Secrets (2 page)

Nan held me even tighter. She could feel me quivering.

‘So it's Terry we've got to think of, is it? Our Treasure can get scarred for life but never mind her, let's all worry about Terry?'

Kyle was looking puzzled because he doesn't get sarcasm. Gary was wailing now, his nose running down into his mouth. Mum looked awful too, her mascara smudged and her face so white it made the pink rouge along her cheekbones look like clown make-up.

‘It's just a nasty nick,' Mum pleaded. ‘Take Treasure for a little holiday, it's maybe all for the best – but don't cause trouble, Mum, I beg you.'

‘Call yourself a mother!' said Nan. She bent down, scooped Gary out of his baby chair, checked his nappy and grimaced. ‘Here, try and take care of this one at least.' She thrust Gary at Mum and yelled up the stairs to Bethany.

Bethany came running with a carrier bag spilling clothes. Nan snatched it from her and gave my shoulder a squeeze.

‘Right, pet, we'll be off.'

Mum was so busy crying she didn't say goodbye to me. Kyle just gawped. But Bethany suddenly put her arms round me and gave me a big hug, even though we've hated each other ever since we've been stepsisters.

‘I'm sorry, Treasure,' she said.

She must have been truly sorry because when I unpacked the carrier bag back at Nan's I found she'd put in her own black designer T-shirt, the one with the little grey squirrel on the front. She'd got it as one of her Christmas presents from Terry and she'd gone berserk on Boxing Day when she'd found me secretly trying it on. It fitted perfectly even though I'm nearly two years older, because she's big and I'm a little titch. She had told me to whip it off quick or she'd tell her dad – but now she'd given it to me.

I'm wearing it now with my black jeans and my crocodile boots. I look seriously cool. OK, the boots are last year's and so they scrunch up my toes a bit but I don't care.

‘We women have to suffer to look stylish,' says Nan when she kicks her high heels off and rubs her own sore feet.

My nan is young for a grandma and very, very glamorous. She wouldn't be seen dead in the usual granny gear. My nan wears tight, lacy vesty things and short skirts that show off her legs. She looks especially glam when she teaches her line-dancing class. She has all these little matching outfits. I like the white one best: white waistcoat with rhinestones, short white skirt and white leather cowboy boots with spurs.

‘Can
I
go to your line-dancing class sometime, Nan?' I asked her.

‘Of course you can, darling. I reckon you'll pick it up in no time. Patsy goes, don't you, pet?'

Patsy grinned at me. ‘Yes, it'll be great, Treasure.'

Patsy is being so
kind
to me. She's so, so different from Bethany. Patsy doesn't even seem to mind that she has to share her bedroom with me. It's not much bigger than a cupboard so it isn't easy. She's only got a single bed so Nan fixed me up with cushions and a spare duvet on the floor. It seemed all right to start with but in the middle of the night the cushions kept sliding sideways.

Patsy heard me rootling around, trying to reorganize my bedding. ‘Here, Treasure, come in my bed,' she whispered.

‘There isn't room. It's OK, I'm fine,' I whispered back.

‘No, you're not. Come on, it'll be fun.' She paused and then giggled. ‘Do as your auntie says, Treasure!'

I giggled too. Patsy is only seven but she is my actual auntie. She's Nan's youngest child. My mum is the oldest. Though she acts like she's never grown up, Nan always says.

Patsy is Nan's favourite. She calls her ‘my little surprise'. She's Pete's child and Nan is nuts about him. I can't remember him properly but I think he's big and bear-like. Patsy is little and fluffy, like a baby bunny. She's got lovely, long fair hair. She wears it in a ponytail or a topknot with a cute little set of butterfly slides at either side. The only funny thing about Patsy is that she walks with her feet pointing out like a penguin, but that's because she does a lot of ballet. She does tap too and acrobatics. Nan's thinking of sending her to a
special
stage school soon as she has the talent and the looks to make it really big.

You'd think Patsy would be a horrid little show-off but she's not a bit. I've always liked her lots though we haven't met up much as I've lived all over the place with my mum and then, when Mum settled down with Terry, she and Nan kept falling out. But I like all Nan's family and I love Patsy second-best to Nan.

I squeezed into her bed and we cuddled up like spoons. Patsy felt so little and springy compared with Bethany. (We weren't usually on cuddling terms at all but if Terry and my mum were having a fight in the middle of the night it got so scary that Bethany and I would huddle together, the duvet over our heads to block out the noise.)

Patsy's hair tickled my face but I didn't mind. I reached out and stroked it gently. I'm trying to grow my own hair but it goes all wispy. If I tilt my head back and hunch up I can kid myself I've got shoulder-length hair, but it's not really. Patsy is so lucky having lovely long hair. Patsy is so lucky, full stop.

Still, I've got lucky now. This is my new life and I'm happy, happy, happy. I look a bit weird still because I had to have ten stitches and they're still sticking out of my forehead. Nan hasn't dared wash my hair yet so my fringe is all stuck together. I shall have a big scar but I don't care. It will make me look TOUGH.

I didn't tell on Terry up at the hospital. I couldn't do it to Mum. I said me and my brother and sister were
messing
around playing a stupid cowboy game and I got lassoed.

Nan backed me up.

‘Though why we should protect that pig I don't know,' she muttered, lighting up a ciggie. ‘Still, I'm not having anyone call
me
a grass.'

She got told that the hospital has a strictly no-smoking policy so she stamped on it. She looked like she wanted to grind Terry under her high heel too.

‘Your mum's the one needs her head looking at,' said Nan, as we trailed out the hospital, my forehead all puckered up with black thread. ‘Why doesn't she
leave
him?'

I shrugged. It baffles me too. ‘Still,
I've
left him now, haven't I, Nan?' I said.

‘You bet, Treasure. You were such a good brave girl up the hospital. I'm proud of you.'

‘And I can really, truly stay with you, Nan? I'll do lots of housework and keep an eye on Patsy and I could help Loretta with little Britney, I'm good with babies—'

‘Bless you, pet,' said Nan. ‘You don't have to earn your keep. You're
family
.'

‘And I can stay in your family for good, Nan? Promise?'

‘Yes, I promise, Treasure,' said Nan.

That's the best bit. You can rely on my nan. She never, ever breaks her promises.

Two

India

DEAR KITTY

I don't know what to put! And it sounds a bit silly, ‘Dear Kitty' – as if I'm writing a letter to our cat, Tabitha. I started this new diary that way because that's how Anne Frank wrote
her
diary. She was this wonderful Jewish girl who had to hide in a secret annexe with her family during the last world war, and while she was there she wrote a diary. She was a brilliant writer. She described everything so vividly. You really feel you're hiding in the annexe with her, sharing your bedroom with a grumpy old dentist, eating rotten vegetables, running out of clothes to wear and having to creep about all the time, not even able to pull the lavatory chain when anyone's downstairs.

Well, I don't flush the toilet sometimes when I get up in the night, but that's because our water system's really noisy and it wakes everyone up. If Dad wakes up he can't get back to sleep because he's under a lot of pressure at work. That sounds so funny, as if Dad sits at his desk with a huge weight on his head. Actually he often rubs the back of his neck now as if it's hurting him.

It hurts me too. I really love my dad. He's a managing director of this big engineering firm, Major Products. I don't really know what major things they produce. I don't even know exactly what my dad does. He manages. He directs. He's always been a whizz at his job but now he acts like he's worried all the time. I tried massaging his neck for him yesterday but he pushed my hands away and said, ‘Stop
dabbing
at me, India.'

I went away and cried. Mum happened to be home and came in to my bedroom to look for my coat and skirt to send to the cleaners.

‘Maybe I'd better send you to the cleaners too, India,' she said, looking at my blotchy face and inky fingers. I'd written a poem to express my feelings. It started
Oh woe, I love my Dad so
. It wasn't one of my
better
poems.

Mum asked why I was crying, even sitting on the bed beside me and acting all
mumsie
for once. She seemed disappointed when I told her it was because Dad didn't seem to want me around him any more.

‘For God's sake, India, don't be such a baby,' she
said,
laughing at me. ‘He just snapped at you, that's all. That's nothing. You should hear the things he says to me sometimes.'

She sniffed resentfully. Then she smiled again. Mum has this really irritating, dazzling smile showing off all her cosmetic dentistry – but her eyes don't light up. It's as if her face is a mask and her eyes are the only real bit.

‘Still, I suppose we'd better try to be understanding. Dad's having a hard time at work.' Mum sighed. ‘Aren't we all?' The smile was still there but it was as if she was silently adding, ‘But
some
of us cope without making all this fuss.'

Anne Frank loved her dad but frequently couldn't bear her mother. I feel Anne and I are soul sisters. I love to write too. I write my diary, I write stories and poems, I even wrote the nativity play at school. I tried so hard, rewriting it three whole times, trying to be
original
, so it was mostly from the animals' point of view, with the ox and the ass and the littlest lamb as the major characters.

Mrs Gibbs said in class that it was ‘a lovely idea, don't you think so, girls?' Everyone smiled and said it was super. But out in the playground they all groaned and made faces and said it was the most stupid idea ever and who wanted to act as a cow, for God's sake? Did I think they were all
babies
?

I should have said they were all acting like babies right that minute. I didn't. I just blushed and stammered and said I was sorry, yes it was a mad idea, in
fact
it absolutely sucked. So then they despised me for being wet as well as babyish and a teacher's pet. Sometimes I think I despise myself.

I have bright ginger hair. Most people think this means I have a fearful temper. I do get angry inside but I can't stick up for myself. I only get furious when I think things aren't fair for other people.

Maria waited until the others had all run off and then she put her arm round me and said she thought my play sounded very imaginative. It was maybe more suited to
little
children. She thought it would work a treat with them.

Maria was probably just being kind though. She's kind to everyone.

I wish Maria was my friend but she's Alice's best friend.
Everyone
in my class has got a best friend – or else they go round in little gangs like Lucy and Imogen and Sarah and Claudia. It's so awful not having a gang, not having a best friend.

I
used
to. I used to have Miranda. We knew each other right from when we were babies because we shared the same nanny while our mums ran this designer scarf company. Miranda and I were almost like sisters. We went to the same kindergarten and then the same school. We always had each other.

Miranda could be just a bit boring sometimes because she never had any ideas of her own – but I always had
heaps
of ideas so I suppose it didn't matter too much. Miranda wasn't much use at playing pretend games but at least she didn't laugh at me.
When
we were little we had two favourites: we played Monkeys, swinging about and being silly and scratching ourselves, or we played the Flying Game, pretending the sleeves of our coats were wings and swooping around all over the place. I know, it sounds so daft now, but we were
very
little.

As we got a bit older the two games merged. Flying Monkeys was the best game of all. We pretended we could whizz through open windows and throw peanuts at people. We could ride the weathercock on the church steeple, prance on the roof of the tallest multi-storey and nest in the tops of the poplars on the playing fields. We Flying Monkeys fiercely defended our territory against our enemies, Flying Elephants flapping their vast ears.

Mum saw us battling it out one day. She didn't understand this was Flying Animal Warfare. She clapped her hands and said, ‘That looks great fun, girls' but when she got me on my own she hissed, ‘I wish you wouldn't
shriek
so, India. And do you really have to galumph around like that?'