Massive

by Julia Bell

  The flat has two bedrooms with windows that face out on to the city, a lounge with a small kitchen and a bathroom. There’s a balcony, the door leading out of Mum’s bedroom. It’s windy, the air howling round us, like it wants to pick us up and throw us off, send us flying out into space. Mum puts her arms out.

  ‘Oooh, isn’t it bracing?’

  I stand with my back to the wall, edging out, inch by inch, as if I’m on a small ledge, not a balcony. The noise of the wind and the traffic is deafening.

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, you won’t fall off. Look.’ She pushes against the balcony, lifting herself up off her feet.

  ‘Mum!’ My heart sinks to my stomach. ‘I don’t like it.’

  The wind blows her hair across her face, into her mouth. ‘I don’t like it. Afraid I’d jump off, were you? Bless.’ She gives me a pitying look.

  There’s hardly any furniture, only one bed, and a mattress on the floor in what Mum says is my room. No TV, no phone, and only a small, uncomfortable futon sofa. There are thick, pink, nylon curtains to match the carpet. Mum makes a face at them. ‘We’ll have to do something about those.’

  I help her get our stuff out of the car. It takes ages to get everything up in the lifts. ‘We won’t be here for ever,’ she says. ‘It’s just a stop gap, a stepping stone.’

  She unpacks all her cleaning things from one of the boxes.

  ‘Billy’s not very houseproud. I can cope with scruffy if I have to, but I can’t deal with unhygienic.’ She gives me some bedding. ‘Here, go and do your bed.’

  She plugs the stereo in, tunes the radio to Choice FM. I can hear her from my bedroom, doing karaoke in the kitchen, trying to sing all the high notes with Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.

  There isn’t a wardrobe or anything, so I can’t really unpack. I arrange my trainers in a row against the wall. I didn’t even bring any posters to put on the walls.

  ‘You know what’s so great about having our own place is that there isn’t any food,’ she says, using a Brillo pad to scrub the grill pan. She looks up at me, wipes hair out of her eyes with her wrist. ‘Makes everything so much easier.’

  Later she makes tea from her hamper. Weight Watchers beans on toast for me. Fat-free yogurt with four tablespoons of bran for her. We sit on the futon, side by side. She eats her yogurt slowly with a teaspoon, putting the spoon in her mouth again and again, sucking the yogurt off with her lips a layer at a time. She’s only on her third teaspoon by the time I’ve finished my beans.

  ‘Here,’ she says, handing me the pot, still nearly full, to throw away. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  Out come her catalogues and magazines. Her new job starts in a week and she says she needs to familiarize herself with their range. She spreads them on the carpet in front of her and kneels down in front of them, making notes. The clothes are cheaper than Mrs Walton’s but still quite expensive. All their winter coats are over a hundred pounds. The classy end of the high street, Mum says, the kind of place that sells suits for work and dresses for cocktail parties.

  ‘You know, Linda looked fantastic in a Galliano version of that frock in Milan.’ She points to one of the dresses in the catalogue. ‘She’s pregnant, you know, and she still looks amazing. Mrs Walton’s met her at the shows once. Said she was every bit as beautiful as her photographs.’ She pauses. ‘Bitch.’

  She goes quiet and I ignore her, flicking through her magazines instead, looking at all the clothes, the make-up, the silky faces and shiny skin.

  ‘We’ll be like sisters, you and me,’ Mum says, smiling. ‘City slickers.’ The radio has started playing trance music, all strings and chorus; she turns it up and lights another menthol Superking.

  Even with the curtains shut my room isn’t properly dark. I put my head underneath them and hold on tight to the window ledge. The clouds are pink with the reflection of the city lights. I hold my nails up and watch the stars sparkle against the window, wriggling them until they look like part of the sky.

  I lie down again but I can’t sleep. There’s too much noise. I can pick out individual sounds, brakes squealing, cars revving, people shouting, the wind gusting, every now and then air whistling through the cracks in the walls. I’m just drifting off when a loud buzzing noise starts, and doesn’t stop; though sometimes it seems to move further away. I get up and look out the window. It’s a helicopter. I can feel my heart start to beat faster. There must be something bad happening.

  I knock on her door. ‘Mum? What’s going on?’

  She doesn’t answer, so I open the door; she’s asleep, a mask over her eyes. Her sleeping pills are on the side by the clock radio. The buzzing outside seem to be getting louder and louder. I shake her.

  ‘Mu-um, Mum.’

  She stirs. ‘Ngh, what is it?’ she says, her voice thick with sleep.

  ‘Outside, there’s a helicopter.’

  She lifts her eye mask up and blinks at me. ‘Police, darling, don’t worry about it, now . . .’ She settles herself back on the bed and seems to fall asleep again.

  ‘But Mu-um.’ I pinch her arm but she doesn’t flinch.

  The noise has gone further away but I can hear it coming back. It seems to be circling. I go back to my room and look out of the window, wrapping myself in the curtain. I can see it in the distance, swarming like a fat black insect, breaking up the darkness with its searchlight.

  6

  In the morning she laughs at me for being frightened of the helicopters. ‘Scaredeycat,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to toughen up a bit. Get streetwise.’

  She sits me down on the futon, gently pressing my shoulders with her fingers, whispering now. ‘You know, I realized something a long time ago. If you feel anything, anything at all, for whatever reason, even the smallest little twinge, and you think, oh no, I’m going to start crying, or I’m going to go and eat something I shouldn’t, squeeze your stomach muscles together really tight, or bite your lip, or dig your fingernails into your palms. Control it. Don’t let anyone see that you’re upset. That way you’ll always win. Always.’

  When I look up, her expression is invincible.

  She gives me some hydro-repair anti-ageing cream to rub under my eyes, so they won’t look red and swollen. While she brushes my hair she tells me about Billy. She says she wants me nice because he hasn’t seen me since I was in a pram.

  ‘Don’t want him thinking I haven’t been looking after you,’ she says.

  I’ve chipped my nails. One of the stickers has come off, leaving a star-shaped hole in the polish. I pick at it while I wait for Mum to finish her make-up. My skin is tired and prickly. We haven’t even had breakfast yet.

  ‘Don’t talk to me now, I’m concentrating.’

  We’re stalled at a junction. Cars sound their horns, buses squeal as they brake behind us. Mum is going hot and red, turning the key in the ignition again and again. ‘I told Brian it needed a service.’

  When we’re moving again, zipping towards Five Ways, she asks me how much I think the car is worth.

  I shrug. I don’t really know how much cars cost. Loads, I expect. She tells me that it’s worth thirty thousand new. Second-hand it ought to fetch ten, twelve. ‘Keep us going for a month or two.’

  ‘I thought we were only borrowing it.’

  ‘He can always buy another one,’ she says, running a red light. ‘It’s only what I’m owed.’

  We turn a corner off the main road, down a narrow side street. At the end is a wooden-clad pub that stands on the brow of the hill looking down over a big, leafy park. There’s bunting tied from the roof to the telegraph poles and a big red and gold banner above the door that says:

  Steers. All U Can Eat. £10.

  Chalkboards propped up by the door announce the attractions: BIG SCREEN SPORTS. FRIDAYS KARAOKE.

  We park the car in the Staff Only space. ‘Well, here we are,’ she says, yanking the handbrake.

  Bolts slide across the door. He’s wearing leather trousers, cowboy boots and a dirty white s
hirt with a crumpled leather waistcoat. His spiky black hair flops over his eyes and he rubs a fat hand over his gut. The air around him stinks of chips and cigarettes.

  ‘Orright, Maria, thought you were the cleaner.’

  ‘Hello, Billy,’ Mum says, sounding a bit put out. ‘What’s this then? Your Boon look, is it?’

  ‘Ha ha.’ He hugs her clumsily, grabbing her arm to keep his balance.

  ‘Mind the jacket, it’s Versace,’ she says, wiping her sleeve as if she’s dusting him off. ‘This is Carmen.’

  He bends down to look at me. His skin is pale and freckled; I’m sure he has eyeliner round his eyes. I get a waft of stale breath. ‘You’re a beauty, aren’t you?’ His voice is really raspy, like he’s got a throat full of sandpaper. He pulls a strange expression. ‘Just like your mum.’

  Mum touches his arm. ‘Don’t be a tease.’

  ‘Come in, come in.’ He stands back from the door.

  Inside is a huge, square barn of a room. Everything is made of logs. There are logs for chairs, logs for tables, even the walls are made of logs sawn in half and nailed to the bricks. There are pictures of lakes and mountains and pine forests on the walls, and a servery built to look like an outdoor barbecue, together with flame-effect lighting that flickers over the bark of the fake-log fire.

  ‘I tell you, Maria, best thing I ever did getting into this game. Everyone round here’s pissed off with curry.’

  ‘It’s certainly a surprise, Billy.’

  ‘Entrepreneurial, Maria, that’s what I am now. Entrepreneurial.’

  We follow him across the restaurant to the bar. The tables are covered with scrunched napkins, plates, bottles, ashtrays, glasses, baskets of cold chips, even, on one, party hats and streamers.

  ‘Scuse the mess,’ Billy says, side-stepping a chicken wing.

  Stools covered in cowskin material stand haphazardly around the bar. There’s a stuffed buffalo head behind the bar, glass eyes glistening. Billy sees me looking and pats it on the nose.

  ‘Fancy a drink? Pernod and black, like old times?’ He pushes a glass against the optics. ‘I used to go to school with your mother, Carmen,’ he says. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘Don’t start, Billy,’ Mum says.

  We sit at the only clean table in the place. Still set with knives and forks and napkins. It’s a big, round table made from a sawn piece of trunk. Sap has risen through the varnish, making sticky bobbles on the surface. Billy comes over with a bottle of Coke and two Pernods. He downs his in one, making a face after he’s swallowed it.

  ‘Agh,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘That’s better. You been to see Lisa yet?’

  Mum shakes her head. ‘One step at a time, Billy. Besides, she knows where to find me.’

  ‘I have,’ I say, holding up my nails.

  ‘Oooh, there’s pretty.’ He cocks his head to one side, his black hair flopping over his eyes and looks at Mum. ‘Why didn’t you stay in touch?’ He reaches a fat hand across the table but Mum pulls hers away, puts them in her lap.

  She shrugs and looks at me. ‘Things changed,’ she says.

  Billy takes a cigarette out of her packet. ‘Haven’t lost all yer bad habits though.’

  The doorbell rings; this time it is the cleaners. Three women in blue overalls come in. They go out the back, start clanking around, getting Hoovers out of the cupboards, shaking out plastic sacks.

  I look at Billy as he walks back to the table. He swaggers a bit in his boots, though his trousers are too tight for him. He looks like he could be famous. I don’t know anyone at home who looks like him. I am amazed that Mum knows him at all. He looks like the kind of man she would sneer at on the street. He keeps giving me funny looks, when he thinks I’m not looking – perv.

  ‘What about the car then?’ Mum says. ‘Can you shift it for me?’

  Billy lights his fag. ‘I can give you five thousand for it, Maria. Cash,’ he says, his voice full of smoke.

  ‘Oh, c’mon, Billy, it’s worth loads more.’

  ‘Not without papers it’s not. Take it or leave it.’

  Mum looks at me out of the corner of her eye, and takes a sip on her Pernod.

  ‘All right then,’ she says.

  When we leave, Billy gives her an envelope full of twenty-pound notes. She stuffs it in her handbag.

  ‘I’ve taken your first two months’ rent out of that. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to look after you, Maria.’ He winks. ‘I always knew you’d come back. Country life doesn’t suit you, gel, this is where you belong. Come and have your tea later if you like. On the house.’ He kisses her on the cheek, puckering his lips like a suction pad. The kiss leaves a wet trail on Mum’s cheek, which glistens as she steps out into the sunlight.

  ‘Wouldn’t eat there if you paid me,’ Mum says, turning up her nose as the door clunks shut behind us. She insists that we walk back into town. She says it’s not far and that we need the exercise. It’s miles. All down the main road, traffic screaming around us, Mum walks really fast, and I get out of breath trying to keep up with her.

  We walk past houses and offices and restaurants and off-licences and chip shops. Mum has her face set, her head down, her shoulders hunched. People step out of our way as we come towards them.

  My sandals are rubbing my feet and by the time we get to Broad Street I have to stop.

  ‘It hurts,’ I say, looking at the trickle of blood on my heel.

  Mum sighs. ‘Well I haven’t got any plasters. Here, try a bit of tissue.’ She folds up a square of bog roll and pushes it under the strap.

  It works for a bit but then it falls off again and we have to go into Boots for plasters.

  Bending down in the shop to stick the plaster on, she mutters at me, ‘If you weren’t so heavy, Carmen, you wouldn’t put so much pressure on your feet.’

  In town we buy a toaster and a kettle and some curtains and a couple of table lamps. Mum says she doesn’t want to go mad, but it seems like we buy something in every shop. At the cash desk, Mum gets her wad of money out and peels off notes like she’s in a gangster film or something. On the way to Marks and Spencer we pass her new workplace. A narrow little shop with a tall front window. There’s summer wear in the window. Strappy tops, shorts, mini skirts, wrap-around frocks that look like sarongs, string handbags, sandals.

  She makes me wait outside while she goes in. I can see her at the back of the shop, shaking hands with one of the sales assistants. When she comes out she’s beaming. ‘Good to get your feet under the table as soon as you can in this line of work.’

  We go to the Pavilions and spend ages in The Pier choosing candlesticks, tea towels, a novelty toast rack.

  We’re standing outside McDonald’s, Mum trying to decide whether we should go to Rackhams to look at their steamers. ‘It’s so much healthier than boiling, and you know it was the one thing I forgot to pack.’

  ‘Mum, I’m starving.’ I wasn’t going to say anything, but it’s nearly three and there’s still no sign of her stopping for food. ‘Can I have a Big Mac?’

  She shrugs. ‘If you want to behave like a pig.’ She stares at me.

  ‘I want a Big Mac,’ I say again, staring back. She gives me a fiver.

  ‘I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.’ Her mouth twists shut, making her look mean. ‘Miss Piggy.’

  7

  There’s a battered looking Ford Fiesta parked at the bottom of the tower on the double yellow lines, big patches of rust up the back, a dented side panel. As we pass it, the horn goes. Someone puts their head out of the window.

  ‘Maria! Carmen!’

  It’s Dad.

  He gets out of the car. His clothes are creased, he’s got his tie knotted halfway down his chest, his hair’s ruffled. He looks like he hasn’t shaved for a few days. Mum just stops when she sees him, hides her shopping bags behind her legs.

  ‘Brian,’ she says, her voice all tight and funny. ‘Who told you I was here?’

  ‘I want the car, Maria.’ />
  ‘Too late, I sold it. And I’ve spent the money. Looks like you got yourself a new one, anyway.’ She nods at the car and smirks.

  Dad says he’s worried about her, that he wants her to come back.

  ‘Should have thought about that before.’ Mum holds out her hands to him. They’re trembling. ‘Look!’ she says. ‘Look! It’s you that’s done this to me, Brian. You. It may have escaped your notice but I actually had a life before I met you.’

  Dad looks at me. ‘Wasn’t me that wanted it to be like this.’

  Mum gives me her handbag. ‘Go let yourself in, sweetheart.’

  He never raises his voice, even though he has plenty of reasons to shout. It’s Mum who does all the screaming. I can hear her calling him names as I get into the lift. Dad’s voice is low and sad and tired, like he knows it’s not worth arguing.

  When I get into the flat I go out on the balcony, biting my lip to stop myself feeling scared. I peek over quickly, in case the concrete gives way. I can’t see them, though the car’s still there, a big rust patch on the roof.

  She comes out on to the balcony, stalks up and down, her heels clack-clacking on the concrete.

  ‘He wants a word with you,’ she says, puffing out her cheeks, her hands on her hips.

  We sit in the car listening to the radio, Dad chain-smoking cigarettes. I don’t know what to say to him.

  ‘Bought Grand Turismo the other day,’ he says, eventually.

  ‘Turbo or normal?’ I ask.

  ‘Didn’t know there was a difference.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Like, Dad, it’s been in all the magazines. The turbo version is loads better.’

  ‘Uh, I guess I wasn’t concentrating when I bought it,’ he says. Then he clears his throat and asks me if Mum’s looking after herself.