Bindi Babes

by Narinder Dhami

  “Well, you're on your own then,” I said, and dropped her arm.

  We waited till Kim had staggered into the girls' cloakroom before saying anything.

  “So how did you get her down?” Geena asked.

  “I said I'd show everyone her knickers,” I replied.

  “Nice one,” Jazz said. “Poor old Kim.”

  We grinned at each other. Kim was scared of everything. For her, life was a big, ongoing problem. The three of us, on the other hand, weren't scared of anything at all. Life was pretty good, despite what it had thrown at us.

  “Now, has anyone got anything to ask Dad tonight?” Geena asked in a businesslike way.

  School was over, and we were on our way home. Kim was still feeling a bit wobbly, so we'd taken her to the tower block where she lives with her mum and Gary, her mum's boyfriend. In a flat, I mean. They don't own the whole block, ha ha.

  “My ears,” Jazz began, and Geena and I groaned.

  “Not again,” I said. “I happen to think my new trainers are more important.”

  “Why?” Jazz demanded aggressively.

  “Because I've already told Chelsea and Sharelle that I'm getting them,” I replied.

  “That was a bit risky,” Geena remarked. “Seeing as you haven't even asked Dad yet.”

  “Like he's really going to say no,” I scoffed. We tried not to ask Dad for too many things all at once, so we had regular discussions on the way home from school to plan our strategy. But it had been a month since I'd got the money for my DKNY sunglasses, so I reckoned my new trainers were as good as on my feet already.

  “Anyway, Jazz, there's no point in asking Dad if you can get your ears pierced again,” I went on. “He'll just say you have to wait till you're twelve, like he always does.”

  “No, he won't.” Jazz gave me a shove. “He's weakening. I can see it. He can't look me straight in the eye anymore.”

  “I want my bedroom redecorated,” Geena joined in. “I saw a gorgeous purple and silver color scheme on Changing Rooms last week.”

  “You just fancy that bloke with the long hair,” I said.

  “No, I do not,” Geena retorted, and we spent five minutes hitting each other with our bags.

  “Geena, will you go out with my mate?” yelped a spotty Year 10 boy, who'd been following us for the last fifteen minutes.

  “No, thank you,” Geena replied politely.

  We get asked out all the time. Dad's quite strict and he doesn't let us date boys. But we'll get round him when we feel like it.

  “How about this for a brilliant word?” I announced, clipping Jazz lightly on the ear. “Discombobulate.”

  “There's no such thing,” Geena accused me.

  “Yes, there is.” I smiled. “Now you've got to guess what it means.”

  I didn't know what it meant myself, but it sounded great.

  “You've discombobulated my head,” Jazz suggested, rubbing her ear.

  “That dog's discombobulating,” Geena added, as an Alsatian cocked his leg against a lamppost.

  “Nope.” I'd let them guess for a while, and then I'd make something up.

  “Oh no,” Geena groaned. She was looking further down the street. “That's all we need.”

  There was Mr. Attwal, standing in the doorway of his minimarket, searching for likely victims to bore to death.

  I assessed the situation. “We haven't got time to hide.”

  “No, we haven't,” Geena said under her breath. “Just stay cool, and remember: stick together.”

  We stood shoulder to shoulder. It could be dangerous if one of us got left behind or separated. Bravely we marched along the pavement, looking straight ahead. If you accidentally made eye contact, it could be disastrous.

  “Hello, girls,” Mr. Attwal was already beginning hopefully, as we got closer. “Not coming in today?”

  “No, we're in a hurry,” Geena said brightly, still walking, still looking straight ahead.

  “Not even for free sweets?” Mr. Attwal offered.

  We'd fallen for that one a couple of times before. Luckily, we were saved when a young mum with a baby in her arms crossed the road and walked toward the shop.

  “Come in, madam.” Mr. Attwal beamed. “Welcome to my shop.” He handed the woman a wire basket, stepped aside, waved her in and patted the baby's head without drawing breath. “Of course, I never expected to end up as a shopkeeper. I could have been an accountant, you know. Or a lawyer. My teachers in Delhi actually thought I'd make a very fine doctor …”

  The mum and her baby were trapped, like flies in a spider's web. Meanwhile, the three of us rushed past gratefully.

  “Personally, I think I could have been a computer wizard.” Mr. Attwal's voice drifted after us. “Of course, I've never used a computer. I just have this feeling …”

  “He told me once that he could have been an astronaut,” Jazz whispered. “He said he wanted to be the first man in orbit with a turban under his space helmet.”

  “Do you remember—” I began, then stopped. About five years ago, Mum had sent me to the corner shop for a loaf of bread. When I hadn't come home after an hour, she'd panicked, but it turned out I'd fallen asleep behind the fruit and veg while Mr. Attwal was still talking, and he hadn't noticed. It was a family joke, but it meant mentioning Mum. And we never did.

  The other two were looking at me, waiting for me to finish the sentence. Luckily, I spotted something to distract them.

  “Isn't that Dad's car?”

  “What? It can't be.” Geena shaded her eyes and looked down our street.

  “It is Dad's car,” Jazz said. “What's he doing here?”

  That ought to have given us a clue. Dad was never home when we got back from school. We used to have a childminder called Mrs. O'Connor, but about a month ago we'd persuaded Dad that we were old enough to look after ourselves until he got home from work. Dad was the head accountant with a big company, and he always seemed to have too much work to do. Half the time he didn't get back till ten or eleven at night, so we got takeaways and watched unsuitable TV programs whenever we wanted. It was great.

  “When was the last time Dad came home early from work?” Geena asked.

  I thought about it. “When Jazz fell over and split her head open,” I said. “And Mrs. O'Connor panicked.”

  Jazz sniffed. “She was more worried about missing Neighbors than about my poor head.”

  “Well, it was just coming up to an exciting bit,” Geena said.

  We hurried toward the house. Our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Macey, was weeding her front garden and, as usual, she turned her back on us. She moved in six months ago, and she never speaks. We can't figure out if she doesn't like us because we're Indian, or because we're children. Maybe it's both. Or maybe she just doesn't like anyone. I've never seen her have any visitors.

  “Mrs. Macey's definitely discombobulated,” Geena said, unlocking the door with the key she kept on a chain round her neck.

  “You know what?” I said. “I reckon you're right.”

  Dad came out of the living room as we burst through the door. He was wearing jeans and a denim shirt instead of a suit and tie, which was even more shocking. He'd come home and changed, which meant he wasn't going back to the office.

  “What are you doing here, Dad?” Geena asked immediately. “Is something wrong?”

  Dad looked nervous, and that was enough to make my skin crawl with fear. It reminded me of coming home from school almost two years ago, and Dad telling us Mum was ill, and wasn't going to get well again. The memory was so strong, so bitter, I could almost taste it. I did what I always did, and pushed it right out of my mind, like a bad dream that had nothing to do with me, or my life.

  “Nothing's wrong,” Dad replied, just as quickly. He took off his silver-rimmed glasses and polished them on his sleeve, while trying to look casual. That made me even more nervous. Dad always cleans his glasses when he's worried so he doesn't have to look us straight in the eye. “I felt like finishin
g work early today.”

  “Why?” Jazz said, opening her mouth just to put her foot in it.

  Dad looked as awkward as we felt. “Do I need a reason to come home to see my daughters?”

  This was new ground, so we were a bit unsure how we should reply.

  “No,” Geena said at last.

  “Oh,” Jazz said.

  “Great,” I added.

  We stood and looked at each other.

  “Well,” Dad said helplessly, replacing his glasses. “What do you usually do at this time?”

  “We make something to eat,” Geena offered.

  “Something healthy and nourishing,” I added.

  “Or we could get a takeaway from Perfect Pizza,” Jazz began. “Ow!”

  She's such a drama queen. I'd only stamped on the very tip of her toes.

  “Fine.” Dad looked relieved. “Let's have something to eat then.”

  We went into the kitchen, and Geena took two Marks & Spencer's lasagnas out of the freezer, while Dad laid the table. I made a salad, and Jazz sat on the worktop, swinging her legs.

  “Why do you think Dad's come home early?” Geena asked, switching the microwave on. She looked worried.

  “You heard what he said,” I replied, putting the boxes neatly into the bin. “Maybe he's just come home to check up on us. You know he didn't really want to get rid of Mrs. O'Connor.”

  “That's true.” Geena cheered up. “Jazz, you're sitting on a big blob of tomato sauce.”

  We sat down to eat. Dad was still looking nervous, which I couldn't understand. If he'd come home to check up on us, why would he look nervous? I glanced at Geena, who raised her eyebrows expressively at me. She was thinking the same thing. Jazz, as usual, was only thinking about herself.

  “Dad, can I have my ears pierced again?” she demanded.

  “What for?” Dad asked bravely. But Jazz was right, he was starting to cave. He was fidgeting in his chair and looking shifty. “You've got two perfectly good holes already.”

  “Geena and Amber have both got their ears pierced twice, and they've got their noses pierced as well,” Jazz whined. She's good at that.

  “Yes, and we had to wait till we were twelve,” Geena said. “So you've got six months to go.”

  “But I'm very mature for my age,” Jazz argued. “I feel like I'm twelve already inside my head.”

  “Well, I feel seventeen,” I said. “Dad, can I have a car, please?”

  Dad laughed, which delighted me. I liked making him laugh because it didn't happen very often these days. I didn't see him enough to do it regularly. But he soon shut up when Jazz stuck her bottom lip out and did a bit more whining.

  “Please, Dad.”

  “We'll see,” Dad said vaguely. He always looked a bit awkward and lost without Mum to back him up. The thought surfaced in my mind before I could stop it. Mum wouldn't have given in, whatever Jazz had said. Don't think about it, I reminded myself quickly.

  Dad twirled his fork around, and I noticed he hadn't eaten anything. “Listen for a minute,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”

  There's everyday kind of talking, and then there's talking. Dad and the three of us didn't talk since Mum. I wondered what he was going to say.

  “Yes, well …” Dad fidgeted about for a bit. “We haven't had a very easy time of it for the last year or so, have we?”

  We all looked down at our plates. He couldn't talk about Mum. We didn't, because that was the only way everything was bearable.

  “So, I think it's time there were a few changes around here,” Dad went on.

  “Changes?” I repeated suspiciously. “What kind of changes?”

  I could tell that Geena and Jazz were thinking exactly the same as I was. Why did we need changes? Everything was as good as it could be, under the circumstances.

  Dad cleared his throat. “You remember your aunt in India,” he said hopefully.

  Aunt?

  “What aunt?” Jazz asked, opening her eyes wide. “We haven't got an aunt in India.”

  “Yes, we have, no-brain,” I said across the table.

  “Oh, that aunt,” Jazz said. “The one who doesn't like us.”

  “Oh, Jazz, really.” Dad looked nervous. “That's not true.”

  It was. She was my dad's sister, but we didn't know her at all. She'd visited us in England once, years ago, but she and our mum didn't get on, so she'd never come back.

  “Auntie's very fond of you,” Dad went on.

  We didn't say anything. I couldn't even remember what Auntie looked like. I was five the last time I saw her.

  “Auntie's coming over from India to live with us,” Dad said. “She's going to look after us. Won't that be nice?” He stared intently at his plate.

  “What?” Geena said.

  “When?” I demanded.

  “Now I'm really discombobulated,” Jazz announced sulkily.

  There was no answer to that.

  We didn't want her, of course. Why would we? We had everything going for us. Dad gave us anything we wanted, eventually. Everyone at school thought we were the best. The teachers loved us. Nearly all the boys fancied us. We could do pretty much what we liked as long as we behaved ourselves and did our homework on time. Life was good.

  Of course we didn't want her. We didn't need her.

  “I can't believe Dad would do this to us,” Geena said for the seventh or eighth time. It was the following morning. Dad had escaped to the office before we got up, so there was no chance to have another go at him. “This is going to ruin everything.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?” I asked. “Jazz, if you've nicked my only clean shirt, I'm going to kill you very slowly.”

  “I haven't,” Jazz retorted, putting her school sweatshirt on quickly.

  “It looks like mine.”

  “They're all exactly the same,” Jazz said smugly. “They're uniform. That's what it means. Uniform means all the same— Urgh!”

  I'd grabbed her round the neck. “Give me that shirt.”

  “Geena, help me!” Jazz croaked, as I tightened my grip.

  “Oh, for God's sake.” Geena took a clean shirt out of her wardrobe, and handed it to me. “We've got more important things to talk about.”

  She was right. Jazz and I slapped each other around a bit, and then declared a truce.

  “Maybe we can stop Auntie from coming,” Jazz suggested, as we clattered downstairs.

  “How?” I asked. “Hijack the plane?”

  “We could ring the Foreign Office, and tell them she's an international criminal,” Jazz said. “We could say she's smuggling drugs under her sari.”

  “Pity she isn't married,” I grumbled. “If she had her own family to look after, then she wouldn't have to come and interfere with ours.”

  “I heard Mum say once that nobody would be daft enough to marry her,” Geena blurted out. Then she stopped, looking horrified. Jazz and I immediately leaped in to cover for her.

  “How old is Auntie anyway?” Jazz asked.

  And at exactly the same moment, I said, “Didn't she have to look after Biji and Babaji?” Our grandparents had been quite old when they'd married and had Dad and Auntie, and they'd died only six months apart two years ago. They'd never come to England and I'd only seen them once, when Mum and Dad had taken Geena, me and baby Jazz to India years ago. My memories of Biji and Babaji were even more hazy than my memories of Auntie.

  Geena cleared her throat, still looking a bit pale. “She's a bit younger than Dad,” she mumbled. “About thirty?”

  “She's getting old,” Jazz remarked severely. “No one'll want to marry her if she doesn't get a move on.”

  “When did Dad say she was arriving?” Geena asked.

  “He didn't,” I replied. “He just said sometime soon.”

  “That's a bit suspicious, don't you think?” Geena said thoughtfully. “Maybe they're trying to take us by surprise.”

  “We've got to make sure we're ready for her, whatever happ
ens,” I said.

  It all made sense now. Why Dad had agreed to get rid of Mrs. O'Connor last month. He must have known for weeks that Auntie was coming, but he hadn't said a word.

  One thing was certain. Auntie might think she was coming to take our mum's place. But we knew better.

  We ate breakfast and got ready to leave. We loaded the dishwasher and wiped the worktops and emptied the kitchen bin. Did we need anybody to look after us? No, we didn't. We were doing a fine job on our own.

  “You know what's going to happen, don't you?” I predicted, as we left the house. “She's going to interfere in everything.” I banged the door shut behind us. “No more takeaways. No more late-night TV. No more—”

  I turned and got a Daily Telegraph smack in the face.

  “You scumbag!” I charged down the path after the paperboy. Meanwhile, Geena and Jazz laughed their heads off. “You are so dead!”

  The paperboy stuck two fingers up at me, stopped at Mrs. Macey's gate, hurled the Sun into her porch and cycled off. I glared after him.

  “Why can't you open the gate, walk up the path and put the newspaper through the letter box like a normal person?” I hollered.

  I was really angry, though it was hard to explain why. It was more than the useless paperboy chucking a Daily Telegraph at me. Here we were, trying our best to get on with things and cope with all that had happened. And there everyone else was, trying to make life really difficult for us. “Everyone else” included Dad.

  “Anything good in the paper, Amber?” Geena asked me with a grin.

  “Ha ha.” I stuffed the Telegraph savagely through our letter box. “So what are we going to do about Auntie? Any ideas?”

  We decided to walk, rather than get the school bus, so that we could discuss our anti-Auntie campaign in peace. The bus was always noisy, and the driver would be threatening to throw everyone off and leave us stranded in the High Street if we didn't behave ourselves. Or worse, he would be muttering about ways of killing us all, slowly and horribly. And boys would be pestering us for dates. Or they'd annoy us by flicking bits of paper or kicking our seats, and pretending they didn't fancy us. We weren't in the mood.

  “Morning, girls.” Mr. Attwal was unlocking the minimarket. “I hear your auntie's coming to live with you.”