We are being a bit bad.
She touches my hand.
If Mammy finds out she’ll
take a leather shoe to me.
If Daddy finds out he’ll peel me alive.
No one will ever know, Marla.
Clinking glasses,
we guzzle.
Single Ladies
Marla and I are giggling,
clinging to one another,
swaying, spinning to
Beyoncé singing out
from the radio’s tinny speakers.
Now like this! Like this! I tell her.
I hold one hand aloft and twirl it
like any single lady would,
and Marla copies the choreography –
hands in the air,
hands on hips,
fists punching forward,
hair flicked back.
It’s too quick. She is breathless,
stepping up to the mantelpiece and
pouring more gin into her glass.
Show me again!
I fall to my knees laughing.
Her Beyoncé is appalling.
But she is beautiful.
Hangover
I comb through
Marla’s medicine cabinet for painkillers
before crawling back into bed with my sore head,
a pint of tap water,
a sack of self-loathing
and a promise to myself
never
to drink
again.
Any Jewels?
Jan is with Lucy at the beach hut.
It feels rude to say no
to the slim bottles of beer on offer,
so by 7.00 p.m.
I am staggering home,
totally ratted,
Lucy managing both to keep me up
and use me
as a crutch.
Jan snickers
behind her hand
about lightweights,
like she isn’t wasted herself.
At Marla’s back gate
Lucy says, seeming surprised,
It’s a house.
My stepmum’s mum,
my stepmum’s mum’s,
I slur, blinking slowly.
Lucy says,
Has she got any booze?
Has she got any jewels?
My nan’s loaded, Jan adds.
Tomorrow, I say.
I’d have to ask first.
Lucy leans in and hugs me,
her grasp heavy, hard, unexpected.
I hiccup and hold on to
the gatepost
to stop myself from
sliding
on to
the ground.
Come over to mine on Saturday.
Hopefully my parents won’t be home.
I can give you that phone, Lucy says.
I can’t stay to say thank you.
I might be sick.
And then I am.
In Marla’s grass,
while Lucy stumbles away,
trailed by her friend,
their laughter
hollow.
Have You Seen?
Have you seen my biro?
Marla shuffles in her chair,
grumbles,
disturbs the cushion and crossword on her lap.
I had it only a second ago.
I am slumped,
hungover again,
but jump up, head spinning,
and search for the biro myself,
lifting magazines,
rifling through a bowl of keys
and junk.
What are you doing? Marla asks.
Looking for your pen.
Why?
You didn’t take it.
Did you?
Where’s the Remote?
When Dad asked a question like,
Where’s the remote?
what he meant was:
Find the remote.
Or when he said,
What’s for dinner?
what he meant was:
I am hungry. Feed me.
Dad’s questions were never queries –
they were demands
and judgements,
weapons to make me nervous.
Dad’s problems were mine.
His discontent
something I did my best
to fix.
The White House
It’s the white house,
Lucy had said,
which I took to mean
it’s
a
white house.
But no.
Her house is, as she said,
the
white house,
the only one on the street,
a street of three homes differentiated
by colour – white, yellow, brown –
each topped with glass and jutting out
on to the ocean like coastal guardians.
I press the bell and, as if I’ve cast a spell,
a woman in gardening gloves appears at my side
carrying two empty wine bottles.
Well, hello there, she says.
Before I can reply,
Lucy opens the door and
pulls me into the house.
Her mother follows.
Her hair is sprayed stiff,
her face doesn’t move.
Would you like anything to eat, darling?
I can ask Stacey to fix you something.
I’m off out soonish.
I produce a bar of milk chocolate
and hand it to her mum,
who checks the purple wrapping, back and front,
like it’s a quiz.
Thanks for having me, I say,
ashamed I thought
such a small thing could be a gift.
Oh, that’s incredibly thoughtful of you.
How extraordinary.
Lucy, look at this?
She forgot my birthday last month.
Don’t even ask me what happens on Mothering Sunday!
Little Miss Forgetful.
I’d rather believe that than think my child doesn’t care.
Lucy groans, drags me upstairs.
Jesus. Sorry about that.
Thought she’d be at a flaxseed convention
or something.
I don’t speak,
focus on keeping my mouth closed
and not going too goggly eyed at her room:
at the wide-screen TV
next to the PC
next to the laptop
next to the double wardrobe
next to the double bed
next to the acoustic guitar
next to the drum set
next to the bathroom.
You’ve got your own flat.
Lucy scans the room unimpressed.
It stinks in here.
I had the dog with me.
Mum won’t put her down.
Shall we work first or watch Netflix?
Lucy hands me an essay,
a teacher’s red marks in the margins.
Got this back yesterday.
Need to fix it.
Will you help?
I hadn’t expected to work.
I shrug. Sure.
For the rest of the afternoon
I sit at her desk overlooking the ocean
and type into a laptop
while Lucy lolls on her bed
watching films,
occasionally passing me
a sandwich or piece of fruit delivered to the room
by a housekeeper.
At six o’clock her dad arrives home.
Lucy takes me down to say hello.
He is wearing waterproofs
though it’s sunny outside.
I’ve been sailing.
Lovely day for it.
I try to look interested but I’ve no idea
what sailing means –<
br />
was he in a boat as big as a pedalo
or something more like a yacht?
Did he fish?
Is he a captain?
I think of Sophie and Jacq –
what they’d say if they could see this place,
meet this family –
how they’d run out of shitting hells
and oh-my-gods.
They’d swipe stuff for sure.
You’re welcome to stay for supper,
her dad assures me,
pronouncing it sup-pah
then heading away from the kitchen,
where a woman is dutifully chopping.
I better get back.
Maybe Marla won’t have noticed the time
or that I’m missing,
but I don’t want to eat with these people watching,
trying to keep my knife, napkin, glass
in the right places.
In the hallway
Lucy hands me more homework.
Need it back by Tuesday.
You’re getting slower, you know?
This stuff’s not for me obviously.
Oh and here. Take this.
She pulls an iPhone from her back pocket.
Are you sure?
Part payment for the homework, she says.
You’ll need to get it unlocked.
Behind her
on the table
is the bar of Cadbury chocolate.
I reach one hand forward and
slip it into my coat.
Marla’s Tiny Terraced House
Marla’s house must have been painted white
some time ago,
though now it looks grey
from weather-wear
and lack of care.
She is sitting on the back step,
staring at a packet of cigarettes.
Are these yours? she asks.
I shake my head.
Maybe they’re Mary’s.
Find a lighter.
Or you could use the grill.
I pull out the chocolate bar.
How about this instead?
Is it all for me?
You have to share, I scold.
Fair enough.
She swaps cigarettes for chocolate,
yumming so loudly
you’d think we were eating
in a five-star restaurant.
I’m glad you got milk chocolate.
The dark stuff tastes like Calpol.
Yeah. Why would anyone eat it?
Trying to be posh.
Can you be a chocolate snob?
You can be any sort of snob at all.
That’s how the la-di-das sniff us out –
by noticing what we wear and buy and eat and everything.
A snob would know you didn’t belong in two seconds flat,
she says.
I suppose so.
I think of how Lucy could tell
by studying my shoelaces
that I don’t belong in her world.
Marla has chocolate in her eyebrow.
I rub it away with my thumb.
Shall we have supper?
She looks up at the sky.
But it isn’t bedtime.
That wouldn’t make sense.
No, I say. No, it wouldn’t.
So we have dinner instead.
Like common people.
Meeting Marla
Marla is kneeling on the sitting-room carpet,
tearing pages from
a paperback.
I’m home. This is Lucy, I say.
She doesn’t look up.
You’re not Peggy.
She holds the book aloft.
Is this mine?
Who’s that?
Everything’s yours, I explain,
wishing she was sane today.
This is Lucy.
Shall I make tea?
Coffee, she snaps.
And a sandwich. Did you pick up ham?
When’s dinner?
I’ve been hungry since last Sunday.
Did you know Michael Jackson died?
They just said it on the telly.
I loved his song about killers.
‘Thriller’.
‘Thriller’. That’s the one.
With all the zombies.
That was great.
Who else is dead that I should know about?
We have ham, I say.
Lucy follows me to the kitchen,
slumps at the table.
What’s wrong with her?
She helps herself to an apple from the
fruit bowl.
She forgets stuff, I say. It’s dementia.
Old people are nuts! She laughs.
Something in my stomach knots.
We ascend the stairs on tiptoe,
avoiding the final one which creaks.
Lucy strolls to the window.
So Marla’s your great-aunt?
She hadn’t been listening,
which I suppose,
when it comes
to stuff about Marla,
isn’t a bad thing.
No, she’s my sort-of-stepmum’s mother, I say,
repeating the lie
and able to tell something about how I arrived
and found Kelly-Anne gone –
replacing Marla for the man in the football shirt,
telling Lucy some of the truth for once.
I want to get away sometimes.
Mum is a total migraine.
She paws at a porcelain ornament on the dressing
table –
an angel with a harp –
turns it upside down to read the bottom,
like she knows what the markings mean.
Then she opens a drawer,
the top one stuffed with patchwork quilts,
rummages a bit,
closes it again.
What are you looking for?
Dunno. I better go actually,
I’ve a drum lesson at seven.
The clock on the wall ticks loudly.
It is five o’clock.
Don’t you want to have your coffee?
I’ll make it and you can chat to Marla.
Jan’s expecting me.
I better go, she repeats,
and she does.
People
What is it they want anyway?
Bath Time
Allison! Kelly-Anne called out.
She was in the bathroom,
standing over a steaming tub of bubbles.
I stood at the door,
thought she was going to ask me where we
kept the conditioner.
Get in, she said.
I stayed by the door,
wore my best stepdaughter face.
It was my house.
She wasn’t my mum.
Anyway I was ten:
too old to be told when to wash.
And she’d been living with us three days:
too soon to be ordering me around.
Your hair’s mank, she said flatly.
You can’t go to school like that.
Get in.
The TV blared downstairs,
Dad watching Match of the Day,
Kelly-Anne and me keeping away after
Spurs got knocked out of the FA Cup.
I’ll have a shower tomorrow, I lied,
and stomped to my room,
slamming the door
just enough to show her who was boss,
not so much to make Dad mad.
She knocked.
Allison, you need a wash.
My hands were covered in ink stains.
I’d been wearing the same socks for days.
How had I not noticed?
Why had Dad never said anything?
I sniffed my armpit.
Shame, like slime, filled my whole body.
I began to cry.
Kelly-Anne charged into my room,
put one hand on her hip,
with the other pointed to the bathroom.
Go and have a bath this minute, she hissed.
I narrowed my eyes,
felt like spitting at her.
Instead I had a bath.
It was lovely.
It was long.
And afterwards,
with an expression like concrete,
I let Kelly-Anne blow-dry my hair straight,
faking being furious,
secretly hoping,
even then,
that Dad would drop dead
and leave the two of us to it
forever.
Unlocked
I get the iPhone unlocked
and buy a SIM card so I have a number again,
a new one,
making me a real person in the world.
But I don’t bother logging in to any of my apps.
I don’t try to make contact with
my old life.
For some reason.
Reading the Meter
He’s wearing a white T-shirt
rolled up to the shoulder so his biceps bulge,
blue jeans low on his hips.
Just gotta read the meter, guys.
He rummages under the stairs,
giving us a view from the back.
He whistles, hums,
clears his throat of a smoky cough.
Marla elbows me,
stares at the poor man’s arse
like she’s never seen a human being before.
Toffee Page 9
