Moth Girls (8 page)

‘Ow!’

Tina opened her eyes and saw her blood.

‘Quick!’

Petra placed her thumb on top of Tina’s. Using her other hand she put pressure on each thumb, pushing them tightly together.

‘So that our blood can mingle,’ she explained to Tina who was looking queasy.

‘Are we blood sisters now?’ Tina said.

‘For ever,’ Petra said.

Tina glanced down at Petra’s forearm. The bruise was there: a dark cloud on her skin.

‘I knocked into something,’ she said, still holding the thumbs together.

Tina averted her eyes. She had seen Petra’s bruises before.

The next day, Petra got back to the flat just after two. As soon as she opened the door she saw her dad’s keys on the hall table. The place was silent though: no radio, no television. He had gone to bed. In the living room his jacket was draped across the back of the sofa and there was a cup and plate on the coffee table. His bedroom door was shut and from inside she could hear the low sound of snoring.

She dropped her bag and went towards the kitchen. On top of the workshop was a sheet of paper. Her dad’s handwriting was scrawled across it.

Don’t cook anything. Sophie is bringing a takeaway. Dad.

Her dad insisted on calling his girlfriend ‘Sophie’. Zofia was amused by it. ‘It’s easier for English people to say Sophie.’ But Petra liked the polish name: Zofia Banach from Warsaw. Her phone vibrated and she pulled it out of her pocket. It was another text. Perhaps Zofia
sensed
in some way that Petra was thinking of her. She opened it up.

I buy Chinese, moja mała ró
ż
a, OK?

Moja mała ró
ż
a
was Polish for ‘my little rose’. Zofia had started to use it after she’d explained about her and Tina’s duo, The Red Roses.

Zofia’s texts always made her smile.

Her dad used to smile a lot when he first brought Zofia to the flat, when they started seeing each other. Nowadays, though, he mostly looked serious and sometimes a little irritated by her. Zofia didn’t seem to notice. Petra had watched Zofia humming while making her dad a cup of tea and then seen him roll his eyes at something she said. It made her feel sad to see it.

She found herself frowning and used her hand to rub at her wrist, which had started to ache again. She tried to push gloomy thoughts out of her mind. It was her birthday. There was the Chinese to look forward to and Zofia would certainly have bought her a present.

Zofia was washing the plates and Petra was drying up. Her dad was watching football on the television in the front room. There was a pile of silver cartons on the worktop that the food had come in. Over one of the chairs was a red nightie that Zofia had bought Petra for her birthday. It was exactly the same shade as the clothes she wore for The Red Roses. In the middle of the table was Zofia’s card to Petra. It was pink and had sparkles on it.

From the living room the sound of cheering was loud. It felt like a normal family evening. Petra could imagine Tina standing in her kitchen, drying up the plates for her mum. Tina’s dad wouldn’t be there of course, he would be in South London with the beautician he’d moved in with some months before. Tina’s life would always seem more normal than Petra’s though. She wondered, for a second, about Mandy. She lived with her mum and dad, so she was the most
normal
of the three of them.

Petra chewed at the side of her lip. She didn’t really like comparing her life to that of other people. She hadn’t, not until Mandy had started to hang round with them. Mandy was always so well turned out, her hair neatly brushed and held back with ties. Petra would bet that even her shoes were polished. She always did her homework, had packets of highlighters in her bag and all her books were covered with posh paper.

‘What happened,
Anioł
?’ Zofia said, touching the plaster on Petra’s thumb.

Anioł
was the Polish word for ‘angel’.

‘Cut it on a piece of paper.’

Zofia frowned as if she didn’t believe her. They were looking directly at each other because Zofia was small, just a shade taller than Petra. She wore heels all the time and she was always squaring her shoulders and straightening her neck. Her red hair was often up in a ponytail or a bun because it gave her a few more centimetres of height. The nice thing about looking straight at Zofia was that it made it seem as though she was a friend and not a woman who happened to be her dad’s girlfriend.

‘How is school?’

‘OK.’

‘And Tina is good?’

‘OK. But we’ve got this other girl who hangs around with us now and she gets on my nerves a bit.’

‘Two is good. Three not so good? Too many arguments. My sister, Klara, she had one close friend. And many other not-so-close friends. But two close friends can be trouble.’

Petra didn’t know how to answer this. She knew that Zofia’s sister had died of leukaemia when she was twelve years old. It’d happened a couple of years ago and Zofia often spoke about her. It was always awkward when she came up in conversation. Petra didn’t know whether to respond or to try to ignore it in case Zofia got upset. Today she almost asked a question. ‘What was Klara’s best friend like?’ she wanted to say and then maybe compare her in some way to her best friend, Tina. But before she spoke she thought of Tina living closer to Mandy than she did. She felt a twist of anxiety in her chest and momentarily forgot about Klara.

Zofia dried her hands on the tea towel and Petra focused on her nails. Today they were yellow and had tiny pink stars stuck to them. Zofia worked in a nail shop with her friend Marya. They were always practising on each other’s nails. Zofia saw her looking.

‘Did I tell you Marya is going back to Poland? Her boyfriend has asked her to marry him.’

‘Oh.’

‘He’s asked her three times before. I told her to dump him but she is in love! You can’t change the mind of someone in love.’

‘You’ll miss her.’

‘Lucky I have you. You’ll be my girlfriend. And I was thinking we should go shopping. I buy you some new jeans. These are tight. I think they are old.’

Petra looked down at her jeans. They
were
old, the knees almost white and the zip fraying. She’d got taller since she’d bought them and she knew they were too short, but her trainers were bulky so it didn’t really show.

‘And maybe jumper?’

‘Great. When?’ Petra said.

‘I get paid Friday. Meet me at Angel tube at five thirty and we’ll go shopping.’

Zofia folded the tea towel up into a neat oblong. Then she went into the living room and Petra heard her dad speak. They were talking quietly, her dad’s voice a little choppy, Zofia’s silky tones underneath. Petra couldn’t work out if they were getting on all right or not. They’d seemed quiet while eating and her dad had been looking at his phone a lot. It was hard to understand people’s relationships.

Zofia had first appeared just after Easter. She came to the flat a couple of times, then one morning she emerged from her dad’s bedroom wearing his shirt and looking sleepy. Petra followed her instructions and made her a cup of tea just the way she liked it: black, two sugars, the tea bag left in for a long time. Her dad came out of the bedroom in his jeans and nothing on his top. He was smiling and Petra felt embarrassed looking at him. His skin was white and she could see the lines of his ribs. Zofia said something in Polish that Petra couldn’t make out. Her dad laughed but looked at Petra and did a
Huh?
gesture with his hands.

At first Petra only saw Zofia to say hello and goodbye to. Then she went out with them a few times: to Thorpe Park, Southend and London Zoo. They would finish up at McDonald’s and it was fun, but Petra always felt a little ill at ease, as if she was play-acting in some way, trying to be a
good daughter
. When Zofia asked her dad if Petra and she could go shopping together he shrugged and said, ‘Fine by me.’ That was when she began getting to know Zofia.

They went to lots of shopping centres: Nag’s Head, Angel, Camden, Spitalfields and Walthamstow Market. Zofia liked to scavenge in charity shops but she always bought Petra something new: a top or leggings or skirt. Petra linked her arm as they strolled along, looking in the shops. They weren’t really searching for anything in particular but it gave them time to chat at length. Zofia talked about her life in Poland and her family whom she didn’t get on with. She also talked about her friends, the jobs she’d had, her two cats that she’d left with a friend before she came to England. She talked about her sister, Klara, who, she said, she missed every single day. While running her fingers across some china or picking up glassware Zofia unspun her life story for Petra.

When Petra got home from these outings she would tell her dad something. ‘Did you know that Zofia went to a school where the only teachers were nuns?’ And her dad would mumble some reply but she knew he wasn’t really listening.

Zofia was equally interested in Petra’s life. Petra told her everything there was to know about Tina and also about the years when her gran had been alive. Then it was the summer holidays and she was getting ready to go to secondary school. Tina was away with her mum a lot so Petra had of time to kill. She spent time at the nail shop tidying up the equipment and sweeping the floor. In return she had her nails done for free several times while Marya interrogated her about her dad and then said things in Polish to Zofia.

She’d stayed at Zofia’s house a few times, sleeping in her bed while Zofia slept on a fold-out bed alongside. She’d met different people, mostly from Poland, who came and stayed in the house-share with Zofia and then moved on. Zofia was the only one who was there long term. She’d been to Marya’s flat and seen her boyfriend who was also from Poland and worked on a building site. Sometimes, when she was at home and saw her dad getting ready to go out with
Sophie
, she quite forgot that it was the same person, as if
her
Zofia were someone different. She thought of Zofia as
her friend
and nothing much to do with her dad.

She could hear the television being switched off and moments later saw her dad come into the kitchen. The bathroom door shut then and Petra guessed that Zofia had gone to the toilet.

‘I’m going to take Soph home now, Petra. You’ll be OK, won’t you?’ he said.

‘Course,’ Petra said.

Her dad was looking smart again. He had some suit trousers on and a clean shirt and tie.

‘I’m driving Mr Constantine tonight. The man I picked up from the airport? Just one ride then I’ll be home. I couldn’t turn it down because the money’s so good. I won’t be out all night. I’ll have my mobile but you’ll be all right on your own, won’t you? Don’t open the door to anyone.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘I won’t tell Soph that you’ll be on your own because she worries. You’re a big girl now. She doesn’t get that. Don’t be ringing her or anything. She fusses too much. Any problems call my mobile.’

The bathroom door opened and Petra could hear Zofia humming a tune. She came into the kitchen, walking past Petra’s dad.

‘You have good birthday?’ Zofia said, giving her a goodbye hug.

‘Come on, I haven’t got all day,’ her dad said, opening the front door.

Zofia said something in Polish under her breath. Then she picked up her coat from the back of the chair and gave a little wave. As she reached the front door Petra could hear her dad’s voice, sharp like a pin bursting a bubble, ‘Leave her alone, Soph, you’re all over her, for God’s sake.’ Then the front door shut.

Petra sighed. It had been like this for a while now. Her dad was like a dog with a sore tooth snapping at Zofia. Zofia didn’t get riled by him, she just smiled sweetly and seemed to put up with his moods. How much longer would it last? Petra wondered. She’d seen him get fed up with other girlfriends.

She tidied the kitchen and took the rubbish outside and placed it in the chute. When she closed the flat door she saw that it was seven forty. She had the whole evening to get through. She could ring Tina and see what she was doing, but she had homework that she should probably have a go at. After that she drew some designs for The Red Roses outfits and wrote out some lyric sheets of songs they could learn.

Just after ten she began to get ready for bed. Her books had been packed and she’d ironed her skirt for school the next day. In her pad she had several designs for outfits that she and Tina could wear for The Red Roses. She’d drawn the figures like matchstick girls and felt a little guilty looking at them. At the same time at least it would be clear to Mandy that she could never wear these kinds of clothes so it was a really solid reason why she could never join the group. Just in case she asked.

She lay back down on top of her duvet.

She wondered what Mandy’s mother and father were like. She pictured her mother as a bit overweight and perhaps someone who didn’t have a job. She probably worried all day long because Mandy was always saying, ‘My mum says this, my mum wants me home early, my mum is worried about …’ She knew that her father worked in a building society and Petra had once seen him coming out of the doctor’s and waving at Mandy when they were walking home from school. Tina’s mum had probably been behind the counter, saying in that polite receptionist voice of hers, ‘Hello, Mr Crystal. Do you have an appointment?’

Petra thought about her own mother. She’d died when Petra was two years old. She pumped her pillow up then lay back down and chewed at the side of her lip. She had no memory of her as a person, just a pile of photographs that her gran had given her. Her name had been Megan and she’d gone up to Oxford Street to buy some clothes for a friend’s wedding and got hit by a car. When Petra was ten years old her gran had taken her on the Tube and showed her the very place where it’d happened. It was an obelisk in the middle of the road near the Marks & Spencer’s at Marble Arch. It was a tiny spot where pedestrians paused and waited to see if traffic was coming in the opposite direction. On that day, when her mum was shopping, it had been packed. She’d been standing on the very edge of a knot of people waiting to cross when a car had raced through the lights and lost control, hitting her with a glancing blow.
A glancing blow
. Petra had had no idea what that was at first. Her mum had been propelled across the road and had fallen on the place where the road met the pavement. Her head had hit the kerb with a crack. If she’d landed anywhere else she would have lived, her gran said.

Petra had stood beside her gran just in front of the obelisk while her gran wept loudly. Petra, who had been holding her arm, felt her whole body shivering. She held on to her tightly and avoided making eye contact with the pedestrians walking around them looking puzzled. Petra didn’t cry that day, but a year later, when her gran had died, she’d sobbed until her eyes were swollen and her face was scarlet.