Indigo Blue (2 page)

Sometimes I dream that school is cancelled due to freak floods or blizzards, or that we all get stranded in class for weeks on end and have to be rescued by soldiers in boats or helicopters or dog sleds. Sometimes I imagine I’ve won a national competition for painting or acting or inventing a car that runs on orange juice and recycled sweet wrappers, and even Miss McDougall thinks I’m sussed and cool and dripping with talent.

My favourite daydream is about my dad. He comes driving into the playground in an indigo-blue Ferrari and squeals to a halt right in front of me. He leans over to open the passenger door and I can see him clearly – sometimes he’s a cooler, fairer version of Robbie Williams, and other times he looks just like Mr Lennon, our head teacher, only not so podgy.

He smiles at me and it makes up for the whole of the last eleven years. I get into the passenger seat and we speed right out of that playground while everyone stands and stares, and I remember to send postcards to them all from New York, Cairo, Mexico City and our lush private villa in the Bahamas.

Well, maybe.

After half eight, kids start arriving at school, a few at a time. Some come with mums and pushchairs and squirmy baby brothers and sisters. Some come by car, some come by bus, some come on bikes, and Shane Taggart comes on his skateboard, every day, except when it snows.

Jo gets here at five to nine most days. She’s been my best mate since we met on the very first day of school. She never laughed at my hair, which was all blonde dreadlocks and multi-coloured beads and feathers. She never asked why I was wearing an ancient turquoise felted jumper and tie-dyed leggings instead of a blue polo top and navy pinafore dress. She just raised her eyebrows, giggled and dragged me off to the sandpit.

I’m eleven now, and I know way more about fitting in. I got my mum to chop out all the dreadlocks when I was in Year Two – she still has them in a wooden box, along with her photos and her hippy jewellery and a yellowed ticket for Glastonbury Festival from hundreds of years ago.

I looked like a scarecrow for a whole year while my hair grew out, and ever since then I’ve looked after it myself – one hundred brush-strokes every night, conditioner every time I wash it, cute hair-clips and tiny plaits and zigzag partings and little twisty buns with the ends sticking out, the way they do it in Jo’s magazines.

I’m pretty much in charge of my own clothes too. Gran gets me basic uniform stuff every August and Mum lets me choose a few cool tops, some clumpy shoes or a little skirt to liven it all up. Sometimes they come from the charity shop, but I don’t care about that as long as nobody at school catches on.

I look like the other kids, and that’s what matters.

I’ve changed, and not just the way I look but the way I feel inside too. It might be something to do with growing up, but it’s probably more to do with Mum and Max and Misti and all that stuff.

At least Jo never changes.

When things have been bad at home, she pretends not to notice. Jo doesn’t ask awkward questions or try to get deep and meaningful. She doesn’t do slushy and she doesn’t do sad. She just rolls her eyes, digs me in the ribs and tells me silly stories and corny jokes, and we link arms and laugh and talk and the bad thoughts go away.

Last night was bad.

Mum and Max were shouting downstairs for hours and hours, and then they moved up to their room and the shouting got louder so that hiding under the covers and turning my CD player up to full volume didn’t help any more.

Misti, who has the box room next to me, started crying around midnight and nobody came to see to her. I wrapped myself in the duvet and crept across the landing, and even in the dark I could see she was standing up in her cot, her face streaked with tears.

I scooped her up in my arms, my little sister who’s only just two, and I tried not to hear the things that Max was screaming at my mum because you’re not meant to know words like that when you’re only eleven.

I climbed back into bed with my arms round Misti, singing corny pop songs into her hair and wiping her eyes with the duvet cover.

After a while everything went quiet – I suppose Mum and Max were making up. They usually do, kind of. It’s just that it never lasts for long.

And, after that, Misti stopped snuffling and drifted off to sleep, her breath a soft whisper on my neck.

I heard footsteps on the landing, water running in the bathroom, stairs creaking. Someone was moving around downstairs, but quietly.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I wake up dead on half seven, like I always do. There might as well be an invisible alarm clock inside my head.

I leave Misti cocooned in the duvet and roll out of bed. The house is silent as I wash and brush my teeth. I dress in yesterday’s skirt with a fresh top, clean undies and black tights with a darn that hardly shows just behind the knee.

I tiptoe down the stairs and past the living-room door. It’s ajar, and inside I see Mum curled up on the sofa asleep, her Chinese robe wrapped round her instead of a blanket. There are bulging bin bags all around the room, and a few things don’t look right.

The fringed Indian hanging with all the tiny mirrors is gone from the wall, and so are the framed photos of Misti and me. The stripy rug has disappeared, and the bookshelves look half empty.

Spring-cleaning in the middle of the night is not a good plan. I hope Mum susses that when she wakes up.

I make toast and drink the last of the orange juice from the fridge. I do it silently because I don’t want to wake Mum.

I brush my hair, push in some glittery clips and grab my school bag from behind the door. I pull on my fleece and root around for a hat because it’s raining hard outside, and I haven’t any money for bus fare today.

I’m almost out of the door when Max comes down.

He’s tall and fair and rumpled-looking with big sad eyes, and when Mum first met him three years ago she said he was the best-looking man she’d ever seen. He was kind and funny and generous then, and we had lots of laughs, the three of us.

Max isn’t laughing now.

He’s wearing jeans but his feet and chest are bare, and his blond hair is sticking up like he’s been sleeping in a hedge. He comes closer and I can smell the drink on him: stale beer, sweat, sadness.

He doesn’t look like a man who’s been shouting, screaming and swearing all night, he just looks crushed, lost, hopeless.

‘Indie,’ he says. ‘Indie, you have to talk to your mum.’

I pull on a blue fleece hat with long tassels and refuse to look at him.

‘She’s going to leave me,’ Max says. ‘She doesn’t love me any more. You have to stop her, Indie. Tell her she can’t do it.’

‘I’ll try,’ I mutter, dragging open the front door. I step out into the rain, but he’s following me, and I can see tears in his eyes.

I’ve never seen a man cry before.

‘Indie, please,’ he says raggedly. ‘Please. Talk to her.’

He catches hold of my arm and holds me tight. I can’t tell whether it’s rain or tears on my face.

‘We’ve been happy, haven’t we?’ Max asks. ‘We’ve had good times. Tell her I’m sorry, Indie. I love her. I do. You have to make her see!’

His fingers dig into my arm, but he doesn’t mean to hurt me. It’s because he’s upset.

‘Max…’

‘Let her go.’

It’s Mum, standing in the doorway, her Chinese silk wrap pulled tight round her, fair hair falling loose across her face.

‘
Take – your – hands – off – my – daughter.’

Her voice is hard and slow and fierce and determined. Max lets his hand fall away from my arm, and suddenly he looks lost and alone, standing in the rain without his shirt, without his shoes, on the path of the little house we’ve all called home for three years.

‘Indie, I’m sorry…’

‘Get away from her,’ Mum says, and Max slinks back inside like a naughty schoolboy.

I turn away, put my hand on the gate.

‘Indie, babe.’ Mum is next to me now, but I daren’t look up.

‘It’s going to be all right from now on. I’m going to fix it, sort things out, get us out of here.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t worry, love, I’ll put things right. We’ll be OK, just the three of us: me, you, Misti. Wait for me after school, Indie. I’ll fetch you. Wait for me. Only don’t come back here, d’you understand?’

‘I understand.’

For a long, long moment our eyes lock, and although I try not to notice I can’t help but see the blue-black bruises on Mum’s face. The bruises that weren’t there yesterday.

By the time I get to school I’m drenched, and I stand in the porch for ages before Billy arrives and opens up. He lets me in and I arrange my hat and fleece on the big cast-iron radiator, steaming.

I sit cross-legged with my back against the radiator to dry out, my hair hanging in rat’s tails on my shoulders.

Billy slips me a snack-sized Mars bar, shaking his head.

I need a seriously brilliant daydream today, one that can blot out the memory of Mum’s face and Max’s tears, and the sick sense that something weird and scary is going on. I just can’t do it, though, so I hug my legs and press my face into my knees and blank it all out – the drumming of the rain outside, the swish of the door and the giggles and shouts as kids start arriving, the off-tune whistling from down the corridor where Billy is doing something complicated to the broken door latch on Class Six.

‘OK, Indie?’

Jo scuffs a toe against my soggy trainers, grinning.

I jump up and we link arms, and it’s OK again. All the home stuff fades out and I’m safe and sure and happy. Pretty much.

We mooch off together to watch out for Shane Taggart, Jo’s latest crush. Just before nine, he skids into the playground on his skateboard and rolls to a halt in front of the doors, flicking his board upright and winking at us. Jo goes pink and pretends to be looking somewhere else completely. I stifle a yawn.

Sadly, it’s all downhill from there. I get a row from Miss McDougall for forgetting my English book, then I bomb out with a measly 4/20 in the mental maths test after break. Worst of all, Miss McDougall homes right in while we’re getting changed for PE and asks me how I hurt my arm. I tell her some junk about banging it in the playground yesterday, but when I look down I can see that it looks like exactly what it is: a ring of dark bruises where somebody’s held on to me way too hard. Thanks a bunch, Max.

So Miss McDougall gives me a long, funny look, then puts a hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Indigo, is everything OK at home?’ I go kind of pink and shake off her hand and say everything is fine. As if I’d tell
her
anything.

Only now Jo is looking at me sort of weird too, which bugs me loads, because I need today to be normal and ordinary and totally pity-free.

Sadly, it’s not happening.

Jo asks if I want to come over to her place for tea, and of course I have to tell her that I can’t.

‘Why can’t you?’ she wants to know.

I don’t go over to hers that often because she has a whole raft of things to do most days – violin lessons and gym and swimming club and stuff – only sometimes her mum loosens up a bit and I get an invite. I always go, because unlike Jo
I
’
m
never doing anything after school. Mum doesn’t mind as long as I ring and let her know, and as long as Jo’s mum drops me back before seven or so.

‘I just can’t,’ I mutter.

‘But why?’ Jo pushes. ‘Is something up?’

‘No. I’m busy after school, that’s all.’

Miss McDougall tells us off for talking when we should be practising our handstands, and gives us twenty sit-ups apiece as punishment. Jo is not impressed.

Coming back from the gym hall, I notice she’s sulking. She manages to keep it up till lunch, then, watching me push cold macaroni cheese around my plate, she finally cracks.

‘Why are you so secretive?’ she explodes. ‘You’re meant to be my best mate, only you never tell me anything. I only asked you over cos you looked so down today. I wanted to cheer you up.’

‘I’m OK,’ I say helplessly.

‘You are not. You’ve been biting your nails all morning. Your eyes are all red and puffy too. And your arm…’

‘I banged it yesterday!’ I snap.