Sweet (15 page)

And let’s face it, my excuse for a career was hardly heading for the splashy smash of the glass ceiling anytime now; a new jiffy mop was just about the biggest thing on that particular horizon at the moment. How far had I got with my daring plan to get the hell out? Brighton held me as firmly in its grasp as some sort of camp Bermuda Triangle. Maybe it would just be easier – and wiser – to give in to what was expected of me.

My illusion ended the minute I set eyes on my family – not because they were repulsive, or rowing, or any of the usual stuff that makes you want to flee the family home and never go back. No, it’s just that they seemed SO DAMNED HAPPY with what they’d got – so little, from where I stood (the doorway) – and with their roles of mum, elder brother and bratz. And standing there watching them, it was like I got a glimpse of my future, and how I could fit in too if I surrendered – older sister, old before her time single mum, pram-faced princess. And look, there’s a ‘ren’ in ‘surrender’!

I left the room quietly – no one noticed me. Which was fine with me, because I’d already decided I didn’t want to fit in. Because giving in and doing the done/easy thing doesn’t mean you’re wise or grown up – it just means you’re a coward. And I realized that though I was fond of my family and wished them no harm – even JJ, the little prick – I didn’t actually want them to become the most important thing in my life. I mean, families are fine being the centre of your life when you’re very young or very old because, let’s be honest, you need them then and you ain’t got much choice. But when you’re living your life proper, they should be the scenery not the main event. Otherwise, in my experience, they feel like a straitjacket. And I wasn’t ready for the nuthouse yet.

What I was ready for was bed. I let myself into my room and stared at the Twister duvet where Kim and me had had many a memorable roll around. For all her faults she’d introduced me to the idea that there was
something more out there
, given me a little taste of what a different life might be like – and it had tasted sweet.

I fell asleep on top of the gay duvet, and dreamed of chasing Ren through endless long corridors, crying. Only when I caught her, she was Kim.

16

I woke up in the morning full of beans – or at least full of Bacardi. You know those mornings you occasionally have when you know that you drank loads the night before and you can’t work out why you have no hangover? Well, that’ll be because you’re still drunk, sucka! And the worst is yet to come.

So on the way to work I was grinning and singing to myself like a happy idiot – that old song ‘The Only Way Is Up’, for some reason – and it wasn’t till fear and dread greeted me at the gates of Stanwick like two particularly ill-tempered bouncers that I really woke up and smelt the cleaning fluid. The only thing going up around here in the foreseeable future was the planes – with me not on them.

Asif was already there, pushing a brush around like some horrible illustration of Boy Going Nowhere – the perfect match for a pram-faced princess! – and studiously ignoring me. At break time the
Argus
I picked up just wouldn’t let the alleged ‘hate crime’ die, and used the trashing of the collection as a springboard to a piece about all these horrible gay-bashing incidents that had happened in Brighton over the past year, which even though I knew weren’t the same made me feel totally shady.

I couldn’t believe it when I got home that night – I walked right in and there on the local news was Marcella Whittingdale interviewing Aggy and Baggy! She makes me spit anyway cos she’s so gorgeous, but to see her nodding sympathetically as they piled on the agony made me want to hurl. I mean, sod all the other stuff going on in the world – clearly a few stained carpets and slashed curtains were far more important than people starving or being massacred.

To really rub it in, Susie, JJ and the twins were sitting there glued to the screen. ‘Ooh, there she is! – look, Ria, it’s that couple you used to work for!’ squealed Susie.

‘Couple of gaylords!’ sniggered JJ.

‘Oi!’ tutted Susie. ‘Leave it! – they’ve just been the victims of a hate crime!’

‘My arse!’ I spat. Immediately I caught JJ looking at me funny. ‘What?’

‘You left sorta sudden, din’t you?’ he said. ‘Catch you drinkin’ their booze, did they?’

This was a bit near the knuckle – I was about to make up some excuse when Susie said something incredibly annoying. ‘Ooh, look at those clothes they’ve done! – they’re a bit weird, but it’s all the rage, innit!’ She turned to me. ‘Ria, you’d look lovely in ’em!’

I turned away quickly from the screen; I couldn’t trust myself. ‘Yeah, Mum, I can see why you like ’em – reminds me of that fancy-dress fairy-princess outfit you made me when I was seven. The one made out of twelve rolls of pink bog paper.’

She looked hurt. ‘It wasn’t my fault it tipped down and you were all in the garden!’

Of course it hadn’t been – she’d stayed up all night attempting to work magic with a dozen rolls of Andrex (‘Only the best for my little princess!’), and it wasn’t her fault that the subsequent unseasonal downpour and ridicule was the first time it dawned on me that being pretty and sharp didn’t count anywhere near as much in this world as having money.

I mean, it was bad when I was a kid, but it’s got worse since then – becoming a model or, I dunno, an actress used to be a way for a hot girl from a poor family to get out. But now even those jobs are already taken, and you see the biggest dogs with famous dads just grab them as a matter of course. All that’s left to us is to take our kit off – funny how those doggy rich chicks never want to be Page Three girls. Though I was dead pleased the other day when I read that some restaurant thought that Jade Goody was about to turn up, and they were all excited – and then it turned out to be Jade Jagger, and they were all dead disappointed!

About as disappointed, dismayed, disgusted, in fact, as I felt now watching Bag and Ag’s latest, greatest fan – my mum! – ooh and ahh over them. This would be the same pair of stuck-up ponces who’d considered MUM’S ABORTION such a suitable source of inspiration, and who perceived council tenants as brain-dead breeding machines!

‘So, James and Andrew, can you tell me more about DESIGN FOR LIFE?’ the gorgeous Marcella was saying.

‘Well, Marcella,’ one of the loathsome blighters replied, ‘my partner and I have always been interested in underprivileged young people –’

‘That’s a funny noise, Ria!’ commented a twin. ‘Like a piggy!’

‘– chance to give something back –’

‘Mum, look at Ria! She’s making a face like she’s going to be sick!’

‘ – give young people a helping hand –’

‘Ooh! – maybe they could help you get some work experience, JJ! Ria, could you put in a word for your brother, do you think . . .’

‘Oh, give me an effing break!’ I slammed out and into my room, before I finally said something about having fixed their kiddy-fiddling wagon. And before I really gave Mum a mouthful about how dumb she was. It wasn’t her fault after all that those two were bastards who’d give her underage son a roasting soon as look at him, any more than it was her fault the bog paper fairy dress had made me a laughing stock back when I was seven. I guess that was just the way life was . . .

I was just getting used to going down this ‘whatever will be, will be’ route for once when the bedroom door opened and JJ sidled in. He closed the door quietly behind him and then leaned against it, smiling slightly, his eyes heavy-lidded, looking at me; I know it sounds sort of sexy, but when it’s your kid bruv, whose filled nappy you’ve had the pleasure of more times than you care to remember, believe me it’s not. Besides, he was looking at me funny.

‘What?’

‘Nuffin.’ He went over to my dressing table and started fiddling with my stuff – I hate that! And it’s always just the one way round, have you noticed – I’ve never met a girl who goes into her brother’s room, be it behind his back or right in front of him, and fingers his smelly socks and stuff. I’m not surprised that the world’s full of men dressing up as women but not the other way round, and that it’s nearly always men who want to have a sex change, not women – they’re obsessed with our stuff! We’re meant to have penis-envy – I don’t think so – I think they’ve got punani-envy.

He gave himself a couple of quick squirts of, appropriately enough, my Envy perfume, and then turned to face me, smirking in a way that made me uncomfortable. ‘So. Tell me again why you don’t work for them two benders no more?’

‘I got sick of skivvying, din’t I?’

He snorted. ‘Like you’re not doing that at Stanwick!’

‘That’s different. There’s other people there. It’s a laugh—’

‘Yeah, that’s why you come home singing and dancing every night!’ His eyes lit up as he saw some Benefit Bad Gal I’d lifted from Boots. ‘Nice one!’ Mouth wide open, he applied some as he gazed into the mirror.

‘Do you know what a cretin you look?’

‘Ta.’ He put it down and blinked rapidly. ‘Talking of which, you seen anything of Duane recently?’

A gay goose walked over my grave. ‘Why would I? He’s your mate.’

‘No reason.’ He turned around and gave me that look again. ‘How much did the
Argus
say the compo was for turning in the kiddy that smashed up them gaylords’ gaff?’

‘I have no idea.’ I jumped up and grabbed my coat. I had to get out before I let on that I was terrified he knew something and begged him not to tell. I had to get round there and lay it on the line to them – that they’d laid Duane, that is, and therefore it was gonna be their necks on the line if my guilt in this matter ever emerged. ‘’Scuse me not spending the evening handing out make-up hints, but I’ve got places to go.’ I couldn’t resist a final dig; maybe if boys like my brother and Duane weren’t so keen on lipstick, powder and paint, men like Aggy and Baggy wouldn’t be so quick on offering them a quick spot of bed-bothering soon as look at ’em. It really pisses me off the way underage girls are always supposed to have ‘asked for it’ when some old perve screws them – there’s no male equivalent of ‘Lolita’ is there? Though in my experience most boys would probably do it with mud from the age of thirteen onwards, they’re that horny a lot of the time. ‘Try to remember to put the tops back on, won’t you – don’t want ’em drying out or they’ll be useless next time you got a hot date!’

I was furious as I stormed up Clifton Hill. The idea of being banged to rights by those two preening queens, my mother being amazed and ashamed and – the final straw – my thieving brother making free with my Juicy Tubes made me see it was time for action. Such as going right round to said queens’ pit and making it clear as crystal that if they didn’t let this business die down soon, I’d make damn sure that it wouldn’t be Marcella Whittingdale giving them a shoulder to cry on, but rather
Crimewatch
feeling their collars. We’d see how much the local heroes they stayed when they were fingered for threesomes with minors!

I got up to their poxy door, thought about kicking it, but instead I did the decent thing and rang the bell. I could hear it echoing through the house, and almost like hearing the voice of someone you used to be in love with unexpectedly, I got a real flashback of how big and dark and plush it was, filled with the ghost of that scent – L’Heure Bleue. Well, this should have been
their
blue hour – but like a pair of slippery eels in a Teflon pan perched on a duck’s back, everything had just rolled off of ’em. If anything, they were even better placed now! – the
Argus
, Marcella, local heroes, charity, bravery.

It made me mad. I rang the bell again. And this time, for good measure, I kicked the door too. And yelled, ‘Oi! Gaylords! I know you’re in there! Woss wrong, got your mouths full?’

And I kicked it again, harder this time. And grabbed the handle and rattled it hard, while yelling about what a pair of rotten bastards they were.

Because in spite of what I’d done to them and their precious house, I still hadn’t rattled them. They still weren’t scared. And it made me think of that old saying ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’ – in the olden days it was probably meant to like imply to all of us who live in this country, but, uh, I DON’T THINK SO! It’s always a man whose home is his castle as far as I can see, and it’s always a man in specific postal districts too.

Because though the thing in front of me was just a big old door that opened straight on to the street – not even a porch door for protection – it made me think of when we’d been taken to Arundel Castle on a school trip one time. In the olden days the rich had had drawbridges and moats and stuff to keep the poor people out, but today they didn’t need more than an intercom and a Big-I-Am attitude. Where I’m from our places get burgled and trashed all the time – and if they do catch the skank that did it, even to some old person that had nothing but the skin on their Horlicks to their name, what does the ponced-up judge do? Pat ’em on the head, give ’em an iPod and tell ’em not to do it again! Even if they messed on their antimacassars! But let a rich person’s castle be done over and it was all posh hands on deck, hate crimes being announced from every rooftop and practically a price on my head.

I couldn’t go back inside . . . I just couldn’t . . . me inside that cold, hard detention centre and them all tucked up cosy inside their warm, cosy house . . .

‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, you fat bastards! – come out here and fight me like men!’ I contradicted myself wildly, banging and kicking at the door. ‘And leave my mum out of it!’ I added for good measure. ‘And you can shut your fat yaps about that bit of interior decorating I did for you the other day, unless you want me to come back with my mates and some spray cans and do the outside to match! And unless you want to make it back on to the front page of the
Argus
, but this time it’ll be your little tea-parties with teeny-boppers, not your so-called charity work!’ I was screeching now, conscious I was out of control and could be heard by any random passer-by, but I just couldn’t resist a final volley of abuse. ‘Talking of charity, you wanna keep bigging it up! Because that’s the only reason a fit kid like Duane would have anything to do with you two, for sure! I’ll give you fucking hate crime – it’s you that must hate people, inflicting your disgusting bodies on ’em like you do!’