Wonder Women (39 page)

Mel rang the bell, and an expensive, sonorous clang sounded inside the house. She heard someone coming down the stairs and the door was opened by a Slavic-looking girl who would probably go on to a successful career as a ramp model following her undistinguished stint as an au pair. ‘Yes,' she said with sulky insolence.

‘Hi, Romana,' said Serena quickly. ‘I'm here for the sleepover.'

Romana shrugged and walked away. Izzie came bounding down the big staircase. ‘Serenie!' she squealed. ‘You're here! We're going to have the best … sleepover ever!'

If Mel had been harbouring any hopes that the girls were actually planning a slumber party, they were dashed then and there. Izzie was a terrible actress.

Serena turned to her, her face guarded. ‘See, Mum? We're fine. I'll text you before I walk home tomorrow, okay?' She was obviously desperate for Mel to go before Izzie let loose with any more unconvincing lies.

‘Okay, love,' said Mel, fighting the urge to grab Serena's hand and drag her out of there. ‘Have fun, girls.'

At ten o'clock that night, she couldn't take it any more. She had been pacing up and down the living room for an hour. What was going on? Where was Serena now? Was the party in full swing? She went into her room and changed into black jeans and a black polo neck and pulled on her black running shoes. All she needed was a black woolly hat
and she'd be a cat burglar, she thought ruefully, looking at her reflection. She went to her PC and checked the location of the party … it was about half a mile away, closer to Izzie's house than their flat, but still within easy walking distance.

She took a detour to avoid crossing any possible routes Serena, Izzie and their friends might take, and ended up approaching the house from the other end of the road. If she hadn't been sure which house it was, as soon as she was within a few hundred yards, there was no doubt. Music blared and pulsed and every window seemed to be open. She could see flashing lights in the living room and the front garden was full of teenagers smoking and talking and laughing in that heightened, super-loud way they affected when they were in a big group. Kids were flowing into the house at quite a rapid rate. She knew there was no way she could go in without immediately being spotted as an adult. She crossed the road, and saw that there was an alleyway almost directly opposite the house with a big overhanging tree. If she stepped into the passage and hung back in the shadow of the tree, she could watch the house undisturbed.

There was no sign of Serena or Izzie, although there were an awful lot of young girls wearing very small dresses and very high heels. To Mel, they all looked far too young to be out at a party like this. People kept arriving and going in: in the first half an hour that Mel watched, she counted forty-odd people. Admittedly, it was hard to tell who was arriving for the first time, because people kept going in and out, standing in the garden to smoke, or just randomly wandering into the street and before going back into the party. They seemed incapable of standing still, as if they were scared
that if they did, something more fun might be happening somewhere else.

Mel was getting cold, and she was beginning to doubt the wisdom of her actions. She had no idea what was going on inside the house and no way of finding out: Serena might be shooting up heroin in there for all she knew. And what if she saw her spying? The damage that would do to their relationship was incalculable. Also, what if Serena rang the flat looking for her and she wasn't there? Or went home for some reason? She decided that it made the most sense to head back to the flat, maybe send Serena a text saying something innocuous like, ‘Hope you're having a nice time,' and hope for the best. She was about to turn and go up the alleyway before doubling back along the parallel street to go home when she heard a commotion behind her. A boy burst out of the door of the house, closely followed by two girls. In an instant, she recognised the boy as Triggah (and a ratty little individual he was too, with an overlarge baseball cap and his trousers worn at gangster level, showing his boxers). The two girls were Serena and Izzie. Izzie immediately backed into the shadow of a house and stood sobbing, her arms clasped around her body. But Serena was screaming and raging. That was the noise Mel had heard … her own daughter screaming.

‘I can't believe you!' she screamed at Triggah. ‘You disgusting bastard! With my own friend! At a party with all my friends! I hate you!'

‘Yeah, well …' said Triggah, who actually looked quite pleased with himself. Clearly he thought this made him seem like quite the stud. ‘Whatever,' he finished proudly.
Whatever it was Serena saw in this boy it clearly wasn't his conversational skills. Serena was sobbing, a real body-shaking, heartbreaking cry. She kept screaming at Triggah, but Mel couldn't hear what she was saying. Then Triggah said something to her and laughed, cruelly.

Serena stared at him, horrified, and pushing past him, she ran down the path and away down the road. Mel could see her weaving and stumbling. She was obviously very drunk. Mel thought for a split second, then sprinted back down the alleyway, up the parallel road and around the corner. She had guessed right: Serena had turned towards home, and was half a block away, still running and lurching, half on the pavement and half in the road. Mel stepped into her daughter's weaving path.

‘Serena!' she called. ‘What's going on?' She hoped, in Serena's drunken state, she'd assume their meeting was coincidental.

‘Mum!' she gasped. Mel held her tight and Serena's body shook and convulsed in her arms.

‘Oh,' Serena said suddenly, apprehension in her voice. Fortunately Mel was thinking fast. She spun her daughter around and bent her at the waist, just as Serena started to vomit. She held Serena's hair as she retched and cried. Once the vomiting had stopped, she looped an arm around Serena's waist and together they walked home. Serena didn't ask what Mel was doing there. She was too drunk, too distressed and too exhausted.

In the early hours of the morning, Mel found herself sitting on the bathroom floor with her daughter's head in her lap. Serena would doze for a while, then wake up crying,
drag herself up to retch in the toilet for a while, then collapse back into Mel's lap. She kept muttering and talking about Triggah. At one point, she fell into a restless sleep, her eyelids fluttering, then woke up and looked up into Mel's eyes. ‘I can't believe he did it, Mum,' she sobbed. ‘I can't believe it.' Then she fell asleep again, but woke up a few minutes later, continuing the conversation as if there had been no break. ‘He said he loved me. Yesterday he said he loved me. And now he says I'm a frigid bitch.'

Mel was cold and aching, but sitting on the floor, stroking her little girl's head, holding her close and looking at the long sweep of wet lashes on her cheek, she felt choked with love. She had done the right thing. If she hadn't been online, she would never have known about the party. The end had utterly justified the means. She had been there to catch Serena when she fell.

The patent leather shoes were squashing her toes so badly she wanted to cry. They were too small, but her mum had said she would have to manage. They had to wear smart shoes for the funeral, and these were the only decent pair Mel had. They had been bought for Christmas the year she turned seven, and that was more than a year ago now, and she had grown. She sat on the cold wooden pew and tried to pull her skirt down under her, but her mum put a hand on her leg to stop her fidgeting. She looked up at her mum, who was wearing a small black hat with a bit of netting to cover her eyes. She was very thin. She had spent months looking after Mel's dad when he was ill and then working nights in the betting shop. Her lips, coated in very bright red lipstick, were thin and pressed together. She wasn't crying. And Mel didn't think she would cry. Dad's illness had been so long, so painful and drawn out, that they'd all cried themselves out. Mel wasn't going to cry either. She was relieved it was over … that her dad's terrible, rattling breathing that had echoed through the house day and night, had finally stopped. She felt bad that she was glad it was
finished, and she was sure that it made her a terrible daughter.

The whole neighbourhood had turned out for the funeral. Her dad had been a popular man before he got ill, and everyone was sorry that he was gone now. Mel had lived her whole short life in this grim little town in Shropshire. She knew every single person in the church. Everyone was there, from the lady who ran the corner shop, to the head teacher from Mel's school and her mum's workmates from the betting shop.

Mel turned in her chair and peered over the back of the pew to see who else was there. There was her friend Matilda from school, with her mum and dad, and a group of big, awkward-looking men. She didn't know their names, but she knew they were long-distance truck drivers like her dad had been. Her mum suddenly pinched her hard in the leg. ‘Face the front!' she hissed furiously. Mel's eyes filled with tears. She didn't want to face the front and have to look at the horrible polished box that had her dad in it. And the pinch had really hurt. But she knew her mum had done it because she was also upset and scared and this day was horrible. She was only eight, but she understood, so she faced the front and sat quietly.

In the days that followed, people kept dropping by with things to eat and offers of help, but within a week or so, the visits had dried up and it was just Mel and her mum alone in the house. Mel could see her mum was struggling. It wasn't just the loneliness. It was the lack of money, the bills that kept coming in, the problems with the house that she had no way of fixing. She seemed to be angry all the
time. Mel tried to be as good as she could. Even though she was boisterous and outgoing by nature, she was always quiet at home, did her homework and helped out around the house. But she couldn't help it that she grew out of her coat, or that there was a school trip to Ironbridge and she needed money for the coach, and she hadn't meant to break the plate when she was washing up. But it seemed whatever she did her mum found annoying or difficult, and she was always sighing and saying, ‘Oh,
Melanie
,' or shouting at her, or telling her to be quiet. She wished she knew what to do to help her mum, but it seemed to her that the only thing she could do that would really help would be to disappear and stop being a bother who kept costing so much money.

Her mum had to work longer and longer hours at the betting shop just to make ends meet, so most days Mel would walk home from school and let herself in with the key she wore on a string around her neck. Her mum would have left a sandwich in the fridge for her (it was always cold and dry by four o'clock), and she would sit down and do her homework at the kitchen table. Sometimes, when she was finished, she would watch some telly, cuddled in a blanket on the sofa, but she had to be careful to watch the time and turn it off before her mum got home. Otherwise she'd get, ‘Oh,
Melanie
, do you think I'm made of money? Do you know what electricity costs these days?'

She knew better than to put the fire on, even when it was very cold. She got used to putting on extra jumpers and socks and shuffling around in her slippers like a pensioner, trying to keep warm. One Friday afternoon though, she was squarely caught out. She was huddled on the sofa watching
Morph and giggling, when she heard a key in the door. She looked up at the clock. It was only four thirty and her mum wasn't usually home before six. Mel jumped guiltily to her feet and ran to switch the television off, but as she did it, she realised her mum would have heard it as she came through the door. Mel stood frozen in the middle of the living room, certain she was about to be yelled at. But instead, she heard something she hadn't heard for months … her mother laughing.

She stayed where she was, and listened. Her mum said something softly in the hallway and laughed again, and then Mel heard another, deep voice. A man. Who could it be? Her mum's boss, Terry, from the betting shop? She couldn't think who else it would be … They never had male visitors. Her mum walked into the living room then, still talking and laughing over her shoulder. Her cheeks were pink from the cold outside, and she was smiling. Mel remembered then that her mum used to be pretty, very pretty, before worry and grief had made her thin and pinched.

The man with the voice followed her mum into the room. Mel had never seen him before, but she recognised his type: he was a big man, balding and red-faced with a neck as thick as his big head. He was twisting a woolly hat in his large fists. Without knowing how she knew, Mel was sure that the man was another long-distance driver, like her dad had been. He looked a bit like her dad had looked before he got sick, and he looked like his friends who had come for the funeral too.

‘And who's this?' he said, noticing Mel, who was still standing in the middle of the room. Her mum hadn't seemed to have noticed her yet.

‘Oh, this is our Mel,' said her mum dismissively. ‘Some tea, Phil? How about a little something to eat?'

‘Thanks,' said Phil. ‘Don't want to put you out.' And he winked at Mel, who smiled shyly.

Her mum bustled into the kitchen and started banging frying pans and plates around. ‘Egg and chips all right? Maybe a fried slice?'

‘Got any beans?' said Phil.

‘Course!' said Mel's mum. Mel looked at him open-mouthed. She would never have dreamed of asking for something extra for tea, and she'd have got a clip around the ear if she had. Phil smiled at her again, and opened his mouth as if to speak, but he clearly couldn't think of anything to say to an eight-year-old girl, so he shut it and wandered into the kitchen to chat to Mel's mum while she cooked.

Who was this man? And why was he in their house? Mel was dying to ask, but she knew she would never get an answer. She'd learned very early on that the best way to find things out was to sit quiet as a mouse and listen when grownups were talking. They soon forgot you were there, and as long as you didn't ask any silly questions, they would just keep talking. So over tea (the best tea she'd had in months), Mel learned that Phil had known her dad from the longdistance truck routes. He had been living in Newcastle, but something had happened with his wife (she wished she could ask what a ‘hussy' was, but she knew it wasn't the time). Phil had moved back into the area with his son (‘He's a couple of years older than you,' he said, turning to Mel. ‘Look out for him at school.'). He'd come to live with his sister, so she
could help him look after the boy when he was away on the road. He'd thought he would look up his old friend, and was sad to learn Mel's dad had died. However, when he found out his widow was working in the betting shop, he'd stopped by to pay his respects.