It's a Girl Thing (22 page)

This is a fine time to be lying about, listening to records,
I think. Then I remember that last week, when Jimi didn't ask me out after collecting his hooded top, I was so depressed that I listened to track four, “Merry Go Round,” which is the saddest song on the Spike Saunders CD, thirty-two times in a row.

Maybe Dad really is upset after all.

I storm into my bedroom, snapping the door firmly shut and flinging myself on the bed, where I lie for almost twenty minutes brainstorming reasons my parents might have for splitting up.

I can't really think of anything valid.

I mean, they bicker quite a lot. But that's not really surprising, what with both of them being fairly irritating.

I suppose Mum does have that running niggle that Dad's family are all of a far lower social class than hers, and that lots of them are “career criminals,” while Dad always bitches about Mum's family having “delusions of grandeur” and are actually descended from Gypsies. But that can't be it, can it?

That's mostly a joke, isn't it? Well, so I thought.

And they argue about money a lot. Like when Dad forgets to pay bills and we get our meat supply canceled. Or when Mum goes out to buy a new dress and comes home with a new state-of-the-art trunk freezer worth over two thousand pounds. Yep, that argument was a doozy.

But they always get it together again.

Don't they?

I put on Spike again to drown out the sounds from the den.

Maybe one of them is seeing another person?

Oh, God, that can't be possible.

No, that would mean someone has literally spied either my mum or my dad and thought, “Oooh, hang on. That is one hot-tie over there! Be still, my beating heart. Blah blah blah . . .” before setting about wrecking my happy family home.

(Funny how you don't realize what you had until it's gone, eh? It was quite a happy home.)

But that doesn't make sense.

I mean, if I, Ronnie Ripperton, in the prime of my life, trying my damnedest to look gorgeous, can't get a single soul to fancy me, how the heck can a psychotic chef with bizarre eating habits or a man who perpetually smells of stale beer and ashtrays attract the opposite sex?

How?!

And then suddenly I start feeling very cold and alone in my little room. Because maybe this was all
my
fault.

I mean, I'm not much of a daughter, am I? And I'm always pulling stunts that annoy one of them. And then whoever I have the fight with bawls me out . . . leading the other one to start defending me. Then they both have a big row with each other.

This has definitely got much worse lately.

Mum's always on my back about something petty, and Dad usually tries to smooth things over by saying: “Oh, come on, Magda, leave her, she's only a little girl!” which drives my mother totally stark raving bonkers, as she knows full well that I'm fourteen and not a little girl at all. I'm completely capable of cleaning my own bedroom or remembering to lock the back door when I come home at night. Or all those other stupid, thoughtless things I do.

So maybe this is all my fault.

I really don't feel so clever now.

 

 

“Mum?”

“Oh, hello, darling,” she says. “Oh, so you've eventually called me. Have you run out of clean knickers or something?”

“I didn't realize you'd gone.”

“Exactly,” says Mum.

“Is that why you've gone?” I say, deciding to skip straight to the point of the phone call, sparing formalities. “Because I'm thoughtless and you have to wash my underwear and do loads of stuff for me?”

My voice is all wobbly now.

“Oh! Oh, God, no, Ronnie. No, not at all,” Mum says, realizing that I'm putting two and two together and coming up with 157. “I didn't mean that last bit. I know you're really busy at the moment. I'm not really annoyed you didn't notice I'd gone.”

“When are you coming home, Mum? And why are you there? And what's going on?” I say, mumbling all my key questions at once.

“It's okay, Ronnie, chill out,” says Mum.

“Chill out!? What are you doing at Nan's house?” I say, beginning to raise my voice.

Long pause.

“I'm having some time to think.”

“About what?”

“About what I want.”

“What, about whether you want to live here anymore!? What's wrong with living with me and Dad?” I say.

My mother has quite clearly gone mad.

“No, I need to think about the future,” says Mum.

“But you can do that here!” I snap back.

“I can't,” says Mum firmly. “Me and your dad . . . we want different things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, right now he wants me to live at the Fantastic Voyage. And I, well, I want to live at your nan's,” Mum says. Then she starts softly chuckling.

I am in no mood for her hilarity.

“Mother, have you been drinking?”

“I wish I had,” she sighs.

“Mum, I'm really getting freaked about all this now,” I say, even though freaked isn't really how I feel. I can't explain how I feel. A bit numb really. A bit like life as I know it has just unceremoniously crashed and burned, and I'm too stupid to even work out why.

“Just tell me what's going on,” I eventually say. And this time, by asking the obvious question, I seem to gain a smattering of information.

“Okay. Okay,” Mum sighs. “I know I'm being unfair, that
we're
being unfair. I just didn't see the point in dragging you into things. Look, shall we just say that something important has happened. And me and your dad have got different opinions on how to handle, er, it.”

“What, has a big bill arrived? Something like that? Or do you want to fire someone and he doesn't?”

“Er, no. Not like that. It's bigger than that. Look, don't worry about it—”

“Oh, all right, I won't worry about it then,” I snap at her.

And then we both don't say anything for ages. I can hear Nan's cuckoo clock ticking away in the background.

“Look, Ronnie, I'm really riled by what your dad said last night. I don't want to look at him at the moment,” she says. “I just need a few days—”

“Days?” I repeat.

“Or weeks. Months. I can't tell. You'll be fine whatever we decide to do. You're dead important to us, Ronnie,” says Mum. “I've gotta go. I need the toilet, Ronnie. I'll call you.”

And then she hung up.

 

 

I really don't know how to feel about all of this. So I opt for “angry.” And in strict alignment with the universal rule of bad moods, I decide to bum out the day of the very next person I come across. This just so happens to be my dad.

“Hmmph,”
I say, flouncing into the den, throwing the door back so heavily, it hits a nearby freestanding wall cabinet with a huge smash. I've only been told not to do this about seven zillion times before.

“Hello, sweet pea,” says my dad rather glumly. He's surrounded by mountains of old vinyl LPs, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays. It's almost as if he's forgotten that it's Friday evening and hundreds of beer addicts are heading toward the Fantastic Voyage for fun and lager-fueled frivolity. Oh, no, that's not a priority. He's too busy listening to old blues records.

“Why is Mum living at Nan's house? What have you done?” I begin, as subtly as a tornado.

“I've not DONE anything,” says Dad, looking deeply wounded. “Well, not much. Your mum's decided to move out. For a bit. Er, well, I hope for a bit anyhow. There's more space for her to think at your nan's.”

“Space to think!?” I splutter. “Why is everyone talking in riddles?”

“Hmmm,” says Dad, staring into the middle distance. “Actually, that's quite a good point, Ronno. I'm not sure what that means either.”

“Wonderful,” I say sarcastically.

“She'll be back, though,” announces Dad meekly, picking a bit of dried chicken tikka masala sauce off his shirt. He hasn't shaved for days either. “If she knows what's good for her.”

He doesn't look too much like a “Welcome Home” treat to me.

“You're really angry at me, aren't you?” he asks, perceptively noticing my eyes drilling into him and my nostrils flaring.

“Well, yeah. I am! I mean, it just makes me mad that no one tells me anything around here—”

“You hear about most things—”

“And I mean, there's only THREE of us in this house, so it's not too much to ask that I be informed of the latest departures and arrivals—”

“Actually, I wouldn't speak too soon on that one,” Dad mutters.

“But somehow,” I say, ignoring Dad's mutterings, “SOMEHOW I still get treated like a BABY!! And I'm not a BABY. I won't be treated like one anymore!!” I announce, pointing my finger at him.

“That's a good job, really, because . . . ,” Dad begins, but then he stops whatever it was he was going to say as tears begin to drizzle down my cheeks.

“Ronnie, you've got loads on your plate at the moment. It's your school festival in like seven days, isn't it?”

“Sheven daysh from tomorrowsh,” I say, snorting tears and snot back up my nose.

“Listen, I've been thinking about that. You know what you were saying on Wednesday? About more people buying tickets than you ever imagined? And about Claude having hassles with hiring equipment and all that sort of thing?”

“Yeah. We're all right now, though. Fleur's dad lent us a grand. I told you that too, didn't I?”

Dad went slightly white when I said that.

“Oh. No, no, I didn't know that. You can pay it back, can't you?” he asks, to which I just roll my eyes at him and thin my lips.

An adequate answer in my opinion.

“Well, anyhow, it was just that I was thinking. Well, you know that I used to dabble in the music industry before you were born and that I still know a load of the old faces who work touring with rock bands on the road?”

“Uh-huh,” I say. Of course I do. He's always going on about it.

“Well, seeing as this whole Blackwell Live thing is getting so big . . . well, how's about me calling some of my old mates up and seeing if they can lend a hand?” he says, grinning at me like this is the best idea in the world.

I stare at my father incredulously, without blinking, for about half a minute.

“Well, what do you reckon?” he says, clearly glad to be thinking about something other than my missing mum for five minutes. “Good idea?”

I stand up and walk toward the door, carefully preparing my exit speech. Dad has really done it this time.

“That is just typical! Really typical!!” I begin in a rather raised voice.

“What is?!” shouts Dad.

“YOU! You think I'm some sort of stupid kid with stupid mates and we can't do anything by ourselves. Like I need you and some other crinkly old duffers to sort out our mess? I don't believe it!” I shriek.

“Ronnie. Don't be daft. I didn't mean it like that, I just thought that—”

“Yeah, that's right, call me daft! I am daft. I'm really stupid, aren't I? I'm so stupid that you and Mum are splitting up and no one even tells me why.”

“Ronnie, calm down. Where are you going?!”

“I'm going out. Nobody cares where I'm going, anyway!” I yell. And by this point I'm pretty much just saying the first things that come into my head without really knowing why, just because shouting is making me feel better. Which does, by no means, excuse the following gems that drip from my lips.

“And because I hate you. I hate both of you. I hate being alive. I wish you'd never had me . . . in fact, I know that you two wish you'd never had me either!! Good-bye!!”

I've said so many shocking things in that last sentence that as I crunched shut the den door, my final view of my father's face was pure “rabbit caught in the headlights.”

So I throw back the gate of the Fantastic Voyage, I kick a nearby pile of refuse bags, I hiss at the neighbor's cat, who seems to be mocking me from atop an adjacent garage, then I begin stomping up the high street toward Fleur's gaff.

I feel amazingly angry, and by default I actually feel quite amazing.

Huh, I really told him, didn't I?!
I think, recalling every second of my outburst.
He knows where he stands now, doesn't he! Huh?

And on I plod . . . except that now with every shop I pass, and every few meters I travel, I'm becoming a little more creep ingly aware of what a total idiot I've been.

As the seconds tick past and I'm almost halfway to Fleur's, I'm beginning to realize just how hurt Dad looked and how nasty I was to him when he was probably just trying to be kind. And how much I just want to run back home, if my pride would let me, and tell him that I'm not mad at him. It's just that the thought of Mum leaving us makes me want to hurl with fear, and I'm stressed about the festival, and I don't really know why I said all that stuff.

And I'm dead sorry.

But I don't. As that seems a difficult thing to do, as opposed to just going to Fleur's house, bitching about him for a while, then watching a video. So I keep on walking.

And that's when I see them.

Jimi Steele and Panama Goodyear.

In the window of Paramount Pizza. Jimi's arm draped around Panama's shoulder, while Panama feeds him a tempting spoon of tiramisu. Within a millisecond Panama spots me and is waving, nudging Jimi, who looks up, attempting a smile that just looks extremely sheepish. Panama is distracted by this point, gently kissing the apple of Jimi's cheek.