Size Matters (6 page)

‘Doubt it. Even if she was more grown-up-looking she'd still be a bit young.'

‘Maybe. Though there's thirteen, and there's thirteen-going-on-twenty-three.'

‘She's got the rest of her life to be grown-up, give her a break. She's not even that interested in make-up and clothes. She's like me. I was no more than a wannabe pony girl at thirteen. Boys and make-up didn't figure at all,' Jay said, thinking back to the after-school hours she'd spent leaning on the paddock fence at Mrs Allen's scruffy junkyard riding school, longing and longing for Delphine to let her have her promised go on the plump little pony. This chubby toffee creature, with a cascading blond, flicky mane like the Timotei shampoo girl, was Delphine's pet and weapon of supreme manipulation. Jay owned a sweet and loving black cat that made Delphine sneeze in an exaggeratedly suffering manner, but from Santa, the year she was eleven, Delphine received every girl's dream of a pony complete with monogrammed blanket, grooming kit and fabulous, biscuit-coloured, squeaky leather tack. Only a child destined for sainthood could fail to be envious.

Even many years later, when she'd bought a My Little Pony Grooming Parlour for Imogen's fifth birthday with its miniature pink brushes, curry-combs, rosettes and ribbons, Jay had had a pang of nostalgic covetousness, recalling Delphine's real-life equivalent. Jay's mother Audrey had been sniffy about the pony's expense and declared it would be a five-minute wonder, that the creature would be abandoned in a matter of weeks to languish in a field, getting fat and grumpy. But in the months of meantime, the power shift between Jay and Delphine was even more horribly unbalanced.

The deal had been that Win would let Delphine stay for whole afternoons at the stables as long as Jay (being that bit older) was there to keep an eye on her. In exchange Jay was supposed to be allowed to share the riding time on Cobweb. Delphine wasn't cut out for sharing. She was an only child and the pony was only hers. She was the one who could say yes or no about who got to sit on its glossy saddle. She loved power much more than she loved poor Cobweb. At Mrs Allen's Delphine would canter round and round the sandy practice ring, flicking the pony over foot-high jumps, yelling instructions at Cobweb the whole time. ‘Bad, stupid pony!' she'd roar, when she lost a stirrup or mistimed her approach. All the time she'd be eyeing Jay sideways, slyly smiling as she watched her hanging over the fence with an uncontrollable expression of yearning. Jay would always get her ride – it would be a brief twenty minutes or so till Delphine got bored and fidgety and demanded to go home in case Mrs Allen noticed she had nothing to do and allocated the less pleasant tack-room duties to her.

‘I wasn't a bad rider, actually.' Jay was almost surprised to hear herself saying it aloud.

‘Eh? What? Horses?' Greg looked puzzled. ‘Or,' and his tone became more animated, ‘motorbikes?' Horses to Greg were merely optional decorative items for a rustic scene and best viewed from a safe distance. Motorbikes on the other hand were objects of desire and he knew quite well that when the time came for an edgy male menopause to strike, a shiny, bestudded Harley-Davidson Electraglide would be top of his splash-out list and he would joyously embrace his inner biker before it was too late.

‘Horses.' Jay laughed. ‘What made you think I'd got a motorbike history that you didn't know about?'

‘Dunno, but even after twenty-one years you can't
know everything about a person, can you? It was quite an exciting thought, picturing you zapping to school on a little Vespa or something, all straw boater held on with elastic and your skirt wafting up in the wind.'

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Greg. I wasn't even a bicycle girl, let alone a motorbike one. I could never understand why on cold wet winter days some of the girls from school were pedalling down the high street having cars swoosh puddles all over them when they could be all steamy and warm on a crowded bus.'

Greg rolled towards her and snaked his hand under the duvet and across her stomach. ‘That's you,' he said, snuggling into her neck. ‘A keen eye for the comfort option.'

Jay wasn't sure what to make of that – it was disconcertingly close to telling her she was fat and idle. Fat (ish) maybe, she conceded (though working on it . . .) but idle, hardly. Another day out with Henry tomorrow, she thought as she pit-patted her Cifwhitened fingers down Greg's back. Such a pity Henry was a vacuum cleaner.

Ellie waited at the bus stop in the drizzle, a suitable distance from her brother. They got on fine, quite well really considering, even if Rory believed deep down and unchangeably 50 Cent was the greatest star, music-wise, ever, ever ever. And he played the Darkness louder than anyone who wanted to keep their ears from shrivelling could possibly stand. All the same, you didn't travel on the bus to school sitting next to your brother. There was no written-down reason, you just didn't, End Of.

Rory was huddled into one of the bus stop's pull-down seats under the shelter, rudely ignoring an elderly woman struggling with two walking sticks and a handbag big enough to contain, Ellie shocked herself by thinking grotesquely, a severed human head. Rory looked about as miserable as it was possible to look, even at eight fifteen in the morning. Ellie watched from the back of the queue as he wrapped his arms across his chest, reaching them round as far as he could and shivering dramatically. He was really pale too, but then who wasn't in chill March. And he was fidgety, in that way she remembered he used to be when he was little and was about to throw up but didn't quite know it yet.
She started to feel hot and panicky – she needed to make sure he
was
completely OK about the state of his insides before they were trapped on the bus and it was too horribly late.

‘Rory?' Ellie went to the front of the queue and tugged at his arm. ‘Rory, are you . . .'

‘Hi Ellie! You OK babes?' Tasha, all glittery gold eyeshadow and the chemical whiff of knocked-off market perfume, appeared beside her.

‘This your brother, innit?' Ellie watched Tasha push her shoulder bag a bit further back so her breasts jutted forward inside her shiny black hooded jacket. She wondered if she was wearing the red and silver bra. Tasha had wolfy teeth, big, grinning and predatory, gnashing up and down hard on Barbie-pink gum. Rory was now staring at the floor, his head in his hands, elbows resting awkwardly on his knees.

Please don't, Ellie thought suddenly, please don't chuck up on Tasha's perfect kitten-heeled square-toed boots that must have cost a mint, if she'd actually paid for them. With them she was wearing diamond-pattern black tights. Cool-as and also not to be sicked on. Rory glanced up, looking bleary, and grunted something at the two girls, then raced off down the road, back towards home.

‘What's he say? What's wrong with him? Have I got eggy breath or something?' Tash was staring after the running figure of Rory, which ducked down an alleyway out of sight. I was right, Ellie thought, he was feeling pukey. He was probably right now leaning on the fence round the back of Oddbins barfing his toast and raspberry jam all over the alleyway's dog shit and wind-blown Macca wrappers. Better not to mention it to Tasha, it would be all round school in a something-to-laugh-at sort of way.

‘He said he'd forgotten something. His brain possibly.'
Ellie laughed. ‘If he ever had one. And anyway, how come you're here? I thought you lived over the other side of the bridge. This isn't your usual stop.'

Tasha linked her arm through Ellie's. ‘My dad was going to drop me off and then I saw you. Thought I'd come and say hi. Don't mind do you?' Tasha squeezed Ellie's arm. There was pressure from Tasha's hard, bony fingers even through her school sweatshirt and padded jacket. It was a pressure that was emphatic; it underlined that Tasha had made a thought-out choice to be with her, not just turned up by accident or coincidence.

Across the road another uniformed girl was hurrying towards them, racing to get to the stop before the approaching bus. Amanda Harrison, Ellie's friend, the girl she usually sat with – not just on the bus but in most classes and at lunch – was waving as she ran. There was a choice to be made here and as they all clustered to board the bus she knew with a sort of elated helplessness that it was no contest. Tasha slid into a double seat, patted the one next to her (sugar-mouse-pink nails with added heart motif in silver) and Ellie sat beside her. Amanda was great, she really, really liked her but sometimes you just needed a bit of danger in your life.

Delphine's handwriting was neat, upright and spiky. The envelope was pale lilac and suggested that it contained a pretty greetings card rather than the businesslike list that Jay found herself reading.

‘Bloody cheek,' she muttered to Tristan, who had come up from the basement flat to have a look at the leaky tap in the attic shower room. In twenty minutes he'd made his way only as far up the house as the kitchen and was making himself a cup of tea, claiming that no plumber could be expected to work without a
sharpening shot of caffeine. Good thing, Jay thought, that I don't have to pay him by the hour.

‘Listen to this, Tris,' she said as she scanned Delphine's instructions. ‘She wants me to have this Charles person round for drinks before I go and give his flat the professional once-over. “Make a bit of a party of it,” she orders me. “Welcome him into the family.” Hmm.'

No wonder Delphine preferred to write instead of phone (or e-mail, how come she hadn't caught up with e-mailing?). She knew perfectly well no-one could argue with safely distant written instructions. You can't simply slam down a letter like you can a phone.

Tris swooshed hot water three times round the teapot then poured it down the sink before carefully measuring four flat spoonfuls of Twinings Darjeeling into the pot. Jay wondered what he did when he was out on his regular plumbing jobs. Did he wince at householders' cheap tea-bagged offerings (Staff Tea – she'd seen it stashed away along with a jar of supermarket instant coffee and plenty of white sugar in many of the houses she'd cleaned) provided in thick heavy mugs? He and Delphine would get on wonderfully. They'd bond over fine bone china and an abhorrence of twice-boiled water.

‘But you have great parties. It'll be well cool,' Tris said, placing Jay's late grandmother's silver strainer on top of a rose-patterned Coalport cup and saucer that were so delicate you could see through the glaze. It had been a perfect joky find at the school car-boot sale, bought specially to indulge Tristan and his taste for dainty traditions. (Win had seen it on the worktop, turned over the cup and said, ‘Ooh lovely, Cole Porter') What on earth he was doing living with slapdash, untidy Imogen – apart from the sex and procreation thing – she could hardly begin to imagine.

‘We do, we do,' she agreed, though recalling that on the last Christmas Eve, the big garden flares had set fire to next-door's fence. All the oldest ladies from the retirement home up the road had turned out in their dressing gowns to warm themselves at the blaze and shout naughty comments to the firefighters about the size of their hoses.

‘But all I really need to do is check over his flat, arrange this cleaning blitz that Delphine wants, give him a price and allocate a couple of the girls to do the work. I didn't think it was going to involve . . . well
involvement
. I assumed we'd do the socializing bit when she actually gets here. After all, surely the introductions are her job.'

‘Well you could just, like, tell her that?' Tris suggested, with the simple logic of youth. ‘Tell her no? E-mail? Phone?'

Jay stared at the letter again. ‘Oh I suppose I could phone – she doesn't “do” e-mail, but . . . you don't know Delphine – she's always got an unarguable reason for having things her own way. She says here it would really help her out if it's me who introduces him to Win. Listen to this; she says, “He'll be the third husband I've brought home for Mum to give the once-over. I know she'll say something completely barmy if it's just me and her and then he'll think that in marrying me he gets part share in a family of nutters.” I hope she's not including me in that. And she goes on, “Get it out of the way for me, Jay, would you. She'll be on her best behaviour if she's got a smart frock on and a g. and t. in her hand. Just make sure it's her first, not her fourth.” Oh and get this, Tris.' Tris took a long sip of his perfect tea, closing his eyes blissfully like Daffodil the cat after she'd had a go at a dollop of tuna.

‘She says – can you believe it – “You might need to know that Charles is allergic to smoked salmon.” ' Jay
laughed, ‘Instructions, instructions – that's Delphine. She was born in the wrong era. She should have been a Roman with teams of slaves. I'm surprised she didn't give me a list of acceptable canapés and a map showing a correct buffet-table layout.'

‘She sounds a . . . a . . .' Tristan was groping for words as he carefully washed his cup under the hot tap.

‘A control freak?' Jay finished for him. ‘Oh she's that all right. No question. But I'm supposed to be all grown-up now. I can say no.'

Tristan raised an eyebrow (the one pierced with a small gold bar).

‘I'll think about it,' Jay insisted. ‘Anyway, gotta go. Got a mutiny among the staff to sort out. See you later Tris, good luck with the tap.'

Rory felt better now. He'd made an executive decision not to go to school – well he was doing the teachers a favour really, they wouldn't want someone in their classrooms who might puke on the floor and scupper the lesson. He spent a peaceful hour in the park having a cigarette or two, a can of Coke and a mooch about by the pond to see what the ducks were up to. He'd watched two of them mating and it looked like a sadistic sort of process. Date rape at best; the male had grabbed the female by the back of the neck and shoved her head under the water while he did the deed. Then he'd let go, left her on her own to fluff up her feathers again and done a lap of honour, racing round and round, squawking. The triumphant drake reminded him of blokes at school on a Monday morning, the sporty ones like Ben Pickard and Alan Simmonson when they'd got some action at the weekend. They came in all cocky with a swaggery walk and a smirk, looking for someone to guess what they'd done. Some
of them even said it, not even a lead-in, just in-yer-face with things like, ‘You know that Kelly in 5R, the fit one with the tits?' and straight in with the details to whoever was in the way.