Over the Moon (13 page)

“Dropped by on the off chance. Are you going to come and speak to him?”

Is Mum mad? Does she really think I’m going to show myself to Matt in this state?

“Come on,” she says, “be brave! You can put my sunglasses on.”

“No
!” Why would I be wearing sunglasses when I was supposed to have the flu? ‘Tell him I’m ill! Tell him to phone me!”

“Oh, all right,” says Mum.

The minute she’s gone I leap out of bed and race to the door. By opening it just a crack I can hear Mum, down in the hall, talking to Matt.

“ … some kind of allergy. Her face is a bit swollen. It’s not as bad as she makes out, but you know Scarlett … won’t be seen dead unless she’s blemish-free and perfect.”

How could she?
How could she
? I hurl myself back on to my bed and scream silently into the pillow. When I accuse Mum, later, of betraying me, she says she’s sorry, she’d forgotten it was the flu.

“Just stop overreacting,” she says. “I know it’s not very nice, but it’s not as if it’s life-threatening. If you’d just stop looking at yourself in the mirror every five minutes, you might find it went away.”

I sob and say that she obviously thinks I’m some kind of neurotic.

“I think you’ll turn yourself into one,” says Mum, “if you don’t relax a bit.”

I yell that I am relaxing. “I’m lying here with these stupid bits of cotton wool soaked in stupid witch hazel and they’re not doing the least bit of good!”

To which all Mum can think to say in reply is, “In that case, why don’t you come downstairs and join us for tea? You can always put the glasses on,” she says, “if you’d rather Dad didn’t see you.”

So I put the glasses on and they’re the cheap kind that make everything just like totally pitch black, so I have to keep lifting them up to find out where things are.
Mum says maybe she should make me a veil, out of curtain netting. I immediately burst into tears and have to be comforted by Dad, who reprovingly tells Mum that “This is no joking matter!” Mum agrees that it isn’t, but says I am grossly overplaying it and nobody who didn’t actually know me would ever realise there was anything wrong. Dad says that is not the point.

“There is something wrong and she’s naturally upset. If she’s like this tomorrow, she’ll have to see the doctor.”

That’s my second memory: seeing the doctor. Cos when I wake up on Monday morning I’m, like, right back to square one, huge great puffballs where my eyes are supposed to be. You can hardly even see my eyes, they’re so swollen. I scream hysterically at Mum that
no way
am I going in to school to be laughed at. Dad says there’s no question of my going in to school.

“You’re going straight to the doctor!”

Well, you can’t go
straight
to the doctor (not unless you’re dying, and maybe not even then) cos you have to make an appointment, and the first free slot is days away. It’s not until Dad’s angrily snatched the telephone from Mum and bellowed into it that the dragon woman who guards the entrance to the cave grudgingly says I can come along at six o’clock that evening. So I spend
another day lying on my bed, and by the time I finally get to the surgery with Mum my eyes have, like, subsided a bit, only now the elephant skin is back. It looks like the skin of some ancient old crone.

The doctor is a complete idiot. He says, “Hello, it’s Scarlett, isn’t it? And what’s wrong with Scarlett this fine day?”

I say, “
This
” and whip off my glasses.

He looks at me and says, “So what’s the problem? You look very pretty!”

I scream that my eyes are all puffed up.

He says, “Are they?” and peers a bit closer.

I screech that of course they are! “You don’t think they’re normally like this, do you?”

He says apologetically that they might be; how should he know? He’s never seen me before. Mum then
steps in to explain that the swelling’s gone down a bit since this morning, but it was quite bad.

“We think it’s probably some kind of allergy … all the muck she puts on her face.”

I roar at her that I haven’t
got
muck on my face. “I don’t
put
muck on my face! Do you see any muck on my face? I haven’t got
anything
on my face!”

Mum says, “Well, not right at this moment, maybe. But some of that stuff … you never know what it’s got in it.”

The doctor agrees with Mum. He says you can’t be too careful. “Especially if you have that type of skin.” He says what Mum said about being a redhead. He says, “I’m afraid beauty sometimes comes at a price.” He tells me to take antihistamine tablets and on no account to put anything whatsoever on my face.

“Just let it breathe for a while.”

“An excellent idea,” says Mum.

She’s always been anti make-up. But I haven’t used any! We sit round the table that evening, me and Mum and Dad, trying to work out what else I could be allergic to, like my pillow, or house dust, or cheese, or – almost
anything. Mum still says the most likely culprit is something I’ve put on myself. There isn’t any point in arguing with her; she gets these ideas. Nothing will change them.

Hattie rings later, wanting to know how I am. I glumly inform her that I’ve got an allergy. She says, “Oh, horrible! Poor you,” and goes on to tell me how much money we made at the fundraiser. I know it’s very wrong of me, but just at this moment I don’t care two straws about the fundraiser. I don’t even care about the tsunami victims. All those poor people who died, or lost their loved ones. I just care about me and my face!

Later on, the phone rings again. This time it’s Matt, also wanting to know how I am. “Are you going to be presentable in time for the Founder’s Day thing?”

I squawk in protest at him, down the phone. “God, I should hope so!”

Founder’s Day isn’t for another three weeks. I can’t still be in this state in three weeks!

But I can. This is just the start of the nightmare. Next day when I wake up I grab the mirror and this thing, this loathsome, hideous, unspeakable
thing,
leers back at me, like some kind of deformed monstrosity out of a horror movie. Overnight, my entire face has swollen up. I just scream, and scream, and scream. Mum comes running, and so does Dad. Now even Mum can’t say that I’m over-reacting. Dad is almost as panic-stricken as I am; he wants to rush me straight down to the A & E department. It’s Mum – as always -who keeps her head. She says this is proof positive I’m allergic to something.

“Now, Scarlett, think!” she says. “And be honest …
what have you been putting on your face
?”

I sob hysterically that I haven’t been putting anything on my face.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you,” says Mum. And she pulls open the door of my bedside cabinet and starts rooting about inside it. “Cleansing lotion! Did you use any cleansing lotion?”

“I didn’t need to! I wasn’t wearing any make-up.”

“OK. What about eye shadow?”

“No!”

“What about mascara?”

“No!”

“Lipstick?”

‘No!”

“What’s this stuff?
Toner!
What do you want toner for, at your age? For goodness’ sake! All this junk. Gel cleanser, correction stick— ”

“That’s for spots! I haven’t used it.”

“What about this?
Mattifying moisturiser
?”