I am looking for Helen’s Real Diary. I know now that my sister doesn’t keep it in her bedroom because I have searched every last corner and crevice of her space. Nor does she keep it in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the cupboard under the stairs, in the shed, in the cupboard under the sink, in the living-room, or in our mother’s bedroom. For a moment, I even wondered if she’d hidden it in my own bedroom. I’ve read The Prince by Machiavelli. I borrowed it from Rebecca. This morning I found myself lifting my pillows, blankets and the mattress, searching my own clothes drawers and calligraphy files to see if she’d tried to outwit me with this Machiavellian manoeuvre.
The study is the last place left for me to look.
Inside one of the desk drawers I see a tattered, blackened book of poetry. It falls open on a poem called ‘Rural Rhymes.’ I try to read it. A shepherdess sings ‘lurah-leigh, lurah-la’ to a shepherd. ‘Chimes’ is made to rhyme with ‘lines.’
‘What are you doing in here?’
I spin around. My sister’s standing in the doorway.
‘None of your business. Go away!’
‘We’re not allowed in here.’ Helen eyes Collected Works. ‘She paid fifty pounds for that book.’
I carefully replace Collected Works in the desk drawer.
My sister sidles over to the bookshelves in the far corner. She squats down, pulls titles off the shelf randomly, opens them up, and discards them in messy piles on the floor.
‘Stop following me everywhere!’ I hiss. ‘Why can’t you go away when I tell you to?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
Suddenly she squeals, puts a hand over her mouth and holds out a book. ‘Look!’
I take the book reluctantly, not wanting her to think that I’m offering any encouragement, but when I look at it I nearly drop it on the floor. Cartoon Japanese men with gigantic Things and outstretched fingers aim for smiling women with chopsticks poking out of their hairbuns and wide open legs.
My sister laughs at the expression on my face. I throw the book towards her. ‘Put it back. It’s disgusting.’
‘It’s funny!’ she says, turning more pages.
I can’t believe she finds this book amusing. She examines each drawing in detail, rotating the book as if she’s trying to identify exactly who owns which pair of legs and arms, revelling in the detail as if it’s a proper comic book like the Beano.
I march over to where she’s sitting, grab the Dirty Book out of her hands and stuff it back into the bookcase, trying not to look at the pictures as I do so. ‘Get out. You’re disturbing me.’
‘But what are you looking for?’ she asks, turning her head left and right as if she’s looking for something too. ‘I’ll help. Do you want a book to read? This one’s good.’ She takes Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose off the shelf and holds it out to me. ‘It’s really sad. The little girl only gets to see the man when the goose comes out of the sky…’
‘I know what it’s about. I read it ages ago.’
The longer she’s in here with me, the more I realise that she can’t possibly have hidden her Real Diary here. She throws no sneaky looks at particular spots in the room. She isn’t making any effort to leave the scene of the crime. She gives me no other clues to its whereabouts.
Leaving her by the bookcase, I stalk out, defeat
III. October
Sat 1st October
‘Would you like a go of my new bike?’
Katie Nelson stands simpering on the doorstep of number eleven. She’s wearing a pink Wonder Woman t-shirt and spotless white jeans. She obviously thinks she has an entitlement to come round to our house and ring our doorbell uninvited. Diamante studs twinkle in her ears and she reeks of her mum’s Chanel No. 5.
I refuse to let her in, even though she’s trying to edge forward to stop me closing the door. Her toenails are painted pink. Little by little, each toe creeps over the threshold and arrives on our battered coconut doormat.
‘It’s my birthday today,’ she says eagerly. ‘I’m twelve.’
I wish she would act her age.
This morning, when I nipped up the road to have a quick chat to Mr Phillips when he opened the shop, I saw Katie Nelson’s dad carrying the bicycle into their house. Pink balloons bobbed around on the handlebars.
Mr Phillips told me he was a bit too busy to talk this morning.
Katie’s taken off the balloons and tied them round her wrists. They bob around in the afternoon breeze. The whole pink vision ripples and throbs in the doorway of number eleven.
‘Unfortunately I’m a bit too busy to talk to you at the moment,’ I tell her.
I regret having opened the door. I’ve been trying to write a letter to my dad all morning and I’ve got another headache. Sometimes I don’t know what I should write in my letters to him.
‘My dad says I’m not allowed to let anybody ride it, but I’ll let you have a go of it if you like. We can go down the other side of the creek. They won’t see us there. I haven’t had a go of it yet.’
My curiosity is faintly aroused. It’s not like Katie Nelson to be disobedient like this. She obviously wants to impress me because I’m older than her. She thinks she can win me over with bribes.
The birthday bicycle is cerise and lilac, with silver spokes that gleam in the sunshine and a white leather saddlebag. A large pink basket is strapped to the front, and a wing-mirror has been fixed to each handlebar. A tinkerbell sticker clings to the rear mudguard.
Katie’s dog has stretched its lead as far away from our front door as possible. It pulls her arm backwards and dances around the front fence, fluffy and excited, sniffing, rolling the whites of its eyes at us. Somebody has wound a pink ribbon through its collar.
‘I’ve got my birthday money here,’ Katie says, pulling a pink purse out of a pink handbag and unfurling a crisp twenty pound note. ‘I’m not allowed to fritter it. I’ve got to save it for something special. You coming out?’
‘Yeah, okay then,’ I say, eyeing the purse as it disappears back into the handbag.
She tries to pass me the dog’s lead as I close the door, but I refuse because I hate little yappy dogs, so she locks the extending cord in place and winds the lead around one of the handlebars.
Carefully, Katie wheels her new possession down the hill past the pub, squeezing the brakes to stop it being pulled over. Whenever the dog catches a scent on the road, the bike jerks sideways.
We walk across the bridge and past the boatyard. The tide is out, leaving the hulls of the yachts exposed beside the jetties, keels plugged stiffly into the mud. Their pale, smooth bodies glisten in the sunshine.
The handbag sits in the front basket, zipped up.
We turn left onto the private road, and I look back across the creek, wondering what my sister is up to, regretting saying I’d come out with Katie Nelson. All the while as we walk, Katie tells me about her birthday presents, how many she got, how her mum made her a special breakfast this morning with hot chocolate in a rare bone china teacup that’s worth hundreds of pounds.
A truck trundles past, drowning out Katie’s voice. We stand aside and pull the dog into the verge. When the noise dies down and the exhaust fumes clear, Katie continues telling me how her mother brought the birthday presents over to the sofa, one by one. Her best present, the bicycle, was saved until last. Her dad gave it to her.
Another truck heaves past, engine roaring, spewing black exhaust in our faces. We stand in the tufty grass on the verge. The terrier yaps and strains at the lead. It would choke to death if it tried to swallow one of those hulky bones.
‘You can have first go,’ Katie says excitedly when the last truck has rumbled through the factory gates.
She unwinds the dog’s lead and holds the bike towards me. I grasp the handlebars and clamber up. She doesn’t know I can’t ride bikes.
Even though she’s nearly two years younger than me, Katie is a few inches taller. I wobble dangerously in the saddle, feeling too high of
f the ground. I can’t put my feet down to steady myself. The front wheel swings left and right uncontrollably.
‘I’ll show you.’ She almost pushes me off in her keenness to take possession of her precious birthday present.
‘Get off! I can do it.’ As I push her away, I fall off, and the bike clatters onto the road. The terrier starts barking uncontrollably. I’m sure the Nelsons will hear its terrible piercing noise across the creek, up the hill to the village.
‘My dad’ll kill me if you’ve damaged it.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ I say, rubbing my knee. I give her a dirty look, but at the same time, a pink rectangle in the basket of the bike catches my eye.
‘I’m going home.’ Katie’s chin starts to pucker.
‘Come on! ‘Let’s play Dukes of Hazard.’ I say, grabbing the handbag out of the basket and taking hold of the dog. ‘You’ll be loads better than me. Bet you can ride it really well.’
She jumps into the saddle and sets off.
‘Go on! Show me!’ I shout. ‘I bet you five pounds you’re too scared to go round the corner.’
With the balloons still tied to her wrists, Katie pedals faster and faster until she is a small speck at top of the road. Her hair flies behind her like ribbons. She doesn’t stop. Veering right, she speeds through the gates of the bone factory.
I hear the familiar clatter as a truck empties its load in a heap.
The terrier cocks its head and studies the spot where Katie disappeared. Its face is alert, ears like pert triangles of cloth.
The mudflats make soft popping noises.
I hurry up the road towards the factory, but the dog keeps halting, squatting firmly on its haunches, refusing to walk forwards. In the end I drag it along by its collar. It makes loud choking noises and looks back over its shoulder, whining to go home.
Just before we get to the factory gates, I stop beside a hawthorn bush and take Katie’s purse out of her handbag. Then I throw the handbag into the grass under the bush. It forms a small lump of pink on the ground. Quickly, I push it deeper into the grass with my toe to make sure nobody will find it. I stuff the purse in my trouser pocket, trying to make it look flat against my leg, then I hurry towards the factory, hauling the dog by the neck.
At the ‘No Entry’ sign I pause and look inside. There’s no sign of Katie.
A chainsaw buzzes somewhere in the village.
A swarm of starlings forms a brief, noisy cloud overhead.
The dog twitches its crusty nose. Suddenly, it cocks its ears and strains forwards. This time I’m the one to pull back reluctantly on the lead because two men with fluorescent jackets and bright yellow helmets are hurrying towards me.
****
Sun 2nd October
Helen’s name has started to materialise on interior walls around number eleven. One moment she sees a slightly grubby magnolia surface. The next moment, just as soon as her back is turned, ‘H-e-l-e-n’ appears.
It first appeared on the wall of the upstairs landing in large indelible letters, stretched out between our bedrooms. Next it appeared tucked away by the skirting board in the hall downstairs in small wobbly black print. After that, it became more confident, rolling boldly and colourfully along the top of the radiator in the living room. And it sprang up wantonly, countless times, on the bathroom walls in a multitude of permanent colours. Worst of all, once it appeared just within arm’s reach of the door of our mother’s study.
Helen didn’t see that one until it was too late. But it’s always going to be too late for her.
Not once does she ask herself why my name doesn’t appear on the walls. What makes this situation worse is that the name seems to be spelt out in her handwriting. There is no escape from the evidence of her own hand. Until now, she’s been proud of her skill with the pencil and talks excitedly about her achievements at school. Countless times, she sits at the dinner table boasting that hers is the neatest writing in class, that she will be the first person to do joined-up writing, that she will be the first person her teacher will allow to discard the pencil and use a biro. Blah, blah and etcetera, etcetera.
Pride is what you see before The Fall.
The first time she saw it, she actually ran to tell our mother in excitement while I watched from my bedroom doorway. But now she’s learnt to creep around the house looking for these terrible signs.
Our mother’s slippers aren’t the same as those belonging to comic-book dads in the Beano. Theirs are always made from corduroy, tucked neatly beneath the settee before they go ‘Thwack!’ on the menace or the minx. Our mother’s slippers have a strip of pink fur on each toe, decorated with beads and glitter. The pink fur streaks, up-down, up-down, in a nauseating way through the air, and the bead makes an arrow of light.
Watching Helen doubled over on Rebecca’s knee, face already crumpling with tears, even before the first blow lands, I always feel my own emptiness pulling the inside of my stomach and tugging, connecting me to her. Up-down, up-down goes our mother’s slipper.
At night my sister winds her alarm clock and lays herself down to sleep. The next morning, when she pads out of her bedroom into the house, she will be faced by H-e-l-e-n on a wall. Somewhere in the house, at some point during the day, she knows she will find it. Regular as clockwork.
Several days of ghostly writing have taken their toll on my sister. Today the headmistress of the village school, who lives up the road from us, dropped a note through the door to Rebecca asking if everything is okay and inviting Rebecca round for a cup of tea and a chat. We all know Helen will fail her eleven-plus next year. She is simply less intelligent than me.
****
Mon 3rd October
She scuttles across the lino like a mouse being chased by a cat. But I can tell she wants to be caught because she’s shrieking with pleasure and laughter. I can hear her from where I’m standing, even though we’re separated by a thick layer of glass.
He chases her with the purposeful stride of an adult who knows there’s no need to run to catch up with the collapsible target. He delays catching her on purpose, increasing her excitement. I can see he’s laughing, too. When he finally scoops her off the ground, hands like spades under her stomach, she kicks her legs and I can see her begging him not to tickle her again.
****
Tues 6th October
‘She’ll never find a husband now.’ Mrs Nelson gulps a large mouthful of brandy. ‘Not with that thing on her head.’
I maintain eye contact. I’m here to deliver a homemade get well card to Katie Nelson.
Mrs Nelson gasps and sighs like a fish when you flick it out of the bowl. She says she’s been struggling to breathe all afternoon. Wondering if it’s the right thing to do, I put my arm around her and give her a comforting squeeze.
Katie is upstairs in bed. She’s had mild concussion since the accident on the other side of the creek, and she’s covered in bruises. More than any other injury, however, Mrs Nelson is upset about the row of stitches across Katie’s forehead, where she split her skin on the side of the pit.
The doctor said that Katie was very lucky. She fell into a bed of bones.
Mrs Nelson’s bellyflesh moves around when she sobs. The soft crevices in her waist keep trapping my fingers, so I withdraw my arm from her middle and search for another place to put it.
‘What were you two doing on that road, anyway?’ Mr Nelson has just come home from work. He sends a brief, bitter look in my direction. ‘Playing I-dare?’
‘No, honestly! I never play that.’
‘That puts an end to our Christmas safari. She’s not allowed to travel for two months,’ Mrs Nelson says, handing her glass to Mr Nelson. ‘We’ll lose the deposit. Pour me another drink, love. Another little Baileys, Lizzie?’
I suck my cheeks, savouring the aftertaste of the deliciously sweet, creamy drink. ‘No, thanks. I’ve got to go home quite soon. The Baileys was lovely, though. I could just have a little one.’
I have explained everythi
ng to Mrs Nelson from start to finish. How, knowing the bike was a brand new special present, I tried to stop Katie from riding too fast until she’d tried and tested it properly. How she refused to listen to me because she was over-excited. She’d darted off.
Unlike some people I could mention, Mrs Nelson is beautiful when she cries. Her pupils turn shiny. She looks like a film star with diamonds in the corners of her eyes.
‘That man who phoned us, do you think he took her bag?’ She’s been going on about the handbag for hours, in spite of all my efforts to divert her attention onto something else. ‘You should’ve heard how he talked. Common as muck. “Ain’t this, ain’t that, ain’t she a poor little girl.” Bloody thief.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t take her bag,’ I say in alarm. I’ll need to retrieve that bag and dispose of it properly if Mrs Nelson is going to call the Police. Otherwise they’ll find my fingerprints all over it.
I put my arm round her waist again. ‘The bag’s not important now. We just want Katie to get better.’
Mr Nelson gives me a Funny Look, but Mrs Nelson’s eyes well up again. ‘You go up and see her, pet, just for five minutes.’
****
Instructions to Copycats
Copycats are the lowest form of human life. They need to be trained and corrected. Read and sign the following:-
1. I am not allowed to like the same things as Lizzie.
2. I am not allowed to wear the same clothes as Lizzie or borrow her possessions without permission.
3. If I ever ask Rebecca to cut my hair in a bob, Lizzie will cut it into a new shape to make it different from hers.
4. I am not allowed to like the same people as Lizzie. That includes Katie Nelson who is more Lizzie’s age than mine. If Katie Nelson phones or comes round, I am not allowed to start talking to her about anything without permission.
I will be compliant with these Rules forever.
The Third Person Page 6
