Lucky Girl

by Fiona Gibson

  ‘I want to give her a chance.’

  Jen smiles kindly and says, ‘You’re too good to them.’

  ‘I don’t do much,’ I say. I haven’t told her it’s my flute that Jojo’s learned to play, or that her rapid progress is largely due to free lessons at my house.

  She drains her glass, kisses my cheek and says, ‘Better get home, Simon’s cooking tonight.’ As she threads her way through the crowds I realize I still haven’t told her about Alex.

  The taxi driver turns sharp left, past Aquasplash, his wipers battling against insistent rain. In Main Street he stops at a red-and-white barrier and flashing amber lights. A police officer directs him down a narrow side street. Main Street is flooded, some trouble with drains. ‘Christ-on-a-bike,’ the driver mutters. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like, dealing with this kind of situation, every day of your life?’

  Assuming he means the flooded road, or perhaps just the rain, I say, ‘It must be terrible.’

  ‘Sorry I ever got into this game. No respect, that’s their trouble. Cheeking their elders.’

  I can’t figure out whether his thoughts are filling the gaps, or chunks of his sentences are flying out of the open driver’s window, which is allowing fine spray to dowse his right shoulder. ‘In my day,’ he adds, ‘people had time for each other.’

  Perhaps I’m more drunk than I thought. I’ve only had a couple of drinks—on an empty stomach, which is now aching hollowly. The lane snakes between stern-looking buildings shrouded with twiggy plants that are, I think, Virginia creeper, but are still leafless. A seagull squawks from a rooftop, as if lost. The street is full of cheap shops: Bargain Bazaar, Quids In, Everything Under a Pound. The kind that make you wonder how many cottage-shaped tea-light holders people really need.

  I think about Jen, and realize she’s right: Jojo might be able to play simple pieces in my house, and even in group lessons—but in front of gawping mums and dads she’d freeze. I can’t put her through that. Toby will play a solo, like last year, and we’ll do a group piece. With the choir, guitar group and the Mad Dogs—a band formed by three boys in year six—there are plenty of acts for a concert without torturing Jojo.

  The lane ends at a T-junction. I’m about to ask the driver to turn left, but he swings right so dramatically I’m sent slithering over the peeling back seat. We’re heading back toward the seafront—to the farthest end, the Orange Tree end. Something stops me from telling the driver he’s going the wrong way.

  ‘Dodgy pub,’ the driver observes as we pass the Lorimer Arms. ‘Those punters—you have to ask for fares upfront. You can tell them, the type that’s going to do a runner. You can see it in their eyes.’ The driver keeps making eye contact through his rearview mirror. He looks as if he’s had his fill of the rain, the road works, the customers who dodge out of paying their fares. ‘You, young lady,’ the driver adds, ‘you’re not the type, I can see that.’

  ‘Not what type?’ The café comes into view. There’s a light on inside, an orangey glow.

  ‘The type to do a runner,’ the driver says.

  ‘No, I’m not.’ I wonder what Alex thought when he finally woke up. If he really imagined I’d skip work to lie there with him.

  There are two people in the Orange Tree. Ed and a woman. At first I think they’re working in there—painting, perhaps, making final touches. The driver’s voice drones on, like the mumblings of a radio I’ve stopped listening to.

  Dancing is what they’re doing. His arms are around her as she leans into him. She has a powerful body; a swimmer’s body. It’s the traveler, who isn’t traveling at all. Or another girl—a girlfriend he’s omitted to mention, and why should he tell me anyway?

  Of course they don’t see me, or even the passing taxi. They don’t see anything because they’re holding each other. I turn away to face the sea, which usually looks vast and inviting, but now just seems endlessly flat. ‘Come the wrong way,’ the driver mutters, performing a rash U-turn and speeding away from Ed, his girl and my stupid ideas.

  Staring through other people’s windows is a habit I really must stop.

  22

  Nothing to Wear

  ‘You all know about the spring concert, don’t you?’ I ask at the end of the Paul Street lesson.

  The kids bob their heads eagerly, apart from Toby, who’s gazing at the acetate drawings. ‘Willow,’ I say, ‘I think you’re ready to play a solo this year, and Toby, of course…’

  Willow looks around at the others excitedly. Toby wrinkles his lips—an I-don’t-think-so expression. Something about his guarded look says he doesn’t want me to cajole him, not in front of the other kids. I try to make eye contact but he’s peering at the clump of children who are crouching on the dusty tarmac outside. Each class is taking its turn to line up coppers on the ground. A mile of pennies for St Vincent’s Hospice, that’s what Jen’s aiming for. A photographer is coming from the South Devon Echo to take pictures of the kids and their snaking lines of pennies.

  Jojo looks up from her scales book and says, ‘I’d like to play in the concert, Miss Moon.’

  I’m startled by her use of my teacher name. She only rejoined the class three weeks ago, and she usually avoids referring to me by name at school. At home, of course, I’m just Stella. ‘Are you sure?’ I ask. I picture her reading aloud in front of her old class, and being so scared that she had an accident.

  ‘I’d be all right,’ she says. ‘It’s just…you’ve never played in front of an audience before.’

  ‘I don’t mind. I want to do it, Stel—Miss Moon.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like to think about it.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says flatly. As the other children leave for lunch she hangs back, slowly putting away the flute. She doesn’t seem to have made friends at Paul Street. Most break times she drifts around the playground, flipping through the gaudy pages of Planet Girl or World of Fairies. Other girls of her age have graduated to magazines filled with pop-star interviews, posters and makeup tips.

  ‘Hadn’t you better hurry off to lunch?’ I ask.

  ‘Euch,’ she says, shuddering. There’s been a drive to improve school meals: to offer more vegetables and fruit, and include all the food groups. Since the scheme started, Jojo and Midge have nagged Diane to make them packed lunches, but she’s not a bloody catering company.

  ‘I know I could do it,’ Jojo announces, before sauntering off to brave something disgusting, with broccoli.

  When the Echo comes out, Jen pins up the picture of the pupils and their mile of pennies on the noticeboard in the main hall. Between the anti-bullying poster and the flyer inviting children to audition for the spring concert beams the huddle of red-sweatshirted kids.

  Midge has parked herself at the front, her hands planted firmly on hips, and is grinning triumphantly as if she’d collected all those pennies herself. A dark-haired boy, possibly Toby, is gazing down at the tarmac like someone dragged into a wedding photo by his embarrassing parents. There’s a small gap between Jojo and rest of the children, as if the person who was standing next to her has been erased.

  And I realize why she wants to play in the concert. She wants to matter.

  The days slide into spring with endless, unblemished blue skies. Diane buys a white plastic patio table and four matching chairs, bringing them home from Discount DIY in a taxi. She drags them through the house and arranges them on the fractured patio at the back where they’re soon splattered with seagull droppings. No one bothers to clean them. Since Diane upped her hours at the bedding factory, the girls have taken to preparing their own breakfasts to be eaten outdoors. The moment they’ve finished and gone back inside, gulls swoop down to feast on spilled Coco Pops.

  My meager back lawn starts to sprout. One Sunday I haul out the dilapidated lawn mower from the dank shed at the bottom of the garden. Alex despaired of it—the way the rusting blades tore hopelessly at the grass—and would stagger back inside bathed in sweat. I suggested buying a new one but he retorted that he coul
dn’t bear to turn into ‘the sort of person you see in garden centers, staring at mowers.’

  ‘You stare at pictures of water features,’ I said.

  ‘That’s different.’ Lawn mowers, I decided, were just too damn useful.

  Diane ambles out to observe my mowing endeavors from a patio chair. She’s wearing her apricot dressing gown and the puppy slippers. Some kind of pearlized white lotion is swirled thickly over her chunky bare legs. ‘Need some help?’ she calls over the fence.

  ‘No thanks, I’ll be done in a minute.’

  ‘You want a big strong man for that,’ she adds with a cackle that disintegrates into a rattling cough.

  I’m trying to pretend she’s not there but the apricot blob glows in the periphery of my vision. A blur of cigarette smoke drifts over the fence. Sometimes I wish the fence were higher; I’ve even considered planting a hedge. Certain types of willow, I read, grow at the impressive rate of up to twenty feet in one season. But you can’t put up barriers after new neighbors have moved in. You’d be making a point, literally shutting them out—like slamming a door in their face.

  Diane flings her cigarette butt onto the patio and flattens it with her slippered foot. ‘Come over,’ she says, ‘when you’re finished. I can’t promise a big strong man, but I’ll make you a cuppa that’ll put hairs on your chest.’ She swans back inside, leaving the cigarette end still smoking on the fractured paving slab.

  When I visit, Diane is shoveling rank-smelling hamster bedding from the cage into an open carrier bag at her feet. ‘Want to hold him?’ she asks, cooing over the creature that trembles in her cupped palms.

  ‘No thanks. I’m not good with rodents.’

  ‘It’s not a rodent,’ Diane retorts, thrusting the hamster into my face. Jojo’s minor scales ripple down from her bedroom.

  ‘Has Jojo told you she wants to play in the spring concert?’ I ask, with my back pressed into the microwave in order to distance myself from the quivering animal.

  Hamburger makes the small leap from Diane’s hand to the table. ‘I think she might have mentioned it.’

  ‘D’you think she’ll be okay, playing in front of an audience?’ She shrugs. ‘If you think so.’

  ‘Well, I think she’ll be fantastic.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Diane murmurs, seemingly unimpressed that her daughter is preparing to play Debussy’s ‘Syrinx’ before 300 pairs of gawping eyes.

  Diane and the children spend half term in Birmingham with George, the girls’ father. Without them around, my house is eerily quiet. There are no bangs on the door, no squeals filtering through in muffled form, no Queen’s Greatest Hits.

  Charlie has been ill, and from one brief phone conversation I can diagnose his condition as lovesickness—a mysterious, shadowy period during which he exists between work and staying in at the lodge with the object of his affections, leaving little inclination for swimming with me, or even a five-minute chat on the phone. ‘I think we should go down to Dad’s,’ I say, ‘and see how he is.’

  ‘Not sick or anything, is he?’

  ‘I mean after the Friday Zoo stuff.’

  ‘I thought you said that Lance guy had dropped charges. That it was just some dumb publicity stunt.’

  ‘Dirk. He’s called Dirk. And he let it go because of his mum—she’s a huge fan of Dad’s, apparently. Has all his books from the seventies. Didn’t you read the interview with her in the—’

  ‘I don’t read gossip columns,’ he says airily.

  I pull a face into the phone. ‘He’s out of a job, Charlie. With the bad publicity he’s had lately, I doubt he’ll ever work in TV again.’

  ‘He hasn’t worked for years. He has to face it—it’s all over for him.’

  Somehow I’ve turned into The One Who Worries About Dad. ‘And that’s okay, is it?’ I ask, banging down the phone before Charlie can answer.

  I drive to Dad’s by myself. The first thing I notice is the new Silverdawn Cottage sign, its lettering embellished with spindly curls as if carefully painted by Midge. The NOTRESPASSERS sign has gone, and the garden is already abundant with flowers—just tamed enough, unlike Surf, who is recovering from eating poisoned meat that a farmer must have put out for foxes.

  Dad is giving the small back lawn its first cut. He waves, but doesn’t turn off the mower to greet me. ‘You won’t believe this,’ Maggie says as we head indoors, ‘but the Penjoy Bugle have run a piece on your dad.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Good things, all about the lovely job he’s done on the garden. Here, let me show you.’ She leads me into the musty kitchen. She’s been making dumplings, which will loll like small boulders in the kind of vegetable casserole that makes Dad profess to being not-hungry-at-all.

  Maggie wipes her floury hands on a tea towel, opens a drawer beneath the kitchen table and pulls out a newspaper cutting. I take it from her and read:

  Frankie’s Coming Up Roses

  Life’s bloomin’ marvelous for local celebrity Frankie Moon. Since his scandalous sacking from popular show

  Friday Zoo, Frankie, 61, has thrown all his energies into transforming the unpromising grounds of his cottage at Penjoy Point. Although Frankie has worked steadily in the garden since moving to Penjoy in 1987, it’s only this spring that his efforts have come to fruition with astonishing effect.

  The garden has attracted visitors who are keen to discover how the soil has been improved to produce the abundant display. When asked for his secret, Frankie told the Bugle: ‘Creating the garden has taken a huge amount of work, plus a special ingredient to improve the poor soil, which I am not prepared to divulge, for personal reasons.’

  Visitors are welcome at Silverdawn Cottage between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on Sundays. No dogs please.

  There’s a picture of Dad, affecting a casual pose by leaning on a fork in the garden. Behind him—like my first glimpse of the allotment—is an eruption of color.

  I find him pruning the pyrocantha that hugs the far wall. ‘Maggie showed me the article,’ I tell him. ‘It’s looking lovely out here.’

  He frowns, and I wait for the barbed comment about Charlie not coming or caring. But his eyes soften, and he looks at me levelly and says, ‘Nice to feel you’re good at something, isn’t it, Stella?’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ I say, ‘it really is.’

  Something wells up inside me. I think it’s called pride.

  I come home to a message from Robert: ‘Stella, I know you’re away at your dad’s, but I was passing your place and saw this thing in your front garden—a kind of play tent. Those two girls were running around it. The little one had a weapon—a tomahawk, I suppose you’d call it. Do you mind this going on while you’re away? Just thought you should know. Oh, and let’s have a drink sometime.’

  I find the girls in their back garden, slashing at an aging lilac bush with Midge’s light saber and a long-handled brush. ‘You’re back!’ Midge yelps, as if we’ve been separated for months.

  ‘How was your trip to your dad’s?’ I ask.

  ‘Great!’ She rearranges her face to an expression of seriousness. ‘Mum was meant to sleep on the bed that’s a sofa.’

  ‘You mean a sofabed.’

  ‘Yeah. She got into it—I saw her, in her nightie—but in the morning when I went in to see Dad, she was in bed with him.’

  ‘Midge!’ Jojo elbows her in the stomach.

  ‘With her nightie off,’ Midge adds. ‘Can we come over?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Aww, when?’

  ‘When the jelly’s ready to eat.’

  On the first day back at school, Jen and I audition singers and musicians, plus Dylan Storey, whose act involves having his arms taped to his side, then being bundled into a large cardboard box from which he bursts out, Houdini-style. We’re not expecting virtuoso performances. We’re just trying to minimize the risk of acts chundering on for several weeks, and suggesting cuts where necessary.

  After auditions I go to the music
room, which becomes the after-school club at 3:20, to pick up some sheet music I need to photocopy. A cluster of girls is painting at the main table. Most of the boys are installed in chairs, riveted by a PlayStation game. Toby is gripping the controls. ‘We’ve just finished auditions,’ I tell him. ‘Sure you won’t play in the concert?’

  ‘No. Yes. I’m not playing.’ His face is fixed on the screen. His black eye has healed now, but there’s a small, burgundy-colored cut on his cheek. I want to ask if he’s okay, whether he’s been winding up his little sister again, but he’s reached the next level—the other boys are cheering him on—and I have ceased to exist.

  Diane is rarely at home when the girls return from school. They have their own key now, which Jojo wears on a string around her neck along with her fairy necklace, and let themselves in and make sandwiches (Diane has banned them from cooking; first thing she does when she comes home is rest a hand on the hot plates).

  Midge invites me in to see her design that has been chosen for the cover of the concert program. She’s drawn the school with notes soaring over its roof, like homecoming birds.

  ‘It’s fantastic,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Jojo’s gaze is fixed on the TV. ‘Let’s run through your piece for the concert,’ I suggest.

  ‘No thanks.’ She stares at the screen.

  ‘Not nervous, are you?’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m not doing it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Shush, I want to watch this.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Jojo? You were right—you can do it. Think how proud your mum will be when—’

  She gathers herself up from her cushion on the floor and stomps out of the room. I find her hunched, with her knees pulled up to her chin, on the top bunk in her bedroom. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, scaling the ladder and perching on the edge of her unmade bed among a scattering of tights and knickers. She looks milky, unwell. ‘Don’t want to do it,’ she whispers.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to wear.’