Being Me (18 page)

‘Like I care.’

‘He’d arranged it all. You. Fucked. It. Up. Well done, little sister, it takes someone special to fuck that up.’

I punch him in the chest. He traps my hands. I say, ‘where’s Mum?’ When he still doesn’t answer, I pull away from him and take the stairs. He follows me, saying stuff, but I’m not listening. The staircase bounces up and down.

Mum’s at the top of the stairs.

She looks like an extra out of a Zombie movie. One eye is swollen and there’s bits of dried blood all over her face. She keeps her hands in her face as she’s talking. ‘That’s enough you two,’ she groans. ‘I need to talk to both of you.’

She turns and drags her feet back to her room. We follow obediently.

Dad’s not in the room. Mum pats the bed. I sit next to her. MTB sits on the floor at her feet.

‘Tony, you must stop teasing your sister like that. She has temper issues,’ Mum says, ‘Your teasing her doesn’t help.’

‘I do not have temper issues,’ I tell Mum. She ignores me.

‘Sorry,’ MTB says meekly to Mum. He blows me a silent raspberry as Mum moves a pillow to prop herself up with.

‘Mum?’ I say, fingering the bruise on her cheekbone.

She traces the bruise with me. ‘It was the kitchen cupboard. When I get drunk, I bang my head on things.’ She shifts her pillows again. ‘Tony, what happened between me and your father had nothing to do with your sister’s sponsorship thing. That wasn’t ... that didn’t ... that isn’t...’

Mum’s shaking her head side to side. She opens her eyes again as I pat her hand. ‘The thing is...’ She swallows. ‘Your dad’s having an affair.’

MTB cuts Mum’s tears off. ‘Again?’ he says, sarcastically.

I’m thinking,
so Mum knows about Dad’s affair.
I suppose that’s good. I look suitably shocked. ‘Who with?’ I ask.

‘What does it matter who with?’ snaps Mum.

Now I know that Mum does not know that it’s with my best friend’s mum.

‘He admitted it,’ Mum continues, ‘so we had a discussion and we agreed that him moving out was the sensible thing to do.’

‘C’mon, Mum,’ MTB cuts in. ‘You had a blazing row, he admitted he’d been shagging this Bimbo for the last two months. You asked for his phone to check, he wouldn’t give it you so you chucked your wedding ring at him, he threw the swan at you and you threw the picture at him. You called him boring and he called you ugly and struck you across the face. Then he stormed out.’

‘Tony, I’ve told you before not to eavesdrop on your father and my conversations.’

‘It was ninety decibels, Mum. They heard you in France.’

‘Anyway,’ Mum says, ‘what happened’s happened. There’s no going back... I can’t find my medication. Did I take it already? Have you both done your homework? Your uniforms ... Adele, you’ve got split ends, dear.’

She has been examining my hair as she says all this. MTB’s eyes flick with worry at me because Mum’s rambling. I shake my head to him to say ‘don’t worry’. He kisses Mum, almost on the bruise. She strokes his hand. Then it’s just me and Mum.

‘Did you have a nice time at ... at ... at ...?’ asks Mum.

I’m impressed she remembers.

I nod.

‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, Adele, about what I said. I didn’t mean it.’

She sniffs my hair and lets out a little sob.

‘It’s OK, Mum. Do you need your medicine?’

‘I ... I think I took it already.’

‘Water?’

She strokes my face. ‘You so look like your dad at times. I wonder where he’s gone,’ she says.

‘Don’t let Dad get away with it this time,’ I tell her, Anthony’s right, he’s done it too often.’

For a brief moment Mum’s face hardens. ‘I told him to go be with his frigging fancy woman!’ she spits. Then her anger fades and something like fear takes over. ‘She’ll be pretty,’ Mum says, ‘very pretty... He’ll have booked into a hotel. He’s had work pressures. Something about Turkey. I think he might be having a breakdown actually. I hope he’s alright. He used to compliment me. ... I do have crows’ feet around my eyes ... I need Botox. And a boob job.’

‘Stop it, Mum, you’re not ugly. And Dad
is
boring.’

‘He wasn’t always boring, Adele. We used to go to parties together. He’d dance so wild and beautiful. Expressive. Everyone would be in a circle, cheering him on. He was hot then. We were the hot couple. Nobody did the clubs the way me and your dad did the clubs... Back then they played music you could dance to. Disco music.’

Mum gets up and starts to dance in the room. It’s more Middle East dancing than disco, but that’s because of the drugs, I guess. I take her hands and we dance like this. It’s the first time we’ve danced together in ages and it feels good, even though she’s off her head and will never remember it.

‘I was a rock chick,’ Mum mumbles. ‘A dancer in a nightclub. I was paid to dance. I danced and other people came on and danced and filled the floor ... I got the party going. It’s how I met your dad.’

‘Show me your moves, Mum.’

‘I will one day, just you wait. It was none of this booty-shaking you do nowadays. It was all in the hands and the footwork.’

Mum tries a fancy move, I think it was meant to be a spin, but she stumbles. I steady her, guide her back to the bed and prop her back up with pillows. She waves away the water I offer her. ‘I was good you know. A very sexy dancer.’

‘Of course you were, Mum.’

‘I was ...’ She starts a tuneful mumbling, making up nonsense lyrics. ‘“Disco queen ... see a thousand me’s spinning in that disco ball ... “See that girl ... she could dance...”’

As Mum half-talks, half-sings, her eyes get hazier and hazier until she slides off the stack of pillows and falls asleep.

I pull a cover over her then tiptoe out. MTB’s got his music blasting. When I get downstairs, I put the coffee table back together again and sweep up the flower picture glass. In the kitchen, I find whiskey behind the fridge and pour it down the sink. I decide to hide the empty bottle in the drum of the old washing machine in the garage but when I open the drum door, I find another half full bottle so I tip that down the sink too, then hide both bottles in the old plastic picnic box instead. I turn off all the lights.

Next morning, there’s still no sign of Dad. I make some tea and take it to Mum on a tray with toast, bacon and eggs. MTB gallops past me. I’ve left him enough breakfast to keep him happy. I help Mum sit up, and as she pecks at the scrambled eggs (and moans, “why is it not still nighttime?”) I climb onto the bed and sit behind her, brushing her hair.

‘Is the bacon crispy enough, Mummy?’ I ask, as I coax a brush through her hair.

‘The bacon’s adorable, darling. Did Marcus snore?’ she asks, her canny-parent eyebrows flicking upwards at me.

‘I don’t know Mum, because I slept in Leah’s room. With the baby ... She got out of the cot and slept with me.’

Mum goes quiet. Babies is a painful subject for her. Ever since she lost my sister. I keep on stroking her hair. I decide I’m going to plait it, French style. ‘My sister would have been eleven now, wouldn’t she, Mum?’

‘Eleven and three months,’ Mum says.

‘You could have been plaiting her hair while I plait yours,’ I say. ‘Putting those silver bobbles in what you used to put in mine, remember?’

A circle of water appears on one of Mum’s thumbs.

‘She had big locks of hair,’ Mum says. ‘Curlier than yours. Like candyfloss. Your dad’s hair ... She was beautiful. We never got to know her. It hurts your dad. Sometimes he cries in his sleep. He wants another child. To replace Cara. I can’t give him one, I think that’s why he...’

‘No, Mum,’ I say. ‘He has affairs because he’s a cheating bastard!’

‘Adele! He’s your father.’

‘So?’ I’ve half plaited her hair. I stop. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Very chic,’ Mum says, looking across to her dressing room mirror.

‘You’ve said worse about him.’

‘But he’s my husband. That’s different.’

‘Is he good for you though, Mum?’

Mum does one of her avoiding-the-question answers. ‘We may have to sell the house. I don’t know if the loan companies own it all now, I haven’t seen the papers...’

She witters on as I finish plaiting her hair.

I’m on edge all day, listening out for the sound of tyres on gravel, but Dad does not come back.

At night I can’t sleep. Thoughts tumble around in the giant washing machine of my head. What is my dad up to? Has he really left Mum? Is he with Mrs Robinson? Are they going to go on holiday together? Is Mikaela to be his step-daughter now? Will he tell off Mikaela, choose her A-levels and stuff, like Dads do? But that doesn’t make sense because Mikaela’s dad’s come back, she said. Does Mikaela have two dads now? Or maybe her dad came back and then left again? Is it my fault Mum and Dad have split? If I didn’t give Mum such a hard time, she wouldn’t be so alcoholic then she would pay more attention to Dad and he wouldn’t need go off with Mrs Robinson to get some attention. What if his car crashes into a river, with me and Mikaela in it and we’re both drowning? Who would he pull out first? Me? Mikaela? Why does he even like Mrs Robinson when he’s a racist? Is it like the thing we say we hate the most, secretly we love? What if Mikaela’s mum gets pregnant by Dad? Me and Mikaela would be related then. Does Dad really want another baby to replace my dead sister? Will Mikaela be seeing more of my dad than me? Will her mum start choosing my dad’s clothes? Where will he spend Christmas? Does Mum still get all Dad’s money if he dies? Will Mum leave and Dad come back and move Mikaela’s mum in, then me and Mikaela would be living together, maybe even sharing my room? Do I need to kill Mikaela to stop all of this?

It’s all so brain-aching. My head goes numb. I try to sleep. All I get is nightmares.

It’s half term. We haven’t heard from Dad for forty-eight hours. Mum’s feeling it. I tell her forget him, what does she want to do with her life?

We’re having a fried egg on granary bread lunch. Mum makes a bucket list:

Mum’s Bucket List:

   GET FIT

   SOMEONE TO WANDER ROUND TOWN SHOPPING WITH

   SOMEONE TO SEE A MUSICAL WITH

   VISIT TO MILAN FASHION WEEK

   DANCE WITH A HOLLYWOOD STAR