The Illustrated Mum (3 page)

“Will you
play
television, Star?” I begged.

“Oh, honestly, Dol, you and your dopey games,” she groaned.

“Please?”

“Just for ten minutes then.”

We went into our bedroom, shutting the door on the sleeping Marigold. Star wouldn't try properly at first, and said she felt stupid, but eventually she got into it too. I said we'd do
Top of the Pops
first because I knew Star liked being all the different singers. Then we did this children's hospital program and I was a little girl dying tragically of cancer and Star was my nurse giving me treatment. Then we played vets and Star's old teddy and my china dog and the troll doll we'd won at a fair were the pets in distress.

Star started to get bored with this, so I said we'd do some soaps because she's great at accents, so for a while we played
Neighbours
and then swopped to
East-Enders
and then Star herself suggested we do
Friends
. We both wanted to be Rachel and then we got onto hairstyles and we stopped the television game and played hairdressers instead.

Star played for ten times ten minutes and it was great. We almost forgot Marigold.

She woke up in a snappy mood, going on about the cross again, muttering to herself, holding her bandaged arm. She spent ages in the bedroom after tea.

“Are you all right, Marigold?” I called eventually, standing outside the door.

“I'm fine fine fine, never finer,” said Marigold.

She came out all dressed up in her shortest skirt
and highest heels, her black chenille sweater hiding her bandage.

“You're going out,” Star said flatly. “Of course I'm going out, darling. I've got to celebrate my birthday,” said Marigold.

Star sighed heavily.

“Don't be like that. I'm just nipping down to the Vic. I'll be back in a couple of hours, promise.”

We both looked at her. “I
promise
,” she said again. She stroked her bulky arm gingerly. “I'm at the crossroads. I'm going to take the right turning now. You'll see. I'll be back by ten. Half ten at the latest.”

We stayed up till midnight. Then we gave up and went to bed.

I woke up too early. It wasn't properly light yet. My heart started thudding.

I scrabbled around for my silk scarf. I always like to take it to bed with me. Star calls it my cuddle blanket. When she's being really mean to me she sometimes hides it.

I could only feel rumpled sheet and lumpy pillow. I wriggled up the bed a bit and then realized I was lying on my scarf. I rubbed it quick against my nose, snuf-fling in its sweet powdery smell.

I still felt frightened. Then I remembered.

“Star!” I leant out of my bed and reached for her. “Star, wake up. It's morning. Nearly. Do you think Marigold's come back?”

“Go and look,” Star mumbled from under her covers.

I was scared to look. Scared in case she was in a state. Scared in case she had someone with her. Scared in case she hadn't come back at all.

“You look, Star,” I begged. “You're the eldest.”

“I'm sick of being the eldest. I'm sick of being the one who has to try hardest all the time. I'm sick sick sick of it,” said Star. Her voice was thick. I thought she might be crying.

“OK, I'll look,” I said, and I got out of bed.

My heart was like a little fist inside my chest, punching and punching.

“Don't be so stupid,” I whispered in Star's voice. “She'll be back. She'll be in bed fast asleep. Just go and take one peep.”

I crept across our room, over the landing. I stood in front of Marigold's open door. Had it been open or shut last night? I couldn't remember. I could see the edge of her bed but no mound under the cover, no foot poking out palely from beneath the sheet.

“She'll be curled up in a ball, legs tucked up. That's why you can't see her. She always sleeps like that. Go and
look
,” I whispered.

I stood still for more than a minute. Then I whispered her name. Nothing. I stepped into her room. It was empty. I knew it was empty with one glance but I
pulled the covers back, I lifted the pillow, as if she might be curled so small she could be hiding underneath. I looked under the bed and felt for her there with my hands. I rolled little dustballs in my fingertips, breathing very quickly, wondering what on earth to do next.

I looked in the bathroom and loo. I went into the kitchen to see if she could be there, my mind conjuring up a crazy image of Marigold making toast, hours early for breakfast. The kitchen was empty. The tap dripped, plink plink plink. None of us knew how to change the washer. I stood watching it, blinking in time until my eyes blurred.

I went back to Star. She was still under the covers but I could tell by her breathing that she was wide awake and listening.

“She's not back.”

Star sat up. I heard her swallow. I could almost hear the buzz of her thoughts.

“Look in the loo,” she said.

“I have. She's not anywhere.”

“What's the time?”

“It's half past five.”

“Oh,” Star sounded frightened too now. “Well. Maybe … maybe she's not planning on getting back till breakfast.”

“Star. What if … what if she doesn't come back?”

“She will.”

“But what if something bad has happened to her?” “
She's
the one who does bad things,” said Star. She reached out and caught hold of me by the wrist. “Come on. She'll be all right. She's probably met some guy and she's with him.”

“But she wouldn't stay out all night long,” I said, scrabbling into her bed beside her.

“Well, she has, hasn't she? Hey, you're freezing.”

“Sorry.”

“Never mind. Here.” Star pressed her warm tummy against my back and made a lap for me with her legs. Her arms went round me tight and hugged me.

“Oh, Star,” I said, crying.

“Shhh. Don't get my pillow all wet and snotty.”

“She
is
all right, isn't she?”

“She's all wrong wrong wrong. But she'll be back any minute now, you'll see. We'll go back to sleep and then we'll wake up and the first thing we'll hear is Marigold singing one of her stupid songs, right?”

“Yes. Right. I do like it when you're being nice to me.”

“Well. It's no fun being nasty to you. It's like kicking Bambi. Let's try to sleep now.”

“I love Bambi.” I tried to think of all the best bits in
Bambi
. I thought of Bambi frolicking with Flower with all the birds twittering and Thumper singing
away, tapping his paw. Then my brain flipped to fast forward.

“What?” said Star, feeling me stiffen.

“Bambi's mother gets killed.”

“Oh, Dol. Shut up and go to
sleep
.”

I couldn't sleep. Star couldn't either, though she pretended at first. We turned every ten minutes, fitting round each other like spoons. I tried counting to a hundred, telling myself that Marigold would be back by then. Two hundred. Three hundred.

I wanted my silk scarf but I'd left it in my bed. I put the end of the sheet over my nose instead and fingered the raised edge of the hem. It started to get lighter. I shut my eyes but in the dark inside my head there was a little television showing me all the things that might have happened to Marigold. It was so scary I poked the corner of the sheet in my eye. It hurt a lot but the television set didn't even flicker. I tried to hum so that I couldn't hear it. I banged my head on the pillow to see if I could switch it off that way.

“What on earth are you doing?” said Star. “Just trying to get comfy.” “You're going about it in a funny way.” “It's to stop myself thinking stuff. It's so scary.” “Look. Let's tell each other really really scary stories. We'll think about that, right? There was this video I saw at that sleepover I went to, and there were these
girls in a house, and they played these real witchy tricks on another girl, so that when she got out of bed she stepped into this great squirmy mass of spiders and slugs and snakes, and she screamed and starting running, and all these
other
snakes dropped on her head and writhed round her neck and down inside her clothes’

“Shut up, shut up!” I said, shrieking‘and yet it helped. We were suddenly just us playing a scary game and it was almost fun.

I hadn't ever seen any horror videos but I was quite good at making them up. Star told me this story about a dead man who comes back to kill all these kids and his fingers are like long knives so he can rip people in half.

“I've got a better ghost, a
real
one. Mr. Rowling!” I said triumphantly.

Mr. Rowling was the old man who lived upstairs. He had this illness when we first moved in here and he knew he was dying and he said he was going to leave his body to medical science. I'd had to ask Star what that meant and when she told me it had given me nightmares, thinking of medical students cutting up all these little bits of Mr. Rowling.

“Mr. Rowling couldn't be scary. He was quite a nice old man,” said Star.

“Yes, he might have been nice when he was alive, but he's really really scary now, because those medical
people cut out his eyes so he's just got horrible bleeding sockets and they've sawn off great strips of his skin and torn out his liver and his kidneys and left a big mess of intestines sticking out all smelly and slimey, and all the rest of him is rotting away so that when he walks around little moldery bits of him fall off like big dandruff. He wishes and wishes he hadn't left his body to medical science because it hurts so badly so every night he rises up off the dissecting table and he trails messily back to this house where he liked living and he's maybe upstairs right this minute. Yes, he is, and he's thinking, I like that Star, she was always nice to me, I'm going to go and see how she is, and he's coming, Star, he's slithering along, dripping maggots, getting nearer and nearer. …”

Something creaked and we both screamed. Then we sat up, ears straining, wondering if it was Marigold back at last. But then we heard the whoosh of the boiler in the kitchen. It was just the hot water system switching itself on.

“Oh well,” said Star. “We could just go and have a bath in a minute.”

“Let's have one more look round the flat. She could have crept in while we were cuddled up. We could have gone to sleep without realizing it,” I said.

We both padded all over the flat though we knew there wasn't a chance Marigold was there. So then we went and had a bath together, because the water
wasn't hot enough for two baths. It was like being little kids again. Star washed my hair for me and then I did hers. I'd always longed to look like Star but I especially envied her beautiful long fair hair. Mine was mouse and it was so fine it straggled once it grew down to my shoulders.

I suppose Star looked like her father and I looked like mine. Neither of us looked like Marigold, though we both had a hint of her green eyes.

“Witch's eyes,” Marigold always said.

Star's eyes were bluey-green, mine more gray-green. Marigold's eyes were emerald, the deepest glittery green, the green of summer meadows and seaweed and secret pools. Sometimes Marigold's eyes glittered so wildly it was as if they were spinning in her head like Catherine wheels, giving off sparks.

“What if Marigold’ I started.

“Stop what-iffing,” said Star. “Hey, I thought you fancied yourself as a hairdresser? I've still got heaps of soap in my hair.” She tipped jugfuls of water over her head and then started toweling herself dry.

I watched her.

“Quit
staring
,” Star snapped.

I couldn't help staring at her. It was so strange seeing her with a chest. I peered down at my own but it was still as flat as a boy's.

“Two pimples,” said Star, sneering at me. “Turn round, let me do your back.”

We got dressed in our school clothes. Well, our version of school clothes. I wore one of Marigold's dresses she'd cut small for me, black with silver moon and star embroidery. I called it my witch dress and thought it beautiful. It still smelt very faintly of Marigold's perfume. I sniffed it now.

“Is it sweaty?” said Star.

“No!”

“I don't know why you keep wearing that old thing anyway. You just get teased.”

“I get teased anyway,” I said.

Star used to wear much weirder outfits when she was at my school but nobody ever dared tease Star. She changed when she started at the high school. She wore the proper uniform. She
wanted
to. She got money off Marigold the minute she got it out the post office and went to the school's special uniform sale and got herself a hideous gray skirt and blazer and white blouses and even a tie.

She customized them when she went into Year Eight, shortening the skirt until it was way up above her knees, and she put pin badges all over the blazer lapels. It was the way all the wilder girls in her class altered their uniform. Star didn't seem to want to do it her way anymore.

She checked herself in the mirror and then fiddled with my dress.

“Sweaty or not, it needs a wash.”

“No, it'll spoil it.”

“It's spoilt already. And the hem's coming down at the back. Here, I'll find a pin.”

She tucked the wavy hem neatly into place and then stood up.

“Right,” she said. She glanced at the kitchen table, the bowls and spoons set out Three Bears style.

“I'm not hungry,” I said.

“Me neither,” said Star. “Tell you what. Marigold's got the purse, but I've got that pound I found down the park. We'll buy chocolate on the way to school, right?”

“Do we have to go to school?”

“Yes.”

“But’

“It'll be worse if we just stay here, waiting. We'll both go to school like normal. Only you won't tell anyone that she's gone missing, will you?”

“Has she really … gone missing?”

“I don't know. But if you start blabbing about it, or even go round all sad and snively so that some nosey teacher starts giving you the third degree then I'm telling you, Dol, they'll get the social workers in and we'll both end up in care.”

“No!”

“Maybe not even together.”

“Stop it.”

“So keep your mouth shut and act like you haven't got a care in the world. Don't look like that.
Smile!
”