I was dreading asking Terry over – I thought he’d run a mile – but he actually jumped at the chance. See, here’s the thing, Diary. He actually seems really into me. When he was over here, he made such an effort with the folks and was really trying to make a good impression on them. Well, it worked. They can’t say enough good things about him, despite the fact that he’s from Towerhill. In fact, I think they like that fact.
“He’s one of us,” Mum said after he left.
“Us”, by her definition, being one of the good people who were unfortunate enough to end up in our neck of the woods. She’s impressed by the fact that he’s determined to make a life for himself outside here.
I actually can’t believe I have a boyfriend! It’s really weird, but it’s good to have something else to focus on other than Ricky. Say a prayer that my next entry isn’t about a big dramatic break-up. (I can’t, because we’re still anti-God in this house, but old habits die hard and it’s the first thing I thought of saying just there. Christ, Mum really knows how to confuse me.)
Chapter 20
“I know it’s disappointing when you’ve spent all day getting ready for it. No, Hawaii, I’ve already told you – there’s no way I can mind the kids when I’m dying with the flu. Yes, I know they’re probably going to get it anyway from someone else, but the point is that I’m not physically able to. Now, just leave it at that . . . Oh, for God’s sake, Hawaii, will you get over it! There will be other nights!”
Susie almost put her finger through the cordless phone as she hung up on Hawaii.
“Mother of God, she’d drive you mad. She has herself all dolled up for an Aslan gig in town but her babysitter just rang to say she’s sick. You know what Hawaii is like about Aslan.”
I nodded. “Obsessed.” Hawaii had been into the band Aslan since they first came on the scene.
“Yeah, and this gig tonight is a celebration of the band being together thirty years. She’s missing out on a little bit of Aslan history, she says, but what can I do about it when I can barely breathe? ‘Like fuck you can barely breathe – you’re still able to talk,’ she says, the cheeky bitch. As if that’s going to make me change my mind.”
“Can’t she get one of the other neighbours to look after the kids? Surely there must be someone else in the estate who she hasn’t fallen out with?”
“I’d be surprised. She said I was the last resort, anyway.”
“She really knows how to go about getting a babysitter.”
“It’s a pity I’m in bits, though. She offered me twenty euros an hour to mind them and sure, she’ll be gone all night. Men who are as obsessed with Aslan as she is – she’ll be in heaven! She won’t leave the gig until she’s found someone to make sweet music with herself.”
“Hang on a second. Twenty euros an hour?”
“Yeah. She got the payout last week for that compo claim she put in with the council – remember, I told you about it? She stubbed her toe on a broken bit of pavement and went flying – broke her arm and all. Or so she says. I wouldn’t be surprised if she fell down the stairs in her house while she was drunk and then went out the next morning and faked an accident. Hawaii is a crafty auld cow.”
“Ah, she’s not that bad!” I’d usually pull Susie up more than that when she was being mean, but I had to get something else more important in there. “Susie, I could babysit her kids if you kept an eye on mine. I could really, really do with twenty euros an hour.”
“But I’m sick! Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? How can I babysit?”
“But my kids are easy to mind! Weren’t they great the night I went to Sam . . . salsa dancing?”
“The night you came home drunk as a skunk and woke the whole house up? Salsa dancing, my foot.”
“But seriously, they were as good as gold, weren’t they?”
“Oran wakes up several times a night, every night, and as I’ve said, this is going to be an all-nighter for Hawaii. No way, lassie. I’m far too sick.”
“Right. Fine, then. I’ll take all of my lot over to Hawaii’s. Ring her up and tell her if she wants a babysitter, she has one.”
“Are you mad? Do you have any idea how wild her children are?”
“I don’t care if they belong in the zoo as long as I get paid twenty euros an hour, Susie. Just ring her.”
Susie picked up the phone and made the arrangements, muttering about how I must be really desperate and I’d certainly fallen a long, long way. I didn’t care. The second episode of the show had been aired last night, with me mumbling about how determined I was to make money and work my way out of this mess. If this is what it entailed, so be it.
Luckily, there were other talking points from the show that the media had focused on today, so nobody had enquired as to what exactly I was planning on doing. Eve had spoken about how much she missed her old boyfriend in London and how it didn’t work out because his very public profile put a strain on their relationship. The papers were full of speculation today on who her ex-lover was.
As for Stephanie, she’d declared on the show that she’d love to get bigger boob implants and when she earned enough money in the future, she’d go up several sizes. I’d gone under the radar with these topics in the mix and that was fine by me. Still, though, I didn’t want to go too far under or I wouldn’t get any promo opportunities.
A half an hour later, my gang and I were at Hawaii’s front door, complete with an inflatable mattress and a duvet in a huge rucksack on my back. Her eyes popped when she saw me.
“God, you’re at least two decades older than the babysitters the agency usually sends me.”
“Lovely to see you too, Hawaii.”
“Oh, wait a minute. Is that you, Holly? God, you’ve aged since you landed on your mother’s doorstep with your brood. I don’t blame you though, love. It must be terrible for you to have had such a comedown. Still, that’s what happens when people around here get ideas above their station.”
And to think I’d defended her! Susie had her number. Well, fighting fire with fire seemed to be the only way forwards in this one.
“I barely recognised you either, Hawaii. Weren’t you a different colour once?”
“Oh, shut up. You could do with a bottle of fake tan yourself. You look like Caspar the ghost and it’s nowhere near Halloween yet.”
“Isn’t it?”
Hawaii’s hair was backcombed so high at the top it almost reached the ceiling. I think she was going for a Cheryl Cole when she was in her big hair phase look, but the fact that Hawaii’s hair had started to droop lankly at the sides already made the overall effect look more Edward Scissorhands than pop princess.
Her fake tan was the colour of jaundice on her face with ebony on her neck and bare shoulders. The elastic on her yellow boob tube had seen better days and was currently revealing far too much white boob. It was accompanied by a leopard-print miniskirt, crotchless knickers – I could see they were crotchless from where I was standing – and heels that would double as stilts. They were pretty much the same height as herself, give or take a few inches.
It made no odds to me – who was I to judge? – but people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and I had no idea why Hawaii had taken such a set against me. Still, as long as she paid me . . .
“Keep up that talk and you’ll be docked,” Hawaii said with a sneer. “And we wouldn’t want that to happen when the whole world knows you need the money badly. I bet you never thought the day would come when common old Hawaii down the road who left school when she was fourteen would have more money than you, did you?”
Oh, dear God. It was certainly one of those evenings.
“Speaking of the money, I’d like it upfront, please,” I said as I walked in with the kids.
Clearly, an invite wasn’t going to be forthcoming. It was time to put a bit of control on this situation.
“But I don’t know yet what time I’ll be back. You know yourself,” she said.
“No, I don’
t. What time do you think you’ll be back?”
She ran her hands up and down her body.
“Wearing this outfit? Sometime in the morning, I hope.”
God, Susie knew her friend well. I ignored her lascivious remarks and started counting out the hours.
“Okay, it’s 7 p.m. now. By morning I take it you mean around midday, so that’s seventeen hours.” Seventeen hours – good Christ! What had I let myself in for? “That equates to a payment of 340 euros.”
“What? Are you absolutely mad?”
“But that’s the rate you offered Susie . . .”
“Well, I’m not paying you that much.” She looked me up and down and tutted. “You might be four times her size, but you’re not a fraction of the woman your mother is. Besides, I could get seven spray tans for that!”
I’d had enough. “You’re not paying me, Hawaii. The council is.”
“Oh, fuck off, you jumped-up little bitch.”
I glanced at the kids, who thankfully were squealing as they chased each other around the sitting room and didn’t seem to be paying attention to Hawaii’s words.
“I’ll do so with pleasure if you continue to curse in front of my kids. Yes, I need money, but not that badly. If you want to see your precious band and get a bit of action afterwards, you’d better pay me quickly and get going.”
My voice sounded a lot more confident than I felt. In truth, I was close to tears at how mean Hawaii was being to me. I knew she’d never liked me since my wedding, but this was bad even by our usual standards. I didn’t like how readily my own meanness was coming out in return either, but I knew no other way to deal with her.
“Whoever the lucky man is, he’d better be fucking good,” she muttered as she picked up her handbag. She rooted out her purse. “If I don’t score and I’m home at a reasonable hour like three or four, I want that extra money back, all right?” She shoved the money into my hand. “The boys are upstairs playing video games. They’ll probably be down in a few minutes looking for food.”
“Have they not had dinner?”
“We don’t have dinner until eight.”
“Oh. What do you want me to cook for them, so?”
“Whatever’s in the fridge. You can decide.” A horn hooted. “Taxi’s here. You have my number if there’s any trouble.”
“I don’t.”
“Oh, you know what I mean! Susie has it! Look, stop delaying me. See you when I see you.”
And with that she was off, yelling goodbye to her sons as she walked out of the door. No sooner had the taxi pulled away than I heard footsteps upstairs.
“Who is it this time?” said a voice I recognised as Tropicana’s.
I looked up to see a face peeping down through a gap in the banisters. It quickly retreated.
“It’s the one your mum calls the posh one. Susie’s daughter.”
“But Mum hates her!”
“She must be hard-pressed for a babysitter.”
There was silence for a few seconds before the boys came charging downstairs. They stopped on the last few steps and stared at me.
“Hello,” I said. “I’ll be looking after you tonight while your mother’s out.”
“What’s for dinner?” said Tropicana.
I hadn’t seen him since the day I’d taken him to school and explained to the headmaster how his classmates had bullied him into mitching. I don’t know if he’d got in trouble for it afterwards, but right then, he was staring at me rather menacingly.
In fairness, wouldn’t menace be something you’d be forced to cultivate if you had a name like his? The Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue” always came to mind whenever Susie brought him up in conversation. In true local gossip style, Susie loved to fill me in on her neighbour’s children’s misdemeanours. It was only right when her neighbours were currently getting such mileage out of me.
“I haven’t checked the fridge yet,” I said.
“Don’t bother – it’s empty. You’d better order in something for us. We’ve no money, by the way,” said the younger one known as Jaguar.
Hawaii had decided to ride a trend of naming children after their place of conception at the time Jaguar was born.
“In that case, he should be called Daihatsu,” Susie had scoffed more than once. “That’s the only car that boy’s father had for the child to be conceived in. He certainly wasn’t conceived in a Jaguar, anyway. The closest Hawaii has been to a Jaguar is wearing that knock-off Jaguar watch she bought in Tenerife for ten euros.”
On these occasions, I’d ask Susie for the millionth time why she and Hawaii were friends when all they seemed to do was fight.
“Ah, but we go back a long way,” she’d always say. “She’s a cow, but I love her. We’d do anything for each other.”
Except mind her children when Susie had the sniffles, it seemed. And a few minutes into the experience of babysitting Hawaii’s kids, I couldn’t blame her. There were no flies on my mother.
“Right, I’ll order something, so. Someone get me the takeaway menus.”
Tropicana rang the order through. I was glad that all of my children had eaten before we came out, because takeaways were a luxury I couldn’t afford. Who knew how long Hawaii’s 340 euros would have to last?
“That’ll be forty-four euros, please,” the delivery man said when he came to the door forty minutes later, laden down with Chinese food.
“Sorry, you must have the wrong order there,” I said.
“No, this is definitely the right address.”
“But we just wanted food for two people. There’s no way it’d cost that much!”
“Your order was a Vietnamese spring roll, grilled dumplings, beef satay, chicken with cashew nuts, chicken with orange sauce, steamed king prawns with black bean sauce and two cans of Coke, according to what I have here.”
“Yep, that’s ours!”
Tropicana barged past me and grabbed the bags out of the delivery man’s hands before running back inside.
I reluctantly handed over forty-four euros and followed Tropicana into the kitchen. He was inhaling the spring roll straight from the foil carton while Jaguar made short work of the grilled dumplings.
“Lads, I told you that my children had eaten and just to order for yourselves!”
“Oh, we did.”
“What?” I looked at the docket at the side of one of the bags. “But there are four main courses in here!”
“Yeah, two are for our breakfast tomorrow morning. We’re out of Shredded Wheat.”
I checked the cupboards and they were as bare as a newborn baby’s behind. There wasn’t so much as an old sticky packet of caster sugar or a leaking bag of flour knocking around in them.
“Is this normal?” I eventually said. “I mean, you do get fed, right?”
“Ah, yeah. Ma’s just been telling us to get takeaways since the compo claim came through, that’s all. It’s a novelty for her, not having to cook.”
“But she doesn’t have to cook Shredded Wheat and you have none of that . . .”
“She was hung-over yesterday and she made Shredded Wheat chocolate buns to get her out of the horrors. It’s grand. We reheated leftover chips for breakfast today and we have this stuff now for tomorrow. Thanks, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.” Jaysus! And I thought my diet was bad.
The entire night was sheer torture. Sarah was entranced by Jaguar and insisted on following him everywhere he went, much to Jaguar’s very vocal disgust. Sarah responded by bursting into tears every time Jaguar told her to stop being his shadow.
“I don’t know what he meeeans!” she’d squeal before trying to follow him again.
Debbie alternated between crying “I want Nana!” and “I want Dada!”
Both refrains probably made Susie very happy on the other side of the wall. Oran was unsettled in his new environment and cried non-stop for two hours. Tropicana declared the sitting room area a war zone and retired to his room, where he played loud music
.
When Oran eventually stopped crying, Sarah and Debbie were exhausted and Jaguar had joined Tropicana upstairs for more video games time. I set up the inflatable mattress and duvet and they dived on it gratefully, asleep before they even lay down. Oran went to sleep after finally taking his bottle, but he'd put up a good fight before he'd even looked at it.
I went upstairs.
“Lads, turn off that games console and go to sleep,” I said.
Jaguar laughed in response. I went back downstairs.
After two hours of staring at mindless TV, I went out to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I sat at the kitchen table as I waited for it to boil and wondered what in the name of God I’d do next for money. I looked up.
“Please, God, let Hawaii score,” I said. “Surely to God Aslan’s biggest male fan will be there tonight and you can pair them up. She mightn’t even come back until tomorrow evening and then I’d earn another few quid. Please, give her the happiness she’s looking for and help me to put food on my table into the bargain.
“My mother’s table, I mean. I don’t even have my own table any more and never will again if you don’t start treating me a bit better. What did I ever do to you, anyway?”
I soon shut up when I heard footsteps running down the stairs. They were heavy ones – Tropicana, I guessed. God Almighty, surely he wasn’t hungry again?
“Were you talking to someone?” he said as he bounced into the kitchen.
“Em, no. What are you doing down here?”
“I heard the kettle boiling and I fancied a cup of tea. Here, I’ll make yours.”
“Oh, thanks. Sounds like your house isn’t any more soundproofed than ours, so.”
“The ceiling isn’t much more than paper. Mum says she’s thinking about cutting a hole in her bedroom floor so we can make her tea in the morning and stand on a chair to pass it up to her.”
“Right. She’s gas.”
“You don’t like my mum very much, do you?”
“Ah no, she’s grand,” I lied. “She’s a good friend of my mother’s, after all.”
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