Big Bones Read online

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumble and watch Max walk away from me. Behind Alicia he turns, widens his eyes and pushes the whole panini into his mouth in one move. Then he grins. Mouth full of squished bread. He coughs. Chokes. Splutters. Alicia turns around and growls. And I am laughing my head off but secretly melting, like a soggy panini gone soft.

  CHEESE

  The day goes on FOR-EVER. It’s like it’s stopped in time. I have a totally new understanding of the phrase ‘school holidays’ now that I see it from the other side of the desk. School holidays mean HOT, BUSY and STRESSED. It’s so long and hard work. A chaos of mums and dads and nannies and babies and prams and soggy bread crusts and tiny hands clutching raisins and smushed-up grapes and flattened Wotsits. And kids just coming in like they own the place. And me, making green tea after chai latte after peppermint tea after stupid babyccino. And gossip and leggings and iPads and nobody eating. Just sip. Sip. Gossip. Gossip. This is so dry. Nearly as dry as the brownies that I’ve suggested a new recipe for to make them more gooey. And every baby is crying because it’s so hot. I find myself counting nine months backwards from August so I know for my whole entire life never to have a baby born in the summertime so I don’t have to stare at their screaming red scrunched-up face. I realise how jokes it is that I’m writing this all down in a doctor’s journal. I never thought I’d get so into writing this thing. How cringe it is that I’m now writing about a boy too. Well … I don’t want to keep you in suspense … plus … it’s kind of nice talking to you really; it’s like having a little friend.

  All I’m thinking is Max and trying to figure out if he’s my species or not. He’s never seen Jurassic Park. But he’s still not mentioned anything about the crepe place or me or being vegan, even though he did eat a panini, but I can’t quite remember if it was a cheese one or not – no, it was, I know it was, but anyway, why does it even matter and I’m just going mad and my eyes are slowly blinding. Blurred by sweat and exhaustion and more sweat that’s giving me rings under each armpit and my thighs are scraping against each other in scabby agony and I feel like a hideous monster walrus cattle girl and why would anybody like Max fancy me when a trillion and one astoundingly beautiful girls of every kind come into our coffee shop every day? And I am just here, taking up ALL the room. Conscious of the bobbly cheese-grater red dots on my arms that make my skin feel like the crust of a seeded loaf. Conscious of the fact that my boobs might be sweating but I don’t have the guts to even look down and check because if I see hideous half-moons of sweat under there I will begin to believe I am as horrible as the rest of the world might think I am.

  I am a tree trunk.

  A grand piano.

  I puff my Ventolin.

  It’s the end of the day when Max comes up to me and says in the cutest voice ever, ‘So if it’s vegan I’m guessing no cheese, which is gonna be hard as cheese is one of my all-time favourite foods, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, Blue.’ He grins. ‘For you.’

  OH BOY.

  It. Is. On.

  MOULD

  I have to take the bus home. My thighs are rubbing like mad. It’s like rubbing your cheeks on tree bark, plus the sweat is making it so sore; every step sticks and chafes. The bus is so hot and everybody is covered in a gammy sheet of glueyness. But I don’t care. I am going on a date and I can’t help but feel really good about that.

  Obviously I want to get home and just put a soaking wet bed sheet over my whole body and watch TV and eat ice cream but Mum doesn’t seem to have the same agenda. Plus, the only ice cream we ever have in our house will be a quarter tub of something old that has thawed so badly it will have snowflakes, or a gammy singular solitary ice lolly dating back to the early 2000s. The front door is wide open and both dogs are yawning and scratching around the front garden. The house is ripe with the throat-thwacking stench of bleach and Mum is padding around in Dove’s Nike sliders and a pair of yellow gloves.

  ‘Right, BB, get your gloves on. Come on, we’re having a clear-out.’

  Dove looks at me with one of those faces and I can see she’s already been put to work by the grot and grime all up her arms and on her cheeks. I don’t even own the gloves she means.

  ‘You two can clean the larder out; it’s full of all your dad’s crap. He hasn’t touched half the stuff in there for years.’

  I don’t want to remind her that I used Dad’s larder to cook the shepherd’s pie the other day but that obviously made me poo out the whole of south London into the dog bowl so I keep quiet and say, ‘Yeah, but what if we throw away stuff he, you know, wants?’

  ‘I don’t care if his bloody dead mother’s ashes are in there: out. OUT. OUT!’

  Harsh. I raise an eyebrow at Dove.

  So I guess Dad isn’t coming home yet then.

  Dove holds open the bin bag and I open the larder door. It’s the same height as me, like an airing cupboard, and stinks of spices and savoury musk. It’s the cupboard of every ingredient that can change a tin of tomatoes into a chilli, a curry or a bolognese. The cupboard where everything and anything goes. The cupboard you don’t dare touch in case it avalanches on top of your feet and breaks your toes. In fact, both dogs have had injuries from the cupboard: 2B once ate a whole sack of sugar and was sick for days and Not 2B had a tin of golden syrup dropped on his head.

  It’s floor-to-ceiling chaos. Jars of spices balanced on top of vinegars and oils, tins shoved in in all directions, some upside down and slanted, and open packets of lentils, rice, flour, almonds and pasta ready to roar open at you and skittle across the floor.

  We travel all around the world inside the globe of Dad’s larder. Yellow turmeric and baking powder, shreds of saffron, smoked paprika, vanilla essence and Tabasco, sticky Marmite and banana ketchup, oregano and fish sauce, coconut milk and cayenne pepper, balsamic vinegar and palm sugar … We find doubles of almost everything, triples in most cases; three open bags of couscous, three jars of curry paste, three bottles of soy sauce. And the whole thing, nearly everything in there, is all out. Of. Date. Crawling with fluffy reels of dust and strings of spider webs carrying spools of flies. I sneeze as the mixed itchy-scratchy powders irritate my nostrils. My eyes water and bleed my make-up, as I reveal what should be jars of dried coriander leaf that are now a muted gunmetal grey and turned to dust. Flour is damp, vinegars dehydrated and sauces are pungent and ripe, gone off.

  The jars of jam are thick with mould sporting hay bales of silver fur.

  I feel crap about chucking it out, to be honest, plus some of this stuff is really good quality. Even if it is out of date. Dad would still use it but it seems every time I try to hold something back, Mum glares at me like I’m thrusting a knife into her shoulder.

  Everything is …

  Best before … when Dad still lived here.

  Best before … when Mum and Dad were happy.

  And it all goes in the bin.

  SPRING ONIONS

  People always say how much Mum and Dove look alike. Having a mum smaller than you makes people look at us like I’ve given birth to a mum rather than the other way round. Imagining me squeezing out of her is like imagining a sausage dog giving birth to a desk. I watch Mum and Dove move around the kitchen, hopping like little robins looking for somewhere to settle.

  I’m a pregnant cow.

  A gaggle of spring onions hold tight like hugging girls in the grasp of an unnatural blue plastic band; their spindly legs are strangled around one another, bruised and brown and wilted. Have you noticed that, if you look closely, spring onions wear pin-stripe power suits? Mega babes.

  ‘Why are these bloody things in the cupboard?’ Mum very over the toply roars. ‘Bin. NOW!’

  ‘All right, calm down.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to calm down, Dove. I’m sick of this man’s rubbish everywhere. He’s not even here and he manages to infest the whole place with his everlasting debris of sh—’

  ‘You don’t need to throw all of this stuff away, Mum. Just cos you don’t want to
live with Dad doesn’t mean you have to throw perfectly good food away.’

  ‘Perfectly good? Perfectly good? I can’t see what’s perfectly good here. What’s the point in buying all this stuff if it just goes in the bin? Do you think I like seeing food go to waste?’

  ‘OK. OK. Calm down!’

  ‘I am CALM.’

  She’s not. What is WRONG with her tonight? I am wondering if there’s any natural yoghurt or ANYTHING in the fridge that I can slather on my thighs to take the venomous sting away. Does it have to be in date if you’re just rubbing it on your thigh chafe?

  ‘What’s wrong with you tonight?’ Dove ventures. How brave. I mean, I was thinking the exact same thing but, like, I’m not dumb enough to say it.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Mum says. ‘What’s wrong with me? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. Your stupid father is an absolute incapable moron who lives his life like a student and can’t sort himself out and thinks just because he is an old man that he can patronise me and squish me into compromising conditions so I’ll buckle. You know, he hasn’t got a clue. Do you know that? Not one clue.’ Her voice gets louder. ‘He’s an egotistical parasite,’ she barks. ‘And then, to top it off, I’ve got you two taking a FULL three hours to clean out a larder that I already said needs completely throwing out!’

  ‘We didn’t want to throw away anything edible, anything Dad might want.’

  ‘Oh, Dad wants it,’ Mum snarls. ‘Dad wants it ALL!’ She throws a tea towel onto the table. ‘But Dad doesn’t live here and I, me, MUM, am asking you to throw it all away, all of it. You both suck up to him non-stop. Why don’t you ever listen to me? It’s MY house and I want that cupboard and everything in it gone, do you hear? And I want to start afresh without that ugly rancid rotting jungle looking at me. I can’t even make a risotto without the whole thing crushing my foot. LOOK AT MY FOOT.’

  OH. So this was the trigger. A bright-purple swelling of a bruise shines on Mum’s toe. The pan is burnt, lined with burnt onion, the elderly cousin of the spring onions. (Why do Americans call spring onions ‘scallions’? It’s such a diversion … Like, how an aubergine is an eggplant, and coriander is cilantro. Aubergine – all day. Eggplant though? A plant of eggs. No thanks.)

  ‘It wasn’t Dad’s fault that happened though, Mum. Stop shouting at me just cos Dad isn’t here to bear the brunt of it.’

  ‘Bluebelle, don’t even start with me. He stacked the cupboard like an absolute boob. Dad is NEVER here to bear the brunt of ANYTHING!’

  ‘Yeah, cos you kicked him out.’

  ‘Is that what he told you? Seriously, I’m not in the mood. Helping me clear up is the least you can do. You still haven’t kept your side of the bargain.’ Why is the knife turning on me now?

  ‘Mum, I use the stuff in the larder too, you know, not just Dad.’ I feel my chest tighten. I feel it clench. My breathing becomes all short and sharp.

  ‘You said you’d go to the gym; you still haven’t gone. You said you would. You promised.’

  ‘Mum, it’s not that –’ My ribs are aching. My words are constricted.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. Do you have any idea what a big deal it means for me to just let you not go to school, to just believe in you, trust that this is the right decision for you, to maybe not get your grades like everybody else your age. Have you not thought about that? Your exam results are going to come knocking on our door any second and it’s like you don’t even care. That’s not normal. For some kids these results change their whole career path, determine their entire future, and you haven’t even batted an eyelid! That’s over ten years of education for what? Nothing!’

  ‘Not nothing,’ I say. ‘My brain’s not a sieve, I’ve not forgotten all of this, Mum. I am smart, in my own way.’

  ‘I didn’t say you weren’t smart. I never once said that, but THINK, for a second, please, how it will look in the future if you’re not happy and you turn around and say to me, Mum, why did you let me quit school? I was just sixteen. Do you know the guilt I will feel if you can’t become the things you want to be because you don’t have the grades? I’ll have to live with that. Not you. You probably won’t even remember.’

  ‘I will. I will remember. This was my decision, Mum.’

  ‘Course you won’t. Trust me, Bluebelle, I’ve been there; I’ve been you. Thinking the world will give me a massive pay cheque, that everything will be all right. But you won’t remember. I don’t remember my decisions when I was sixteen, because I was SIXTEEN! All I knew is that my mum told me I would NEVER make it as an actress, ever, that I would never be on stage and, you know, she was actually right, I didn’t.’

  Because she fell pregnant with me.

  ‘I didn’t make it. And I didn’t do my exams because I concentrated on performance. And then I was left with nothing. And I had to pay for that, in my own way. So I’m letting you take one. I’m letting you do what you want to do but there were conditions.’

  ‘I know, Mum, and I’ve told you I’m grateful, I said to you, didn’t I? I said I’m so grateful for that.’ I feel myself getting short of breath.

  ‘And your one part of the bargain, aside from keeping the diary thing –’

  ‘Which I’m doing, I’m doing – ask Dove – aren’t I, Dove?’ I panic; Dove panics; we’re all panicking. This has come out of nowhere. Mum’s gone mental. WHERE’S MY BLOODY INHALER?

  ‘Aside, I said, aside from keeping the diary, which is the easy bit – anybody can keep a diary – was going to the gym.’

  ‘Mum, I –’

  ‘I’m not asking for rent money, no contribution towards bloody toilet roll, nothing. All I’m asking is for your word, your promise. And you can’t even give me that.’

  ‘It’s not like that, I just … I haven’t had the time. I’ll go, I will, I’ll go.’

  Dove pretends to read the back of a crumpled packet of flour. The ingredients being … flour.

  ‘And we’re just gonna go back to the doctor’s, like all those times we’ve gone before and nothing would have changed with your health and it will be my fault, again. Because I was too lenient. Then I’m going to look, YET AGAIN, like I’m the world’s worst mum and your dad is just going to love that, isn’t he? That you’ve given up your education and I’ve allowed you to; I’ve failed and you can’t even get your lazy bum down the gym three times a week for me!’

  ‘I will. I’ll go, I’ll go for you!’

  ‘Don’t go for me, Bluebelle. That’s not the point, don’t you see? Go for you, go for yourself !’ She shakes her hands wildly and then points right in my face. ‘I look bad in this but you’re the only one you’re cheating!’ She looks at me in disgust. I find my inhaler and breath in. And again. I hate the look she’s given me; it makes my bones go cold. ‘Listen to you. You can’t even breathe.’

  Ouch. Tears form, one slides down my face. I wipe it off. Breathe in and face her.

  ‘You think I’m too fat, don’t you?’ Dove lifts her gaze up to Mum, wide-eyed.

  ‘Oh, what is this now?’

  ‘No, Mum.’ I jut out my jaw; my voice rasps. ‘If you think I’m fat, just say. If you want me to get to the gym because you think I’m fat, then just tell me. Don’t pretend it’s because it will make you look like a bad mum if I don’t go. Sorry I’m not a skinny-minnie like you and Dove, sorry I can’t eat a whole burger and chips like you two and not feel the fat physically attach itself onto me, sorry that people laugh at me and point at me and make comments about me, that I’m embarrassed whenever I point you out as my mum and have people stare back at me in disbelief and make cruel jokes about me because I’m so BIG. That YOU pushed ME out. That it’s a miracle that I didn’t break you. I hate it that I can’t share clothes with you and Dove. That we can’t even go shopping together because I don’t want people to comment on us. That some shops don’t have my size, even. That I tower above you. That I can’t even get on some rollercoaster rides, that people describe me as “big”, that they assume I�
�ll want a “large” of everything, assume I’m a liability, that I’m a whale, that I’m not a girl, that I can’t be gentle, or feminine, or myself. Because that’s all I’m being, Mum, myself. Or I’m just trying.’ I can’t help it: the tears roll down my cheeks fast now and my voice cracks and trembles. ‘That’s all I’m trying to do.’

  And she drops the bin liner to the ground and we hug and we are both crying. Mum strokes my hair and I don’t even care that our fingers are covered in old food and bits of grossness.

  ‘You know you never know the answer, don’t you?’ Mum holds my face, wiping my tears with her thumbs and says, ‘You never really grow up. It’s a trick; everybody is wandering around just as lost as the person ahead and the person behind. We are all winging it. You are always waiting for somebody to tell you if you’re doing it right but you never know. Ever. Me and Dad don’t know. None of us know what we’re doing in this life. But we are proud of you for asking for more. We are. And I don’t think you’re anything except beautiful. You’re so beautiful, I can’t even begin to take in your beauty. You’ve always been beautiful. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  Mum yanks Dove in to our hug too and we are holding tight, bedraggled, tired and worn, but still so close, still holding on, together, like the girl gang of spring onions we’ve just thrown in the bin.

  MARS BAR

  ‘Don’t burn it!’ I yell, smacking Dove’s hand out of the way.

  ‘Sor-ry! Calm down.’

  ‘It’s only meant to be thirty seconds.’

  ‘It’s not my fault the stupid thing only sets in minutes.’

  ‘Take it out.’

  ‘Stop bossing me about.’

  ‘If you did it right I wouldn’t have to.’

  ‘OH! YEAH BOY! IT LOOKS AMAZING!’

  ‘Let’s see then, share the wealth.’

  A warm bowl of melted Mars Bar. Hot caramel, chocolate and nougat. Sticky, fudgy, warm.