Big Bones

by Laura Dockrill

  MUFFINS

  I REALLY like using the squeaky pen to write the menu out. Squeak. Squeak. I stand on a chair to do it. A metal one. One that I trust. The screws and I have forged a solid relationship, and the chair, she carries me well. Her metal works like scaffolding and I’m a big statue she’s helping to lift towards the sky.

  Our cake selection is actually pretty good but it’s our muffins that made me want to work here in the actual first place. ‘Muffin’ is my favourite word to write with the squeaky pen because I enjoy writing the word with the ‘M’ really over-the-top, extra ‘M’-y, all joined up and loopy like the first letter of an old-fashioned fairy tale, then down to swoop low for the ‘u’ and then making the ‘f’s join up like music notes. They are tall and come in little paper cups; the muffin swells out all over the top. These muffins are the reason that juicy hips got the name muffin tops, I’d say. Because of these beauties. They do look like a brilliant gorgeous girl with a giant bum spilling out over a pair of too-tight jeans.

  The top is cracked and hardened with little sugar grains or oats or cinnamon, depending on the flavour, and inside it’s all moist and crumbly and soft with a jammy, gooey middle. The chocolate one is double chocolate, so not only is the cakey stuff deep and dense and cocoa-ey brown but it has these huge squares of chocolate chips running through it too and the centre is like a fondant. Moist and smooth. The blueberry one has giant sweet blueberry freckles throughout that are gummy and bleed into the soft white cake like a leaky Biro onto a love letter, and the inside is so smooth and light. There’s a healthy oaty one, which is soooo good and then there’s my favourite – banoffin – which is … you’ve guessed it, a banoffee pie muffin! Sweet caramel and banana sponge with cream cheese frosting with little toffee nuggets and banana chips sprinkled on top. The centre, a butterscotchy caramel whip. I mean, SERIOUSLY. WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL?

  Alicia struts out. She’s so annoying. She’s one of those people that just eats to live. Not because eating is amazing. I’m the other way round. I’m sure you’ve worked this out. She loves up those really large uniform Bourbon biscuits and Jammie Dodgers when, sure, OK, they look great but they’re not a delicious slice of home-baked cake. I like to see the effort: the peak of whipped cream and golden crumbling sponge, the bronzed goo of a baked peach that’s caramelised the top of a tart. The rubble of toasted nutty mounds. She also thinks cakes are ‘real cute’ if they are like overly iced turquoise cupcakes with glitter and plastic butterflies on top. A semi-edible greetings card. The sort of stuff people hand out at terrible baby showers. Also: glitter is for eye shadow. Festival eye shadow. I really don’t fancy seeing glitter in my poo left over from some hideous fairy cake that was decorated by somebody that should work in greeting cards and shouldn’t be let near a bakery.

  ‘Morning, aliens!’ she whines in that annoying voice. She doesn’t even have to put the pretend Martian voice on. Look, I’m not being mean about Australian accents, I promise, just in case you’re Australian. ‘So, guys, how’d ya reckon you have a good day up in space?’

  ‘Errrrmm …’ Max and I look to the ground. Marcel doesn’t care; he’s greasing his hair into a topknot. He’s French; he does what he likes.

  ‘I’m talking to you, Marcel?’ She tells him off like a question.

  ‘I’m French,’ he says. ‘I do what I like.’

  ‘You have some coffee and then you PLAN-ET!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s a joke. Planet. Like plan it. A good day up in spa— As in plan the day … but planet, because we’re Planet Cof— Forget it.’ She straightens her face like she couldn’t look more serious. ‘A bit of humour from time to time goes a long way, gang.’ Her nostrils flare like a dragon. ‘What’s wrong with you guys? Let’s get the schedule up.’

  We set up and I go ‘backstage’ to check I haven’t got something on my head, as Alicia is one of those people that sometimes talks to your forehead or above it. She follows me in as I open up my locker. (I don’t know why we have lockers; nobody ever locks them – we just dump our stuff inside them. Still, it’s a cool place to keep pictures. I hang recipes in mine: courgette and lemon spaghetti, butternut squash with kale and parsley, king prawns with chilli and red sauce.)

  ‘Bluebelle, can I have a quick word?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I just wanted to say thank you for the other day. I don’t know what happened to me back there but you dealt with it totally professionally and you were a real good nurse.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, it was my pleasure.’

  ‘Not many girls would clean up somebody else’s sick like that –’ meaning herself – ‘but you just rolled up those sleeves, got right down on your knees and scooped that vom up like a trooper.’

  GREAT. She slaps my arm. She does it with extra vigour; it’s like she thinks because my arms are big that I won’t feel the force of her bitchy birdy violence. That the nerves are numbed.

  ‘Ouch.’ I rub my arm.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve been doing kickboxing. Well, self-defence. You know, if a kidnapper ever approaches you on the street you just do this …’ Alicia closes her eyes, palms pressed together, and begins to do some sort of pointy hand actions that are meant to be t’ai chi, I guess. She sort of looks like she’s massaging somebody’s back.

  ‘And what if that doesn’t work?’

  ‘It will.’

  ‘It might not.’

  ‘No, it will. Trust me.’

  ‘’K.’

  ‘Don’t worry though, babes, no one’s gonna kidnap you anyway. Imagine trying to shove your ass in the boot of a car. I mean … let’s be honest, that’s one advantage to being, you know …’

  Have you ever wanted to bite somebody’s face?

  I want to scratch her. Eat her. Then howl at the moon.

  The worst thing is, she definitely meant that as a compliment. She does an awkward hum of some terrible song. ‘I’m sure it was probably food poisoning anyway. That made me sick. I had a bad chicken burger from Mandy’s Diner and a few too many wines the night before.’ She unfolds a little hand-mirror out of her pleather handbag and smudges kohl eye crayon on her lower lids, her wet mouth gaping open like a gasping fish. A line of spit connecting her dry lips together.

  Everybody knows Mandy puts sleep-eye crust in her chicken burgers. Although I always think she must have to do a LOT of sleeping to gather up THAT much sleep crust. Also I don’t think Mandy even exists.

  ‘Probably that then,’ I reassure her, but secretly I am body-waving inside wanting to throw her a baby shower ride all the way OUT OF HERE. I feel bad; Mum told me that women always want other women to have babies as immediately as possible to get them out of their career way, because in some places of employment there’s a shortage of jobs for women so they are all nipping at one another’s feet all ugly, praying they’ll take those high heels off and out from underneath that desk and become a mum, making space for the next one to come along. How horrible is that?

  Anyway, now could be my chance …

  ‘Alicia, I wanted to ask you if you’ve, if Planet Coffee have ever considered taking on an apprentice? It’s really quick; there’s just, like, this application you can do … to, like … see if we can maybe apply for a barista apprenticeship? For me. And, like, this other letter … it’s already typed up … just to say … well … it’s from Julian in Careers, it’s basically to say I can be an apprentice? You just have to sign it.’ I pull the little folded square out of my back pocket. I am sweating. Why? Alicia doesn’t take the letter.

  ‘Who’s Julian?’

  ‘Julian in Careers. He works at my school; he’s like the career guy. I know that’s not something you do here but Julian says that some of the major coffee shops can apply for a scheme to have an apprentice and I thought –’

  ‘Stop there, sweetie. You know that we pride ourselves on not being a major coffee chain, that’s why our customers love us.’

  ‘No, no, I know – this is different. I was
just saying that it’s possible, that there is such a thing. You can apply for the scheme for me to be an apprentice and that way –’

  ‘Now, hun, I know you’re in the summer holidays now and you’re wanting to take a gap year to go find yourself or whatever –’ IT’S NOT A GAP YEAR – ‘and if you’re struggling for money and you want me to poke around in the rota and see if I wrangle you out a few extra shifts here and there then you got them. We all need a bit of extra pocket money, don’t we?’

  ‘Ah thanks, Alicia.’

  ‘Not a problem, chuck, no worries, least I can do. We love having you around.’ She grins. ‘Now let me have a gander at this letter from your little Jools in Careers.’

  She whips it from me and clicks her tongue like she’s calling a horse. ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, baby. But I’m not promising anything.’

  No, not ‘baby’.

  Shudder.

  She balms her lips in pawpaw cream and smacks her locker shut. ‘By the way …’ She puts a sympathetic claw on my shoulder. ‘Have you lost weight?’

  OH. The most obvious. Most boring. Most overused fat girl compliment in the history of time. As if I’m going to suddenly spin around to Alicia with my palms under my chin and my eyeballs all big and gooey like a musical star and screech, ‘OH MY GOD, DO YOU REALLY TRULY THINK SO? SAY IT’S SO, HAVE I LOST WEIGHT? HAVE I?’

  No, I haven’t lost weight in between now and the two seconds ago when you were just saying how fat I was. No. Weird that, isn’t it?

  But instead I reply, ‘I hope not.’ And Alicia shakes her head as if she’s a really bad actress in a soap and she’s just found out that the man she loves is ‘not who I thought you were’.

  And then I see her pop the letter into her back pocket.

  Her clip-cloppy kitten heels clap out front.

  For comfort, I kiss myself on the shoulder, where her hand was.

  Max catches my eye when I step out but then pretends to be pouring milk into a jug. It spills a little onto the floor by his feet. Teardrop white speckles splatter.

  All day I see the top of the letter from Julian in the back of Alicia’s pocket. And I watch it like it’s a kitchen door at a restaurant and I’m waiting for my meal to come out. But it doesn’t come out. And I fear it will be there all day. And the day after. Until the folds become fluffy. Until the dye from the denim bleeds into the white paper. Until it whizzes around the washing machine with all of Alicia’s other bits of worn-out clothes and clogs up the arteries of her machine like a dirty tissue from a cold.

  APPLE

  Apples are saintly, crunchy goodness donkey food. The hero fruit. If an apple were a person, he’d be that bloke that everybody likes that gets an invitation to more than one party on a Saturday night. Reliable. Loyal. A team player.

  The only way to eat an apple is aggressively and splashily.

  My body is like an apple. One that’s maybe been rolling around the bottom of a handbag for a while, covered itself in glitter and hair and taken a bit of a bruisy bashing.

  I want to bring this apple out with me but I don’t want to eat it now because I’m not hungry and I don’t want to hold the apple in my hand all day but I’d really like to not have to wear a bag today. I rub the apple against my leg, almost wishing it would magnetise itself to my clothes somehow, sort of latch itself on.

  WHY don’t girls’ clothes come with pockets like boys’ clothes do? Do we not have stuff too? I’m starting a campaign for dresses with pockets. Even guys get to go down red carpets and weddings with pockets and WE just have to shove stuff down our bras. It’s so annoying. There’s only so long you can hold a pound coin in your cleavage for.

  I’m wearing my off-the-shoulder leotard and dotty shorts. I feel like everybody is staring at my thighs. But I think it’s because humans in England aren’t that great at seeing naked flesh. We just aren’t used to seeing that much skin. I have a massive bruise on my thigh too from work, which I forget about until I see somebody react to seeing it. Then I’m reminded of the swirling greeny purple tie-dye flower of it. I don’t shave my thighs because the hairs grow back all dark if I do, so they are nice and blonde now from the sun.

  I meet Dad at the Lobster, a pub. He is sitting outside, in the shade, crumpled up over some Penguin Classic that’s really famous that everybody lies about reading to sound intelligent but nobody has actually read unless it comes up in some school syllabus. And they still, even then, once it’s been explained 50,000 times, don’t get it.

  Dad always gets irritated by the heat. He scratches his ears like a flustered dog. He likes to sit all wound-up and suffering in the shade like a depressed teenage vampire. He likes to scribble down ideas and thoughts with a pencil in the pages while he’s reading; he also, sometimes, licks the lead of the pencil before he writes. I have no idea why he does this. It’s well extra.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Bluebelle, what a beautiful day, isn’t it? That’s a nice lipstick … very … bright. You look very … pink.’

  ‘It’s called Candy Yum Yum.’

  ‘Candy what?’

  ‘Candy Yum Yum.’

  ‘OK.’ He accepts the information, logs it, and then I watch as it sails out of his head again, through his earhole into the universe to live with all the other unimportant information that parents have been told.

  ‘Do you want this apple?’ I hand it to him; it’s inconvenient to carry but I don’t have the heart to throw it in the bin. Sometimes I feel that fruit has feelings and I get guilty.

  ‘I might have it in a bit, sure, leave it there. I’ll pick at it.’ You don’t pick at an apple. ‘I’ve got a beer here.’ He sips it, leaving him with a frothy tash. ‘Dove coming?’

  ‘Should be.’

  ‘How’s Mum?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Has she mentioned me at all?’

  ‘Of course she mentions you.’ Dad looks relieved. I leave out, ‘Not in a good way.’

  ‘That bloody artist hasn’t been over again, has he?’

  ‘What artist?’

  ‘That one with the ponytail.’

  ‘Keith?’

  ‘Keith. That’s the one. He fancies her, you know.’

  ‘Dad, Keith’s about ninety-four years old and smells of damp.’

  ‘Well, she likes an older man.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. She’s after younger men now!’

  ‘No she’s not. Who?’

  ‘I’m winding you up.’ I feel my knees lock. ‘Ah, look, there’s Dove.’

  Dove is wearing neon orange shorts and a white vest top, her long blonde hair sailing behind her. She’s tanned. She’s never ever had to touch exfoliator or moisturiser in her life. She wears headphone buds in each ear.

  ‘Doveling!’ Dad says.

  ‘Hi, Daddy.’ Dove for a second evolves from tomboy to ballerina as she leans into Dad’s arms and kisses him, unhooking a headphone.

  ‘Daddy. She still calls me daddy; you’re such a little baby.’ He chuckles. He treats her like she’s still three and I’m the big crashing horrid gargoyle of a sister, too big to call Dad daddy without it being awful and weird and people thinking I’m like his girlfriend or whatevs.

  ‘You look pretty,’ he says to her. Meanwhile I look ‘pink’. Dove finds a chair and sits on it cross-legged.

  ‘It’s hot, isn’t it?’ Dove says, fanning herself. ‘It’s going to thunderstorm tonight. I love a thunderstorm.’

  ‘That explains my headache.’ Dad rubs his head, trying to make out that he’s so spiritually synchronised with the weather. ‘Do you not tie your hair up or anything when you do all that running around?’ He’s still on this one.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doesn’t it get in your way?’

  ‘Sometimes, but if it does I just wrap it into a bunch and bite it. Like this.’ Dove gathers all her hair up, twists it and clenches her teeth around the hair, biting down like a mum cat would carry her kitten.

  ‘You odd g
irl,’ Dad says, picking up the apple. ‘So … which younger men is Mum after then?’ Jesus, DROP IT.

  ‘Dad, look at my video!’ Dove cleverly changes the subject. ‘Look, that’s me, look, watch … doing a front.’

  ‘What’s a front?’

  ‘A front flip … See?’

  ‘I missed it. Show me again; hold it still …’ Dad fumbles with his glasses. ‘Start it from the beginning. Go on, wheel it back.’

  I watch Dove lose her patience. ‘OK, watch here …’

  ‘Which one’s you?’

  ‘That one.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No! That’s Tommy.’

  ‘He looks like a girl, his hair is longer than yours.’

  ‘Dad! You missed my front again.’

  ‘It’s so shaky.’

  ‘That’s because it’s on a GoPro, Dad, strapped to somebody’s head.’

  ‘A go what? I don’t like the sound of this. It looks too dark.’

  ‘It is dark, Dad. It’s a night mission.’

  ‘A what mission?’

  ‘Night,’ Dove stresses, ‘MISSION.’

  Dad looks frazzled. ‘Mission? What sort of mission? Is this legal? Do the police not … do you not wear gloves or anything?’

  ‘No, Dad, it’s frowned upon. You can’t wear gloves because you have to get calluses, toughen up your hands for grip. You don’t wear gloves.’

  ‘No helmet?’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  ‘What if you fall?’

  ‘Yeah, sometimes you bail but … you just try again.’

  ‘They only do low jumps, Dad,’ I reassure him. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Low jumps! Ha! It’s not so babyish, Bluebelle.’ Dove’s eyes light up. ‘I know someone who got concussion doing it.’

  ‘Good grief, Dove, what does your mother say about this?’

  ‘She knows. I’m getting a crash mat for the garden to practise on.’

  ‘Yes, but there aren’t any crash mats out on the streets of London!’ Dad tries to be cool. ‘Why can’t you just get one of those scooter things that commuters use to get to the office? Aren’t they cool?’