Big Bones Read online

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Me too at the moment. Until that mum of yours sorts her head out.’

  Hmmmm. Or YOU could try sorting yours out too?

  ‘I think she’s just jealous. You know?’

  He wants me to agree but I don’t because I know FOR A FACT that Mum is more jealous of the dogs than she is of Dad. I say nothing. He can undig himself out of his own grave. ‘Because I’m still treading the boards in a way, you know? I mean, I know I’m teaching theatre but I’m still very much hands-on with the actors and the space. I don’t direct as much as I’d like to; always the way, isn’t it? The higher up the ranks you get the less you get to actually get stuck in.’ He mimics digging into soil or something visual, then he chuckles to himself; I can see why Mum hates him. ‘She misses that, your mum. Her team aren’t using her to her full potential, all that helping others and not herself. Of course the work they make there is of a pretty high standard. She was a great actor, stunning. I’d love to see her on stage again. It’s confidence, isn’t it? Age knocks it right out of us. Shrinks us to fragile … mice.’ He considers the mice comparison. ‘By the time you finally get your confidence, you die. Sad old world,’ he mutters. This is D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G, boy. ‘I’ll never forget the day I saw her headshots, those eyes … I said to my friend, I’m gonna marry that girl. As the great man said, the course of true love never –’

  ‘You’ve told me this.’ I chew the inside of my cheek. ‘Here, have a waffle.’

  WAFFLES

  These amazing caramel waffle things are divine. You just can’t go wrong with them. You pop them over your mug of tea and they heat up. When you split the waffle it tears apart, the toffee arms grab at each other, like you are some evil cold-hearted giant separating mad lovers. Dunk in any hot beverage and the chewiness dissolves.

  ‘Why didn’t Dove come today?’ Dad takes EVERYTHING so personally. So insecure, although he’s too insecure to say it out loud so just makes everything about himself instead.

  ‘She’s roof running.’

  ‘It’s called parkour, isn’t it, that thing? One of the blokes in dance, his son does it. When I said Dove was doing it they thought I was joking. They were quite shocked that she was a girl.’ More shocked than the bloke doing dance? It’s all so sexist and tedious.

  ‘Ha! Everyone says that.’

  ‘Do they?’ Dad frowns. ‘Is it dangerous then?’

  ‘I think it’s cool.’

  ‘I think it’s cool too.’ Dad fiddles with the sugar packets. I hate sugar packets in cafes, so cheap-looking. ‘But is it safe for a girl to go running around jumping on buildings and all that? I mean, she could hurt herself.’

  ‘Boys can hurt themselves too, Dad.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’ He panics, as he always does when he talks about Dove and me being girls, and becomes a ginormous horned bull in a china shop smashing all the china up. ‘I mean boys too – is it safe for anyone to go jumping around on buildings?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘I mean, when I was younger we were performing protest theatre outside the Houses of Parliament, on the roofs of buildings, very powerful stuff. Of course the police hated us – we were a movement! A notorious army of guerrilla thespians raging at the system, but that was then …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you’ve told me before.’

  ‘She sent me this video but I can’t get it to load properly on my phone.’ Like I’m surprised. ‘But I saw a bit; she doesn’t even tie her hair up, you know?’

  ‘She’s like Tarzan.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she is. Are you sure she’s not rejecting me?’

  ‘Why would she be doing that?’

  ‘I thought she might be punishing me for moving out. It’s only temporary.’ Whatever. I don’t even take their break-ups seriously any more. ‘How’s Not 2B?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I miss that dog.’

  Our dogs are 2B and Not 2B (good old Shakespeare again). Dad actually thinks that Not 2B might have a complex about the fact that he is not 2B so he always tells me to love that dog extra hard and now the balance has shifted as if to say that not to be 2B is actually better than being 2B. That is the answer to the question.

  Also 2B was once actually in a car insurance advert that paid more than Dad’s entire salary for the whole year, so he is quite a major celebrity big deal in Dalmatian land. And paid for our central heating so …

  I smile.

  ‘I’m sure he misses you too.’ That’s probably true. But Not 2B’s a dog so it doesn’t count. A dog would miss its owner even if he was a murderer. I wish Dad could be the person Not 2B thinks he is … He probably sees Dad like some action-movie-star actor hero … not a broke, grey-haired wiry stick of a man with round tortoiseshell spectacles (he calls them that, not me. He also calls bikes bicycles, and Snickers bars Marathons … so you can just imagine the type of man I’m dealing with).

  We watch the people. Polite smiles, hello, thank you, the cricking of a neck, pushing hair behind ears, sneezing into a tissue. A baby softly whimpers, a toddler stretches its legs out in cramped frustration in its pram and loses a shoe, a young-ish guy with a beard picks the shoe up but the mum doesn’t see so he sort of gently props the shoe on the toddler’s lap and orders an americano to take away. I love humans.

  ‘So guess what?’ I say in a happy, don’t-respond-badly voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not gonna do school any more!’ I say excitedly, as if he should leap up in delight. He doesn’t. He frowns. And his greying bobbly drama blacks make him look like he’s shopped for my funeral in a skip.

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m leaving school.’

  ‘What about sixth form? I thought you got a place.’

  ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘What about university in the future?’

  ‘I don’t want to go. It’s a pile of debt for something I don’t want to study. I would literally be picking a course for the sake of it. I want to take my time.’

  ‘So take a gap year.’

  ‘No. Dad. You can’t just take a gap year. I have to be in some form of training or education until my eighteenth birthday.’

  ‘Can’t you just get on with your art and sewing and baking and stuff at school until you’re eighteen and then let the world be your oyster? You don’t have to rush.’

  ‘I don’t like school, Dad. It’s not for me. It’s not my kind of place.’

  ‘You’re not being bullied, are you?’

  I think about the way some of the girls stare at me when I eat at lunchtime. Or in the changing room before PE. The red lines from my bra straps carving into my skin like scars.

  ‘No, of course I’m not. I just don’t want to go back. I’ve outgrown it.’

  ‘Outgrown school, eh? That’s a first.’ He considers it. ‘I suppose it is possible to outgrow anything. A sunflower can outgrow its garden … Of course, better to outgrow a garden than not see any sunshine at all. Left to wither and die because you’re being overshadowed by the other plants.’

  ‘Or get strangled by ivy.’

  ‘That too …’ He nods, visualising it, I imagine. ‘Poison ivy. What does your mum say?’

  ‘I like the way poison ivy made you think about Mum.’

  ‘No it didn’t,’ lies Dad. ‘I just know she’d have something to say about this. And of course, she has to grant you permission.’ Mum’s not the queen gatekeeper. So annoying. ‘Well … what did she say?’

  ‘She’s not happy about it.’

  I feel like I actually see my dad’s head go as clear as glass. The little mechanical wheels begin to turn and clank, he’s seen a window here, to get close to me while trumping Mum. He plays with a little ball of foil he’s found in his pocket. He relaxes methodically; it’s all that acting I guess, reading between the lines – all actors have to pretend they care about tiny things like rolling balls of tin foil. He starts to chew the waffle, using it like a
prop; actors ADORE eating and acting at the same time. They think it’s the ultimate proof of being a human being. If they could do a poo on stage they would.

  ‘I don’t know what she’s talking about; she didn’t go to college, neither did I, and look at us!’

  Yeah. Look at you.

  ‘I wonder if they’ll be up for slurping a drop of whisky into this,’ he jokes with a deadly serious face and a leaning eye. I say nothing. He continues, ‘The whole thing’s making a wedding cake out of a cupcake if you ask me.’ He always thinks I’ll appreciate cake jokes. No fat person appreciates cake jokes unless they are on OUR terms. ‘I think you’re old enough now to decide what you want to do with yourself.’ Even though it pains him to say this. ‘So what are you going to do? You’re not going to become an actor, are you?’ He pronounces the word ‘actor’ like ‘goblin’, terrified at the prospect but also secretly quite proud of his profession.

  ‘Hell no!’

  ‘Nothing wrong with treading the boards, following in the footsteps of your very old man.’ Defensive, immediately. ‘English rose like you.’ SNORE. ‘So … what is the plan?’

  ‘Be an “alien” at Planet Coffee a bit longer … I dunno, bake?’

  ‘No travelling or …’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You should learn the guitar. I always wanted to learn the guitar, like Bob Dylan. You know that my one regret in life was not learning the guitar.’

  Your regret in life, Dad, not mine.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, meaning probably most definitely actually not. ‘I’d rather perfect the art of the chocolate fondue.’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, but he’s disappointed.

  ‘It’s not too late for you to learn the guitar though, Dad.’

  ‘Nah.’

  He uses his bitten-down fingertips to collect some fallen grains of brown sugar. He can only use brown – it has to be wholesome. Farmhousey. I think about all the habits and bits and pieces of him that I don’t get to see now I don’t live with him any more. Now that I don’t know him like I used to. His choices are usually a safe bet. As long as the boiled eggs are organic, the juice is fresh, the coffee is proper and the booze is on tap, he’s happy.

  ‘So.’ He defrosts. ‘Then I’ll have two girls running wild on the streets of London! What you got there?’

  ‘It’s a food diary.’

  ‘You’re not going to write any of the things down I said about your mum are you, like a reporter?’

  ‘No, Dad. It’s part of my deal to Mum to stop going to school, I have to fill this in every day, to show the nurse, because of my asthma.’

  ‘Deal to Mum? Bribing you, is she now? Unbelievable. That’s that woman all over.’

  ‘The nurse made me do it.’ Dad folds his lips into a little ugly purse.

  ‘So what is it? A string of love letters to food?’

  ‘Yeah, basically. Mostly unrequited.’

  Dad pats me on the shoulder sympathetically. ‘You can always write down how I feel about your mum in there, if she’ll read it – will she read it, do you think? Reckon you could tell her I still love her?’

  ‘She knows you love her, Dad.’

  ‘And maybe you could tell her I looked really handsome today?’

  ‘No, Dad, it’s a diary, you have to tell the truth, that’s the whole point.’

  BAKEWELL TART

  ‘You must think I’m stupid,’ Dove barks at me. ‘This is just exactly like the time you and Dad snaked me and went and got your ears pierced behind my back.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ I say. Which is another lie. Half of the joy of getting my ears pierced was because I knew Dove would be jealous. It’s what got me through the burning ringing sensation.

  ‘I don’t get why you just get to quit school.’

  ‘I am older than you.’

  ‘Only by three years and you’re still meant to be learning.’

  ‘I am still learning.’ And then I say in a wind-up condescending tone: ‘You never stop learning, Dove.’ Always more patronising when you add their name at the end. I decide to leave out the bit that technically I’m desperate to become an unglamourous apprentice at Planet Coffee, because it’s too good watching her squirm with envy.

  ‘Oh PLEASE. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Well, it’s what’s happening. School just isn’t for me.’

  ‘School, actually, just isn’t for most people but you just get on with it. Why do you think you’re such an exception to ALL the rules, ALL the time?’

  ‘We could ALL be an EX-ception to ALL the rules, Dove, it’s just about having the guts to not ACC-ept them.’

  ‘You’re full of crap.’ She folds her arms. Her hip bones poke out like shark fins making a little gap between her jeans and her body. You could balance a taco in there, balance it nicely while you stuffed it. Her belly button winks at me like an eye. ‘It’s always about you,’ she shouts. ‘I’m sick of it!’ and then she struts away, blonde ponytail swinging after her like some hideous discontinued My Little Pony.

  ‘That’s not true!’ I shout back. It’s always about Mum and Dad; we ALL know that.

  I love making Bakewell tart because it calms me down so much. Its creation, so gentle, is like building a sandcastle or dozing off to sleep.

  Make pastry. Chill it. Roll it out, measure it against your tin to make sure it will fit, line the tin with your pastry … Then chill it again so it sticks to its shape in the fridge. Then blind-bake the pastry with those baking bead things (or you can use coins apparently but I think that’s kind of weird and might make it taste money-ish). Or rice, but I mean, what a waste.

  Then you’ve got to make the filling, which is basically ground almonds, almond essence, sugar and eggs … you heat it in a pan. This is the frangipane. I could eat this stuff for dinner every single night. IT IS AMAZING. It’s sweet and tart and moreish.

  When the pastry has been baked, blindly, you’ll be so proud of yourself, you might want to think about adding that new skill to your CV. Because it’s actually well hard to make your own pastry and so tempting to not make it and buy ready-made. So in other words you’re pretty much completely over the moon with your own self before you’ve even begun.

  Smear a fat layer of good quality raspberry jam on the bottom then topple the frangipane mix over it. Scatter with flaked almonds and bake again. It smells like butter and amaretto. Like the house is a cuddle.

  Serve the cuddle on its own or with custard or ice cream.

  ‘DOVE!’

  No answer.

  ‘DOVE? ANSWER ME YOU ABSOLUTE WITCH!’

  ‘What do you want, you IDIOT?’

  ‘I’ve made you a Bakewell tart.’

  ‘Made me a Bakewell tart or just made a Bakewell tart mostly for your greedy-ass self?’

  Errrrrmmmm …

  ‘There better be custard.’

  AVOCADO

  IT IS LONG writing a food diary. It’s becoming the first thing I think about each and every morning and it is BRASSING my life out. I don’t think it’s healthy to look this inwardly at your own life.

  ‘They don’t even taste of anything,’ Dove says as she watches me scoop out the green flesh.

  ‘Yes they do.’ Please don’t ask me of what because I can’t give you an answer. It’s a bit like how tea just tastes of tea, which is kind of a nothing flavour but you need it. I reckon I’m only even questioning the way an avocado tastes because of this stupid logging-of-everything-I-eat life I’m currently leading. ‘It tastes of superfood smush.’

  ‘Do you think if you eat loads of a superfood you will be a superhuman?’ Dove folds into a backbend, the dogs sniff about her face.

  ‘It’s so annoying trying to hold a conversation with you when you’re always moving like some hyperactive acrobat.’

  ‘It’s called a crab. Look, watch this.’ She lifts a leg up, her toes pointing to the ceiling. I know what it’s called. ‘Eugh, the ceiling is well dirty.’

  �
��It’s called a superfood because it’s extra good for you; it’s a good fat. Like nuts. You know some people won’t eat an avocado because they say it’s fatty but they won’t think twice about eating a cereal bar, which is full of sugar and crap. Avocado is nature’s answer to cream and butter and mayonnaise; it’s perfect. Much better for energy than all that junk food you eat all day, Dove. In fact, start carrying an avocado around in your pocket and watch your happiness go up.’

  Dove looks at me, stunned. ‘No thanks. If I wanted to walk about with an alligator egg in my schoolbag I would.’

  I think about the amount of crinkled-up chocolate wrappers and crisp packets Mum clears out from Dove’s pockets before a wash.

  For something to do while the water boils, I unwrap a roll of cherry drops that’s been sitting on the table for an age. The white paper is all stiff and stuck to the little red sugary planet. I unpeel the paper and look to Dove; she opens her mouth like a lazy fish; I pop the sweet in.

  ‘Ta,’ she says and I hear the chink of the cherry drop clatter against the back of her teeth.

  Then I do one for myself. Once the initial hardened crackly sticky bit has dissolved, it’s as good as fresh.

  We poach eggs. The trick is to use a frying pan with water rather than a big pot; it’s the only way for perfect poached eggs every time. That way you don’t have to crack the egg into a glass first. You just drop it in with confidence. You let the little angel bob around for a while, skimming the scum off the surface with one of those spoons with the holes in it, before placing the egg on a piece of bread to soak up all the unwanted excess water – you don’t want that going on your toast. We have it on toast with chilli and I have avocado but Dove has marmite and we both crumble rubbles of feta cheese on top too because a) it’s delicious and posh and b) why not?

  ‘What you doing today then?’ I ask her.

  ‘Parkour. Want to come watch?’

  ‘No, for the millionth time. I do not want to watch you Tarzanning it around London like some circus-act burglar. I’ve got stuff to do.’

  ‘Like what, being rude?’