Dustbin Baby (17 page)

‘So long as you do it carefully in the right colours,' I said, because Jodie nearly always went over the lines, and sometimes she coloured faces green and hair blue just for the fun of it.

‘OK, Miss Picky,' said Jodie. ‘I'll help you out but that won't be my
real
job. I'm going to be an actress. That's what I really want to do. Imagine, standing there, all lit up, with everyone listening, hanging on your every word!'

‘Maybe one of my stories could be turned into a play and then you could have the star part.'

‘Yeah, I'll be an overnight success and be offered mega millions to make movies and we'll live together in a huge great mansion,' said Jodie.

‘What does a mansion look like?' I said. ‘Can it have towers? Can our room be right at the top of a tower?'

‘
All
the rooms are our rooms, but we'll share a very special room right at the top of a tower, only I'm not going to let you grow your hair any longer.' She pulled one of my plaits. ‘I don't want you tossing it out of the window and letting any wicked old witches climb up it.' Jodie nudged me. She had started to have a lot of arguments with our mother. She often called her a witch – or worse – but only under her breath.

‘Don't worry, I'll keep my plaits safely tied up. No access for wicked witches,' I said, giggling, though I felt a bit mean to Mum.

‘What about handsome princes?'

‘
Definitely
not,' I said. ‘It'll be just you and me in Mansion Towers, living happily ever after.'

It was just our silly early-morning game, though I took it more seriously than Jodie. I drew our imaginary mansion, often slicing it open like a doll's house so I could illustrate every room. I gave us a huge black velvet sofa with two big black toy pumas lolling at either end. We had two real black cats for luck lapping from little bowls in the kitchen, two poodles curled up together in their dog basket, while twin black ponies grazed in a paddock beside our rose garden. I coloured each rose carefully and separately, deep red, salmon, peach, very pale pink, apricot and yellow. I even tried to do every blade of grass individually but had to see sense after dabbing delicately for half an hour, my hand aching.

I gave us a four-poster bed with red velvet curtains and a ruby chandelier, and one wall was a vast television screen. We had a turquoise swim- ming pool in the basement (with our twin pet dolphins) and a roof garden between the towers where skylarks and bluebirds skimmed the blossom trees.

I printed the title of each of our books in the library in weeny writing and drew every item of food on our kitchen shelves. I gave us a playroom with a trampoline and a trapeze and a jukebox, and one of those machines you get at the seaside where you have to manoeuvre a crane to pick up little furry teddies. I drew tiny teddies every colour of the rainbow, and I had a shelf of big teddies in our bedroom, and a shelf of old-fashioned dolls with real hair and glass eyes, and a splendid rocking horse big enough for both of us to ride on.

I talked about it to Jodie as if we'd really live there one day. Sometimes I imagined it so vividly it seemed like a real place. I just had to work out which road to take out of town and then I'd round a corner and spot the towers. I'd run fast, through the elaborate wrought-iron gates, up to the front door with the big lion's-head knocker. I'd know how to press the lion's snout with my finger and the door would spring open and I'd step inside and Jodie would be there waiting for me.

I wasn't stupid, I knew it wasn't really real, but it felt as if it might be all the same.

Then one morning at breakfast everything changed. I was sitting at the kitchen table nibbling at a honey sandwich. I liked opening the sandwich up and licking the honey, letting it ooze over my tongue, but I did it quickly and furtively when Mum wasn't looking. She was very strict about table manners. She was forever nagging Jodie about sitting up straight and spooning her corn- flakes up quietly without clanking the spoon against the bowl. Jodie slumped further into an S shape and clanked until she nearly cracked the china. Mum took hold of her by the shoulders and gave her a good shaking.

‘Stop winding me up, you contrary little whatsit,' she said, going
shake shake shake
.

Jodie's head rocked backwards and forwards on her stiff shoulders.

‘You're hurting her!' said Dad, putting down his
Daily Express
and looking anxious.

‘She's not hurting me,' Jodie gasped, waggling her head herself, and then she started da-da-da-ing part of that weird old ‘Bohemian Rhapsody' song when everyone bangs their heads to the music.

‘Stop that silly row! I suppose you think you're funny,' said Mum.

But Dad was laughing and shaking his own head. ‘You're a right head-case, our Jodie,' he said.

‘Trust you to encourage her, Joe,' said Mum. ‘Why do you always have to take Jodie's side?'

‘Because I'm my daddy's girl,' said Jodie, batting her eyelashes at Dad.

She was too. She was always in trouble now, bunking off school and staying out late. Mum could shake her head until it snapped right off her shoul- ders but she couldn't control her. But Dad could still sometimes make her hang her head and cry because she'd worried them so.

He'd never say a bad word against Jodie.

‘It's not her fault. OK, she's always been a bit headstrong, but she's basically been a good little kid. She's just got in with the wrong crowd now, that's all. She's no worse than any of her mates at school,' he said.

‘Quite!' said Mum. ‘Moorcroft's a rubbish school. The kids aren't taught properly at all. They just run wild. Half of them are in trouble with the police. It was the biggest mistake in the world letting our Jodie go there. She's heading for trouble in a big way. Just
look
at her!'

I thought Jodie looked wonderful. She used to have pale mousy hair in meek little plaits but now she'd dyed her hair a dark orangy-red with streaky gold bits. She wore it in a funny spiky ponytail with a fringe she'd cut herself. Dad said she looked like a pot of marmalade – he'd spread her on toast if she didn't watch out. Mum said Jodie had ruined her hair and now she looked tough and tarty. Jodie was thrilled. She
wanted
to look tough and tarty.

Then there were her ears. Jodie had been begging Mum to let her have her ears pierced. Mum always said no, so last year Jodie went off and got her ears pierced herself. She kept going back, so there are five extra little rings up one ear.

‘You've got more perforations than a blooming colander,' said Dad.

Mum was outraged at each and every new piercing.

‘Hey, hey, they're only pretty little earrings,' said Dad. ‘It's not as if she's got a nose-stud or a tattoo.'

‘
Yet
!' Jodie whispered to me.

She'd tried going to a tattoo parlour but they said she was too young. She inked butterflies and blue- birds and daisy chains up and down her arms and legs with my felt pens instead. She looked incred- ible in her underwear with her red-gold hair and her earrings and her fake tattoos – but her clothes were mostly as dull and little-girly as mine. Jodie didn't have enough money to buy much herself. Mum was in charge when it came to clothes- buying. Dad didn't dare slip Jodie some money any more. She'd told him this story about her clunky school shoes rubbing her toes sore, so he gave her forty pounds for some new ones. She bought her first pair of proper high heels, fantastic flashy sparkly red shoes, and clacked happily round the house in them, deaf to Mum's fury. She let me try them out. They were so high I immediately fell over, twisting my ankle, but I didn't care. I felt like Dorothy wearing her ruby slippers in
The Wizard of Oz
.

Jodie was wearing the clunky school shoes this morning, and the grey Moorcroft uniform. She'd done her best to customize it, hitching up the skirt as high as she could, and she'd pinned funny badges on her blazer. She'd inked little cartoon characters all over her school tie. Mum started on a new nag about the tie, but she interrupted herself when she heard the letterbox bang.

‘Post, Pearl. Go and get it, pet.'

I'm Pearl. When I was born, Mum called me her precious little pearl and the name stuck. I was born prematurely and had to stay tucked up in an incu- bator for more than a month. I only weighed a kilo and was still so little when they were allowed to bring me home that Dad could cradle me in one of his hands. They were very worried about Jodie's reaction to me. She was a harem-scarem little girl who always twisted off her dolls' heads and kicked her teddies – but she was incredibly careful with me. She held me very gently and kissed my little wrinkled forehead and stroked my fluffy hair and said I was the best little sister in the whole world.

I picked up the post. A catalogue for Mum (she wrote off for them all – clothes, furniture, commem- orative plates, reproduction china dolls – anything she thought would add a touch of class to our household) and a letter addressed to Mr and Mrs Wells – Mum and Dad. A proper letter in a big white envelope, not a bill.

I wondered who would be writing to them. I hoped it wasn't a letter from the head of Moorcroft complaining about Jodie. I knew she and her friends had been caught smoking once or twice, and sometimes they sneaked out of school at lunch time to go and get chips and didn't always bother to go back again. Jodie didn't
like
smoking, she told me privately; it made her feel sick and dizzy, and she also said the school chips were much better than the pale greasy ones in polystyrene pouches from the chippy, but she was trying to keep in with Marie and Siobhan and Shanice. They were the three toughest girls in Jodie's class. If you kept them on your side, you were laughing.

‘Pearl?' Mum called.

I fingered the letter in my hand, wondering if I should stick it up under my school sweater until we could steam it open in private. But then Mum came out into the hall and saw the letter before I could whip it out of sight. She barely glanced at the cata- logue, even though it was the one for little enamel pill boxes, one of her favourites. She took hold of the letter and ran her finger under the seal.

‘It's for Dad too,' I said quickly. He'd be softer on Jodie; he always was.

‘Mr
and
Mrs,' said Mum, opening it.

There was a letter inside and some sort of brochure. I peered at it as best I could. I saw the words
boarding school
. My heart started beating fast.
Boarding school, boarding school, boarding school!
Oh God, they were going to send Jodie to boarding school. I wouldn't be able to bear it.

‘No, Mum!' I said, my voice a little squeak.

Mum was reading the letter intently, her head moving from side to side. ‘No what?' she murmured, still reading.

‘Don't send Jodie away!' I said.

Mum blinked at me. ‘Don't be silly,' she said, walking back into the living room. She flapped the letter in front of Dad's face.

‘Look, Joe, look!' she said. ‘Here it is in black and white!'

‘Well I'll be damned!' said Dad.

‘I told you so!' said Mum triumphantly.

Jodie pushed her cornflakes bowl away and got up from the table, taking no notice.

‘Sit down, Jodie,' said Mum.

‘But I'll be late for school,' said Jodie.

‘It won't matter just this once,' said Mum. ‘Sit
down
! You too, Pearl. Your dad and I have got some- thing to tell you.'

‘What?' said Jodie, sitting back on the very edge of her chair. ‘You're getting a divorce?'

‘Don't be ridiculous!'

‘You're going to have another baby?'

‘Stop it now! Just button that lip of yours for two seconds.'

Jodie mimed buttoning her lips. I copied her, zipping mine.

Mum glared. ‘Now, don't start copying your sister, miss! Shame on you, Jodie, you're a bad example. It's just as well you'll be making a move. I can't believe how badly you behave nowadays.'

‘You
are
sending her off to this boarding school!' I wailed.

‘
What
boarding school?' said Jodie, looking star- tled. ‘You mean you're getting rid of me?'

‘No, no, of course we're not,' said Dad. ‘We're
all
going. I've got a new job. We both have, your mum and me.'

We stared at them. New jobs? At a
school
? Dad worked as a carpenter for a small building firm and Mum was a waitress at Jenny's Teashop opposite the town hall.

‘Are you going to be teachers?' I said doubtfully.

Dad burst out laughing. ‘Heaven help any pupils if I had to teach them their reading and writing! No, no, sweetheart, I'm going to be the school care- taker and your mum's going to be the school cook. We saw this advert for a married couple and it seemed like we might fit the bill.'

‘It's time for a move,' said Mum. ‘We need to get you girls away to a decent environment where you can grow up into little ladies.'

Jodie made a very unladylike noise. ‘We like it here, don't we, Pearl? We don't want to go to some awful jolly-hockey-sticks boarding school.'

I picked up the school brochure. I shivered when I saw the coloured photograph of the huge grey Victorian building. My fingers traced the gables and turrets and the tower. It was called Melchester College, but it was just like my dream-world Mansion Towers.

‘Look!' I said, pointing. ‘Look, Jodie!'

Jodie looked too. She bit her lip, fiddling with the little row of earrings running down her left ear. ‘We'd live
there
?' she said.

‘There's a special caretaker's flat,' said Dad.

‘It's got all the mod cons even though it all looks so old fashioned,' said Mum.

‘So you've both been to see it? When?' said Jodie. ‘Why didn't you tell us? Did you fix it all up behind our backs?'