Simultaneously, another feeling rises unexpectedly and makes me narrow my eyes. This is the first piece of proper evidence I’ve found to prove that my sister sneaks off secretly with Mr Phillips.
When they return after three hours in the pub I’m sitting at the opposite end of the sofa from the cat, reading the Radio Times. I have borrowed Pure and Untouched: it’s in my bag.
As usual, Mrs Phillips goes straight upstairs to check on the kids, while he stands in the hall, swaying to and fro quietly like a tree.
I carefully avoid looking at the bureau so he doesn’t suspect anything.
He’s quieter than usual as we walk down the road to number eleven. I try to think of questions that will test his knowledge of that page in the Radio Times, but my mind’s too busy thinking about the pictures of Helen.
‘So what was that little performance about tonight?’ he suddenly asks, grabbing my arm aggressively.
‘Little performance?’ I’m too shocked to know what to say. Does he know I’ve borrowed a photo from the bureau?
‘You know what I’m talking about.’ He starts to parrot my voice. ‘She’s always out on Monday and Wednesday nights, Mrs Phillips. Why did you say it like that? I’ve had enough of all your insinuations, Lizzie. If you want to accuse somebody of something, just come out and say it. But let me warn you now. You won’t be able to pin anything on me.’
I stay quiet. I’ve never heard him use this tone of voice before. His breath smells of beer. I’m not sure how to reply. One thing I know for a Fact is that it wouldn’t be in my interests to mention my dossier of evidence about his games with my sister.
‘You’d better forget all your little suspicions.’
‘Okay,’ I say meekly.
I can’t think of ways to keep him talking on the doorstep of number eleven tonight.
‘Happy Christmas,’ he says and walks away.
****
Sat 24th December
Katie’s sound system towers out of the floor in her bedroom. It’s not even Christmas till tomorrow! This stereo is far better than the last one, which didn’t last long before it fell downstairs when Mrs Nelson was cleaning. We’re listening to Radio One, debating which tracks we like best. Katie has bet me five pounds that Number One in the charts for Christmas will be ‘Only You’ by the Flying Pickets, and I’ve started to panic as Dave Lee Travis speculates about the Top Ten.
The speakers are three feet tall, lurking in the corners of the room like security guards in shops.
‘I got you a Christmas present.’ I take the gift out of the carrier bag. ‘But it’s only small.’
This year I’ve taken special care in selecting and wrapping people’s presents. I wasn’t going to get anything for Katie Nelson after her attempted robbery of my bedroom. After fairly weighing and measuring the evidence, however, I decided to find a present at the last minute as a thank you for helping at school. Thanks to Katie, the ball is back in my tennis court at school, and that’s where I intend to keep it from now on. So I got her a wide belt in white mock-leather with an ornate gold buckle. For Mrs Nelson I chose a set of pink marble coasters. Each coaster is heavy enough to stay on the table when Mrs Nelson lifts up a glass.
I didn’t know what to get for Rebecca, so I chose a china pot and matching saucer decorated with bluebells. For my sister, I finally plumped for a box of scented writing paper. If I’d actually paid for these gifts, the grand total would have been a massive twenty-three pounds and fifty-seven pence.
‘I got you something, too.’ Katie holds out a present wrapped in red, with two miniature gold rosettes on the top.
‘Let’s open them.’
When we see what’s happened, we burst out laughing. Katie has given me an identical belt to the one I got her, except mine’s in pale pink rather than white. We hold them in the air.
‘We can share them,’ Katie says, but I know that won’t happen.
****
Sun 25th December
As one embroidered egg cosy after another tumbles out of the homemade wrapping-paper, I realise that my sister’s finally lost her grip on the plot. She’s stitched a whole world out of felt for our mother. Each egg cosy is embroidered with a face. One has round eyes, red cheeks, brown hair made of wool and a snarling mouth. Another has black hair, a sad mouth and green sequin eyes.
‘Are they meant to be people we know?’ Rebecca frowns at the face with thick-rimmed spectacles and grey hair, puts it down and picks up another. She laughs. ‘Oh dear, this one looks sad. Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘No one pacific,’ Helen replies. You can see she’s proud of her achievement.
‘Specific,’ I correct her poor English.
‘They’re beautiful.’ Rebecca picks each one up for a second tour of inspection. She’s really overdoing her praise of my sister. ‘Perhaps these sad ones need an egg inside them? Then they’ll be happy eggheads!’
‘Can we hurry up please?’ I point at the old telly in the corner. ‘I want to watch The Sound of Music.’
‘You don’t want to watch that rubbish,’ Rebecca snorts. My sister hands her a flat square parcel. ‘What’s this, darling? Another present?’
My Christmas present from Helen is a plant-pot filled with earth, painted glossy yellow on the outside in an effort to make the plastic look new, and decorated with hand-drawn pictures of the houses on our street. Allegedly there are three daffodil bulbs planted in the compost, called tit-a-tit, or something, and they’ll flower in the Spring. A certain amount of trust is required to believe this story about the daffodils. She’s such a cheap skate with her amateur homemade presents.
‘A vegetarian recipe book. I didn’t know you could get that kind of thing.’
When our mother finally stops humouring my sister, she asks me to fetch my batch of presents from under the tree.
I wade through the balls of screwed-up paper and bring the parcels over. My wrapping looks really professional compared to theirs. I’ve put a little gold rosette on the top of each present.
‘Please will you try not to tear the wrapping paper, because I want to keep it for next year?’ I say as I sit back down on the sofa. I pat the neat pile of paper by my seat.
Rebecca holds up the bluebell pot and saucer. ‘Thank you, darling, it’s lovely! I’ll put it on the mantelpiece in my bedroom.’ She puts my present on the floor and looks over at Helen, who’s holding the box of writing paper up to her face, sniffing it deeply like a dog in grass. ‘What’ve you got there, Helen?’
I can tell Rebecca doesn’t like my bluebell pot. A small section of the saucer sticks out underneath the wrapping from the presents Helen gave her.
‘It’s amazing!’ Helen says, sniffing and exhaling with an angelic smile. ‘Smell that, Lizzie. Lovely flowers! Like the real smell of freesias!’
‘Friesians,’ I correct her.
‘Freesias,’ Rebecca says, looking at me and laughing. She always takes Helen’s side, even when Helen is wrong.
At least my sister is making an effort to be cheerful today. I’m not surprised she’s so happy because she scored a major turkey coup this year in persuading our mother to make a meat-free Christmas dinner. Rebecca said she’d cook anything Helen wanted, and they sat together discussing possible dishes for hours, finally agreeing on nut cutlets for us all instead of meat. Twenty-two million turkeys die every year at Christmas in Britain alone.
Personally I find this over-indulgence of my sister extremely irritating. These days the happiness of our whole household seems to revolve around whether or not Helen’s in a good mood or a sulky mood at any particular minute of the day.
Rebecca gives me an electric clock-radio for Christmas, and she gives my sister some boring gardening books, then she hands out the presents from Dad. Instead of individually wrapped presents this year, he sent two envelopes inside a bigger envelope. You can see from the postmark he sent them from town, but he hasn’t been to see us since that incident with Rebecca.
‘Snap!’
Helen laughs, holding her card in one hand and her ten pound note in the other. Not only has he given us the same present, but he’s given us the same card as well, with a cartoon red-nosed reindeer on the front.
Disgusted, I throw my card on the floor and turn on the telly for the remainder of the film.
****
VI. January
Thurs 5th January
‘Happy New Year, Mr Phillips! Have you got any good card games or tricks you can show me?’ I have decided to strike while the iron is hot and repair the damage from our last encounter.
He taps the counter with his pencil and doesn’t look up. ‘Unfortunately I don’t know a single solitary card trick, so you’d better run along now so I can close the shop.’
‘Yes you do! I know you do!’
He frowns.
‘Like when you make the shopping list disappear and reappear somewhere else.’
‘Come on, then, very quickly.’ He sighs, but I know it’s only a mock-sigh. ‘I’ll read your palm. Give me your hand. Quickly!’
I giggle as he pulls my hand across the counter, unfurls my fingers, and touches my palm. This is the second time he’s ever touched me. His hands are soft and warm.
‘And what does the future hold in store for Miss Elizabeth Osborne?’
He points to each line on my hand and tells me I’ve got lots of hidden potential beneath my surface. I am going to pass all my exams with flying colours. And I am going to be a stunning beauty in a few years’ time. I’m glad he doesn’t mention getting married or having children. He knows there’ll only ever be one man for me. He says that he, on the contrary, will turn into a grumpy old man if he can’t close the shop soon and go back to the house for his tea.
Frowning, I buy a Mars Bar and wander down the road. I can’t understand why, whenever I give him the opportunity, he refuses to spend time with me. Maybe it’s because of his shyness. I can tell by the way he treats me that he really likes me. He knows I’m different from other girls my age. He doesn’t speak down to me. He’s never expressed it openly, but he’s definitely attracted by all my hidden potential. We will be specially connected for ever.
****
Sun 8th January
When I was younger, at bath-time I used to pretend to be a bottle bobbing around in the creek. My body was the bottle and my head was the stopper, while me was the message curled up tightly inside.
****
Tues 10th January
Rebecca slams the door as she enters number eleven, and the whole house shudders in alarm.
‘Lizzie! Get down here immediately!’
Helen comes out of her room. ‘What’ve you done?’ she quails.
There must be some mistake. I always receive outstanding progress reports at parents’ evenings. My teachers use words like ‘inventive’ and ‘imaginative’ to describe my numerous talents.
Rebecca frog-marches me into the study, pushing me in the back with her hand like a kidnapper. She slams the door behind us, then bursts into tears.
‘What’s all this rubbish about Dad and the IRA?’
I feel horribly surprised. I need to cluster my thoughts together as quickly as possible.
‘Have you gone mad? How could you tell all those lies to your teachers?’ She shakes her head and looks at me as if I’m one of the aliens out of Return of the Jedi. ‘Dad? The IRA? Playing the violin in London? What’s got in to you, Lizzie? You don’t expect people to believe this rubbish, do you? How can you do something like this just as we’re trying to surface from all the mess with Dad?’
My teachers have betrayed my confidentiality. I will never forgive them. Teachers can lose their jobs for behaviour like this. They’re supposed to be caring for the interests of the child, not telling tales and betraying our trust.
‘I think I know what you’re talking about.’ I need to use all my skills and methods and resources this evening.
Calmly, I look Rebecca directly in the eyes and explain that my teachers must have misunderstood something I wrote last term. Carefully, I move my eyes to the left, just for a split second, then return them to my mother’s face. I explain how I heard a report on John Craven’s Newsround about a girl who was a musical genius and her father was a victim of IRA activities. I wrote a summary of that news report for my essay.
‘Rubbish!’ she shouts. ‘Your teachers aren’t stupid! Why did your English teacher think you were talking about us? Come on! Admit you lied, then we can decide what to do.’
I know precisely how this happened, I tell her, and it is partly my own fault. When our teacher told us to write an essay on ‘My Summer Holiday,’ I wrote my piece about that girl and the IRA.
‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’ Rebecca snaps rudely. ‘Why couldn’t you write on your summer holiday like all the other children in your class?’
I hold firm. All the other children in my class went away to nice resorts for their holidays. I stretch my mind and reach for some detail. I need to be as accurate as possible to make it sound true. I tell her our teacher said it sounded as if the whole world was packed into our classroom asking how to spell place-names like Burgundy, Lambrusco, Curacao, Cinzano, Smirnoff and Laphroaig. They all had material for their essays, whereas in our family we never go anywhere on holiday. We always stay at home.
All the way through my account, Rebecca continues to frown and shake her head. I feel as if her face is interrupting my flow of words with a long silent No.
‘I want to believe you, Lizzie,’ she says when I finish, ‘but very little of what you’ve said adds up.’
She insists that I write an apology to our teacher, and she makes me promise never to tell lies again.
I promise.
I know Helen’s been listening at the top of the stairs because I hear scurrying and scratching noises when I reach for the study door.
Out of the blue as I depart, Rebecca says, ‘Just accept it, Lizzie. Your dad walked away from us all.’
I halt in my tracks. I don’t want her to talk about my dad. What she says is completely false. He walked away from Rebecca and Helen, not me. If she thinks otherwise, then two people are liars at number eleven tonight.
Then she says, in a wobbly voice which fades into a hiccup at the end, ‘I’m your mum and dad, now. You’ll have to make do with me.’
I refuse to reply. I have nothing to contribute, especially after she’s accused me of lying and then brought my dad into the conversation in order to manipulate me.
****
Fri 13th January
A tower of brochures advertising weekend breaks in European cities has been building up on their coffee-table since the New Year. I turn the sound of the television low and examine the new destinations to arrive in their living room. Are they going to choose Venice or Dublin, Amsterdam or Bonn, Paris or Madrid, I wonder, leafing through each glossy publication and marvelling at the mouth-watering adjectives used to plant each city in the reader’s imagination.
He doesn’t walk me home after babysitting any more. Mrs Phillips does.
‘By the way,’ she said casually as I put on my coat this evening. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen our dandelion paperweight kicking about, have you?’
‘Paperweight?’ My voice sounds authentic because I am genuinely surprised to find out that the dandelion doorstopper is actually a paperweight. If so, I’ll use it to hold down my sheets of calligraphy.
‘Sammy must’ve hidden it somewhere.’ She sighs. ‘My sister gave it to me before she left for Australia. Sentimental value… ’
I’m going to stop babysitting very soon.
****
Wed 18th January
I want to be able to do more than copy. I need to create whole new sentences in her writing. Before she learned joined-up writing, it was easy to write ‘H-e-l-en’ on the walls, but now my sister’s writing is really difficult because sometimes she scrawls, and at other times she writes neatly. Sometimes her letters lean forward, sometimes they lean backward, sw
inging to and fro, kicking their limbs in all directions. She also uses unreadable abbreviations, weaving her own distinctive grammar into each sentence.
Since embarking on this project a few weeks ago, I have started to understand that I mustn’t just focus on learning how to reproduce the shape of each letter, as I tried to do at the beginning. This isn’t calligraphy, where the beauty of each letter is the end in itself. Even though the idea revolts me, I must allow my sister’s handwriting to stick to me, sink in. If I’m going to move away from mere copying towards the creation of new material, then I must allow her writing to get under my skin. I have started to understand that a perfect copy is not simply an act of perfect imitation. It involves something extra, something alive and creative, like swallowing another person’s spit.
The tip of my tongue has developed tiny blisters from probing the back of my teeth all day. Today is one of the few days this week when the wind hasn’t carried the stench of the bone factory into the village.
Rebecca gets home just after six o’clock, greets me absent-mindedly, pours herself a tumbler of fruit juice, and turns the oven on.
The Nelsons are on winter holiday for ten days in the Seychelles. They booked it at short notice through Lunn Poly in town. They’ve been gone a week already.
Katie’s taking the time off school. So am I.
Mrs Nelson’s skin turned bright orange before they left. She wanted to arrive at the resort with a healthy-looking suntan, she said, so she tried to build up layers of natural colour using skin dye she saw advertised in Cosmo. But it went wrong. She couldn’t see the writing on the bottle because it was too small, and she thinks she over-applied it. She took the bright edge off the colour by rubbing used teabags on her skin. She said she wanted just the right amount of suntan to still look European.
I wish the Nelsons had taken me on holiday with them.
The Third Person Page 17
