My Family and Other Freaks (5 page)

Rick, who has just come back from taking Simon for a walk to get out of the way of them,
agrees with me that they might be having marital troubles, because he caught Mom crying in the bathroom but she pretended she had just poked herself in the eye putting in her contact lenses.

“She looks like a woman scorned,” he says. Then he thinks for a moment. “Who would you live with if they split up?”

This is a good question. It's like being asked to choose between tuberculosis and appendicitis. Neither is very appealing. “Dunno. Mom probably, because of access to her makeup and hair straighteners,” I say. “What about you?”

“I'd go wherever the Sky box was,” he says.

It must be so rewarding having children.

I'd like to talk more about this with Rick but he's gone into the Stink Pit and won't discuss it anymore because he's going out with his friends from his class and must get into cool and aloof mode, which mainly consists of ignoring me.

Mom has gone out, taking Phoebe, who's asleep in the pushchair, with her. Not a thought for beta daughter, note. I suppose it could be the other way around. My mom could be “carrying on with another bloke” as Gran puts it. Mom is still quite pretty in a Nolan Sister kind of way and does keep talking about having to get rid of her love handles. Very suspicious. When I mentioned the other day about needing £4k for my nose job when I'm 18 she fell about laughing, grabbed her thighs and said, “If there's any spare money for cosmetic surgery in this house, these are getting hoovered out first.” Self-obsessed woman. She's too old for anyone to care much what she looks like anymore. Her life's nearly over, whereas I still need to find love.

Mom and Phoebe are back. Mom looks sheepish and says, “We went shopping with Gran.”

“I got a Don Lewey balloon!” says Phoebe. She means John Lewis. It's come to this. We are so neglected that my baby sister thinks a free Sale balloon that's been tied to some vacuum cleaner in John Lewis is a treat.

Mom and Dad go and whisper in the living room as per usual, but then they realize Phoebe is holding Deirdre up at the kitchen window and a line of neighborhood cats with saucer eyes are staring at her from the garden and licking their lips.

This is another of Phoebe's—and my dad's—favorite pastimes, especially when one of the cats leaps at the window and brains itself. Dad especially enjoys that and always says, “Nice one, Pheebs—ten points.”

We are a deeply sick family.

My mother looks R.O.U.G.H. Maybe she's been hitting the Tia Maria that Aunty Karen brought back from Turkey. Or maybe she's been out with her fancy man! She was missing for three hours yesterday and I bet Phoebe was asleep for most of them. Plenty of time to do The Deed. Ugh.

Mom is still in her candlewick dressing gown. I heard her saying to Dad, “I don't know
if I can do this, Dave. I'm so tired.” Do WHAT? Is living with Dad making her tired? If so, join the club.

Dad seems strangely unbothered that his wife is having a passionate affair and is reading the sports pages of the
Daily Mirror
. He says, “It'll all work out for the best, you'll see.”

What will?
WHAT WILL BE FOR THE BEST?

Mom's in the bathroom and I need to brush my teeth with the new whitening toothpaste I made her buy from Superdrug. I knock on the door. Is she crying? She's certainly making a weird snuffling noise.

“I just feel a bit fluey,” she says when I ask what's wrong. She's a terrible liar, just like her husband. I'll have to go to school without brushing my teeth. Gross. Maybe I can beg a chewy off someone on the bus.

Weird day at school trying to decipher my parents' untruths. I was sitting rocking my chair back on two legs as I gazed out of the window wondering whether it might be something else—like we're all moving to Scotland. I don't want to move to Scotland. It'll be cold and Simon won't like that and there'll be no Amber.

“Chairs have one, two, three, four legs,” Miss Judd said, bending down to touch each one in turn. “Use them.”

Why are teachers so obsessed with how many legs chairs have? Everyone knows that story about someone falling over backward and knocking their teeth out with their knees is a total myth. And here's another thing teachers never shut up about either. “Do you put your feet on the furniture at home?” they say. But when you answer “yes” because it's perfectly true, they tell you off for being cheeky. Explain to me the logic
of that. I'd never be a teacher. What a pointless life.

I tell Amber I need to talk to her and so we go to her house and sit in her bedroom, which is filled with posters about saving rainforests and pandas and remote tribes-people. Sigh. Not ONE picture of Robert Pattinson. It's not natural.

Unburden myself of my worries. Amber sneaks into her mother's bedroom to borrow a huge hardback book called Women's Health. It has a picture on the front of a middle-aged lady laughing while eating a salad. Why would anyone laugh if they had to eat a salad?

She looks through it and eventually says triumphantly, “Thought so! Your mother is going through The Change.”

Am sitting in my bedroom, feeling sick, trying to unremember all the things Amber read out from that book about The Change. It means a woman is getting old. Past it. Her periods stop, which must be a good thing, obviously, but there was other stuff which sounded disgusting and I don't really want to go there, to be honest. Basically it means she'll be getting grayer and moodier with creaking joints and hot flushes and maybe even a hump on her back. So if she does want to have an affair she'd better hurry up because no one will look twice at her soon.

Worse—I've remembered that I agreed to let Amber help “take my mind off things” by accompanying her on a protest this weekend against a new bypass or motorway or cutting
down some woods or something. I forget what. Anyway, I only said yes so that I can tell everyone at school and Damian will see that I take an interest in the wider world and am so much more intellectual than Treasure. But let's face it—a Curly Wurly is more intellectual than Treasure.

Rick is feeding Phoebe raisins for breakfast and telling her that they are dead flies. “Yum, yum,” she says, shoving more of them into her mouth. Weird child.

He likes Phoebe much more than he likes me. I even see him kiss her head sometimes.

“Which is your favorite Disney princess?” she asks, as she does 400 times a day. Rick knows the drill here. We all do. None of us is allowed to pick Sleeping Beauty because she's Phoebe's
favorite because she wears a pink dress at the end.

“Snow White,” he says. “Oooh, but she's UGGERLY,” says Phoebe. “She's got SHORT HAIR!”

Bitching at three years old, I ask you. I should let her loose on Treasure.

I whisper to Rick that Amber has a theory about Mom going through The Change. But he covers up his ears and runs from the room shouting, “Shut up, shut up, you're repulsive!”

Boys are so immature. No wonder it's left to women to do all the hard work in life.

Totally boring day at school except that Damian and Sean came first and second in the boys' 200 meters in PE and Treasure was jumping up and down like an overexcited cheerleader. I was embarrassed for her so I said, “Treasure, if you jiggle your boobs much more you'll get two black
eyes.” All the girls laughed, but only because they're all jealous that Treasure is in a B-cup already. Lucky cow.

I tried to hit the ball into her face during rounders but smashed it into the air instead and Megan caught me out. She was instantly demoted to third best friend.

Megan is reinstated as second best friend. She is already on an official warning for swallowing helium gas out of a balloon in science last term and singing “Livin' la Vida Loca” in a Donald Duck voice, but she excelled herself in Miss Judd's class today. She had basically recorded her cat meowing on her phone and hidden it down her sock, and every so often she pressed it so it sounded like there was a cat in the classroom.

Miss Judd kept swiveling her eyes around the
room like a meerkat, then looking under the desks and in the cupboard saying, “If this is a joke you are ALL in detention.”

You know when you know you can't laugh but that makes you want to laugh even more? I caught Damian's eye. He was shaking and had tears rolling down his face but he didn't look away. He smiled at me. He likes me again! Hope springs eternal. Miss Judd said she'd keep us all behind until someone owned up. So eventually Megan put her hand up and said, “Miss, I admit it was my pussy.” Well, that was it—I just spluttered all over the desk and was told to go and stand outside until I calmed down.

Megan deserves deep respect.

Sean O'Connor asked me at school today how my dog was. “Fine—why do you ask?” I said. I never know what's going on in his head. “Just wondered,” he muttered. Strange boy. He never looks at you when he speaks.

Then he spluttered, “I've got my dog now. Mitzy. I've had her two weeks. Her owners couldn't afford to keep her anymore. Maybe they could play together sometime.”

Now hold on a second, mister—I am NOT spending my free time hanging out with Shy Boy Sean. I'm about to say, “Simon has a very busy schedule over the summer actually,” but then I realize—this could be it, the lucky break I have been waiting for!

“Sure,” I say, casually rubbing a spot of paint on the floor of the art classroom with my shoe. “We could meet in the park. I'll get Amber to come along too and you could bring …”

“Who? Bring who?” says Sean a bit suspiciously for my liking.

“Oh, I dunno—erm … Damian?” I say as if it was just one name I had picked from many at random.

Sean looks a bit grumpy and says he doesn't think that's a very good idea after “last time,” by which I assume he means the PI. “But I could bring my cousin Neil,” he says. “He likes dogs and has got a pet gecko.”

Oh whoopidoo—a day out with the world's quietest boy and his lizard-loving geeky cousin. My cup runneth over. But it's too late. Before I can think up a decent excuse I've already agreed to meet up a week on Sunday. Sean can't do this weekend because Neil's busy with some project or other which I can't remember because I'd fallen into a coma by this point in the conversation. Yawn, yawn, yawn.

Amber stays over at my house as it's the ecoprotest/march/sit-in/whatever tomorrow and my dad's giving us a lift. Can't wait. Not.

We sit in my bedroom eating Nobbly Bobbly popsicles and trying to make Deirdre jump over fences we've made from matchsticks. She's useless. She's just too fat, like a furry cheese barrel on legs. And she's not going to get any thinner if she keeps shoveling Nobbly Bobbly down her throat.
She holds it in her paws like a squirrel with a nut.

“If you could have three wishes, what would they be?” I ask Amber

She says, “One—an end to pollution. Two—world peace.” And then, clutching her hand to her boobs (what there is of them) melodramatically, “Three—true luuuurve.”

I'm surprised at this third answer. I was beginning to think Amber might be, well, not a lesbian, but just Not Bothered. When we were ten we made a pact that we'd go to the same university and when we get married we'd live in the same street so that we could still see each other every day, but just lately I've been suspecting that Amber isn't like normal girls. I try not to look surprised.

“Just because I don't fancy Damian doesn't mean I don't like boys,” she says huffily.

“How can you NOT fancy Damian?” I say. “It's not humanly possible.”

“He's vain,” she says. “I see him checking his
reflection in the windows all the time, flicking his hair back,” and she does this impression of someone in a shampoo advert.

I don't answer this because I too check my reflection in the windows all the time. Who doesn't?

Some of Rick's long-haired friends have called for him. I can hear them downstairs calling each other “man” and “bro” again. My dad finds this hilarious. They're trying to form a band with Rick on the drums. It's called—wait for it—“Fast Track.” My dad almost died and went to heaven when they told him this. “Fast track to the unemployment line, more like,” he said, rolling around laughing in his chair.

Phoebe comes in holding Mom's makeup bag which she's stolen from her bedroom. She wants to give Amber a makeover. I tell her Amber doesn't wear makeup and to please go away.

“But why, Amber?” she asks. “You might be pretty if you did.”

Phoebe's bedtime, I think.