Phosphorescence (6 page)

With Mum, I spent the morning at the school last week, and although it was empty of pupils and full of the holiday smells of wet paint drying, and polish and disinfectant building up in layers, I was determined to learn my way around. Now I hardly hesitate as I go, so desperate am I not to show my newness by being lost.

My classroom is upstairs in the main building, and in it, sitting on the desks and leaning against the walls, are my new classmates. There are a lot of them, and their self-confidence radiates like heat.

‘Here, dude, catch this!' a fair-haired boy yells,
flinging something towards the door as I come in. Instinctively ducking, I just miss being hit by a rubber ball which is caught by a youth lounging behind me, a sarong wrapped over his baggy jeans. The quickest glance at him makes me feel prissy in my neat, close-fitting clothes. Shouting, ‘Ready, Carl? Pete, are you awake?' he rubs the ball on his thigh and takes a short run-up like a bowler and dispatches the ball between two girls leaning on their desks to a couple of boys hunched over a phone by the window. The room is high, with big, old-fashioned windows and long rows of wooden tables. Everyone seems so at home here, wandering about, slouching to their places with enviable confidence. For some reason they remind me of lions, or racehorses.

Hot, and horribly self-conscious, I look around for somewhere to sit. It takes every scrap of courage I possess, and the thought of my mum heading for her new job, so tiny and brave in her suit, not to turn round and walk straight out again. No one would notice, no one would know. Mum is at work. I could let myself into the flat and shut the door on this terrifying new prospect. It is so tempting. But before I have time to act, Mr Lascalles, our form teacher and the senior geography master, is in the room. The door has clicked shut and everyone is standing behind the desks. I slide into a space between Carl or is it Pete, and a willowy blonde girl whose expanse of deeply tanned stomach is on show, right to her hipbone, where a small pansy is tattooed. Nothing on earth could be cooler than that. I sigh to myself. How can
that girl possibly inhabit the same universe as me? She can't be real. She will never, ever speak to me.

By breaktime it is clear that in the class pecking order I will be low-ranking, and the amazing girl is at the top. Jessie Tait, a sandy blonde with a down-turned mouth and freckles, is put in charge of me and is helpful, if a little detached. But nothing can alter the fact that I am new, an outsider, and I have no idea what they are talking about, so I have no way of entering any group, even if I dared speak, which I don't.

‘Christoff, he's our maths teacher, is totally random,' Jessie hisses to me as we wait for Mr Christoff to arrive.

‘Oh, right.' I have no idea what ‘random' means in this context, so I wait to hear more.

‘He confiscated Pansy's phone for no reason for the whole of last term and when she got it back all the credit was used and he totally denied it and went into a massive freak-out. He's just so rank.'

‘Is Pansy the girl I was sitting next to?'

‘Yeah. She's going out with Aiden Black. He's in the sixth form. He's a Rastafarian and he's the captain of the basketball team.'

I remember the boys at the gate this morning, and that one had dreadlocks.

‘Does he wear a hankie on his head?'

Jessie looked at me pityingly.

‘They're not hankies. They're our school colours. You know. For when you're excellent at something. He is the only one here to have got colours for basketball.' She tosses her hair back, swivelling on her
chair. ‘Harry Sykes – he's in the sixth form too – has just been given them for skateboarding. It is so cool. Apparently it's the first time any school has awarded skateboarding colours, so he was in the newspapers. Everyone wants to go out with him now.' She leans confidentially towards me. ‘I've snogged him in fact, but it was a year ago, so I don't think it counts any more. Do you?'

‘Umm. Err, maybe,' I mutter. Ohmigod, this is terrifying, just terrifying. I have never been much of a boffin, but I am beginning to wish that there was no gap between lessons, and no time for talking ever. I mean, how obvious is it that I have never kissed a boy, let alone gone on a date? Why didn't I try to get Josh to snog me? I'm sure he would have done if we hadn't become such good friends. Oh, why did I ever go and look after Sadie and become friends with his mum? I really needed that potential experience.

Falling behind badly on the boyfriend front, I am not much better on accessories, despite my amazing shopping trips with Mum. My phone is a different make to everyone else's, which is fine, except it is much bigger – like the mobile phone equivalent of being fat. And my clothes are new in the wrong way.

‘How can clothes be new in the wrong way?' Mum is incredulous. ‘Surely they're new or they're not?'

I hurl myself back on the sofa, and the taut anxiety which has been holding me together all day collapses. Tears roll down my cheeks.

‘Oh, Mum, you wouldn't understand. You can't just wear everything new and expect it to look – oh – there's no point in trying to tell you.'

I don't want to see the hurt look on Mum's face, and I don't want her to start telling me everything is fine, because it's not. I need to call Nell, right now. Nell understands, and goes straight to the point.

‘So what did you wear?' is her first question, followed by, ‘How unfriendly were they?'

Hugging the phone to my chest, I stretch out on the floor, facing the base of the sofa, my back to Mum and the room.

‘Oh, Nell, it's so weird. I am not on their planet. I don't have the stuff and I haven't done anything. There's this girl in my form going out with a sixth-former.'

I stand up and go through to my room, cradling the cordless phone between neck and ear.

Nell cuts strictly through the whimpering note in my voice. ‘Well, Josh is a sixth-former, isn't he? It's not that weird.'

‘Yeah, but I didn't go out with Josh, did I?'

‘I know that, you know that, but
they
don't, do they?'

A reluctant giggle surfaces for a moment, but dies again.

‘Oh, Nell, they go out on dates and they meet in bars in the evening. No one will ever want to meet me, and there's this teacher called Mr Christoff and he sat on my hand when he was explaining something in maths to me.'

‘Ooh, gross,' murmurs Nell. ‘Does his breath smell? Our new geography teacher is a woman. She's called Miss Harris. Actually, she's more like a girl, really. She's only about twenty-five and all the male
teachers follow her around with spaced-out hungry faces. It's so rank, it's unreal.'

I am restless with the phone, and now I lock myself in the bathroom and turn on the taps, partly because I want a bath, but also just in case Mum might be listening. I pour in some bath essence.

‘Lola!' Nell's voice is distant. ‘Are you in the loo?'

‘No, I'm running a bath and it's going to be blue thanks to little Sadie's leaving present. Actually, it's a bit gross – it smells like those cartoon yoghurts Sadie likes, but anyway, I can't be bothered to let it all run out. No one will be near enough me to smell it anyway.'

Nell sighs.

‘Come on, Lola, you've got to make the best of it. I think it would be brilliant to be in London. What about the shops? I'm going to fix a weekend with Mum when she'll let me come and see you. I've got to go now, I haven't done my homework and it's getting late. My mum is in a real psych. Text me tomorrow. I'm missing you.'

She is gone. I wonder whether to call back and ask how Josh is, but what is the point? I have to get on with my life in London now.

It isn't until I am in bed, drifting off to sleep enveloped in the fruit aroma of Blueberry Bubble Breeze, that I remember something awful – I haven't called Dad or Grandma, and I promised I would.

The first day was the worst, and, in fact, I soon become grateful for the invisibility I feel at school. It gives me the chance to get to know my way around and to work out who is who without any attention focusing on me. Jessie becomes a real friend when I notice a photograph in her locker of a terrier, and speak my thoughts out loud.

‘What a nice face that dog has got.'

‘That's my dog, Loopy.'

‘Ooh, he's sweet. He looks like Cactus. Is he a Border terrier?'

‘He's anything you want him to be. We got him from Battersea Dogs Home when he was a puppy. They found him in a dustbin with six brothers and sisters.'

I lean into the locker to look at the picture more closely; there is a dark-haired woman holding the dog in her arms.

‘Is that your mum?'

‘Yup.' Jessie slams the locker shut. ‘She's a cow. She's left me and Dad and my sister and she's gone off with her yoga teacher. She's on holiday right now.'

Jessie's sneer hides pain I can recognize, even
though it is too new to have made an imprint on me yet. I slide my arm through Jessie's as we walk towards the canteen for lunch.

‘My parents have broken up too. That's why I'm here.'

The relief of telling someone at school brings a lump to my throat.

All my physical boundaries have changed, along with the structure of my family. I am surrounded by buildings and pavements instead of the sea. Spring bursts out all around and I scarcely notice it – I am never aware of the weather any more. I haven't once taken a coat to school; if it rains, I just run for shelter. Anyway, it doesn't matter because it isn't real rain like in Norfolk. And just as it is never really wet, it is also never really dark. Even in the middle of the night the street lamps glow orange, and I become used to sleeping through the restless city at night, only in my dreams experiencing the black silence of the nights at home.

Dad calls, and when I speak to him, I realize how odd it is not to see him every day. The funny thing is, I probably say more to him now on the phone in the evening than I did when we both lived in the same house.

‘Hi, Dad, I've got history and maths homework to do tonight and I haven't even started.'

‘Is it the same as you were doing at Flixby?'

‘I can't really tell because everything here is done so differently. We're doing the French Revolution. I've never done that before.'

‘Oh, Marat and Robespierre and what was that woman called?'

‘You mean you know it?'

I am ashamed by my own surprise, but then, I've never thought about Dad in any other context than on the marshes, knowing about birds and boats and ecosystems, but not about revolutions and politics and history. Mind you, he quickly reverts.

‘I think one of them was a bit of a pervert. Was it Robespierre? I can't remember, ask your teacher. When you come home, I've got lots to show you.'

‘I can't ask which of the leaders of the Revolution was a pervert,' I protest. ‘Tell me about Cactus, and what's happening in the village. And Grandma and Jack.'

It is May now.

Staitheley is still home. Our flat in Iverly Road is characterless and hot. I miss the familiar faces in the village, people I didn't even realize I noticed, like the milkman, or Miss Mills, or Billy Lawson's dad with his gnomic hat and his daily stroll along the quay getting slower every year with his encroaching arthritis. In London, I don't know a soul on our street, and the youth in the newspaper shop never acknowledges me with so much as a flicker of recognition, no matter how often I go in for chewing gum and phonecards.

The window in my room is stuck shut and Mum is working too hard to get it fixed, or so she says. I asked on Monday after a restless night, and then again on Tuesday and Wednesday.

‘I'm sorry, darling, could you organize it yourself?' Mum says finally.

This is the last straw. I am a child, not a caretaker. I slam out of my bedroom yelling, ‘Mum! Why don't you do something about this place? It's not a home, it's a cell.'

Mum looks stricken. ‘I'm sorry, darling,' she repeats. ‘I've been so busy at work I haven't had time to think about it.'

‘Well, life isn't just about work. You've got to live somewhere as well,' I storm. ‘This flat is awful. I want to go home.'

And Mum sits down on the sofa, and for once doesn't cry.

‘This has not been an easy time for either of us, Lola, and I know I have neglected your needs. I am sorry for that.' God, she is so serious. All I wanted was my window open. But the look on Mum's face, which is kind of soft but strong, makes me slide down next to her. ‘I don't know if I can make it up to you, but I can make an effort, with your help, to make this a happy place to be.'

‘OK,' I agree. ‘Let's make some rules about things each of us should do.'

The next day Mum comes back from work late with big bags of rugs and lampshades, cushions and a silver-grey velvet throw for my bed.

‘Here, I bought you this because it reminded me of the sea.' She smiles, wrapping me in the silvery softness. ‘And I got takeaway for supper – sushi tonight.'

Actually we have takeaway most nights. I like it. In fact I love it, although breakfast the next day isn't so great. We had curry last night, and this morning I
have to hold my breath, because of the rank smell of the empty cartons. I must be a very contrary person, I think, because I find myself hankering after supper at home in Staitheley when all three of us sat down together at the table for fish pie or lasagne, proper meals that I took for granted until they stopped existing.

‘Why don't you cook any more, Mum?'

We are both leaning on the breakfast counter, eating cereal and watching the toaster.

‘I do,' protests Mum, rinsing a mug for each of us, and throwing in a tea bag. ‘It's just so nice not to do it every night, especially now I'm working, and you love takeaway, don't you?'