My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Croissant Read online

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Enjoy the sun!” she teases, knowing I’m fuming.

  DOG FOOD

  Mary, Kate and Ashley quack around me. Oh, NOT NOW. I’m so tired. My eyes burn to a crisp in the harsh light. Sizzle like burnt onion skins. It’s so sunny. I’m so thirsty I could drink an actual lake.

  Mum thinks she’s so creative because she found an old bath on the street and turned it into a makeshift pond for the ducks to swim in. They have to take turns but they quite like it.

  The dumb Dalmatians are here too. Sniffing the garden. Taking unnecessary wees to show off their freedom and trying to suck up to get treats and snuffling up the odd bit of duck food.

  The shed is full of poo. Thick, feathery, leathery clammy streaks of wet, cloddy straw that is all sodden together and heavy and neon from duck wee. The rake claws mightily. I feel sick. My brain is swollen from the heady stench of bleugh. Maybe this sort of manual labour counts as going to the gym anyway? It’s this sort of toil that earns you a torn muscle or a hernia or whatever. I imagine my back being torn apart like strips of streaky bacon, all the fat separating as I shovel. I’m like a farmer. Maybe THAT’S my calling?

  “Hello, Bluebelle!” It’s my neighbour Farhana, from next door. She’s all right. “Lovely day!”

  “Yeah!” I smile, a big one.

  “Everybody is out on their balconies today!” She grins. “I’ve got to water my plants—look at my thyme; seen better days, right? It’s so hot!”

  I look around. Farhana is right. Everybody is out on their balconies. Watering their plants. Reading their newspapers. Saying hello. I always loved it that we have balconies on our houses. It makes our homes feel Mediterranean because it is so rare to have them on London town houses. Even if the view is mostly pigeons and flying crisp packets. Ah, it’s quite nice really, on a day like today. Except ours is the worst balcony. Everybody else’s is all smart metal, painted and lovely with plants and tables and chairs and mini barbecues. Ours is more like a ramp. A leaning ramp, hanging on by woodworm-snacked puffs of wood that almost seem to dissolve when you touch them. Decorated in bird poo and fag butts from the neighbour.

  I lower my head. Continue to shovel. It’s times like this when I could do with more limbs. Holding the bin bag open to tilt the wet straw in is proving to be hard. The dogs keep grunting around, gluey noses poking into the bag. “No, it’s not for you,” I tell them, wrestling with their big spotty sides.

  “Eugh! That looks tough!” It’s Gerald, the other neighbour. He’s an author who looks nothing like his author photograph because it was taken twenty-five years ago. I know: I’ve researched him. He stands, proud, pregnant-looking and smug, on his balcony like it’s a stage. “Rather you than me!” he jokes, balancing his mug on his gut.

  “Ha!” I shout back, mainly because my brain isn’t working enough to comment.

  “Still, I suppose you have to pay your way somehow, even if it is just to Mum. When I was your age I had to do a paper round AND get the coal AND give my mother money for rent.” He stretches his arms like he’s some kind of hero. Why is he showing off that he had to give his mum money? Weirdo.

  Camille is so lucky. All she’s got to do is sit in the car and wait for Mum. Dove’s the real lucky one; she never has to do stuff like this because she’s always busy. I need a hobby or a club. Like how Dove has gymnastics and parkour. Yes, yes, I know the gym exists but that’s NOT a hobby, that’s a punishment. What club can I do? Wish I wasn’t too old for Brownies. Brownies was wicked. Could really do with a squad of goody-goody Brownies cheering me on right now. Even more so now that my days are long and never-ending. I can’t just work in a cafe all day. Twix club? Baked bean club? Garlic bread club? Key ring club? Something to get me out of thi—

  Oh dear, no. Suddenly it’s like the bottom of me has fallen out. I need to poo. Badly. I feel my organs sliding away from each other like the polar caps in the Arctic, melting, making way for a lava spill of furious hot poo to gallop out of me. Oh what, why? I smile politely to Gerald and try to act normal. I might have even mumbled something like “I forgot to…erm,” but I can’t be sure. I drop my shovel to the ground, where it lands with a dollop. The ducks look startled. Wet-mouthed, I shake. The dogs follow me, as we all know dogs double up as police officers and dustbins, to make sure I’m not rushing inside to either murder a burglar or drop a vat of gravy onto the floor. But it’s just to get to the toilet.

  I can feel the shepherd’s pie banging on my insides like trainers in a tumble dryer. I knew we shouldn’t have eaten that rank old rancid thing.

  The heat of the sun is making my temperature rise, basically cooking the whole thing in my stomach. Melting it down. The disease of diarrhoea is punishing me. I’ve been POISONED. By my own self. Suicide. Death by shepherd! I run to the back door….

  It’s locked. It’s locked. I try again. Wrangling the door. It won’t open. What? WHAT?

  WHY DID SHE LOCK THE DOOR? WHY DID MY STUPID MOTHER LOCK THE DOOR? I DON’T UNDERSTAND!

  Meanwhile, my bumhole is anything but locked. It is a wide-open discount store that is screaming “SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO!” Sweat beads begin to squirt out of my forehead. My hairs all spike up and my toes curl as my body is shuddering. 2B grunts, Not 2B is bored and walks off. Disappointed there’s no intruders or gravy. Their Dalmatian spots begin to blend and merge. I’m losing my mind. I need to poo so badly I’m losing my actual real-life vision. This can’t be.

  The ducks quack.

  POO. POO. Actual, literal POO. Threatening to force its way out of me like a Mr. Whippy ice-cream machine. I trap it in.

  I run around like a sweating headless chicken among ducks and dogs and overgrown weeds and the annoying pond bath and all this gross hay. Sweat is pouring off my face. Can I find somewhere to do a poo in the garden? But how, without being noticed by my nosy neighbours who are all enjoying the sun?

  I’ve also left my phone indoors, so I can’t even call Mum or Camille and get them to rush home and let me in.

  They’ll be back soon. The pet shop isn’t far. Even though my mum takes a batrillion years to shop, I’m thinking Camille might’ve had the same reaction to the old shepherd’s pie and they might have turned back.

  I just need to hold it. Hold it. And breathe. Focus. Think back to that woman who came and spoke at school about mindfulness and meditation. Blank it out. What was it she said? You are on a beach….You can see the sea….NOW RUN, RUN INTO IT AND…POO!

  Wah. Breathe. It won’t be long until they come back. I tremble. I feel sick. Wet mouth. I spit. The bulking bashing of squishy, hot poo in my insides is terrorising me. I try to look calm. But I feel like I have a wet handbag filled with warm brown goat’s cheese slamming about inside my guts. My bowels are a punching bag being beaten. A bagpipe of mud.

  And then it only gets worse.

  “BB!” It’s Farhana. “Your mum’s out the front. She says can you let her in. She’s locked out.”

  What the actual hell?

  “Sorry, what?” This can’t be. I feel dazed. Feverish.

  “She’s left the front-door keys on the kitchen table; she’s just asked me to ask you if you can let her in.”

  “Farhana!” I scream. My voice garbles; I feel like I’m talking gibberish, my mouth as lose as my bum. I can’t be bothered to be nice to anyone anymore, no more pleasantries from me. “SHE’S locked the door to the garden from the inside! I’m locked out; I can’t get into the house!”

  AND P.S. MY BUM IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE!

  “Oh dear! What are the chances?” Farhana bites her lip. Well, don’t just stand there. “I’ll let her know.” She runs back inside and I squirm. 2B and Not 2B glance at me. L-o-v-i-n-g the drama. Smugly toilet-breaking liberally to spite me. YOU DO NOT NEED TO SQUEEZE THAT FAKE ANXIETY-WEE OUT, 2B. I have to find somewhere to go. I have to try the door again even tho
ugh I know it’s locked. Maybe the heat made the door swell? Perhaps my hands were too clammy?

  “Bluebelle!” Oh no, not Gerald the author. He dangles his head over his balcony, mug balanced cockily in his hand. “Your mum’s outside, she’s—”

  “I know, I know!” I snap. I KNOW! Shut down.

  I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.

  I need to get this disgusting Trojan horse of a shepherd’s pie out of me. It’s toxic; it’s poisoning me. Why couldn’t it come as sick? Then it wouldn’t be so embarrassing. I could just lean over into a bush and be sick. Pop stars do it on stage all the time. Come on, if I could find somewhere to turn upside down it might come out of another hole. I can barely move; I’m walking cross-legged. Hopping. Bum cheeks clenched. I don’t dare fart. It would rumple out of me. HELL. OK, THINK….Right up next to the back door, there is an alley, only small, with a cupboard door where the lawn mower is kept. I creep around there, crouch and prepare to poo—but it’s all decking. I can’t just go freely like that. I don’t know what’s going to come out of me. What if somebody walks out at the wrong time? Yes, maybe my bare bum will be out of view, but the eruption of poo might not go so unnoticed. It might spill out of me like a glass of spilt chocolate milkshake. Crap, I need a thing to crap into.

  The dogs look like they’re looking around for me too. But I know they’re not. They don’t care. Just DO IT. Be natural and free and animally like us! they think. It’s so tempting. But I’ll never live it down. I’m meant to be becoming a woman. Not needing a baby nappy. I’ll never be a manager of anywhere. I think about the annoying smug nurse from the doctor’s laughing in my face. Alicia from Planet Coffee tutting at me in disgust. The girls from school. Blegh…She’s so fat and gross AND she poos herself. These stories don’t just go away, you know?

  * * *

  —

  I can’t. The poo is bellowing, desperate to begin its grand exit and thunder out of me. Why do I feel like it’s taking over my body, drip-feeding poo into my veins?

  I’m so hot. I have to smash the window, break into the house. I take my pyjama top off, so I’m just in my once-white-now-looks-like-it’s-been-retrieved-from-a-Victorian-ghost tea-stainy bra, and wrap it up around my elbow. I am so impressed I know to do that and not punch the glass through with my fist like an actual idiot, which I CLEARLY am. I size up the window, ready to punch the glass. But I can’t. I’m tingling. I feel so weak from the necessity to poo that I have no strength. If I do a punch, I’ll surely do a poo too. No woman-power at all. I have to grow up.

  This is my moment. You are a responsible adult now, BB. You got yourself into a jam and you’re gonna get yourself out of it. Let this be the start of the new you.

  I go back to my spot, breathe in deep and pull my pyjama bottoms down and then I spot it. The dog bowl. Sod it. I drag the bowl towards me; at least then it will be contained. It scratches, metal on the tiles. Not 2B hates my guts—Not in there, no, not in there, BB, THINK!—but whatever, he needs to be brought down a peg or two. Sorry, Not 2B.

  Shoving the metal pan under my bum like a potty, I, without much choice, release hot sloppy poo into it. The dogs whimper.

  Gerald pops his head out onto his balcony to say something but I point a finger at him from my crouched position like a possessed demon giving birth to another possessed demon, Possessed Demon the Second, for example, and roar, “GO BACK INSIDE, GERALD!”

  And he skulks back in as I continue the big smushy relief. Eyes closed, it gallops out of me. I am rattling with the sensation. Trembling. So elated I feel I could float. Actual heaven. Pull my bottoms up.

  Now. I am back to life. A superhero. Capable of anything. I breathe. Wrap the pyjama top again over my elbow. Focus on the glass like a bull’s-eye target, smash the window; it shatters in one go. I am SUCH a badass ninja. I use my other hand to unlatch the bolt. Clank. Yet again, absolute boss. Inside, I run through the house. It all looks so basic and inferior to me now that I am a legend capable of breaking into houses and just as I reach the door the key inside the lock twists. Mum and Camille enter with Dove.

  “Dove let us in. I told Gerald to come out and tell you. Did he not say?” BLEUGH. WRETCHED FLASHBACK OF GERALD SEEING ME POO! The eye contact. Shudder. Mum continues: “Sorry for locking the door, it’s just habit. How did you get inside?”

  “I just…” I feel frantic. “I just smashed the door with my elbow.”

  “You smashed the glass? BB, we were only outside for two minutes. I just rang Dove, she ran back with the key. Couldn’t you have waited?” Stupid Dove with not even one bit of sweat on her stupid perfect forehead after running in the heat.

  “Not really. I…had a bad tummy. Did you, Camille?”

  “No.” Camille laughs, carrying through the stack of straw. She looks perky and fresh. She’s got bagels under her arm. We couldn’t be in more different places at this moment.

  “Is the shed clear?”

  “Sort of, but, like I said, I had a bad tummy.” I follow her through to the kitchen, where she unpacks her shopping.

  “It’s hot, isn’t it?” She reaches for a glass to fill with water, rolling her eyes at the shattered glass on the floor. She looks out into the garden…

  Where there are bloodstained white feathers everywhere.

  Mary, Kate and Ashley…OH NO!

  Those dogs do NOT hang about.

  “Well, we won’t be needing this anymore, then.” Mum throws the bag of straw down and I run upstairs to shower.

  TOAST

  Toast eases most things. Even toast from crap white sliced bread—that and a cup of tea and you can fix quite a lot.

  But not three dead ducks.

  Or having to hose out a dog bowl full of your own poo.

  It’s later that day when Dad comes over.

  “It’s Not 2B!” Mum yells. “He thinks he owns the bloody place.”

  “Don’t blame Not 2B!” Dad yells. He’s wearing a flat cap these days and he flops it off like a prop and slams it on the coffee table to show he’s annoyed. I can’t help but judge all of his actions like he’s been directed to do them. “What do you expect? If you get three ducks with two Dalmatians there’s going to be carnage. They are dogs, you know, Lucy. They hunt.”

  “They are badly trained.”

  “Oh, see it as the equivalent of you being left on your own with four hundred glasses of chilled white wine and being asked not to drink one.”

  “Excuse me?”

  * * *

  —

  Meanwhile, the toast is amazing. I can drown out the thought of the ducks’ murder and the poo incident and them arguing with the delightful lullaby of pale, salty butter. The smushing soft, warm press of a doughy mattress, the crumbling of salty Marmite rubble, collapsing under each chew, the crisp toastiness, washed down with tea. It’s my fault. I never should have left the ducks unattended.

  Then the pair of them really begin to row.

  “Where are you going?” Dove says as Dad gets up.

  “I’m leaving. Your mum’s being a septic cow.” And then he walks out.

  Mum turns to us and laughs. “His hairline is so receding,” she says. “I don’t know what I ever saw in that bloke. Honestly, girls, never fall for an older man, because it seems fun and mysterious at the time and then you turn around and before you know it you’ve gone and made babies with your granddad. They say they have money but it’s a lie; you end up paying for them.” She rubs her eyes. “I’m sorry, girls, I shouldn’t be mean; I know he’s your father but I just need to get this off my chest.” She rubs her neck like she’s about to say something she’s been holding back for a too-long amount of time. “Your dad is a deluded, arrogant, egotistical, self-pitying old pig with a drinking problem.” She catches her breath, clears her throat and begins again. “He looks like a tub of butter, an old one, that should be in a muse
um. It’s laughable.” She strokes the dogs’ heads. “What on earth was I…? Dove, go pour me a glass of wine, would you?”

  * * *

  —

  Turns out toast can’t fix Mum and Dad either, but I love each and every mouthful.

  CORNISH PASTY

  “No, I know what he looks like.” Mum sips the wine; it’s clearly giving her clarity. “…a Cornish pasty. Your father looks like a soggy Cornish pasty…sweating…in a paper bag.”

  You know, in the olden days, you used to be able to get Cornish pasties that were half savoury and half sweet so the farmers could take them to work and have a main and a pudding in one filling lunch. I think they should bring that back.

  LATTE HEARTS

  It’s not that I fancy Max but maybe I think I fancy him.

  Quite an actual lot.

  Max and Marcel like to talk for hours about the coffee beans. I know I a bit fancy him because I’m jealous of the coffee beans. I am jealous of how Max talks about them like it’s his genuine passion. I am jealous of the way he holds the beans so gently in his hands, how he smells them, breathes them in. Flirts with them. I want him to talk to Marcel about me like I’m the coffee beans. Saying how great and unusual I am.

  I flump next to the two of them. Next to my rival, the beans. Knuckles pressing into my chin. I have on my alphabet shirt. It’s covered in coloured letters. And high-waisted pink leggings. The boys have a little thermometer thingy that they dunk inside the milk frother, and challenge each other to do designs on the top: leaves, fans, flowers, birds, presidents’ faces.

  “Teach me how to do one of those,” I ask Max. And by “ask” I mean “BEG.” Oh, I feel like my mum, perving all over him. OK. Time to admit it: I FANCY MAX. IT IS OFFICIAL. OH I HATE HOW I’M WRITING. HOW I’M BEING. THAT YOU’RE READING THIS IN MY FOOD DIARY AND IT CLEARLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FOOD BUT BLOODY HELL THIIIIISSSSS­SSSSS­S GUYYYYY­YYYYY­YYYYY­YYYY. TOO FIT. TOOOOOOOO FIT.