by Jean Ure
“Now, Scarlett, think!” she says. “And be honest … what have you been putting on your face?”
I sob hysterically that I haven’t been putting anything on my face.
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you,” says Mum. And she pulls open the door of my bedside cabinet and starts rooting about inside it. “Cleansing lotion! Did you use any cleansing lotion?”
“I didn’t need to! I wasn’t wearing any make-up.”
“OK. What about eye shadow?”
“No!”
“What about mascara?”
“No!”
“Lipstick?”
‘No!”
“What’s this stuff? Toner! What do you want toner for, at your age? For goodness’ sake! All this junk. Gel cleanser, correction stick— ”
“That’s for spots! I haven’t used it.”
“What about this? Mattifying moisturiser?”
“No!”
“Soothing day cream?”
I open my mouth – and then close it again. Mum says, “Scarlett, you didn’t?”
I desperately want to say no, but I hesitate just a fraction of a second too long.
“For crying out loud!” Mum’s holding up the jar, squinting at the list of contents. “Fragrance. It’s got perfume in it!”
She unscrews the lid and takes a sniff. “That is disgusting! Totally artificial. No wonder you’ve made such a mess of yourself! You used it last night, didn’t you?”
Guiltily, I nod. It hadn’t seemed to me that the witch hazel was doing anything very much, so yes, I’ve been using the cream.
“It said it was soothing! I thought it would be good for me!”
“Not,” says Mum, “with perfume in it. Not with skin like yours.”
Now I’m sobbing again. Dad’s like really scared.
“It won’t have done any permanent damage, will it?”
“No, but it’ll probably take a while before it settles down. She’ll need to get it out of her system.”
Dad rises up at this, in a rage. He says if this is what the product does to people, it shouldn’t be on sale. He’s shouting and striding about the room and threatening to sue. And he still wants to take me to A & E. Mum stands firm. She says, “At least we’ve discovered what’s causing it.”
It’s the only comfort I have, that at least now I know. Dad’s still muttering about the hospital. He says, “We can’t leave her in this state!”
In the end he lets Mum talk him out of it on the grounds that she’s the expert when it comes to skin care. She’s always had to be careful what she puts on her face and it looks like I’m going to be the same. Mum gives me a pot of her extra special and hugely expensive, antiallergic skin lotion to use, and promises me that “It will clear up … just be patient.”
Unfortunately, being patient is the last thing I’m any good at. I take after Dad. Mum always says that “Your dad’s like a child … wants everything right now, like immediately.” I am exactly the same. When Mum said it could take a week or two before my face was back to normal, I just nearly freaked. I was still waking up five or six times a night to look in the mirror and check I hadn’t swollen up again. By the end of the week most of the puffiness had gone, but I was back to elephant skin. Red elephant skin. All rough, and lined, and wrinkly. Mum said that give it time and it would start peeling off. She said that underneath my skin would be smooth, just like it was before. I told myself that Mum knew what she was talking about, but I still couldn’t help waves of terror engulfing me, specially in the middle of the night, because suppose Mum didn’t know? Suppose she was wrong? Suppose I was always going to be like this?
Hattie rang to check my progress and to ask if she should come round, but I said not yet. I didn’t even want Hattie seeing me with elephant skin. Matt rang, too, and I told him I was getting better. I assured him I would be all right for Founder’s Day, cos I didn’t want him giving up on me and arranging to go and do something else. Especially not with another girl. Jokingly he said that he would “Send Si round to check … unless I’m allowed to come and check for myself?”
I wanted to scream “NO!” at the top of my voice, but forced myself, instead, to giggle and say, “Well, if you’re into horror movies!”
“Bad as that?” said Matt. It is actually not funny, having to tell a boy you fancy like crazy that you look like something in a pickle jar, but it was either that or bursting into tears and I just had this feeling Matt was not the sort of guy who could deal with tears.
On Friday in the local paper there was a report of our fundraiser, with a big syrupy picture of Tanya being crowned beauty queen.
“Not a patch on you,” said Dad.
“Oh, never mind that!” said Mum. “How about all this money they’ve raised? Scarlett, it’s wonderful! Don’t you think so?”
I said that I did, to keep Mum happy, but really it didn’t mean anything. I told myself that I was now being truly shallow, worrying about the way I looked when there were poor little children who had lost their mums and dads, and mums and dads frantic with grief cos of having lost their children. I mean, I did try to put things in perspective, I really, really did. I felt so ashamed of myself! But every time I looked in the mirror it just seemed like totally unimportant. The only thing that seemed important was me and my face. How could I go on living like some kind of freak?
After about ten days, Mum wanted me to go back to school. I refused, point blank. I wasn’t going back to school with bits of skin hanging off me!
“And look at my eyes … they’re like an old person’s!”
Mum said, “It’s really not that bad any more. Certainly not bad enough to miss all this schooling. You’ve been doing so well this year! We don’t want you falling behind.”
I said, “What does it matter? Really?”
“It matters,” said Mum. “Believe me!”
And then told me to sit down. She said, “Scarlett, we have to have a talk. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I didn’t want to do it while you were still in such a state, and I don’t want you to be too upset, but the fact is your dad and I have been doing a lot of soul-searching these last few weeks and we’ve finally come to a decision. That is … I’ve come to a decision. And your dad has agreed. I’m going to be moving out for a while. Just for a while! We’re not getting divorced, we’re not splitting up. It’s not even a proper separation.”
In this small, tight voice I heard myself say, “So what is it, then?”
“It’s more like a – a trial separation. Not even that! Your dad and I haven’t quarrelled, we still love each other, it’s just … I need to be on my own for a bit. I need my own space. Just to get myself sorted. You know?”
I said, “No! What are you talking about?”
“I want an education,” said Mum. “I want to go to college. I want to get a degree!”
I stared at her, blankly. “What for?”
Mum said it was something she just had to do. “I suppose … I don’t know! I suppose I just feel the need to exercise my brain. I never used it, all the time I was at school … total waste! So I’m going to enrol for classes, and see how I get on.”
I said, “But why do you have to leave home?”
“It’s just until I get the hang of things – or until your dad gets the hang of things. I love your dad dearly, but he’s not always the most supportive. If he could just bring himself to give me a bit of encouragement … It’s really quite difficult, going back to school again at my age, especially when you have to start right from square one. I can’t cope with your dad putting me down all the time! I can see that it’s difficult for him. I’m not the person he married! It’s just one of those things … it happens. It isn’t anybody’s fault.”
It seemed to me that it was. “You’re the one that’s changed!” I said.
“Yes,” said Mum, “I accept that. But, Scarlett, people can’t help the way they develop! I really do need to do something with my life. I m
ean, something of my own. You’ll be off to uni before we know it, your dad’s business is doing very nicely without me … I just feel the need to move on.”
“You mean, move out,” I said.
“No! I mean, move on. To the next stage. I can’t just stagnate! I know your dad can’t understand, and probably at this moment you can’t, either, but I’m hoping that in time you both will, and then – well, then maybe I can come back and we can all get on with our lives!”
She smiled at me, like she was saying that she would just pop down to the shops for a couple of hours, then she would come back and we could all cosily have tea. Coldly, I said, “So when are you going?”
“The end of next week,” said Mum. “But I won’t be far away! I’ve got a flat in town … just one room and a kitchen. I can always put you up on the sofa if you want to stay the night.”
“I don’t think that’s very likely,” I said.
“Oh, Scarlett, please! Don’t be like that,” said Mum. “I know it seems like I’m being totally selfish, and maybe perhaps I am, but it’s not a step I’m taking lightly. Believe me! It’s not a spur of the moment decision … I’ve been thinking of it for a very long time.”
Somehow, that just made it even worse. The thought of Mum secretly brooding to herself. Plotting and planning how she was going to leave us. Planning to walk out!
“Scarlett?” She smiled, hopefully. “Come and give me a kiss and tell me you don’t hate me.”
But I wouldn’t. Cos I did hate her! I wrote furiously in my diary that I hated, hated, hated her.
She can sweet-talk as much as she likes. She needn’t think she’s going to get round me! I shall never forgive her for what she’s doing to Dad. He loves her SO MUCH. He’s always telling her how beautiful she is, and how proud he is of her. She ought to think herself lucky, having a husband like that! He’s never been mean to her, not once. Mum’s the one that’s always nagging and finding fault. At least, just lately. She never used to be like that. We used to be a real family. We used to be HAPPY. Now she’s gone and ruined it all, and I just don’t know what Dad’s ever done to deserve it. He’s never so much as LOOKED at another woman. Lots of men do, but not my dad. Serve her right if he went out and got a girlfriend. Half her age and twice as pretty. Oh, God, I hate her! I hate her, I HATE her!
I thought that it simply wasn’t true, what Mum had said. Dad didn’t put her down all the time, he just pulled her leg a bit. Like when she got too serious he’d tell her to chill, or to lighten up. That wasn’t putting her down! That was just teasing. It certainly didn’t seem to me a good enough reason for her to walk out on us. She could just as easily have stayed put and done her stupid studying during the day, when me and Dad weren’t around. Do it all night as well, if she wanted. It wouldn’t worry me and Dad! We wouldn’t interfere. We’d just do our own thing, same as we always did, and let her get on with it. But at least she’d have been here.
When I asked Dad about it, he just hunched a shoulder and said, “You know your mum. She gets these ideas.”
“But what’s the point of it?” I said. “What’s she want a degree for? What’s she going to do with it?”
“I guess it will make her feel good,” said Dad. “Load of nonsense, if you ask me, but if that’s what she wants …”
“But what about what we want?”
“Doesn’t seem to matter what we want,” said Dad. “She’s a very wilful woman, your mother.”
“She’s selfish,” I said.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” agreed Dad.
“I mean … what are we going to do? How are we going to manage? I can’t cook!”
“Don’t you worry,” said Dad. “We’ll survive. We’ll get stuff sent in, we’ll go and eat out … we’ll have a whale of a time! We’ll eat junk food till it comes out of our ears. While the cat’s away …” He winked at me. “Make hay while the sun shines, and all that.”
Dad was trying very hard to pretend he didn’t care, but I knew that he did. I can always tell when Dad’s putting it on. He’s a very up-front kind of person, far more huggy and kissy than Mum. When he’s feeling happy, he likes everyone to join in. When he’s feeling ANGRY, then, boy, the whole world has to suffer! But when something really, really gets to him, like deep down inside, he goes into what Mum used to call his “macho mode”. All blokeish and blustery and couldn’t give a damn. It was what he was doing now, and I just played along cos that was what seemed easiest.
“At least she won’t be able to keep nagging at me,” I said. “Like passing exams is the only thing that gives you any right to even exist!’
“I never passed an exam in my life,” said Dad.
“She’s so hung up about it! It’s just, like, nag nag nag, the whole time.”
“Not any more,” said Dad. “You just do your own thing. There’ll be no nagging from now on.”
I’d almost made up my mind that that was it: I was through with working my brains to a frazzle. Knocking myself out to pass stupid exams! Who needed them? Like Dad said, he had never passed one in his life and look at the business he’d built up, look at the house we lived in. Not a single other person in my class had a house with an indoor pool! Hattie’s mum and dad were both teachers, so they’d obviously passed exams, but you could have put their poky little place in our back garden and still have room for a tennis court or two. Mum was talking total rubbish!
I think that not doing any more homework was my way of getting at her. She’d been so pleased and proud when I’d had a good report. Now I’d get a bad one, a real stinker, and that would really hurt her. After all, she was hurting me, why shouldn’t I hurt her back?
But then Hattie called round, lugging books and homework assignments. She said, “Why aren’t you at school? You look perfectly normal!”
“Well, I’m not,” I said. “Why do you think I’m wearing sunglasses?”
“Mm …” Hattie put her head on one side, pretending to think about it. “Don’t want to be recognised?”
I said, “Ha ha, very funny. Why have you brought all this stuff?”
“Mrs Wymark asked me.”
“What for?”
“So you can keep up with things. She said that you’ve become one of her star pupils. She said it would be a terrible shame if you got left behind.”
I said, “Huh!” trying to disguise the fact that I was secretly thrilled to bits to think I was becoming anyone’s star pupil. I didn’t want to be thrilled, but I just couldn’t help it. Me! A star pupil! “Did she really say that?” I said. “You’re not just making it up?”
“I’m not making it up,” said Hattie. “She was going to come round herself if I couldn’t manage it.”
So that was the end of my cunning plan to get back at Mum, cos after Hattie had gone I sat down and looked at the various assignments. Before I knew it I’d started off on one of them and, weirdly and oddly, and totally against my wishes, I found that I was quite enjoying the sensation of actually doing some work again. When I next bumped into Mum (I was trying my best to avoid her) Mum said brightly, “Did Hattie bring you your homework?” I just grunted, and shoved my way past. I was no longer on speaking terms with Mum.
The day after Hattie called with my homework, Simon came. I saw him from my bedroom window and immediately grabbed my glasses, but it was several minutes before Mum called up the stairs.
“Scarlett, it’s Simon. Are you going to come down?”
I stuck my head over the banisters and yelled, “Tell him to come up!”
“Oh. All right,” said Mum. She sounded surprised, but I didn’t want to be downstairs talking to Simon with Mum hovering around. Mum was definitely not my favourite person.
Me and Simon sat in my room, with me on the floor and Simon on the bed, and he explained how Matt had sent him “To check how you’re getting on.”
“What, and then report back?” I said.
Simon grinned and said, “You’ve got it! He wants to know whether he
’s still going to partner you on Founder’s Day.”
I said, “Yes!” I thought it was so strange, the way things worked out. I was remembering how Hattie’s nickname for Simon had been “Hermes, messenger of the gods.” And here he was, running errands for the Sun God! It was like Hattie was some kind of prophet. “Tell him I’m heaps better,” I said.
“But your mum says you won’t go back to school.”
I said, “Oh, well! My mum.”
“I think she’s nice,” said Simon.
I said, “Huh! You might.” I obviously sounded bitter, cos he asked me what the matter was.
“Aren’t you getting along?”
I said, “She’s leaving home!”
I don’t know why I blurted it out to Simon when I hadn’t even told Hattie. I mean, I tell Hattie everything. But Simon sounded genuinely concerned; and maybe, too, I was thinking of what Matt had told me, about Simon’s mum and dad almost coming apart at the seams after his dad had crashed the car. It made me feel that he would be sympathetic. He would be able to understand in a way that Hattie couldn’t, cos Hattie’s mum and dad are like really close. Hattie would feel sorry for me, but it wasn’t like anything she had ever experienced.
We had this long talk, me and Simon, all about parents and what it did to their kids when they fell out. Simon said that his mum and dad still weren’t properly speaking to each other, and that sometimes his dad went off for days and didn’t tell them where he was going. He said, “It’s like living in a war zone. I almost wish they’d part company and get it over with.”
“You mean, like, get divorced?” I said.