One More Little Problem (8 page)

‘Caro isn’t as horrid as she comes across,’ I say in the end.

Fran raises her eyebrows but says nothing.

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

The clash between Fran and Caro has made me all tense and unsettled.

When Fran goes to the loo I make an excuse and creep upstairs to do some rituals.

I do fifty jumps on the carpet in my bedroom and then measure all the gaps between my clothes in the wardrobe with a ruler, just to make sure that they are exactly four centimetres apart.

Fran comes in and gives me a look of impatience but I can’t stop.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

I tidy my bedroom up and make all the spines of my books stand up straight and tall in the bookcase.

Then I stick some washing in the machine downstairs and clean the kitchen table.

Only when I’ve done all that can I face going back up to my bedroom.

And that turns out to be a hideous mistake.

First thing is that Caro has followed Fran up there and is sitting on my bed with her dirty boots all over the white duvet.

Fran is sitting at my desk with her back towards Caro. It’s a back as hard and rigid as a plank of wood so I can see that she’s not enjoying Caro’s company.

‘Caro,’ I say. ‘Haven’t you anything else to do? Painting? Smoking? Abusing strangers on the street?’

I gesture towards Fran and make some encouraging faces but Caro fails to pick up on my hint. On purpose.

‘OCD, are you trying to get rid of me?’ she says. ‘That hurts, man.’

I sigh loudly.

‘It’s kind of private,’ I say. ‘I’ll be down in half an hour. Promise.’

‘Ooh,’ says Caro, her face lighting up with malice. ‘I bet it’s BOY stuff. Hey, Fanny! Got a boyfriend? I heard you were a bit of a tease.’

‘I haven’t got time for a boyfriend,’ says Fran in a low, neutral voice meant to discourage any further conversation.

‘Haven’t got a boyfriend?’ Caro says, her eyes glinting at having found a chink in Fran’s armour.

‘Why not? Do you bat for the other side? Or are you like OCD here? Boys are just a germ-carrying waste of space. Unless they happen to be called Sol.’

I make to whack Caro over the head.

‘Hey! No need for that!’

I don’t want Caro spilling the details of my disastrous love life to my ex-best friend.

Fran’s back goes even stiffer and she pretends
to be reading the screen on Heather’s laptop even though it hasn’t fired up into life yet.

‘Ahh, diddums,’ says Caro, on a roll now. ‘Poor little Fanny hasn’t got a boyfriend! Maybe they don’t like her perfect pink clothes and her sweet little plaits. Maybe they’d prefer a
real
woman like me. Or maybe she’s frigid! That’s it! Frigid Fanny!’

Caro lies right back on my bed with a satisfied smirk on her skinny features.

She drums a pen on the edge of my bookshelf and hums an irritating tune to herself.

Fran is turning puce.

‘Why don’t you go back downstairs and smoke yourself to death?’ she says, turning round and directing the full force of her Fran-glare upon Caro.

Caro lights up like a crazed Christmas tree.

She gets another pen and starts drumming two at the same time, still singing an
annoying little riff over and over.

All I can see is a big grassy clump of vile mud dangling off the sole of Caro’s boot.

Any moment now that clump is going to fall off and attach itself to my bed.

MAJOR DIRT ALERT.

Fran gets up from her chair and starts to advance on Caro.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘That’s it. Get out of Zelah’s bedroom. Now.’

Caro does a pretend tremble but I notice that her smile has faded just a bit.

‘I’m not joking,’ says Fran.

I half expect to see actual steam coming out of her ears so I duck.

Fran leans over the bed and Caro’s pretending to squeal in fright but is really enjoying herself in that warped way of hers and I’ve just about had enough of this now.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Caro. Downstairs. NOW.
And please take that duvet cover with you. I want it boil-washed at ninety degrees and then rinsed in fabric softener. Then I want it hung on the washing line, attached only with the blue plastic pegs from the packet NOT the dirty wooden ones. Goddit?’

Wow. I sound like one of my teachers.

Caro swings her legs off the bed, still with the insolent grin on her face. She picks up the whole duvet despite my desperate cries and drags it off into the hallway, muttering and swearing as she goes.

The smell of stale tobacco hangs in the air.

I fling open my sparkling latticed windows and let a cool breeze stream in.

Fran takes her coat off and lets out a sigh of relief.

‘How do you put up with her?’ she says. ‘And WHY do you put up with her?’

I sigh too.

‘It’s complicated,’ I say. ‘She kind of helped me at Forest Hill. And Dad thinks she’s a reborn angel.’

Fran looks very doubtful at this but manages not to say anything nasty.

I go downstairs and get us a can of coke each from the fridge and then I show her the emails and photo from Marky.

‘Wow, Zelah,’ she says. ‘He’s got a stupid name but he’s hot! If you don’t like him, can I have him?’

She’s not joking either. And the annoying thing is that when I turn up with Fran in tow this Marky will probably take one look at her beautiful long brown hair and freckled face and fall head over heels in love with her and that will be me out of the frame forever.

Then I open the latest email from Alessandro. This is what it says:

Dear Zelah,

Sorry, I hope I didn’t upset you by mentioning your weird name. I guess I kind of like it that’s all. Cheers for mentioning my dad. He’s doing OK in the nick now. He’s got this cellmate called Chris who weighs about ninety stone and has fifteen snakes tattooed on his left arm. So nobody bothers them much. Which is good ’cos my dad’s quite a small bloke. What do you do at the weekends? I’m going on hols for a week but maybe we could meet up some time after that? Your profile says that you live in West London. I live over East London but I could get a tube. I understand if you want to bring somebody with. I mean, I could be anybody. But I’m not. I’m just me. Alessandro. x.

‘He put a kiss! He put a kiss!’ squeals Fran in this demented fashion.

‘Er, it’s only one,’ I say, but inside I feel all pleased and hot.

I’ve stopped Fran and Caro from killing each other and Alessandro has put a kiss on his email.

Maybe things are finally looking up.

F
ran’s agreed to come with me to meet Marky on Saturday morning. I reckon she just wants to flirt with him and lure him away, but seeing as how I’m not exactly swamped with friends at the moment it’s Fran or nothing.

Dad would go mental if he found out I was going off to meet a strange boy so I’ve sworn Fran to secrecy and also made her promise upon pain of violent death that she won’t tell Caro.

Dad comes home at half four when Fran has
left with promises to return on Saturday morning with some story worked out about what she and I are supposed to be doing all that day.

Caro is upstairs downloading new goth misery music from Heather’s computer on to her iPod.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table performing a ritual on the last of the custard creams by dissecting it into little squares of equal sizes and arranging the pieces around the edge of the plate with four centimetres in between them.

‘Oh dear,’ says Dad when he sees this. ‘Bad day, Princess?’

He throws his briefcase into the corner and pulls out a chair.

His eyes are a bit red and his cheeks are flushed and there is a faint whiff of something. Petrol? Aftershave?

Oh no, it’s stale beer.

‘Dad,’ I begin, suddenly feeling as if I have the weight of the entire world on my shoulders. ‘Dad, please tell me you didn’t go in the pub on the way home from school?’

Dad holds his hands up in a surrender position. His tie is hanging loose around his neck in a most un-teacherly fashion.

‘OK, I did go for one quick drink,’ he says. ‘But only because I was celebrating my first day in a proper job again. The induction is going really well.’

I perk up a bit at that. He does look cheerful, in a flushed kind of way.

‘What were the other teachers like?’ I say.

Dad gets up and clicks on the kettle.

‘Nice,’ he says. ‘Yep. They were really nice. I think I’m going to like it there.’

Well, at least something good has come out of this confusing day. My father is
finally getting himself sorted.

I dissect the custard cream into even smaller bits.

Then I go upstairs to scrub my face.

M
y rituals go from bad to worse.

When I was at Forest Hill I kind of got over my fear of touching toilets and sinks. But now it all seems to be going backwards again.

I’ve just been to see Stella at the clinic for my treatment session.

It’s fair to say that she wasn’t very happy with my progress.

Stella looked as hygienic as ever in her white coat and shoes.

But she didn’t smile as much as usual. Her face kept creasing into a frown as she listened
to me talk about what was going on at home.

‘So you’re pretty much trying to take control of everything,’ she said. It’s not really a question, more just a summing-up of my hideous life.

She chewed her lip for a moment and I got all worried that she was considering contacting Social Services and reporting Dad for going to the pub on the way home from teaching and not helping me with the cleaning.

And if she got them involved they might take me away from home and place me with foster parents. Like Caro. Look what’s happened to her.

‘It’s only temporary,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘Heather’s back in a couple of weeks and then I’ll be able to get on with my normal school life after that.’

‘Hmm,’ said Stella. ‘The thing is, Zelah, that none of the things happening in your house should really be your responsibility
at all. I’m not surprised that your rituals are getting worse.’

After a bit more of her looking doubtful and me pleading that everything at home would soon be normal again (ha!) she let me go home on the condition that I ring her up if it all gets too much.

Like I’m going to do that. I might as well just ring social services direct and volunteer myself as a homeless foster child.

‘It’s fine. It’ll be fine,’ I said as I backed out of her office and made a run for the bus.

Saturday dawns all wet and horrid.

Great. I won’t even be able to wear my favourite silver flip-flops unless I want to make weird squelching noises all around Shepherd’s Bush.

I’m up in the bathroom doing some extra rituals to prepare.

I turn the taps with a tissue wedged between the cold metal and my warm hand.

I put a piece of paper on the toilet seat before I sit on it.

If I forget to wash my hands at any time I have to do each hand an extra thirty times, with the nailbrush and a load of white soap.

The soap has to be a brand new fresh bar and not an old slimy brown one.

All my pocket money (when Dad remembers to give it to me) has been spent on soaps in cellophane wrappers over the last few weeks.

Other kids are going to the cinema or lying in the park eating ice creams or hanging around clothes shops with their friends or going to Disney Land or going up to London by train to see a show.

And me?

I’m sitting on the toilet trying not to touch it with any bits of my skin and I’m worried
about going on a date with a strange boy who could turn out to be some creepy old man for all I know and my ex-best friend probably pities me because I’ve made such a mess of things and she hates my other sort-of-friend Caro, who hates her, and she regards Dad as a bit of a weirdo and I’m not sure Dad’s all that happy in his new job and Sol’s somewhere out there in the big wide world and I’m all unsure what to do about Alessandro and . . . and . . .

‘OCD!’

Caro is banging on the bathroom door. Not again.

‘Please tell me you haven’t produced more blood,’ I shout. ‘If you have then you’ll just have to drown in it. I am not coming out until I am ready.’

‘Your little friend Fanny is here!’ she yells.

Fran’s nearly an hour early.

Great.

‘Make her some tea,’ I yell. ‘And be NICE.’

I hear Caro’s evil little chuckle and my heart sinks further towards the bottom of the (very clean) toilet bowl.

How on earth do I get into these situations?

I dry off with a nice clean white towel and do fifty jumps on the bathroom mat.

By the time I’ve finished scrubbing my face, brushing my hair and cleaning my teeth Caro has been up twice to complain.

‘Jeez, OCD,’ she hisses through the bathroom door. ‘Can’t your sodding rituals wait? I’m stuck downstairs with Frigid Fanny.’

‘Just a minute,’ I hiss back.

I need to finish off by cleaning my teeth with my left hand. Don’t ask me why. I’ve already done them with my right, but somehow my brain is telling me that I can’t say I’ve completed my rituals until I’ve done them with the left hand too.

Another weird moment in the life of Zelah Green.

When I get downstairs I ban Caro from following me upstairs with Fran by bribing her with money.

Then Fran and I tip all the contents of my wardrobe on to the bed and Fran starts rifling through them with a frown on her smooth brown forehead.

‘Zelah, you like,
so
need to update your capsule wardrobe,’ she says.

I ignore the insult and allow her to hold a long red flippy skirt in front of me and team it up with a white vest top.

‘Yeah, that’s nice,’ she says. ‘Kind of girly but casual.’

My heart does somersaults of guilt ’cos Dad bought me that skirt last year and it’s my favourite and now I’m lying to
Dad about where I’m going today.

Dad looked a bit suspicious when Fran said that we were going to the cinema and then out for pizza.

‘You two girls seem to be getting on very well again,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you have some major bust-up a few weeks back? Didn’t I hear you say, Zelah, that you’d rather plunge your hands into an un-flushed toilet than ever clap eyes on Fran again?’