by Julia Bell
When the birds are cooked Mum pulls them out of the oven and puts them, still sizzling in their pans, on the table. She hacks off some big, thick pieces for me and puts them on my plate.
‘That enough for you?’ It looks like far too much. ‘Have a bit more, I’ve done no vegetables or anything.’ She adds a thigh to the pile.
She looks at the clock. ‘I only did this for your father and he isn’t even here. I just want to get away from all this’ – she flaps her hands at the chicken – ‘food. Know what I mean?’
She picks the thinnest slivers of meat and lays them on her plate in a dainty fan.
The meat is tasteless and chewy. Sinews get stuck between my teeth. Mum cuts her piece into squares, and pushes it around her plate, tantalizing herself with it. I watch, holding my breath to see if she’ll eat any. She prongs a bit, no bigger than a stamp, and lifts the fork to her mouth. She hesitates for what seems like ages, her hand trembling in front of her lips. Then, taking a breath, she closes her eyes and pushes the fork between her lips. ‘It’s a bit dry,’ she says, chewing and swallowing, making a face as it goes down. It’s so small, I wonder that she can feel it at all. She eats a few more squares and then pushes her plate aside. ‘It’ll be all right in sandwiches.’
‘I’m going to pay you more attention from now on,’ she says. ‘I’ve been neglecting you.’
She sits really close to me on the sofa while I’m trying to get to the end of the lap on Wipeout. She distracts me and I crash into the side of a tunnel.
‘I bought you some clothes for going away.’
In three separate bags there’s a pink T-shirt with a heart on it, black Lycra trousers and a denim jacket, all from Top Shop in Manchester.
‘I got you these as well, I hope they’re going to fit you.’ She hands me a Schuh bag. Inside is a pair of chunky, stack-heeled sandals.
My heart sinks as I look at the bags. It’s all really slaggy stuff. More Janice’s kind of thing than mine.
‘Well, aren’t you going to try it all on?’
I pull the T-shirt over my head. It fits, but it pinches a bit across my chest.
‘There, that’s so much better than all those tracksuits. Put your new shoes on.’
When Dad comes back, she presents me to him. ‘Well? What d’you think?’
He gives me a strange look. I can tell he thinks I look crap but he’s just being too polite to say. ‘Like a princess,’ he says, dropping a kiss on the top of my head as he pushes past us to go to the garage.
We’re head to head on Colin McRae Rally.
‘Why aren’t you coming with us?’ I ask.
He winces and takes the corner too sharply, spinning out into pine trees. I’m miles ahead of him now.
‘I gave her a choice, Carmen,’ he says.
I cross the finish line and win the game.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, switching off the machine without bothering to finish his lap. ‘I expect she’ll come to her senses soon.’
Last day of term is own-clothes day. Mum makes me wear my new outfit.
‘You need to break it in,’ she says. Then she looks at my feet and sighs. ‘Look at the state of your toenails. I’ll go and get my gloves.’ She makes me sit on the bed while she cuts my toenails and files them. ‘Darling, you know people say that you should never judge a book by its cover, but people do, they do. If you look like you care about yourself, then the world will care about you.’ She puts spongy dividers between my toes, which make my feet feel funny. ‘This colour will go really nicely, pearly pink, look.’ She passes me the bottle. ‘You do it.’
I have a very unsteady grip. My hands feel big and clumsy pinching the delicate brush, and besides it’s hard to bend in half over my stomach. I wipe a stripe of polish on my new flares before I even get to my toenail. I manage my right foot, apart from my little toe, which I figure I can hide under the strap of the sandals, but by the time I’ve finished with my left foot the polish has started to congeal in blobby lumps.
Mum is narked when she comes back. ‘Come on, hurry up.’ I stand up in my shoes. She sighs. ‘Don’t pull the top down, you’ll stretch it. Hold your stomach in. Wear your denim jacket over. That’s better.’
‘You copying me?’ Janice asks. She’s smoking a fag, hanging off Karl’s arm. She’s got the same top on as me. I pull the denim jacket close across my chest.
‘No,’ I say.
‘’S all right, only joking.’
We’re supposed to be at end-of-year assembly. The first years have been practising a half-hour summer Micro Panto with the drama teacher all week.
‘Micro pants, more like,’ Janice says, giggling. ‘We’re going into town? You coming?’
Karl pulls his head back and looks at me like I’m a long way off. I know that he doesn’t really want me hanging around.
‘Go on then.’
I follow them out of the school gates as they walk in front of me hand in hand. When we walk past the alleyway that shortcuts behind the houses to the park, I duck down it. I bet they don’t notice for ages I’m gone.
I sit on the swings until the dark clouds that have been gathering since first thing begin to drop down into the valley in a soggy veil of drizzle. It’s supposed to be the start of summer, but it’s colder than spring.
3
I know there’s something wrong the minute I turn into the drive. Dad’s car is parked with the boot right up to the side door. We’re not supposed to be going until Dad gets back from America. The boot’s flipped up and there are lots of boxes stowed, Mum’s diet books and all her best suitcases.
She comes out of the house with another box in her arms.
‘All right there, sweetheart.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘We’re going to Birmingham. You haven’t forgotten already?’
She’s too bright, too breezy. She’s lying to me.
‘I thought we were going next week.’
‘No time like the present, Carmen. Seize the day,’ she says. ‘You only ever get one shot in this life.’
‘But you’ve packed all your diet books.’
She dumps the box and looks at me, biting her lip. She tells me that we’re not really going on holiday after all. We’re going to live in Birmingham for a bit, just the two of us. For good.
She knocks on the door. ‘Carmen! Come on, Carmen, sweetheart. Open up.’
‘I want to stay here.’ I can’t believe she’s really doing this. I thought she’d change her mind. She can’t go now, not while Dad’s away. If I can get her to wait till he gets back, she might change her mind.
‘Carmen, I’m your mother. I’m not leaving you in an empty house all week.’
‘Yes you can!’ I say. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll wait for Dad. I’ll explain, I’ll tell him you’ve gone.’ She hasn’t packed half my stuff. My tracksuits, my best pair of trainers, all my posters.
She’s smiling now, I know, even though I can’t see her. ‘You can talk to him when he gets back, OK?’
Not OK. None of this is OK. I know other people’s parents split up, but they don’t leave town. Rachel Veasy’s mother moved her in with her new man six doors down the road from her old house.
‘But why do we have to leave?’
‘I’ll tell you if you open the door.’
I sit down with my back against the door. It’s all too fast.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘It just didn’t seem appropriate. Besides, I wasn’t sure myself until just now. I’ve just got to get out of here, Carmen. I’ve got to.’ She taps on the door. ‘We’ve got to go now. If we don’t go now, I’ll miss the moment. You’ll understand when you’re older, I promise you, you will.’
‘But I want to stay here with Dad.’
‘You can’t stay here on your own.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s against the law. I’d get locked up.’
‘So don’t go then.’
‘Carmen. Don�
��t make this difficult.’
‘But why can’t you stay with Dad? Why? I don’t want you to split up.’
She says she was going to tell me in the car. She’s been offered the job in Birmingham. ‘This is my chance, sweetheart, and your dad doesn’t want me to take it. I know it’s a big step, but it’s exciting.’ She’s pleading with me now.
When I open the door she’s rubbing her hands across her belly. She smiles at me, but there are tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. She grabs my hand. ‘I know it’s hard, sweetheart, I know, but you’re just going to have to be a big girl.’
She hugs me, her arms hard and bony. ‘It’ll all be fine, you’ll see. It’s an adventure.’
An adventure. Adventures are supposed to be exciting. Like trekking in the Amazon, or crossing the desert, or climbing Everest. Birmingham’s not an adventure, it’s embarrassing.
She holds the steering wheel tight as we power round the bends on the road to the motorway. ‘Don’t look back,’ she says. ‘You’ll turn to stone.’
She puts on the radio, it’s Friday-night dance music, hyper, hyped-up beats. She turns it up and taps the steering wheel in time with the music, her wedding ring making a click-click against the plastic.
‘Everything’s changing, Carmen. We can’t afford to stand still. I can’t afford to stand still. I want a piece of the action. I’m not too old. I’m only thirty-five you know, that’s not really very old at all.’
It seems ancient to me, but I don’t say anything. The dark clouds that have been chasing us since Yorkshire finally block out the evening sun. It starts to rain and lorries throw up waves of spray as we pass them on the motorway.
‘At least I got the car,’ she says. ‘At least I got the car.’
He’ll go mad when he sees that it’s gone. I squeeze my eyes together, really tight, and try to send a message to him. I want him to know that this wasn’t my idea.
She starts going on about him and Moira. Repeating herself, on and on, like she can’t stop. She says it’s only fair that she should get something from Dad. That she can be a career woman too. The car is full of her voice, underlined by the droning of the engine.
‘He doesn’t think I can do it,’ she says. ‘He thinks I need him. I’ll show him what I need.’
She turns to look at me, taking her eyes off the road.
All I can smell is the sickly leather off the seats, the whiff of exhaust fumes. ‘I feel sick,’ I say.
‘For God’s sake.’ She pulls over sharply into the hard shoulder and leans across me to open my door. ‘Do it outside, not in the car.’ She pushes me, her hand against the small of my back. ‘Go on. You shouldn’t eat so much.’
Once I’m outside I don’t feel sick any more. ‘I’m all right now,’ I say.
In the twilight the West Midlands twinkles like a fairground. The sky on the horizon is a murky pink and the air starts to smell of rubbish. The traffic gets heavier; more cars, headlights blinding us. We pass supermarkets, factories, warehouses, tower blocks. Everything is massive, much bigger than at home.
She says we’re only going to stop with Nana and Grandad for a couple of days. ‘I tell you, Carmen, a couple of days with those two is more than enough for anyone.’
As we get closer to Birmingham, the tower blocks close in around us. There are lights everywhere, tail lights, stop-go signs, street lights. It’s like we’re being pulled by a current, the car carried along by the momentum of the traffic towards the underpass.
I never imagined it would look like this. I thought it would be grey like an old photo, chimneys belching black smoke, sooty children playing in the dirt. Something in me fizzes.
‘Look at it,’ she says with a sigh. ‘Whole world of opportunity.’ She whoops and turns the radio up even louder. ‘You gotta be yourself,’ she sings along with the music, ‘and no one else.’
Nana lives in Hall Green in the middle of a wide, winding street. Mum reverses into a space between a shiny red Toyota and a battered Nissan Sunny, hitting the kerb and swearing.
‘Where do they live?’ I ask, looking at the long, low bungalows that sit squatly on their patches of lawn.
‘Over there,’ Mum points across the road at a house half hidden by an unruly fern hedge. ‘Behind all the greenery.’ Long straggles protrude out into the road. ‘It’s your grandad,’ she sighs. ‘He’s too bloody lazy to cut it.’
Nana’s house has gold carpets and beige curtains. It smells funny, of damp or drains or old people, I don’t know which. The kitchen is full of fake fruit: bananas, oranges, grapefruit, peaches, pears, plums. I can see the wind-up kiwi fruit I sent her for her birthday on top of the microwave. Even the fruit bowl with its sag of grapes is hard and shiny and made from moulded plastic.
Nana hugs me tight and holds me close, stroking my hair. She smells of fags and cooking and cheap perfume. Her body is squashy as a cushion.
‘You’ve grown so much.’
‘She has,’ Mum says. ‘In the wrong direction.’
Nana has glasses with red frames that are too big for her face. They have the kind of lenses in that go darker in strong light. She’s wearing a black cardigan that stretches over her bum. Around her waist is a bulge of fat that makes her look like she’s wearing a rubber ring.
‘Sit yourselves down. I’ve made tea.’
She gets a big tray of pizza out of the oven.
‘It’s only frozen, but they’re quite nice these ones, got stuff in the crusts.’
‘I’m on a diet,’ my mother says, tapping open her cigarettes.
Nana frowns. ‘You’re not still going on about all that are you, Maria? Carmen, you’ll have some tea, won’t you?’
The light in the kitchen hurts my eyes. It’s too bright, showing up all the veins under my skin. I have veins on my wrist that look like someone’s drawn them with biro. If I touch them with my fingertips they make my toes feel funny.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Mum asks.
‘Where d’you think?’ Nana cuts the pizza into uneven quarters. She puts a huge piece in front of Mum even though she acts as if it isn’t there.
‘You should be pleased he’s not here, Maria. You don’t want to hear the things he’s been saying about you.’
‘Shhh,’ Mum says, nodding at me.
I smile at them and crunch into my pizza.
Nana makes me a bed in the lounge from the sofa cushions because there’s only one spare room and Mum’s having that. Nana suggested we share the bed, but Mum turned up her nose.
‘Just because I gave birth to her, doesn’t mean I want to sleep next to her.’
The carpet smells funny and the cushions keep moving apart, making me slip down the gaps. When I fall asleep I dream of us in the car, driving on and on into the blackness, never stopping. Mum is talking to me but her voice has slowed down, distorted. She sounds like she’s yawning, and when I turn to look at her she’s got her mouth wide open. For a moment I think she’s trying to swallow me.
I wake up suddenly, sitting upright, gasping for air. It’s still dark and there are voices outside, a car engine turning over. Footsteps walk quickly then start running, a dog barks loudly next door. The air hums with noise, even now in the middle of the night. It’s not like at home, where everything was so quiet; where if I listened too long to the silence I could convince myself that I was deaf.
4
The hedge is starting to block out the light. It’s already grown halfway up the front windows.
‘I tell him,’ Nana says to Mum before he comes down for breakfast, ‘but he won’t do anything about it. It’s depressing me.’
Nana has cooked a big breakfast of sausages, beans, bacon, eggs, and black pudding for Grandad. My mother makes a face when Nana puts a plate in front of her. Grandad coughs from behind his paper. He hasn’t said a word to my mother yet.
‘You all right then, Dad?’ she says, sticking a menthol Superking between her lips.
Grandad looks at her over the top of yesterda
y’s Evening Mail. ‘Doing better than you, I expect. You left him for good?’
She bites her lip. ‘Trial separation.’
Nana puts a plate of breakfast in front of me and snatches my mother’s cigarette out of her mouth before she can light it. ‘Not at breakfast, for God’s sake, girl.’
Nana has given me a plateful of food: two sausages, two eggs, two bits of bacon and fried bread and beans. My mother raises her eyebrows at me and pushes her nose back so she looks like a pig.
‘I’m going outside for a fag,’ she says.
When she’s gone the room is quiet except for the sounds of us eating: scraping forks across plates; Grandad grunting over his black pudding; Nana licking smears of ketchup from her lips. I look at my mother’s food congealing on the plate.
‘I knew it wouldn’t last,’ Grandad says putting his knife and fork down. ‘That Brian’s always fancied himself too much for my liking.’
‘Ray, please, not in front of Carmen.’
They both look at me. I crunch on my last bit of fried bread, the meaty oil oozing out over my tongue. ‘Can I have her breakfast?’ I ask.
Mum has packed our old wicker picnic hamper with her food. A box of Power Shakes™, fat-free yogurts and spreads, rye crispbreads and bags of bran and apples that she boils up with sweeteners for breakfast. I watch her slicing an apple into thin slivers.
‘You’ve got egg on your chin,’ she says, wiping it off with a bit of kitchen roll.
‘When can I see Dad?’ I ask.
She narrows her eyes, puts a few heaped spoons of bran into her apples. ‘You can ring him when he gets back.’
‘You never told me you were separating,’ I say, accusingly.
‘I don’t tell you everything.’
When he gets back I’ll tell him I want to live with him. I don’t want to stay here all my life. I want to hang out with Janice in the park, race Dad on Wipeout.
There are pictures of Mum all round Nana’s house. Above the fire there’s one of her wedding day. I’m in a little shiny dress with paper wings strapped to my back. I was meant to be a fairy but I’ve got my face scrunched up like I’m about to cry. My mother is beautiful: flowers coiled in her red hair, her dress a shimmery pea-green. Dad is in a morning suit, grinning and holding up a champagne glass.
