‘Yeah, maybe,’ I say. But I have other plans for later, and I close the door in Katie’s face.
Poised in an elegant pirouette, her chin slightly raised, she gazes away from me into the distance, across the creek, into the open sky beyond the bone factory. Her graceful hands are clasped together above her head. Her fingers are hooked in exquisite arcs. She stands on my bedroom floor, more beautiful than ever now that she’s mine.
I examine her fingers, one by one. They are so tiny and delicate, fragile and perfect. Minute dots of glitter sparkle on her porcelain ballet skirts.
Beside her, the wrapping paper lies carefully folded on the floor so I can use it again.
This is the best birthday present anybody has ever given me. Part of me would really like to say thank you to Katie. But I don’t see how I can go about doing that without giving the impression I would like to be her best friend. I don’t want to sit in Katie Nelson’s bedroom surrounded by all her glossy Habitat furniture, playing records and cassettes on her shiny new stereo. I don’t want to talk about boys. I don’t want to talk about school to remind me of Those Three Girls. I don’t want to talk about clothes and make-up. Actually, I’m far too busy with all my own projects for such nonsense.
After three attempts at composing a thank you letter, I give up and sneak over to Helen’s room to listen at the door. I can hear rustling noises inside. Good.
Ten minutes before we’re due to set off for school, I creep out of the door and hurry up the road.
Helen runs after me, appearing from nowhere, insisting on coming too.
‘You can’t come. Go home!’ I shoo her away, but she tags along, carefully staying an arm’s length behind.
All morning, she’s tried to be nice to me, smiling and chatting about my birthday presents. We all got up at six thirty so I could open my presents before school. But I know the real reason my sister follows me up the road: it’s because records show that she’s barely seen him at all since her birthday. Clearly, she wants to prevent him from spending any time alone with me. It’s to stop our relationship from developing.
Mr Phillips fills bags with sweets and passes them over the counter to me, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ at the top of his voice. I’m not really into sweets any more, but I take the bag to humour him. His singing is so off-key that I put my hands over my ears, laughing, begging him to stop. He doesn’t shut up until Mrs Phillips storms down the corridor, arms wrapped around the howling baby, and tells us all to keep the noise down.
I look for something to nick from the shop.
Mr Phillips adopts a gloomy expression. ‘Mademoiselle de l’Osborne! Please take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror and reflect upon the situation.’ His voice is hilariously solemn, filled with despair. But what he says next stops my smile in its tracks.
‘Dear, dear, dear! Soon you’ll be going out with boys, then you’ll be off to university. This really is terrible! What shall we do with you?’
‘I hate boys,’ I say fiercely. How could he be so insensitive?
Helen grinds the heel of her shoe into the chequered lino, and gazes at him with a sullen expression. She remains completely silent. It’s very unlikely that she understands references like university.
‘What balderdash and tosh you speak, mademoiselle!’ Mr Phillips says. ‘How can you hate boys? We’re lovely, aren’t we Irene?’
Mrs Phillips stands in the doorway with a down-turned mouth. Their new baby has grown to the size of a large bag of King Edwards. ‘Have you asked her yet?’
‘Asked me what?’ I ask suspiciously.
‘Excuse me, Mrs P! I was just coming to that! Actually, mademoiselle, I do have a cunning plan up my sleeve which I’d like to share with you, and now seems as good a time as any to discuss it, if you can spare a moment of your precious time before going to school.’
But his voice has changed now Mrs Phillips is trying to elbow in on our conversation. He sounds more like a boring grownup than my magical man. If his plan is so cunning, why’s he going to tell it to me in front of Mrs Phillips and my sister?
But his eyes still sparkle with the playfulness I love.
‘Now you’ve reached such a ripe young age, perhaps you’d like to earn a little income by babysitting for us once a week? I know you mentioned it recently. It would be fantastic if you could. We’ve hardly been out since we had baby George.’
‘Since we had Sammy, actually,’ Mrs Phillips interrupts.
Helen bristles. I can almost hear her bones splintering with envy.
Mrs Phillips emerges fully from the corridor. She stands beside him. ‘Do you think you’d be okay to look after George and Sammy? We’d always leave a phone number, of course.’
I stay silent.
When she adds that I won’t need to worry about walking home in the dark afterwards because he will always accompany me back to number eleven, that seals the deal and closes negotiations as far as I’m concerned. I agree, triumphantly, to the arrangement.
‘And what remuneration will a young lady of your social standing expect for her babysitting services?’ he asks.
‘We’ll pay you a pound an hour,’ Mrs Phillips says. I was just about to tell them my rate of seventy-five pence per hour.
Samuel lurches out of the corridor, slug-trails coming out of his nose, reaching his arms up to Mrs Phillips. She waddles around the shop with flushed cheeks, the sleeping baby in her arms, hair loose and frizzy on her shoulders. She’s searching the shelves for something.
Helen scowls at Mr Phillips.
He’s barely even looked in my sister’s direction. It’s my special day. Everything has changed for the better.
Samuel starts to grizzle by the biscuit shelf.
Mrs Phillips grabs a pink beaded purse off the toy shelf, and Mr Phillips tucks a five pound note into it when she’s not looking. I can feel Helen’s scowl deepening. The purse is quite pretty, even though it’s meant for nine-year-olds.
Looking at Mrs Phillips’s pink freckly face and ginger eyebrows, framed by her frizzy red hair, I decide she looks more like a farmyard pig than ever before. She’s so cumbersome and red, always complaining about something. But Mr Phillips obviously really likes me. I’m surprised and pleased to be asked to babysit. His request circles me like a warm embrace. I could never have anticipated such a pleasant birthday gift. As it dawns on me that he has cleverly disguised his love for me as this invitation to babysit, all my recent doubts and suspicions evaporate. He wants to see me more often. Not only that: he’s also managed to persuade Mrs Phillips, and he’s shown my sister publicly that he likes me the most.
Tipsy with happiness, I stammer my thanks.
As we leave the shop, I slip a jar of Shippams salmon paste into my pocket.
Walking back to number eleven with Helen trailing behind, I realise that, without any planning or action on my part, I have finally gained access to the magical world behind the shop counter. I start to swagger, dangling my beaded purse by the clasp, knowing Helen’s staring at me bitterly.
‘Mrs Phillips looks obese. It’s disgusting,’ I remark as Rebecca drives me into town. I have decided to attend school today just in case anybody’s bought me a birthday present. We’ve posted Helen into the village school.
‘Do you think I should try to make spaghetti tonight with that horrid TVP stuff?’ Rebecca asks, frowning at herself in the rear-view mirror.
‘Really. She’s fat like a pig,’ I say.
‘Or shall I try to make those vegan sausage things again? The ones which fell apart in the frying pan. Which tasted better to you?’
****
V. December
Thurs 1st December
‘You ok, pet? You look a bit … peaky,’ Mrs Nelson says when she lets me in this evening.
A wall of warmth rushes forward and strikes my face when she opens the door. All the Christmas decorations jangle in the hall, dancing around in the breeze.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I say, un-hunching
my shoulders, sighing with relief, kicking off my shoes on the mat and putting my schoolbag on the peg above the warm radiator.
‘Look at the state of you! You’re soaking wet! Where’re you having these rehearsals? The playing-field?’
I try to keep my coat on, but Mrs Nelson makes me remove it. The next layer is wet, too. My nose melts into a stream. She digs in her handbag and holds out a hanky covered with lipstick kisses, and I dab my face with fingers too numb to locate the tip of my nose.
The terrier won’t stop sniffing my shoes, wagging its stump, making excited ruffing noises at the array of outdoors scents I’ve brought in from the seawall. Every time Mrs Nelson tells it to leave my shoes alone, it sneaks back to them, crawling along the carpet towards me, inhaling and exhaling rapidly.
It was impossible to stay warm by the creek today because of the drizzle and icy wind. By one o’clock, my fingers had turned white and my toes were numb. By two o’clock my hands were paralysed and I couldn’t unscrew the lid of the half-bottle of vodka I bought from the pub. Even my bones shivered inside my flesh. In desperation I walked back to the boatyard, searching for an unlocked yacht to shelter in, but I was too nervous to walk up and down the jetties testing the hatches, looking like a thief, so I hid for the rest of the day behind the hull of a boat in dry dock.
After I’ve changed into one of Katie’s fluffy bathrobes and put on a pair of pink slippers, Mrs Nelson invites me to try out the new sofa which arrived today. Even though the last one was quite new, it got damaged. She didn’t want it any more and threw it out.
The new sofa is the size of a barge. It’s made from thick, velvet-type fabric decorated with huge purple and orange whorls which clap against each other on a background of dark brown and emerald green. Flecks of yellow and red flash across the fabric. All these colours harmonise beautifully with the carpet and with all the pictures of exotic birds that soar across the walls. The sofa is so soft that when I sit down my legs leave the floor with a jolt. Mrs Nelson screams as I nearly spill my Baileys Irish Cream on the fabric.
As I get comfortable in this nest, I notice that Mrs Nelson’s special bone china teacup and saucer aren’t in their usual place.
‘Where are they?’
She sips her peppermint cocktail, purses her lips, and looks away.
****
Fri 2nd December
‘Helen!’ I bawl up the stairs, ‘dinner’s ready.’
‘I’m not hungry!’ Helen calls back.
‘Tell her she’s got to eat something,’ Rebecca instructs me.
‘You’ve still got to do the washing-up,’ I shout.
****
Sat 3rd December
I have high standards for friendship. I don’t let anybody come along and try to get close. But since Katie Nelson gave me that birthday present, I’ve realised that she’s not as horrible as I thought. I’m also pleased to note that she’s altogether more mature than she used to be, especially now she’s stopped hanging around with my sister all the time. I have decided to set her a Friendship Test. If she passes, I will consider the possibility of something more cordial.
I ring on the bell and the national anthem resounds through the house. Behind the frosted glass, a fat rectangle of white leaps about, yapping hysterically. A pale blue figure wobbles into view. Fingers take shape, reaching towards the handle.
‘I was wondering, can Katie come into town with me today?’ I ask.
The dog pants, pink tongue flapping in and out.
Mrs Nelson sways gently to and fro, as if she’s still behind the frosted glass. A bubble of spit froths out of the corner of her mouth.
I have my pocket money in my jeans pockets, but I don’t plan to spend it. I’ve got other plans.
Every Saturday I put my two pound coins into my moneybox. I was really upset when pound coins started to replace pound notes back in March because it meant I couldn’t make a fat bale out of my pocket money any more. Now I get Rebecca to hang onto pound notes whenever she gets hold of them, and I swap them for pound coins from my tin. You can roll pound notes up into a wad, then you can sit on your bedroom floor and peel them off, one by one.
In my other front pocket, and in both back pockets, I’ve got rubber bands of different lengths.
‘Of course! How lovely! You two girls out shopping together!’ Mrs Nelson says. Each exclamation comes out slightly shriller than the last. She gazes at me with an expression of such complete adoration that I tingle from the roots of my hair right down to the tips of my toes.
‘Katie,’ she calls, turning around, but Katie’s here already, beaming at me.
I wish Katie wouldn’t come so close. Every time I go over to number sixteen, she hurtles down the stairs, lurching at me with her lips pulled back and those white teeth getting bigger and bigger. I suppose she thinks she’s smiling. Her skin looks smooth, like plastic. She smells so sweet that I have to take shallow breaths and turn my nose away. She sticks her eyelashes together in wedges using Mrs Nelson’s mascara.
Mrs Nelson gives us a lift into town because she’s got one or two bits of shopping to do. She goes up to her bedroom just before we set off and weaves her way back down the stairs smelling strongly of Chanel No.5.
‘Seeing as I missed your birthday,’ I tell Katie when we’re in the car, ‘I thought we could go and choose something for you today.’
I haven’t lied to her.
‘You are such a sweet girl!’ says Mrs Nelson, and her eyes give me a Melting Look in the rear-view mirror.
Katie bears her teeth at me and fidgets with her new Burberry handbag, pulling out her purse and checking it. She gets five pounds pocket money a week, which is more than twice what I get from Rebecca. I observe that there are two five-pound notes curled up together in her purse.
Mrs Nelson drops us in the town centre, and gives us two pounds for the taxi fare home. I put the coins in my pocket.
‘Have fun, girls! Don’t be naughty!’ she calls, turning up the car stereo as she drives away.
Bach blasts out. I know this music is Bach because our mother often plays it when she’s in the study. But Mrs Nelson’s version sounds far nicer than Rebecca’s boring harpsichord music, which just goes plonk-plink-plonk. Mrs Nelson’s cassette tape has a wealth of wonderful additional sounds, with electric violins and trumpets swelling and fading emotionally.
A new Miss Selfridge has opened in town, next to Top Shop. After sharing a greasy sausage roll from the bakery, which Katie buys, we go in. We pick clothes off the rails while David Bowie sings ‘Let’s Dance’ in the background. There are lots of lovely things: tight t-shirts in pastel colours, white puffy-sleeved blouses, big leather belts, salmon pink kick-pleat skirts, black pencil skirts and drain-pipe jeans. Shopping with Katie is more fun than I thought, although when she tries to break-dance to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller,’ I realise that she’s still very immature compared to me.
Katie is a size twelve, but she hasn’t got much of a bust.
I’m what Mrs Nelson calls ‘size gorgeous,’ which is just a little bit bigger all over than Katie. Mrs Nelson says size gorgeous girls remain lovely all their lives. They don’t age rapidly like the scrawny ones who abuse their bodies with food fads like vegetarianism and look wrinkly and used-up by the time they’re twenty-one.
Then Katie sees the red dress made out of stretchy cotton, with a deep v-neck, a tight waist and full skirt. She tries it on, and dances round the changing-room singing ‘Lady in Red’ in a completely out-of-tune voice, skipping over all the discarded clothes, arms raised over her head.
She’s clearly in love with this dress, even though it doesn’t fit very well. Her stomach looks lumpy in it, and the v-neck flaps emptily.
‘It really suits you,’ I say.
Katie is worried about the price, because it’s fifteen pounds. She knows I can’t afford that much, but she really wants the dress. She offers to contribute the two five-pound notes from her purse and says we can run over to Nelson’s Eye to
get the additional money from her dad. He’ll give it to her from the till.
‘Go and distract them,’ I tell her.
‘What?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Go through there and distract them.’ I point out of the changing-room, where the assistants hover like wasps.
‘No, Lizzie. We mustn’t.’ She is taking off the dress as if it’s infected with a deadly disease.
‘Put on that kick-pleat skirt and that white top, and get back in the shop,’ I command.
‘Then what?’
‘Honestly! Make something up! Go and ask them if it suits you. Tell them to give you other things to try on.’
She tiptoes out of the changing room as if she’s walking on broken glass. After a while, I hear her asking advice from the assistants. Her voice trembles. She sounds like she’s confessing to a Terrible Crime. But after a while, she seems to manage to involve them in swapping shoes and jackets for other colours and sizes.
I kneel inside the changing room and roll the dress into a tight bundle. I bind it with rubber bands and stuff it in the back of my jeans. I tie my jacket round my waist by the arms to stop the bump looking too suspicious at the back, then saunter out of the changing room into the shop. Katie is in the process of squeezing into a white leather jacket.
It’s hard to breathe.
‘That looks really nice, but it’s quite expensive. Why don’t you go away and think about it?’ I say to Katie in a loud voice. ‘Then you can make up your mind which one to get.’
‘Oh, okay,’ she replies stiffly. She scrutinises my body.
While she changes back into her clothes, I browse through the items on the circular rail in the middle of the shop. I try to make sure I’m always facing the assistants so they don’t see my bulges. I hold up garments with a critical expression on my face.
‘Hurry up!’ I call.
When she finally emerges, Katie’s face is yellowish-white, with huge scarlet patches over her neck and cheeks.
‘You look a bit ill,’ I say, loudly. ‘Why don’t you go and wait for me outside?’
The Third Person Page 14
