Red Ink (9 page)

Mr Spencer is late, so we’re standing there, killing time. Chick is telling me about her summer holiday, which her mum and dad have just booked. The Laceys go to Playa De Las Americas in Tenerife every year. Which is bizarre. There is a whole world out there to visit and the Laceys have no family abroad forcing them to go to the same place all the time. We still have to go to Crete every summer even though Granbabas is dead, and Auntie Aphrodite pretends to speak less and less English each time we visit.

Anyway, Chick tells me that they’re going to a new place on holiday this year. This is big news in the Lacey household.

“It’s in Italy and it has loads of towers,” Chick goes. “S’called San Jimmy . . . San Jimmy . . . I don’t know, San Jimmy something.”

“Blimey,” I go.

It makes me think, if the Laceys can change the habit of a lifetime, maybe I could convince Mum to try somewhere new. The Crete pantomime with Auntie Aphrodite each year is painful.

“Mum read that it’s
the
place to go right now,” Chick goes. She doesn’t realise it, but she’s boasting. Then Chick drops the bombshell: “But it doesn’t have a beach.”

“No way!”

“Yes way! Nightmare.”

At least me and Mum get plenty of beach action when we go to Crete.

Then I hear my name being yelled from the end of the line. Straightaway, I know that it’s Ian Grainger.

Ian Grainger has called my name.

There’s a little explosion in my chest. A bit of me thinks, maybe Ian Grainger really wants to talk to me about something. That would be okay. I admit, that would be quite a bonus. The other bit of me thinks – not likely.

I look back along the line and Ian’s head is sticking out. He’s waiting for me to answer. The explosion in my chest spreads. I feel it between my legs. I don’t know why. It’s a sensation so strong that everyone else must be able to see what’s happening. I’m blushing too, my cheeks are burning, and I haven’t even said anything yet. I am officially pathetic.

“Yeah?” I go at last, and it’s a good ‘yeah’, really bored and not interested.

“Not you!” Ian slams back.

The warm explosion turns into a knife stab. I duck back behind Chick.

Ian is doing one of those dumb boy laughs. He’s yelling again, “Why d’ya fink everyone’s always talking aboutcha, Melon?”

Ian’s mates start spewing laughter. The whole class are looking at me now, most of them doing that face that says,
it’s really bad to laugh.
They are doing that face while pissing themselves laughing.

Ian isn’t letting me off yet. “We were just, like, you know, yelling out names of food and stuff. Bananas! Cake! Maccie Ds!”

The laughing cranks up.

“Chicken fucking vindaloo!”

This is Dylan who is puny and spotty and should thank his lucky stars he gets to hang around with Ian otherwise his head would be forever down a flushing toilet. The laughing dies down when he opens his gob. He hasn’t got the same influence.

The explosion inside me has gone. I’m cold. The only bits of me left on fire are my ears. Both of them. Mum says if your left ear burns, someone is talking lovingly about you. If it’s the right, it’s spite. So that means Ian loves me and hates me at the same time. He doesn’t. He totally hates me.

I turn back to face the glass double doors of the science block. I catch a glance at my reflection, make sure I don’t look like I’m crying. I tip my head forwards. Long, bushy hair is good for hiding behind. I keep threatening Mum that I’m going to hack it all off but I only say that to upset her. Really I want to grow my hair long enough to sit on.

I can see Chick’s face out of the corner of my eye, looking almost as shamed as me.

“Prick,” I mutter, quietly so no one else can hear. I don’t want a fight.

I pray Chick will start blabbering on about San Jimmy-wherever again and its rubbish lack of a beach, but she’s gone dumb. The whole line has gone whispery quiet. Me and Chick stand there, hunched over, waiting for the firing squad.

Then it comes again, like I knew it would. “Meh-lon!” Chirpy like a doorbell. Ding-dong.

I focus on the white scuffs around the toes of my black ballet pumps. I concentrate on not crying. Crying would not be cool.

“Oi, Melon! It’s rude to ignore someone when they’re talking to ya.”

The shoes are really interesting, I tell myself, the shoes are really interesting.

“Melon! I’m fucking talking to ya. Where’s ya fucking manners, man?”

“Turn round, Mel,” Chick hisses. I can’t look at her.

“Melllll-ohhhhhn!” Ian is squealing it now, like an opera singer.

I obey. I turn my body. Last thing I do is let my gaze meet his. His eyes are brown, too brown. They’re black and sticky.

“Yes? Can we help you?” Ian does his posh voice.

I try and stare him out.

He pouts at me, pretending to be a girl.

Nothing about this is even slightly funny yet Lucy Bloss goes solo and bursts into shrieky laughter. Everyone looks at her for a minute, which is exactly what she wanted, so she milks it. She clamps a fingerless-gloved hand over her mouth and rolls her eyes at Emily Winters and Dionne Agu. Then she forces out a few giggly hiccups for extra effect. She is so fake. I mean, who wears fingerless gloves in the middle of March?

Ian smiles at Lucy. This means they are probably going out together again. They make up and break up the whole time so it’s hard to keep up. And anyway, who can be bothered to waste their time trying to keep up?

Ian is mouthing my name, feeling his chest, pretending he has boobs.
Mehhhh-lllonnn
, his lips go. His tongue makes a meal of it.
Mehhhh-lllonnn
.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have asked Mum why she gave me such a stupid, stupid name. Every time I ask, I get The Story. I get whispering at seeds, I get yellowstriped armyworms, I get laying hands on warm fruit. I don’t get answers.

Before I get The Story, Mum will usually go: “Why you ask about your name today,
peristeraki mou
? They make fun of your tits at school?”

I hate the way she says ‘tits’ – it’s so porn mag, so throw-away, as though nothing that worries me is important to her. My name is important. The size of my chest is important. The two of them work together to ruin my life.

The last time I asked Mum about my name, I was trying on bras. I have prayed every night since I was eleven that my boobs would stop growing. I’ve had to buy a larger bra every year since then. I thought if I asked Mum at the exact moment I was trying on some new, ridiculous cup-size she would realise what she’d done. She would immediately say sorry for naming me Melon and our next stop would be Deed Poll. Some hope.

We were in the changing rooms. I was staring at my big woman’s figure in the mirror. Mum was sitting on the leather stool in the corner of the cubicle searching for cigarettes and a lighter in her massive shoulder bag. When I asked, she ignored me. Instead she went, “Smells in here, hey? Cheesy, no?”

“You can’t smoke in here, Mum,” I told her.

She ignored that too, went back and answered the original question.

“I want you to be different,” she went, still ransacking her bag.

“I want to be like the other girls,” I said back.

I really wanted her to hear that. I really wanted her to see me, standing there, the thick, white elastic crisscrossing my boobs. A sturdy bra, a boring bra. I’m not allowed anything pretty. With my chest, it makes me look too grown-up, Mum says. Makes me look like a stripper, she means.

“When you older, you be grateful to be different.” That’s what she told me. I wasn’t going to get my sorry. I took off the bra.

“Maria?” she goes, poofing air through her lips. “Everyone has this name!”

And then she was off. “On an island far, far from here, where the sea is woven from strings of sapphire blue . . .” Whispering at seeds, yellowstriped armyworms, warm fruit,
ta karpouzia ine etima!
Blah, blah, blah. By the time she’d got to the bit about the truck driving away, she was halfway through a cigarette and I was back in my jumper. She stopped then, poked a finger at the bra on its hanger.

“What, you are not liking it?”

“It’s fine, Mum,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

Mum stubbed out her cigarette in the lid of her fag packet.

Outside the cubicle, a shop assistant was squirting air freshener and giving Mum a dirty look. Mum breezed away from the changing rooms, refusing to notice.

Ian is still mouthing my name. He licks the nipple of one of his huge, invisible breasts. Everyone is creased up. Especially Lucy. Everyone in the line is waiting for me to say something. Or, even better, to run to the nearest toilet for a cry. If I bolt, Lucy will send Dionne Agu to follow me and report back.

I have no razor-sharp reply, no witty answer. I have . . . nothing.

So I laugh.

It’s a horrible sound, really phony, but it does the job. Ian stops feeling himself up. He tosses out a chuckle. The laugh shows that I’ve got a better sense of humour than Lucy Bloss. After all, I’m the one getting picked on, not her. The laugh has let Ian off the hook. He turns away.

The ripples of giggling along the line die down. They’re disappointed, I know it. They wanted me to crumble. That would have been something to talk about.

Ian has forgotten me already. He’s kicking Dylan’s rucksack, pretending to start a fight. They’re shouting about something else now.

“Phew-ee!” goes Chick, mouse-like.

I shrug, I smile, like it’s nothing.

Inside, I am still searching for that killer line – something to plunge right down into Ian’s soul, something to stop him dead, something to wound him. Make him choke. Something to make him . . . like me.

I feel sick. I hate myself for making it easy on Ian. I hate everyone in that queue for laughing. But more than that, I hate Mum for giving me my stupid, stupid name.

When I get home, I will tell Mum this. I will tell her how she has made my life hell.

I am nine and a quarter years old and my bag is packed. I’ve got clean pants and socks for three days, a nightie, my school uniform, a spare jumper and a pair of jeans. I also have a house key so I can go back and get more clothes if I need them. Inside my wheelie suitcase there are also Cherry Drops and Arthur, my lion, so he won’t be lonely on his own in my bedroom.

I’m going to stay with Pamela nextdoor while Mum goes to Crete. Usually Mum and me go to Crete together. But that’s only in the summer. Now it’s winter. Granbabas has died. But we musn’t feel sad. Mum says he’s had a good life and he’s lucky his heart held out this long and it is the fate of everyone in the Fourakis family to die young. So if we’re not supposed to be sad about Granbabas dying, Mum must be doing all that crying for a different reason.

Pamela’s house is the same as ours but the other way round. When you walk in our door, the stairs are in front of you and you turn right to go into the living room. In Pamela’s house, you turn left. I’m worried that I’m going to get up in the night for a wee and walk smack into the wall with the window instead of going the right way along the landing for Pamela’s bathroom.

Pamela has short white hair that doesn’t move. It stands up from her head in one big wave. I’m looking forward to finding out how she makes it do that. One of her front teeth is twisted and pops out of her lips when she smiles. She has lots of wrinkles on her neck, which get filled up by all the tiny, gold chains she wears. Pamela’s son and daughter are both grown up and have moved out, that’s how come she has room for me to stay. The daughter is called Sophie and she lives in Canada. Pamela often shows us the postcards Sophie sends when she chats to Mum over the back garden fence. Pamela’s son is called Brian. He still lives nearby and visits lots. When Mum bumps into him outside the house, she says, “All right, Brian,” and he just nods his head and does this weird little salute. I’ve never heard him speak. Brian does Pamela’s garden for her and sits around with a grumpy face drinking her tea. I wish it had been Brian who had moved to Canada rather than Sophie, but I suppose Pamela prefers it this way because her garden stays tidy.

In Pamela’s house there is no wall between the kitchen and dining room. This is because she has ‘knocked through’. I try to imagine Pamela with a sledgehammer bashing through the bricks and then decide that Brian must have done it for her. Mum sometimes says she would like to knock through our kitchen wall. I worry that I’ll wake up one morning and come downstairs to find that she’s done it in the night, just because she felt like it.

The other walls in Pamela’s kitchen and dining room are covered in plates. There are kings and queens on them, flowers, ones that say ‘mother’ and ‘sister’ and ‘friend’ and ones with dogs. Pamela has a Westie called Ernie who yaps at Kojak through the wire fence that separates our gardens. Kojak just ignores him. I wonder which of the plates Pamela will take down off the wall for us to eat on come tea-time.

Once she’s let us in, Pamela goes, “Why don’t you go and watch a bit of telly, lovie, while I have a chat with your mummy in the kitchen.” So I turn left into the living room and Mum and Pamela go straight on to the kitchen. Pamela’s sofas have extra pink covers on the armrests and headrests. On top of her TV set there is a pottery milkmaid looking embarrassed while a pottery boy whispers in her ear.

Even with the sound up on the TV, I can hear bits of their conversation, because there is no wall between the dining room and the living room either, just an archway. I don’t think this is because Pamela has knocked through. The living room and dining room are all one in our house too.

Pamela is asking Mum about her flight and whether she will be okay and Mum is telling Pamela that Granbabas had a good life and was lucky that his heart lasted so long and it is the fate of everyone in the Fourakis family to die young, so we shouldn’t be sad. Still, I can hear that Mum is crying a bit. I wonder if this is because she is leaving me behind. We’ve never been apart for a night my whole life, except for when I sleep over at Chick’s house, but that doesn’t count because I know Mum is only a few streets away. I said this to Mum when she was rushing around packing my case and she said to me, “No, silly, we spend many weeks apart before this.”