Just Peachy (4 page)

I thought that some people seemed to know OK. I couldn’t imagine any of my family stopping to ask themselves who they were.

“Sometimes,” I said, “I can’t make up my mind whether I’m just Peachy or whether there’s something more.”

Millie skipped out of the way as two huge Year 10s went lumbering past.

“Why
just
Peachy?” she said.

I’ve always been Just Peachy. Almost ever since I can remember.

“It’s what my family call me,” I said. “Well, it’s not what they actually
call
me. It’s not like a nickname or anything. It’s more what they say, like, ‘Oh, it’s just Peachy.’ Like there was this one time, when I was little, we’d gone to visit my gran…” Big Gran, it was. “I was clambering round the room on the furniture and I went and fell off and clonked my head and started howling, and Gran came rushing in wanting to know what had happened, and Mum said, ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to worry, it’s just Peachy.’”

“What did she say that for?” said Millie. “It seems a bit mean.”

“I suppose – ” I wanted to be fair to Mum, even though it was Gran who had picked me up and cuddled me – “I suppose cos I was the sort of child that was always doing that sort of thing.”

“Even so,” said Millie. And then she screwed up her face and said, “Families!”

I wondered what hers was like, with all those annoying little sisters. The twins were a bit annoying, always showing off and doing their special twin thing, like finishing each other’s sentences or collapsing into secretive peals of laughter. They would giggle away for minutes on end, without anyone ever knowing why.

“Know what?” said Millie. “I was having this huge big argument with my dad the other day and he was getting really mad. I could see him getting all bright red. And in the end he said, ‘You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. You are a mere child.’”

“Like that means you’re not entitled to have opinions?” I said.

“I guess not,” said Millie. “Not according to my dad.”

“Honestly,” I said. “Families!”

The second bell was ringing as we reached the science lab. We had been dawdling rather; all the others had raced ahead. Guiltily we made our way down to the front, to the last two empty places. Miss Jackman stood watching us, starched and crackly in her white coat.

“Just get a move on, you two! You should have been here five minutes ago.”

You two. I liked that! I think Millie did too, cos she gave another of her impish grins as we slid on to our stools. Seconds later, she pushed a scribbled note along the bench:

“Hi, Just Peachy! This is your friend Merely Millie. LOL!”

I think that was the moment when I began to feel that maybe Sacred Heart would not be so bad. When Gran asked me if I had made any friends yet, I was able to tell her very proudly that I had.

“Excellent,” said Gran. “I’m sure that must be a great relief to your mum. I know she was a bit worried.”

Mum has this belief that I am shy. But I really am not! So long as I can just be
me.
The reason I’d found it so difficult to make friends at primary school was because of everyone always expecting me to be someone else. All the really cool kids lost interest once they discovered I wasn’t like Charlie. And all the others were too busy trying to get into the smart set to bother with a non-entity who’d been dismissed as boring. That only left a few nerdy ones, which made me think I must be pretty nerdy myself, only how can you tell? I wasn’t nerdy like Ginetta Derby, who used to keep whining at me to get autographs for her. It was all she was interested in: autographs.

“Your dad must know hundreds of stars! He must meet them all the time.
Please
, Peachy… I really need him to get some for me!”

And then there was Emily Ashton, who trailed round with me at break time and did nothing but moan.

“Everyone is so mean! They are all so
mean.
I really hate them!”

And poor Jennifer Baxter, who couldn’t help being nerdy cos her nose kept dripping and whenever you sat next to her all you could hear was the sound of snuffling and sniffing. It absolutely wasn’t her fault and I felt really sorry for her and tried very hard not to mind. It wasn’t actually the sniffing that bothered me so much as the fact that she was a bit limp and dim, though I expect that was something else she couldn’t help.

In the end we all became friends, sort of. We used to hang out together, the other three nerds and me. Ginetta, whining for autographs, Emily hating everyone, Jennifer sniffing, and me wishing I could be someone else. Someone who
didn’t
have a dad that was a minor celeb and brothers and sisters that were so talented and so popular.

And now, at last, I was! That is, I could pretend that I was, and no one would know any different. As far as Millie was concerned I was just me. If she called me Just Peachy, which she sometimes did, it was done as a joke. Just Peachy and Merely Millie!

Gran wanted to know if I was in a group.

I said, “Group?”

“Yes,” said Gran, “we used to go round in groups. Well, we called them gangs in those days, but I don’t suppose you’re allowed to do that now. What with the riots and everything.”

Sometimes I find it difficult to follow Gran’s train of thought.

“All the violence,” said Gran. “Drugs. Guns.
Knives.
”

“Oh,” I said. “I don’t think we have any of that.”

“I should hope not!” said Gran. “Not at Sacred Heart. I just wondered if you were part of a group, or—”

“No,” I said. “It’s just me and this other girl.”

“Your own special friend! Your mum must be so pleased.”

Mum didn’t even know. She’d asked me once or twice, rather vaguely, if I was getting on all right, and I’d said that I was, but I hadn’t yet got around to telling her about Millie. I was going to have to soon, cos Millie had suggested only the other day that maybe I could go round to her place one weekend for a sleepover.

“It’d be fun,” she said, “wouldn’t it?”

I’d agreed that it would. I’d never been to a sleepover before. Me and the nerds hadn’t done things like that. There was only one big problem, and that was how I was going to explain to Millie that I couldn’t invite her back. Because I couldn’t! I really couldn’t. I
so
didn’t want her discovering about my family.

“Peaches?” said Gran.

“Yes,” I said. “Sorry!”

“Would you like to put your mum back on the phone?”

I went into the hall and yelled up the stairs, “
Mu-u-um
! D’you want to speak to Gran again?”

“Love to!” cried Mum. “Oops, watch out!”

I stood stolidly at the foot of the stairs as Mum laughingly slid down the banister. It is not really what you expect from someone of her age, but she likes to show that she can still do it. She can do handstands too, and almost the splits. I suppose it is a good thing.

“Well, you had a nice long chat,” she said, landing cat-like at my feet.

I said, “Yes,” and handed her the phone. Nobly I resisted the temptation to park myself by the door and listen, though I knew that they would talk about me. Gran would say how good it was that I had made a friend, and Mum would go, “Really? She hasn’t said anything to me! Why is that girl so secretive?”

And then when she got off the phone she would ask me. She would want know when I was going to invite Millie over. Mum is hugely sociable. She is always urging us to bring our friends back.

“You must ask her to come for tea!”

What excuse could I possibly make?

As it happened, Mum didn’t ask me about Millie cos while she was still talking to Gran there was a loud shriek and Charlie came belting down the stairs in one of her panics.

“Mum, Mum, I’ve lost my new top! I can’t find it anywhere, I’ve looked all over! Mum, you’ve got to help me, I really need it, I’m going out in five minutes!”

Mum jumped to attention like she always does. She said goodbye to Gran – “Got to go, sudden crisis!” – and went racing off to search for the missing top. (Which was probably just where it was supposed to be: Charlie never bothers to look properly.) While she was upstairs, the twins had a crisis of their own. I could hear them yelling “
Mu-u-u-m
!” at the tops of their voices. It sounded like they were up in the attics. I heard Mum call, “All right, I’m coming!” And then the sound of her feet pounding up the attic stairs. No sooner had she got the twins sorted than Dad came roaring in, bellowing like some large jungle creature.

“Cretinous load of pillocks!”

Someone had obviously upset him. People are always upsetting Dad. According to him, the world is full of morons. Mum had to pour him a drink and calm him down, and by that time she’d obviously forgotten about me having a new friend and how lovely it was. At any rate, she didn’t return to the subject. But next morning at school Millie mentioned again about us having a sleepover.

“Could you come this Friday? It would be so fun!”

I promised that I would ask Mum that same evening.

“Oh, do,” begged Millie. “Please!”

“I will,” I said. “I will!”

It’s next to impossible, in our house, pinning Mum down for more than a couple of seconds. You have to make a real effort. I knew it wasn’t any good trying to do it while the others were around, so I waited till she went upstairs and managed to corner her as she came out of the bathroom. She said, “For goodness sake, Peachy, what are you lurking there for? I nearly tripped over you!”

I didn’t waste any time. I said straight out, “Is it OK on Friday if I go to a sleepover?”

“A sleepover?” Mum seemed surprised and pleased.
Peachy?
Going to a
sleepover
? “Darling, how lovely! Of course it is.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Hooray! So that was it. I was about to go galloping off when Mum seemed to remember that there were things she was supposed to check. She wasn’t used to me going to sleepovers. Or anywhere at all really. Me and the nerds hadn’t ever seen one another out of school.

“Whose sleepover is it, exactly?”

“Just a friend,” I said. “A girl in my class.”

“Oh, yes, your gran said you’d made a friend. Who is she? What’s she called?”

“Millie,” I said.

”Millie. That’s a nice name! Where does she live?”

I hesitated. “Over Marketside?”

“Marketside?” I could see a slight ripple of doubt pass across Mum’s face. She is not at all a snob, but Marketside is this area that has a really rough reputation. It was one of the places where there had been riots, with buildings being set on fire and policemen having bottles thrown at them. Even I had been a bit taken aback when Millie said that was where she lived. She’d looked at me challengingly as she said it, though all I’d thought, to be honest, was that it must be a bit scary.

“Millie’s a high-flyer,” I said. I knew Mum would like that. “She got a scholarship.”

“Clever girl,” said Mum.

“She is,” I said. “Some of the others are a bit sniffy, cos, you know, they look down on people that have got scholarships?”

I wanted to make sure that Mum wasn’t one of them, but she said at once that that was ridiculous. “If anything, they ought to look
up.
”

Eagerly I said, “That’s what I think.”

As I was leaving for school on Friday morning, with my nightie and my toothbrush packed away in my school bag, Mum asked me what time I thought I’d be coming back.

“Some time in the afternoon?” I wasn’t sure about the rules for sleepovers.

“Well, give me a ring,” said Mum. “I’ll come and pick you up.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “I won’t be late.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Mum. “Of course I’ll come.”

“But I can get the bus! Millie’s dad,” I told her, “is a bus driver.”

“So you think he’s going to get his bus out just to drive you back?”

“No, I meant—” What had I meant? I hadn’t meant anything. Except maybe to impress upon Mum that Millie’s dad was a perfectly respectable person even if he did live in a place where people threw bottles and set fire to buildings.

Mum just laughed and told me again not to be silly.

“I’ll wait for you to call.”

At the end of school me and Millie went to the bus stop to catch a bus to Marketside. I felt quite adventurous. Not only was I going to my first sleepover, I was going there
on a bus.
I’d hardly ever been on a bus. Either Mum or Dad, usually Mum, always drove us everywhere. Mum is not overprotective, but buses just don’t figure in her scheme of things. It is either the car, or a cab. There is a family joke that Dad once got on a bus and said to the driver, “42 Tay Hill, please.” He thought they actually dropped people off on their doorstep! Well, I don’t suppose he really did, but just the idea of Dad getting on a bus cracked everybody up.

I didn’t tell any of this to Millie. She was already surprised that I didn’t have a bus pass and didn’t even know how to get a ticket from the ticket machines.

“Your mum still drives you to school?” she said. She sounded almost accusing.

Quickly I told her that it was only because Mum had to drive the others and could drop me off on the way.

“I s’pose really I could use the bus.”

“It would be a lot greener,” said Millie.

And in any case it is good to be independent. Millie wanted to know where I lived, so she could tell me which bus to take. When I said, “Tay Hill,” she widened her eyes and said, “Ooh, posh!”

“Not really,” I said. “We’re not! I mean,
some
people are—”

“Like that MP man,” said Millie. “I read about him in the paper.”

The MP man lived just a few houses up the road from us. Dad sometimes played golf with him.

“Snotgrass,” said Millie. “Or whatever his name is.”

“Snodgrass.” I giggled. Dad said he was a buffoon, even if they did play golf together.

A number 10 bus came and we got on, me clutching my newly purchased ticket.

“Is this the bus your dad drives?” I said.

Millie said, “No, Dad’s the 234. He goes all the way to London.”

She sounded really proud. I thought that driving a bus in and out of London was probably a lot more important than just driving locally. Like driving a long-distance lorry was more important than driving a little local truck. What Mum would call the
crème de la crème.

“The cream of the cream,” I said.

“You what?” said Millie.

“Your dad! Driving all the way to London every day.”

Millie grinned. “I’ll tell him.”

“Oh, no, please,” I begged. “Don’t!”

“Why not? He’d like it.
My friend Peachy says you’re the cream of the cream.
Oh, look!” She pointed out of the window. “That’s where I used to go to school. See? St Jude’s Primary. It’s where
they
go – the Diddy People.”

She meant her little sisters.

“Over
there
– ” she pointed straight ahead – “is where the riots were. They burned a whole row of shops. I could see the flames from my bedroom window. And this one boy that lives in our street? He was done for nicking stuff. Police found loads of television sets in his house. Stupid or what?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I hadn’t even known the riots were happening till I heard about it on the news next morning. Millie had been there in the thick of it.

“Went on all night,” she said. “Gangs of people walking up and down the street. All going to join in, like going to a party. Then a bit later on you’d see them come back, carrying stuff.”

I nodded knowingly. “Stuff they’d nicked.”

“Crazy stuff. I mean, just anything they could lay their hands on. Like they’d see a shop smashed open and they’d go rushing in and grab whatever was there. Like cans of lager, for instance. Who’d risk going to prison for nicking cans of lager?”

I shook my head. I wouldn’t run the risk of going to prison for nicking anything. I’m not brave enough! Not to mention the fact that stealing is wrong, unless maybe your children are starving and you don’t have any money. That, I think, would be understandable, though Dad would not agree with me. Dad is very hard line. He says there is never any excuse for antisocial behaviour.

“Some of them,” said Millie, “were only kids. Like our age, roaming the streets at two o’clock in the morning. Dad said they let themselves get all whipped up by what was happening. He said most of them weren’t really bad.”

I didn’t tell him what my dad had said. “Horsewhip the lot of ’em if I had my way!”

“I guess it’s different if they’re setting things alight,” I said.

“Oh, well, yes,” said Millie. “There isn’t any excuse for that.” She sprang up. “This is our stop!”

Millie lived in a street just a few minutes away, in the smallest house I’d ever seen. It was in the middle of a whole row of houses, all the same. There weren’t any front gardens, and I think they must have been really old as they had chimney stacks tottering up into the sky, though Millie said the chimneys weren’t actually used any more.

“They’re all blocked off. Couldn’t get a fire going even if you wanted to.”

I thought that was a shame. It has always seemed to me that a roaring big fire would be far more cosy than central heating. Millie, however, seemed doubtful.

“Not according to my gran. According to her, they were nothing but a load of hard work.” She opened the front door with her own key and called up the stairs, “Mum! We’re here!”

A voice with an Irish accent called back: “With you in a minute!”

“Come through,” said Millie.

We went along this tiny narrow passage and into the kitchen, where three small girls, standing in a row, solemnly stared at us. They all had jet-black hair cut short with a fringe, and the same bright, inquisitive eyes as Millie. They were so alike they could almost have been triplets, except that they were obviously different ages.

“These are the terrible trio,” said Millie. “I’d introduce you, but I can never remember which one is which.”

“You so can!” they chorused indignantly.

“I so can’t!” said Millie.

“So can!”

“So can’t!
Ow.
” The three of them had started pummelling her, pounding at her with their fists. It was obviously a game they played. “All right, all right!” Millie backed away. “Let me see. I think this one is… Katy?”

“
That
one!”

“That one? OK! So if she’s Katy, you have to be… Kimberley?”

“
She’s
Kimberley!”

“She’s Kimberley? OK, OK, I’m getting there! That just leaves… Kaylee! Right? Now I can introduce you. This is my friend Peaches.”

The oldest girl, Kaylee, gravely held out her hand. Equally gravely, I took it. So then the other two held out their hands, and I had to take them as well.

“Otherwise known,” said Millie, “as the Diddy People.
Ow!
”

Millie’s mum came into the kitchen at that point. She looked just like an older version of Millie and her sisters.

“Well, now,” she said, “isn’t that lovely? Only a short time at the school and already you’ve found a friend. I knew you would! Peaches, is it? Lovely to meet you, Peaches. That’s a beautiful name you have. Now, you three, hop along into the other room while we sort out some food for these two. You can take it upstairs, if you like? If you’d rather be private.”

Millie said private would be nice. “There’s not a lot of it going on in this house,” she said, as we went upstairs carrying a tray of food. “Those Diddy People get everywhere.”

She said it like she was complaining, but she obviously loved them.

“I think your sisters are really cute,” I said.

“They’re OK,” said Millie. “But does one actually need
three 
of them?” And then she remembered and said, “Of course, you’ve got even more. I don’t suppose you have any privacy at
all.
”

I said, “Well…” and let my voice sort of trail away. Lack of privacy is not a problem I have ever had to face. Our house is quite big and we all have our own rooms, so it’s easy to shut yourself away if that is what you want. But Millie’s house was like a dolls’ house, and I noticed immediately that there were bunk beds in her room, so I guessed she had to share with one of her sisters.

“Kaylee,” she said. She screwed up her face, making her nose go all crinkled. “That’s hers, the top one. But it’s all right – she’s in with the others for tonight. We’ve got one of those bedroll things.” I must have looked blank. So many things I didn’t know about! “You roll them out and sleep on them? Be nice if she always slept there, but there’s not really enough space.”

There wasn’t any space in Millie’s room, even without a bedroll thing. We sat companionably on the floor, on a woolly rug, to eat our tea.