by Jane Renshaw
And Tricia had lived up to all their expectations.
Flora remembered her that first day, standing by Mrs Stewart’s side in front of the blackboard as she was introduced to the class. She’d had long black hair, and skin that was a lovely pale brown colour, and she’d been wearing a dress with a fringe along the bottom. She’d been slim and very graceful, with a smiley face, pretty green eyes and a long nose, which somehow made her look older.
After the class had chanted, ‘Hello Tricia,’ and Tricia had done a funny little wave and said, ‘Hi!’, Kenny Scott had said, ‘Are you a Red Indian?’ and Mrs Stewart had gone mental at him and given them all a lecture about (a) shouting out and (b) shouting out personal questions.
Tricia had smiled and said no, she wasn’t an Indian, ‘I just tan real easy.’
She’d proved to be even more of a rebel than Kenny. This had become obvious that first day. They’d been doing pond life. They’d all had to look down a microscope at a smelly Petri dish with water boatmen and horrible larvae and shrimps in it doing disgusting things like eating each other alive and mating. Mrs Stewart had told them to draw one of the creatures they’d seen, but then she’d caught Tricia doodling on her jotter instead, and when she’d told her to get on with what she was supposed to be drawing, Tricia had said, ‘Bugs! Who wants to know about bugs? Count me out.’
Count me out!
Rachel had thrilled at those words – so casually dismissive – and repeated them to herself in her head over and over. Count me out.
Imagine actually saying that to a teacher!
Mrs Stewart had seemed similarly shocked. For a long moment she hadn’t said anything, just stood over Tricia’s desk, blinking her pale eyelashes and putting a hand up to smooth her already smooth, neatly cropped sandy hair. ‘Tricia, I don’t know how things worked in your school in Canada, but in this school you don’t give teachers cheek. And you do as you’re told.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Tricia had paused in her doodling to smile up at her angelically. ‘In my old school, it was okay for the kids to talk like that, you know? And if we didn’t want to do something yucky, we didn’t have to.’
‘Well, that’s not how things are here. Please take your turn at the microscope and make a drawing of one of the creatures you can see.’
Everyone had wanted Tricia as their friend, but to Rachel’s amazement it had been to her own group that the Canadian girl had gravitated.
Rachel had been standing with Gail and Susie in the porch, sheltering from the rain, although by rights they weren’t allowed in the building at break time – if it was raining, they were supposed to shelter under the trees or the canopy of the annex, or just get wet. But the porch was sort of half inside and half outside, a space about five feet wide between the outer and inner doors of the side entrance. There was no heating in it, but at least it was out of the weather.
Rachel, Gail and Susie had been doing hairstyles – braiding and unbraiding each other’s hair, and adding the multicoloured clips that Rachel had given Susie for her birthday. Gail was good at doing French braids. Rachel had been standing with her eyes closed as Gail’s gentle fingers worked methodically down the back of her head. She loved people playing with her hair. Even the constant traffic through the porch – P7s were allowed inside the lobby during break – hadn’t bothered her. They had been in their own little world.
Until the door to the lobby had crashed open and Tricia had been shoved through it by one of the prefects.
‘Chrissakes! It’s a school hall, not Buckingham Palace!’
Rachel had opened her eyes.
Tricia had made a face at her and grinned, and Rachel had grinned back and said, ‘Yeah, but the P7s think they’re royalty or something.’
It hadn’t really been all that funny. But Tricia had yelled with laughter, and come and stood with them, leaning against the wall and chucking her rucksack down on the floor.
Fifteen minutes later they’d all four of them been standing in the headmistress’s office, trying to explain what they thought was funny about putting their bags in a row in front of the porch door – which for some reason opened outwards – so that people coming in, unless they happened to glance down at their feet, tripped over them.
‘Didn’t you realise how dangerous that was?’ Mrs Campbell had snapped at them.
Gail and Susie had been crying.
It was the first time any of the three of them had ever been in real trouble.
But Rachel had caught Tricia’s eye and copied her insouciant expression. And on the walk of shame back to their classroom, Tricia had jumped up and flicked a hand at the catch on a window, punching it open to the rain, and said: ‘Hey Rache, wanna come back to my place after school tomorrow? My parents don’t get back for maybe two hours. And my brother can’t stop us doing whatever we want.’
‘Oh!’ she had squeaked. ‘That would be… yeah, that would be great!’
Susie had looked at her expectantly but she had turned away, watching Tricia’s fingertips trailing along the wall. Tricia had had elegant fingers with long nails which made a shishing sound against the wall. Rachel later found out that her mum let her have long nails for playing the guitar.
Tricia had walked very slightly in front of the others, the hand trailing in front of them like she was marking an invisible line for them to follow.
Not them.
Her.
Rachel.
Rache.
‘Can we come?’ Gail had asked.
Tricia had pretended not to hear, talking over her.
Rache had pretended not to hear, laughing at what Tricia was saying.
Why couldn’t she have smiled, and said that sounded like fun, but could they all come? Why couldn’t she have told Tricia that she couldn’t make it?
She hadn’t even looked at Susie and Gail, she’d looked only at Tricia, at her long dark hair slapping her back as she walked, at those long nails trailing on the wall.
She still remembered the smell of those corridors: smelly gym shoes and polish and boiled beetroot.
11
I’ve got one of they microcloths and I’m going round Bekki’s room wiping the plastic Elsa and Anna and Sven the reindeer figures, and the castle, and the sparkly brush and hairclips and jewellery box on her wee dressing table, and the lamp that’s a toadstool with animals keeking out the windaes, a badger and mouse and that. Me and Mandy did the whole room over before Christmas in a Frozen theme, like all the wee lassies are still wanting even though the film’s been out a while, but we left the toadstool lamp because what wean’s gonnae care it doesnae go, eh?
Before Frozen we’d went for a jungle theme because Pammie had said Bekki loved animals and was into that film Madagascar and lemurs. I found this wallpaper with trees on it, and got Connor to fix up some real branches and dangle wee stuffed animals off of them. Looked magic. The duvet cover was called Cheeky Monkeys and had cartoon monkeys and chimps and gorillas on it, although Connor was like that: ‘Chimps and gorillas arenae monkeys.’ Like Bekki was gonnae care.
But all the lassies are into Frozen now, eh?
I go to the wardrobe and open the door and take out the Elsa and Anna costumes. They’re no Tesco shite, they’re from the Disney store. One’s all shiny, ice-blue, with glittery sequins on the bodice and a see-through snowflake cape. There’s two skirts, a see-through one on top of a shiny one. Like it’s made of ice.
The other one’s even bonnier. It’s got a wee red satin cape and a black velvet bodice with bonnie flowers all embroidered on it, and gold trim, and a satin blue skirt with more bonnie flowers at the hem. And at the neck there’s a wee gold brooch.
When Carly saw them she went, ‘She’s eight, but? Too old for dress-up.’
But I’m minding me and Mandy and they princess dresses. I was eight year old and Mandy was ten, and we wasnae too old for dress-up. We loved they dresses. Maybe our lives were shite, but when we put on they dresses we were wee princesses. Mandy was Princes
s Vicky and I was Princess Sarah.
We called ourselves for Vicky and Sarah Ramsay, the doctor’s daughters. After school this time, Mandy was crying in the lavvies because she’d lost one of her gloves and she was feart to go home, and Sarah Ramsay finds her and goes, ‘Don’t cry. Here, have my gloves,’ and she asks Mandy if she’d like to come to her birthday party. Sarah Ramsay was in another class and Mandy didnae even know her.
Mandy goes, ‘Can my wee sister come an’ all?’ and Sarah goes, ‘Yes.’
That birthday party was pure amazing. There were sausages and miniature pies and sandwiches and salty biscuits with cream cheese and cucumber, I ate my weight of them so I did, and a shitload of crisps and nuts, and strawberry and vanilla and mint choc chip ice cream, and a big chocolate cake with ‘Sarah is 11!’ on it in white icing, and bowls of all different kinds of sweeties you could rake in whenever you wanted and Mrs Ramsay just smiled when you put a handful in your pooch. The Ramsays’ house was a fucking mansion and all us wee lassies was allowed to go mental, running through the rooms and up and down the stair, and when Mandy was sick on the carpet Mrs Ramsay just went, ‘Aw Mandy, it’s okay, don’t worry about it. Are you all right? Come and get a glass of water.’
The best game was sardines – one of us hid, maybe under a bed, and the other lassies had to find that first one, and then hide with her, until the last one found all the others and we’d all jump out and shout ‘Sardines!’ so loud it hurt your throat.
Magic.
When it was my turn to hide, Vicky went with me because I was scared in that big house on my own. Vicky was older, maybe fourteen. She could have been a model she was that bonnie, long blonde hair on her and a right bonnie face. She opened a door in Sarah’s bedroom and it was like one of they stories Miss MacGregor read us at school, it was a whole other wee room that Vicky called a cupboard, and there were all these bonnie clothes on hangers all round the walls and my gob was dropping open, and I touched one of the dresses and I went, ‘Are yous princesses?’
That was a right daft thing to say.
I wasnae a babby, I was eight year old.
Vicky laughed, but not in a mean way, and she went, ‘Actually Sarah’s too big for that dress now. Would you like it?’
When we went home we each had a carrier bag with a princess dress in it and we couldnae believe it. Mandy hid them up her coat when we got to our bit. We kept them under the bed in our room and at night we’d put them on and pretend we was Princess Vicky and Princess Sarah and we’d go to our servant: ‘No they diamonds, they ones, you stupid fucker!’ Mandy’s dress was too wee for her and one of the seams ripped but it still looked dead nice. It was purple with shiny blue stripes on the skirt and a blue frill round the neck and on the ends of the sleeves, and tiny wee buttons down the front of the bodice that looked like maybe they were jewels, all sparkly blue. Mine was pink with a white lacy layer over the top and if you looked close at the lace you could see there were the shapes of flowers and that in it, and I’d stand and birl round one way and then the other and the pink skirt under the lace would swirl like it was water.
Magic.
Then one day the dresses were gone.
Must be Ma or Billy found them.
Next year we stole a wee present for Sarah from Woolworth’s, a box of fruit jellies, and we were that excited counting down the days to her birthday, and even if we didnae get dresses we would get to be in the princess house with the real Vicky and Sarah.
But she never asked us.
We never went in that house again so we didnae.
No reason Sarah Ramsay would ask us again, eh? She wasnae even in Mandy’s class. Sometimes she would say ‘Hi’ in the corridor or in the playground, but we werenae friends or nothing.
Fruit jellies were nice but.
And sometimes still, me or Mandy will go, ‘Mind they dresses?’
I smooth down the skirts of the Elsa and Anna costumes and hang them back in the wardrobe.
I sit on the bed and give Shrek a coorie and imagine Bekki here, all cooried down under the duvet with Shrek. The duvet’s got Anna and Elsa on it. I can never mind which is Anna and which is Elsa, but the frozen one with the blonde hair, her dress, the icy one with sparkly snowflakes and crystals, it covers half the duvet it’s that long.
‘She’ll be back soon,’ I says to Shrek.
Bekki loved her Shrek. She was that funny, all them would come in to see her chubby wee cheek pressed against Shrek’s, beauty and the beast right enough, and Bekki would hold up Shrek for them to kiss, and they’d all do it, even Ryan. Then when they’d gone, I’d sit on the floor and stroke her hair and her wee face and I’d sing that song ‘It Is You’ out the film. I knew all the words so I did. Each verse ended the same way.
It is you I have loved all along.
And I’m wondering if that bitch Ruth, or Flora she’s calling herself now, is putting Bekki to bed and reading her a story like Bekki’s her fucking wean.
Does Bekki still have that lemur?
Is she coorying down with the lemur and that Flora bitch is stroking her hair?
But I cannae think about it.
I cannae think about they fuckers or I’ll go mental so I will.
I put Shrek back on the pillow. The pillow’s baby-blue with a giant white snowflake and ‘Like a snowflake I’m one of a kind’ on it. If Bekki likes all this shite we can take it with us to Spain. Weird but, snowflake bedding and mobiles and that, when it’s thirty fucking degrees.
I go down the stair and get my coat. I leave the heating on low and a light on in the hallway. Then I pick up my bag and lock up and head off down the wee lock-block drive to the street. It’s a cul-de-sac with landscaping and grass and bushes and a blossom tree on the corner that you can see from Bekki’s windae. All the houses in this street are brand new newbuilds, some double-fronted detached like ours and some semidetached, all matching in with white walls and red tiles and wee porches. Dead nice.
I cannae wait, so I cannae, till I’m in the house with Bekki and Carly and Connor. We’re bringing her here when we first get her, and Jed and them will stay at our bit. Then it’s Viva Espana!
I power-walk to the bus stop and when I get there I get out my phone and take a deek at the photies Ryan took last time he was out there. The windaes are in, and the glass doors out to the patio round the pool. Rooms are massive by the way. Ryan’s getting a sound system put in through the whole house, and the heating’s gonnae be remote-controlled.
It’s raining and I’m all bumfled up in a scarf and my big coat and boots. There’s no wee neds at the stop like there would be at our bit, bevvying and yowling and chucking Minstrels at the motors from packets they’ve robbed from the shop. There’s just an old couple with a wee laddie, and they’re reading the timetable up on the shelter and the wee laddie keeps going, ‘What does that say, Nana?’ and when she reads out ‘Bearsden’ he goes, ‘Are there real bears in Bearsden?’ like he’s hoping, and the old guy goes, ‘Aye, Christopher, there’s one there look driving that bus’ and the woman’s like that: ‘Silly Granda.’
Nana smiles at me.
I goes, ‘There was once a bear in Bearsden, but that was hundreds of year ago. The laird’s sons kept a bear cub in a pit.’ I looked it up on the internet in case Bekki asks. The bear died, but I’m no gonnae tell Bekki that bit. I’ve a wee story ready. ‘But that was cruel, eh, and the poor wee bear didnae like it. It wasnae a proper den, it was just a hole in the ground with nothing for the wee cub to coorie down in. He was cauld. The laird’s sons couldnae be doing with him and hardly ever came to play with him any more. They were more interested in drinking fancy wine and that. The bear cub was lonely. He didnae like it in that pit, so he didnae.’
‘Oh, the poor wee bear!’ says Nana. ‘What happened to the poor wee soul?’
Christopher’s looking up at me with big blue eyes. He’s pure gorgeous so he is, with that soft creamy skin bairns have, and I want to pick him up and squeeze him and pinch his
wee cheeks.
I give him a big smile.
‘Did he escape?’ he whispers.
‘Oh aye, he escaped all right. He got out the pit one night and ran away, and after lots of adventures he found a nice fisherman with a cottage by the sea who had always wanted a bear for a wee pal, and he lived there in a cosy den lined with wool from the man’s sheep, and he went swimming by the man’s boat when he went out fishing, and just had a rare time altogether.’
‘He lived happily ever after,’ goes Christopher.
Aye, in the version I’m telling Bekki, that’s the happy ever after.
But now I’m thinking: wee fucker, everything’s happy ever after for wee Christopher, eh, and Nana and Granda, off home for tea and fucking crumpets. While my Bekki doesnae even know who the fuck I am. I’m no her nana, I’m just a fucking random.
So aye I shouldnae, but I cannae help it, I goes, ‘He’s happy aye, but then this big fierce mad dug comes along, and it fights the wee bear and gies it rabies so it does, and the bear goes fucking mental.’
Christopher’s wee face!
Nana’s and Granda’s!
‘Fucking mental, and when the nice fisherman comes and goes, “Here, wee bear, let’s us go for a swim, aye?” the bear opens his gub like that!’ I pull back my lips and give Christopher a good long deek at my molars. ‘And he jumps on the man and rips his fucking head off!’
Nana grabs Christopher and wheechs him out the shelter, and Granda hyters after them, but the bus is pulling up. I go and stand at the door but I dinnae get on, I pretend I’m looking in my purse for change, so they have to come back past me. Christopher’s greeting and Nana flings him up the steps and as Granda goes past me he’s like that: ‘Bitch.’ And then: ‘You need help,’ like that’s me telt.
I goes, ‘Excuse me? I think you should maybe watch your language in front of the bairn, aye?’ real loud. As they move on down the bus I goes, ‘You heard that, Driver? You heard that man giving me verbals, calling me a bitch and that, just because I wasnae quick enough looking out my change? That’s sexist. That’s misogynistic so it is. Are you gonnae respect my right to get on a bus without being fucking abused by a sexist prick or are you no?’