Zelah Green (2 page)

‘What happened next?’ I said. I was keeping one eye on the empty crisp packet on the floor and edging away from my father to avoid being touched by his wet, salty hand. My fear of contamination was new and raw back then. I hadn’t yet invented Germ Alert or Dirt Alert.

‘She picked up a copy of
Country Hiking
magazine from the bedside table,’ said my father. ‘And she flicked through it with her eyes shut and then she stabbed her finger down on to the page.’

He hiccupped again and stabbed his own finger hard on to my leg at that point. I winced but said nothing.

‘She opened her eyes and her finger was on the word “Zelah” said my father. ‘And that was it. That’s what she called you.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I felt flat and cross and very much in the present day. ‘So you didn’t come up with the idea in Cornwall on a romantic camping holiday, then?’

‘Nope, sorry,’ said my father. ‘We never camped. And whilst I’m ruining all your childish illusions I might as well tell you that you were conceived in a damp council flat in Deptford. We had cockroaches.’

Then he blew his nose (I ducked under the
sheet to avoid droplets) and left me sitting up in bed with my sense of identity lying in pieces around me.

There was nothing safe or solid any more. My past was a fraud, my name was rubbish, my mother was dead and my father was drinking too much beer, eaten up with regret and guilt.

That’s when the rituals began to take over my life.

I suppose I ought to explain exactly what they are.

M
y rituals are all part of Germ Alert and Dirt Alert.

These are some of my rituals.

You might think they sound a bit crazy, but to me they’re normal, just something I have to do before I can leave the house. It’s a pain if I’m running late for school, but I have to do them or else the whole day goes wrong and I get hot and anxious and can’t concentrate on anything.

My rituals change a bit depending on what music I’m listening to. At the moment I’m listening to Green Day. Just as the first track finishes I step into the bathroom. Then I’ve got
four tracks to get my hands done. To get them properly clean I have to wash them thirty-one times each, right hand then left. On a good day I finish this just as the fifth track comes to an end. On a bad day I forget and touch the toilet by mistake as I’m reaching for the towel. That means I have to wash them another thirty-one times, which takes me to the end of track eight. After my hands I load up a nailbrush with clean white soap and scrub my face until it’s raw. Then I have the tenth track to put my clothes on and get my hair brushed. I brush it thirty-one times using downwards strokes. At the end of all this it still looks like a mad black bush but that’s not really the point. I try to tie in the last brush stroke with the last note of track eleven. I never get to track twelve. If I do, it’s bad luck for the entire day and people I love might get run over or fall off a cliff, so I make sure this doesn’t happen. I once got to track twelve when
I was listening to the Kaiser Chiefs, but their songs are shorter so I told myself that that was OK.

I do one hundred and twenty-eight jumps on the top step and then I go downstairs, changing my shoes on the bottom one.

Once I’ve gone down for breakfast I can’t go upstairs or I’ll have to start the whole washing thing over again.

This is really annoying when I leave my school bag upstairs. If my stepmother has already gone to work, then I’m stuffed.

Teachers don’t like ‘Sorry, Miss, I couldn’t go upstairs to get my homework or else I’d have had to wash my hands thirty-one times’ as an excuse.

This is another one of my rituals:

Wardrobe spacing.

I go mental if anything is touching the item hanging next to it. There has to be a gap of at
least four centimetres between each piece of clothing, and I keep a ruler in the cupboard just in case so I can measure the gaps and woe betide if anyone gives me a piece of new clothing because that screws up all the measurements and I usually end up having to give it back to them, which is rude, or else I wrap it in tissue paper and put it on a shelf in the top.

The last thing I have to do before I go to school is this:

Checking. This is my checklist for checking:

Check kettle switched off. (Up to ten times.)

Check back door locked. (Up to ten times.)

Check no crumbs on kitchen worktop. If there are, put on plastic gloves and wipe them away with a clean tissue. Throw away tissue without touching bin. If touch bin, wash hands thirty-one times, left then right.

Check that labels on jars, bottles and tins are all lined up in the cupboard and facing the front.

Check television switched off at mains.

Check all lamps switched off.

Make sure curtains pulled open and exactly same distance apart.

Check all windows are locked.

That’s my morning rituals and my checks. My evening rituals take place when I get home from school. This is what I have to do:

Change from school shoes into flip-flops on bottom stair.

Go upstairs not touching banister.

Jump one hundred and twenty-eight times on top step.

Have shower.

Change out of school uniform.

Wash hands another thirty-one times, first left, then right.

If I go to the toilet after that the whole hand-washing thing has to be done again.

Do homework in bedroom.

Jump one hundred and twenty-eight times on top step.

Go downstairs not touching banisters and change shoes on bottom step.

That’s all of my rituals.

After I’ve done all my rituals I usually manage to have a pretty normal evening until I have to go to bed at ten, when the whole washing thing starts up again. Most of the time I cope OK with my ‘little problem’. There aren’t many people around to be annoyed by it. Mum’s dead and my stepmother’s out as much as possible.

Oh yes. And just over four weeks ago my dad vanished off the face of the planet. Picked up his briefcase one day and air-kissed me goodbye to avoid major Germ Alert. He smelled of leather and aftershave and wood chippings and that weird dried shampoo stuff, just like normal.

Dad got into his car and drove off to his teaching job at school. And he never came back.

Which is why I’ve been stuck in this house with my vile stepmother for the last month.

So, Fran’s the only one who sees me close up on a daily basis and she’s brilliant. Fran’s mum is cool about it too. When they invite me for tea, they let me take my own knife and fork to avoid washing problems.

‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be clean and tidy,’ says Fran’s mum.

I’ve noticed something about Fran’s mum when she says this.

She never looks me straight in the eye.

School’s out and I’m home again.

I change out of plimsolls, do jumps and get into the shower to scrub off the smells of chalk, sweat and rubber gym shoes. My stepmother is downstairs, murmuring on the phone.
She knows that this means I’ll have to disinfect the mouthpiece again, but she doesn’t care.

I pad into my room wrapped in a soft, white towel and open the wardrobe to find a clean T-shirt.

I freeze.

My wardrobe is almost empty. There are only two items left hanging in front of me – a long, red gypsy skirt with flippy chiffon layers and a rose-coloured sleeveless summer dress with tiny embroidered red flowers round the waist.

Both these things are for wearing on special occasions. Dad bought them for me. He was pretty bad at buying clothes for girls, but he consulted our next-door neighbour Heather on this occasion and she knows what I like.

All my ordinary clothes have vanished, save for a T-shirt and jeans laid out across my bed in the shape of a long, thin, flat person.

I go to the top of the stairs.

‘Chan-tal!’ I shout down. My stepmother is half French, although you’d never know it from her squeaky voice and shocking taste in clothes.

‘Got to go – she’s noticed,’ she murmurs, replacing the handset.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I have noticed. Where are all my clothes?’

Chantal pauses at the foot of the stairs with her hand on the banister. She doesn’t speak.

She doesn’t need to. Behind her, plonked on the red-and-white tiled floor, is a suitcase.

My suitcase.

Outside I can hear the sound of an engine running.

I hold on to the wall with my tissue, giddy. I am still wearing the bath towel with another wrapped around my wet hair.

‘Zelah, get dressed at once,’ says my stepmother. ‘I was meaning to tell you earlier but you rushed off to school.’

‘Tell me what?’ I say. I am trying to decipher the expression on her face as it stares up at me. Guilt? Worry? Excitement?

No. Relief. That’s it. My stepmother looks relieved. As if she has been relieved of a huge burden.

The burden appears to be me.

I get dressed in a daze. I don’t bother to blow-dry my hair or put on any make-up. All the time my stepmother hovers around my bedroom, glancing at her watch and out of the window to where an engine can still be heard running.

My mind works overtime as I pull on my jeans. What if I tie myself to the bed and refuse to move? Or push her out and lock the door? Who’s waiting in the car outside?

I zip up my flies and turn to face her.

‘Well, come on,’ I say. ‘Don’t I deserve to know what’s happening?’

My stepmother takes a step towards me. Her eyes are large and imploring and to my amazement, filled with tears. I have never seen her cry, not even on the night when Dad left us.

‘I’ve arranged for you to go away for a while,’ she says. ‘I can’t cope with your little problem any more.’

Of course. Her tears are not for me, they’re for her.

‘And also,’ she says. ‘I’m getting quite stressed out by trying to cope with you. All my confidence is going. I’m ageing too fast, you know.’

I sink down on the edge of the bed and stare at her.

‘You’re joking, right?’

It’s obvious that she’s deadly serious.

‘I’ve asked Heather to take you away,’ she says. ‘You’ll be gone for about a month. After that you might be able to come home again.’

‘You’re booting me out?’ I say. ‘You’re booting me out and you haven’t even got the guts to drive me there yourself?’

I pull back the net curtains. Heather Huntsman is waiting in her red car outside, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. Heather’s lovely – much lovelier than my stepmother, in fact – but that’s not the point.

‘Zelah, this is upsetting for me too,’ says Chantal. She ignores my loud snort of anger. ‘But we need to get you treated. Come on.’

She gestures me off the bed and shoos me towards the door. I can’t help noticing that she’s leaving a small trail of mud on the white carpet – she forgot to change into her indoor shoes – but Dirt Alert is starting to fade next to the great big whopping new problem now facing me.

‘I’m fourteen,’ I say as she hustles me downstairs and grabs the suitcase. ‘Fourteen.
I’m too young to leave home! Where are you sending me? What would Dad say if he knew what you were doing? How will he know where to find me?’

She ignores me and hurries me towards where Heather is waiting, throws my bag into the boot and pushes me into the back seat.

The engine starts and we leave her there, a tall awkward figure, standing in silence and hugging her own elbows.

She doesn’t wave goodbye.

H
eather gives me a quick appraising glance.

‘Seatbelt,’ she says as we roar off in a cloud of Porsche-induced fug.

‘Can’t,’ I say.

I don’t trust belts in Other People’s Cars. They’ve been on Other People’s Bodies, absorbing bits of dead skin and old sweat. A bit of the belt might touch the exposed area of my chest and neck and then I’ll have to scrub myself raw.

‘God Almighty,’ says Heather. ‘As if this isn’t stressful enough already.’

She screeches to a halt at the foot of our road.

The cigarette lighter pops out with a loud click. Heather sucks in her cheeks while the lighter glows red. She puffs on the fag as if the next forty years of her life depend upon it, although at this rate she probably won’t live to see many of them.

Bits of dirty ash flutter and splutter towards the passenger seat.

Dirt Alert
.

She sees my face of angst and smokes out of the window instead.

I flush with shame. Heather’s been our neighbour for ages and I like her a lot. Mum liked her too. When Mum started to get sick, Heather was brilliant. She went shopping for Mum and bought clothes for her. She treated Mum to little bits of colourful jewellery to cheer her up and bought special organic foods to tempt her into eating more.

Even my stepmother must like Heather, or
why else would she rope her into taking me away?

I’m never sure whether Heather likes my stepmother, though. She’s polite and smiley in our house, but I sense something tight shifting and wriggling underneath.

‘OK, kiddo,’ Heather’s saying. ‘Here’s the deal. Your stepmother wants me to drive you to the local hospital for treatment, but we can’t go anywhere until you put your seatbelt on.’

I gulp at the word ‘hospital’, but look around the car. There’s a box of Kleenex on the back seat.

‘Sorted,’ I say.

I wrap wads of tissue round the seatbelt, enough to ensure there’s no area of pale chest skin left uncovered.

‘Good girl,’ Heather says. She starts the engine, tosses her fag butt out of the window and lowers her dark designer sunglasses from where they’ve been perching on her head.

Heather’s gorgeous. She’s only five years younger than my stepmother, but she looks about twenty years younger. She’s got this long, red hair with honey-coloured highlights woven through it and it kind of flips forward over her eyes until she pins it into place with the sunglasses. She’s tanned, tall and skinny and works as a fashion journalist in London.

Mum and Heather used to go shopping for hours. They called themselves ‘ladies who lunch’ and they’d come home tipsy with armfuls of boxes and bags and pour white wine into long-stemmed glasses. Then they’d sit in the garden smothered in sizzling coconut gunk and hoot with laughter, teasing Dad and me.