Posh and Prejudice

by Grace Dent

  I met Joshua’s mum properly today. She didn’t seem to remember me from New Year’s Eve. I only met her for five minutes in the kitchen tonight and I said hello and smiled at her but she just sort of looked at me a bit funny. She stared at my hoop earrings and my hoodie and my scrunchie and my rings like she’d never seen anything like it before, then Josh told her I was called Shiraz and she said, “How lovely.” Then she said, “Well, your friend will need to go now because we’re sitting down for supper as soon as Dad’s finished speaking to L.A.”

  I came home and my mother was giving Penny a bath in the kitchen sink and my dad was clipping his toenails in front of the TV and Murphy was moaning ’cos the clippings kept nearly landing in his Coco Pops. I just spoke to Josh on the phone and he was asking when he can come to my house. I just laughed and said when hell freezes over mate.

  MONDAY 12TH JANUARY

  Mayflower was proper stressful today. Everyone’s going on about studying now because it counts toward the final AS grade. EVERYONE: Saf, Sean, Sonia, Manpreet, Tonita, Nabila, even my Josh. They’re all PROPER OBSESSED with getting good homework grades and getting good AS grades ’cos everyone reckons if you get good AS grades then you can get good A2 levels next year and then if you get good predicted A2 grades and have good hobbies and stuff for your uni application forms then you can go to a good uni. Then if you go to a good uni you can get a good job and if you got a good job you can buy a big house and if you work hard every day after that you can get an even better job and… and… bloody hell I’m knackered just listening to everyone.

  That’s one good thing about knocking about with Carrie. She ain’t like everyone else. Carrie didn’t show up until noon today and when Mr. Douglas started nagging her about missing Business Studies class she just tutted and said she’d done a Fake Bake deep-bronze tan last night and it was still sticky so she couldn’t get her thong on over her lady-garden. Mr. Douglas’s face went so RED. I love Carrie Draper. She is bare jokes. I can’t see Barney’s business lasting long with her in charge, mind you.

  THURSDAY 15TH JANUARY

  Lewis’s mother in Benidorm has agreed to give Cava-Sue and Lewis a loan to go traveling!!! They are leaving for Vietnam in two weeks! That’s two less people using the bathroom in the morning. Some mornings I don’t even get a shower before school! I just have to spray more deodorant on and hope for the best. I asked Mum if I can have Cava-Sue’s room and we can put in another bathroom. My mother just tutted and said, “A bathroom?!! Ha! Well I think we said goodbye to another bathroom the moment you gave poor Wesley the plumber the boot! Oh, and I saw him today outside Sears, by the way. He looked like death warmed up! You broke that one’s heart you did!”

  I felt like crap when she said that. I’m guessing Wes has seen the photos on everyone’s MySpace of Joshua’s party. The ones where I’m snogging Josh.

  Then Mum says, “So what does this new one of yours want to be then?” And I went red when she said that, ’cos I didn’t think she knew about Joshua, then I remembered that me, Murphy, and Cava-Sue all trade little bits of info to Mum in return for favors so I mumbled a bit and said, “’Erm I dunno what Joshua wants to be, a politician I think.” And my mother laughed and said, “Well if he’s got two faces and a slithering tail he’ll be fine.”

  I tried calling Josh for a chat to cheer myself up, but his phone went straight to voicemail.

  WEDNESDAY 21ST JANUARY

  I was down at Uma’s tonight. There was a time when I’d never have hung out round there, ’cos Uma used to be a proper loon, but she’s a bit different now. I wish other people could see it. Uma don’t smoke weed anymore so she’s not as paranoid. She never even sees Tiffany or Ashleen who she used to go drinking with in the park.

  It’s not like Uma’s suddenly an angel or nothing. I just reckon her stepdad going to jail and her mum leaving her with Clinton just gave her a big wake-up call. My mum still don’t trust Uma though. She never will.

  “How is she surviving for money? That’s what I wonder!” my mother keeps saying. “Mugging grannies and dealing drugs, I reckon! Or much worse! And that devil dog of hers wants to be put down too.”

  Me and Uma never mugged any grannies tonight. We shared a box of cookies and talked about King Lear.

  SUNDAY 25TH JANUARY

  WEIRD DAY. Josh never called me last night like he said he would ’cos we sort of half said we’d maybe go to the AMC Loews, but I texted at 5PM to check and he never texted me back and then his phone was turned off. He’s not like Wesley when it comes to plans. He’s sort of unpredictable. But I’m fine with that though ’cos at least I’ve got lots of space. Anyway Josh rang me this morning and said, “Sorry, babycakes, I ended up going out with my sort-of cousins in North London.” And I said “No worries, that’s fine.” Because it totally was.

  “Come over and bring your King Lear notes!” he said, so I jumped in the shower right away and made myself look all glam and bling and got there as soon as I could ’cos I’d proper missed him. So I got to Josh’s house and rang the doorbell and he answers the door and said, “Come down into the kitchen for a bit, me and Mum are in there.”

  So I went into the kitchen and Mrs. Fallow was sitting at the table, looking at the magazine from the Observer newspaper and drinking coffee and eating a bar of expensive looking dark chocolate. Weird opera music was playing on a little stereo on the counter and a big black cat called Marx was sitting on the Sports Section, washing his bum.

  To be honest, I didn’t feel very welcome in there, ’cos when Mrs. Fallow saw me she reckoned she’d never met me before again. Then eventually she remembered she had and then she said, “Remind me. You’re Joshua’s friend from where precisely?” doing a scan of my hoodie and hoops just like last time.

  And I felt like saying, “I’m not his friend. I’m his girlfriend!” But it didn’t seem the right thing to do. Then she stood up and opened the door of this weird iron cupboard thing that looked like an oven but can’t have been.

  “Mayflower Academy,” I said, not knowing whether to sit down or stand up and what the weird oven-cupboard thing was. So I said, “What is that?” and she just looked at me with this kind of smile that wasn’t a proper smile and said, “It’s an Aga.” I just nodded like I knew what that was.

  Then Josh got a plate of banana bread and granola bars and some chips and pomegranate juice for us both and we went upstairs and snogged loads and lay about on his sofa. I couldn’t stay long though ’cos I was going down to bingo with Nan tonight at Chadwell Heath.

  As I was leaving Josh’s house I thought I’d pop down into the kitchen and say a quick goodbye to Mrs. Fallow then she might remember me next time, but as I got halfway down the hall I could hear her on the phone with someone.

  “Oh I know,” she was laughing. “I’m terrible, I know! I KNOW! I’ll go to hell… Ha ha ha! The thing is it was Josh’s father’s idea to send him to Mayflower Academy. ‘Oooh it’s a Center of Excellence now,’ he said! ‘Think of the cash we’ll save on school fees,’ he said! ‘It’ll make Joshy more streetwise,’ he said!”

  I should have just walked away and stopped earwigging then, but I stayed a bit longer and then Mrs. Fallow laughed her nutty laugh again and said, “Oh God, I know, Jocasta, I’m just being wicked. It’s just, for the love of god, I make my donation to Christian Aid! I’m sponsoring a little African girl in Burkina Faso! I don’t see why I’ve got to feed the chavs from the local projects too. Ha ha ha!”

  I felt proper sick then so I ran out of the door and ran home. I’m sure she wasn’t talking about me. I’m just being a bit paranoid, aren’t I?

  She never meant me.

  FEBRUARY

  MONDAY 2ND FEBRUARY

  Cava-Sue and Lewis left for Vietnam today. It’s weird ’cos I’m missing Cava-Sue already and only two days ago I was thinking what a right pain in the ass she was, wiffling on about the awful human rights violations of the Vietnamese people and how some poor peasant folks in Nam Pam Lang have
no access to information and I was sitting there thinking, “Flaming hell, they’re not going to know what’s hit them when you get there with your big clacking gob.”

  Then suddenly, her and Lewis have packed their backpacks and gone. All the talking about it is finally over. Cava-Sue has gone off following her dream. It’s really made me think about my dream. I still don’t really know what it is.

  We had a little going-away party for Cava-Sue and Lewis in our house yesterday and because everyone had been giving me proper earache about inviting Joshua (including Joshua himself) I let him come over. To be honest, I was proper paranoid about asking Josh to my house ’cos ever since I heard his mum say that nasty thing which I don’t even know for sure was about me, well it makes my face go proper hot.

  I haven’t been wearing my gold hoops at all recently. Or my charm bracelet. And I even feel a bit weird in my hoodie ’cos I keep thinking, “Does this make me look like a chav? Am I a chav? Am I? No, I ain’t a chav! Chavs are people like those little hoodrats who hang round the park and those rudes who jack folks’s phones outside Ilford station! I’m not like that! Am I?”

  But then I think what I might look like to a woman who has friends called Jocasta, who has enough money to have a stupid hot cupboard instead of an oven and sponsor kids in Burkina Faso and give her son his own bathroom and suddenly I feel all terrible and a bit, well… a bit like a chav.

  So I bring Joshua back to my house on Thundersley Road and I’ve spent months being proper vague about where it is ’cos I didn’t want him to just show up, but now here we both are walking down the road together and I’m totally noticing all the stuff I never even noticed before, like the broken sidewalk and the white dog poos and the road sign with grafitti willies on it and the way Bert at number 89 hangs his underpants up on a line in his garden and how everyone has Staffy dogs. Then we walk past Uma’s house with the fridge in the garden and Joshua snorts and says, “I suppose that saves space in the house!” And I cringe a bit and say, “That’s Uma’s house.” And Joshua goes, “Oh, that makes sense.”

  In our house, my mum, my dad, Murphy, Clement, and Nan were all there laughing and talking and eating a buffet from Tyson’s that Mum had just bought and shoved out on plates. And they’re all drinking Peach Lambrella wine and little stubby bottles of German beer and listening to Dad’s Chas ’n’ Dave record and being silly and noisy. And it’s weird ’cos now I’m noticing stuff like the wear on the hall carpet and the chipped paint and the way our house smells a little bit of the dog and the way there’s framed photos of us all everywhere and how no one is using a plate for the buffet and how everyone is shouting and not listening to each other’s answers and how bloody small the house is. And to be honest I think Joshua is pretty stunned by everything ’cos he hardly says a word and at one point when my nan got up and started singing I could swear he was trying not to stop himself smirking.

  My nan asked Josh what he was studying and he said English, Politics, Geography, and Critical Theory and everyone went, “Wooooooh! Clever clogs!” like it was something amazing, then Nan asked him what he wanted to be and he said, “Well I’ll be off to Oxford University next to study Diplomacy and International Relations I hope. If they’ll have me.” And no one said nothing to that ’cos I think they were too gobsmacked.

  I don’t know if Joshua enjoyed the party. My mum said afterward he never ate none of the buffet. I said, well, Joshua’s mum never lets him eat nothing with additives or non-organic so he probably didn’t reckon his delicate stomach would stand the fried cheese or the reconstituted seafood ring. My mum said something quite rude then about shoving the fried cheese where the sun don’t shine for all she cares, but I think she was quite tipsy and emotional.

  I miss Cava-Sue. I hope she stays in touch.

  THURSDAY 5TH FEBRUARY

  I had a bit of a funny thing happen today. We’d got the marks back for our English coursework—well, most of us, not Carrie, ’cos she was “ill” again—and everyone was in the common room feeling pretty happy ’cos we’d all done fairly well. So, everyone was chatting about grades and Manpreet had got an A and Josh had got an A and I’d got a B and Sonia had got an A and Uma had got a C and everyone was just chatting away about what that meant and what grades this might mean for the future and about jobs in offices and getting a smart suit for uni interviews and suddenly I started feeling really weird ’cos I was the only one not talking and I realized I was the only one who didn’t really care.

  I never admitted it to anyone but I suddenly realized I don’t care about going to uni. I suddenly realized the thought of carrying on studying as hard as this for loads more years was making me feel as trapped as that time I was parked around the back of Bishop Fledding Industrial Estate looking at a pile of rubble that Wesley wanted me to live in with him forever.

  I don’t want to feel trapped like this. I want to feel like I did when I stood on Waterloo Bridge in London among all the crowds and the traffic and the gargoyles and statues when I looked along the river and felt properly blown away and excited and free and like anything was possible. I think I’m due for my period. I’ll feel better tomorrow.

  FRIDAY 13TH FEBRUARY

  No word from Cava-Sue. I hope she’s OK. There’s a small chance she’s been captured by a rare mountain cannibal tribe who’ve tried to barbecue her head to shut her up from telling them interesting facts about themselves.

  I’m a bit narked today ’cos I was just speaking to Carrie and she says Saf is taking her to Le Galle restaurant in Romford tomorrow night for a three-course Valentine’s dinner. Then I spoke to my nan and she reckons Clement is cooking her dinner round at his place, then I come home and our Murphy is stealing a red felt pen from my room to write a card to some girl he’s seeing and he’s covering it with hearts and kisses like he is proper in love. (Murphy! In love?? With a girl called Rema in Year Nine. Not a PS2 game. Mental.)

  So I ask my Joshua what he was getting me for Valentine’s Day today and he laughs at me like I am a weirdo and says, “Ha! You’re kidding, aren’t you? Don’t tell me you buy into that capitalist conspiracy? It was invented by a card shop to make money. What do you want, one of those big tacky teddy bears with I WUV YOU on it too! Ha ha ha ha!” So I said, “No, course I don’t, but, well, but…”

  And I didn’t have no answer ’cos Josh has a way of making you feel really small which he must have learned off his mum. So I said, “Well I just want to feel like you CARE!” and Josh says “Oh, OK, OK, Shiraz. Look I didn’t want to spoil the surprise but I’ve actually booked one of them planes to fly past Thundersley Road dragging a banner. I’ll just run along now and call air traffic control and see if it’s on its way.”

  And I said “You haven’t???!!!” And he said, “No, of course I haven’t, you silly mare! You know how much I’m into you, what MORE do you want?”

  I’m sure he must be kidding me. ’Cos everyone likes Valentines Day really, don’t they?

  SATURDAY 14TH FEBRUARY

  MENTAL NEWS OF THE YEAR ALERT: my nan is getting married to Clement! She is seventy-three and he is seventy-eight but Nan says that finding him makes her feel seventeen again, so they’re going to get hitched to show the world they’re in love. Nan says he cooked her a chicken round at his place tonight and she was helping with the spuds, then when she turned round at one point she found him down on one knee by the sink and she thought, “Oh Christ Almighty, he’s having a stroke!” but then she noticed he was holding a ring in a ring box. They’ve set a date for July!

  I wasn’t so lucky today. It seems my Josh meant that thing about the “capitalist conspiracy.” I spent tonight sitting indoors with my mum and dad.

  Josh said there was no way he was booking any restaurant tonight ’cos it would be full of mushy couples. Josh said he’d rather spend the night in Fat Freddy’s Foodstop in Romford with all the superchavs and that’s saying something. “There’s nothing wrong with Fat Freddy’s Foodstop!!!” I wanted to yell, but I didn’t w
ant him to know I’d ever been.

  SUNDAY 15TH FEBRUARY

  I was lying in bed this morning sort of sulking a bit about Joshua, when my dad knocked on my door and shouted, “Woo-hoo! Shiraz Bailey Wood. There’s been a special delivery!” And suddenly everything felt better ’cos I knew Joshua had been joking all along and he’d bought me a pressie.

  So I went downstairs in my pajamas, and sitting on the floor in the living room was a massive red envelope about a meter high. A massive soggy envelope. With SHIRAZ BAILEY WOOD written on the front in magic marker, but the letters had all ran ’cos the envelope was damp from being outside. When I looked closer there was a bug crawling up the front.

  “Where did this come from?” I said, ’cos right away I knew this wasn’t from Josh.

  “It was sitting on the front doorstep just now,” said my dad. “Someone must have brought it round in the night. It’s a bit wet, look.”

  “Did you see them?” I said.

  “No, it must have been really late,” said Dad. “Oh, and they left this too.”

  Dad passed me a tube wrapped in shiny paper. Inside was a tube of candy Smarties. But when I looked at it closely it wasn’t any old tube of Smarties. It was all blue Smarties. Somebody had bought lots and lots of tubes of Smarties and fished out all the blue ones and put them all into one tube so I could have lots and lots of my favorite blue ones. Then they’d come in the middle of the night in the rain with a big card and dropped them off. The card didn’t say who it was from. It just said, “For Shiraz, the most beautiful girl in Goodmayes xxxx.”