentrate on plotting my route to the bathroom, ploughing all my energy into planning exactly where I’m going to place my feet. Bonnie acquires new items almost constantly so the most direct path changes on a daily basis. Tonight, I have to na
vigate a large box containing a deluxe foot spa (unopened), a piñata in the shape of a donkey, a broken record player and at least ten stuffed black bin bags, as well as the usual piles of paper. When I was a little kid, I used to think all people lived like this, that everyone’s house resembled a dangerous playground, filled with obstacles and booby traps, requiring you to be on constant alert in order to make it safely from A to B. It was only after a run of playdates and birthday parties at other kids’ houses that I twigged that I was the odd one out. I specifically remember going to the loo at Georgia Purnell’s house and the creeping unease I felt when I realized it took me just ten seconds to walk from her living room to the bathroom, rather than the full minute it took me at home.
As Jamie suspected, the bathroom is not being retiled. The bathtub is piled so high with stuff I can’t even see the tiles. I haven’t had a bath since I was about five or six. I shower in the cramped plastic cubicle in the corner of the room instead, one of the few spaces in the house that Bonnie hasn’t yet colonized. I sometimes wondered if my favourite bath toy, a wind-up Nemo, is still in the tub, buried for ever under years’ worth of rubbish, still smiling his sweet hopeful smile as he patiently waits to be found.
I brush my teeth and wash my face, still wearing my backpack on my shoulders, then pick my way back across the landing to my bedroom.
I pause outside the door. A hand-painted wooden sign declaring it as ‘Ro’s Room’ hangs on a small plastic hook at chest height, just as it has done for as long as I can remember. I trace my name with my index finger.
Ro’s Room.
My bedroom.
My sanctuary.
I reach into my backpack, take out my keys and unlock the door.
The lock is relatively new. I added it two years ago, after I’d finally had enough of Bonnie sneaking her crap into my room while I was at school.
I step inside and instantly feel calmer.
Around the same time I fixed the lock, I used that year’s birthday money from my dad to paint my entire room white. My bed linen is also white, topped with squishy cushions in coordinating shades of pebble grey and duck-egg blue, and a soft fleecy throw. My desk and bedside table are clear and the walls bare apart from the full-length mirror that hangs to the right of my bedroom door. There’s no clutter, no mess, no fuss – my room is the calm at the centre of a raging storm.
I go into autopilot – changing into my pyjamas, spraying my pillow with lavender-scented sleep spray, and climbing into bed. I usually read for a bit, but tonight all I want to do is sleep. I turn off my lamp and lie on my back, the duvet tucked under my arms. Bonnie has turned the radio back on, Sixties pop floating up the stairs. God knows when she’ll turn it off and go to sleep. Bonnie is a night owl, staying up until the early hours and dozing until lunch.
I retrieve my earplugs from the top drawer of my bedside chest and shove them in my ears. It takes me for ever to drop off, and when I do, I dream the dream I’ve dreamed at least one hundred times before.
Being buried alive under piles and piles of paper.
4
On my way to breakfast, I stop to peer around the slightly ajar living-room door. Bonnie’s snoring away in her armchair, her head lolling forward to expose her naturally dark roots, a crocheted blanket crumpled around her ankles.
I sigh and creep over to her, picking up the blanket and draping it loosely over her knees. Her snoring is soft, pretty almost. She looks different when she’s asleep – younger, sweeter – her face relaxed and free from its usual thick layer of stage make-up.
As I watch her doze, the lingering anger from last night begins to fade a little. I haven’t a clue how she manages to get a decent night’s sleep in this horrible lumpy old chair. I wish I could scoop her up and carry her to her bedroom, but, even if it was physically possible for me to get her upstairs, there’d be no point. There’s a reason Bonnie’s sleeping down here and not in her bedroom.
I tuck the blanket round her knees and press my mouth to her cheek. Her skin is cool and soft against my lips.
‘See you later,’ I whisper.
Bonnie murmurs a sleepy reply and turns her head in the opposite direction.
I spend my Saturday mornings pushing leaflets advertising local takeaways and cleaning firms through letter boxes. The headquarters, where I pick up my leaflets, are located above a pet shop on the high street. On reflection, ‘headquarters’ is probably far too grand a description for the higgledy-piggledy collection of rooms.
‘Morning, Ro,’ Eric calls when I arrive.
I stick my head behind his office door where he’s sitting behind his paperwork-laden desk. ‘Morning,’ I reply.
‘Just a few more days at school now, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, we break up on Wednesday,’ I say. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘You read my mind.’
I smile and swipe his Avengers mug from the debris and head into the narrow kitchen, the squawk of birds from the pet shop below just audible over the boiling kettle. I’m rifling in the box of tea bags when Jodie stumbles in. She’s wearing a crop top with huge pompoms sewn onto each shoulder, leggings covered with lightning bolts and a battered pair of gold Reeboks.
‘Are you making tea?’ she asks.
‘Well spotted. Do you want one?’
‘Yes. A million times yes, you little beauty.’
She collapses into a chair, resting her forehead on the tea-stained Formica table. Her choppy bleached-blonde hair flops forward, forming a curtain around her face.
‘Out last night by any chance?’ I ask, teasingly, plopping a tea bag into each of the assembled mugs.
She groans. ‘No shit, Sherlock. Student night down at the George. Three sugars please.’
I spoon three heaped teaspoons of sugar into Jodie’s mug before pushing it under her nose.
‘Thanks, babe,’ she says, groping for it with shaking fingers. ‘You’re an angel without any wings.’
‘You should really eat something too. Want me to pop out to the cafe before we have to head off? Get you a bacon sandwich or something?’
Jodie shakes her head hard. ‘I can’t, Ro. I’ll spew, I swear.’
‘It’ll make you feel better. You need to replace the salts you’ve lost.’
Jodie peers up at me between strands of knotty hair. Her eyelashes are thick and crusty with day-old mascara. ‘You’re far too bloody wise for your age, Ro, do you know that?’ she says, pausing to take a long slurp of tea. ‘I’m twenty, you’re fourteen. I should be guiding you through your disgusting hangover, not the other way round.’
‘Have a biscuit at least,’ I say, ignoring her and pulling the lid off the ancient Quality Street tin that houses the communal biscuit supply. ‘Iron.’
Jodie laughs and reaches for a custard cream. ‘You’ll make a great mum one day, Ro,’ she says, dunking it in her tea. ‘Do you know that?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I say, turning away and tending to Eric’s tea.
*
Ten minutes later, I head out into the sunshine. My delivery patch is near the park, where the streets are wide and tree-lined and the houses big and sprawling with driveways large enough for at least four cars.
I like my job. I like the fresh air, even on the days when it’s freezing cold or tipping down with rain. I like the peace and quiet and being up and about when most people are still lazing in bed. I like peering in through the windows of the houses I leaflet and admiring the spacious living rooms, drinking in the fancy wallpaper and matching scatter cushions and framed art on the walls and fantasizing about the orderly lives the owners must lead.
Today, though, despite the glorious sunshine and cornflower-blue sky, I’m distracted, and even my very favourite stops on the route (the Georgian villa with the sunshine-yellow door, the row of art deco semis with their elegant curved windows, the Victorian house on the corner with its very own turret) can’t get me back on track. I just can’t stop my stupid brain from replaying the events of last ni
ght, all the very worst sound bites from my conversation with Jamie making me want to slide between the cracks in the pavement. I lurch between feeling mad at Jamie for being so pushy about walking me home, and mad at myself for giving in so easily. I let my guard down and it backfired. Horribly.
There’s no use in dwelling on it though. I need to move on and learn from it. And that means never, ever putting myself in a situation like that again.
*
I’m almost home when I notice a large red lorry with ‘Addis & Son Removals’ on the side parked up outside 46 Arcadia Avenue.
Number 46 has stood empty since its former occupant, an elderly man called Terry, moved into a care home just after Christmas. I liked Terry. A lot of people would have a problem living next door to a house like ours, but Terry never had a bad word to say. He even let me borrow his toolbox and lawnmower whenever I asked and gave me a chocolate egg every Easter and a Cadbury’s selection box every Christmas. I was sad to see him go, but mostly scared of who would take his place, well aware that not everyone would be as forgiving. Lots of people have been round to have a look, but the ‘For Rent’ sign has remained up and the house has continued to sit empty.
Until now.
I approach with caution, slipping behind the cluster of bushes that separate my front garden from number 46’s, and peer through the foliage. I watch as the removal men unload an assortment of mismatched furniture, cardboard boxes and black bin liners from the half-empty van. I’m struck by just how little stuff there is. I wonder how many vans’ worth of junk my own house contains. Two? Three? Five? More?
A few minutes later, a black SUV with a dented bumper pulls up behind the van. A man and two boys get out, one around ten years old, the other around my age. All three have the same shock of inky black hair and olive skin. All three look utterly miserable.
The man opens the boot of the car and removes a large, clearly very heavy suitcase. It lands on the driveway with a thud. Sighing, he extends its handle and wheels it towards the front door. The younger boy follows, the Arsenal Football Club backpack he’s carrying in his hand trailing on the floor behind him. The older boy reaches for a black sports bag and hauls it over his shoulder. The strap’s too long and it bangs against his lower thigh as he makes his way up the driveway. In his other hand he carries a guitar case covered with stickers. He’s basketball-player tall and dressed all in black apart from a pair of grubby white hi-tops. His features are sharp and delicate at the same time, and make him look like he belongs in the past, in a frock coat perhaps, reciting poetry.
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