Red Ink

by Julie Mayhew

  The doors open. We all get on to an empty carriage.

  “Mind the gap.”

  That’s where I am right now, in the gap. Please mind the gap between the death of your mother and the edge of normal.

  The doors close. I sit down. Only when the train hiccups into life do I dare check where they are. They’re on the seats by the glass panel at the end of the carriage. They’re looking at me now, but they’re not saying anything. I’m in the middle of the train, another two glass panels of protection away. I won’t need it though. They’re not going to do the thing with my name. I can feel the pity oozing off them, although they’re grudging about it at the same time. Mum dying has spoilt their game. Murray gives me a soppy look, Dylan nods. It feels like being patted on the head by an old relative. The train clangs into the dark of the tunnel. This is the weirdest thing to say but I actually preferred it when the boys took the piss.

  I turn away. I feel a bit sick. I haven’t eaten yet today. Couldn’t think about breakfast. I take the bottle of Cherry Coke I bought at the newsagent’s, open it without thinking. Of course it explodes. It’s been bumping around in my bag all the way to the station. Sticky brown stuff everywhere. The smell of sugar. The eyes of Ian and his lot are on me again. This would be a perfect excuse for them to pounce. Ian is itching to, I can tell, but he swallows his laugh. Come on, I think, say something, something rude, something horrible, anything. I shake Coke from my hands, hold the bottle away like a smelly shoe. A puddle has formed on the floor of the carriage and is travelling towards my feet. I suck drips from the edge of the bottle and take a swig. Warm. Makes your teeth feel furry. I burp. Loudly. Ian looks again. Say something. Say something. He wrinkles his nose, pretends he’s disgusted. That’s rich, coming from him.

  I put the lid back on the bottle, put it on the seat next to me. Satisfied.

  I have Cherry Drops in my bag. Nothing goes better with Cherry Coke than Cherry Drops. Unwrap one, put it in your mouth, crack it with your gums so the insides come out, then take a mouthful of Cherry Coke. Gorgeous. The shell of the Cherry Drop fills the gaps in my back teeth like gluey fillings. I click my jaws together, feel the top teeth stick to the bottom.

  “Oi.”

  It’s Ian.

  “Give us one of those,” he goes.

  So I do. I lob a Cherry Drop, hard, all the way along the carriage. Ian stands to catch it. It clips him on the forehead.

  “Wanker,” I mutter as he fumbles to pick it up. Dylan and Murray can’t help but crease up.

  Ian looks at me, surprised. I’m shocked, shocked that I said that word out loud. So I say it again.

  “Wanker,” I go. “Can’t even catch a fucking sweetie.”

  Ian moves forwards along the aisle, trying to make himself look big. Big, strong Ian. I poke at the cherry film on my teeth with my tongue. He stands there looking at me, wobbling with the train, a skittle that could fall back or stay standing, ready for another strike.

  “What did you say?”

  Dylan and Murray have stopped laughing. Murray can’t get rid of the grin. They’ve turned in their seats to get a good view, anoraks rustling.

  “Nothing.”

  “Didn’t sound like nothing.”

  I look down at the river of Coke parting around my shoe.

  Ian raises his voice above the noise of the train. “I said, it didn’t sound like nothing.”

  “I heard you the first time.”

  I meet Ian’s sticky tar eyes. There’s something different about them today. Usually they’re fiery and wet, full of the joy of being an absolute twat. Now they’re unsteady. He knows he should back off, not because he’s made my life hell for the last few years, because of my mum. My dead mum. She’s my ‘get out of jail free’ card. I hate that. I hate it because it’s a cheat.

  We’re still staring at each other. Let me have it, I’m thinking, don’t you dare let me off easy.

  “Yeah, well . . .” Ian wobbles, parts his legs to get stable on the train floor. Murray and Dylan are waiting for the final verdict. “Just watch your mouth, yeah?”

  I nod at him. “Okay,” I say, sarcastic. “I’ll watch it.”

  The lights of Highgate station appear behind Ian’s head.

  “Let’s get off here, yeah?” The boys pick up their bags, start bundling towards the door, trying to knock each other over. I wonder if they’d planned to get off at Highgate or if Ian is just saving face.

  “Mind the gap,” I say to the back of their heads.

  “Yeah, fuck you, right,” Ian shoots back from the platform, giving me the finger.

  The doors close and the platform starts moving through the frames of the window like a cinema reel getting back to normal speed. The boys are whisked away. The black of the tunnel gulps me down.

  They can’t bother me now.

  Nothing and no one can bother me now.

  26 DAYS SINCE

  There is a bag for clothes for the charity shop. There is a box for the knick-knacks. There’s a rubbish bag. Then, on the bed, there is a pile for Paul to keep. Paul says I can have a pile too. How generous. Whose mum was she after all?

  He’s also let me choose which bit of Mum’s room I want to do. He’s all give, give, give. I decide on the chest of drawers. I don’t want to watch Paul sorting through Mum’s knickers; I’ll do them. Though I’m not stupid, I know he’s already been through her knickers. If you know what I mean.

  Mum’s chest of drawers is a Victorian relic like her wardrobe, but they don’t match. The chest is a lighter wood and it’s a great hulk of a thing compared to the dinky wardrobe that Paul is sorting. I’ve chosen the short straw – there’s going to be a mountain of junk in this thing. I pull open the top drawer, full to bursting with cheap lace. Nothing really saucy, but still, a drawer filled with sex. I don’t want to look. I know Mum did it – she had me, after all – but it makes that thing Mum said about Paul go round my head. Black man’s cock, black man’s cock, black man’s cock.

  When I look at Paul, I find it hard to imagine he really has a penis. He’s by the wardrobe, folding Mum’s clothes like they do in posh clothes shops: laying each top on its front on the bed, crossing the arms behind the back, folding up the bottom hem, then turning the thing over and tidying up the collar. They’re only going to Cancer Research. He’s such a dullard. So straight. I swear he’s made of cardboard.

  “How about we put some music on?” he says.

  Paul is dead-set that this is going to be a joyful experience, excavating Mum’s room. A ‘celebration of her’, that’s what he called it. Idiot.

  “Whatever.”

  “I know just the thing.” The cheerfulness is painful. I know he’s going to blub. I’m just waiting to find out which item from Mum’s wardrobe tips him over the edge.

  Paul goes to the old ghetto blaster CD player by the bed. It’s a real antique with a furry coat of dust. I know what album he’s going to put on. If we’re celebrating Mum there could only be one choice. It’ll be the one with the Brazilian woman who half talks and half sings, a bit like she’s bored, or drunk, or both. Mum’s favourite.

  There’s the hiss of the CD spinning into life and Paul stands over the ghetto blaster, fretting whether he’s pressed the right buttons. The man starts dum-dee-dumming, then the slurring woman starts singing her pointless song about the tall, tanned girl who does nothing but walk.

  Paul turns to smile at me, does a little shimmy with his hips. I think I might die of embarrassment. I concentrate on stacking thongs and pants on top of the chest of drawers. A leaning tower of nylon. Mum never went in for fancy coordinating pants and bras, but she liked colour. Purples, pucey pinks, bright turquoise blues. Traffic-stopping underwear.

  I wonder what coloured ones she was wearing when it happened. I imagine Paul bringing those knickers and her other clothes home from the hospital in a clear plastic bag. Although I have no clue if that is what actually happens. Do they give you the clothes back when someone dies? Or do they lea
ve them on? Did they cut through her clothes when they tried to save her? Did they just throw the clothes in the bin? When they’d given up on her, did they send her to the morgue naked? I don’t know.

  People joke about wearing clean underwear just in case you get knocked over. Not funny. I picture that plastic bag of clothes quite a lot – I can’t help it – her things soaked with blood. I imagine it like that see-through sack of guts they give you when you buy a Christmas turkey from the butcher.

  Why does everyone who passes the tanned girl in the song say ‘ahhh’? Why does she make everyone feel so sad? It makes no sense.

  Paul has thankfully stopped shimmying. He’s taking more clothes out of the wardrobe, folding them on the bed. Mum and Paul must have done it on this bed. I never heard them. Thank God. But they must have. They could have been as loud as they liked. I always stayed over at Chick’s house when Paul spent the night. Or rather Mum only invited him when she knew I wouldn’t be here. I never even saw them kiss. I think Mum knew I didn’t approve, or maybe she thought I needed protecting from the truth.

  Now the tanned girl is ignoring all the people who are smiling at her. What is the tanned girl’s problem, for God’s sake?

  Mum said in her will that all her stuff was to go to charity – except for anything that Paul or I wanted. Nothing much fits me, not even her shoes, so it’s all going into the bin bags. Off to charity. Only the burgundy dress will stay, because it’s still in the wash basket in my room.

  It suddenly occurs to me that loads of the clothes in charity shops belong to dead people. Creepy. Those vintagey dresses that Elaine Wilkie and her lot are always wearing, they probably came from some dead granny’s wardrobe. That’s what the smell of charity shops is – the smell of death. Mum’s clothes still have the fir cone pong of moth killer but maybe they’ll start to take on a new smell away from the house.

  I’ve done all the pants and don’t know what to do with them. The bag for the bin? I watched a documentary once about how you could take absolutely anything to the charity shop, even pants. They send it all to a big central warehouse and find a use for everything. Bras are valuable, apparently. They’re expensive to make – all that wire and foam. They send them to Africa and sell them to market traders. The pants get shredded up and turned into cushion and pillow stuffing. I’m not sure what’s worse: wearing someone’s second-hand pants or knowing that you’re resting your face on a pillow full of shredded gussets. I shove all of Mum’s pants into the bag for the bin. Paul watches me out of the corner of his eye, but says nothing.

  A saxophone is jazzing over the top of the slurring woman.

  Paul’s finished with the wardrobe and is going through Mum’s jewellery box. Nothing of any value in there. When I was little, I asked to see Yia-Yia’s old necklaces and rings from Crete, but Mum said she didn’t have anything. I thought this was strange. What did she do with all of Yia-Yia’s jewellery after she died. Sell it?

  I’ll put the bras in the charity bag. Mum would have liked the idea of them going on a long-haul holiday to Africa. She has hundreds of bras – lacy, padded, push-up. I hope African ladies like that sort of thing. Underneath the bras I find a small, square, yellow photo album with a 1970s print of a flower on the cover. It’s big enough to hold a picture per page slipped into plastic sleeves. I’ve never seen this album before. Mum was never really into taking photos. There is one other photo album in the house. It’s on the bookshelf in the living room. The first picture in the book is of my first day at school. Then there are odd pictures of me from each year after that. There are no pictures of me any younger than four. I’ve never seen a picture of me as a baby. This used to make me think I was adopted, but no one would ever have given a baby to my mum when she was only sixteen years old. Maybe I’m stolen.

  I open the photo album from the underwear drawer. I’m expecting Mum to walk in any minute and tell me off for poking around. Although I actually think Mum would have liked me to have been more of a snooper – you know, pinch her earrings, borrow her lipstick, that kind of thing. I did it when I was a little kid. I used to wobble about in her shoes, drown myself in her dresses. But once I was grown up I was never interested in her stuff.

  The first picture in the yellow photo album is of Granbabas. He looks younger than I’ve ever known him, although his hair is still silver. He’s sitting in a wicker chair, smiling. I never saw him that happy in real life. On the next page there is a picture of Mum. I’m sure it’s her, although she must be only seven or eight. She looks the same as she did as an adult – same long hair – but her top front teeth are all gappy. She’s standing in a dusty yard. She’s pulling a face at the camera. Standing in the background is a serious woman who looks similar to Mum. My yia-yia? I don’t know. I only have a picture of her in my head based on The Story. The real Yia-Yia doesn’t match up with my imaginary photograph. The real one looks harder, more cross.

  The next picture jumps in time. Mum looks about fourteen or fifteen in this one. She’s in the middle of the shot and has one arm around the shoulder of a skinny boy who looks the same age as her. My heart bobs into my throat. Christos Drakakis?

  My dad is Christos Drakakis, and my name is Melon Drakaki – how do you do?

  I look into his eyes and try to feel some sort of connection, a piece of thread. Nothing. Mum’s other arm is reaching around the shoulder of an older, taller boy. Although it’s an awkward position, it also looks like a really comfortable thing for Mum to be doing. Her body is relaxed, slouching towards him, confident. The older boy is sneering with his smile, almost snarling. He is familiar. I am trying to work out what it is that makes me think that I know him. Then, I realise. He looks like me.

  The slurring woman is singing a new song now, double-fast, about a girl called Maria whose Papa is telling her to go to bed but she goes out hugging and kissing instead.

  “What you got there?”

  “Nothing.” I snap the album shut. I don’t want Paul to see it. It’s nothing to do with him.

  “Photos?”

  “Yeah, me and Mum. I’m going to keep this.” I hold it hard against my chest.

  “Fine, fine, that’s fine.”

  “I wasn’t asking permission.”

  Paul ignores me. He’s already cooking up the next thing he wants to say, umming and ahhing his way into it. He always does that when he has an announcement that he thinks is important. He likes building up his part.

  “I’m, errrr . . .” Paul is toying with a small piece of jewellery in his fingers. “I’m going to take this back.” He points the thing at me quickly, then pulls it away again, like he didn’t really want me to see it. It catches the light, then disappears into his fist. He opens his hand, looks down at the thing, closes his hand, opens it. Pink palms. On the back of his hand the skin is dark, smooth, airbrushed. He wants me to see what he’s holding. He wants me to say something. This feels like a trap.

  “What is it?”

  “The ring. It was my grandmother’s, so I think . . .”

  Bingo. He’s crying. His mouth stretches into a strange grimace. His shoulders shake.

  “Why did Mum have your grandmother’s ring?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, it sounds like the most stupid question in the world. It’s the diamond ring Mum is wearing in that laughing photo in the dining room. There would be only one reason for Mum having that ring. Paul looks up at me, his eyes red and wet. He looks as stunned as I am.

  “Your mum never said that we were going to . . .”

  “No.”

  “Melon, that’s not . . . I’m sure she had a reason for not . . .”

  The slurring woman is all out of tune now, demanding we give her a call.

  “Who cares,” I say. I head for the door. I’ve had enough. “I don’t want to do this any more.”

  “Melon.”

  “What?”

  “Ahhhmmm . . .” Paul is brewing up another speech. I don’t want to hear it, but he’s so upset I feel I have to listen.<
br />
  “Ummm, do you want to know how it happened?”

  “No!” I squeak. I don’t want to hear about him taking her on the London Eye or to Primrose Hill or wherever and getting down on one knee. He could have abseiled down the Eiffel Tower with a box of chocolates for all I care.

  “I mean, how Maria . . . how your mum died.”

  Oh.

  “I know how she died,” I say. “A bus.”

  “Details, I mean. It’s just occurred to me, just now, that no one has been telling you much, the whole story.”

  “I don’t need details.”

  I try to leave again.

  “I thought it might help,” Paul calls after me. “It might stop you from being so angry.”

  I spin round in the doorway and glare at him. “Who’s angry?”

  “You seem very angry, with your mum.”

  “No.”

  “She didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “I know that.”

  “It was an accident. The people who saw it happen said she was looking for something in her bag. Cigarettes probably. Or something. She stepped out and . . .”

  “I said I didn’t want details.”

  I reach for the back of my head and remember that the ponytail has gone. Just tight coils of hair. Paul won’t shut up.

  “She was in a rush, as usual. She was late to meet me and . . . She wasn’t paying attention to the road.”

  “I said I didn’t want to know.”

  “She thought the world of you, Melon.”

  I spit air. I can’t believe that Paul is spouting this rubbish.

  “Everything was for you.” He’s pushing me to say something nice about Mum.

  “Nothing was for me,” I mutter.

  “She wanted to be your best friend.”

  “I didn’t need another best friend.”

  “What did you need?”