And then, just when I was beginning to cope with Mam not being there, two really horrible things happened:
Dad decided he’d start making porridge for breakfast, like Mam used to.
Mam told me she was moving back to San Francisco, where she’d been working before she married Dad.
Here’s how that phone call went:
Her: Guess what – I’ve been offered my old job back, in San Francisco. (She wrote for some dorky magazine out there, about a million years ago.)
Me: (Silence. I was too shocked to say anything.)
Her: Are you still there?
Me: I can’t believe it. You’re moving to America?
Her: Listen love, I’ll still phone you every day, OK? I promise. It’ll be just the same as now, honest.
Me: Yeah, RIGHT. It’ll be exactly the same when you’re thousands of miles away.
Her: OK, I know it’s a lot to take in, but please love, try to –
And that was all I heard, because I had just hung up.
Can you believe it? She was planning to go and live in America, leaving her only child behind her, and she had the cheek to sound excited about it. In case you don’t know exactly where San Francisco is, it’s right over on the far side of America, about a zillion miles away.
Of course she phoned back, right away. I stood beside the phone feeling mad as hell. I let it ring six times, and then I picked it up and put it down again without even listening. And then I took it off the hook and went straight to the freezer.
After half an hour I put it back, and she called ten minutes later, and I just about managed not to tell her what I thought of her brilliant plan.
I told Dad she was moving, because I thought he should know. It was the first time I mentioned Mam to him since she’d left. Dad just nodded and went on eating Marjorie Maloney’s tuna casserole.
I’ll get to Marjorie Maloney later.
And now Mam has been in San Francisco for about two months, and she still rings me every day, and her voice still sounds as near as when she was ringing from Granny Daly’s house.
But she’s not in Granny Daly’s house – she’s ten hours on a plane away from here, and I have no idea when I’ll see her again.
OK, I have to stop for a while now.
A quarter to one
The day after Mam’s bombshell about San Francisco, the Christmas holidays ended and I went back to school (I’m in sixth, by the way). I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, I just couldn’t – except for Bumble, of course. So I told the rest of the class that Mam had gone off to be a nun in one of those convents where they aren’t allowed to talk to anyone from the outside world, which was why Dad and I couldn’t visit her.
Naturally, Catherine Eggleston had something to say. She said, ‘Married women aren’t allowed to become nuns’. So I said, quick as a flash, ‘Oh, didn’t you know? The Pope changed that law two years ago, when there was a shortage of nuns.’
Well, that shut Catherine Eggleston up, and everyone else too, because of course nobody had a clue whether that was true or not. They all looked a bit sorry for me, and Chloe Nelligan offered me her Penguin bar at break, which I refused – I could see that really impressed them all. I didn’t tell them that I hate Penguins, and that I’d been hoping that Tessa Ryan would offer me her mini Bounty bar. I love Bounty bars.
Of course, I’m still hoping like mad that Mam will realise that she made a terrible mistake and come home. I try to pray for it to happen, but I’m not very good at praying. Whenever I try, I can’t stop other things jumping into my head, like whether I remembered to bring home my maths copy, or how many days left to my birthday, things like that.
But I really, really hope she comes back.
I wonder if Dad misses her as much as I do. No, of course he doesn’t.
Ten past one
God, I am SO starving right now. I could eat a slice of stale bread that fell on a carpet, buttery side up. I wouldn’t even pick off the bits of hair and stuff – I’d just cram it all into my mouth.
This must be what it’s like to go on hunger strike. Oh God, I smell food. It can’t be coming from downstairs – he never cooks anything that smells this good. Must be the Wallace’s lunch next door. Smells like melting cheese – oh God, I think I’m going to start dribbling.
My stomach is making incredibly loud gurgly noises. When I get out of here I’m going to look up the Childline number in the phone book and report my father for starving his only child.
OK, he just knocked on the door after I wrote that last bit and told me he was leaving my lunch on a tray outside. I didn’t bother answering him. He must be dreaming if he thinks I’m going anywhere near it.
I am SO starving though. Bugger, bugger, bugger.
Twenty-five past one
Listen, the only reason I ate it was because I thought there was a really strong chance that I was going to collapse with starvation, which would mean never seeing Mam again. Imagine how she’d feel if she came back from America and found me dead.
I did it for her, not for me.
It turned out to be a pizza, one of those frozen ones. Simple enough for even my dad to cook. Boy, was it good. I nearly licked the plate.
OK, I did lick the plate.
Not that it lets him off though. No way. He’s still a grouch who cooks warty porridge and then tortures people by starving them.
Now I’m really thirsty. Maybe I’ll take the can of Coke I was planning to leave outside the door. Look, he probably wouldn’t even notice if I left it there – and anyway, he doesn’t drink Coke, so if I don’t have it, I’ll be just letting it go to waste, which I’m pretty sure is a sin.
Half past one
OK, Dad just knocked again and said I can come out if I apologise. I was tempted to tell him to get stuffed, but then I remembered that I wanted to change my library books, so I said I’d think about it. He gave a kind of a snort and went away. I’ll make him wait ten minutes before I go downstairs.
Five o’clock, Thursday, somewhere near the beginning of April.
Today I got into trouble at school. Again. Another visit to Smelly Nelly’s office – and a note for Dad, which I’ll get to later.
Smelly Nelly is our principal. Her real name is Mrs Nelligan, and her breath always stinks of garlic, so you can see where the name comes from. She has a daughter called Chloe in my class – remember the one with the Penguin bar? – and she’s a garlic freak too. Nobody can stand being around her, especially on Mondays. They must spend the weekend eating garlic. No danger of vampires in Nelligans’ house, that’s for sure.
Anyway, all I did today was pass on a note. I didn’t even write the stupid thing. It just landed on my desk, and when I looked around to see who’d thrown it, Catherine Eggleston put a horrible smarmy smile on her face and pointed to Terry McNamara, who was on the other side of me.
Catherine Eggleston doesn’t like me, and boy, is the feeling mutual. But I didn’t want to leave the note on my desk, and Terry sometimes lets me look into his copy at maths time, so I decided to pass it on.
Of course I had to read it first – well, I was doing them a favour, they owed me – so I held it under the desk and opened it, feeling Catherine’s eyes boring into me from behind.
Boy, was it a big disappointment. All it said was:
‘Don’t believe all you hear. Trudy has a vivid imagenation.’
I had no idea what it meant – except that Catherine Eggleston couldn’t spell imagination – so I folded it again and reached across to Terry, and I was just handing it to him when Santa turned around from the blackboard and caught me.
Santa is our teacher. His name is Mr Santorio, even though he’s Irish, but his grandfather or someone came from Italy. Santa doesn’t look in the least like an Italian man, who as far as I know are all dark and good looking, and probably tall.
Santa is the complete opposite – small with wavy red hair that grows in his ears as well as on his head, and his eyes are blue, not ch
ocolate brown, and they’re a bit crossed as well, so you’re never quite sure if he’s looking at you.
But the fact that he roared out ‘Elizabeth Jackson’ gave me a pretty good idea who he was looking at. That’s my name, Elizabeth Jackson, although most people call me Liz. Anyway, Santa made me bring up the note, and my heart sank, because I knew I was off to Smelly’s office again.
The last time I was there was only about ten days before, after the dead beetle in Trudy Higgins’s cheese sandwich. She nearly ate it too, before she spotted its legs, or something, sticking out. You should have heard the scream she let out – I’d say half the school heard it. And then of course her best buddy, Catherine Eggleston, came running over and screeched her head off too. Talk about drama queens.
I still don’t know how they guessed it was me, though. I mean, I hadn’t made a big deal out of Trudy laughing at my banana sandwich the day before, just told her to belt up. How was I supposed to know that bananas go black in sandwiches? Mam had always made my lunch – I was just learning what you could and couldn’t put into a sandwich:
Yes No
Cheese Tomatoes
Peanut Butter Bananas
Ham Curry sauce
Nutella Ben & Jerry’s
Crisps Baked beans
And of course Santa believed Trudy when she pointed a shaking finger in my direction and whimpered, ‘She did it, I know she did,’ and off I went to the office.
So today Smelly gave her usual ‘I’m-very-disappointed-in-you’ talk, and I did my best to look sorry – I knew there was no point in telling her I hadn’t written the note – and then I was sent back to apologise to Santa.
And just before home time, when I thought it was all over, Smelly called into the class and handed me an envelope to bring home to Dad, and told me to get him to sign the note inside and to bring it back to her tomorrow. Bugger.
I’ve just opened it – well, Smelly never said I couldn’t – and here’s what it says:
Dear Mr Jackson,
I’m sorry to have to bother you, particularly in the light of your recent domestic problems –
Domestic problems? What’s she on about?
– but I have to tell you that Elizabeth has been increasingly disruptive in class since Christmas. She has been sent to my office six times during that period, for various reasons –
Six times? No way – it was definitely no more than three. Definitely.
– and for her own sake, and the sake of her classmates, something needs to be done, particularly in the light of her imminent transition to secondary school.
Imminent transition? I have no idea what that means. Why can’t people use normal words?
I am sure a word from you will be effective, and will hopefully sort things out.
Many thanks,
G Nelligan, principal
G. Probably stands for Godzilla.
OK, I’ve thought about it, and I hate to admit it, but Smelly is right, I have been to her office six times since Christmas:
The dead beetle.
The note today, which I didn’t even write.
The encyclopaedia I dropped on the floor, which of course was an accident. (It sure gave Santa a fright though.)
That drawing I did after our ‘how babies are made’ class – just a cartoon, not rude at all really.
Copying the way Santa stood on tiptoe to reach the top of the blackboard – not exactly a major crime.
The poem I wrote about Santa, which I thought was very creative.
Yes, that does make six times. I should have known Smelly would have her facts right. Bugger.
And I suppose ‘domestic problems’ is about Mam leaving – not that that has anything to do with my ending up in Smelly’s office. Oh well, I’d better face the music. I still have to show the note to Dad, and I heard him coming in from work a few minutes ago. Wish me luck.
Five to six
Could have been worse. I’m just forbidden to watch TV for the rest of the week. He’s probably forgotten that this is Thursday. Saturday is the end of the week, right? So that’s just three nights. No problem.
And by the way, in case you’re wondering, I’m a latchkey kid since Mam left, which means I have to let myself into an empty house every day after school, and wait about two hours till Dad gets home. I have a good mind to report him to Childline for that.
Although I must say it’s kind of cool to have the house to myself. Mam never used to let me watch telly in the afternoons.
Nearly time for her phone call. Guess what I’m not going to tell her.
Five past five, Friday, 23rd April.
Today is my thirteenth birthday. I am the first official teenager in the class. What’s more, I’m a teenager from a broken home.
As Granny Daly would say, A RECIPE FOR DISASTER.
Granny Daly knows a lot of recipes for disaster.
I got a Dunnes jumper and a twenty euro book token from Dad, and luckily he left the tag on the jumper, so I can bring it back after school tomorrow and swap it for something that doesn’t look like it was bought by someone who has NO IDEA what thirteen-year-old girls are wearing these days.
And I might be able to trade the book token for cash with Mary Sullivan, who always has her nose stuck in a book.
Dad’s cooking is as bad as ever. Last night we had potatoes with hard bits in the middle of them, and burnt fish fingers. Even I can do fish fingers without burning them. Tonight we’re going out for a Chinese, thank goodness.
I wonder if Dad would let me have some wine, now that I’m thirteen. It can’t taste any worse than the sherry I swiped from the sitting-room cabinet last month. God, that was BAD. It must have been past its sell-by-date, or something.
I got half a bottle of White Musk perfume from Bumble – I told him what I wanted and gave him half the money, because it’s a bit dear. Bumble is great at lots of things, but he’s useless at buying presents.
Last year he gave me a yellow Eminem baseball hat, which just goes to show. My best friend since we were four years old, and he gets me a hat in my least favourite colour. I HATE yellow anything – yellow buildings, yellow flowers, yellow cars. The only yellow things I like are the sun and bananas. Oh, and corn on the cob. And the yellow bit of a boiled egg, as long as it’s soft and runny.
Anyway, I had to wear the Eminem hat a few times so Bumble’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt – mostly around the house – and then I pretended that I’d left it in the garden and the Wallaces’ cat next door had peed in it, and I couldn’t bring myself to wear it again after that. He believed me, of course. Bumble’s nice like that.
So this year I was taking no chances. I love White Musk. It makes me feel sexy and dangerous. Pity it makes Bumble want to throw up, but you can’t have everything.
Bumble’s name isn’t really Bumble, of course – it’s Ben. When he was small someone shortened it to B, and then later someone else changed it to Bumble Bee, and now it’s just Bumble. He doesn’t mind; he’s very easy-going.
Granny Daly sent me a new hairbrush, which I thought was quite a good present for someone with hair that you can actually brush, unlike mine which is too curly for anything except one of those big wooden combs.
By the way, in case you’re wondering, I have reddish brown hair, just longer than my shoulders, and dark blue eyes and zillions of freckles, and a dimple in my chin that I absolutely HATE. I’m 156 centimetres tall and I wear size 38 shoes and my teeth are almost perfectly straight, with a tiny gap between the front two that’s great for spitting through, and I have no boobs yet, and I’m Eminem’s biggest fan, and I can’t bear Britney, and I think Colin Farrell is the sexiest man on the planet.
My favourite food is pizza – but I eat most things – and one of my biggest fears is getting stuck in a lift halfway up a skyscraper. And you’ve already figured that I’m an only child, and my parents are split up. So now you know.
I’ll offer the hairbrush to Bumble’s brother’s girlfriend, whose hair sur
e could use a bit of brushing. She might trade me one of her bangles for it – they’re really cool, and she has loads.
I got a fiver from Marjorie Maloney, a neighbour across the road, but that’s only because she has her eye on Dad since Mam left. She pestered us the first month, knocking on the back door at least twice a week with casseroles, and lemon meringue pie, which is one of the few foods I hate, and asking Dad if he’d have a look at her iron – probably broke it on purpose – and offering to take me shopping for clothes and stuff. As if.
A few times we pretended to be out, but she just came back half an hour later, so we gave that up. The Wallaces’ cat next door got a lot of leftover casseroles for a few weeks. He loved the tuna ones, but he turned up his nose at the chicken, probably because Marjorie Maloney put lots of herbs and stuff in, trying to impress Dad.
Honestly, the way she plays with her hair and giggles when Dad says anything makes me want to throw up in her face. As if he’d look at Marjorie Maloney in a million years, with her tight dresses that stretch across her behind and show the line of her knickers, which everyone knows is a fashion disaster.
Her hair is dyed too – it has to be. No way is anyone’s hair that black. And the perfume she wears is strong enough to knock out an elephant, and nowhere near as sexy as White Musk.
Oh, and I got a parcel.
It arrived a day early, which I suppose is OK seeing as how it came all the way from San Francisco. There was nobody here when the Post Office van delivered it, so Mrs Wallace from next door took it in, and her son Damien came around with it when I got home from school.
Don't Even Think About It Page 2
