Love Bomb (2 page)

‘Weird,’ says Kat. ‘They are cute piglets.’

The three of us link arms and head towards maths, the balloon bobbing between us. Even though we’re new friends, we’re old friends too. When we were at nursery school, we were in a gang called the Ladybirds, along with Pearl Harris, who has since become a man-eating bully. The Ladybirds drifted apart, but now we’re almost back together.

‘Bettyarse is in lovarse with that rudarse boyarse,’ Kat tells Bea.

‘I can understand what you’re saying, Kat,’ I say. ‘Your secret arse-language is rubbisharse.’

‘It’s coolarse,’ says Kat.

‘No, it’s notarse,’ I say. ‘Anyway, he was probably sighing because he was thinking about me.’ Kat and Bea laugh. I laugh too so they know I’m joking.

I’m not joking.

Please, please, God of Love … Eros? Venus? Whatever,
please
make Toby Gray speak to Betty Plum
today
. It would be the most awesome birthday present ever.

Thanks for nothing, Erosnus.

Despite stalking Toby all lunchtime, I leave school without exchanging a single word with him. I start to walk home, reminiscing about the way his powerful fingers tore off a Twix wrapper, and just as I’m thinking about the lazy way he played football with the Year Elevens, I spot Bill waiting for me outside Spar.

‘Bill, you freak!’ I yell across the road. He looks up and smiles. Bill’s my best friend, even though, as his name suggests, he is
un hombre
. He goes to the Catholic boy’s school, Cardinal Heanan, which is why right now he’s wearing a hideous maroon blazer and stripy tie. His uniform clashes very amusingly with his mad blonde hair and deep tan. Bill’s a surfer, a
wind
surfer to
be precise – apparently there’s a difference – and he spends every available moment on the sea.

I cross the road. Despite his alarming appearance, I’m still willing to be seen in public with him.

‘Hey,’ Bill says, throwing a Tesco bag in my direction. ‘Got you a present.’

We walk towards my house, and I look inside the bag. ‘Yuck! What is that?’ I pull out a tiny but very realistic horse mask. ‘Is it for a baby?’

‘It’s a cat mask for Mr Smokey,’ he says. ‘Now you can have a tiny horse running around your house.’ I stroke the mane. ‘Don’t you like it?’ he asks, frowning.

‘Are you joking?’ I say. ‘I
totally
love it.’ I start to tell Bill about my other birthday presents. ‘Dad got me a Lego set, as usual – the Millennium Falcon – although it clearly says for ages nine to
fourteen
on the box. I need you to help me make it.’

Bill and I turn the corner and I gasp. Toby is slouched at the bus stop, still hanging out with his new football
friends. Instantly my heart speeds up and I feel my cheeks burn.

‘Bill,’ I say, stuffing the mask back in the bag, ‘when we go past those boys, promise not to let me look weird.’

‘Honestly, Betty, I can’t promise that. Why?’

‘Because you see that tall boy with the floppy dark hair?’

Bill scans the group of boys. ‘The one doing rapper hands?’

‘That’s him,’ I say. ‘I want to impress him.’

‘Why?’

‘Errch, don’t make me spell it out.’

‘What are you talking about, Betty?’ he asks. We are getting really close to the bus stop.

‘Because I
like
him,’ I hiss.

‘Oh,’ says Bill, and he goes quiet. This is a strange moment for us. It’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned liking someone who is real and not a singer or an actor
or Flynn Rider from the Disney film
Tangled
. We watch as Toby shows a boy something on his phone.

‘You mean you
like
him?’ Bill asks.

‘Yes.’

‘
Him?
’

‘Yes!’

‘I suppose he does look a bit like Flynn,’ he says.

‘Exactly, now shut up.’ We are walking past the bus stop. ‘Hey, Toby!’ I say. My words come out loud and hysterical. Startled, he looks up from his phone and stares at me. His eyebrows raise and then he smiles. His smile makes me dizzy with happiness and I have to say something to him, something that will make him fall in love with me. ‘Getting the bus?’ I ask.

‘Er, yeah,’ he says, turning back to his friends.

‘Getting the bus?’ says Bill loudly. ‘Brilliant!’

I try to smack him with my bag, but he just catches it and pulls me round. Unfortunately, what with all his
windsurfing, Bill has powerful upper-body strength and he swings me deep into a bush.

‘I think I look weird,’ I say.

‘Just a bit,’ he says, pulling me out. ‘Sorry about that.’

Bill is so at home at my place that he’s making toast before the kettle’s even boiled. I go to get some Marmite and see that Dad’s left a birthday message on the kitchen table – ‘Hippo Birdday, Betty!’ – and I mean he’s
literally
written it on the table. I started this off when I was six when I wrote
Daddy smells ugly
with a permanent marker. There’s not much room left now.

‘What do you want on your toast?’ asks Bill.

I throw him the jar and he catches it with one hand. Our mums met in the maternity unit at the hospital and instantly became BFFs. They made sure Bill and I did everything together: breast feeds, naps, potty training,
oh, and baths, of course, loads and loads of naked baths. Obviously, they took hundreds of photos to record the humiliating early days of our friendship.

Then, just before I was two, my mum bummed out on the world. It wasn’t her fault. She had cancer.

I drop teabags into mugs and pour in the boiling water. Now Bill and I are the BFFs. ‘What’s this?’ I say, picking up my favourite mug, the one with ‘Groovy Granddads’ written on it.

‘It’s definitely a mug.’

‘No,
this
.’ I point at a pale pink smudge on the rim. ‘Is that
lipstick
? I know Dad’s been home because he’s written on the table.’ I sniff the smudge. ‘It smells like lipstick. Bill, do you think Dad dresses up as a woman while I’m at school?’

‘Or, maybe,’ says Bill, licking the Marmitey knife, ‘he made a woman a cup of tea?’

‘What?’

‘Maybe your dad’s got a girlfriend.’

‘No way,’ I say, and then I start sniffing. ‘Does the house
smell
different?’ I sniff my way into the hallway then back to the kitchen. ‘I think it smells like a shop in Brighton. The kind of place that sells crystals or beads.’ The smell is making me feel funny, like someone’s broken in. Our house should smell of curry and paint, not flowery joss sticks.

‘Your dad’s got a hippy girlfriend, Betty. It was going to happen one day.’

I shake my head. ‘Bill, the idea of Dad sneaking a pink-lipstick-wearing, hippy girlfriend in here and making her a cup of tea in
my
mug on
my
birthday is just –’ I try to think of the right word – ‘wrong. Honestly, we tell each other everything. I’d know if he had a girlfriend. Anyway, we’re happy on our own.’

‘Is that why I’m not invited to your birthday tea tonight?’

‘Yes! You’d ruin it. It’s perfect with just me and Dad … no offence.’

‘You’ve got a card you haven’t opened here.’ He taps a purple envelope with his knife.

‘Oh, that’s Mum’s birthday letter.’

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ve got butter on it.’ He tries to rub it off with his sleeve. ‘Aren’t you going to read it?’

‘Not this year.’

‘Why? You used to love them.’

‘Not really. She wrote them for a baby. They’re all,
you can say “bird”, you hate bananas, you did a massive poo …
They’ve got boring.’

Bill passes me my toast and looks at me with his serious grey eyes. He’s waiting for me to explain. But I don’t want to talk about Dead Mum’s letters, not today. I hardly ever think about the fact that I don’t have a mum and it’s only on my birthday, when I get one of her letters, that I realise I’m missing something.

‘Come on,’ I say, picking up my tea. ‘If we’re building a naked Lego man, we need to get a move on.’

‘You said we were making the Millennium Falcon.’

‘I lied,’ I say, leading him into the front room.

After Bill’s gone, I keep working on naked man’s tiny toes. Suddenly I hear Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday to You’ come on in the kitchen and then Dad bursts into the room singing along and doing a truly shocking dance routine.

He does a couple of circuits of the room then puts his hands out to me and says, ‘Dance with me, birthday girl!’

‘No way,’ I say, but eventually I let him pull me up, and then I dance with him just like I did when I was little, standing on his toes and going round and round in a circle.

For dinner, Dad makes my special meal of macaroni cheese and baked beans (the baked beans are combined in the cheesy sauce) and then we eat a Smartie-decorated cake and watch
Jailhouse Rock
. Watching an Elvis film is a birthday tradition and, as usual, Dad sings all the songs while I groan and roll my eyes. I love it really.

Finally, I gather up my presents. I’m ready for bed.

‘Good birthday, Plumface?’ asks Dad. He’s sprawled on the sofa, still wearing his decorating dungarees.

‘The best,’ I say, from the corner of the stairs. ‘I love the Lego.’

‘You’re never too old for Lego, right?’

‘Right, Dad.’

‘I see you got started on it. It’s looking good.’

So funny. If Dad looked closely, he’d notice the Millennium Falcon has a lovely pair of brick buttocks.

‘Night, Bumface,’ I say as a special treat. He loves it when I call him this. Me, Mum and Dad: Plumface, Mumface and Bumface. These names take Dad back to such a happy place.

At the last minute, he says, ‘You saw your letter from Mum?’

‘I don’t want it.’ My presents wobble in my arms.

‘Betty.’ He comes to the bottom of the stairs. ‘It’s the
last
one.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You haven’t got any more birthday letters. That’s the last one she wrote. She only managed to write them up to your fifteenth birthday.’

‘Oh,’ I say.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks.

‘I’m fine, Dad,’ I say, then I struggle my way up the stairs, into my bedroom and drop the presents on my bed. I flop down after them.

The last one
.

I wasn’t expecting that.

When I was little, I got Dad to read my mum’s first letter to me so many times that now I know it off by heart.

Dear Plumface,

Whoop, whoop … you are two! I wonder what you will see today? Daddy obviously, but maybe you’ll get a surprise and see a big ginger cat
or the moon or Auntie Kate. At the moment these are your favourite things and you can say all of them. This is what they sound like: ‘ginge’, ‘moo’ and ‘ka ka’. This last one is funny because it’s German for ‘poo’! I hope it’s sunny and Daddy puts lots of Smarties on your cake. Don’t put them up your nose like last year … If you do, Daddy will have to suck them out again.

Love you always,

Mumface xx

But,
the last one
.

I suppose I thought Dad had loads of them stacked away in his wardrobe and that I’d go on getting them forever. I pick up one of my presents from Dad, a bottle of Wild Bluebell perfume, and spray some on my wrist. It’s smells yummy, of flowers and woods, but I feel a bit sick. Perhaps hot chocolate
and
chocolate cake wasn’t the greatest idea.

I lie back and turn the blue glass bottle round in my hands. This isn’t a usual Dad present … could it be one of Dead Mum’s suggestions? She’s done it before. Along with the letters, she gave Dad a list of present ideas. With perfect timing, Mr Smokey (
twelfth birthday: grey kitten
) slips into my room, trots to the bed and leaps effortlessly on to my stomach.

He pushes his head against my hands until I rub his nubbly velvet chin. I stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, while he kneads his nails into my top. Dad makes the best birthday cakes, my friends make my hair fly
and
throw me in bushes, and just the thought of Toby Gray’s smile makes me tingle. I should be purring like Mr Smokey right now.

But something feels wrong.

A knot of worry is hidden deep inside me.

I shut my eyes and try to discover what it is, but everything gets confused … Toby’s blue eyes fall on me, I trace a curve of pink lipstick on a white mug, and,
resting against the breadbin in the kitchen, I see a purple envelope with a heart drawn round the words ‘Plumface is 15!’

‘Hey, Mr Smokey,’ I say, picking up his paws to get his attention. ‘Ever fancied being a horse?’

‘Miaow,’ he says, which obviously means,
Yes, Mistress, it’s my life’s ambition!

The next morning, all my worries disappear when Mr Simms makes an exciting announcement in tutor time.

‘Listen up, guys!’ He’s perched on the edge of his desk, tie loose, sleeves rolled up, doing his cool-teacher thang. ‘It’s time for our Year Ten and Eleven Autumn Celebration.’ A ripple of interest runs round the room. The Autumn Celebration is legendary. Not because of the quality of the performances, but because of the imaginative ways students get inappropriate material
into it. Last year, Bea’s boyfriend, Ollie, sang ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ with his band and gyrated in Mrs P’s face for the entire track. When they signed up, they said they were going to do a folk song about a lonely fisherman.