It's a Girl Thing (10 page)

So Mum said, “Why didn't you ask me anyhow? You asked your dad! You think I'm an ogre, don't you?”

So I said, “No, no, you're not . . . you're just a . . . It's just that . . . Oh, God, yes, you ARE an ogre sometimes.”

This made Mum look sadder.

So then I told her all about Blackwell Live, and about Claude's plan, and about our meeting with McGraw, then about Guinevere shouting at McGraw. This cheered Mum up loads.

“Ha ha ha
. . . Rocket up his you know where!
” Mum repeated. “That's pretty terrible. You girls shouldn't have heard that, really, y'know? Mrs. Guinevere would get into trouble. . . . Still funny, though.” She laughed.

Then I told her about the auditions and all about Lost Messiah, and the website and the tickets . . . by this point I was rabbiting away really quickly, and my palms were sweating again.

“I'm really scared, Mum,” I eventually said.

We both stared at the TV again.

When I looked at Mum next, she really was crying, vast rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks.

“I think this is all great!” Mum sniffed.

“You do?”

“Yes, it's a wonderful idea, I'm really proud of you.”

“I've not done anything yet . . . and we might mess it all up,” I said.

“I'm sure you won't,” Mum said. “This is so great. . . . I mean . . . when I had you, I was always worried that . . . well, you know, what if something bad happened to me when you were little? You, well, you'd not be able to look after yourself. And that used to upset me . . . but now I look at you, and you're like a young woman, you're taking the initiative to do all this great stuff . . . you know? You're doing your own thing. That makes me really happy.”

I'd like to be able to say that this was one of those important mother-to-daughter chats, one I'll be able to look back on in years to come, but I'll be honest with you: I didn't have a Scooby-Doo what Mum was blathering on about.

Mum was sitting there peering at me.

“What I'm saying is,” Mum continued, “it's not easy being a mum, and the world is such a horrible place to bring a little girl into . . .”
Sniiiiiiiiiffff.
“And I used to worry all the time that sometimes I don't make a very good job of things . . . but then I look at you, and I hear about the things you do . . . and I know that I did all right.”

Mum produced almost an entire man-size box of Kleenex from her pocket and blew her nose really loudly; in fact, so loudly that she could have blown a bit of her brain out.

“I've not been a bad mum, have I?” Mum said suddenly. Like my opinion at this moment really mattered.

“What? Of course you've not been a bad mum,” I said. What a stupid thing to ask. “Mum! You've been a top mum . . . hang on, you
still are
a top mum. What are you talking about?”

Mum continued, looking at me with her head slightly tilted: “I've just been wondering lately. What kind of a world is this to bring babies into? That sort of thing.”

“That's really, er, heavy,” I say, rather uselessly.

Mum must be taking this row with Dad really to heart if she's thinking all this crazy rubbish.

“Mum, you're being dead silly here. I mean, you're wrong. Totally wrong . . . I mean, I know that me and you fight a lot these days, but most of the time we have a brilliant laugh. You're, like, the coolest mum out of my whole class.”

Mum cheered up when I said that.

“How am I
cool?
” she said, dabbing her eyes.

“You just are,” I said. Mum creased her brow slightly. “Right, okay . . . ,” I said. “Well, you were the only mum I knew when I was a little girl who would flambé my rice pudding at the supper table with a proper chef's blowtorch like on TV cooking programs. Like,
woooooosh!
On fire!”

“Yeah, that was kind of cool,” Mum admitted, chuckling. “Probably not very safe, but cool.”

“And we used to bake loads of pies and cakes together when I was little. That was excellent . . . I mean, I know we don't bake together that much now, cos it's a bit, well, babyish. But, hey, we can do that sort of thing again if you want?” I said. I felt a bit bad now for always trying to be so independent. Those days were good fun.

“I'm sure we can,” Mum announced, smiling. “There'll be more time for babyish things, I'm sure. Everything doesn't have to be serious in this house.”

“Nah,” I said, grabbing the remote and flicking the channel on to cartoons.

“Ronnie, I really think things are going to be fine with your festival,” Mum said. “You're a very competent young lady.”

Even though it was Mum saying it, this was still one of the best things anyone has ever said to me.

Then she stood up, announced the kitchen was opening early and padded off.

Next time I saw Mum, later on today, she was throwing around a lump of dough as big as her head and shouting at Muriel, our sous-chef. She seemed to be quite enjoying herself.

Weird.

It's now Sunday night. This weekend has totally dragged.

Both Claude and Fleur have been busy doing family stuff. Claude had to go to her cousin Gerrard's house for her great-uncle Leonard's birthday party (
party
is not the term any of the LBD would use to describe such events). Fleur, on the other hand, has had a huge row with Evil Paddy over the family phone bill. She's been addressing this debt by polishing Paddy's BMW and accompanying him to see her gran in the old folks' home. Miss Swan insists she doesn't give a hoot about Paddy and how he feels about her, like she's so rock 'n' roll that Paddy's just a housemate she'd rather be rid of; likewise, Paddy treats Fleur like his evil nemesis, always on the prowl to rid him of his wages. Nice ruse, fellas, but I don't buy this at all: They're as thick as thieves really. They actually enjoy kicking about together, especially at the old folks' home, which is not a barrel of laughs.

Fleur says that when she visits her gran—who is mad, blind, and has only two subjects of conversation, the Second World War and the escalating price of canned peaches—well, it's difficult to work out who in the room wants to be dead the most.

That's really sad, isn't it?

I don't want to ever get that old.

Being abandoned by the LBD sucks. I've tried to occupy my time usefully (I sorted my CDs into alphabetical order and made a list of other CDs I need to buy), I've listened to my new Spike Saunders CD
To Hell and Back
about twelve times and learned all the words to a few tracks, and I've tried my very best to keep my mind off my worries.

Somehow I'm still a heady mixture of anxious and bored rigid.

The thing is, it's tricky trying to be bored at the Fantastic Voyage. If you make it too obvious, there's a good chance Loz or Magda will find you something useful you could be doing. Something like hosing down the cellar, or polishing various brass fixtures and fittings in the saloon bar, or even cleaning the front windows in full view of the high street traffic jam.

You DO NOT, repeat, NOT want that.

Especially not the windows option. Believe me, so many Blackwell kids will travel past you on the bus, grinning their heads off and waving, you may as well place an advert in the school newsletter announcing you're changing your name to Billy No-Mates.

My saving grace has been that it's drizzled all weekend, meaning at least I could skulk alone in my room without my parents harassing me too much. Lordy, if the weekend had been sunny, it would have been a different matter entirely. I've noticed, over the past fourteen years, that the moment the sunshine appears, grown adults seem to become totally obsessed that young people are “making the most of the sun.” (Ah, there's a sentence that fills me with dread.) Oh, yes, if the sun even pokes its head from behind a cloud for ten minutes above the Fantastic Voyage, rest assured my parents are straight into my room, poking me with a stick, nagging me to “go out and enjoy the heat wave” and “stop missing the best part of the day” or even “go to the shop and buy ice cream cones for me and your dad.”

But as I say, it rained this weekend anyhow and, rather ingeniously, on Saturday morning I took a can of furniture polish and a feather duster into my bedroom, then lay on my bed watching crappy TV with it close at hand. Every time Loz or Magda knocked, I jumped up and pretended to be polishing the same fifty centimeters of window ledge. This has kept them satisfied for the last forty-eight hours.

 

 

Is that the house phone?

It certainly
sounds
like our house phone.

Well, it's not for me, anyway.

Nobody calls me on the house-phone line, not now that I've got my cell phone.

Phhhh, I'm not answering it.

I'm still not answering it. It can ring as much as it likes.

“Ronnnnnnnnnieeee! Answer that flipping phone! We've got a full bar down here! I know you're up there, you lazy little sloth,” shouts Dad.

Damn, better answer it.

“Hello,” I say. “The Fantastic Voyage Public House and Torture Chamber. Can I help you?”

“Yes, you can, Miss Ripperton, it's Miss Swan here,” says Fleur.

“FLEUR!? Why are you calling the house phone?” I say.

“Can I put you on hold a moment?” says Fleur.

“Eh?” I say. I can hear Fleur pressing buttons on her phone.

“Hello, Ronnie, this is Claude,” says Claudette's unmistakable voice.

“Excellent!” squeals Fleur.

“Claude, what is going on? Are you both at Fleur's house?”

“No, I'm at my own house!!” says Claude.

“And I'm at my own house too!!” shouts Fleur. “Paddy has had a conference call service fitted to his study phone line! Now we can all talk at once!!”

“Ha ha ha—heeeeellllllllllo!!” we all shout, giggling.

This is truly a momentous occasion. I'm experiencing the full splendor of an LBD meeting from the comfort of my own living room. I need never leave the house again!

“Soooo . . . Good weekend, Ronnie?” asks Fleur.

“Sucky weekend,” I correct her.

“Oh, dear, well, what about you, Claude? Fun at Uncle Leonard's?” Fleur asks.

“Hmmm . . . It was a family dinner,” grumbles Claude. “Everything was okay till we sat down to eat . . . when I discovered that I'd been put on a separate coffee table in the living room to eat with all the other ‘little people.' ”

We all groan.

“I spent an hour trying to dissuade my six-year-old cousin from sticking butter beans up her nose.”

“Bummer,” I say.

“Hang on, Fleur,” interrupts Claude. “Weren't you actually grounded this weekend
because
of the phone bill? Should we really be conference calling?”

“Ooooh, no, I wasn't grounded because of how much the phone bill was,” sighs Fleur. “Well, not as such. It was something else . . .”

Fleur leaves a long pause.

“Oh, you know what my dad's like,” she continues. “He's a total schizoid. Actually, he's downstairs cleaning his guns, declaring war on the Swan family right now, just cos Josh has knocked a side mirror off Mum's Volkswagen.” Fleur tuts. “He needs to chill out.”

“So, what did you do to get grounded, then?” asks Claude.

“Oh, right, yeah, well, Paddy got this letter through from British Telecom about his private study phone bill,” says Fleur. “They said he'd been entered into a sweepstakes for a Special Sunshine Holiday in Martinique—”

“He grounded you for that?” I ask idiotically.

There's bound to be more to it than that.

“Well, no, he was pretty psyched about that, actually. But the letter said that the holiday was for nine people: Paddy and his top eight Friends and Family Numbers,” explains Fleur.

“What a totally cool competition!” I say.

“What are Friends and Family Numbers?” asks Claude.

“Oh, something boring about you choosing the people who you spend the most money talking to,” says Fleur. “Then you register them with phone company bods and get a discount on the calls.”

“Ahhh, I get you,” says Claude.

“Well, ahem, except Paddy didn't,” says Fleur.

“Does Paddy not like any of his friends and family?” I ask.

“Not enough to call any of them,” says Fleur. “So he didn't register any of his numbers.”

“So, why are you in trouble?” I ask.

“Well, the stupid phone people automatically registered some for him, going by who he calls the most. So, ahem, this morning Paddy received a letter saying he could be going on a Special Sunshine Martinique Holiday with, ahem, both of you two, Junior Watson, Dion, Johnny Goodman from the lower sixth, oh, yeah, and that lad from Shrewsbury that I snogged in Rimini last year.”

“Ouch,” we both say.

“No, no, it gets worse,” says Fleur. “Also on the list was Paramount Pizza Home Delivery and Lucky House Cantonese Noodle Bar. I've been, ahem, sort of using his study phone when he wasn't looking.”

“Nooooooooo!” we both squeal, cringing.

“You are so busted!” I say.

“Tell me about it,” sighs Fleur. “I've never seen him so angry. He couldn't speak for about twenty minutes. Then he said I was a luxury he couldn't afford and he was handing me over to social services.”