Wonderland (8 page)

DAD IS
waiting for me.

I walk up the bare treads of the stairs. My head’s hanging down, heavy with sleep and sun and last night, my stomach alive with butterflies, a can of Coke in my hand to quell them, poison them. I see his feet in front of me, on the landing, faded-brown socks, a hole in the left one. I stop. And wait for the words I know are going to come out. Seen it on the soaps.

“Where the hell have you been?” Like he’s scripted.

“Ed’s.”

“I know that. His mum rang last night. But, why, Jude? You knew your gran was coming.”

“I forgot.” True. “Where is she?”

“At the beach with Alfie. I’ve told her you’re helping Ed clear out the garage.” Lying. To cover for me.

I shrug, like it’s nothing. But it’s everything. To him.

The TV script starts again. “Have you seen the state of yourself?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter with you lately?”

“Nothing. God, will everyone stop worrying about me? I’m fine — No, I’m better than fine. I’m happy.”

“You were drinking . . .”

Mrs. Hickman told him, then. Must have heard Ed carrying me in. “It’s just the end of term, Dad. Everyone was out.”

Dad looks at the floor, shakes his head. “I can’t do this again.” But he’s talking to himself now. About her, I guess. And I’m sick of it. Of this ghost that stalks us. Unacknowledged. Unspoken. But we both see her, feel her.

I dig my nails into the palms of my hands. “Say it, Dad,” I demand. “Say I’m like her. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? But I’m not. I wish I bloody were. But I’m not.”

The words hang there, taunting him. I watch his face, struggling. See what he wants to say bubble up inside him. But he fights it back down.

Eventually his eyes meet mine again. But his face is set now. “Just get washed. They’ll be back for lunch at half past.”

I laugh. Quick and spiteful. “You are unbelievable.” I run up the last stairs, push past him, and slam my bedroom door. Textbook.

I hear him turn the radio on in the kitchen. Radio 2 again. Sunday love songs. I flick on the stereo and press play, not even checking what’s loaded. The Rolling Stones reverberate off the walls as I flop down on the bed. Staring at the ceiling. Craving sleep that I know I can’t have. I cover my face with my hands and feel a warm wetness. My nails have dug so hard they have drawn blood.

I’m sitting at the dressing table, staring at myself in the mirror. In trousers and a T-shirt now. Last night’s dress abandoned on the floor.

People used to say we could be sisters. Me and Mum. Mum would laugh and smile and kiss me. But they were just trying to be nice to her. Just saying the words she wanted to hear. I take after him. Quiet. Plain. A nobody.

Mum was beautiful. Not just like every kid thinks their mum is beautiful. I mean she was like Marilyn and Marlene and Madonna rolled into one. That wild blond hair, eyes an obscure shade of green. Like candied angelica or lime Starburst. Unique. My shooting star, Dad called her. And she was. Lighting up the village for nine years, then burning out.
I am like a low-energy lightbulb,
I think. I laugh at the image in my head. And what is Stella? A Catherine wheel? Maybe a disco ball.

Mum and Dad met in a pub in London. She kept the matchbook in her jewelery box. I have looked at the street on maps. Googled it a hundred times. This once-in-a-lifetime meeting place. The start of it all.

He was at art school in Chelsea, his great escape from Churchtown. She was doing modeling jobs for a hundred pounds and living on her mother’s inheritance, her father three years dead. She was in a pop video once. They still show it on MTV, Mum dancing in the background behind some cheesy eighties band with striped T-shirts and blow-dried glam hair.

She said it was love at first sight. Dad would get embarrassed, but I think it was the same for him. When she got pregnant, they thought they would move to France. Live in some stone farmhouse in the South. In lavender fields. Where all artists go, following the light. Him painting, her reading me Keats, teaching me “Frère Jacques.”

But then Dad’s father died. And Dad had to come back tothe farm he’d fought so hard to leave. Gran forbade Mum to follow him. Maybe that’s why she did. To spite her. And I was born on the farm in May. A Gemini. Same as her.

Dad says she was like nothing Churchtown had ever seen. She’d walk into the village in Gaultier skirts and stilettos, with me on one hip. She’d send me to school in mismatched wellies or a party dress because she’d lost my shoes or used my skirt to mop up spilled soup. I would get sent home, mortified. But Mum just laughed and let me watch cartoons and made cupcakes.

Those were the good days. On the bad days, I’d come home and she’d still be in bed. Or lying on the sofa in one of Dad’s shirts. Eating cornflakes from the box, then lying defiantly in the crumbs. Saying she was too tired to clean. Mrs. Hickman hoovering around her and muttering under her breath.

Highly strung, Gran called it. But I know what she really thought. What everyone thought. And I think of Mental Nigel, sitting outside the launderette, counting red cars and eating candy. And for one brief moment, I’m glad I’m nothing like her.

Mick Jagger has faded into the low electricity hum of the speakers. The back door slams and I hear Alfie’s voice singing through the house. Then Gran’s restrained, clipped vowels. So different from me and Alfie.

Then Dad.

“Jude!”

“Yeah.”

I down the last few mouthfuls of warm, flat Coke and look again at my reflection. Wishing someone else were staring back. But it’s still me.

“Jude, darling.”

“Hi, Gran.”

She kisses me on both cheeks, like the French girl I am not, her lips never once coming into contact with my skin. I can smell soap and coffee and Nina Ricci. Dressed in cream linen, she is immaculate. Out of place in our cramped, mismatched living room.

She isn’t staying with us. Now she has the excuse that there’s no room. But even before we moved, she’d find some reason to book a hotel. Said the farm gave her hay fever. “They’re cows, not crops,” Dad said. But Mum just laughed and said, “Let her waste her money.”

“So, you’ve been helping Edward and his mother.”

I feel Dad’s eyes on me. Don’t-you-daring me. I smile at Gran. “Yes. Sorry I missed you earlier.”

“Oh, never mind. We’ve had a splendid time, haven’t we, Alfie?”

“We got ice cream dipped in chocolate, and Gran says I can go to the hotel later and swim in the pool.”

“Does she, now?” says Dad.

Gran raises a plucked, arched eyebrow at him that says,
And?

But Alfie doesn’t see it. “It’s made of salt water. Did you know that salt actually makes you float? In the Dead Sea you actually float on top of the water because it’s, like, so salty.”

“I didn’t know that, Alfie,” says Dad. Lying again. Twice in one morning. Alfie looks pleased. So does Gran. One point for her.

“You must come too, Jude. We can have tea on the lawn.”

I hear Stella laugh in my head and force a smile. “Thanks. Maybe.” Maybe not.

“So, how were the exams, darling?” Gran perches on the edge of the sofa, tensing in case some neglected spill seeps through her trouser suit. “Have you thought about university yet? Your father tells me Edward is going to King’s.”

“Give her a chance.” Dad glances over at me. “She’s only just done her GCSEs.”

But Gran ignores that fact. “It pays to think ahead, Tom. You know they have summer programs at Cambridge for less fortunate pupils. To give them a taste. She —”

“She goes to a bloody three-thousand-pounds-a-term girls’ school. I’d say she’s more than fortunate.”

Gran stiffens.

“Dad swore. Dad, you swore.” Alfie is delirious with forbidden things.

“Sorry, Alfie . . . Margaret.” He nods at Gran.

“I’m only thinking of Jude.” Gran holds up her hands.

“I know.”

“She has such potential. . . .”

“
She
is in this room,” I point out.

But Gran doesn’t hear me. Or chooses not to. “And then there’s her acting.”

“That’s a hobby. Not a career.”

“That’s not what Charlotte thought . . .”

Dad flinches. Mum’s name hanging solid between them. Like a swearword. And I think,
She’ll stop now; she has to.

But she doesn’t.

“. . . not what you used to think. She could have been someone, you know. If —”

“She
was
someone,” Dad says deliberately, his face reddening with anger.

“Dad,” I plead softly. Desperately. “Stop it.” I don’t want to hear this. Not now. I’m too tired. But he ignores me.

He and Gran blur into one noise. “Don’t understand . . . never accepted . . . blame me . . .”

I can’t listen anymore. Have to make the noise disappear. “I’m leaving, anyway,” I blurt out.

The voices cut out abruptly.

“What?” Dad looks at me, confused.

“I’ve got an audition. At the Lab. It’s a drama school.” I pause. “In London.”

“Oh, Jude, that’s wonderful —” Gran is glowing again. Victorious.

But she hasn’t won. Dad plays his trump card. “No,” he says.

“What?” It’s my turn now.

“You’re not going.”

“Why?”

“How are you going to pay for it?” he says. “They don’t give out grants anymore. How much do you think it costs to go to stage school?”

About three thousand pounds a term,
I think. But I don’t say it. I don’t need to. We all know where the money will come from.

Gran smiles. “You can’t keep her here forever, Tom.”

Dad drops his head. Then looks up at her. “I’m not trying to. Do you think I want her to end up like me? But she’s a kid, Margaret. She’s too young. She’s too”— he looks over at me, searching for a word —“fragile.”

“No, I’m not.” I retort. I’m strong. I’m invincible. Like Stella. Aren’t I?

But Dad’s still going on at Gran. “She needs stability. Normal things. A normal life.” He pauses, searching for the words. “Look at what it did to her,” he says finally. And he doesn’t mean me now. “Those people. Every time she went up to London . . . the state she was in when she got back.”

“Because she saw what she was missing,” Gran says.

Dad shakes his head. “Because they got her drunk. Gave her —” He stops.

I can feel the tears prick my eyes again and I choke back a sob. But Gran waves her hand. Dismissing it as lies.

Dad turns to me. “I’m sorry, Jude. You’re too young.”

“I’m sixteen,” I cry.

“Exactly. Sixteen. How can you even know what you want to do at this age? Who you want to be?”

I know exactly who I want to be. So does he. And that’s what he’s scared of. But I don’t say that. I use another weapon.

“You did,” I spit. “You wanted to be Turner or Whistler or . . . or Monet. What happened to that?”

“Life happened,” he says. “And, anyway, I wasn’t good enough.”

“What if I am, though?”

Dad says nothing. Alfie is crying. Dad tries to pick him up, but he fights and wriggles out of his grip and holds on to my legs. “Don’t go.” Snot is running down his nose and sticking to my leg. A snail trail.

“It’s all right, Alfie,” I say, wiping his face. “It’s all right.” But it isn’t.

Lunch is ham and potatoes, pushed around plates. Only Alfie is really eating. And talking. Back to his endless chattering now. “Did you know that potatoes were the first food grown in space?” Dad clears the table and gets everyone ice cream from the shop freezer. Ice cream. Mum’s answer to bad dreams and scraped knees and bee stings. And rows.

I don’t go to the hotel with Alfie and Gran. I go back to my room. Back to my bed and the Rolling Stones. Ed calls, but I don’t come to the phone. Because it’s not him I need now. It’s Stella.

But Stella has other plans.

IT’S MONDAY.
Two days since that night at the Point. Two days since I saw Stella. Gran has gone, Alfie’s at school, and Dad and I are working in the shop. Me putting out cans of tuna, boxes of cereal. Him behind the counter, doling out stamps and pensions and explaining passport forms to Mrs. Saunders, who is going to Germany to see her son. “He’s got four medals, you know.”
And no brain,
I think,
joining the army.