by Jane Asher
Anyway, I was gobsmacked when Denisha came out with it like that in the staff canteen. ‘What’s he like?’ and all that. Then I thought – well, that’s how all the girls talk to each other all the time, ain’t it? It’s just that they don’t usually ask you this kind of stuff because you don’t usually have nothing to tell them, do you? So I felt quite proud then, and thought I’d tell her the truth and shame the devil, or whatever Ma says.
‘He ain’t done it – proper, I mean. He’s – he’s like a real gentleman, Nishe, except he likes to touch me – you know.’
‘How? How does he touch you?’
‘Well, you know he moved in a couple of days ago and him and me share a room, and when we’re in bed he –’
She really yelled when I said that.
‘So it IS true! Fuck me, Stace, why’re you sharing a room with the old bugger? He’s married, ain’t he? You’re gonna get yourself in trouble, girl, if you don’t watch out. How come your ma’s letting you share a room, in any case?’
‘She likes him, Nishe, you don’t understand. I asked her if he could stay, ’cos – well, never you mind. I have plans for him, Nishe. Anyway, there ain’t nowhere else he could sleep, ’cept in my room. There’s a sofa bed in my room, you see, and that’s where he sleeps. He pushed it right up to my bed last night so’s he could touch me and all that and then he pushed it back this morning. He treats me real well and my mum knows he’s making me feel – well, you wouldn’t understand, ’cos you’ve never understood about – you see, you’re pretty and you ain’t never gonna understand what it’s like to be ugly like I am. He makes me feel special – like when you go with Jason and you tell me how great he makes you feel. Well, Charlie makes me feel like that all the time. He thinks I’m pretty, you see. My mum can see how different I am and that makes her happy. So we’re pretending he’s just sleeping on the sofa bed but Ma’s not stupid.’
‘You ain’t ugly, Stace – we’re always telling you. You’ve got pretty eyes, you know. And you’re funny, too.’
‘Yeah, yeah, sure. But I don’t wanna be funny. I just wanna be like you. Like you and the others.’
‘Why don’t you try one of your diets again, Stace? You lost two stone that other time, remember?’
‘And no one could see the difference, could they? I’m past that stage, Nishe. No diet’s gonna work for me, I know that now. Shall I tell you what it’s like being me? I worked it out the other day. You know about your dad being an alcoholic, right?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘You know how he is about booze, right? One drink, you said, just one drink and he’s off, ain’t he? He can’t never have just the one, ’cos it’s like an illness and if he has one he can’t – absolutely fucking can’t – help himself having so many that he’s rat-arsed and beats up your mum and all them other things that happen to him, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And drug addicts – them’s the same. Not just like when kids take a bit of speed and that, or the odd joint or shoot up just once in a while to try it I don’t mean, but a real junkie. They have to stop – right out. And they don’t usually manage that, neither. But – s’posing they stop, they can’t never have another hit ever again, right? One hit and they’re off – back on it. Finished.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m like that with eating, Nishe. I know that. I’ve known it for years, when I stop to think about it. I’m a food junkie. I can’t eat normal just like an alcoholic can’t drink normal – but there’s a big fucking difference and I’ll tell you what it is. The difference is what you do about it, that’s what. Because an alcoholic goes to the doctor and the doctor says, “Right, you’re an alcoholic, so there’s only one cure – stop drinking. No alcohol – never. Nothing. And then you’ll be OK.” So I’m a food junkie and I go to the doctor and what does he say to me? “Right, you’re an addict, so there’s only one cure – stop eating. Everything. For ever. Then you’ll be OK.” Does he fuck. I’d be dead – right? So he says, “Right, just eat a little bit. Not the food you really want, neither – just a little bit of all the food that don’t fill you up and don’t satisfy you and don’t give you that feeling you need. But just enough to keep your fucking addiction bubbling along nicely.” See?’
‘Yeah, I never thought of that, Stace. You’re right. If my dad has just a sniff of a drink – like when he got them liqueur chocolates for Christmas and he went right back on it for weeks – well, he just can’t, that’s all.’
It was then I decided it, I think. It was talking to Denisha in a way I’d never talked to her before that made me face it for real. What I had to do, I mean. ‘Cos the diets ain’t never worked before and they ain’t never gonna work again – that’s what Crystal and all them others in America understand. Diets ain’t no good for girls like me and Crystal.
I’ve known in my heart for a while now that Charlie’s been sent to me by Jesus to help me (well, I don’t really think that: I think it’s daft, in fact, but it’s like Crystal would say it and it sounds kinda nice), and it’s time now for me to ask him. To be my angel.
Sally
I did try to ring Dad about Ben, and I was half relieved and half angry when they told me at the hotel that he’d checked out two days ago. I hadn’t realised how wound up I still was about his leaving – I like to think I’m the one that’s most in control of themselves in this family, but as I dialled the number I could feel my heartbeat going berserk and my breathing getting really fast. Once I heard that receptionist’s flat little voice on the other end of the phone telling me calmly that my father no longer stayed there, all that adrenaline swishing round my system was put to more positive use, and I redialled Dad’s office and practically yelled at the secretary there to give him a message to ring me urgently. Then I stormed into Ben’s room and started a thorough search for anything that might give me a clue as to where he had gone. It wasn’t surprising that the answer was stupidly simple: I found his address book. I started a systematic ring round of all his friends, and, after trying just a dozen or so, I tracked him down to an old school friend’s.
When he came on the line I was so angry I could hardly speak: I guess I was still upset about Dad, and it suddenly seemed that everyone but me could just fuck off wherever and whenever they liked without thinking twice about all the hurt they might be causing. But poor old Benbo sounded so quiet and subdued that I soon calmed down and found myself back in the old caring big-sister routine. He tried to explain – something about ‘getting away from his own head’ – but I’m sure it’s all part of Dad’s leaving really. Bastard. I made Ben promise to come home at the weekend, and then left him alone.
I ran downstairs to Mum’s bedroom and knocked on the door. She hadn’t seemed to care much about Ben’s disappearance, but I think I needed to go through the motions of pretending she was the caring, loving mother I wanted her to be.
I was sure she was in there, but she just wouldn’t answer. I put my head down and pressed my ear against the door to see if I could hear a faint radio or anything (she often puts on Radio 4 or Classic fm very quietly when she has a headache – God knows why, as you’d think any kind of sound would be the last thing you’d want, but she says it’s soothing) but it was dead silent. Or at least that’s what I thought at first.
After a few seconds, I heard something. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was like: it reminded me of when I came down into the kitchen once years ago and a mouse was inside the vegetable basket. I can remember the little scraping sounds it was making (they went on for ages while I stood there listening) and I didn’t know what it was at first, then, once I realised there was something alive inside where all our potatoes and things were, I had to go and get Ben and he said it must have been a mouse and he showed me all the droppings. We never did catch it.
Anyway, this noise was a bit like that. Funny little scrape-scrape-scrape sounds, followed by a kind of sigh, or whisper, then a sort of quick, rustling, papery noise and then the scrap
ing all over again. I just couldn’t begin to work it out, and I stood bent over at the door for at least a minute, trying to put a picture to the sounds, like a quiz or something. Scrape-scrape-scrape-sigh-rustle. Over and over. I began to feel a bit scared, imagining there was a bird or huge insect trapped in there that might fly out at me if I opened the door, but the noise seemed too regular for that. If Mum really was in there – and I thought I’d heard her go up the stairs a while ago – then I knew it was no good trying to push open the door to look, even if I was brave enough, because she always locked it when she had a headache ‘to make sure I’m left in peace’, she’d say.
I called her again, but as there was still no answer I gently turned the handle and pushed the door. When it began to swing quietly open I knew she couldn’t be there.
But I was wrong. I’m not sure now if I wish the door had been locked. It might have been easier if I’d never found out. If Dad had never found out.
Charlie
I could sense something was brewing, of course. Stacey’s darling eyes give away more than she knows, and when we were settled into our beds and I was stroking her in the way I love to, she was looking at me very thoughtfully. The night before, she giggled and closed her eyes when I felt her gorgeous skin and ran my hand over her beautiful curves, but last night she was quiet and just watching me.
‘What is it, you lovely, divine light of my life?’ I asked in a whisper. (Although our door was shut and Lena’s room is on the other side of the landing, it’s such a tiny flat that I was worried we could be heard.) Even my silly love talk didn’t make her laugh this time, and I felt a tiny stab of anxiety. ‘What is it, darling? Why are you so quiet? You’re not ill, or hurting somewhere, are you?’
‘No, Charlie – it’s nothing like that. But I love it when you look all worried about me: it makes me feel like crying. No one except Ma ain’t never worried about me before like you do. Denisha says you’re my father figure, ’cos my dad went off when I was little and all that, but you don’t seem to act much like a father to me. Well – I dunno though, come to think of it, when you read all them things in the paper – Billy Connolly’s dad was feeling him up and that, you know. He said so on Parkinson. Disgusting. At least my dad never done that, but then he wasn’t here long enough to get round to it. But he never tried it on when he was here. I’d soon have told him where to get off, I can tell you.’
I smiled at her. ‘I certainly love you as much as a father would, Stacey, and you know I’ll always take care of you if I’m allowed to. And of course I worry about you, darling: you know how – how completely and utterly besotted with you I am. If you’re not well then I’m not well – don’t you see? You are me, Stacey. I am you. You’ll never be able to understand this – I know that. It’s something I’d only read about in books before it happened to me, and I’m not stupid enough to think for a second that the way I feel about you is something that you can ever possibly feel for me. I realise that.’
‘But I do feel –’
‘Shh, it’s all right, darling. I really don’t want you to think you have to say all those things. You don’t. It’s OK. I know you’re fond of me – and you probably even think you’re a bit in love with me, because I make you feel good and confident and loved and beautiful. All the things you should feel – that you deserve to feel. But it doesn’t matter: it’s enough for me that you let me worship you and love you and be with you. Touching you like this is – it’s the nearest thing I can imagine to being – well, in religions they’d call it being in a state of grace, or nirvana, or ecstasy or – Buddhahood or something. I feel nothing but love and light and peace and wonder, and if I was a religious man I’d say – I’d say when I look at you and feel what I feel, I see the face of God.’
‘Fucking hell, Charlie. You’re right weird, sometimes.’
‘I know. Don’t worry – I’m not as weird as I sound. It’s just love, that’s all. I had no idea. No idea.’
‘Would you do anything for me?’
‘Anything. Come on, darling – what do you want? What can I do? Anything I have is yours – just tell me.’
‘I want to be thin.’
It nearly broke my heart when she said it – she looked so sad and so vulnerable, but at the same time so much on the defensive, as if she expected me to laugh at her.
‘I haven’t seen that look since our bogof days, Stacey. Relax, sweetheart. You can say anything to me – I promise you. You’re lovely, Stacey. You mustn’t mind what people do or say – you’re –’
‘Piss off, Charlie – I’m fat. I’m horribly fat and I hate it and I can’t stand it no longer and you can help me.’
‘I love you just as you are. You’re perfect.’
‘You said you’d do anything.’
‘And I will – I meant it. I will. But I don’t want you to make yourself more unhappy by always wanting something; always struggling with diets or pills or –’
‘No, it ain’t that. No more diets, Charlie. I want to go over to the other side.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I want the slimming operation. I want weight-loss surgery – that’s what it’s called.’
‘No, Stacey, not an operation – that’s dangerous. I can’t – I can’t risk anything happening to you. You’re my life.’
‘If I go on like this, Charlie, I’m gonna die anyway. My doctor says –’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’re young – you’re healthy.’
‘I ain’t healthy, Charlie! Face it. I’m sick – I’m as sick as if I got cancer. I got arthritis and my insides is all squashed and I’ll have diabetes soon and my legs is all ulcered and you’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Anything, you said. You said I could have anything.’
‘Don’t cry, darling – please, please don’t cry, I can’t bear it. You can – you can have anything. You will have whatever you want, I promise you. But this surgery idea is just crazy, Stacey. I’d do anything to keep you well, to make you happy. I’ve said that and I mean it. But not surgery, darling, it’s far too dangerous.’
‘Oh, yeah? How do you know? What do you know about it? I know everything. I know the hospital what does it and I know what it’s like and I know it works. My friend I write to had it done and she’s lost masses already. I find it hard to go into work now, Charlie, and I know I’m gonna be like she got soon. All she done for months is sit in front of the TV and eat. I want more than that: I want a life and I’m gonna get it whether you help me or not. If my fucking doctor won’t help me get it on the NHS and you won’t help me I’m gonna find someone who –’
‘Stacey – Stacey, my darling – please stop crying.’ I shifted myself over onto her bed and put my arms round her and held her. ‘I will help you – anything you want – I’ll do it. Anything. Don’t worry, my angel, I’m going to help you do whatever you want. I promise. Shh.’
She snuffled and burrowed into my shoulder like an animal and left it wet and sticky when she looked up at me. ‘No, Charlie,’ she said, and she was smiling now, ‘no, I’m not the angel. That’s you.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, over there – in America – when they go over to the other side, they all get themselves an angel. Even before they go over, I mean. Like for support and for telling all their friends how they’re doing and all that. Like the men with Aids have a buddy – you know. They get an angel. You’re going to be mine, aren’t you, Charlie? I can’t do this all on my own.’
‘I can’t think of anything more wonderful, darling. I’m your angel. For ever.’
Sally
I couldn’t make out what she was doing at first. I must have opened the door really quietly because she still didn’t look round, although I suppose that’s not surprising when you think I’d been calling her through the door and she hadn’t answered. She was – distracted. By what she was doing.
I walked up behind her, with a feeling of fear – not fear of what might happen, I don’t mean, but fear
of what I would see when she turned round. It was like one of those films when you see the back of someone’s head and you just know that when they turn round they’re going to have no mouth or be covered in blood and stuff. The funny scraping noise was still going on, and of course I could see now that it was coming from her. It made me think of the mouse again, and the really strange thing was that as I got nearer I saw a little pile of mouse droppings on the dressing table top right next to where she was sitting. That was so freaky – like I was still in my memory while I was looking at the present.
But then she did turn round, and in one jolt I knew what she was doing and understood that it wasn’t mouse droppings at all. She was holding some sort of blade in one hand, and the other was resting on the dressing table. On top of a card. But that wasn’t the only card. There were – dozens – no, hundreds – of them. In a messy pile on one side of her: all different colours, with pictures all over them. And names: Treasure Cove, I could see on one. Wizard of Odds on another. Lucky Dog, 3 Times Lucky, Raining Cats and Dosh. And then I saw there was another pile on the other side, but neatly stacked so I could only see the one on the top. Top prize £100,000 it said, in bright-yellow writing, and next to it those stupid crossed fingers with a smile on them.
