‘I have a little boat and her name is Gloriette
Across the brave horizon her prow is boldly set
Gloriette, sail away, to where your fortunes lay
Then come back safely ’cross the bay.’
Ren looked thoughtful, then blew a raspberry. We both laughed in sheer delight.
‘That’s my girl!’
I started crying then so quickly strapped her back into the buggy, turned around and set off back in the direction I’d come. Story of my life. I started wheeling her along the seafront pavement in the direction of Hove until we came to the Pirates Playground and paddling pool.
I knew I’d made a mistake the minute we sat down. The place was full of those posh old birds who like to think of themselves as Yummy Mummies; the kind of old broads who look right down their noses at young single girls who invest in looking good, and dismiss them as bimbos. But then they’re so desperate, they even have to make having kids something that adds to their sex appeal! Like the tots are tiny pimps or something. As for that MILF crap – yuck! They started that themselves, obviously. It’s like, ‘I may have a kiddy and be staring the menopause in the face, but I’m not slack, honest!’ My arse!
It’s meant to be ‘chav’ parents that are loud and sweary, but these broads broadcast every boring thought they have at the tops of their voices; all that mindless crap about how child-friendly France is, and how dyslexic kids are actually super-bright rather than thick, and how the additives in oven chips turn people into serial killers. It’s like they think they’re being permanently watched by some CCTV camera that’s doing some perfect-parenting test on them. Well, from where I was sitting, they were far from perfect; one of them was responding to a pre-school brute, who was repeatedly screeching at the top of its voice, with a tinkling laugh and a ceaseless, ‘That’s a lovely scream, darling! – can you do it again, only louder this time?’
Another was leeringly droning, over and over, ‘India, do you want to do a wee? Do you, India? Want to do a wee? Or would you rather do a poo?’ And though they, the mums, don’t swear, the kids themselves have filthy mouths – the boys are often perverts. Rather than curtail their creativity or whatever, the mums let them run riot; one of them here, called Rory apparently, was running around with his nasty little cock out shrieking, ‘Look at my willy, isn’t it silly!’ – in front of little girls and everything! And all the stupid cow mothers were just laughing appreciatively! Then one of them started breastfeeding a dirty great ‘baby’ big enough and ugly enough to open beer cans with its teeth!
Me, I was staring at the rapist-in-waiting Rory through narrowed slits of eyes, just daring him to come over to me and Ren and show us his manky miniature dick. The little shit obviously had a death wish, because eventually he capered right up to us and waved his nasty chipolata right in Ren’s amazed face. ‘Look at my—’
I moved so quick I surprised myself. Before he could say the offending word I had him by the throat and was hissing in his face, ‘If you don’t put that dirty little worm away, I’ll yank it off and stick it so far up your bum you’ll have an umbilical cord. There’s ladies here –’ and with this I rattled Ren’s buggy so roughly she yelped – ‘and I don’t care how your slag of a mum’s brought you up, you don’t do that in front of ladies!’
With this I jumped up, grabbed the buggy and hightailed it out of there. I wasn’t scared, not of what a bunch of wusses like that would do, but I suddenly couldn’t stand the way I felt about them. Not the hate or the repulsion – that was easy and familiar and enjoyable. No, this time there was envy too – cos of Ren. Don’t get me wrong – the last thing I wanted was for her to grow up like those posh prats India and Rory. But I wanted her to have the freedom that they had, to choose what they were gonna do with their lives. And what choice was she gonna have growing up on Ravendene, with me as a mum?
As if on cue, to remind me of my shortcomings, she vomited her Happy Meal all down herself. At the same time a seagull dropped a message on my head. It was a proper wake-up call.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get you home. Proper home.’
Susie looked like she might try and change my mind when I announced that Ren should stay with Cathy, but then she must have seen my face, really seen it, and made the wise decision to keep her mouth shut. And it wasn’t like she could never see Ren again. Now Cathy knew I wasn’t going to try and keep Ren I reckoned she’d be happy to visit a bit more often. When she took Ren away, I lay down on my bed to have a think. I could hear Susie and the kids tiptoeing around. But I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself – far from it. Rather, I was feeling I’d done the right thing. For once.
I’m not pointing the finger here – that sort of life was fine for some people. My mum had always wanted the life she had, basically – OK, she’d probably have chosen to have a bit more money and a man who stuck around a bit longer than his sperm did, but she had always wanted to have kids young and have a family around her – hence her insane recent desire to conceive yet again, and our eventual trip to the abortion clinic when she realized that the economic practicalities were beyond her. (How long ago that seemed now!) But that just wasn’t me, and it never really would be. And even if I could have made a wish and made myself like that, for Ren’s sake, I wouldn’t have. That was the truth. I cared about myself more than I cared about anyone else – and the idea of changing that seemed like suicide. I reckon being big enough to know I’d be a crap mum was about the best parenting skill I had. (Irony or something, Kizza would have said.)
So I didn’t care enough about her to stick around – but I did care enough to get her out of here. Course my little ghost-girl Kim was never far away from my thoughts here, forever banging on about her lousy relationship with Stella. But when you really thought about it, I reckon Stella did Kim a big favour by screwing a toy boy and sodding off to the Bahamas or wherever. I mean, yeah, it was Stella’s behaviour that had sent Kim off the rails and yeah, some of it had been bad, like when Kimmy OD’d, but loads of it, most of it, had been sweet. Instead of following the safe and trodden path to Dullsville she’d been diverted to somewhere a whole lot more exciting. She’d stopped being scared of every little thing that might mean she wasn’t the perfect daughter and instead she’d thrown herself into life (and my arms). She might have got a few bruises but so what? They weren’t fatal. If Stella had been a ‘better parent’ Kimmy’s life would probably have been a whole lot smaller and duller and, come to think of it, so would mine. Well, I wouldn’t wish that for Kizza, or for me, and not for my own daughter. If you ask me, that’s love.
25
I don’t know – I got quite sad after that. It was like I slept for a hundred years. And when I finally woke up, there was only one place I wanted to be – on the beach, the only place you can still go when no one else will have you. I took an old Bratz notebook down there, and a big fat joint, and I vowed to myself that I was gonna stay there till I’d sorted my life out.
But sad to say, I smoked it straight down in about six seconds and fell into a reverie about Bratz. I know it’s childish, but I just couldn’t get over how unfair it was! They totally had, between them, the future I wanted. You can jeer and say get a life – but how could I, when a bunch of plastic dolls already had it! I was sooooo like Cloe and Co.; jealous mingers called me a slut cos I was so pretty, nobody knew exactly what my racial origins were, and when I’d had a few too many drinks I couldn’t spell my name properly either.
Why couldn’t I just hang out being fabulous, like what Bratz did, and get discovered? Nothing else seemed feasible or made sense, to be honest. I could just imagine what the audience on Trisha would be yelling at me by now: ‘Go to college!’ ‘Get some qualifications!’ ‘Do something with your life!’ They make it sound like the simplest, most straightforward thing on earth – but I mean, who’s zooming who? It’s like I said about Jamie Oliver’s kids – you’re not what you eat these days, you’re where you’re born. And for people to pretend that if you
put your shoulder to the grindstone, your nose to the wheel and all that crap, you’ll ‘make something of yourself ’ all above board – well, they’re liars. Because the only thing you’re ever going to make of yourself by following the old rules is seven sorts of cretin.
To kids of my generation, from my background, the idea of becoming, I dunno, a doctor or a teacher or something ‘worthwhile’ seems about as likely as becoming a unicorn, only not as sexy. I mean, if you were a unicorn you could at least make some money from it; be in a reality show or something. You keep hearing ugly posh people tut-tutting that girls today have no ambitions beyond being a WAG, a pop star or a topless model – but that’s because those are realistic goals if you’re young, good-looking and poor. Nothing else is.
That’s why so many girls like me have babies – so they’ve got an excuse to give up a fight they’ve already lost before they begin. Of course if I’d kept Ren I’d have a total excuse not to work. But what a lousy reason to have a kid! That’s one of the reasons I knew I couldn’t keep Ren: cos I wasn’t ready to give up yet, and I wasn’t ready for her to give up either. I wanted her to stay with Cathy, to be taken out of the loop, to think there was more to life than being a WAG or a glamour model. And if you think that makes me a hypocrite – well, cool, kiss my gorgeous ass! ’Cept you couldn’t afford it – and you’ll never be able to afford Ren’s either if it turns out for her like Cathy plans it will.
But what did I want for ME? At the end of the day, the thing was that I didn’t want to lead an ordinary, boring, respectable life – but I didn’t want to live a beat-up criminal one either. I guess I wanted what Kim used to call la vie Bohème – breaking the rules but somehow getting away with it. Sounded pretty much like what I thought of as my balcony in the sun. Talking of which, I was still no closer to it than when I got out of prison with my fat arse and my heroin habit.
So now I wasn’t going to be a full-time mum I was back on the job market, ’cept for me it didn’t promise to be much of a shopping experience; it wasn’t so much of a market as a manky old blanket on the pavement with a few bits of knock-off that no one really wants. If I’d stuck it out as a chilli, who knows, maybe I could’a worked my way up the food chain and one day made it to a singing sandwich or a dancing dhansak, but I figured that after starting the full-sized food fight my career as a performing vegetable was pretty much over. Bothered?
If I was going to make a splash I really needed to do it soon before I got old and wrinkly and couldn’t remember that I once wanted a thing called ‘A Life’. So with a heavy sigh I picked up the bloody Bratz notebook and made another list of things for and against me.
FOR
Total goddess
Just about still 17
AGAINST
No money
No job
No prospects
Then a couple of strange things happened. I was gonna write down ‘No boyfriend’ in the FOR column, young, free, single and all that, but then I realized thinking about Asif made me feel sad. I knew I didn’t want to be with him, but I realized I did feel kinda bad about how I’d left things. It wasn’t really him I was mad at, he’d just been in the line of fire after B&A had sent me into one. He could be annoying, and let’s face it we’d never see eye to eye on the whole happy family thing, but we’d had a good time, me and him. I’d been calling the shots from the first moment I saw him standing there holding his broom handle, and all he’d done was his best to keep up and keep me happy. And all of a sudden I was back thinking about Kim again. The other person who’d done her best to keep up with Sugar and failed. And almost like that spirit writing you hear about, I found myself writing in big letters under the AGAINST heading, NO KIM.
And so it turned out that that was what I wanted after all – Kim. Came as a bit of a shock, to say the least. OK, so I know like, dhur, I think about her loads and even imagine her ghost following me round Brighton, and I know what we had was something good, and special. But honestly, until right then I didn’t really know how much I wanted it, wanted her, back. I guess I’d thought it was just nostalgia or whatever, but now I knew I just needed to find her. I stared wide-eyed at my heart’s desire, then lay back on the shingle giggling with glee. Ohmigosh! – BRATZ DOLLS GO LESBO! You couldn’t make it up.
And you couldn’t make it better either. Cos it was perfect the way it was.
And from then on that was all I could think about; the little girl with the short name who stayed on my mind for the longest time, short and sweet. Kim, Kim, KIM! We’re not much for wordplay round our way, ’less you wanna get a punch up the bracket pronto, but it was like I floated around in a daze for weeks, just smiling at everyone every time I thought of new stuff about her name.
Like: KIM – sounds like ‘him’, but better. KIM – sounds like ‘kin’, but better. Kim: the best of both worlds.
Kim: nice without ever being dim, which made me wince to think how many times I’d treated her like she was.
Kim: sounds likes hymn; say it loud and there’s music playing, say it soft and it’s almost like praying.
Kim, so pretty and so plain. So painfully plain to me now – that I loved her. And I’d lost her.
And I had to find her.
As I lay there on the beach I realized that I had two choices in my life, and that if I didn’t choose the right one then I wouldn’t have a lot of my life left. I could mope around in the shallow end, letting the sea of circumstance wash all around me till I was so smoothed out I had no rough edges left to bash my way to a better life. Or I could make something happen; I could find Stella and beg or bully her to put me in contact with Kim. Shouldn’t be that difficult; no disrespect, but at the end of the day she was a right old slapper and would never knowingly prevent a shag, even if her own daughter was the shagee.
But before I went wherever the hunt for Kim might take me, I wanted to say a proper goodbye to Asif. He replied straight away to my text, saying he’d like very much to see me but he was busy at Pride the day I’d suggested. Asif at Pride – this I had to see. At first, being surrounded by more than 100,000 snogging same-sex couples was something I certainly wasn’t looking forward to in my current sapphic sulk. But you can’t beat ’em, the Brighton gayers, for that one weekend, so you might as well join ’em. When I was but a chav – in the original meaning of the word, a little child – in 1992, Brighton Pride began with only a fistful, only about a hundred, of gaylords blowing, bending and buggering about at their own convenience. Fifteen years later, it’s so much part of the mainstream that my little sisters’ school spends ages in the run-up making costumes to parade in! I don’t know how the gayers can moan about what a homophobic straight society we live in, frankly, when you’ve got schools actively encouraging ten-year-olds to do projects celebrating a man’s right to take it up the wrong ’un!
I turned up at Preston Park with half a bottle of Smirnoff clutched in my clammy paw, and among the hoards waiting for the parade on that steaming Saturday there he was – the least likely person to find at a gay-fest.
Among a group of sweet-faced people holding disapproving placards, the sweetest face of all was one I’d kissed many times.
‘Asif!’
He stared at me from behind two hand-written signs, one in each fist, which read JESUS WOULDN’T DO IT! and FISHERS OF MEN – BUT NOT LIKE THAT! Trust Asif to take on the world without ever cussing anyone! ‘MARIA!’
I ran up to him, threw my arms around his neck and kissed his lovely lips as the disapproving banners looked down their noses at us. All around us a chorus of tutting broke out. I laughed, looking round at them. ‘Jeez, have some patience – I’ll get around to all of you in the end!’ I laughed again in delight, just for him, holding his lovely face in my hands. ‘What are you DOING here?’
In reply he smiled shyly and shook the JESUS WOULDN’T DO IT! banner. ‘Oh! – of course. The Christian thing.’
‘Come join us in Jesus, sister,’ a nice-looking blonde lady suggested.
‘I will,’ he said solemnly. ‘And in your way, I know you will too, Maria.’
I kissed him one more time, for luck and for almost-love. And that was the last I saw of him – still so beautiful, so good, so lost to me forever.
26
As I turned my back for the last time on my beautiful dark-eyed boy and headed into the park, my mood had already started to lift; partly cos of the vodka, partly from that last lingering kiss, but mostly cos it just felt so good to know what it was I wanted. Some girl was gonna fall head over arse in love with Asif one day (getting the benefit of his Sugar-education!), but it was never going to be me. Now that was sorted it was just the future I had to worry about. And yeah, I’d just been moaning that mine was looking kinda grey rather than a glowing orange, but as I weaved my way deeper into the crowd it was hard not to catch the mood and feel like the world was full of promise after all.
A girl wearing nothing but a fishnet bodysuit, long satin gloves and biker boots asked if I’d take a picture of her and her girlfriend, a pigtailed blonde wearing a neon-pink T and lime-green knickers. I had a jealous moment as the loved-up couple grinned and groped for the camera, but I told myself that once I found Kizza all this could be ours, as I wandered through the laughing and loving and let the party vibe ripple through me.
Sweet Page 17