The Taming of Lilah May (4 page)

I lie on my stomach and laugh into the grass. Bits of it go in my mouth, but I don't much care.

Adam hauls me up and we leave the cemetery and head for home.

He refuses to speak another word until we get to the gate outside my house.

Then he glares down at me through his floppy fringe, and says:

‘You're not the only person who's got issues, you know. Get over yourself, Lilah May.'

I go round to Bindi's house the next day to tell her about my date with Adam.

Bindi's house is like this Temple of Delights. It's about as different from my house as you can imagine.

She lives with her very large Asian family in a chaotic modern house on the other side of town from us. She's got five little sisters and one little brother and two insane, chattering and multi-tasking parents who are forever throwing their arms up in the air and shrugging their shoulders as they talk me into the ground.

I love going over to Bindi's house.

Her mum, Reeta, is an amazing cook and the house always smells of onions and savoury meat and hot, heavy, exotic spices. The kitchen is about a hundred degrees at any time of the year and there's always some sort of family crisis going on, but it's all warm and close and loving, just like a family should be.

Except that mine isn't.

Not any longer.

I'm up in Bindi's bedroom and we're supposed to be doing homework.

Asian Network Radio is blaring out and Bindi's weaving a long shiny ribbon into my hair, and she's put one of those red dot things right in the centre of my forehead to make me into some sort of demented goddess or something. I don't really know what she's doing, and nobody else would ever survive trying to make me look girly, but Bindi gets away with it because she's my best friend, and the thought of upsetting her would be a bit like the thought of hitting a soft, big-eyed puppy very hard.

So I don't. I sit as still as I can while she finishes my transformation into an Asian princess, and then I try on a few of her saris and spin around in front of the mirror to make her laugh.

Actually, I look quite good. My colouring's dark anyway and the dark red lipstick she's forced me to wear suits my skin tone. I've got heavy black eyeliner around my bottom lashes – I always wear that, even at school. The teachers have given up trying to expel me for it, and now they just raise their eyebrows and shake their heads whenever I pound down the school corridors, all attitude and black make-up.

‘Aha,' Bindi is saying, with a satisfied smile. ‘There. You can come and live with us now.'

I give her a rueful grin. ‘I wish,' I say.

In fact, I'd probably be driven mental by having to live with about fifteen people in one house. But I love the fact that Bindi's family are so open and kind and that when I visit, they just sort of weave me into the fabric of the household, like I'm a missing thread that's turned up in the sewing basket.

As if to illustrate my thoughts, two of her little sisters come into the bedroom and dive onto my lap, where they fiddle with my hair and bracelets.

I like pretending that they're my sisters.

Siblings are a bit thin on the ground in our house at the moment.

My smile must have faded, because Bindi shoos her sisters out of the room.

‘I'd quite like to live here with you, actually,' I say. I guess I'm hoping she'll say, ‘Oh, OK then,' and I'll just be given a camp bed to put on the floor here and never have to go home again.

Bindi frowns.

‘It's not always quite the paradise you're imagining,' she says. ‘My parents are really strict. I'm going to have an arranged marriage, and that will have to come ahead of any career when I leave school.'

‘Really?' I say. ‘Wow. That sucks.'

‘My parents are going to choose a boy in India and get me to marry him,' says Bindi. She sounds very matter-of-fact when she says this, like she's discussing choosing a coat in the shopping arcade or something.

‘Yeah, I know what an arranged marriage is, Bindi. Just never thought you'd have to have one.'

‘It's no big deal,' she says. But her mouth has drooped a bit at the corners. ‘It's what a lot of Asian families do. Well, those who
are still religious. Like mine.'

I shake my head. For a moment I can't speak. I try to imagine how I would feel if Mum and Dad stopped being obsessed with clowns and lions and instead focused all their energies into marrying me off to some boy I'd never met.

Groo.

‘I so would hate that,' I say.

Bindi is staring down at her lap now and fiddling with the end of her dark plait.

‘Well, I don't get much say in the matter,' she says. ‘Sometimes it's difficult to be heard around here. Too many kids in the house.'

‘Yeah,' I agree, but I'm not really listening. My head is still spinning with Bindi's revelation about the arranged marriage.

Bindi comes out of her trance and turns up the music on Asian Network.

‘Now, Lilah May,' she says, settling cross-legged on the bed next to me. ‘Let's hear about you. Spill.'

Bindi's the only person I can talk to about how I'm feeling.

And she's the only person I don't get angry with.

She doesn't ask me that stupid, ‘How ARE you?'
question, and she's always got time for me.

Mum's too busy with her clown job and comes home exhausted and with no energy left to speak to me after yelling at groups of kids.

Dad's kind of good to talk to about some things – like how hideous my teachers are, what boring subjects I'm doing at school and what we're going to do at the weekend.

But I can't talk about the important stuff to him. You know – boys, feelings, girl stuff. He's more interested in animals than he is in me. To Dad, animals have more feelings than humans do. He's always worrying about them and reading great long articles about animal behaviour. He writes articles too, for a science magazine that deals with animals.

So I can't really talk to Dad about how I'm feeling. Teenage girls don't register on his animal radar.

The only other person I used to be able to talk to about personal stuff isn't here any more. And he got just as fed up with Mum and Dad never being around as I did.

I've got my anger diary to write in but it's not the same as talking to a Real Live Person with a sympathetic look in their eyes.

So there's just Bindi left. She's like the dustbin for all my raging tempers.

Poor Bindi.

She's staring at me now with an expectant look in her wet brown eyes.

I clear my throat and cross my legs on the bed, fiddle with my socks.

‘Y'know,' I mutter. ‘It's still difficult at home and all that.'

Bindi nods. She does know. She's seen me in great stomping rages after yet another argument with my parents. She's seen me quiet and withdrawn at school, and she's seen me burst into flames of rebellion and act like a complete nutter.

Bindi's always calm and serene, like the surface of a blue-green river under sunlight. She ripples with sympathy but never goes over the top.

Sometimes I wonder whether there might be a tiny flame of rebellion living deep inside Bindi. I haven't seen it yet.

‘How did it go with Adam?' she says now, getting up to draw the curtains. She is smirking at me, twirling her dark plait around her finger and then sucking on the end of it. Honestly. She's so girly, she's giving off invisible pink fumes.

‘It sucked – I made a right idiot of myself. Maybe YOU should go out with him,' I say.

‘Don't be so stupid,' she says. She gets up and changes the CD to some other weird Asian music. ‘I told you – my parents would go mad. I'm not allowed to date a non-Asian boy. Anyway, I don't fancy Adam Carter. But you do.'

My face must have fallen again, because Bindi's smile has faded too and she's looking at me with genuine concern.

‘Is there still no news?' she says in a softer voice.

I shake my head. For a moment I can't speak.

Two years.

Two years.

People keep telling us that things get easier with time, but when you've got this big puzzle and you can't find the answer to it, all that happens is that the frustration and anger get bigger and bigger, until they threaten to swallow up all the nice things in your life.

‘Sorry,' whispers Bindi. ‘I wish I could help.'

I let my hair fall over my face.

‘You do,' I say. ‘You're my best mate. That helps. But don't leave me, right?'

Bindi reaches over and brushes the hair out
of my eyes with her delicate long fingers.

‘Right,' she says.

We don't do a lot more talking after that.

I listen to Asian Network with Bindi and she tells me about her favourite DJ, and we test each other on Biology because we've got a mock exam tomorrow. And then Dad rings my mobile and asks if I want a lift, because he's just on his way home after dropping off the Big Cat Vet and he'll be passing near Bindi's house in a moment. I tell him not to bother, because I need the fresh air.

Then I hug Bindi and all her sisters and brother goodbye, hoist my black rucksack over my shoulders and set off on the twenty-minute walk home, except that Dad ends up driving past me anyway, so he hoots and I jump out of my skin. I climb into the van and sit there in silence while Dad talks about Hero, his biggest lion cub, who's just had some injection for something or another, and after a while I tune out his words and just stare at the windscreen wipers going back and forth. Another face pops into my head with a wide grin and curly hair, but I can't quite see his eyes any more and that panics me, so I shake the thoughts out of my head and try to focus on what Dad's telling me.

It's no good, though.

Seeing Bindi always makes me feel a bit better, but by the time I get home, that's all faded like a memory of one of those holidays which is too good to be true.

Now I am back in our white kitchen with the Aga and the big pine table and it all looks as it always does, but then there's the silence coming from upstairs, the silence that threatens to eat all of us up.

When will it ever get any easier?