After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby (7 page)

Which at least stopped the Battle of the Skype Connection, but started another one about What
Parents
Should or Shouldn’t Be Prepared to Do for Their Children’s Birthdays. Twig’s friend Jason had a birthday sleepover party at the Science Museum last weekend, and now Twig wants to do the same thing in the Natural History Museum for his birthday next month, because ever since our trip there with Zoran it is his favourite museum.

‘But
where
do you sleep?’ asked Mum.

‘Under the diplodocus,’ said Twig.

‘That doesn’t sound very comfortable.’

‘It’s not supposed to be comfortable,’ said Twig. ‘In fact, you’re not really supposed to sleep. They take you round the whole museum by torchlight, and you play games.’

‘What, all night?’

‘At Jason’s party,’ said Twig, ‘we went to bed at half-past four in the morning. Or rather, we got into our sleeping bags. We didn’t have beds, or even mattresses. I would also like a sleeping bag.’

‘We have lots of sleeping bags, son,’ said Dad. ‘From our old back-packing days.’ He sort of grinned at Mum but she ignored him.

‘I don’t think I can do all-night parties,’ she told Twig. ‘Not while I’m living in different time zones.’

That was when Zoran bundled Flora and me away from the table and made us do the washing-up.

‘But you sleep
right underneath the dinosaur
!’ Twig began to cry, and Flora balled her fists in the soapy water. ‘He’s
a hundred and fifty million years old
!’

‘Get the ice cream out of the freezer,’ Zoran told me. He took Flora by the shoulders.

‘I can’t stand them,’ she whimpered. ‘I mean it. I hate them.’

‘Calm down,’ said Zoran.

There’s only one thing that stops Jas crying, and that’s if Twig beats her to it. ‘You take us,’ she ordered Dad. ‘If she’s too tired.’

‘I, um, well,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, son. I’m going to be a bit tied up for your birthday.’

Flora walked out, slamming the door.

Nobody ate the ice cream.

Dad has gone again, after another argument, this time over Christmas. Mum, who has now agreed to sleeping with dinosaurs, tried to make up for the fact that she ever hesitated by suggesting that we all spend Christmas in New York, where she has a friend who can lend us her apartment, and the plane tickets would be our present. Even Flora was excited. Mum asked me if I thought it would be good to get away this Christmas, and even though I would rather be at home, I said yes because it was so lovely to see her smile. And then she looked at Dad and said, ‘What now, David?’ And he looked sheepish and she sighed and said ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, not that again.’ Because Dad is terrified of flying, and has vowed that he will never set foot on an aeroplane ‘unless he absolutely has to’.

‘Well,’ said Flora, ‘you absolutely have to now.’

‘I don’t see why your mother can’t come home for Christmas,’ said Dad, and they argued until he left.

Mum went to bed straight after dinner. We all pretended to go at the same time as her, but then snuck into Flora’s room.

‘Are they going to get divorced?’ Jas curled up against Flora in her bed with the covers pulled over them. I sat on the sheepskin rug on the floor with Twig.

‘Possibly,’ said Flora.

‘What will happen?’ asked Jas.

‘They’ll live in separate houses and never see each other,’ said Twig.

‘So no change there, then,’ said Flora.

‘Jason lives half with his mum and half with his dad,’ said Twig. ‘Do you think we’ll have to do that?’

‘Live in
China
?’ said Jas. ‘In
New York
? In
Warwick
?’

‘There is no way I’m moving to Warwick,’ said Flora.

‘We should run away,’ said Twig. ‘That would show them.’

‘Show them what?’ I asked, and Twig admitted he didn’t know.

What with one thing and another, we had all almost forgotten about the incident with the rats, except Zoran.

‘You have to make it count,’ he said this morning. ‘Otherwise it will have been no more than a prank.’

‘She deserved it!’ I protested, but Zoran was on a roll.

‘You must show that you are better than her. You must put a stop to it, before she retaliates. Violence only begets violence.’

‘It’s not a blooming war, Zoran,’ said Flora.

They all cheered when I came into class this morning. Jake Lyall had woken up long enough to lead them, standing on the teacher’s desk with Tom Myers and Colin Morgan. Then Cressida asked if I wanted to sit next to her. Everyone pretended not to notice when Dodi came in, just a few seconds before Mr Maths.

They ignored her all day. I thought they would tease her. I even imagined myself making Zoran proud and telling them to
stop
teasing her. But it was like the enormity of what she had done – peeing all over the classroom floor – was too much for them to take in. So they did what they always do when they don’t know how to behave with someone. They just pretended she wasn’t there. And I guess Dodi knows the score because she didn’t even try to talk to them. She walked in calmly in her tightest skinny jeans with violet All Stars and a pink batwing sweater, and when she saw what was happening she just went blank, and ate lunch alone, like she knew this was always coming to her even though she had ruled the class for the past year. It was actually quite
impressive
.

Dodi kept up her dignified silence until the end of the day, when we were the last two to leave Art. This term we are working on environmental catastrophe, and I am making an anti-oil-spill collage with a sun shaped like the BP logo and dolphins made of silver foil dipped in black paint. I stayed behind because I’m making the sea out of ring pulls, which is much more time-
consuming
than I thought it would be. Dodi had finished her project but hung around for ages, watching me. I tried to ignore her, and then suddenly she said, ‘I’m not surprised you hate me.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I went on ignoring her and focused like mad on my ring pulls and then Mr Watkins, who is teaching us Art this term, came back in and told us he had to lock up, and I started to tidy up.

Dodi followed me out of the art room.

‘Do you remember how cross Iris used to be if she had to wait for us?’ she said as we walked out into the playground. ‘Even though she was always late for everything?’

At Iris’s funeral, when the curtain fell over her coffin at the crematorium, I didn’t realise it wouldn’t be coming back. That is the only time I have cried in public since she died. Literally. Nobody has ever seen me cry since then, but when Dodi said that about her always being late, my eyes started to sting.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t you dare talk about Iris.’

For a moment I thought she was going to cry too, but I guess Dodi still has her pride. We stared at each other, and part of me wished she
would
say something, but after a while she just turned round and marched off. For a moment I was sorry. I almost called out for her to wait, but then I remembered everything that has happened between us and I just couldn’t.

On the way home tonight, Joss nicked a Kit-Kat from the corner shop. He just asked me ‘What’s your favourite chocolate?’ and then he went in to Mr Patel’s and slipped it into his pocket and came out and gave it to me.

‘To cheer you up,’ he said, and then he added, ‘I don’t have any money’ because I think I must have looked a bit shocked.

‘I’ll buy two tomorrow,’ he said. ‘To make up for stealing today. I’ll give him a quid and tell him to keep the change. Just, right now you look like you need chocolate.’

I think Iris would have liked Joss. One time, when we were little, she stole all of Flora’s Halloween candy and gave it to a girl in our class whose parents wouldn’t let her go trick or treating.

‘Poor Mabel without any sweets,’ she said. ‘And anyway, Flora is getting spots.’

Joss nicked a bar of my Kit-Kat and swallowed it in two bites. ‘Just call me Robin Hood,’ he grinned.

Iris would definitely have liked Joss.

Mum is staying home all of this week. On Monday she gave Zoran a long list of shopping to do, with masses of fruit and vegetables and wholegrain cereals and absolutely no sausages, and she has made dinner for us every single evening. She also helps us with our homework while she cooks, and when we go to bed she comes in to each of our rooms in turn and sits on the end of our bed to talk.

‘She could get an Oscar for playing Perfect Mum,’ Flora grumbled. Flora is cross because Mum won’t let us stay in London with Zoran for half-term next week and is insisting that we go to Grandma’s.

‘What is the point of having an au pair if he doesn’t look after us?’ she shouted at Mum, and Mum said even au pairs need a break and anyway we always go to Grandma’s for half-term.

‘I’m sixteen,’ Flora said. ‘I’ll die of boredom in Devon,’ and then she ran out of the room screaming when Mum said it would be a good chance for her to catch up on her homework.

Mum has told Bütylicious that she can’t travel this week, and what’s more that she has to leave the office by seven o’clock at the latest, except yesterday and today when she told them she was going to the doctor and the dentist when in fact she was picking Jas and Twig up from school.

‘It’s easier to lie,’ she explained.

She was sitting on my bed and she looked so pretty in her pinstriped pencil skirt and grey silk blouse and cardigan. She was wearing her little
tortoiseshell
glasses on the end of her nose and the fluffy slippers Flora and I gave her for Christmas last year.  I don’t think she has any idea we all overheard her argument with Dad, the one where she told him she deserved a life and didn’t want to be stuck at home with us.

‘Do you actually like your job?’ I asked.

Mum’s face always goes completely still when she doesn’t want to answer a question. ‘Funny little Blue!’ she said. ‘Why would I do it otherwise?’

I wanted to tell her how much I liked having her at home, but I knew it would only upset her, especially after the row with Flora.

‘What does it feel like to have a crush on someone?’ I asked instead.

‘Do you have a crush on someone?’

‘I just want to know.’

‘Goodness, well it’s been an awfully long time . . .’ She lay down and I snuggled up next to her. ‘I suppose you think about it all the time; you always want to talk about your crush, you blush when you see him and your heart hammers and if he talks to you, you can’t even speak. Your knees go weak and you giggle a lot and you’re terribly moody.’ She peered at me over the top of her glasses. ‘Does that sound familiar?’

‘No.’

‘Well that’s a relief.’

I thought about what she had said when she had gone, and I thought about Joss. The rats, the cafe, the stealing chocolate. The lying out on the roof. I don’t have any problem talking to Joss, in fact I talk to him more than to anyone else in the world. I don’t blush when I see him, or go weak at the knees. Joss makes me forget everything, and he makes me feel not alone.

If being sixteen means being like Flora, I never want to grow up.

I told Joss we were going to Grandma’s on the way to school this morning.

‘Rats,’ he said. We use that word a lot now, for obvious reasons. ‘I was hoping we could all hang out.’

I thought about Grandma’s house, and how even though our parents always talk about it as
getting away
it never actually feels like that any more.

‘Maybe we can come back early,’ I suggested.

Which is when Flora went weird.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ she snapped. ‘You love it at Grandma’s.’

‘I was only saying . . .’

‘You’re just trying to act cool in front of Joss.’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Isn’t it?’

We watched her storm off.  My cheeks were burning, but Joss was laughing. ‘She’s a bit mental, your sister,’ he said.

‘I’m not trying to act cool,’ I said, and he laughed again.

‘Course you’re not. I know that.’

‘I do want to go to Grandma’s, really. It’s just . . .’

‘You’ll be all right.’ We stopped in front of our house and Joss was looking down at me, all serious and sympathetic, like he knew that I couldn’t find the words to say what I was thinking.

‘I’m sure you’ll have fun.’ He reached out a hand and flicked the end of my nose. ‘I’ll miss you,
Bluebird
.’

Our front door was open. Inside, Flora and Zoran and the Babes were all yelling at each other.  

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll miss you too.’