One More Little Problem (6 page)

Fran makes an indignant little-girl squeal of protest. She’s only one year younger than Caro but she does look a lot more innocent when you compare her pink dress, neat brown plaits and shoes with little flowers to Caro’s big black baggy outfit.

‘Anybody who upsets my best mate OCD here,’ and Caro tilts her blonde head towards me with a sharp gesture, ‘has me to reckon with. OK?’

Fran turns pale and then flushes pink.

This is a total nightmare. And since when did Caro become my best friend? ‘That’s enough,’ I say. The iron in my voice takes us all by surprise. ‘Leave Fran alone. She’s come to help me with something.’

‘Oh, have I?’ mutters Fran. ‘That’s news to me. I haven’t actually agreed to do anything yet.’

She looks at my gritted teeth and hands-on-hips posture and shuts up.

‘I’ll give you my blue sparkly earrings,’ I say. Fran always used to stare at them with longing when she thought I wasn’t looking.

‘Done,’ says Fran.

‘Yeah, excuse me interrupting your business transactions but I’ll have that cake now,’ says Caro. She manages to make it sound as if she’s doing me a massive favour by suggesting this.

Oh great. I’m going to have to demonstrate some more OCD weirdness now.

I scrabble around the bottom of the cake tin with my rubber gloves to avoid contamination by old sponge and find an ancient Battenberg. I cut two slices for Fran and Caro (I don’t do out-of-date cake – major
Germ Alert
) and we sit in silence.

The girls make a great play of separating the pink and yellow squares and peeling off long sticky strips of marzipan. It’s like watching a children’s television presenter trying to make something, except without the happy smiles and silly music.

I check my watch. We’ve already wasted loads of time arguing so I take Fran upstairs and leave Caro smoking and casting the evil eye at Fran’s neat departing bottom in its flowery dress.

Fran struts out of the kitchen with her nose stuck in the air.

*

Fran waits for me while I do my jumps on the stairs.

I can see her biting her tongue and trying to be patient.

It’s all a bit awkward.

And sad.

We used to chat away without pausing for breath in the back of the biology lesson, collecting detentions like Smarties. When we weren’t chatting we were texting and when we weren’t texting we were either on the phone every evening catching up on gossip or emailing each other in the dead of night.

How can five years of chatting turn into this awkward moment of tension on the staircase?

But that’s what’s happened.

She follows me into my bedroom, glancing around at the gleaming white walls and bleached-white pillowcases, sniffing the sterilised air.

‘Still got the OCD, then?’ is all she says, but it’s enough.

I flush and look down at my silver flip-flops.

‘Never mind that,’ I say. ‘I need your advice please. I’ve got this email from a boy and I don’t know whether to reply to it or not.’

Fran gives me a look of disbelief.

‘You’ve got me here just to read one email from one boy?’ she says. ‘Zelah. I can’t believe you rang me up just because of that.’

I flush again and chew my lip.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I maybe could have read the email on my own. But I don’t know how I’m going to react after reading it, do I?’

Fran raises a pretty arched eyebrow at me until I sink down on to the edge of the bed.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘So I’m having a lonely holiday. I admit it. But I do really need your help with the email from this boy.’

Fran tosses her shiny plaits back and takes off her smart denim jacket, hanging it over the back of a chair and sitting down at my desk. She clicks open a designer glasses-case and slides a pair of expensive-looking pink frames up her nose.

‘Fine, let me see it,’ she says.

I flip open Heather’s laptop and click on to the first email from Alessandro. Fran reads it in silence and then screws her mouth up to one side.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘The heavy metal bit is gross. Maybe he should hook up with your friend downstairs instead,’ and she tips her head in a dismissive way towards the open door.

‘But he doesn’t sound like a teen-killer, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

I wonder if Fran’s forgotten to read the very last bit of the email so I point at the screen (not actually touching it, of course,
because smudges are
Dirt Alert
and then I’d have to go and get a clean white cloth to wipe it off).

‘Yeah, so?’ says Fran in a voice quite at odds with her neat pink girly appearance. ‘Loads of people have parents in prison. Welcome to the twenty-first century, Zelah. I mean – there’s like nothing remarkable about that, is there? You were locked up in Forest Hill with all those weirdos. You should know about strange people by now.’

I take a deep calming breath. I know full well that Fran’s just approving of jailbait fathers because it’s the opposite of what I’m expecting her to do.

Difficult. She’s a difficult ex-best friend.

There’s still that new email from Alessandro so I click on it with my arm trembling.

It only asks whether I got his first email.

‘So you think I should write back?’ I say.
‘S’pose I have been quite rude ignoring his mails.’

Fran stands up to offer me the chair and then she looks over my shoulder and in a grudging, impatient sort of way, helps me to write a reply. This is what we come up with:

Dear Alessandro.

Thanks for your two emails. Yes my name really IS Zelah. I don’t think there’s anything weird about it but then again I’m used to it. I live with my demented father in West London and at the moment I’ve got a friend called Caro staying with me. She’s into Marilyn Manson in a big way and for some unknown reason my father thinks she’s the best thing since stale sliced white loaf. I haven’t got many hobbies ’cos I haven’t got time to do anything much other than try to get my father to job interviews and clean the house from top to bottom. But that’s another story. And by the way, sorry to hear that your father is in jail. Bummer. Anyway, write again soon. Zelah.

I don’t put ‘love’ or anything crazy like that. Don’t want to give out false signals.

Fran spellchecks the email and then I press the send button and my message to Alessandro whizzes off into cyberspace and my legs have gone all shaky and bloodless so I sit down hard on the end of my nice clean duvet and Fran goes off downstairs to make us some tea with sugar in.

‘I only use the white cup with the red flowers on!’ I shout downstairs after her.

I know it’s a bit pathetic, but that’s my own special cup.

Nobody else dares to drink from the Cup of Zelah.

Fran spends the rest of the afternoon trying on all my earrings and experimenting with my make-up while she tells me how fantastic her life is and how shit mine must be.

At five thirty she stands up, snaps her rosebud-framed glasses back into their silver designer case and pulls on her smart Gap denim jacket.

I pass her the blue sparkly earrings in total silence and she tucks them into her beaded purse.

Outside Mrs Benson is making a great play of revving her monstrous engine and ruining the environment while looking at her wrist-watch, tapping her fingernails on the side of the car and mouthing the word ‘pony’.

‘OK then,’ says Fran. ‘Let me know if he writes back or if he wants to meet you ’cos you like
so
need serious wardrobe advice.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, in the same formal voice she’s just used.

We shuffle down the dark poky hallway trying not to touch one another and I accompany her down the front path.

Of course I can’t touch anybody anyway, because of my problem. But Fran doesn’t have that problem.

She must hate me.

‘OK then, bye,’ she says, running towards her mother’s car with ill-disguised relief. Running away from the crazy household where the depressed father, the devil-worshipper and the axe-murdering psycho with the rituals live in disharmony.

‘Bye,’ I say in a small, sad voice.

Then I walk back towards home. Ha. That’s a joke.

My home is full of stress.

I’ve forgotten how to do fun teenaged things.

This is one of the worst summers. Ever.

T
hree days later and no reply from Alessandro.

I’m sure I’ve put him off with my stupid email and the weird thing is that even though I didn’t really want to write to him I’m kind of annoyed that he hasn’t written back.

But there’s a new email waiting for me on Heather’s laptop this morning.

It’s from somebody called ‘Marky’ and just his name is enough to make me feel really edgy and unsettled.

I don’t like names with extra letters on the end. They’re not neat and as you might have
guessed by now, I like things to be neat and tidy.

The email says that he’s sixteen, tall, fair-haired, loves sailing and playing tennis and in his spare time he invents computer games.

I want to be a millionaire by the time I’m twenty
, he puts at the very end of the message.
And I’m the youngest ever contestant to go on
Dragon’s Den.

‘Huh,’ I snort as I read this bit. I’m not impressed by money. Good job really as Dad never has any and I have to buy most of my clothes off eBay.

Then I notice that Marky has added a photograph to his profile so I click on it in a not-really-bothered kind of way and this really handsome guy pops up grinning at me from a tanned face and with kind blue eyes and I think:
Oh well, what the heck. Might as well reply
, and before I know it I’ve written him a three-page epic all about my life and
pressed the ‘send’ button before becoming a shaking wreck.

I’ve scrubbed my face about fifty times this morning, which is twenty times more than usual.

My skin is stinging and smarting so much that I take one of Dad’s painkillers to try and calm it down.

I’m back in my bedroom reading a website called ‘Addicted to Disastrous Dating and how to get over it’ when Dad comes bounding upstairs and bursts in.

‘Zelah, emergency!’ he pants before running straight out again.

I slam the lid of the laptop shut and leap up, alarmed.

What now? Has Caro set fire to the house or invited Marilyn Manson around for a spot of group devil-worship?

I rush downstairs into the kitchen where Dad is pacing back and forth with a piece of paper in his hand.

There’s no sign of Caro.

‘What’s happened? Where’s Caro?’ I say.

Dad gives me a puzzled look.

‘In bed. Where else?’ he says. ‘It’s only eleven o’clock.’

‘Dad,’ I say. ‘Just tell me what this emergency is.’

Dad passes me the letter with a shaking hand.

I take it by the tips of my fingernails and place it on the table.

‘Dear Mr Green,’ it says. ‘We are delighted to offer you the position of English Teacher at Smithfield High School, Acton W3. Please report to the School Secretary’s office on Monday 12 August when you will be expected to complete a two-week induction course
before the commencement of Autumn Term.

Yours sincerely, Ms S. Smart, School Secretary.’

Lots of things whizz through my bemused brain.

The first is: how exactly is this an emergency?

The second thought eclipses this one. Dad has got a job! He’s actually gone and got a job!

The third thought is that if Dad has a job, I’m going to be spending a lot of time on my own.

And the fourth thought is: when will Caro be going back to her foster parents? Because she’s left school already and if Dad is out all day, Caro will be living in our house on her own and I will have to come home from school Every Single Day and find her there, like some gross evil young stepmother or something . . .

‘Well?’ Dad is saying. ‘Can’t you say
anything? Are you pleased for me, Princess?’

I skip over and give Dad a virtual hug, without arms or anything.

‘Yay!’ I say. ‘You got a job! That’s fantastic.’

Then I run back upstairs and check my emails for about the billionth time.

Nothing.

I have to grab the disinfectant and perform a major clean of the black laptop keyboard even though it doesn’t really need one.

My little problem appears to be getting worse, what with Caro’s grumpy behaviour and the uncertainty of emailing strange boys on the computer.

Here I go, heading off to jump on the stairs.

Again.

I get a tiny bit of homework done on Saturday morning in between clearing up breakfast and going shopping so that we have food. I write
about ten words of an essay on ‘The Wife of Bath’ by Chaucer. Just the title of the book is enough to cheer me up. I have a great relationship with baths.

Not keen on the brown scum-line left around the sides afterwards though.
Dirt Alert
.

Spurred on by the bath connection I take one straight after doing my schoolwork.

I lie in a mass of fragrant lime bubbles and enjoy some good ‘phoo, phoo,’ breaths with my hand on my soapy chest, trying to have a nice calming moment.

As if.

Caro’s hammering on the bathroom door.

‘OCD!’ she yells. ‘I need to get in. Pronto!’

‘Can’t it wait?’ I yell back. ‘I’m having a calm bath. It’s part of my therapy. Stella has prescribed it.’

This is a complete lie of course, but it’s the only way I can think of getting Caro to
leave me in peace. Despite being a total nightmare about nearly everything, she gets the therapy thing.

She should do – she’s had enough of it.

‘Oh, OK,’ she says. There’s a pause when I sense she’s still hovering outside the bathroom door and then her bedroom door bangs and the oh-so-familiar growl of Marilyn Manson rises up from the fiery abyss of Hell.

I’m a bit worried that I know all the lyrics off by heart now.

I’m even singing along underneath the bubbles.

By the time I get out of my bath I’m all shrivelled and dried-up but I don’t care.

I’m super-ultra clean and hygienic.

‘Hooray,’ I say to my scrubbed reflection in the mirror.

I treat myself to a new pot of talc, twisting the dial on top and shaking the sweet clean
powder all over my scrubbed bits.