Red Ink Page 5

  When we’ve had the balaclava there is coffee, which I don’t have because it’s too much like mud, and then some tsikoudia, which is not for children. Granbabas makes tsikoudia in the bath and then puts it in lemonade bottles. I’m not sure how he turns the bath water into tsikoudia but it smells like petrol so I don’t have any. Mum has three of the little glasses straight after each other and it makes her eyes watery. I ask her if it’s crying and she says, “No, it’s just tsikoudia.” So, if you think about it, there’s no actual point to drinking it.

  Tsikoudia makes Auntie Aphrodite giggly and she gets Granbabas and my other auntie, Auntie Despina, and the other Greek ladies whose names I don’t know, to do Greek dancing. You have to stand in a circle and hold hands, but just fingers, and then move one way and then back the other. It doesn’t look that hard, not as difficult as country dancing, but one year Mum tried to join in and Auntie Aphrodite told her to sit down because she wasn’t doing it properly. If it had been me who wasn’t allowed to join in with my friends, Mum would have used her hands-on-hips voice and told the others not to be so mean. She doesn’t do it for herself though.

  This time, when Auntie Aphrodite started Greek dancing we just watched, even though Mum practised lots this year in the kitchen in our house with Greek tapes she got from the market. When the ladies dance in a circle, it looks like they’re trying to screw themselves down into the ground. Auntie Aphrodite’s boobies wobble lots. You must not smile when you do Greek dancing because it’s a serious thing. I’m not sure why. It just is.

  We only see Auntie Aphrodite and Granbabas for one night because they’re too busy to see us again. Even though Mum is Granbabas’s only daughter and I’m his only granddaughter and we have come all this way just for a week, just for them. Granbabas’s farm takes up all his time. I never knew melons could be so much trouble. Auntie Aphrodite has four children and eleven grandchildren that take up all her time and they live in Crete so that means they’re more important. The rest of the week, me and Mum will do beach things together. Really, that’s more fun than pretending to be happy.

  Mum will try to do a big hug thing when we say goodbye and Granbabas will try to get out of it. Maybe he knows we’ll be back next year, so he’s not that upset about us going. Mum kisses Granbabas’s brown and wrinkly cheek and tries not to cry, but he’ll not kiss her back. Granbabas doesn’t ever look like he’ll cry, because that’s more of a girl thing. Auntie Aphrodite will just do a shooing thing with her hand and look embarrassed. I always wave properly.

  On the beach I write a postcard to Chick with my new aeroplane pen, because I promised I would send her something and I am missing her like mad. The pen has four sliding buttons down the sides. One for blue ink, one for black, one for green and one for red. I choose red and start writing.

  “No!” Mum screams. She snatches the postcard off me in a way that really, really scares me. “This is what you are wishing for? You are wishing that Kathleen is dead?” She is ever so cross.

  The frightening moment steals my voice. My eyes are trying to cry but I make them stop because it’s silly to cry about a postcard. Mum is pointing a corner of the card at me. It has pictures of pretty Greek pots on it. They are called urns.

  I manage to shake my head. No, I don’t want Chick to die. She is my best friend in the whole universe.

  “Then you do not use the red ink,” Mum says. She strokes my hair flat which means, it’s okay now, she’s not angry any more. She gives me back the postcard, which has a little crease on it now.

  “You write to someone in the red ink, you wish them dead,” Mum says.

  So I click the red sliding button back up, even out the postcard’s crease with my thumb, and choose the blue ink instead.

  4 DAYS SINCE

  When Chick’s dad comes upstairs, I get the urge to recite the planets to him.

  MERCURY, VENUS, EARTH, MARS, JUPITER, SATURN,

  URANUS, NEPTUNE

  I’ve been up in Chick’s bedroom on my own for the last hour; I need to speak something out loud. I’ve learnt the planet order and don’t need to look at my book any more. I wonder if Mr Lacey would be interested. I’ve got no idea what he’s into. I don’t think he actually has any interests. There are some bowling balls on the shelf in his study downstairs but I’ve never heard Chick mention her dad actually using them. Who owns bowling balls but never goes bowling? Weirdos, that’s who. Mr Lacey revolves around Chick and Mrs Lacey and forgets about being a real person himself. Trying to talk to him about the universe would be pointless.

  There is no one I can talk to about the universe.

  Mr Lacey is peeping around Chick’s bedroom door. His hair is thin on top with blond candy floss around his ears. At this angle, with his head all separated from his body, he looks like a clown.

  “Melon, could you come downstairs for a moment?” This is Mr Lacey’s serious voice. I imagine him with a big, red nose and a flower that squirts water.

  “Why?”

  “There’s someone here who needs to speak to you.”

  “The police?”

  That was who it was the last time Mr Lacey did this, poked his head around the door and told me to go downstairs. The police were waiting to tell me about Mum.

  “Oh, no, no, Melon, sorry, no, someone else, if you could just . . .” Mr Lacey wants to be hard-faced. He’s not even close.

  “Right.” I carry on drawing circle planets with oval, dotted paths that lead nowhere, just back to where they started.

  “Now, if you don’t mind.”

  I’m expecting the men in white coats. Mrs Lacey will have sent for them.

  As I come down the stairs, I can hear Mrs Lacey’s serious news programme on the radio in the kitchen. Long words leak into the hall. Through the banisters I can see Chick sitting at the kitchen table doing her homework while her mum cooks. She must have heard me on the stairs but her head stays down. She’s pretending to be engrossed in her French text book. Look up, I think, look up and see me. No. She’s deaf, blind and dumb. The air is prickly with garlic.

  Before all this, Chick would have done anything to avoid her mum and the serious radio stuff. Now, she can’t be in the same room as me. Even with the TV on, the silence between us is like a big, screaming black hole. It doesn’t feel as though something really awful has happened to me, it feels like I’ve done something terrible to Chick. I’ve made everything scary and miserable. I am a bad friend.

  At the living room door, Mr Lacey does this ridiculous, twirly hand gesture to usher me in. He’s not saying who’s in there. I’m ready for the worst. Bring it on. Let it chew me up and turn me to dust.

  It’s Poppy. Mum’s best friend from work.

  She’s here to tell me that this whole week has been one big joke. Poppy will take me to where Mum is hiding and she’ll jump out and say ‘boo!’ We’ll have such a laugh, the three of us, about the fact Mum’s not really dead, about how the Laceys are such idiots. We’ll laugh until we can’t breathe.

  When Poppy looks up, I know straightaway that this isn’t going to happen. She is wearing the mask – the sorry mask, the death mask.

  Poppy clocks my haircut and her face crumples. “It looks nice, Melon, your hair,” she lies.

  That’s the first thing she says. Not ‘hello’.

  “You reckon?”

  “Yeah, babe.”

  Poppy is sitting in the armchair by the TV, peeling off a cagoule. She’s wearing a skirt made from curtains that goes all the way down to the floor. I know Poppy smokes weed because I heard her talking to Mum about it once.

  Mum went to her, “I could never. No. Would be very bad for me. And I worry for M-E-L-O-N.” As if I couldn’t spell my own stupid name.

  I run my hand up the back of my hair, ruffle it up. I still can’t get used to the way it feels, short tight curls that coil round your fingers.

  “So what’s the big deal then?” I go. “About my hair, if it looks okay?”

  Mr Lacey does an ‘excus
e me’ cough.

  “I don’t think it’s just about the hair, babe,” goes Poppy. She seems to know the whole story. How can that be? How come they’re talking to Poppy but not to me?

  “No, no, that’s not the point,” Mr Lacey blusters, getting ready to make a speech. He’s shoving at his rolled-up sleeves – one of those baggy, pastel shirts Mrs Lacey buys for him because she thinks they make him look cool.

  “Do you want to leave us alone for few minutes, Victor? Would you mind?”

  Poppy is excellent at telling people to piss off in a nice way.

  Mr Lacey waits for a moment, trying to prove that he’s still in charge and not being told what to do. Finally he shifts. Yeah, piss off, Mr Shitty Shirt.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen with the girls,” he says.

  What he means is, he’ll be in the kitchen stressing about leaving us alone with the contents of his living room.

  Poppy does a flat smile.

  “With the ‘girls’, eh?” she says quietly once Mr Lacey’s gone.

  “Dickhead,” I say in agreement.

  “You liking it here, yeah?”

  “They hug a lot.”

  “That’s nice, I suppose.”

  “Each other, not me.”

  “Oh.” Poppy grins, a mean grin that I like. “Probably for the best, eh, babe?”

  Poppy doesn’t like her real name. Barbara is a granny name for ladies who pull tartan shopping trolleys and have too many cats. Poppy is older than Mum and is too past-it to have kids. Plus, she’s single. That’s why she pretends she’s still twenty-one, so she doesn’t have to face up to it all. The name Poppy doesn’t suit her either. It’s a little girl’s name, for someone with pigtails and a pinafore dress.

  I used to think Poppy was just some drip who came to sit in our kitchen and gossip, but here she is – she’s actually bothered to come and visit and see how I am. The house feels different now that Poppy is in it. The stuffy, cream sofa, that lampstand with the hat – they all look embarrassed. Everything about Poppy is wonky and carefree and everything about this house is up its own arse.

  “Right,” says Poppy. She’s grinning like there’s trouble ahead. Fun trouble.

  She goes to her bag, a massive leather job like a doctor might carry, and pulls out a folder.

  “Right,” she says again, this time with less fun.

  She’s fumbling through the folder, pulling a biro out of the scarf that’s holding up her bird’s nest hair. She bites off the pen lid.

  Then I realise.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Melon, me coming to do this initial assessment?”

  Poppy is here because she’s a social worker. Mr and Mrs Lacey have fetched her in.

  “I thought it would be good because we already know one another. It’s one hurdle out of the way, isn’t it?”

  She is using her work voice now.

  “I really should have sent someone else in my place, I know, someone more independent, someone from my team who doesn’t know you, but I just felt I had to do this for your mother. I hope you understand and that you’re happy with that. And anyway, this is just a short visit.”

  My mother? Why doesn’t she just say ‘mum’ or ‘Maria’?

  “Sorry, you don’t need to know this. What I mean is, we’ll assign someone independent to do all your follow-ups so there’s some clear, blue water between us and whoever you end up living with. But you can always call on me if, well, if that feels more comfortable for you. How does that sound?”

  She makes no sense at all. I nod.

  “So we’ll carry on, shall we?”

  I can barely manage a shrug.

  “So how are you holding up?”

  “All right.”

  “Good, good. What I’m here to do today is find out if you’ve got any ideas of what you would like to do now, where you would like to live. I want to find out what would make you happy.”

  She is using the script in her head, the one she uses on all the other motherless kids.

  “Mr and Mrs Lacey have been very generous and let you stay here for the last few days but I’m afraid that can’t go on much longer.”

  “Cos of the haircut?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Because of a number of reasons.”

  It’s a teacher’s voice, a telephone voice.

  “Now you have an aunt in Crete, isn’t that right? Antigone, isn’t it?”

  “Aphrodite.”

  “Aphrodite.” She writes it down. “Do you have a number for her?”

  I nod.

  “You let me have that and I’ll try to get in contact with her for you, to let her know what has happened. Okay?”

  I imagine Auntie Aphrodite getting the phone call from Poppy. She’ll pretend she doesn’t speak English. She’ll huff and puff Poppy away.

  “Your mother also mentioned an aunt in Kentish Town.”

  “Eleni?”

  “Yes.”

  Mum and Eleni don’t speak. “She’s . . . dead.”

  “Oh, Melon. I’m sorry about that.”

  “S’okay. Happened ages ago.”

  “Is there anyone else?”

  Christos Drakakis, I think to myself. My dad is Christos Drakakis, and my name is Melon Drakaki. How do you do?

  “No, there’s no one, really.”

  “Okay. Now, are you aware of the provision that your mother made for you in her will?”

  Your mother. Is that what it says in her script? Poppy is talking like a robot.

  I have no idea what’s in Mum’s will. I didn’t even realise she had one. But I can’t let Poppy know more about all this than me. That would make me look bad. That would make it seem like I didn’t even know my own mother. Maybe Mum wants me bags-packed and on the next plane to Crete. Who knows.

  “So what do you think about that?” Poppy goes. “About going back to your mum’s house and having Paul care for you?”

  I knew it.

  I look at the TV squatting in the corner even though it has nothing to say for itself.

  No, really, I knew it. I knew about the will, about Paul. I was watching television when Mum told me she’d put that in her will. I remember now. I wasn’t really paying attention when she told me. I didn’t think it was important. I didn’t think she would actually go and die one day. The whole idea was as far away as the other planets.

  “What are you thinking, Melon?”

  “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,” I say. “Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.”

  Poppy narrows her eyes at me, confused. “Lovely, what’s that, then?”

  “The solar system, the planets.”

  “Oh, right, yeah. Didn’t you forget Pluto?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, you did, babe. Pluto’s a planet.”

  “It’s a dwarf planet.”

  “When I was at school it was a proper planet.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not now. Listen to me. It goes like this: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.”

  “All right, babe.” Poppy bites her lip. “Things probably changed since I was at school, eh?”

  She smiles. I look away.

  “You like space and stuff, do you?” she asks.

  “GCSE science.”

  “Now, your GCSEs.” We’re back on safe ground for Poppy. “No one expects you to sit them, you know. What with everything that’s happened. You could take another year if you like. I’ve spoken to your teachers.”

  As if I would want to be the kid at school who has to resit a whole extra year. As if I don’t get picked on enough already. Besides, I’ve never revised so much in my life. There’s been nothing else to do here while Chick and Mr and Mrs Lacey have their hug-ins in the kitchen, acting like some huge tragedy has happened to them and not someone else.

  “No, I’m ready for the exams.”

  “Well, that’s well impressive, babe, considering.”

  Considering what? No one will say it out loud. It’s like saying ‘Macbeth�
� in the theatre; it brings bad luck. Your mum died – jinx! – yours will die too now. Say it, say it out loud. The worst has already happened.

  “Do you know about the big bang, then?” I say.

  “Well, I . . .”

  “Do you know about it or not?”

  “Kind of, but I wouldn’t . . .”

  “Well, they think that’s how the universe started, some big explosion, because they know all the other galaxies are racing away from us really fast.”

  “That right?”

  “What else would make them run away from us like that? It would have to be something big, wouldn’t it?”

  Poppy searches the room, looking for something to say.

  “Wouldn’t it?”

  “I expect so.”

  All this stuff is inside me, going round and round, going unsaid.

  “I can see you’ve really been doing your homework,” Poppy goes.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, Paul . . . Your mum wanted Paul to look after you. Does that sound like a good idea?”

  It sounds like an easy idea. The Laceys don’t want me, Paul does.

  Paul.

  Mum and Poppy talked about him loads when they were gossiping in our kitchen, especially back when he and Mum had just started going out. She carried on like some lovestruck, soppy cow.

  One time, I came down the stairs and I heard Mum go, “And you know what it is they say about the black men’s cocks, don’t you?”

  She said it all matter-of-fact, as if she was telling Poppy that frozen peas are on two-for-one.

  “This, it is all true, I am telling you this.”

  Poppy had squawked, really loud, acting like a virgin.

  Then I walked in. “I heard that,” I went.

  I took my time getting a biscuit and pouring myself a glass of juice, and the whole time Poppy tried really hard to be a grown-up and not to laugh.

  Mum went, “Sorry, Poppy, my daughter is thinking I am big, bad, deviant racist.”

  This was apparently hilarious because Poppy then gave up the adult act and laughed so hard I thought she would wet her pants.

  The real joke is that, from the little bit I’ve seen of him, Paul is the dullest, straightest person to ever walk the earth. He’s no sex god. He is one million light years away from being that.