By Any Other Name (5 page)

‘A-star,’ I say quietly.

‘Oh!’ She stops rustling the papers. ‘Oh! Hmm,
très bien. Oui!
It’s not easy to change schools at this point, but
tant pis
. We shall manage,
non
?’

‘
Oui, madame
.’

‘Perhaps you should sit with Nicole and Ella. Do you know anyone at Daneshill?’

‘
Non, madame
.’

‘Yes, with Nicole and Ella then.’ She nods to dismiss me and I slide into the chair next to Nicole. Opposite her is a girl with wavy, mouse-coloured hair who must be Ella.

‘Year 11, vocab lists from last lesson – read through.
En Vacances, s’il vous plâit!
’ Mme Carrière flicks through a range of books on the shelves
behind her as she speaks, pulling several out with brisk efficiency and placing them on the table in front of me. ‘
Voici, Holly, vos cahiers et manuels
.’

I’m glad Nicole warned me that we can’t talk in this lesson, and more than that I’m glad that we
aren’t
allowed to. Glad of the excuse to be quiet and reassess.
Mme Carrière is OK. She’s not friendly but she’s businesslike. You’ll know where you stand with her, and that’s a relief to someone trying to work out how to fit
in.

The classroom door opens quietly and Emo Boy slopes in. Mme Carrière turns sharply and her mouth is open to scold, but when she sees him her face changes and she pulls back from the
telling-off she was about to give him.

‘Joe, you’re late,’ is all she says.

‘Sorry,’ he mutters. He doesn’t offer any explanation, but she seems to accept that.

He walks towards our table. I scan the room quickly, stiffening. Oh no! Only one seat left, opposite me. He takes it. Nicole and Ella don’t react so perhaps this is where he usually sits.
Which means, yuck, he’ll be opposite me in every French lesson. Like I need someone scowling at me three times a week.

He doesn’t speak to us, just gets his books out of his bag without even looking over. I take a peek at his bag – a scruffy rucksack with badges all over it. Badges with band names
I’ve never heard of. I don’t need to wonder why he was late because the stench of cigarette smoke coming from him makes my nose wrinkle.

As the lesson gets under way, Mme Carrière moves round the room, asking us in turn for five-sentence summaries of our holiday. ‘You need to add some less familiar vocabulary to
shine in your oral exam. Throw in a few words or phrases that others won’t. Make sure you stand out.’

The first few people she asks stumble their sentences out. I’m confident when it comes to my turn, bolstered by summer holidays in Brittany that Holly shouldn’t remember, though the
language centre in her brain can’t forget them to order. I know my accent’s good and Mme Carrière’s eyebrows do their Gallic shrug again. Perhaps nobody around here goes on
holiday to France to improve their language skills. Too busy milking cows or shearing sheep or having country fêtes with hog roasts, or whatever they do in villages that they think is
living.

The Emo goes next and it’s the turn of my eyebrows to shoot up. His speech is quick, like a native’s, and his accent is faultless. Clever Emo Freak? No, Emo
Geek
!

I adjust his status from being the boy who thinks he’s too cool for life as we know it to being the geek no one likes. Maybe he stinks because he’s been bullied by smokers blowing it
in his face until he gives up his lunch money. The boy who goes home and cuts himself because no one will talk to him. Who writes really bad poetry on a LiveJournal account nobody reads, about how
no one understands him because he’s so deep.

I’m being really silly, but somehow thinking all this bad stuff about him cheers me up.

Nicole and Ella do their sentences and he writes in his exercise book, head down, fringe over his face. He chews his lips while he works and when his mouth isn’t screwed up because
he’s scowling, it’s actually quite a nice shape. Noticeably. Better than most other boys I know. Oh well, everyone has something about them that’s attractive-ish, I guess. I feel
mean for a second for thinking that nasty stuff a few moments ago, but after all he was the one who gave me evils when we moved in and he was mean in English so I shouldn’t really feel that
bad. It isn’t as if he knows what I’m thinking.

As I watch him covertly, a wave of dislike surges up as I remember how uncomfortable he made me feel outside my house that first day, and again today in English class. The sensation makes me
feel better somehow, like the release you get when you’re angry and thump the pillow or throw a cushion at the wall.

There are all these simmering feelings that normally hide inside me – the ones I can’t talk to friends about because I don’t have friends now and, even if I did, I
couldn’t talk to them about
that
. . . I can’t talk to Mum and Dad about them either because they have their own worries to face in all of this mess, as well as dealing with
Katie’s problems . . . All of the feelings that sometimes overwhelm – in that second, I channel them towards a focus. Him.

Insanely crazy and totally wrong, it helps. For that moment, I have a target. One I can see, that doesn’t hide in shadows. One right here, right now. Tangible.

I concentrate all my anger and confusion and fear on to him. On to hating him. My scapegoat. My own personal whipping boy.

He looks up at me. His lip curls slightly, as if I’m too ugly to be near him. His dark eyes are just as confrontational as when I first saw him.

He makes it easy for me to turn him into a villain.

‘H
ow was your first day? Did you make any friends?’ Mum puts the salad bowl down in the middle of the table as we sit down to dinner
and looks at me expectantly. The scrubbed farmhouse table from our old kitchen looks silly in this more modern kitchen-diner, but the big American oak table we had in the dining room wouldn’t
have fitted in here. It seated twelve and when Mum and Dad had dinner parties –

Don’t!

But it’s so hard to stop. Memories creep up on me when I’m not expecting them, and I’m plunged again into an icy-cold pool of the misery of missing home. It steals my breath
and I feel the pain sharp and new every time it happens.

I pick up a slice of pizza and pretend to nibble the crust. ‘I talked to a few people in my classes.’ Nicole had introduced me to some other girls at break. They were a lot like her:
quietish, prettyish, niceish. Girls I’d never have noticed before. I couldn’t remember which name went with which face, they were so much the same.

I hadn’t had any other lessons with Nicole for the rest of the day, but she and Ella met me at lunch and showed me the dining hall. Part of me would rather have been on my own than making
the effort to talk to them, remembering my role and trying not to make any slips. But another part would have been crushed to have to sit alone in the cafeteria. It would be OK if I was invisible
and I could sit there and watch people. Learn about this strange environment I’ve been dropped into. Even so, I couldn’t face people looking at me so I kept my head down while I ate
lunch – some disgusting pasta and sauce served in a cardboard tub. Nicole and Ella probably think I’m shy. Maybe I am now. Maybe that’s what Holly Latham is.

Nobody else in my classes spoke to me for the rest of the day. That was fine though. Most people seem too focused on the exams looming to pay attention to a newbie who gives every appearance of
not wanting to talk to them either. Is this who Holly is? Holly the
Geek
? No, that’s a step too far. I rebel at that thought.

Katie arranges the salad around her plate in a pattern. Only when she’s got it all exactly where she wants it will she start eating, and nobody is allowed to arrange it for her or to help.
She must do it herself. She puts the cherry tomato halves on the rim of the plate like numbers on a clock face. Cucumber slices go beneath in a ring. Lettuce is piled in the middle, with pepper
rings crowning them. Her pizza slices are on another plate because she screams if hot food touches cold food. She eats the salad first, then the pizza. There’s something hypnotic about
watching her. She’s been doing this for three or four years in exactly the same way and the repetitiveness pulls me back to another room, another house, another life.

I’m Lou . . . and I’m happy . . . safe . . . no worries . . . my world is turning as it should . . .

‘Are you OK – Holly?’ Mum asks sharply. There’s that unnatural moment’s pause between her breath in to speak and her actually saying my name. It brings me back. My
world tilts on its axis again.

‘Just tired. Today was kind of stressful.’

Katie nibbles on a cucumber slice now the tomatoes are gone.

Mum makes a sympathetic face. ‘Of course. It’ll be easier tomorrow, darling. But I’ll run you a nice hot bath after dinner and you can have a relaxing soak.’

Mum firmly believes that bubble bath can cure most ills and it’s only when I see her pouring the last of her Molton Brown foam under the hot tap that I realise she knows how stressed I was
about my first day in the new school. Every Christmas, Dad buys her a hamper with those bath gels, but not the last one. That Christmas was marked by a few hastily wrapped presents and a pub lunch,
followed by afternoon TV in a strange house in Devon surrounded by cardboard boxes. We tried to be cheerful, but we’re a family who love the old rituals: the patchwork stockings with our
names cross-stitched on the top, hung at the foot of the bed; gathering round the tree in the morning with coffee and OJ and croissants to open our presents; the pre-lunch walk to get out of
Mum’s way while she does the last preparations in peace; Dad’s stupid festive CDs playing in the background all day. These are the things that make it Christmas, that make us safe and
secure and at home.

Away from the familiar patterns, Christmas Day felt like walking a rope bridge over a waterfall. I finally understood how Katie must feel when we break her routine. I hugged my sister extra hard
that day.

‘Ready, darling,’ Mum calls as I collect my bathrobe.

‘I could have done it myself.’ I’m guilty that she’s wasting her time on me when she has so much to do herself.

She strokes my hair. ‘I know, but a little pampering after a hard day never hurt anyone.’

Mum always could read me better than anyone. I smile a thank you and hook my robe on the bathroom door. She closes it quietly behind me and the scent of ginger and some flower I don’t
recognise envelops me. I sink into the warm water gratefully and inhale the aroma. Mum’s right – a long soak in expensive bubbles does make the world seem a better place for a
while.

I breathe in and out, and in and out, letting the scent and the warmth calm me until I feel boneless and floaty. When I close my eyes, the smell transports me back to my old bathroom: the
en-suite with its cool, tiled floor, heated chrome towel rail with soft fluffy towels waiting. I pretend I’m there. It’s wrong, I know, but I can’t resist. Today was my hardest
ever day of being Holly. Maybe because it was my first day alone? I don’t know. I just know I’m sick of her.

I breathe in. I breathe out.

I’m Lou again now. Holly’s put to sleep. When I get out of the bath and pad through on to the white carpet in my bedroom, I’ll turn on my netbook and check out my Facebook
page. Listen to the latest YouTube tracks that Kirsten’s linked to. Flick through Talia’s photo uploads. See who’s changed their relationship status, and who’s written what
on their wall, while I dry off and lounge on the bed.

And I can’t wait to do it. The bolt of elation at the thought of it is like an electric shock. I splash around with the soap hastily and wash my hair in record time. I hop out of the bath,
ignoring that it’s grotty lino under my feet, not smooth tiles. I ignore that I have to walk down the hall to my room and that there’s hard grey cord carpet under my feet when I get
there. I ignore the fact that when I log into my netbook, my Facebook account isn’t saved in my Favourites and I have to do a search to find my page.

My fingers tremble as I key in my account name and password.

I ignore the voice that tells me I shouldn’t be doing this.

Ignore everything I’ve been told.

Ignore . . . ignore . . . ignore.

My profile page flashes up.

Four weeks ago, from Tasha:

That’s the last post on my wall. There’s nothing since.

I scroll down and read the earlier posts from the start. 6th December at 19.36 from Tasha.

7th December at 18.56 from Kirsten.

7th December at 19.05 from Tasha.

It’s hard to read some of them but I do, through the whole lot since the day Holly was born. Next I click on to Tasha’s page and read that. Then Kirsten’s, Talia’s,
Lea’s . . .