Primperfect (5 page)

Sorrel sent me out for Tampax from the corner shop and something dreadful occurred to me. It's been about two months since I had my period.

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

'm over it. I'm so over it that I am planning on getting a new boy best friend to replace Joel. I am holding auditions that the boys involved do not know are auditions. I am meeting Kevin for ice-cream on Monday and going for tea with Felix on Thursday. Then there is the wild card, Robb from the maths revision course Dad sent me on at Easter to get me out of the house. Robb has two bees and goes to boarding school. He is not around during term time, but we banter a lot through the medium of the Internet and I am meeting him on Wednesday. Ciara is very excited about these auditions.

‘Maybe instead of finding a new Joel, you will find
TRUE LOVE
.'

I have capitalised
TRUE LOVE
here because that is how Ciara thinks of it, like it is more important than anything. Now that she is sixteen, she and Syzmon have been getting more serious. She isn't ready to sleep with him yet but they are having quite a nice time of it, nonetheless.

‘I am not going to find
TRUE LOVE
, Ciara.' I capitalised true love a bit mockingly, to imply my contempt for the concept.

People are too stupid to be ‘meant to be' together. The best we can hope for is that you will make a friend you want to do things with and isn't boring or mean to you. I am not looking for love like my silly mother was at my age. I am only looking for a new Joel because getting the old one to talk to me is apparently impossible.

I wouldn't mind if I were to meet someone nice, though.

THIS IS MY CHECKLIST OF WANTS IN A BOYFRIEND:

1. Is funny. 2. Is someone I fancy.

3. Is not mean to me. 4. Does not bore me.

5. Is not related to the man who killed my mother.

(Number 5 was added out of necessity. Stupid handsome Mac.)

And even so, Ciara – who has a list she keeps adding to that now has

items on it – thinks
I
am too picky.

I really don't want to be pregnant. I'm not going to have an abortion or anything. But I just thought I'd mention it …

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

hy am I still sad all the time, even though it's summer? It isn't all about Joel. It isn't all about Mum. Some of it is just about me. There is a heaviness in my stomach and it's been there so long that sometimes I wonder if I was born with it. I don't think I was, though. I think that I remember being light.

I am meeting Kevin tomorrow and I am excited as well as sad. I need to be very brave around Kevin. He makes me wish I had an amazing new boyfriend. So I could be all, ‘Kevin, have you met my amazing new boyfriend and part-time soul-mate? His name is Cliff Dirtbike and he lives up to it every day of his life. Cliff, honey, show Kevin how you can lift me over your head as though I were no heavier than a blossom.'

I like the idea of Cliff. I'd probably call him something else, though. If he were real, I would not be thinking about the smell of Kevin's neck and the way his hands are way bigger than mine. I would only think of Kevin platonically, if Cliff existed. Where are you, Cliff? I need you to help me resist Kevin-shaped temptation!!

Fintan is supporting me through this. Those were his words. As if it were a postgrad or an illness. As though he had nothing at all to do with this human being growing in my stomach.

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

evin-shaped temptation will be very easy to resist this summer, as it happens. He called to inform me that has a new girlfriend, Siobhán from my year, and will no longer be available for ice-cream. Siobhán is friends with Karen. She only talks to us when Karen is being mean to her. People seem to gravitate to me and Ciara when they are in danger of being pushed out of Karen's group, for some reason. I don't know why. It's not like we're that nice and friendly. We're kind of in-jokey and Karen-hating and quiet around people we don't know.

Kevin and Siobhán have been going out for a week and a half. He ‘thought I should know'. He still wants to hang out with me. He ‘values our friendship'. I wonder if he asked her to be his girlfriend. I wonder what it is about her that screams ‘girlfriend', as opposed to ‘furiously-make-out-in-random-places-with-friend-whois-a-girl'. I've never had a proper boyfriend, really. Kevin is as close as it has got. Who will tell me I'm pretty and give me cidery kisses and sometimes unhook my bra by way of a joke now? I am not sad, exactly. But I am feeling some definite feelings about this and they are not all good.

I rang Joel to tell him about Kevin and Siobhán. He didn't pick up but I left him a voicemail. A really rambly one that cut out just at the part where I was, like, ‘I miss you so much every single day' and about to cry. I hate Karen so much. I hate her. Why does she have to steal my best friend? I wish I could steal something belonging to her. Like her phone, or kidneys. That'd show her who the boss was. I don't want to be the boss, though. I don't know what I want to be, except Joel's friend.

When I got home from being broken up with for another girl by someone who didn't even care enough about me to be my boyfriend, Fintan and Sorrel were in the kitchen. Sorrel has been coming over a bit recently. She is short of money because she has gone back to college to learn how to be a midwife, which she has wanted to do for ages. Literally. Mum even wrote about it a bit in her diaries. Fintan has been paying her to clean the house, mind me every now and then and give him Indian head massages. Sorrel is a woman of many skills. She had made some banana bread. It was amazing.

‘What's wrong, Prim?'

‘Nothing, Sorrel.'

‘Are you sure?' said Fintan, pushing his eyebrows close together in a show of fatherly concern.

‘Yes.'

‘She's not sure at all, Sorrel. Listen to the grumpy tone of her.'

‘Shut up, Fintan.' I don't know why I told him to shut up. It was clear it was going to annoy him. Gah.

‘Don't you dare tell me to shut up, you little rip. I'd send you to your room only I'm very relaxed and forgiving at the moment after my Indian head massage.'

Sorrel looked really pleased.

I informed him that, yes, I was in a bad mood but that I did not want to talk about it.

‘Do you want to eat banana bread and drink tea and talk about other things?' he asked, scratching his moustache in that way he does when he's not sure what to do with me.

‘Yes. Yes, I do.'

One thing I like about Sorrel is that she never pushes. Also, she is genuinely interested in my life and friends and stuff. She doesn't come over only out of loyalty to Mum. She wants to hang out with me as well. This is nice and means I will forgive her almost anything and indulge her when she talks about things like ‘cleanses' and ‘meditation circles'.

I'm still not sure about the moon-cup she gave me for my sixteenth birthday, though. It might be a bridge too far,

which is a bridge past the acceptable place for bridges to be. Whether it is an overly sharey bridge or an overly gross bridge or an overly judgey bridge, it is not a particularly welcome one. All the other bridges laugh at it behind its back. The reason that Sorrel's gift was a bridge too far is hard to explain without sounding ungrateful. Which I swear I'm not. Just a little weirded out because it was a bit … um …
intimate
. A moon-cup is a sort of silicone cup that you place inside your lady garden when it is that special time of the month. It collects all the lady-blood and instead of throwing it out when it gets full, you just empty and rinse it. It is more environmentally friendly than tampons or pads, but it is also a little creepy when given as a birthday present by a grown-up person to whom you have to write a thankyou card. How would I even phrase that, like? She has not asked me what I think of it yet, which shows that she has at least some level of cop-on. I would have preferred an Indian head massage, to be honest. And those skeeve me out a great deal.

Why can't I fall for people who are nice to me? Why do people who are mean exert this kind of power over me, where I will bend over backwards to please them? When my baby comes, I want it to have a stable, healthy, normal life. I have to stop being so stupid.

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

evin having a girlfriend impacts very little on me one way or another. I was never going to be with him again. So it is probably actually a good thing. Siobhán is friends with Karen also, so the two of them probably deserve each other. So it is definitely a good thing that he is out of bounds and forbidden as a result of belonging to another. He was already out of bounds and forbidden as a result of being detrimental to my mental health anyway. I am going to be mature about this and not try to seduce him at house parties.

Syzmon is having a house party in a fortnight's time when his parents go back to Slovakia for a month. He is joining them for two weeks, but he also has a free house for two weeks. Syzmon is hard-working and responsible. His parents trust him not to trash the place. And he won't. But he will be holding a series of shindigs.

Shindigs are what Ciara calls parties. Sometimes she talks like a little old lady. This is part of Grandma Lily's legacy. Along with a shedload of cash and Ciara saying the rosary sometimes when she is feeling panicked. Ciara is pretty sure she does not believe in God, but she is very pro-the-mystical-power-of-the-rosary. She got me a bracelet of it for my birthday. It is red and has green and yellow enamel flowers on the beads. I like it a lot, but I haven't worn it yet because I'm worried that people will think that I'm religious if I do. They probably won't. You can get crucifixes in Topshop. They're not exclusively sold to believers or anything.

I do go to mass with Dad sometimes. We light a candle for Mum at the end, normally, and that is my favourite part, when people have trickled out and we are mainly by ourselves. Churches are pretty. It's a pity they are full of mass. Mum wasn't too gone on mass herself. Her parents were religious and they kind of went mad at her when she got pregnant with me. They got over themselves a little bit later on, when I was small and cute, but they were never a great support to her. In her diaries, she is so afraid of how much work it will be and scared she'll have to do it by herself. And she
will
have to do it mostly by herself, because that is what my life was till she died. Her and me and, on the weekends, Fintan. Well, on the weekends that he wasn't busy. He makes a pretty good full-time dad, actually. It is a pity he didn't try to be one before Mum died, especially when I was small and loads of work and she could have done with a break.

He paid for minders and things when she was at college. That isn't very romantic. But Mum thought it was a nice thing to do and felt bad about being, like, beholden to him and all of his money or whatever. It is strange reading her diaries. Because I know how it ends with Dad. And how it ends with me. She knew she'd love me, but she didn't want me yet. But it's good that she had me when she did, because she died and if I had been smaller I wouldn't have had as much time with her as I did.

I am meeting Robb with two bees tomorrow. We are going to have tea and cake and hang out in town, looking at things. It will probably be boring. I will either not be able to think of things to say, or say too many things and things that are the wrong thing. Like, ‘Is that your favourite jumper and, if so, why?'

It's not like I want to hook up with him or anything. But I would like a boyfriend, if only just to show Kevin that I am in demand and worth fancying. And also to show Joel that there are interesting things going on in my life, even when he is not there to make me be more out-going and fun. I always feel more fun when Joel's around because we make each other laugh so much. I think I will wear my short dark-red minidress with the cap sleeves and the brown buttons. It makes me look older, and also kind of pretty. And I'll wear my hair down. Probably.