Paper Aeroplanes (6 page)

So today, instead of hockey training, just on the other side of the wall to the hockey field, I am sitting in a circle in an old stone Victorian bath holding hands with Margaret Cooper, Nancy Plum, Bethan Collins and Charlotte Pike. We are having a séance. I nearly asked Flo Parrot to join us, but just as I went up to her Sally ran over waving a hockey stick, and I honestly thought she was going to hit me with it. I can’t see why Flo is best friends with Sally. She seems so nice, and Sally is a real tit.

‘All we have to do is close our eyes, hold hands and imagine a dead person,’ says Nancy, our class hippy. ‘My mum told me the spirits just appear.’

‘I’m a bit scared,’ says Bethan in her littlest voice. ‘What if they want to kill us?’

Everyone loves Bethan because she is small and has a voice like a five-year-old. She’s best friends with Charlotte Pike, who is massive, but not in a fat way. She’s ‘big boned’, or so she tells us all the time. She’s quite manly, with a deep, loud voice, but she’s got long black hair and big boobs.

‘Don’t be scared, Bethan,’ she says. ‘It’s daylight and we are outside. If any spirits are scary then I will just sit on them and you can run away.’

We all laugh.

‘Right, who we gonna call?’ asks Nancy. We all yell ‘Ghostbusters’ in unison, then apologise to each other for being so obvious. The nice thing about these girls is that no one is remotely cool. Bad jokes happen with no piss-taking and no one cares about boys or clothes. It’s very different from being with Carla and Gem. Lovely as they are, all they talk about is their boyfriends, their new clothes, the parties they go to. It all gets a bit boring. I like being girly to a point but it can all get a bit high-pitched and frilly with Carla and Gem. With this little crowd I am the cool one. I like that.

‘I don’t know anyone who is dead,’ says Bethan.

‘What about Marilyn Monroe?’ suggests Charlotte.

‘Do you honestly think Marilyn Monroe will come and visit us in this old stone bath in Guernsey?’ Nancy snaps.

‘She might. My mum says that when you die it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like any more,’ says Charlotte, confidently.

‘Well, we can’t call Marilyn Monroe. Has anyone get any other suggestions?’ Nancy says, losing her patience a little.

There are a few minutes’ silence. I find myself closing my eyes and screwing my face up as if preparing to be punched. And then Margaret blurts, ‘What about your mum, Renée?’

I open my eyes. All four of them are looking at me like hungry puppies.

‘I’m not bothered,’ are my first words. Shortly followed by, ‘Sure, whatever.’

I never let on a shred of emotion about Mum at school. I pretend I don’t care if I mention it at all. It’s easier for me that way, because generally as soon as someone shows me sympathy I burst out crying.

‘Great!’ says Margaret as she grabs Bethan and Nancy’s hands. Charlotte squints at me and lowers her head to find my eyes. When I look back at her she raises her eyebrows as if to ask ‘Sure?’

I nod dramatically and reach for their hands. ‘Let’s do it! I don’t believe in this nonsense anyway.’

‘Calling the spirits. Spirits, are you there?’ starts Nancy in a weird, breathy voice. ‘Spirits, come to the bath and show us your face.’

‘SHOW US YOUR FACE?’ cries Margaret hysterically. ‘What if they died in an accident and their face is mangled?’

‘Bloody hell, have some respect, Margaret,’ says Charlotte. ‘Renée’s mum didn’t die in an accident, she died of cancer. Her face will be fine.’

This isn’t true. The last time I saw my mother’s face it was grey and loose, like an empty plastic bag. Her eyes looked lower than they had before. Her cheekbones stuck out like hard lumps that were hurting her from the inside. Her face wasn’t fine at all. I don’t want to see it again, not like that.

‘Oh yes, sorry. I forgot we were calling your mum. Maybe you should ask her to come on her own, Nancy? We might get all sorts turning up if you just say spirits,’ says Charlotte, taking control.

‘OK, good idea. What was your mum’s name, Renée?’ asks Nancy, with no sense of awkwardness about using the word
was
.

‘Helen,’ I say, my eyes still closed. My head is telling me not to believe in this, but I still find myself imagining her face. What if she comes? What would I say?

‘Right then, Helen it is. OK, everyone hold hands again.’ Nancy gets herself back into the zone and tries again. ‘Helen, are you there, Helen?’

My mind starts to wander – back to when I didn’t even know she was dying. The warmth of Margaret and Bethan’s hands feels so nice in the cold air, the distant sound of the hockey game turns into a low hum. I start to visualise her. I can smell her, the best smell in the world – Chanel No. 5, cigarettes and leather. The perfect smell.

I go back to when I must have been all of five, still having afternoon naps but old enough to have them on the sofa and not in my room. Was that normal? I’m not sure. I woke up to see her face at the living-room door. Her black hair in loose waves sitting just above her shoulders, her nose red from the outside cold, her long eyelashes bold and upright. They surrounded her massive brown eyes like the over-pronounced sun rays I used to draw that Mum would stick on the fridge. As I woke up from my sleep she came over, took off her fur coat and crawled onto the sofa with me. She scooped me up into her arms and put her cheek on top of mine. ‘How’s my girl?’

I turned around and buried my face into her neck. We lay there cuddling while I woke up properly. She yawned, and even when I was ready to move I lay there and let her dose. ‘I love you, Mummy,’ I said.

‘I love you too, darling.’

‘OH MY GOOODDD!’

Mum vanishes as the sound of Nancy’s voice makes us all jump.

‘OH MY GOD, did anyone else see that?’ Nancy shouts, out of breath.

‘Keep your voice down,’ orders Charlotte. ‘Miss Trunks is only behind that wall.’ A loud whistle sounds as the hockey is called to a close.

‘Seriously. WHO. ELSE. SAW. THAT?’ Nancy is standing now. White as a sheet. ‘Renée, your mum. She died of cancer, right?’

‘YES,’ says Margaret.

‘And her ashes are spread on Herm, right?’

‘YES,’ repeats Margaret. I would answer the questions myself but she is getting the answers right so I guess I don’t need to bother. Mum died after getting breast cancer for the second time, and Nana and Pop spread her ashes on a small island just off Guernsey called Herm because she loved it there so much. I wasn’t allowed to go.

‘Well, I just saw a crab floating over an island,’ Nancy says, panting.

‘You saw what?’ I ask, thinking she has finally lost the plot.

‘Think about it. Crabs are the symbol for cancer, and your mum is scattered on Herm. Crab over island? She is here, Renée. She is TRYING TO SPEAK TO ME.’

Nancy is the kind of person who could find something spiritual in a sausage roll. As if Mum would appear to us as a crab flapping its claws over an island. I still find myself unable to ask her to shut up.

The bell rings.

The girls get up and leave. There’s a hum of chatter as they walk away.

‘No way, did she come? Did we actually make a dead person come?’

None of them seems to notice that I have stayed where I am. I know I’ll get an order mark for missing French, but this one will be worth it.

I thought I was OK after Rebecca Stephens, my new hockey partner, thwacked me around the face with her hockey stick. But halfway through French I thought I was going to pass out from how much my head was spinning. I went to the sick room and when I felt better I told Miss Trunks I’d called my dad from the payphone in the foyer and that he was waiting outside. He wasn’t really.

It’s all Sally’s fault. Rebecca is rubbish at hockey, she has the coordination of a drunk person. She usually goes with Charlotte Pike but Charlotte wasn’t in hockey training because she has period pains, so when Sally said she didn’t want to go with me any more Miss Trunks put me with Rebecca and used Sally for all the demonstrations. Charlotte is really good at hockey, probably because she’s big boned. I realised pretty quickly that part of her talent is dodging Rebecca’s stick – that’s a skill in itself. When Rebecca hit me I thought my brain had exploded. I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember Sally laughing and saying she could see my regulation green knickers when I was lying on the floor.

As I leave school, Renée Sargent is coming in.

‘What happened to you? Did Sally do that?’ she asks, referring to the big red lump on my forehead.

Do people think Sally beats me up?

‘No, I was partners with Rebecca in hockey. Turns out she isn’t very good at hockey.’

‘It looks really sore. Is someone picking you up?’ Renée asks, obviously concerned.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘I’m going to walk to my dad’s, he isn’t feeling that great.’ I notice that Renée’s eyes look red. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. My eyes just get puffy when it’s cold.’

We stand awkwardly for a few seconds. Eventually I say, ‘Cool, well, Miss Trunks will tell me off if she sees me. I’d better go.’

Renée looks weird. Kind of sad.

‘Can I walk with you?’ she asks quietly.

I look up at the French class window. Sally isn’t watching.

‘Yeah, I guess so.’

Renée and I walk separately until we get to the end of the school path and totally out of sight. When she catches up with me I feel so conspicuous. Bunking school and cavorting with the enemy? This is the baddest I have ever been.

‘Wanna go get chips?’ she says, her eyes still puffy.

I am about to say no, but I haven’t had chips in ages. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Why not.’

‘Come on then.’

We walk to the Cod’s Wallop and order two portions of chips with loads of salt and vinegar. Renée starts to eat hers as we step outside.

‘What are you doing?’ I say. ‘We can’t eat in public in school uniform. If someone sees us we will get into trouble.’

‘That’s stupid. We’re hungry, they can’t stop us eating,’ Renée mumbles with her mouth full.

‘Can’t we just go somewhere out of sight?’ Once I was caught drinking a can of Coke in town and Miss Grut called my mum to say I had been seen ‘hanging off the end of a Coke can’ in my uniform. Mum was so mad at me for having the headmistress call home.

Renée sighs but wraps up her chips again and says she knows a field nearby. We walk there and sit under a big tree behind a hedge. No one can see us.

‘So what’s up with your dad?’ she asks boldly.

‘Oh, it’s really boring. You don’t want to know.’

‘Yeah I do,’ she insists.

‘Really?’

She nods, her mouth completely full.

‘OK, well, he lost his job nearly a year ago and hasn’t found one since. My mum just kicked him out because he’s drinking too much and . . .’ I suddenly feel very uncomfortable. ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this.’

‘Families are idiots.’

I don’t know what to say to that.

‘I need to go and talk to him.’ I eat a chip, and feel an unfamiliar impulse to keep talking. ‘It feels a bit like I’m the only one who says anything at the moment. Mum and I don’t really get on.’

‘Talking in my family doesn’t happen,’ says Renée. ‘The trick for me is to live on the edge and never tip over. It’s a right laugh.’

‘What’s funny about that?’

‘Nothing. That’s why it’s funny. It’s so bad I just think it’s funny,’ Renée says, tilting her head back so the chips don’t fall out of her mouth.

‘Do you really?’

‘If I don’t laugh about it what else will I do?’

She doesn’t actually laugh though. She falls back, throws chips into the air and tries to catch them in her mouth. She misses them all but picks them off the grass and eats them anyway.

‘So what about your brother?’ she asks as she chews.

‘What about my brother? You don’t fancy him as well, do you?’ I blurt, embarrassed by my defensiveness.

‘What? No way! Why would I fancy him?’ Renée replies, obviously offended.

‘Everyone fancies Julian. Sally is obsessed with him. Sometimes I think it’s the only reason she’s friends with me.’

‘Well, Sally is an idiot, and I do not fancy your brother. He’s way too skinny, and beards are gross. I could never kiss someone with a beard.’ She stuffs her mouth full of chips again, probably to stop herself slagging off my brother any more.

I don’t like it when she calls Sally an idiot. Not because I don’t agree, but because going behind Sally’s back frightens me. If she finds out I skived school with Renée she’ll make my life hell, and come to think of it, what am I doing bunking school? Sure, I have a lump the size of one of Miss Trunks’ boobs on my forehead but how am I going to pass my GCSEs if I skip lessons? The rebel inside me is short lived.

‘I need to go.’ I reach down to pick up my bag.

‘OK, well, do you want to meet up after school tomorrow?’ Renée asks, as if that would be completely normal.

I shake my head. ‘We have clarinet on Thursdays.’

‘Ooo, well, I wouldn’t want to get in the way of you and your boss playing the clarinet,’ she says under her breath, with a little smirk. It makes me feel so small. I stare at her for a while, half expecting an apology.

‘No offence, but you barely make it to lessons, let alone anything extra-curricular. What do you actually do, anyway? Is this it? Chips in fields?’ I am surprised at how easy I find it to answer back to her. Building up to speaking to Sally like this takes weeks of preparation, and then I usually chicken out.

‘So what if it is? Where’s honking down a piece of wood going to get you in life?’

‘That’s not the point. You learn things to make life more interesting.’

‘You think playing the clarinet is interesting?’ Renée says, annoyingly making me question why I do play the clarinet.

‘I think it gives my brain something to think about, gives me something to focus on. What do you focus on?’

‘I dunno. Fun?’

I watch her throwing chips into the air and into her mouth again. She won’t look at me now. She’s pretending this conversation isn’t happening.

I start to walk away, but then turn back. ‘You know there’s more to life than skiving class and being the joker, Renée. Don’t you care about the future?’