Margot & Me

by Juno Dawson

  I now understand the pair at the other end of the row were trying to warn me. I look down the line and see them smile sympathetically. I half smile back.

  The morning passes without incident, although I spend my break remedying the fact that they’ve put me down for music instead of theatre studies. As I’m essentially tone deaf, that won’t do at all. By the time they’ve given me a whole new timetable, it’s time for French.

  At lunch I realise I’ve made another faux pas by bringing dinner money. The canteen is almost deserted and I soon learn why. Stainless-steel vats hold different kinds of brown sludge. One claims to be chilli, the other vegetable curry, both bubble like swamps with marsh gas. Almost everyone else has brought packed lunches, with only the obvious Free School Meals kids filling the cafeteria tables.

  Luckily there’s a cooler with sandwiches and drinks, so I grab a ham-and-cheese baguette and a bottle of water. God knows how, but I don’t see Dewi until I walk into his chest, which my head barely clears. ‘Oh wow, sorry!’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry, like. I’m as clumsy as I look, I am. How are you getting on?’

  ‘So far so good. Were you looking for me?’

  Dewi shrugs. ‘Oh no.’ Oh, that’s awkward. ‘I’m supposed to be m-meeting Rhys in here, like.’

  ‘Oh. Don’t tell me you’ve come for the food.’

  ‘Ha! No one eats that stuff. I mean, what is it even meant to be like?’

  ‘Yeah, tomorrow I’ll be bringing a sandwich!’ And on that scintillating note I realise I have nothing else to say to Dewi Allen Jr. We stand a metre apart next to the salad bar.

  ‘Yeah. Sandwich.’

  ‘Gotta love a sandwich.’ I don’t even have an excuse to leave.

  ‘Ah, look, there’s Rhys!’ Dewi seems as relieved as I am.

  ‘Cool. Maybe I’ll see you on the bus later.’

  ‘Aye, that’d be lush. Catch you then.’

  I don’t know where I’m going, but I need to get away from the smell of brown liquid food products.

  At the end of lunch I decide to brave the A-Block girls’ toilets. I dread to think what they’ll be like, and I am right to be worried. They’re bus-station gross. The whole room stinks of smoke and pee, while the cubicles are covered in decades-old graffiti. Which would I rather – locking door, attached toilet seat or toilet paper? It seems all three is too much to ask for.

  Finishing my hover-wee, I exit the stall to find Megan and her friends waiting at the sinks, a trio of gargoyles. They’re blocking my exit and there are no other witnesses. Great. This day could only be improved by bursting into flames or catching rabies. ‘Hi, Megan,’ I say as sweet as candy.

  ‘You think you’re pretty hot shit, don’t you?’ Megan says, narrowing her eyes. With normal eyebrows and better make-up she could be quite pretty.

  ‘No, I really don’t.’ I try to get to the sink, but the dark-skinned one blocks my path. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Let her wash her dainty hands, Rhiannon.’ Megan is calling the shots. Rhiannon steps aside.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You need to stay away from Dewi Allen,’ says the blonde one. ‘He’s going with Megan.’

  Really? I didn’t get that impression at all. ‘OK.’

  Megan steps into my space and I’m forced to back into the corner furthest from the door. She smells strongly of menthol cigarettes and the Vanilla Kisses Impulse she’s used to try to mask them. ‘We saw you flirting with him in the canteen.’

  I shouldn’t argue, I’ll only make things worse for myself, but I can’t help it. ‘I wasn’t flirting, I was talking to him.’

  ‘Come off it, hun. We saw it – you had your hands all over him.’

  ‘Megan, I only met him this morning. There is nothing going on, I promise.’

  ‘Good!’ she says and backs off. ‘Because you know what happens to snotty English bitches who come here and start touching people’s boyfriends.’

  I don’t reply.

  ‘Shall we show her?’ Rhiannon says.

  Megan smiles. ‘Cerys, keep an eye on the door, yeah?’

  I feel my heartbeat thumping in my skull. Every muscle feels electric, juiced, telling me to GET OUT, but I can’t. ‘Megan, what are you doing?’ My voice is suddenly kitten small.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of hair, haven’t you?’ I say nothing. ‘Looks a bit dirty though. You think it needs a wash, Rhi?’

  ‘Aye.’

  And they’re on me before I can move. They hit me like a wrecking ball, trying to force me back into the toilet cubicle. I cling to the sides of the frame but Megan karate-chops at my arms until I let go. Falling backwards, I feel my bum make contact with the toilet seat before they push me all the way to the floor.

  I thought bogwashing was a myth, an urban legend to scare first years. Apparently not. ‘Megan! Please!’ I cry.

  It’s a small cubicle for three people and it’s hard for them to manoeuvre me. I try to slither under the toilet … better than going into it head first, I figure. They try to turn me around. Rhiannon grabs hold of my hair and drags me up towards the bowl. The floor is damp, sticky and littered with stray squares of loo roll. It reeks and I see cigarette butts bobbing on yellow water. I grip the rim, bracing myself. ‘Megan stop!’

  ‘There’s someone coming!’ Cerys says, and Rhiannon lets go of me at once.

  ‘Saved by the bell, yeah.’ Megan looms over me. ‘Maybe next time. Stay away from Dewi, yeah? And stay away from us, like.’

  Saying no more, they sweep out of the bathroom. I blink back tears as I pick myself up off the floor. I will not cry, because if I cry they win. I clamp my back teeth together until the urge passes. I check myself over. I don’t think anything actually went in the loo, thank God.

  I’m not staying. I can’t spend six months at this school. Can’t deal with it, just can’t. I dig my nails into my palms and stare my reflection dead in the eye. I’m going home.

  That afternoon, after the bell has rung at three fifteen, I collect my clothes from Yvonne and make my way back to the minibus. Dewi sits on the back row as before. I don’t know if Megan’s all-seeing eye is watching me, but even as he smiles affably at me, I make a great show of sitting at the very front behind the driver.

  Thankfully he doesn’t try to talk to me on the ride home, and by the time I’m dropped off at the end of the lane I’m ready to sleep for a week. I ache all over with tiredness, even my hair. I can only hope my body adjusts to the new routine. As I drag my feet past the pigsty I remember I need to feed Peanut, when all I really want to do is collapse. Maybe Margot’s right, and I’m not capable of looking after him.

  I push through the front door and drop my satchel at the foot of the stairs. ‘Fliss?’ It’s Mum, calling from the lounge. On hearing her voice, I have to fight a childish urge to run and throw myself into her arms. I want to plead, beg her to take us back to London.

  ‘I’m home.’ Utterly dejected, my limbs like limp noodles, I schlep through and find Mum on the sofa, reading a book in front of the fire. She’s not wearing her wig and I’m reminded again of why we came to this hellhole in the first place.

  ‘How was your first day, love?’

  I can’t. ‘Yeah, good,’ I lie.

  ‘Did you make any new friends?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a really nice girl called Megan.’

  Chapter 5

  September, October, November, December, January, February and then home. There are only six weeks until half-term – I mark that on my calendar – and then only seven after that until the Christmas holidays. I mark that on too. That all feels like a really long way away so I also make a note that I only have to get through four more days until Saturday.

  With the day I’ve had, I don’t know if I can hang on until February. What I need is a PLAN – a plan to show Mum that we can cope in London without Margot. We have coped for like two years. I don’t see why we need Frosty the Ice Dragon sticking her forked tongue in now.

  After dinn
er I feed Peanut out in the stable and already notice he’s a bit livelier. This time when I pick him up, he bothers to wriggle a little bit. Good. He hungrily gobbles at the bottle and, as I leave him under the heat lamp, one of his brothers or sisters (I mean, who can tell the difference?) comes over to snuggle with him. OK, school was awful, but this sort of makes up for it. I feel porridgey warm in my tummy as I head back inside the farmhouse.

  Mum and Margot are watching Poirot in the lounge. I hover in the doorway for a moment. ‘Can I ring Tiggy?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mum says.

  ‘Don’t be on for hours. It’s not you paying the bill, is it?’ Margot adds because of course she does.

  I ignore her and sit on the bottom step. The only phone in the house is on a little stand in the hallway by the front door. Obviously I know Tiggy’s number off by heart.

  She answers on the third ring. ‘Hello?’

  On hearing her voice, I almost burst into tears. I have to take a deep breath and pinch the bridge of my nose. ‘Hi, Tigs. It’s Fliss.’

  ‘Oh my God! How are you? Is it awful?’

  ‘I can’t talk loud,’ I pretty much whisper. ‘But yes.’

  ‘What is it like?’

  ‘I don’t know … just … nothing like home. At all.’

  ‘What was school like?’

  ‘Tigs …’ I lower my voice further, ‘they’re basically savages. Seriously, the girls are like total Kappa Slappers.’ I can’t tell even her about what happened in the toilet. It’s too shameful.

  Tiggy giggles. I can so clearly see her lying back on her big double bed, fairy lights twisted around the bed frame. Her dead straight blonde hair is in its usual scruffy pigtails. ‘Are there at least any cute guys?’

  ‘No. Not even that.’ Dewi is handsome in a mountainous way, but I’m trying to make a point.

  ‘God, what’s the point in going to a mixed school if there isn’t even any totty!’

  ‘I know, right? Tiggy, I want to come home.’

  ‘Well, how’s your mum?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll feel better and you can come home sooner?’

  ‘God, I hope so. I’m going to go mental at this rate. How is everyone at St Agnes?’ Tiggy gives me a lengthy update. Apparently Nicole Caruthers has had a really ill-advised perm and Carrie Button has gone to live in Jamaica with her dad, which is a huge mistake because everyone knows he’s an alcoholic and serial philanderer. ‘And what about Xander? Have you seen him?’ Xander and I agreed that we’d stay friendly, but he hasn’t been in touch yet, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna make the first move.

  ‘I saw him on Saturday at the fair.’ Pretty much everyone I know was at the fair on Clapham Common while I was trapped in Margot’s car.

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I say, failing to keep wistfulness out of my voice. ‘How is he?’

  ‘I think he’s fine.’

  ‘Did he mention me?’

  ‘Erm. Yeah, probably.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know, I don’t remember, but I’m sure he must have said something.’

  ‘Great.’ This doesn’t exactly fill me with hope. I finish talking to Tiggy and somehow feel worse than before. I remain on the bottom step, head in hands. This isn’t fair! I have to get back, back to my stolen life. Somehow I have to convince Mum to take us home.

  Later that night, when Margot has driven to the pub in Llanmarion to meet with the vet or something, I’m unpacking the rest of my things. ‘Why don’t you sort your clothes?’ Mum had suggested, turning off the TV. I had been slouched alongside her, bored out of my skull. ‘You won’t need your summer things for a while so you could put them in the attic for storage.’

  I perk up at the mention of the Spooky Attic of Cursed Doom. ‘It’s locked.’

  Mum smiles. ‘And I know where she keeps the key.’

  I sit up. ‘Where?’

  ‘Kitchen drawers, third one down.’

  I get the key and hurry upstairs before Margot returns. She said she’d only be gone an hour or so. I just want to have a good nosy, knowing full-well Margot doesn’t want me up there.

  The key, a long rusty one, is stiff in the lock, but I tug on the handle and it grinds around. The door opens with a whine and I peer up a dark, narrow staircase that veers steeply to the right. I fumble along the wall for a light switch. A bare bulb flickers on with a low hum.

  I swallow hard and edge up the steps. The air is cold and dank, danker with every step. It’s freezing up here. Wind moans and howls through the eaves, rattling the bones of the farm. I wrap my arms around myself.

  There’s another bare bulb hanging from the centre beam of the sloped roof, and I have to stoop when I stand. Now that I’m up here, I regret my life choices. Again. With white dust sheets covering everything, it’s like I’m surrounded by ghosts. Ghosts playing Grandmother’s Footsteps when my back is turned. Although, on reflection, my actual grandmother is probably scarier than any ghost.

  I peek under a sheet and see some stacked dining-room chairs. Another is draped over an old vanity unit. There are crates of trinkets I recognise from Margot’s old Hampstead home. I guess they don’t really belong on the farm any more than I do. I find a box of glass trophies and awards: Young Journalist of the Year; Press Association Award; Lifetime Achievement. It’s weird she’d dump them up here where no one can see them. I run my fingers over a burly mahogany armoire and immediately think of storing some of my excess clothes in it.

  I’m about to head downstairs to fetch them when I see the trunk. No sheet, so it’s smothered by a thick layer of dust, tucked out of the way in the corner of the chimney breast.

  I should probably leave it. It looks old, even older than anything else up here, and cobwebs shroud it, but it’s like a treasure chest, daring me to open it. There’s a rusted clasp but no padlock. I check the coast is clear and kneel down in front of the trunk.

  I blow on it, but that only shifts a fraction of the thick bluish dust. I prise the clasp apart and swing the lid open. My fingers come away filthy. I cough and splutter on the cloud I kick up. ‘Oh gross.’ I waft it away and look inside the trunk.

  Oh. It’s just books. Super-old books. The smell hits me like a slap. Musty old pages, almost sweet like almonds. They’re a little brown and dog-eared, but they could be antiques. The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown, The Box of Delights by John Masefield, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. They could be worth something, I think. They all smell fusty, oaky and wise somehow. I flick through, looking at the gorgeous line engravings. It’s so sad that books don’t have illustrations in any more. I think about my own books – a mishmash of Point Horror, Sweet Valley High and Judy Blume, and think they look a bit immature next to these.

  I pull out a judgemental leather-bound Bible and see there’s something wedged underneath it. A slim tortoiseshell notebook. Unlike the other books, this one has no picture or title, it’s just blank. I pull it free from the trunk. I open the cover. The lined pages are a little loose; a couple fall out and scatter over the bare floorboards. ‘Damn.’ I rush to collect them, worried they could slide through the gaps. There are a couple of stiff, glossy photographs among the fallen pages, both that lovely sepia yellow tone from the olden days.

  The first is of a gorgeous man in army uniform. It’s a portrait shot and he’s smiling broadly with dimples to die for. The other is a classically pretty blonde girl wearing a dotty summer dress and cardigan while sitting on a wooden gate in front of a large paddock. She’s laughing, maybe at something the photographer’s saying. I gather the last couple of pages and turn the first one around to read it.

  This book belongs to Margot Stanford. If lost, please return to Tan-Y-Pistyll Farm.

  Oh my God. It can’t be. I peep inside. It is though. It’s Margot’s diary. I look again at the girl on the gate. I squint my eyes … and gasp. It’s her! She looks so, so different, but the high cheekbones and strong jaw are totally the s
ame. She wants to try smiling more often; it suits her. I look again at the other photo. To be honest, I only remember Grandad as a balding old man, but I’ve seen old pictures and he didn’t look anything like this guy.

  I take a deep sniff of the notebook. It’s gorgeous. I’ve only gone and found Margot’s secret diary. I clutch it to my chest, hardly able to contain my glee. This is the find of the decade. I shut the trunk and hurry to the top of the attic stairs. If I strain I can still hear the TV downstairs. No one would ever know …

  No! Reading someone else’s diary must come with the worst karma in the world. I mustn’t or I’ll wake up with all of my own secrets tattooed on my face or something.

  But …

  This is Margot. She’s so not the diary-keeping type. A quick look can’t hurt, can it? I slot the loose pages and photos into the front of the book and turn to the first page. The entry is dated Wednesday 15th January, 1941. I do some maths. I’m pretty sure Mum said Margot was born in 1924 and her birthday is in March, so she was sixteen when she wrote this – just a year older than me.

  Another – much naughtier – thought occurs to me, spreading through my mind like a toxic green cloud. If I can’t convince Mum to take us back, perhaps there’s some dirt in here I can use against Margot. Blackmail is a very strong word, but I don’t want to be here and she doesn’t exactly care for my presence either. So why don’t I do her a favour? It’d be super-fun to take the old bat down a peg or two … but to have something, something juicy, over her could be my ticket back home.

  Interesting. Evil, but interesting. I slink down the narrow stairs, still grasping the diary. I turn out the lights and lock the attic before walking to my bedroom and closing the door behind me.

  OK, I have to look or I’ll explode with curiosity. Margot at sixteen! I can hardly imagine it: some people just come out of the womb aged forty and she’s one of them. I’ll just read a tiny bit.

  Wednesday 15th January, 1941

  It all seems so unnecessary. I don’t see what good leaving London is going to do at this stage – if I can survive the Blitz I rather suspect I can withstand any horrors Hitler has to offer.