The Illustrated Mum (6 page)

“Dol! Dolly, hi! Yoo-hoo!”

Now they weren't just staring at Marigold. They were staring at me too.

I felt as if I were on fire. I tried to smile at Marigold as I walked toward her. My lips got stuck on my teeth. I felt as if I were wading through treacle.

“Dol,
quick
!” Marigold shouted.

I got quicker, because she was making such a noise.

“Which one's Tasha?” Marigold asked.

I felt sick. No. Please.

I glanced at Tasha as she crossed the playground, tossing her beautiful hair. I saw her mother, elegant and ordinary in a T-shirt and flowery skirt, her own blond hair tied up in a topknot.

“I can't see her. Maybe she's gone,” I gabbled, but Marigold had seen my glance.

“Isn't that her? The one with the hair? Hi, Tasha! Tasha, come over here!”

“Marigold! Shhh! Don't!” I said in agony.

“It's OK, Dol,” said Marigold.

It wasn't OK. Tasha stood still, staring. Tasha's mother was frowning. She hurried to Tasha and put her arm round her protectively.

“Hey, wait!” Marigold shouted, rushing over to them. I had to follow her.

“What do you want?” said Tasha's mother.

Her alarm and hostility were so obvious that Marigold couldn't ignore it.

“It's OK, no worries,” said Marigold. “I just thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Dolphin's mother. She and Tasha are friends.”

“No, we're not,” said Tasha.

“We're
not
,” I whispered to Marigold.

“Kids!” said Marigold, laughing. “Anyway, we've got a special tea, lots of cakes, all sorts, and we'd like Tasha to come round and play, wouldn't we, Dol?”

“She doesn't want to,” I mumbled.

“Of course she does,” said Marigold. “What's your favorite cake, Tasha? I'll make you anything you fancy.”

“It's very kind of you but I'm afraid Tasha can't possibly come to tea tonight, she has her ballet class,” said Tasha's mother. “Come along, Tasha.”

“Tomorrow then? How about tomorrow?” said Marigold.

“No, thank you,” said Tasha's mother, not even bothering to find another excuse.

She hurried Tasha away as if they'd just witnessed an appalling accident. Marigold stared after them, biting on the back of her hand.

“It's all right,” I said quickly. “I don't like her anymore.”

“OK, who else shall we ask?” said Marigold.

“No one! Let's go home and eat lots of lovely cake, just us,” I said, putting my hand in Marigold's.

We walked away hand in hand, half the school still staring. I blinked my eyes, wishing them greener and greener, real witch's eyes so that I could cast spells with just one flash of my glittering green orbs. Flash. Tasha and her mother lost all their hair and they ran home hiding their pink bald heads. Flash. Kayleigh and Yvonne wet their knickers in front of everyone and waddled away, dripping. Flash. Ronnie Churley tripped over and cried like a baby, boo-hoo, and he had to wear a dinky little baby suit, a pink one with frills. Flash.

But when I looked at Owly Morris his own glasses flashed back at me.

Marigold wanted us to go to meet Star but I talked her out of it. I knew Star would die if all her new high school friends saw Marigold, especially in her wound-up state.

“No, don't let's hang around Star's school. She's maybe got netball practice today, anyway. Let's just go home.”

“I don't want to go home. Boring! Let's have some fun,” said Marigold. She put her arm round me, her beautiful bright hair brushing my cheek. “Let's go shopping, eh? Star's been niggle-naggling me about your clothes, telling me you need T-shirts and jeans and sneakers.”

“No, I don't. I don't like those sort of clothes, you know I don't,” I said, swishing my dusty black velvet
skirt and pointing my toes in their 1950s glittery dancing sandals.

“Then let's buy you new clothes you really like. How about your very first pair of high heels?” Marigold suggested.

The idea of owning real high heels dazzled in my head like a firework. But then common sense doused it. I knew I wouldn't be allowed to wear high heels to school. Miss Hill had made enough fuss about my dancing shoes.

“They're not really suitable for school wear. Too … flimsy. Can't you wear ordinary sandals?”

I'd looked her straight in the eye.

“I'm afraid we can't afford new shoes for me just at the moment, Miss Hill,” I said. “We had to buy these ones secondhand.”

I wasn't really lying. The dancing shoes
were
secondhand, but they'd cost a tenner because they were genuine fifties and in beautiful condition.

“Yes, high heels. I'll have some new shoes too. What's Star's size? We'll all have new shoes,” Marigold said happily.

“Marigold. We haven't any money. Not till the next check.”

“Aha!” said Marigold, and she whipped a shiny plastic card out of the pocket of her shorts.

“But I thought … Star said you couldn't use your credit card anymore.”

“I got another one, didn't I?” said Marigold, kissing the plastic edge of the card. She tucked it back in her pocket before I could see the name on it. “Let's go shopping, Dolly. Please cheer up. I want to make you
happy
.”

I dithered helplessly. I wanted to go shopping. I knew I only had to mention something casually and Marigold would buy it for me when she was in this mood. It wouldn't just be high heels. It would be strappy shoes too, patent party shoes, ballet shoes, leather boots. Then we'd get onto clothes and I'd end up with a magic wardrobe. Maybe if I wore designer T-shirts and the right jeans then Tasha would suddenly want to be friends after all.

But I knew Marigold had no money in the bank to pay a credit card bill. If it was
her
credit card. She'd sort of borrowed them from people once or twice before. Star said she could end up in prison. Then what would happen to us?

“I don't want to go shopping. Shopping's boring. Let's … let's …” I tried desperately to think of something we could do that wouldn't cost any money. “Let's go for a walk along Beech Brook.”

“The brook?”

“Yes. You used to take us down by the river when we were little.”

“Which river?”

“I don't know. I can't remember the place. But
we used to feed the ducks, you and me and Star. Remember?”

Marigold didn't always remember things but now her face lit up.

“Yes! Yes, we did go, didn't we? Before you went to school. Fancy
you
remembering! You were still at the buggy stage. OK, OK, we'll go and feed the ducks. Right. We need bread.”

“What about some of the cakes that didn't turn out so good?”

“Brilliant! We'll give the ducks a party they'll remember.” Marigold hugged me. “Hey, those little shoulders are still tense. What's up, Dolly?”

“I'm fine.”

“And you really want to feed the ducks?”

“Yes!”

“Then that's what we'll do. Dol … I know sometimes, well, I act a bit wild and screw up. But would you say I'm a really bad mother?”

“No, of course not. You're a lovely mother.”

“Star said’

“
Forget
Star. Come on. Let's get that cake.”

We rushed home, got great carrier bags of cake, and then walked all the way to Beech Brook. Marigold's high heels started killing her, so she kicked them off and stuffed them in one of the bags. She walked barefoot, her long delicate feet padding lightly over the
pavement. She had a yellow and white daisy chain tattooed round her left ankle, with trailing fronds winding down her foot and ending with one more perfect pink-tipped daisy on her big toe. Daisies are powerfully symbolic. A chain is meant to protect you from bad luck. Marigold's daisy chain wasn't always effective, but it would have been mean to point this out.

Beech Brook wasn't quite as I'd hoped. I'd heard Kayleigh and Yvonne talking about having a picnic there and they'd made it sound like the most beautiful place in the world. But the brook seemed to have dried to a trickle, and the remaining water was covered with green scum and foamy where it lapped the bank.

“No ducks,” I said, sighing.

“We'll find some,” said Marigold. Then she swore violently because she'd stepped into a nettle patch.

“I need a dock leaf to take away the sting,” she said, but we couldn't find any dock leaves either.

“No ducks, no docks! Dear oh dear,” said Marigold, rubbing the sole of her foot. “I'm going to walk up the bank a bit, in the grass.”

She held out her hand and I skipped along beside her, the carrier bag of cakes banging against my leg. Marigold nibbled absentmindedly from one of her own carrier bags. Then she started leaving a little trail of crumbs behind her.

“What's that story where the children get lost in a
wood and leave a trail of crumbs?” she said. “It was in some fairy-tale book. I had it when I was your age. I didn't really have any books. Maybe I pinched it from school.”

“I don't like fairy stories. The good things happen to the beautiful people and the ugly ones are always the baddies,” I said.

“So? You should worry. You're beautiful,” said Marigold.

“If this was a fairy story your tongue would go black for telling fibs,” I said, but I squeezed her hand.

“Handy Pandy? The children had funny names. I didn't like fairy stories either, it was the pictures I liked. Princesses and mermaids and fairies with long curling hair and swirly dresses‘hey, what a great idea for a custom tattoo!”

“Did you go and do some flash work for Steve today?”

“No! Boring!”

“But you promised him.”

“I'll go tomorrow. And I can work on a fairy-tale design. A whole back! Great on a woman, with flowery swirls and embellishments.”

I sighed. We both knew the only people who wanted custom work at the Rainbow Tattoo Studio were big brawny bikers with a hankering for a skeleton death figure on a Harley-Davidson, with strictly no flowery swirls.

“I inked the four Teletubbies on my arm in reading today,” I said. “They're easy to do because they're round and blobby. I had red, yellow and green felt-tips but not purple so I asked Owly Morris for a loan of his. He's got this giant set of Caran d'Ache.”

“Howly?”

“No. Owly. Because he wears really thick specs. Though he does go howly too sometimes. He gets teased an awful lot.”

“Poor little guy. Do you get teased too, Dol?”

“No. I don't wear specs, do I?” I said hurriedly. “I had all four Teletubbies just right but then Miss Hill saw and made me go and wash my arms. I can't
stick
Miss Hill.”

I flashed my witch eyes and twitched my black skirt and inflated Miss Hill into a gigantic gray Teletubby with a corkscrew aerial sticking out of her head.

“There was a wicked witch in this story and she captured the children,” said Marigold.

“I know. I remember it now. Star read it to me when I was little. It was scary,” I said.

“Yeah, that witch was
seriously
scary‘but I liked the picture of her, with her big hooky nose and her wild hair and her long gnarled fingers.”

“The witch wasn't the really scary bit. It was the mother and father at the beginning.
They
took Hansel and Gretel‘
not
Handy and Pandy‘they deliberately led them into the wood and got them lost on purpose.

They ran off and left them there. And yet at the end, it was supposed to be a
happy
end, Hansel and Gretel got away from the wicked witch and got all the way back home to their mum and dad and it was like, wow, we're together again, one big happy family.”

“I'd never leave you and Star, Dol,” said Marigold.

“I know.”

“I did stay out‘and I have done stuff that's scary‘but I wouldn't ever try to lose you.”

“I
know
. It's just a stupid fairy story.”

“Tell you what. Think what the witch lived in. Wasn't it a little cottage made out of gingerbread?”

“Yes, that was the roof. And there were sugar candy whirly bits.”

“And cake.
Cake
, get it? Blow looking for boring old ducks. Let's make our own fairy-tale gingerbread cottage, right?”

“Right right right!”

Marigold tipped all the cake out on the grass and started sorting it into shapes.

“We need a knife,” she said. “And something to stick it all together.”

“Your wish is my command, O great gingerbread genie,” I said, sliding my schoolbag off my shoulder. My ruler made a reasonable knife, even if it was a little blunt, and I had a glue stick to gum everything together.

I sat cross-legged on the grass watching Marigold's long white fingers whisking a cake cottage into shape. I nibbled every now and then.

“Don't eat my roof!” said Marigold, giving me a nudge with her toe. “Look, pick some buttercups and daisies. We could link them together and they'd be great curtains.”

I sprang up and searched.

“Come on, Dol. I've built almost an entire house while you've been looking for those curtains,” Marigold called.

“I can't find any,” I said. “Will these do instead?” I thrust a few bedraggled dandelions at her.

“You're not supposed to pick dandelions. They say you'll wet the bed if you do,” said Marigold, laughing. Then she saw my face.

“Oh, Dol. I'm teasing. You haven't wet the bed for
ages
.”

“Shhh!” I said, looking round, terrified in case anyone from school might be nearby.

“It's OK.” Marigold carefully fashioned a twirly sponge chimney with her sharp fingernails. “I was in one foster home where the mother used to put the sheets over my head if I wet them. These sopping smelly sheets, all in my face, on my hair. And all the other kids laughed.”

“That's so
mean
.”

“She was a witch,” said Marigold, and her fingernail lost control and sliced the chimney in half. She swore and sighed. “Whoops! And that's the last of the pink sponge. Chimney repair urgently required. Pass us the glue, Dolly.”

I kept quiet until the chimney was mended and stuck into place on the sloping yellow roof.

“Were you very unhappy when you were little, Marigold?” I asked.

“Some of the time.”

“It must have been horrible not having your mother,” I said, snuggling up to her.