Sugar and Spice (11 page)

Next morning she still wasn’t talking to me, and she didn’t seem to be talking to anyone else, either. I did so wish Amie Phillips would let her join her lot! I didn’t want to have her on my conscience.

I’d thought Shay might have forgotten her idea of me going to the library. I might have known she wouldn’t. She said she’d been thinking about it and she’d decided I ought to go there straight away, after school, and get started.

“No time like the present,” she said, in this bossy, grown-up way.

I told her, apologetically, that I couldn’t do it that day cos my dad would be worried where I was. I always get home an hour before Mum and if I didn’t arrive he’d think something had happened. Dad gets very wound
up. I suppose it’s because of not being well. Shay said, “Phone him!”

“I can’t,” I said. “I haven’t got a phone!”

I’d once said this to Karina and she’d stared at me like I was something that had just crawled out of a pond. “You haven’t got a
mobile
?”

I was so ashamed! I thought that Shay would stare at me as well, but she just shook her head, like “Stop making excuses!” and said, “Use mine. Here!” She thrust one at me. “Ring your dad and tell him.”

“What, n-now?” I said.

“Why not?” said Shay.

I thought that Dad might be snoozing, or watching telly, but I wasn’t brave enough to argue. Meekly I took the phone and dialled our number. Dad sounded puzzled when I said that I was going to the library to do my homework. He said, “Why? What’s in the library?” I explained that it was somewhere you could sit and work. Dad wanted to know what was wrong with sitting at home, so I mumbled something about the library being more peaceful, cos you weren’t allowed to talk in there. That was what Shay had said.

“No one’s allowed to talk, so you can just get on with things.”

“Well, suit yourself,” said Dad. “I don’t know what your mum’s going to say.”

We had maths and French to do that night. I was quite nervous about going to the library. I kept asking Shay what you had to do. She said, “You don’t have to do anything! Just go in and sit down.”

She could obviously see that I was anxious, and maybe she thought that left to myself I mightn’t ever get there, so in the end she said that she’d come with me.

“Just this one time.”

I was humbly grateful as I knew that Shay lived way over the other side of town and it would take her for ever to get home.

“You’ll be really late getting back,” I said.

“So who cares?” said Shay.

“Well…your mum?” I said. “Won’t your mum be worried?”

Shay tossed her head. “My mum never worries. She’s not there, anyway.”

“What, you mean…when you get back the flat is empty?”

“House. Yeah. ’s empty.”

I couldn’t imagine getting back to an empty house. Well, I couldn’t imagine getting back to a
house,
cos I’ve always lived in a flat. And there’s always been
someone there. When I was little it was Mum and now, of course, there’s Dad. I asked Shay if she minded and she said no, why should she? She sounded a bit aggressive, like she thought I was being nosy, or criticising the way she lived, so after that I didn’t say any more. I’d learnt that if Shay wanted me to know things, she’d tell me. If she didn’t, there was no point in asking. She wasn’t exactly secretive. Just, like, what she did was her business and no one else’s, not even mine. She was looking out for me, but we still weren’t proper friends. Not like I’d been with Millie and Mariam, when we’d all exchanged confidences and knew everything there was to know about each other.

Anyway, I was really glad that Shay had come with me as the library is this huge, important-looking building with great wide steps going up to it and a big green dome on top, so that if I’d been on my own I’d probably just have turned round and run away.

But Shay marched in there as
bold as could be, with me creeping behind her, and nobody stopped us or asked us what we thought we were doing. Shay consulted a board which said
Ground Floor, 1
^st
Floor, 2
^nd
Floor,
etc.

“Children’s,” she said. “You don’t want that! It’ll be full of kids. We’ll go up to the Adults.”

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go up to the Adults, but she didn’t give me any choice, just dragged me on to the escalator.

The first floor was full of tables and chairs, and racks of magazines and newspapers. Grown-ups were sitting all around, reading or writing and looking solemn.

“This’ll do.” said Shay. She very firmly led me over to an empty table and sat me down. “There! Now you can get on with things.”

I squeaked, “You’re not going?”

“Gotta get back,” said Shay. “You’ll be all right here.”

And she waltzed off to the escalator, leaving me on my own. It was a really bad moment. I was still expecting someone to come over and tell me that I wasn’t allowed in the library all by myself, without a grown-up, and that I must go away
immediately,
but nobody did. Nobody took any notice of me at all. After a while I started to relax and concentrate on my homework, and oh, it was so lovely sitting there! I’d never been anywhere without noise or bustle Without music or the telly, or Mum nagging at me to do things, or Sammy and the Terrible Two roaring in and out. I mean, just at first it was, like, a bit weird; I kept listening to the silence and wondering what was wrong, but once I’d got used to it I thought that this was how
I’d like to live. I’d have one room all of my own, with a table and chair and lots of bookshelves, where no one could come in without being invited, or at any rate asking permission. In other words, it would be totally, utterly and completely PRIVATE. And I’d get all my homework done with no trouble at all. Even maths. Even decimal fractions. Hooray!

Mum wasn’t too pleased when I got home. She said, “Where have you been?”

I said, “In the library! I told Dad, I —”

“I know you’ve been
in the library,
but what for?”

“Doing my homework! It’s quiet in there, I can get on with things.”

Mum said, “I could’ve done with you getting on with a few things here!” She said how was Dad expected to cope, all by himself, when the Terrible Two got back and I wasn’t there? “Seems to me your dad’s health is more important than your homework! Who told you to go to the library, anyway?”

I said, “A girl at school.”

“What girl?”

“New girl. Shay. She said the library was a good place to work in, and it is, cos I’ve done
all
my homework,” I said, proudly, “and now I can help you!”

“Bit late for that,” grumbled Mum, but she agreed that I could go to the library if I had to, so long as I was home by quarter to five. She still wasn’t happy about it. She still didn’t really see why I should want to go and shut myself away in “a stuffy old place like that” when I could be sitting here in the kitchen at home.

I said, “Mum, it’s not stuffy! They’ve got computers and CDs and a coffee bar. And books, and newspapers, and —”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Mum. “So who is this girl?
Shay?
What kind of a name is Shay?”

I said, “It’s short for Shayanne.”

“What, like she’s a Red Indian or something?”

Shocked, I told Mum that people didn’t refer to Red Indians any more. “They’re Native Americans!” We’d learnt that in Juniors.

Mum said, “Whatever! Is that what she is?”

I said, “I don’t think so.”

“Well, whoever she is,” said Mum, “she sounds like she’s really pushing you around.”

“I only do what I want to do,” I said.

“Huh!” Mum obviously wasn’t convinced. She said that Shay sounded like a bit of a bully. “Perhaps I’d better meet her. Why don’t you ask her over?”

Me? Ask Shay?

“Well why not?” said Mum. “It’s time I met some of your new friends.”

“Yes, but —” Shay wasn’t that sort of friend. “She lives in Westfield.”

“So? If you’re saying we’re not grand enough for her —”

“It’s not that!”

“She goes to the same school as you even if she does live in Westfield. What’s she got to be snotty about?”

“She’s not snotty,” I said, but even as I said it, I thought to myself that I didn’t actually know. I didn’t actually
know
very much at all. But I did know that Westfield was posh, cos Mum always said it was. It was where Mum dreamt of moving to if ever she had a big win on the lottery. And if Westfield was posh, Ennis Road, where we lived, was the pits. How could I invite Shay to Ennis Road?

“It’s been a long time since you had anyone over,” said Mum.

Not since Juniors. But that had been different cos we all lived on the same estate. Millie lived in Archer Court, which was the big block of flats right opposite, and Mariam lived round the block, just five minutes away.

“Dunno how she’d get here.” I said.

“Trust me,” said Mum, “if they live in Westfield, they’ll have a car. You ask her over for Saturday. I’ll get something in for tea.”

I really didn’t think that Shay would want to come. I plucked up my courage and asked her in the playground
at break next day. I said, “My mum said to invite you to tea, Saturday, but it’s all right if you’d rather not.” I knew she wouldn’t just make an excuse, like anyone else would. She wouldn’t pretend she was going somewhere or had to see her nan or her auntie. She’d say, straight out, if she didn’t want to come. I was just so surprised when she said yes!