Being Me (15 page)

Dad goes to ask a question, then stops.

‘What?’ I ask him.

‘This kiss. Have you told your mum?’

I shake my head.

‘Good.’

‘What kiss?’ MTB has arrived. He must have sneaked in. He throws his sports bag down on the kitchen floor in a huge wave of boy energy.

‘Tony,’ says Dad, hauling himself up and moving MTB’s bag out of the middle of the kitchen floor. ‘Tony, Tony, Tony, just leave it, yeah? Just leave it. Adele, come here.’

I go over to Dad.

He takes me in his arms and squeezes me. Tightly, like he’s never squeezed me before, then kisses me on the top of my head.

‘Tony, here.’

MTB looks across at me as Dad kisses my brother’s forehead while hugging us both. MTB’s eyes are saying,
what’s going on here?

‘Happy birthday, Dad,’ MTB says. ‘I love you too.’

‘Yeh, happy birthday,’ I say. ‘I love you no matter what.’

‘Love you both,’ he says. ‘Now I’ve got to make some phone calls.’

Dad leaves the kitchen.

As soon as he’s gone, MTB laughs. ‘A kiss? You mean he doesn’t know about you and Marcus? And he thinks Mum doesn’t know? He’s so out of touch, isn’t he? He should be checking you two are using condoms.’

I throw the empty orange juice carton at MTB and run upstairs to my room.

My phone goes off. It’s Mikaela. I take a deep breath then answer.

‘My dad says it was just a kiss,’ I tell her, before she says anything.

‘They probably talked about it and that’s what they’ve decided to say to us. I know your dad’s aftershave, Adele, and I’ve smelt it on Mum before.’

‘Just because your mum smells of Armani doesn’t mean it’s my dad.’

There’s silence on the other end of the phone.

‘I mean, is she getting any from your dad? I’ve heard that if they don’t get it from their partner they go elsewhere.’

‘Who is “they” and what is “it”?’

‘You know.’

‘...I can’t believe you, Adele!’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. Mikaela. Wait! Mikaela! It came out wrong.’

More silence.

‘You’re like a sister to me, Mikay. I don’t want to lose you as a friend. Mikaela?’

Finally she speaks. Her voice is ice. ‘This situation is very fucked up, Adele. Just try and keep your dad away from my mum, OK? My dad has just moved back in and I want it to stay that way.’

I go to speak but she ends the call.

I don’t know what to do. I’m losing my best friend ever and I can’t do anything about it. And what’s this about her dad moving back in? Does that mean her mum and my dad are, like Dad says, just friends? Nothing makes sense. I’ve managed to pummel a great big dish into the middle of the mattress when my phone bleeps. This time it’s Marcus.

Wot u doin

Nuffin much

Why dnt u call rnd mine

If u ask nicely

Pls

Maybe. wait & c

I phone a taxi and ask the driver to get me to Marcus’s as fast as he can. I’m about to tap on his front door when his mum bursts out with Leah in her arms and two bulging bags in her hands. Leah’s wailing. She sees me, stops wailing long enough to break out a big smile, then goes back to wailing.

‘Hi love, just grab that other bag for me will you?’ Marcus’s mum, says, ‘the one in the hallway. My box of tricks.’

I pick the bag up and follow her to her car.

‘Hold her a moment,’ she says. She pours a wailing Leah into my arms then goes to open the driveway gates. Leah grabs hold of my thumb and pushes it into her mouth. For about two seconds she’s quiet as she sucks desperately. Then she starts wailing again.

‘If she has any more she’ll throw up,’ Marcus’s mum says, peeling Leah off me. She straps Leah into the car seat then puts the car in gear.

I wave them both off. The front door is open. I go in.

Marcus comes galloping down the stairs. He’s wearing about half a bottle of after-shave.

‘Your mum let me in,’ I explain.

‘She’s off to Magic Circle,’ Marcus says, shaking his head. He nods for me to follow him inside.

From the living room I can see his dad in the back garden hanging out washing. I sit on the sofa. The clock says ten past one.

‘Don’t get comfortable, Dad wants me outside,’ Marcus says. ‘He’s got a guy coming round showing him how to set up an Ebay shop.’ He shouts this last bit from the kitchen where I can hear him opening the fridge door.

‘What’s he gonna sell?’ I call out.

There’s no answer. It doesn’t surprise me. Marcus’s ears aren’t good and he won’t have heard me.

He comes back in. ‘What was that?’

‘What’s your dad gonna sell on Ebay?’

‘Stuff,’ Marcus shrugs. He grabs his jacket from the coat hooks under the stairs. ‘Right, we’re off.’ He pats his pockets. ‘One sec.’

He spins out into the back garden. He comes back two minutes later with a twenty pound note in his hand and a grin on his face. ‘Now we’re rolling!’

We wander through Marcus’s neighbourhood. He has a ball at his feet. I’m calming down from the fight with Mikaela and being kicked off the England team and Dad and his stupid kiss with Mrs Robinson. Marcus does the flip-flap then the step-over. Some kids gather to watch. He’s such a show-off. He kicks the ball over to me. I do a few moves, nowhere near as smart as his. People gasp, mainly because I’m a girl. I whack the ball back to Marcus. He peels off some headers then drops the ball into his arms. ‘Show’s over!’ he says to the local urchins. They slope off.

We walk on, Marcus juggling the ball low. For a moment I want him to stop juggling and hold my hand, but then I don’t care. I think about how life is and I decide I don’t care about not being on the England team. Why should I, when no-one else cares? Mrs Richards is right. It would only matter if I was a boy. Nobody really cares about girl’s football, nobody comes knocking on your door trying to sign you up for Manchester United or anything. Compare that with boys. Boys are instant heroes the moment they can do a few tricks. I tell this to Marcus. Then I tell him about the fight with Mikaela and how we’ve been banned from the England trials.

He finally stops juggling. ‘What were you fighting about?’

‘She thinks my dad’s having an affair with her mum. She saw them kissing.’

‘A kiss is not an affair.’

‘A five second kiss, with tongues?’

Marcus shrugs. ‘When my dad was a club singer women used to come up to him and snog his face off every night. Mum didn’t bat an eyelid. It was just part of the job. Show business.’

‘My dad’s a banker, not a singer.’

‘Yeh,’ he agrees. ‘True.’ He thinks a bit. ‘A five second kiss?’

I nod.

‘But no ... roving hands?’

I shake my head.

‘That’s more than a kiss. And yet...’

My phone rings. I shush Marcus.

It’s MC. I mouth ‘MC Banshee’ to Marcus. He frowns.

MC’s buzzing.

‘I’m with Cakes. You coming lifting? It’s a hot day for it. A rob for one is a rob for all!’

Marcus is shaking his head.

‘I can’t go. I’m with someone.’

‘You don’t want to get on the wrong side of me, Adele. You’ve got a pretty nose, it won’t look good squashed into your face.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You’re chicken aren’t you? Just ’cos you got caught.’

‘I’ll ring you back.’ I end the call.

Marcus is right in my face. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he says.

I break free of him. ‘What
are
we going to do then?’ I ask. ‘I’m bored. And wet.’

There’s been a sudden gale. It’s blown off now but it’s left us soaked. We’re in a corner shop doorway.

‘Not thieving,’ Marcus says. ‘I’ll think of something.’

He takes us to a high street. It’s a sound mashup of car horns, road drills, Bangla CD’s blasting out of shopfronts, and ‘Buy your phonecards’ shouts from the phonecard stall guys. We pass restaurants and take-aways and stop outside a furniture store that’s selling gold-sprayed bed frames. Marcus points to a sign hanging above the shop.
Tattoo You
it says, with an arrow pointing upwards. I look at him.

‘Nooooo!’

‘Let’s do it!’

He grabs my hand and we race up a creaky staircase. It’s lined with print-outs of tattoo designs. Swords. Snakes. Dragons. Devils. Microphones. Eyes. Eagles. Virgin Marys. Naked Ladies. Butterflies. Hearts. Lions. Anchors. Everything leaps out at once. Marcus pulls me up the last flight of stairs.

The studio doorway is framed by two silver skulls and a Jolly Roger flag. There’s a plastic bead curtain and behind that a waiting room the size of a telephone box. We squeeze in and this triggers a bell. We wait. We’re so close Marcus is giggling because our bellies are rubbing together. Someone draws a bolt back and the upper part of a door in the wall facing us opens. A woman with straggly black hair and breasts laced into a sleeveless black dress that shows off weird pattern tattoos on her shoulders appears from behind this half-door. She looks us up and down, then says, ‘Piss off!’

‘We’ve got money,’ pleads Marcus. He flashes his twenty pound note.

‘Underage,’ she says, ‘not worth my licence. Go on, do one.’

‘We’ll pay double,’ I say. Marcus nudges me. I nudge him back. He forgets I’ve got money too.

‘And don’t come back, Romeo and frogging Juliet, or my foot’s gonna tattoo your arses.’

We are so close to the tattoo lady that we smell each word she says. ‘Arses’ smelt of hard-boiled eggs. Marcus brushes aside the bead curtain. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘fuck her.’

‘Yeh, fuck you!’ I tell Miss Tattoo as I step out with him. She looks at me like,
is that all you’ve got?
And gives us both the middle finger, slowly.

We tumble down the stairs in a fit of giggles.

The gale has stopped and the sun’s blazing. I spot a big plastic sheet across the road, sheltering a shop’s fruits and vegetables. It’s bulging with rain water. I dart across the road. Marcus dashes after me. Before he can stop me I’ve found a pole and whacked the plastic. A ton of water shoots down off the plastic, drenching me, Marcus and three gasping shoppers.

‘Run!’ Marcus shouts.

We run like the wind.

We make it to a patch of grass at the end of the parade of shops and sit on a bench there.

‘What are you like?’ says Marcus. ‘You just do things.’

‘Fun though, no?’

‘Whatever.’

Marcus has taken his hearing aids out and is wiping them. He pops them back in then gets up and starts juggling his ball.

‘Do you sleep with it?’ I ask him.

He doesn’t answer but a grin sneaks out of one side of his mouth.

‘Admit it, Marky, you sleep with your football!’

‘Shh,’ he says, ‘I’m trying to land this.’

‘Boring!’

He’s doing a spin round and trap. As usual when he starts with his tricks, a crowd builds up. I wait till he kicks the ball really high, then spring up and grab it.

‘What do you do that for?’ he says, trying to wrestle the ball from me.

I hang on to it and he smothers me in his arms, which is kind of nice. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ I say, almost licking his ear. He pulls away me. I bounce the ball back to him.

Where did the time go? It’s nearly eight o’clock and we’re both hungry. We’ve ended up back at Marcus’s. His dad’s out at a recording studio. His mum’s in the kitchen. Baby Leah is sleeping in her buggy and his mum says not to get her out of it because that will wake her. Marcus is in the back alley practicing half volleys. It’s weird sitting in someone else’s house, in a room alone. The TV is blaring out a game show. The house phone rings and I wonder whether I should pick it up. Just as I get up, it stops ringing. There’s photos all along the mantelpiece, mainly of Marcus when he was younger, some of Leah. There is one that I guess is his mum and dad billions of years ago. They’re arm in arm, leaning against a car. She’s got flares and a tie dye top, he’s got a big Afro, a tight T shirt and muscles. There’s a small photo of an old man looking regal in a gold frame in the middle of the mantelpiece. The face is more like Marcus than his dad. I pick it up. People say sometimes genes skip a generation. And sometimes they don’t. I think,
what if I become my dad, with his temper? Or my mum, all druggy and dreamy?
Both thoughts scare me.

‘That’s his granddad,’ Marcus’s mum says, bursting in, her arms full of laundry.

Her voice makes Leah stir. Marcus’s mum freezes and puts a finger to her lips. Leah’s little hands are up and jerking. Gradually they relax and drop to her legs again. Her mum takes a step. The floor creaks. Leah opens one groggy eye. The one eye looks up at her mum who stays as still as a statue. The eye looks around the room. Will she go back to sleep? We’re both holding our breath. Leah’s one eye fixes on me. A second eye joins the first. Both eyes stare at me as only babies’ eyes can, intently and completely blank, like maybe she’s dreaming with her eyes open. I count four seconds, not breathing. Then the sound wave hits.

‘Waaahhhh!’ goes Leah.

‘That’s all I need!’ her mum says, dumping the laundry on the sofa. She unstraps Leah, gives her a big blubbery kiss, changes her nappy, tickles her tum, feeds her with a bottle, and then pours her into my arms. She’s lovely and warm and smells of soap and talc.

‘Have you burped a baby before?’ her mum asks.

‘What’s that?’

She shows me. Soon I’m doing little circular motions on Leah’s back. Leah gurgles.

‘That’s a burp,’ her mum says. ‘Keep that going while I put this laundry away. I won’t be two ticks.’

Half an hour later, I’m still holding Leah. She’s bouncing up and down in my arms. Marcus barges back in via the kitchen. He’s all muddy and he’s chuffed with himself.

‘You should of seen me land the volleys. Boom boom boom! Dead centre every time!’

‘I wish I had a baby sister. Leah’s so cute,’ I say, as Leah starts kicking, then wriggles across into her brother’s arms. He takes her up.

‘Try changing her nappy,’ he says, sniffing her. His mum plucks Leah off him.

‘Can I stay tonight?’ I ask.

Marcus’s mum turns and looks at me squint-eyed.

I can’t believe what I’ve just said either.

Marcus wriggles in his shoes.