Just Don't Make a Scene, Mum!

by Rosie Rushton

  At this point Jon’s mother padded into the kitchen with an armful of flowers. She was tiny, especially when viewed against the rotund bulk of her spouse. Dressed in a chiffon kaftan and embroidered slippers, she looked as if the merest puff of wind would blow her over. This was misleading. She was a lot tougher than she looked.

  ‘Out of the way please, both of you – I’ve got to get three bridesmaids’ posies done by eleven.’ She dumped the flowers on the worktop and reached for the scissors.

  ‘I was just trying to get the lad to see sense, Anona,’ snapped her husband. ‘I’ve told him, with a brain like his, he should …’

  Mrs Joseph, who had heard it all a dozen times before, said nothing and rammed a couple of rosebuds into a wire frame.

  ‘Dad, will you listen to me for once!’ shouted Jon. ‘I don’t have this amazing brain you keep going on about. It’s all in your mind. Ever since I can remember it’s been “Jon’s such a bright lad, he’s going to Cambridge, aren’t you,Jonnie?”Well, I’m not, and that’s that.’

  Mr Joseph, who took little pink pills for blood pressure and whose already florid complexion was turning more puce by the moment, grabbed his golf bag and strode to the back door.

  ‘Well, just look at me, that’s all I can say,’ he expostulated. ‘Had to work my way up the ladder by my bootlaces – no one gave me a head start. I got where I am today through sheer grit and determination.You’ve had it all handed to you on a silver plate and you just don’t appreciate it.’ He growled and turned to his wife.’I’m off now – perhaps you can knock some sense into your son.’

  Mrs Joseph noticed that Jon was always her son when he was not behaving as his father wished, and his when he scored a half century for the school eleven.

  As the back door reverberated to his father’s departure, she looked at her son and said, ‘Why do you wind your father up like that, Jon? You know how set he is on your making a success of your life.’

  Jon perched on a kitchen stool beside his mother.’But my idea of success and his are poles apart – I don’t want to spend the rest of my life stuck in some crappy office all day pushing papers round a desk,’ grumbled Jon.

  His mother sighed. She didn’t often air her views – her husband did enough of that – but she did see Jon’s point.’It’s just that he wants you to have all the things he would have liked but couldn’t have,’ she said, not wanting to seem disloyal to her husband.

  ‘But I’m not Dad. I don’t want the things he wanted. I don’t want to be the sort of person he is. I don’t want to go to any university. And I don’t want to be stuck in some school where I have to …’

  His mother interrupted.’Hang on a minute. “Stuck in some school”? Do you have any idea of what it costs us to send you to Bellborough Court? What sacrifices your father makes to find the fees? How I work at a boring old job to top up the funds? We are giving you the best possible start in life.’

  ‘It’s my life, in case you haven’t noticed,’ yelled Jon. ‘I am fifteen and a half – anyone would think I was doing A levels tomorrow. And I didn’t ask you to pay school fees – I could have gone to Lee Hill with all my friends from primary school. But Dad wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘Oh Jon, how could you compare Lee Hill with Bellborough Court? Don’t be silly – most kids would give their eye teeth to go private.’ And most mothers would give their eye teeth not to have to work weekends to help pay for it, she thought silently and immediately was swamped with guilt for being so selfish.

  Jon sighed. There was no point arguing. He had plenty of friends at Bellborough but none of them lived nearby. His best friend, Rob, was at Lee Hill and so were Gavin and Ben and Doug. They seemed to be doing great. And having fun at the same time. Not that his dad seemed to think fun mattered. Well, he would definitely have some fun tonight.

  ‘By the way’ he said, ‘Rob’s dad is picking me up at seven-thirty to go to The Stomping Ground.’

  His mother sighed. ‘That’ll be nice – but don’t expect your father to approve.’

  ‘He’s not invited,’ said Jon. Anyway, my whole life does not revolve around work. I want some fun. Didn’t you ever want fun when you were my age?’

  His mother said nothing. There were a lot of things she had wanted when she was Jon’s age, and she hadn’t got any of them. Which is why it was so important that Jon didn’t miss a single opportunity. But nevertheless, she did want him to be happy. Lately he had seemed pre-occupied, as if there was something he wanted to talk about but just didn’t get around to. A bit like she had been when she’d first married Henry, she thought ruefully.

  Jon took the silence as a promising sign. ‘Actually Mum, I think I’m more like you than Dad. I mean, you’re really good with colour and design and stuff.You see what I really want…’

  ‘Yes, Jon? What do you want – or are you just drifting through life with no direction?’ Like me, she thought. He mustn’t end up like me.

  Jon snatched his earphones up from the floor where they had fallen. ‘I’ll tell you what I want. Right now, the only thing I want is to get the hell out of here and as far away from all this constant nagging as I can. I’m going out.’

  ‘Jon, where are you going? Jon, come back – I didn’t mean – tell me what…’

  But Jon had gone.

  Chapter Six

  Laura Takes a Tumble

  Laura said goodbye to Chelsea, hung up and grabbed her jacket from the solitary hook in the tiny hallway, tripping over her mother’s umbrella and kicking the telephone directory on her way. This pokey little house was the pits.

  She was sure that her friends talked about it behind her back. Their old house had had big rooms and plenty of space to make a mess in – this one was no bigger than a dog kennel and half as attractive. It had no atmosphere, no charisma and simply wasn’t the right environment for a creative genius. She didn’t know how her mother could have chosen it – but then, these days her mother not only seemed totally oblivious to the sheer ignominy of moving to 18a Wordsworth Close, but completely unaware of a whole load of deadly embarrassing things that were happening in their lives. Mum had changed and Laura didn’t like it. Not one bit. And what was more, she wasn’t prepared to put up with it for very much longer.

  Laura wasn’t at all like her mother – Mum was blonde while Laura had auburn hair like her dad (‘And a temper to match,’ her gran would mutter from time to time), and Laura’s mum was slim while Laura was a bit on the chubby side. (This was due largely to the fact that she saw chocolate biscuits and cheese and onion crisps as life-sustaining items to be devoured at regular intervals.) What’s more, Laura’s mum was very dependable, cool, calm and collected, which no one, not even Laura herself if she was being really honest, could say she was. Mum was great in a crisis but Laura flew off the handle at the slightest provocation. ‘Virginia Woolf did the same,’ she would tell her friends on occasions when they got tired of her tirades. They never seemed that impressed.

  After Dad had moved out, Mum had said she would have to get a job. Laura didn’t like that idea, even though then Mum wouldn’t have any excuse to keep putting off buying Laura new clothes. It was just that she didn’t want people to know her mum had to go out to work for money. Laura and her mum had got on really well — until Melvyn. Laura blamed him for the change in Mum. These days Laura didn’t know where she stood – one day Mum would be all airy-fairy and devil-may-care, the next she could snap everyone’s head off and lay down the law about everything from apple cores under the bed to the time Laura spent on the phone. Which was hardly any time at all really. And more often than not, Melvyn would be at their house for supper, or mowing the lawn, or helping her mum wallpaper the loo and grinning at Laura with that inane smirk of his, and trying to be all matey. It was too much.

  Grandma said it would take time, that Laura should try to help her mother through this difficult patch in her life. She did try to be nice but there were times when she wanted to yell,‘What about my life? Was it me
that drove Dad away into the arms of the Bestial Betsy? Was it me that upped sticks and moved from the decent house in Preston Abbott where I had my own shower room and a huge garden to go and write my novel in, to this seedy little semi on this grotty housing estate with a lawn the size of a postage stamp? But it’s me who is having my entire life ruined at a crucial time in my social and intellectual development. I’m the sort of kid TV documentaries talk about in muted tones of sympathy and understanding.’

  Yanking her bike out of the cramped little garage, and shouting to her mother that she was going over to Chelsea’s, she pedalled as fast as she could out of the close and on to Church Farm Road. Chelsea lived three minutes away in fashionable Thorburn Crescent, where the houses stood back from the road and driveways were crammed with Mercedes and 4x4s. Chelsea’s family were really rich – well, Chelsea said they weren’t, but Laura reckoned they had to be because Chelsea’s mum was a journalist and did stuff on the radio and wore clothes from boutiques instead of chain stores and was always smiling. Laura noticed that people with cash found being light-hearted a whole heap easier than people who were working out whether to pay the gas bill or eat. And even though Chelsea’s dad was out of work right now, they still had takeaways most Saturday nights and hired out DVDs without anyone complaining about the rental fees. Chelsea, sighed Laura, had it all. She even got A grades in physics and chemistry.

  I bet Chelsea’s mum never yells at her, thought Laura as she waited for the traffic lights to change. Because she realises the damage that sort of thing can do to kids. And I’m pretty sure she would never take up with a boring old fart like Melvyn when she could have Dad.

  That was another thing Laura envied Chelsea for – her dad was still living at home.

  Everyone had been really surprised when Dad moved out. ‘He always seemed such a solid sort of chap,’ Laura’s uncle had said. ‘How strange,’ Laura’s aunt had murmured. ‘And him a chartered accountant,’ sniffed Mrs Bramhill next door, as if an ability to understand profit and loss accounts was a certain recipe for everlasting marriage.

  Dad had moved in with the Bestial Betsy – probably because he was trying to get over the pain of being rejected by Mum, Laura reckoned. He couldn’t actually like Bestial B more than Mum — Betsy had black hair and a big nose and wore Laura Ashley skirts and sweaters with lace collars and picked things off bushes by the roadside and made them into wine and other strange concoctions. Laura thought that there was a pretty good chance she had latched on to Dad for his money (the money Mum said she never got to see) and was brewing elderflower wine to conceal the arsenic she was planning to pop him off with. She told Grandma that she thought the Bestial Betsy was up to no good, and didn’t she think they ought to go to the police, but all Grandma had said was that Laura was far too inclined to over-dramatisation and she blamed Dalziel and Pascoe, Casualty and reality TV in equal parts.

  Laura reckoned her mum was being really horrible about her dad. They had had a bust up about it only yesterday. Laura’s grandma, who always came to supper on a Friday, said, ‘Did you get that cheque from Peter?’ and Laura’s mum had replied, ‘What do you think? When did that man ever part with ten pence when he didn’t have to?’ and Laura, who was feeling foul because her period was due and she had got a C minus in biology and she detested liver casserole, and because she loved her dad and hated him for not being there, had burst into tears and said, ‘You’re always being rotten about Dad! That’s why he left – no one would want to live with YOU! I hate you! I wish I wasn’t living here in this dump either!’ and she had pushed back her chair and stormed out of the room.

  She had flung herself on to her bed, crying as noisily as possible so her mum would feel really guilty and come and say she was sorry and that she realised it was all her fault, and she would ask Dad to leave the Bestial Betsy and come back to live with them and everything would be fine. They would move back to their old house and life would be normal again. But after twenty minutes of sobbing and making choking noises and flinging herself off the bed on to the floor (which hurt more than she meant it to), she realised that her mum was not taking any notice.

  That was the problem, she thought as she freewheeled down Billing Hill towards Chelsea’s turning. Mum never took any notice of her feelings or opinions any more. Come to think of it, Mum never took notice of anything, from peeling paint on the windowsill to the fact that Melvyn was a pasty-faced, humourless git. It was as if she didn’t care. What was it that Mum used to say to her when she was little and having a tantrum? ‘Don’t care was made to care.’Well, Laura had decided it was time to take action.

  She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not see the red mountain bike careering out of a driveway on the left. Well, not till its front wheel interlocked with hers, that is. There was an awful squealing sound, a scrunch and she found herself gazing up at a spinning bicycle wheel and a boy with wickedly curly hair and amazing legs who looked distinctly displeased with the whole incident.

  ‘Are you mad or what?’ he yelled, disentangling his iPod lead from her handlebar and staggering to his feet. Laura just lay at the kerb and stared at him.

  Chapter Seven

  Jon Gets Diverted

  This was all he needed. Thwarted ambitions, another blazing row with his father, and now some stupid kid crashes into his precious bike.

  Jon scrambled to his feet and picked up the bike.There was a scratch on the wheel guard and the gravel had pitted the paint at the back, but at least nothing was dented or bent. But all his sketches for the cover of the school magazine which had been hidden in his bag were all over the road. Ruined, probably. Pestilential kid.

  The girl was struggling to her feet and as he scrabbled around picking up sheets of grubby paper, he noticed that her hands were grazed and her left cheek was bleeding. She was also staring at him in a rather disconcerting manner.

  ‘Don’t you ever look where you are going?’ he snapped, suddenly feeling ill at ease and awkward as he brushed mud off his drawings and tried to look nonchalant even though he had suddenly realised that his right elbow was stinging like crazy.

  ‘Me? Me?’ yelled the girl, green eyes blazing. ‘If you recall, I was minding my own business on the right side of the road. It was you that came down that drive like a bat out of hell and straight into my path. So don’t you go putting the blame on me, you idiot!’

  Jon stared at her. He’d expected her to burst into tears or say she was frightfully sorry about his bike. She had guts, he’d give her that. Must be all that ginger hair that made her so fiery. Come to think of it, she had a really interesting face. Jon was fascinated by people’s expressions, their gestures, the way they reacted. But right now, he hated the universe and everyone in it. And she was the last straw.

  ‘I’m surprised you’re allowed out on the road on your own – you shouldn’t be in charge of a doll’s pram, never mind a bike,’ he shouted. ‘Brainless kid,’ he muttered for good measure.

  ‘If it’s brain we’re discussing, you’re the one lacking in grey matter,’ said Laura. ‘See these? These are called brakes. When you apply them, the bike slows down.’ She separated each word deliberately as if talking to a dim-witted foreigner. ‘Most people slow down when approaching a road. Most people look where they are going. People who are not bad-tempered egotistical idiots, that is.’ (She’d discovered the word egotistical last week and thought it had a nice ring to it. She was planning on using it in The Novel.) She gave a sarcastic leer, and turned away.

  Suddenly he grinned. ‘OK, OK – truce. I was in a right mood when I came down the drive. I wasn’t thinking straight, never mind riding properly. Parent trouble.’ He raised his eyes heavenwards.

  ‘You and me both,’ murmured Laura.

  Jon looked at her hands. ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  Oh heck, he was going to be nice to her. She could cope with ranting and raving but his smile had made her go all wobbly round the kneecap area.

  Yes, I’m fine,�
�� said Laura.’Sorry about the…’

  ‘No, forget it. I’m Jon, by the way.’

  ‘I’m Laura. What are those?’ Laura pointed to the pile of papers in Jon’s hand.

  ‘Oh, nothing – just stuff – homework stuff,’ he muttered.

  He wished she wouldn’t stare at him like that. He suddenly felt clumsy and awkward and knew his face was going bright red. And he was sure she was staring at those awful whiteheads on his chin. ‘Well, I must go – things to do, people to see.’ He stuffed the drawings back into his bag and this time remembered to close it properly.

  Laura picked up her bike, still gazing at him and saying nothing.

  ‘See you around,’ he said.And with that he jumped on his bike and sped off down the hill. Laura didn’t move.

  I think, she thought to herself through the throbbing pain in her cheek, I think I am in love.

  Chapter Eight

  The Phone-In Hots Up

  Back at the radio station, things were moving apace.

  ‘So we’ve had Russell whose mum still expects him to wear hand-knitted sweaters,Trish whose older sister flirts with her boyfriend, and Melanie whose mother queuejumps at the checkout by pretending to feel faint.’ Dean Laurie beamed at Ginny. ‘And all of you will go into the Prize Draw to win a trip behind the scenes at the Echo, personally conducted by Ginny Gee.’

  Big deal, thought Chelsea, as she dialled the number.

  ‘So keep those calls coming. We’re going to take a break now for the local news and weather, but we’ll be back and so, I hope, will you.’

  Deal leaned back in his chair and smirked at Ginny. ‘Right Ginny, what have we got lined up for you after the break?’ He glanced at his computer screen, where all the waiting calls were logged.

  ‘There’s a Samantha from Little Brafield — brother keeps teasing her about being fat, Kirsten, aged thirteen – embarrassed by her lisp, Sumitha – bit of trouble with parents who …’