Lottie Project (13 page)

‘And this will be the worst,’ said Jo. ‘They’ll talk about their wedding and their anniversaries, all thirty of them. Grandma will fiddle with her wedding and engagement and eternity rings. She might
even
get out their wedding album. Oh help, she might even delve in the trunk upstairs and come out with this truly horrible yellowy-white lace veil and then her voice will go all shaky when she says she kept it specially for me to wear at my wedding. And then she’ll stop and sigh because I didn’t ever have a wedding. Watch out, Charlie. She’ll be
saving
it for you now.’

‘
I’m
not going to get married!’ I insisted. ‘I’m going to stay here with you. I look old for my age and you look young so by the time I’m grown up we’ll just be like two sisters. I’ll be earning too so it’ll be easy-peasy, simple-pimple paying that old mortgage.’

‘I wish!’ said Jo.

We didn’t have any spare cash for Pearl Wedding presents so we had to be inventive. Jo bought a half-price droopy pot plant and fed and watered it until it stood up straight and grew new glossy leaves. She bought some pearl-white ribbon and then tied thirty tiny bows all over it.

‘There? Do you think it’ll do?’ she said, tying the very last bow.

‘It looks lovely.’

‘It’s nowhere near as impressive as your cake.’

Yes, I’d made Grandma and Grandpa a proper cake! I used Lisa’s mum’s recipe book. I couldn’t do a fruit cake because the ingredients were too expensive. I just did a sponge. Well, I did three sponges if you must know. I didn’t quite get the hang of it the first time and failed to realize you had to mix it all like crazy until your arm practically falls off. There was just this surly sulky crust at the bottom of the tin when I took it out of the oven. The second go was better, but I was too eager, opening the oven door a couple of times to see how it was getting on.
It
didn’t rise properly and so I left it in longer and then it got a bit burnt. I cut off the burnt bits and made it into a trifle, but even so, I was starting to think I was squandering money instead of saving it. Jo said I should have one more go and
this
time it was third time lucky. My sponge was
perfect
.

Now I could get started on the best bit. I covered it with apricot glaze to stop any crumbs getting mixed up with the icing. Then I piped
Happy Aniversary
across the top of the icing and made little rosettes all the way round and studded it with tiny pearly balls. It took ages but I was so proud when I’d finished. Jo looked worried when I showed it off to her.

‘What?’

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘They’ll love it.’

Ha! They didn’t love it. Or Jo’s plant. Grandpa nodded and said, ‘How delightful. Thank you so much. How thoughtful of you. But you really shouldn’t have.’

That sounds OK down on paper. But my grandpa speaks in this slow serious voice with hardly any expression. He doesn’t go
Wow!
or hug or kiss. If he ever touches me accidentally he wipes his hands on his hankie afterwards, as if I’m sticky.

Grandma uses enough expression for two. ‘Oh, darlings, we weren’t expecting
presents
. Especially in your current circumstances. Josephine, I’ve been very worried about your new job, you’ve hardly told me anything about it.’

‘Look at the cake Charlie’s made you. She did it all herself. It took her ages,’ said Jo.

‘Yes, it’s
lovely
, dear. Yum yum. We’ll all have a slice for tea.’ But Grandma sighed. ‘What a pity!’

‘What?’ I said.

‘I can’t wait to sample this cake,’ said Jo quickly. She was sending signals with her eyebrows to Grandma. Grandma ignored them.

‘It’s such a shame you left out the “n”, dear.’

I’d left out one of the ‘n’s in
Anniversary
. Even though I
knew
how to spell it. I couldn’t stand it. I’d thought it really was perfect.

‘As if that matters,’ Jo said, furious with Grandma for pointing it out.

‘Well, as a matter of fact, I
do
think spelling matters although I know they don’t pay much attention to it in school nowadays,’ said Grandma, putting my cake on her kitchen table. She took the pot plant to the sink.

‘It doesn’t need watering yet. I did it yesterday,’ said Jo.

‘I just want to perk it up a little,’ said Grandma.

She should have watered Jo and me. We were visibly drooping. I can never work out if Grandma knows what she’s doing. She’s certainly an expert at chewing you up and spitting you out in tiny pieces. No wonder it took Jo months and months before she dared tell them she was going to have me.

Grandma and Grandpa still treat her like a
school-girl
in disgrace. Grandma kept on and on about her old job while she put the vegetables on to cook, prodding Jo as sharply as the potatoes. Jo lied a lot but she’s not as good at it as me. Grandma didn’t even shut up when we started eating.

‘What do you
mean
, Josephine? What does this new supermarket job entail?’ Grandma attacked her grapefruit, jabbing at it with a serrated spoon. ‘You’re being deliberately evasive. Are you sure you’re not working as a cashier on the tills?’

Jo suddenly flung down her own spoon, going as red as the glacé cherries Grandma used for decoration. ‘I am not a cashier,’ she said. ‘I am a cleaner at the supermarket. So now you know.’

Grandma sputtered like the hot fat cooking her roast beef. She gave Jo a roasting all the while we chewed on our meat. She told Jo it wasn’t a suitable job when she’d been a manager for nearly a year, as if Jo had deliberately turned down umpteen other manager’s jobs just to be contrary. She told Jo she was being an irresponsible mother going out early in the morning and leaving me, and that made me so mad I had to put in my two-pennyworth.

‘I think
you’re
being the irresponsible mother to Jo, telling her off and being so horrible when Jo’s tried so hard to sort things out. I think she’s wonderful to get up so early and trudge off like that.
I’m
OK, I’m still in my bed. Jo has to get up early every single morning except Sunday, and she should be having a lovely long lie-in today, but she couldn’t, because we had to get the train and the
bus
right over to your place to wish you a Happy Anniversary –
two
‘n’s – only you’re just mucking it all up.’ They were all staring at me. ‘That’s quite enough, young lady!’ said Grandma.

‘You’re not my mother so you can’t tell me off,’ I said. ‘Jo? Do you want me to shut up?’

‘Yes!’ said Jo. ‘Come on, Charlie, we’d better go home.’

‘Now don’t be ridiculous. We haven’t even started on pudding yet,’ said Grandma.

‘Why don’t you all do a lot more chewing and a lot less yapping,’ said Grandpa, calmly working his way through his second helping of roast beef.

So we sat still and no-one said anything. Jo and I left a lot on our plates. So did Grandma. But Grandpa didn’t even leave a glisten of gravy.

I didn’t think I’d be able to eat pudding. It was pineapple upside-down cake and my own stomach felt upside-down too. But I tried a tiny bit and it was actually good, so I ate a bit more, and then a bit more still, until I’d finished it all up.

Grandpa nodded in approval. He finished his last mouthful too.

‘Now that you’ve all calmed down, perhaps we ought to discuss your financial situation, Josephine,’ he said.

I wanted to tell him it was none of his business. But even I didn’t quite dare cheek Grandpa.

Jo stammered a little as she told him that we were managing, and she’d sorted things out with the building society to give us a little leeway, and she didn’t just have the one job, she had three, and she was still looking for another supervisory position all the time. She said it all as if he was giving her a formal interview. Grandpa nodded, occasionally easing the collar of his shirt where it rubbed his neck. He never wears casual clothes, not even at weekends. I couldn’t remotely imagine him in something like a T-shirt. I can’t even picture him in his underwear. I don’t think Grandpa has an ordinary body at all, he’s just hard smooth plastic underneath like a Ken doll.

Grandma wanted to know all about the other cleaning jobs. She raised her eyebrows and looked pained when Jo told her about the Oxford Terrace job, but she actually leant forward and looked interested when she heard about Robin, the little boy Jo picks up from school.

‘So what’s his father like?’ said Grandma, suddenly all ears. I could actually see them getting pink underneath her neat grey curls.

I sighed and flopped back in my chair. This was so
typical
Grandma. She can’t even get it into her head that Jo
likes
being a single mum and isn’t remotely interested in meeting any men. Grandma used to keep trying to introduce Jo to all these
creeps
, and she nagged her to join a Singles club and she even once advertised Jo in a Lonely Hearts column. She did, I kid you not. She thinks if she can only get Jo married off then she won’t have to be ashamed of us any more.

I waggled my eyebrows at Jo, expecting her to wink back. But she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at anyone. She was staring at the shiny yellow pudding on her plate as if Robin’s father was reflected there.