‘What’s the point in worrying about the future? Who says there will even be a future? What happens if you die tomorrow and all you ever did was sit in maths classes and play the clarinet and moan about your family? What good is the future to you then?’ She sits up and lights a cigarette. ‘Have fun at your dad’s.’
‘Fun . . .?’ I think better of keeping this conversation going and leave her alone, sitting in the field smoking and eating chips. I get the impression she’ll be there for a while.
As I get to Dad’s house I can hear the TV. He’s watching
Countdown
. The house is so small – barely a house really, more a little bungalow surrounded by overgrown weeds with his banged-up old Ford Fiesta in the drive. It’s the car he bought Julian for his seventeenth birthday, but now he uses it because he can’t afford another one. I remember when he gave it to Julian. Julian said he wouldn’t drive it because it was such a ‘heap of shit’.
The bungalow is a yellowy colour and the windows are filthy. It’s depressing to look at. I hate that this is where he lives now. Our house is big and lovely, and although I know it’s just a matter of time before we have to move out because no one can afford to pay the mortgage, it should be his house too. He bought it. Not her.
‘Dad?’ I let myself in with my key. The house smells of burnt food.
There’s no answer.
I go into the sitting room and see him asleep in an armchair. There’s an empty pint glass on the table in front of him with white froth stuck to its inside. A microwave macaroni cheese is half eaten on the coffee table, still in the plastic.
I stand in the doorway staring at my dad. His large belly is flopped to one side, his double chin squashed into his chest. His dark blond hair that used to be combed neatly is now unwashed and too long, and his face is badly shaven, covered in cuts. He’s wearing a blue T-shirt with jeans, and socks with slippers that he’s obviously been wearing outside. Wearing my slippers outside was one of the only things he ever used to tell me off for. It really upset him. Thinking about that upsets me now. Dad has changed so much in such a short space of time. It feels like only yesterday he was coming into my room every morning singing stupid songs to wake me up for school. I miss it.
‘Dad.’ I shake him gently. ‘Dad, wake up.’
He opens his eyes. No other part of him moves for a few seconds. It’s creepy, like he’s waiting for something to happen before he’s willing to look at who woke him up. Then he sees me.
‘Flo. Hello, darling,’ he says sleepily, like he’s been drugged or something. He shifts in his chair and tries to get up. ‘Here, sit here in my chair. Do you want a cup of tea?’ He starts to clear the table, making all sorts of excuses for not having done it earlier.
‘It’s OK, Dad. Just sit down.’ I perch on the arm of the sofa and he slumps down like a child who has been told off. There are a few minutes where we both pretend to find a word in AHOGWUSPE.
‘Sorry, Flo. I’ll get myself back on track, I promise. And I’m sure your mum and I will work things out.’
‘It’s OK, Dad, honestly.’
‘How’s school? That Sally still acting like she rules the world?’ he asks with a small smile.
My dad knows all about Sally and her ways. He’s the one person I can tell the truth to. He seems to understand it completely. When he lived at home he came up to my room every day after work and insisted I told him all the mean things she had done that day. He somehow made it all seem funny. I’d tell him what she’d said and he’d mimic her in a silly voice that was weirdly accurate. It always made me laugh.
‘Yeah, she’s like a fly trap and I’m a stupid, dopey blue bottle that hovered around so long I got stuck. Makes me feel like such a loser,’ I say, crossing my arms and slumping.
‘Hey, it’s me you’re talking to. King of the blue bottles. I’m the loser.’
‘Don’t say stuff like that, Dad. You’re not a loser.’
We look back at the TV screen. One guy has a five-letter word, the other seven.
‘How is she, your mum? When she drops Abi off she barely looks at me. Can’t blame her, I guess.’
‘She’s angry all the time. She hates having to work, and she hates having to look after Abi when she gets home, so she doesn’t, I do it. I don’t remember the last time I actually had a conversation with her,’ I say, flitting my eyes between him and the TV.
‘Nor do I, and we’ve been married for twenty years.’
We let out little laughs, but they don’t last long.
‘I miss you, Dad. Julian, Mum and Sally do my head in so badly.’
‘Well, people who acknowledge their faults aren’t so angry about them. Oh to be a selfish, eh?’
‘I think life would be easier if I was a selfish.’
‘No, it wouldn’t. Not really. Those people aren’t happy, they’ll be on their death beds with little more than a lifetime of guilt and regret to think about. People like us die with a clear conscience, Flo. That’s the best way to be. If you admit to where you go wrong at least you stand a chance of making it better.’
I still wish I was selfish.
The guy with seven letters lost. Pogwash isn’t a real word.
I can’t sleep. Just before bed Nell told me that she hates living with Nana and Pop and that she plans to tell them that soon. She said she doesn’t care if it hurts them and that she can’t live like this any more. When I asked her where she plans to live instead she said ‘with Dad’. If she ever says that to Pop I think he would explode, and Nana would cry, and things would only get worse.
Dad made his decision to live in Spain. When Mum died him and Pop had the worst fight. I’ll never forget how loud they shouted at each other. Pop said it was his fault she got cancer, that the stress he put her under is what made her ill. I don’t think that’s true, I think Pop just needs someone to blame because his daughter died before he did and his brain can’t handle it. He turns everything into a battle, and has to make everything somebody else’s fault. Sometimes I wonder if he really blames himself. He made Mum, after all. Maybe he feels responsible for her body going wrong. Maybe that’s why he’s so mad all the time, and why he shouts and makes everyone else feel so terrible about themselves. He’s trying to make us all feel as guilty as he does. I think it worked on Dad, because soon after Mum died he moved to Spain, and now he has another wife and another child. The only contact I have with him are the birthday and Christmas cards he sends, which his new wife so obviously writes. I’ve never even met her.
If Nell tells Nana and Pop she doesn’t want to live here any more we won’t be allowed to move to Spain anyway. And even if we are, I don’t want to live in another country with someone who doesn’t love me enough to write their own cards. And I don’t want to start all over again with a new school where no one knows me. So Nell will go and it will just be me, Nana and Pop left here. Pop will be angrier and he’ll make me feel even more guilty about not being the one who died instead of Mum. And they’ll get older and older and I’ll have to start taking care of them, and I’ll have to leave school to become a full-time carer and my life will be awful. Why can’t Nell just shut up and deal with it? It doesn’t make sense that I’m the one who always gets called selfish in this house.
As I lie in bed thinking all of this over I can’t think of a single positive outcome of her saying that stuff. I just lie there, my heart jumping around in my chest, desperately trying to think of something, of something shallow and shiny to focus on to distract my thoughts, and then I remember.
Julian.
I listen to Nell’s breathing. It’s long and slow. She’s definitely asleep. I slide my hand down slowly. My duvet is suddenly very loud. On my back with my hand in place, I think about him. The curve of his top lip pressing against mine, his breath bitter but sweet. We’re in the living room, where I saw him last. He has me on the sofa. His hand is where mine is now, he’s kissing me and touching me and he feels so good. I’m totally transfixed by my fantasy, I must unknowingly jolt, make a noise, I don’t know – but Nell is now awake. She’s turned the light on, and she is telling me I am disgusting.
I don’t bother saying anything. It won’t make me feel any less humiliated to stand up for myself. I just roll over. She turns off the light and says, ‘You should always be alone, Renée.’
I fall asleep, my brain finally realising that being awake isn’t worth the hassle.
The next morning I wake up to hysteria. Nana is next to Nell’s bed with a bowl of water and a cloth. Nell is lying on her back with a tea towel stuffed up her nose. This has become normal. Nell’s nosebleeds are an everyday occurrence since she decided to torture herself by not eating. I go to get out of bed, knowing that offering my help will only get me told to GO AWAY, but as I move I feel a wetness between my legs that worries me. Is it already that time? I lift the covers and see that my pyjamas have a huge red stain creeping across them. I move myself to see if it had spread to the sheets but I’ve woken up just in time. Any wrong move will change that so I have to be careful. I roll onto my side and run to the bathroom. Pulling my PJs down as I go I just about make it to the toilet, but a dollop of blood falls onto the mat.
Why do periods have to start that way? This will be my fifteenth and I’m still not used to them. I can’t believe I have to have them until I’m fifty-something. How many pairs of pyjamas will I have ruined by then?
I clean myself up and stick a big wedge of loo roll between my legs. Holding it in place with my thighs I scrub the toilet mat until the stain comes off. After a shower I hold my pyjama bottoms between my thighs, wrap a towel around myself and waddle into the bedroom. Luckily I have one more sanitary towel in my gym bag, so I stick that in my pants, get dressed, hide the pyjamas in my bag and leave for school. Just at the end of our road there’s a row of bins. I throw my pyjama bottoms into the emptiest one and carry on along my way. As I walk, I think how weird it is that Nana has never even asked me if my periods have started. Maybe when you get that old you just forget about them.
At school, hell strikes. My tummy throbs like a wild animal trapped inside a cage. I sit on the toilet as I try to push out the pain. The registration bell rings, I crawl back to the classroom. My face can’t hide what I’m going through.
‘Get on your knees and put your head on the floor,’ insists Margaret, who is the self-confessed Queen of Periods, seeing as she started so long ago.
‘NO, don’t scrunch up. You lie on your back with your knees apart and feet together,’ says Charlotte as she tries to get me into that position.
‘I am not lying on the floor in my school skirt with my legs open,’ I say, jamming my thighs shut.
I assume Margaret’s position and continue to drop beads of sweat into the carpet tiles. Last month I didn’t get any pain at all – why now? I feel so faint. The dull ache is weakening me. With my forehead on the floor I shout, ‘Why did Mother Nature do this to us?’ I take some long, deep breaths.
‘Ahhh, babe. You’ll be OK. It’s OK,’ repeat Carla and Gem. The urge to scream ‘DO I LOOK OK, YOU PAIR OF PERFECTS?’ at them is almost impossible to control. I pant it out, by instruction of Charlotte. Then I feel a threatening presence hovering over me.
‘Why are you always trying to get attention? Periods aren’t that painful.’ It’s Sally, her feet close to my head. ‘Attention is all you care about, isn’t it? Maybe if you cared about school and did some work then you’d get attention for being clever rather than a thick show-off.’
I try to ignore her, but I’m not in the most pleasant of moods.
‘A school full of girls and I’ve never seen anyone else with their head on the floor at the back of a classroom because of a little period pain. Only you, Renée.’
Focus on the breath, focus on the breath.
I look up. Her smirking face is looking down at me. Flo is sitting at her desk pretending to read a book. It’s upside down. Being beneath Sally, no matter what the reason, is not something I’m comfortable with. She steps closer to me and kneels down.
‘Poor Renée,’ she whispers. ‘No one loves you. No friends, a mad family. It’s hardly a wonder, really.’
I feel a power surge in my belly. My muscles are tightening around the pain. One swift thrust up with my head and I’ll probably remove one of her teeth. I inhale deeply, ready to throw my head back and remove the smirk right from her face. One, two, thr—
‘Good morning, ladies. What is all this?’
Sally jumps up. Miss Anthony is now standing over me.
‘Renée, is there any particular reason you are on the floor?’ Miss Anthony asks with an assertive tone.
‘Period pain, miss,’ offers Margaret.
‘Oh dear. Well, you shouldn’t be on the floor. Come on, Renée, up to your feet. Do you think you can make it to the sick room to lie down? There’s a hot water bottle there. It will pass in a little while if you just lie still,’ Miss Anthony says, helping me up.
‘WITH YOUR LEGS OPEN,’ shouts Charlotte from across the room.
‘Just a water bottle will do fine, thank you, Charlotte. Do you think you can make it downstairs on your own or would you like someone to go with you?’
I nod, embarrassed that everyone in Year 11 now knows I have my period. I hold onto the wall the whole way.
Inside the sick room both bunk beds are empty. Good, there’s nothing worse than having to share the sick room. I always regret skiving when I have to lie there pretending to be ill with someone puking into a bowl underneath me. I lie down on the bottom bunk and wait for whichever member of staff is on duty to come and make me a hot water bottle. My tummy is already feeling a little better.
After ten minutes no one has come and I start to feel anxious. I need to change my panty pad. Knowing that the middle drawer in the office just off the sick room is full of them, I get up and creep in. This is where I’ve been getting them ever since I started my periods over a year ago. As I stuff as many as I can into my waistband, my bra and even a couple in my socks, I hear the door open.
Oh, SHIT!
‘What on earth are you doing stuffing sanitary towels into your bra, Miss Sargent?’