Lucky Girl

by Fiona Gibson

  One night, as we slipped toward sleep, Thomas said, ‘You must go home for Christmas. We can’t have him sitting there with a sad little meal for one.’

  The ‘we’ surprised me. ‘He won’t be on his own,’ I told him. ‘There’s some woman, according to Mrs Bones. And why shouldn’t Charlie go home? Why should it be me?’

  It was what I’d said when Dad had forced me to participate in Frankie’s Girl. The truth was, Charlie just pleased himself.

  Thomas shrugged and rolled over in bed to face me. ‘I just think you’d make him happy. I’ll come with you, if you want me to.’

  I knew then that we’d go.

  The first thing I saw was the Sold sign. ‘Estate agent said there wasn’t a hope,’ Dad said, shaking Thomas’s hand briskly, ‘not at this time of year. It was sold in a week. I told him—I’ve found a place, got nothing to hang around here for.’

  We followed Dad into the house with Thomas agreeing that his new house—Dad flashed us a rumpled picture of a ram-shackle structure teetering on a cliff’s edge—was indeed the perfect home for a man whose children never came to see him. The house was called Silverdawn Cottage. I wondered if he was considering renaming it Home for the Unloved.

  I pulled out a kitchen chair for Thomas, and Dad landed heavily in the opposite seat. ‘So, Thomas,’ he said, ‘what do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a sound engineer. I work with bands, musicians—’ ‘Real, professional musicians?’ Dad asked, immeasurably more impressed with my boyfriend’s credentials than any of my music-related achievements. Thomas nodded. ‘Tell me about some of the people you’ve worked with,’ Dad prompted him.

  Thomas talked about the former Page Three model who’d required sixteen hours of recording to put down her vocal, and still sounded as if she were having a limb amputated with no anesthetic. In turn, Dad hauled out his press cuttings and the reams of pages he’d written for Woman’s Life, now gone pale brown and brittle. You couldn’t walk across the living-room floor without treading on Dad’s beaming face.

  There was no mention of the woman friend Mrs Bones had mentioned in her letter. When I asked, Dad glanced up briefly from his life spread there on the carpet and said, ‘There’s no one special, Stella, no one special at all.’

  I left them in the living room, discussing Dad’s greatness and Thomas’s burgeoning career. I would have rescued Thomas—suggested we watch a film on TV, or went out for a drink—but he didn’t sound as if he wanted to escape. There were rumbles of laughter, and the tinkle of the top being removed from the crystal decanter. I peered into kitchen cupboards, looking for signs of someone—unfamiliar teacups, perhaps—but found only our chipped Royal Doulton plates, and shelves jammed with tinned soups.

  Upstairs I lay on the single bed in my old room that hadn’t been decorated since I was a child. The walls were papered with a violent pattern of spiky orange flowers with brown centers. There were faults at the joins; the lengths of paper hadn’t been hung properly.

  Thomas was heading upstairs now, tracking me down. ‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘Frankie says dinner’s almost ready.’ He had fitted in so easily. One brief afternoon and he was part of my family already, relaying messages from Dad—sorry, Frankie.

  ‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ I said. ‘Have you found your bedroom?’ Dad had made it clear that Thomas would sleep in Charlie’s old room.

  ‘Yes thanks. Interesting posters. Think I might have a shark nightmare.’

  ‘I’ll come in and rescue you, if I hear you screaming.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ll find you.’ My own bedroom was filled with too many flowers, all fake and fading: mixed blooms on the flannel curtains; grimy plastic tulips in a vase on the windowsill. Later that night, Thomas crept through from Charlie’s room into my bed. I slid my arms around him, and was poised to kiss his mouth. He pulled away from me and said, ‘Stella, your dad doesn’t seem so bad. Growing up here can’t have been so terrible.’

  Next morning I reached out for Thomas but found only snagged nylon sheets. I pulled on my pajamas and rumpled them up so it would look as if I’d been wearing them all night, and padded barefoot on to the landing. The olive-green carpet felt un-vacuumed and gravelly. When I inspected my feet, bits of grit were trapped between my toes.

  Dad and Thomas were huddled over the kitchen table, too engrossed in the matter at hand to notice me wandering in. ‘Use the palette knife,’ Dad was instructing him, ‘to smooth the icing all over.’

  He was showing Thomas how to ice a cake. I had never known Dad to bother to make one before. I wondered why he’d gone to the trouble when only Thomas and I were spending Christmas with him.

  They both stood back and admired their joint creation. ‘Not bad,’ Dad declared.

  ‘It’s still lumpy,’ Thomas said. ‘Maybe I didn’t beat the icing enough.’

  ‘For a beginner you’ve done a good job.’

  ‘If I wet the knife, could it I smooth it over again?’

  ‘You could try.’

  Thomas ran the knife under the tap and swiped at the cake but the icing was setting already. A thin crust had formed. It looked like a shattered ice rink. ‘Oh, hell,’ Thomas said. Flecks of icing clung to the front of his sweater. He looked horrified at the damage he’d inflicted on an innocent fruitcake.

  ‘Just leave it,’ I suggested. ‘You’re making it worse.’

  ‘No he’s not,’ Dad protested.

  ‘I’ve wrecked it,’ Thomas said.

  I tried to take hold of his sugary hand but his fingers hung limply. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s go down to the beach.’ I loved the back beach in winter when there were no day-tripping hordes. I wanted us to roll up our jeans for a paddle. We could wade out, daring each other to brave the icy water. I thought it might bring him back to me.

  Dad was already mixing up something in a Pyrex bowl: a new batch of icing, which he started to smear over the cake with the palette knife. ‘What are you doing?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Whipping it up into peaks,’ he said. ‘Now, Thomas, you try. Don’t worry about trying to be perfect.’ Tentatively at first, then becoming freer with sweeping strokes, Thomas sculpted the icing until the cake looked like one of the spiky flowers on my bedroom wall, but in dazzling white.

  ‘What do you think, Stella?’ Dad asked.

  I looked down at the cake. They’d made it, the two of them. Thomas was grinning proudly. I remembered the horror of Frankie’s Girl, how I’d cocked up Dad’s chance of a comeback, how he said the show would have worked, and a series been commissioned, if only I’d not looked so bloody self-conscious.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ I said.

  On the train back to London, I flipped through Garnishing Made Easy, my Christmas present from Dad. I couldn’t have been less likely to carve a mango hedgehog (‘A beautiful adornment for many dishes especially curries’).

  I felt Thomas’s eyes on me as I skipped over pages of butter roses and swans carved out of apples, wondering who Dad thought I was.

  Thomas said, ‘Frankie’s not like I imagined. Not a bit like you described him.’

  ‘What did you think he’d be like?’ I asked.

  He swirled his cardboard cup of coffee. ‘Much sterner. Pretty horrible actually. He’s a lovely guy, Stella—so kind and interesting. Can’t understand why you’re so down on him.’

  I watched the sweeping fields and the Canada geese flying in a ragged arrow, heading south, escaping. I wished we’d visited Mrs Bones, paddled at the back beach, done things together. Thomas was sitting in the opposite seat. He’d pulled off his boots and kept teasing the side of my leg with his toe.

  I edged away from him and said, ‘It’s too late.’

  21

  Love Heart

  ‘What’s that you’re wearing?’ Toby’s voice has a cruel singsong edge. He and Jojo are huddled at the far end of the girls’ cloakroom.

  ‘A badge,’ Jojo says. I’m poised at the cloakroom’s entrance. He shouldn’t be he
re; neither should Jojo. Afternoon lessons have begun. In the small gaps between the coat rails, piled high with damp jackets, appear flashes of their red sweatshirts.

  ‘You wear it all the time, don’t you?’ Toby asks casually. ‘Yes, I like it. It came free with a comic.’

  ‘Comic?’ he sneers. ‘You still read comics?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘It’s a love-heart badge, isn’t it? You in love with someone, Jojo?’ I don’t catch her response. Maybe she just shakes her head. Claudine hurries past me, ushering a desperate child from the nursery class to the toilet. ‘Give me it,’ Toby says suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your badge. Take it off.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ Jojo’s voice is soft and breathy, like a younger child’s. Sometimes I wonder if she puts it on to remind adults that she still needs looking after.

  ‘I said, give me it, Piggy.’

  I stride past the coat rails to the end of the cloakroom. The two of them swing round to face me. ‘Shouldn’t you be in class?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re just talking,’ Toby says airily.

  ‘Really? You weren’t trying to take something from her?’ He shakes his head vigorously, as if astounded by my outrageous suggestion. Jojo has already unpinned the love-heart badge and is gripping it fiercely. ‘What did you call her?’ I ask.

  ‘Jojo. I called her Jojo.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’ I can feel my cheeks blazing.

  A bubble of snot appears briefly at Jojo’s left nostril. Inflate, deflate, like a tiny balloon. ‘Off to your class now,’ I tell her.

  She swipes her nose against the flat of her hand and clomps across the glossy wooden floor. Toby turns to follow her. ‘Just a minute,’ I snap.

  ‘What?’ His dark eyes narrow. The bruise has faded now, but the area under his left eye still looks swollen.

  ‘I heard what you said. You called her Piggy. I won’t have you bullying her, Toby.’

  He wafts his eyelashes at me, as if to say: And who are you? Just a music teacher. Not a real teacher at all.

  ‘I wasn’t bullying her,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’ My voice is too loud, verging on a shout. ‘Everything okay here?’ Jen calls across the hall.

  I step back quickly. ‘Toby’s just off to his classroom,’ I say, like some machine that’s managed to put random words in the right order.

  We watch him stroll across the hall. Something dull thuds inside me. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I’d better get over to St Mary’s.’

  Jen nods, and it’s the same old Jen, but her smile is slightly askew, as if it doesn’t quite fit her.

  That evening, standing in her grubby fallen-down socks, Jojo swoops through ‘Gymnopédie’ as if she hasn’t had a break from playing at all. ‘That was lovely,’ I tell her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she mutters.

  ‘Shall we start your Thursday lessons again?’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  She grins, snatching a biscuit from the plate on the table. ‘What was going on with Toby today?’ I ask.

  ‘He was just being friendly.’

  ‘He didn’t sound friendly to me.’

  She turns the biscuit slowly, grinding its edge with her front teeth. ‘Hey, guess what! We’re going to visit my dad.’

  ‘Will that be okay?’

  ‘Yeah. No. He likes Midge best. Everyone does ’cause she’s clever and I’m thick.’

  ‘Jojo, of course you’re not thick. Midge struggles, too, with her maths. Everyone’s good at different—’

  ‘Mum gets mad,’ she cuts in, brushing crumbs from her lips. ‘Says I’m lazy and don’t try hard enough.’

  ‘It was like that in our house. My brother’s really clever, and I wasn’t brilliant at school—with maths especially. Dad would lose it with me. That made it worse. I’d get so worked up, I couldn’t think straight.’

  ‘Did you hate him?’ Jojo asks brightly.

  ’Of course not,’ I say, picturing Charlie huddled over his biology notes showing all the layers of skin, hairs sprouting from the epidermis like reeds. ‘He was my brother, I—’

  ‘I mean your dad.

  ‘No, I didn’t hate him.’ My stomach twists uncomfortably. ‘What about your mum? Did she shout as well?’

  ‘Mum died when I was twelve, I’m sure I told you that.’ ‘Oh, yeah.’ She says this as nonchalantly as if I’ve reminded her that I once lost a handbag. ‘What happens when you die?’

  ‘Well, no one knows for sure. It depends on what you believe.’ ‘Midge will go to hell,’ she murmurs.

  ‘She’s your sister, Jojo.’

  She blinks at me and asks, ‘Did you cry when your mum died?’

  ‘Yes, lots,’ I say, although I can’t really remember: wet or dry face, what does it matter?

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘She fell into a road and was hit by a car.’ I didn’t mean to tell it so graphically. I meant to say, She had an accident.

  Jojo removes a sock and scratches a troublesome spot on the underside of her foot. ‘Think I’ve got athlete’s foot again,’ she murmurs. ‘Mum got me some cream for it. So, she fell? What, like tripped over?’

  ‘She was in a hurry. She wasn’t thinking.’ This is how I’ve played it, filled in the gaps. Of course, I wasn’t there. I was in Mrs Bones’s living room, with the faded rose-patterned walls and the glinting carriage clock, trying to breathe with my diaphragm.

  ‘My dad got ill,’ Jojo continues, ‘and we thought he might die. He was drinking a lot, doing stupid stuff like falling over and banging his head on the cooker.’

  ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’

  ‘He had a big, bloody bandage. It was embarrassing.’

  ‘And he’s okay now, your dad?’

  She smiles, and a flicker of real happiness—like clouds parting and the sun beaming through—lights up her face. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘My dad’s all right.’

  I pass the old launderette, which is now, officially, the Orange Tree, with its freshly painted white-and-tangerine sign. The canvas sheet has been taken down from the window. I’ve glimpsed Ed, bringing out a wheelbarrow of rubble or blending in with the assortment of builders and fitters. Even if I had the courage, it has never seemed like the right moment (the right moment to what? Ask him for a drink? ‘Look, Ed, I can see you’re busy carrying—what’s that? Shelving?—but would you like to come out with me sometime?’). It’s been years since I’ve given a man my number or asked him out. Like playing a wind instrument, you need to practice these skills. I fear that my breathing will falter, that the phrasing will come out all wrong.

  No one’s working in the Orange Tree this evening. When I peer in I see that the floor has been stripped, and the walls painted, awaiting tables and chairs and pretty young waitresses who’ll flit around Ed, eager to please him. Beautiful woman savaged by bonkers hound? Bet he says that to all the girls.

  There are no tables free in the Anchor and so Jen and I perch on high stools at the bar. A bunch of workers from a nearby construction site keeps reprimanding each other for swearing. ‘There’s ladies present,’ one says, as if bad words might cause our ears to dissolve.

  Jen is describing her son Elliot’s shared flat: amazingly neat and organized, considering it’s home to four eighteen-year-old boys and several pet rats. ‘And he’s finished with Ruby,’ Jen continues. ‘Said they’d drifted apart. Doesn’t that make him sound so old?’

  ‘That’s scary,’ I say, and it really is. I remember being astounded by the sheer power emitting from the three-year-old Elliot in a Batman costume as he swung, monkey-style, from his bedroom doorway. He fell off, split his ear on the sharp edge of a radiator and had to be rushed to A&E. ‘I was being Batman!’ he cried as Jen’s mother bundled him into the car. Jen took to motherhood with remarkable ease, even when dealing with injury. She said it’s what she’d been made for, which I tried to understand, but just couldn’t. I wondered if I’
d been made to do anything other than play the flute.

  I want to tell her that I didn’t really oversleep on Monday, but had spent the night with Alex. That I’d crept out without waking him up, the ultimate in rudeness. A very drunk man with a veiny face keeps wafting an open packet of powerful-smelling pork scratchings between us. ‘No thanks,’ Jen says, turning her back to him. This is the caliber of man I tend to attract these days.

  ‘Elliot’s decided he’s not coming home for Easter,’ Jen continues. ‘He and Rachel—that’s his new girlfriend—are going touring in a friend’s camper van. I told him, we always spend Easter at Auntie Caroline’s….’

  I try to listen, as if I know how it feels to have a son who no longer wants to spend his holidays with me. ‘It’s not a lot to ask,’ Jen adds, and Dad’s words flood back: Is it too much to ask, Stella, that I might see you at some point during your holiday? And I rattled excuses: studying, work—I was still waitressing at the pizza restaurant; too many commitments to enable me to come down to Devon, even for a couple of days. Sorry, Dad—maybe I’ll be down in the summer, or at Christmas. I’ll see how things go. I was aware of the space I’d left, even then.

  ‘So,’ Jen says, ‘what was going on with Toby and Jojo yesterday?’

  ‘He called her Piggy in the girls’ cloakroom.’

  Jen sighs deeply. ‘That’s awful. I’ll have a word with him.’

  ‘And he was trying to take her favorite—’

  ‘Stella,’ Jen cuts in, ‘don’t you think you’re getting too involved with those girls?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You said they’re always coming round, plaguing you….’

  ‘They don’t anymore. It’s calmed down now.’

  ‘Jojo’s dropped out of your group lesson, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Just…just a blip. I think she’ll come back. I’m hoping she’ll perform in the spring concert.’

  Jen laughs, waving away the persistent man and his pork scratchings. ‘Are you sure? She’s only been playing since, what—September?’

  ‘She’s picked it up so quickly.’ I sound limp, embarrassed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re allowing her back into the group.’