Red Ink Read online

The words come out my mouth without me thinking them first. “A mum.”

  It takes all I’ve got not to cry. Not sad tears, angry ones. But I don’t want Paul to see even those.

  “Yes, a mum.” He is nodding, all knowing.

  “I said I don’t want to do this any more.”

  “Okay.” Paul places a palm on his forehead. He’s run out of speeches. “Is there anything you want to keep?” He gestures round the room.

  “No.” I tap the yellow album in my hand. “Just this.”

  The slurring woman is demanding that we call her again, that we trust her.

  I go to my room.

  6 YEARS BEFORE

  I’m nine and a half years old and I’m sitting on a bus.

  “Where are we going?” I ask Mum.

  There is plenty of room on the bottom deck, but Mum insists we sit upstairs.

  “Auntie Eleni’s washateria.”

  “Who’s Auntie Eleni?”

  “Your auntie. My auntie. You know this.”

  I do know this. I’m just trying to get Mum to stop being silent.

  “What’s a washateria?”

  “A shop that is full of washing machines.”

  “Are we going to buy a washing machine?”

  “No.”

  The lady in front turns around to smile at me. Maybe she remembers what it’s like to have your mum get snappy with you.

  Mum hasn’t been herself lately, not since she came back from Crete. She talks about Granbabas all the time, even though it’s two months now since he died. She says he had a good life and he’s lucky his heart held out this long and it is the fate of everyone in the Fourakis family to die young, so we shouldn’t be sad. Still the same stuff over and over. Mum moans about how English people go on about the weather all the time instead of saying something interesting. She’s just as bad.

  I still don’t know what Mum is really sad about, if it’s not Granbabas. I’m pretty sure she’s sad about something.

  “We are here.” Mum elbows me in the ribs. I’ve wiped a hole in the misted-up window so I can try and work out where ‘here’ is. Mum presses the buzzer that tells the driver to stop and starts walking while the bus is still moving, which means I have to follow. I bump into people’s shoulders and nearly fall down the stairs. Mum doesn’t do any bumping, she stays steady, grabbing one pole then the next, like a monkey swinging through the trees. Mum likes buses. When she’s on one, she ignores it, if you know what I mean, pretends it’s no bother. I find buses scary. You have to watch what’s going on all the time – the other passengers, the traffic outside, getting off at the right stop. I like tubes best.

  When we get onto the pavement, the doors shut behind us and the bus does that loud psss-shuh noise that always makes me jump even though I know it’s coming. The bus chugs away. Mum starts scrabbling around in her bag for a cigarette. She hasn’t even turned around to check if I got off okay. I could be still on the bus and halfway to another bit of London by now. That’s another thing I don’t like about buses, you could end up anywhere.

  “Where are we, Mum?”

  Her hands are really shivery when she lights the cigarette even though it’s not that cold. The sun’s out.

  “Kentish Town.”

  “From The Story?”

  “No. Yes, yes.”

  She takes my hand and yanks me along the pavement. She still hasn’t looked to check I’m there. She could be pulling along a complete stranger and she would have no clue.

  Mum is sucking hard on her cigarettes today. Her cheeks go in all the way. Her lips scrunch right up so that they look like Kojak’s bum. We walk fast past newsagents and cafés and charity shops. No one else is rushing like us. We stand out. Twice we almost crash into people standing on the street. We stop outside a big glass window with a door in the middle – a shop full of washing machines. The Papadakis Washateria. From The Story.

  Through the window I can see a fat woman folding sheets at the back of the shop. I’m ready to go inside and say hello nicely, like you should when you meet a new person. Mum is stood like a statue on the pavement. She’s staring at the fat woman the same way we stare at the headmaster, Mr Carling, if he ever comes into our classroom. We’re terrified that one of us is in trouble, but we’re also secretly hoping for good news.

  Mum turns to me and actually looks at me for the first time all day. She takes one big, last suck on her cigarette, drops it and screws it into the floor with her toe. She is wearing proper lady shoes, with heels. She’s got on the smart dress she wears when she goes to court with one of the teenagers from her work. Today is Saturday. No work today. No court.

  Mum licks her fingers and starts pressing down my hair even though it wasn’t wonky in the first place. She really pushes down, trying to straighten the curls. When she’s done, she stops to admire her work, but looks disappointed. She sighs. She takes a big breath, she turns and opens the door to the washateria.

  The inside of the shop smells like a warm blanket. Orange plastic chairs are laid out back-to-back in a row in the middle – like at the start of a game of musical chairs. A man is sitting on one of the chairs, staring at a washing machine as if it’s a television. The fat lady at the back of the shop looks up, and when she sees Mum her face changes. She looked bored to begin with, but now she looks shocked. Then she looks at me and her face changes again. From shocked to all sorry. Then she looks back at Mum and her face goes hard. The whole time Mum and me say nothing. Not even a nice hello, which is rude really when you think about it. We just watch Auntie Eleni’s face change over and over – click, click, click.

  Then there is this rumbling sound that isn’t the noise coming from a washing machine, and isn’t the sound of a bus driving past outside. It’s Auntie Eleni. She’s sort of chanting, under her breath, “Óhi, óhi, óhi, óhi.” It grows and grows like a growl of thunder until she is shouting. “Óhi, óhi, óhi, óhi, óhi, óhi, ÓHI!”

  “Thia Eleni,” goes Mum in her proper Greek voice. She is holding her arms out. Eleni is an angry dog and Mum just wants her to sit.

  Auntie Eleni barks something in Greek to Mum and points to the door.

  Mum presses down her stretched out hands, pushing down the bad stuff that’s growing tall in the air.

  “Oríste?!” goes Auntie Eleni, still loud, still angry. “Oríste?! Oríste?!”

  Is she shouting for Mum to be arrested? The man on the plastic chair turns around for a moment like he might do what Auntie Eleni is asking, then he goes back to watching his washing machine.

  Auntie Eleni has her hands on her hips. She is waiting for an answer to the ‘arrest her’ question. Her chest is heaving up and down. This is that moment in a film when the goodie and the baddie finally meet up and you’re not sure who is going to pull out their gun first and kill the other person, although all along you know the goodie will win.

  I’m not sure who the goodie is in this situation.

  Mum mumbles something back to Auntie Eleni and it’s obviously the right thing because suddenly Auntie Eleni goes soft, like a balloon losing some of its air.

  “Manolis?” asks Auntie Eleni. She looks upset. Manolis was Granbabas’s name.

  “Né,” says Mum, squeaky and quiet.

  “Pós?”

  Mum speaks a little louder now but looks at her feet. Auntie Eleni is still too fierce to hold eyes with. She might bite. Mum carries on explaining. She is probably telling Auntie Eleni that Granbabas had a good life and was lucky his heart held out this long and it is the fate of everyone in the Fourakis family to die young, so we shouldn’t be sad. It sounds almost the same in Greek.

  Mum finishes her speech and Auntie Eleni nods. Mum nods. I wonder if I should nod too. We all stand still for a while with the washing machines going whirr-uh, whirr-uh, whirr-uh. Auntie Eleni looks down at her basket of sheets and then back at us, which even I know means she wants us to go now. Mum stays put. Auntie Eleni starts folding sheets. Mum still stands there. Auntie Eleni picks up t
he basket of sheets and disappears into the back of the shop. Mum gets the message at last.

  “Adío,” Mum says all sad and not really loud enough for Auntie Eleni to hear. She takes hold of my hand and pulls me towards the door. Her fingers are icy.

  I open the door for Mum and cold air hits us.

  “Pos se léne?” Auntie Eleni calls after us. We both turn round. Mum’s face looks hopeful.

  “Pos se léne?” Auntie Eleni says again. She is saying it to me. Mum digs a knuckle in my shoulder which means I should speak.

  My mouth drops open but no words come out. I look to Mum for help, but she is just smiling like a big, stupid sunbeam at Auntie Eleni. I feel like I’ve been asked a question in school when I have no idea what the answer is. Except this is worse, because I don’t even know what the question is.

  Auntie Eleni rolls her eyes at Mum, as if it’s entirely her fault that I don’t know what the question is. Auntie Eleni huffs and starts using English.

  “What’s your name?” Auntie Eleni speaks with less of an accent than Mum, which is a bit of a surprise after hearing her gabbling in Greek.

  “Melon,” I say. Then I remember the thing about being polite. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Melon?” says Auntie Eleni. She is using that surprised voice that everyone puts on when they hear my name for the first time. Her eyes flicker up to Mum.

  Mum does an apologising shrug and then smiles. Auntie Eleni is still scowly.

  “Yes,” I say. “Melon.”

  “Pleased to meet you too, Melon.” I get a smile, but it’s quickly snatched away.

  Auntie Eleni speaks to Mum in Greek again. Just two words, which sound prickly and painful. She walks away into the back room again. Mum’s smile has gone. Bam! Just like that. She looks like she’s been punched.

  When we get outside, Mum says that we are going to have a coffee in the café opposite the washateria. She makes us sit outside, even though she says English people are ridiculous for sitting outside cafés in the middle of February.

  Mum doesn’t say anything about what just happened. I want to ask for a translation but I decide now is the wrong time. Mum is squeezing all the life out of the cigarette in her mouth. Instead, I talk about Chick’s ice concert, which Mrs Lacey took me to see during the week. It was Cinderella, and Chick played one of the mice. When Chick first told me she was playing a mouse, I said I couldn’t remember there being any mice in the Cinderella story, but she said, “Of course there are, silly, there are loads of them. Haven’t you ever seen the film?”

  I can tell that Mum isn’t listening because she says ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘really’ in all the wrong places. She smokes lots and stares at Auntie Eleni through the window of the washateria. I think she is hoping that Auntie Eleni will remember something she forgot to say and come over the road to tell us. I get the feeling Mum would really like a hug but I don’t offer her one. I think Mum wants the hug from Auntie Eleni, not me.

  Mum makes her coffee last ages. I don’t like coffee so I drink lemonade in a cold can with a straw. This makes me feel really freezing and my teeth start chattering. Now I know why Mum’s hands were shivering earlier on. I want to go home.

  Eventually Mum goes, “Come on, we get the bus.”

  “Can we go back on the tube?”

  “No. Bus. It is better.”

  We sit on the bottom deck on the way home, which is something Mum never wants to do, but I’m happy to go along with it because it means I won’t trip on the stairs. Mum is silent. She stares out of the window in a trance. Usually I have to sit by the window so Mum can make conversation with the grannies and other mums sitting nearby. It feels weird being on the aisle.

  I don’t understand why we haven’t been to see Auntie Eleni before today. After all, she was really nice to Mum when she first got to London and when I was a baby. Maybe Auntie Eleni is annoyed because Mum hasn’t stayed in touch.

  What was especially strange was the way Auntie Eleni asked me my name. She must know it already. A name like mine isn’t hard to remember. Maybe she was just being polite and doing proper introductions. Maybe I should have asked for her name in return.

  When the bus gets as far as Archway, I feel like I’ve left an okay gap and can ask some questions.

  “She seemed nice,” I go, to start things off. I don’t know why I say this because nothing that Auntie Eleni did today was really that nice when you think about it.

  “Huh?” goes Mum.

  “Auntie Eleni seems nice.”

  “Oh.”

  “Will we go and see her again?”

  “No,” says Mum and she folds her coat around herself and crosses her arms. It reminds me of Auntie Eleni folding the sheets.

  This is the end of the conversation.

  35 DAYS SINCE

  A few months ago, at my house after school, before the thing with my mum, me and Chick did this friendship quiz. It was in one of her magazines.

  FAKE FRIEND OR FRIEND FOREVER?

  You had to answer twenty multiple choice questions and then add up your scores. It wasn’t rocket science. If you scored mostly ‘A’s you had a ‘Friend Forever’ and could sit back feeling smug. Mostly ‘C’s and you had a ‘Fake Friend’ and the magazine advised you to ‘dump her’. Just like that.

  I thought I could just tell Chick that we were ‘Friends Forever’, save us the trouble of having to answer all the questions. But of course, in the real world, no one comes out and says sappy things like that. Also Chick wouldn’t have trusted my word as much as the results of a magazine quiz. So we got out notebooks to write down our scores and worked our way through questions like:

  YOUR BOYFRIEND DUMPS YOU. WHAT DOES YOUR BEST FRIEND DO? SHE CANCELS ALL HER PLANS SO YOU CAN COME OVER AND BLUB. WHAT’S TEN BOXES OF TISSUES BETWEEN FRIENDS?

  SHE GIVES YOU A PULL-YOURSELF-TOGETHER LECTURE ON THE PHONE. COME ON, THERE ARE PLENTY MORE FROGS TO KISS!

  SHE ASKS YOUR EX OUT ON A DATE. WHAT’S THE FUSS? HE’S A FREE GUY NOW, ISN’T HE?

  You know, real in-depth psychology.

  I hardly gave the questions a second look. I wrote down A, A, A . . . Chick really took her time, masking her notebook with her arm, as if I was going to copy her or something. That really bugged me, that she took it so seriously. Chick will choose the person she marries because of how well he does in a multiple-choice quiz.

  HOT HUSBAND OR HIDEOUS HUSBAND?

  Some rubbish like that.

  Eventually, Chick went, “Finished!” and turned her notebook over on the carpet so I couldn’t see what she’d written. Then she asked, “What was your score for me?”

  I thought about saying ‘all ‘C’s’ just to wind her up, but I couldn’t be arsed.

  “All ‘A’s,” I went. “You are a ‘Friend Forever’.”

  Chick nodded, smiled, as if she’d known that all along. Spit was shining on her braces. She was waiting for me to ask for my score. I couldn’t have cared less.

  “Go on then,” I went. “What did I get?”

  “Ummm.” Chick peeled the notebook away from the floor so I still didn’t get to see what she’d written. She held it close to her face, counting scores under her breath. Not only had she not given me all ‘A’s, it wasn’t even clear cut whether it was mostly ‘A’s.

  “Mostly ‘B’s.”

  Her head went onto one side, giving me a sorry that she didn’t really mean. I was to blame. I wasn’t a good-enough friend. It wasn’t her fault for being harsh.

  “Oh, right.”

  I knew there had to be some ‘C’s in there. But I didn’t ask her. That was what she wanted.

  “Want to watch some telly?” I went.

  When it was time for Chick to go home, I offered to go upstairs and get her bag from my room. I found her notebook. Just one ‘A’. That was for the question:

  8. IS YOUR MATE ALWAYS GOING OFF AND MAKING NEW FRIENDS?

  She’d chosen:

  A - NO, SHE’S STUCK TO YOU LIKE GLUE. YOUR
FRIENDSHIP IS THE BEST!

  So really that answer was about Chick being amazing, not me.

  I think of that quiz when I walk through the school gates. My first day back since Mum. Chick is standing by the wall of the sports centre all cosy with Lucy Bloss. Lucy is sitting on the wall so Chick has to look up to her when she talks. Chick is sucking up. She is actually sucking upwards.

  I’d also given Chick an ‘A’ for the question about making other friends. How wrong was I? There are plenty of answers to that quiz that I would like to change now. Since Mum died, I look back at the old me and wonder who I was and how I came to think the things I did. That’s what you really need to find out if you have a ‘Fake Friend’ or a ‘Friend Forever’ – you need to have your mum die.

  I wave at Chick. I’m not letting her off easy. Why should I walk past acting as if we don’t know each other? Chick watches me come towards her. She’s not bouncing from foot to foot like usual. She’s rooted to the spot. Guilty. She really is a rabbit waiting for an HGV now. She’s frozen in the middle of the road and the tyres are going to crush her.

  Lucy spots me too and stops blabbering drivel down in Chick’s general direction. She tries to hold back a smile. Lucy’s not really on Chick’s side. She’s on the side of drama and stirring things up.

  “All right, Chick,” I go, all bright and breezy.

  Chick nods, half smiles, a quick flash of metal, then she looks down, studies her chipped fingernail polish.

  “All right, Lucy.” Normally, I would never, ever, in the real world, ever, say hello to Lucy Bloss.

  She doesn’t say hello back. She is staring at my head, not at my eyes, higher up than that. She’s scrunching up her nose. My hand goes to where she’s looking, I can’t help it. I stroke the top of my head, expecting to find bird poo there. Nothing.

  “What?”

  “All your hair’s gone.” Lucy draws out every word. She’s proper gobsmacked.

  “I know.”

  “What happened?”

  What does she think happened? Someone burgled us in the night and stole my ponytail? “I got it cut.”