Jacky Daydream (26 page)

I don’t think she had any friends. She wasn’t particularly teased in the playground. She was simply shunned.

I shunned her too in front of the others, but if we happened to fetch up together – before school in the classroom, walking down the corridor, in the girls’ toilets – I’d make a few hesitant overtures.

‘I hope old Brandy Balls isn’t in a bad mood today!’

‘Can you work out how to do those problems? I haven’t got a clue!’

‘Hurray, it’s raining! No PT! I do hope we can do country dancing instead.’

She’d smile at me and murmur something in reply. One day, when I found her combing the tails of her sleek plaits in the cloakroom, I said, ‘You’re so lucky to have such lovely long hair.’

I said it because I genuinely thought she had lovely hair. I was also trying to be kind, because Pat rarely got compliments. Her cheeks went a little pinker. She smiled at me and said nothing, but there
was
such a wry and wistful expression on her face. She knew why I was saying it. She felt pleased but patronized. Why should she feel humbly grateful for a crumb of kindness? Why should she be singled out to be the sad girl in the class? She didn’t seem to eat more than anyone else. She wasn’t lazy. She puffed along heroically after us when we were made to run round and round the playground.

‘I can’t
help
being fat,’ she said. ‘It’s my metabolism.’

I didn’t know what her metabolism was. I imagined it like a night monster, crouching on her chest in the small hours, funnelling double cream and melted chocolate up her nostrils as she slept.

I nodded sympathetically. ‘It doesn’t matter, being fat,’ I said, though we both knew it mattered tremendously.

Pat wasn’t taken seriously by anyone at school. She wasn’t allowed to be Pat the Person, with her own personality. She was simply Fat Pat, a sad cartoon girl waddling in our midst.

Then she suddenly wasn’t in our midst any more. We came back to school after a half-term holiday and she wasn’t there. Her seat was empty. Her name wasn’t called in register. We didn’t really think anything of it. Not until we filed into assembly and saw Mr Pearson standing on the stage, looking very grave.

‘I’ve got some very sad news for you, children. I’m sure you all know Pat in Mr Branson’s class. I’m afraid she passed away during the holiday. Our thoughts are with her poor parents. Let us all say a prayer for Pat.’

I shut my eyes and bent my head, utterly stunned. I hadn’t really known anyone before who had
died
. Harry’s mother had died when I was a baby, Harry’s father had died when I was a small child, but they were old to me. Pat was
my
age. She was poor Fat Pat, the girl I chatted to in the toilets, the girl I shamefully ignored in the classroom. But now she’d done something as extraordinary and dramatic and grown up as dying.

I thought of her squashed into a white coffin, her plaits tied with white satin, dressed in a long white nightie. I wondered if her cheeks would still be pink. I thought of her lying in her coffin week after week after week, getting thinner and thinner and thinner until she dieted down to a skeleton. I started to shake. I wished I’d been kinder to her. I wished I’d been her friend all the time. I hadn’t properly
known
her so I couldn’t really miss her, but it felt as if I did.

I don’t think anyone told us what she died
of
. I have a vague feeling it might have been an asthma attack, but I don’t remember her ever using an inhaler. Maybe children didn’t
have
them in those days.

We didn’t talk about Pat amongst ourselves. I think we all felt guilty. We tried to forget her, but she’s there in our form photograph, smiling bravely, as if she was just an ordinary happy-go-lucky member of our class. And now, when I look at that faded black and white photo, I realize she wasn’t even
that
fat. I don’t need to look at the photo to remember her. I often think about her even now.

I have a very cheery, confident fat boy in three of my books. What is his nickname – and can you think of all three titles?

 

It’s Biscuits, and he appears in
Cliffhanger, Buried Alive
and
Best Friends
.

I suppose I’m still a bit greedy, if I’m absolutely honest. Not quite as greedy as Biscuits though. Well, his real name is Billy McVitie, but everyone calls him Biscuits, even the teachers. He’s this boy in our class at school and his appetite is astonishing. He can eat an entire packet of chocolate Hob Nobs, munch crunch, munch crunch, in two minutes flat.

Biscuits is so kind and funny and positive – and a
marvellous
friend. He’s very supportive of Tim when they’re on their adventure holiday in
Cliffhanger
, and they have even more fun on a seaside holiday in
Buried Alive
.

I decided I wanted to find out more about dear old Biscuits, so he popped up again in
Best Friends
.
Gemma
gives him a hard time, but
eventually
appreciates him. Biscuits makes brilliant cakes, including a wonderful chocolate biscuit cake. One Christmas my lovely friend and illustrator Nick Sharratt made
me
a fantastic chocolate biscuit cake, very rich and munchy, studded with red glacé cherries. My mouth’s watering remembering it!

30

Christine

I MADE A
new friend in Mr Branson’s class. She was called Christine, a tall girl with a high forehead and glossy brown hair cut short and clipped back with tortoiseshell hairslides. She went glossy brown all over every summer, effortlessly and evenly tanning, while I went red and blotchy and then peeled.

Christine was six months older than me. She’d been in the class above but now she’d been kept back to repeat a year. She was bright as a button but there were problems at home. I don’t think Christine had even sat the eleven plus last year. She couldn’t move on to a secondary school because they were all too far away. Christine needed to dash home every lunch time to see her mother.

‘My mum’s dying,’ Christine told me, as soon as we’d made friends.

We huddled up together in the playground, arms round each other, while she told me all about it. Christine told it straight, no soft euphemisms, though the teachers murmured about her mother being ‘poorly’.

‘She’s got cancer,’ said Christine. ‘She’s had it for ages and now it’s so bad she can’t do anything. She just lies on the sofa downstairs. She’s got so thin and she looks so old, not really like my mum any more. But she’s still my mum inside, even though she gets muddled and sleepy with all the drugs she has to take.’

‘The drugs?’ I whispered.

‘For the pain. She gets in such awful pain,’ said Christine. She said it matter-of-factly, but her eyes watered. ‘I give her her dose at lunch time and I take her to the toilet and fix her a drink. She sleeps a bit then, but the drugs wear off. She’s often crying by the time I get home. It’s the worst pain ever.’

I tried to think what the worst pain ever must be like. I thought of all my tummy upsets, when I sometimes doubled up involuntarily. I imagined that much worse. I wondered how I would cope if it was my mum.

‘Isn’t there anyone else to help look after her?’ I asked, taking Christine’s hand.

‘There’s my dad, but he’s out at work in London all day,’ said Christine. (He was a civil servant and vaguely knew
my
dad.) ‘Anyway, they don’t really get on now. Daddy’s got this girlfriend. But don’t tell anyone.’

I nodded. This was something I understood.

‘My mum’s got a boyfriend. Don’t tell either, OK?’

‘I’ve got a big sister, but she keeps having heaps of rows with my dad and staying out late. She mostly stays round at her boyfriend’s house. It’s better when she does, it’s more peaceful.’

‘But it’s not fair on you, having to do everything for your poor mum.’

‘I don’t mind. I
want
to do it. I want to help her,’ said Christine.

‘What about Patricia?’ I said. ‘Does she help too?’

She was Christine’s sister in the year below, a fair, giggly girl, often acting a little wildly in the playground with her friend Madeleine, letting off steam.

‘Patricia tries but she’s not that good at making Mummy comfortable. And she gets too upset. She’s just a baby,’ said Christine, as if there was a lifetime between nine and eleven.

So Christine soldiered on, day after day, nursing her dying mother, doing most of the shopping, the washing, the ironing. She did this willingly, without complaint. The only thing she complained about bitterly was the fact that her mother was dying.

‘It’s not
fair
,’ she said, clinging to me. ‘She’s so kind and gentle and lovely. Why should she have to die so young? I asked the vicar at our church and he said it’s very sad but it’s God’s will. Well, I think God’s a terrible person if he wants to make Mum suffer so much. I
hate
God.’

We stared at each other, both of us shocked at what she’d said. We waited for the thunderbolt to come sizzling out of the sky. Nothing happened.

‘I don’t blame you,’ I said lamely. ‘Oh, Christine, it isn’t fair at all.’

I held her and rocked her. She cried a little and I cried too. Then we realized we were alone in the playground. Afternoon school had already started.

‘Oh, lummy, I’ve made us late,’ said Christine.

‘Never mind.’

‘Brandy Balls will go barmy.’

‘Who cares,’ I said, patting her.

We went into the classroom, holding our breath. Mr Branson was writing something on the blackboard. He stopped as we came in. He broke his chalk in two. He aimed one half at me, the other at Christine. He hit both of us on the temple where it hurt most.

‘How
dare
you come into my classroom ten minutes late!’ he thundered. ‘What have you been doing, you idle lazy gossipy girls?’

I clenched my fists. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ve been doing!’ I shouted back. ‘Christine’s been crying and I’ve been trying to comfort her. You
know
her mum’s very ill. You know what Christine has to do. How
dare
you call her lazy and idle!’

The class sat statue-still, mouths open. They stared at me. Nobody ever ever ever answered Mr
Branson
back. I’d obviously gone mental. They stared at Mr Branson, waiting for him to go to the cupboard and get out his cane. I waited too, trembling.

Mr Branson’s face was purple. He stood still, making little snorty noises with his nose. A long blue vein throbbed on his forehead. Then he took a deep breath.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

I sat. Christine sat. Mr Branson took a new piece of chalk and continued writing on the board.

That was
it
! He carried on teaching and then left the classroom at the end of the lesson. I breathed out properly, almost collapsing. I couldn’t believe it. I’d shouted at Mr Branson and survived! Perhaps he’d actually felt ashamed, realizing just how hard it was for Christine. But he didn’t do anything to make it easier for her.

We didn’t either. I was allowed to invite Christine for tea one Friday when her older sister was back at home. Christine and I shut ourselves in my bedroom and I showed her all my dolls, even my special secret paper girls. We got out all my art things and made ourselves cardboard badges with a C entwined with a J design, carefully coloured in Derwent crayon. We pinned our badges on solemnly with safety pins. We fingered all the beads in my shell box, holding the crystals to the light and
marvelling
at the rainbows. We lay on our tummies and drew portraits of each other.

Then we took a sheet of drawing paper and folded it up into squares to make a ‘fortune-teller’. We sat cross-legged, deciding each other’s fortune. We were so absorbed in our play we didn’t want to stop for tea, so Biddy, with unusual tact, brought our meal in to us. We picnicked on banana sandwiches and cream buns and chocolate fingers and Tizer and then lolled against each other, flicking through old
Girl
comics.

Christine’s father came to collect her very late, past my usual bed time. The adults chatted uncomfortably for a minute or so. The fathers exchanged pleasantries about work. Biddy said something about Christine’s nice manners. Christine’s mother wasn’t even mentioned.