Camera slowly scans wall and trellis before resting on the Batemans’ house. More specifically, on the balcony of Joss’s attic bedroom. The angle is difficult and the camera can only catch a sidelong view, but as the balcony doors open, it picks up the sound of Bob Marley singing ‘One Love’. FLORA and JOSS appear, silhouetted against the light. A flame is struck, blown out. A cigarette tip glows in the dark.
Joss drapes his arm around Flora, pulls her close. They kiss. She leans her head on his shoulder. Eventually, he stubs out his cigarette and they go back in.
Sunday 13 November
Sunday 13 November
Today is Twig’s birthday. He got his sleeping bag, like he asked for. Zoran gave him a Swiss Army Knife and I got him the SAS Survival Guide. We had cake and candles this afternoon. Last night, Mum, Twig and Jas went to the Natural History Museum with six boys from Twig’s class. They did ask if I wanted to go, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I stayed home with Zoran while they ran around with dinosaurs and Flora was next door with Joss while his grandparents went to the theatre.
There is nothing else to say.
Monday 14 November
I tried to look ill when I came down to breakfast, but the Babes had got there before me and nobody took a blind bit of notice. They were all arguing and looking exhausted because none of them slept at all on Saturday night.
‘It’s not fair!’ Twig was raging. ‘Why do we have to go to school when you are here? Why?’
‘But I am not here!’ cried Mum. ‘I have to go to the office! I have meetings! I won’t be at home, so why should you be?’
‘We don’t expect you to stay at home,’ whispered Jas. ‘We know you have to work. We want to come to the office with you.’
I sighed and drooped hopefully over my cornflakes. Nobody noticed except Zoran, who just rolled his eyes.
‘I can’t possibly take you to the office, darlings,’ said Mum. ‘It’s just not done.’
‘Then I don’t see the point of you coming home at all,’ said Jas. ‘Come on, Twig. Let’s go to school.’
The Babes marched out of the kitchen with their noses in the air.
‘Wait!’ Mum tried to drain her coffee cup and spilt it down her blouse. ‘You can’t go alone! Darlings, wait, I have to change my shirt! You musn’t go alone!’
‘Please don’t let us keep you from your fascinating job,’ Jas called out from the hall.
My eight-year-old sister standing up for herself.
‘You’re not ill, Blue,’ said Zoran when they’d all gone. ‘Whatever music it is, you can’t keep avoiding it.’
‘Life,’ I said, ‘is not all about music.’
‘Nice if it was though,’ said Zoran, but I was already on my way out, though it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. I have been leaving early to avoid Joss and Flora, but today when I flung open the door he was already leaning against our garden wall, waiting.
‘Flora’s not ready,’ I said.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was waiting for you.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I think I blushed. I may have said, ‘Oh.’ All I know for sure is that we started walking.
Together.
Me and him.
‘It’s been ages since we last talked,’ he said.
I managed to squeak something about being busy. Joss said, ‘I just wanted to make sure, you know, that you’re cool with me and Flora,’ and I sort of laughed and said ‘Oh, super cool, I think it’s great,’ and he said that was a relief, because he really valued our friendship and he didn’t want me to think that just because he was going out with my big sister we couldn’t be friends.
My big sister. I tried to make myself look taller. I may have stuck my chest out. I wished I was wearing something more interesting than jeans and navy Converse.
‘Because I’m always here for you, Blue,’ Joss was saying. ‘You know that. All that stuff you wrote me about, your sister and everything. I’ve talked about it loads with Flora . . .’ Joss has been talking about me with Flora?
‘And I want you to know that any time you want to talk to me, I mean any time you feel you need to . . .’
‘I don’t,’ I mumbled.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I don’t talk about Iris with anybody!’ I thought I was going to cry again. ‘I can’t believe you talked to Flora about her!’
‘But Blue, it wasn’t anything she didn’t know!’ Joss had to break into a run to keep up with me. ‘I didn’t realise it would upset you!’
‘IT WAS PRIVATE!’ I roared.
I couldn’t bear to walk with him after that. I ran on ahead, and he didn’t follow.
Thursday 17 November
Dodi and I are officially reconciled, I think, and it is largely thanks to Jake Lyall, which just goes to show what a strange turn my life has taken, as Grandma might say.
I hadn’t spoken to the boys since they showed me their skateboard designs, but they pounced on me at lunchtime when I tried to sneak off to the library as usual instead of going to the canteen.
‘You’ve got to eat,’ said Jake.
Colin nodded.
‘IF YOU DON’T EAT,’ yelled Tom, ‘YOU WILL DIE.’
‘I am NOT HUNGRY,’ I said firmly. ‘And I have homework to finish.’
By two o’clock, my tummy was rumbling. Jake looked smug and gave me half a Mars bar. Mr Maths confiscated it.
By half-past three I was so hungry I could have cried. Jake made Colin give me his after-school Twix.
‘He doesn’t really like them anyway,’ he said.
‘It’s true,’ Colin lied, practically drooling.
‘JAKE WANTS YOU TO COME TO THE PARK WITH US,’ boomed Tom.
Jake went bright red. ‘It’s floodlit until five o’clock,’ he mumbled. ‘We thought we could teach you some moves.’
‘Moves?’ I said.
‘SKATEBOARDS!’ yelled Tom.
‘Oh, cool!’ cried Dodi. I swear she just appeared from nowhere. ‘Can I come?’
The thing with Dodi is, people still don’t know what to say to her since the whole peeing on the floor incident, and even though she’s really good at looking like she couldn’t care less I know her well enough to know that she minds a lot. She stood there looking all cute and cool in her blue jacket and silver beanie and her long blonde hair, but the way the boys stared she might as well have been an alien. But then Colin kind of blushed and stammered, ‘Sure, the more the merrier’ and it was like a spell had been broken. Dodi beamed and the boys started messing around and suddenly I was being swept along towards the park without having once said that I wanted to go.
I have never thought about skateboards before. Skateboarding is just something boys like Tom and Jake and Colin do, and I have no interest in it. But in the park this afternoon the same thing happened as when I saw Zoran at the piano. They were different. Not so much Tom and Colin, but Jake was like another person. It’s quite hard to know what Jake is thinking most of the time, mainly because he is usually asleep, so it was quite a surprise to see him either concentrating like mad or grinning his head off, and it’s funny how people look better when they’re happy.
The first time I stood on Jake’s skateboard, I tried to move forward by sort of wiggling my bottom, screamed and fell off.
Dodi got cross and told the boys not to laugh. She said they were rubbish teachers, and then she leapt on to Jake’s board and glided around like she was some sort of Mediterranean yacht. It was actually very impressive.
‘Unreal,’ said Jake. They all stared at her, and I could tell that just like that Dodi was cool again. She sailed back up to us, jumped off Jake’s board and flipped it up with her back foot.
‘Where d’you learn to skate like that?’ whispered Colin.
‘Around,’ shrugged Dodi.
‘Teach me,’ I ordered, then I added ‘please?’ because I sounded so bossy.
We looked at each other for a moment like we did outside the art block after the
rat incident, except this was different too, and then Dodi smiled – not the smirky half-smile I have grown used to when she looks at me, but this huge grin which showed off her turquoise train tracks and which made her look like the old Dodi.
‘All right then,’ she said.
The boys messed about on Tom and Colin’s boards, and Dodi showed me how to place my feet and find my balance. She showed me how to move by shifting my weight, and how to protect myself when I fell off, which was loads. We stayed until way after dark, and only left when the parks police came round in their car and told us the park was closing. I thanked Dodi when we left her at the end of her street and she grinned again and rubbed her nose like she always does when she is pleased and embarrassed at the same time and asked if I wanted to walk to school with her.
‘Like we used to,’ she said. I swear I could feel Iris watching us, and I don’t mean from heaven or wherever she is, I mean she was right there with us, just hiding in the shadows.
‘Not tomorrow,’ Dodi said. ‘I’ve got to go in early for choir practice, but Monday?’
‘Say yes,’ hissed Iris.
‘I’d love to,’ I said, and I meant it. I really meant it.
I could tell Zoran had been worrying about me when I got home. I thought he was going to get cross but he took one look at me and said ‘I’ve made a cherry and almond cake’ instead. He sat with me while I ate three slices and drank two glasses of milk. I told him about my skateboarding lesson and he frowned and said shouldn’t I have elbow pads and helmets and stuff.
‘Honestly, Zoran,’ I said. ‘You’re such an old woman.’
‘I’m just doing my job,’ he grumbled, but he was smiling. ‘Your cheeks are pink,’ he said. ‘And your nose is very red.’
‘I’m sorry I forgot to text you,’ I said.
‘Not important.’ He picked up my plate and dropped a kiss on top of my head as he passed.
Friday 18 November
Flora is trying to stop us going to see her play
Normally, Flora is the sort of person who, when people are singing her Happy Birthday, tells them to sing louder. She is the sort of person who jumps up shouting me, me! when they ask for volunteers at the circus. At Grandpa’s funeral, they say she danced on the kitchen table in nothing but her underwear and a feather boa she found in the dressing-up box because people weren’t paying enough attention to her. Granted, she was only three. But still.
Flora is a show-off. And practically begging us not to come and see her in a play is the opposite of showing off. This was the conversation last night:
FLORA
I just don’t think it’s suitable for children.
JAS
But it’s FAIRY TALES!!!
TWIG
Plus we’re not children. Or rather, we are, but so are you.
FLORA
Excuse me but you are half my age. And these fairy tales are bloody and gory and extremely disturbing. Loads of people die in them. At the end the wicked queen has to dance in burning slippers until she drops quite dead, and there is the smell of burning flesh.
TWIG
How many people?
JAS
I hate it when people die.
TWIG
More than in War and Peace?
ZORAN
Far fewer than in War and Peace. I have looked on the Players’ website and they state quite clearly that the Christmas Extravaganza is family entertainment. Your sister is merely suffering from stage fright.
FLORA
I do not suffer from stage fright.
JAS
I’M NOT GOING IF PEOPLE DIE!
ZORAN
Twig and I will go with Blue. Jas, nobody is going to force you to see a show you don’t want to see. We will find you a babysitter.
FLORA
You are the babysitter.
And so on. I think the argument would have gone on for ever, if Dad hadn’t come home right in the middle of it and said damn right, we were all going, because this family always pulls together, isn’t that right, team?
Dad looks different. His hair has grown very long, and it’s sort of shaggy and almost completely grey. He’s got these new glasses, the black-rimmed ones like the young men in Home Sweet Home, and even though he still wears the same old tweed jacket it doesn’t look quite the same, maybe because he is now wearing it with designer jeans and has an iPhone. It is extremely disconcerting.
‘You will hate it,’ Flora assured him. ‘It’s a completely unprofessional production. The music is terrible and the dancing is even worse.’
‘All the more reason to support you,’ said Dad.
Then Twig said ‘Are the slippers really on fire and are they really that gory?’ and Flora said ‘Yes, Little Red Riding Hood cuts out Hansel and Gretel’s hearts and Prince Charming and Snow White roast the Three Little Pigs for their wedding breakfast’ and Jas said ‘Do they actually roast real pigs onstage?’ which is when Flora started to scream and ran upstairs shouting that we were ruining her life. Then Dad went upstairs as well, but he didn’t go and speak to her. Instead he went into his room, and when he came out half an hour later he was wearing a dinner jacket and had slicked his long hair back. He hugged us all goodnight and said he had to go to a meeting, and he hoped he would be able to explain everything soon.
So much for family always pulling together. I wish I could ask Flora what she thinks of all this.
Saturday 19 November
This is how yesterday ended.
So Dad went out to his mystery meeting and Flora left shortly afterwards, saying that she was going to Tamsin’s and not to wait up because she would probably spend the night. I’m not sure Zoran believed her but I think he is tired of fighting with her, so he just shrugged and told her to text him to let him know what she decides to do.
Mum is in Prague at the Bütylicious Annual Sales Conference. The Babes, Zoran and I ordered a Chinese takeaway and watched Kung Fu Panda, Zoran’s idea of a themed evening, which worked surprisingly well, considering Jas hates Chinese food, Zoran only likes films in foreign languages, and Twig stuck two chopsticks up his nose. We went to bed at half-past ten. Flora hadn’t texted to say what she was doing, and Zoran was pretending not to mind. I lay in bed listening to him pace up and down, then I heard him put the TV on and the next thing I knew someone was shaking me awake.
‘There are burglars in the garden,’ said Jas.
‘Ugh,’ I said.
‘They are throwing pebbles at my window.’ She pulled on my arm. I stopped trying to sleep.
‘Why on earth would burglars throw pebbles at your window?’ I asked.
‘To break in!’ cried Jas.
‘That makes no sense at all,’ I said. ‘And the last time we thought there was a burglar it turned out to be Zoran.’
‘Come and look.’
The flat roof outside my room means that I can’t see down on to the veranda, but the window from the Babes’ room looks straight down on to it. Jas and I crept through their bedroom to look.
‘Don’t let them see you!’ whispered Jas. ‘They might shoot you!’
‘They won’t shoot me,’ I hissed.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because they are not burglars, you idiot!’ I whispered more loudly. ‘They are Joss and Flora, behaving very strangely.’
We peered out, still hiding. Joss and Flora were being very peculiar. They were standing by the garden steps, at the bottom of the drainpipe Joss used to get up to my window. Flora kept trying to climb up it, but even though she has done it loads of times as soon as her feet left the ground she slid straight back down again. She gave up in the end and just stood there at the bottom of the drainpipe with her legs crossed like she does when she’s laughing so much it makes her want to pee.
‘What is the matter with her?’ asked Jas.
‘She’s drunk.’ We both jumped out of our skins. Twig was standing just behind us, looking at Flora and Joss through his binoculars. I put my han
d over Jas’s mouth to stop her from screaming.
‘But Flora never drinks,’ she said when I took my hand away.
‘She is behaving just like Dad did the last time we went to the Batemans’ Christmas party,’ said Twig. ‘When he kept topping up the punch with mini vodka bottles.’
‘Dad did that?’
Twig said Dad won the mini vodka bottles when they did Secret Santa at work and he had no idea what to do with them until he got to the Batemans’ party and decided it was a deserving cause.
‘He danced the polka with Mrs Bateman.’ I shuddered, remembering.
‘And now Flora is dancing with Joss,’ said Twig.
We looked out of the window again. Flora and Joss had given up on the drainpipe and were waltzing across the lawn.
‘Why are they holding their heads like that?’ asked Jas.
‘They are sharing iPod speakers,’ said Twig, who was still using his binoculars.
‘I still don’t like Joss because of what he did to the rats,’ said Jas. ‘But they do look lovely.’
Joss raised an arm, quite gracefully, and Flora twirled slowly beneath it. She kept twirling as they walked back towards the house, until she looked dizzy and fell into his arms, all tangled up in iPod cords. She put her arms around his neck and whispered something in his ear. He threw back his head, laughed and saw us all standing there, watching. He waved at us, then pointed at Flora and the window, as if he was saying what should I do?
‘We have to help them,’ said Jas.
‘Do we?’ I said.
‘Yes, Blue,’ said Jas. ‘We do.’
So we hatched this plan to rescue Flora without attracting Zoran’s attention, which involved Twig pretending he had had a nightmare and luring Zoran into the kitchen to make him some hot milk, while Jas and I dragged Flora round the side of the house to the street, back in through the front door and up to her room.
After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby Page 10
