TWO
‘So how was it?’ asked Mum.
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Different from Hitchworth Girls’.’
I hoped Mum wouldn’t start going on. I wanted to think about the day, make sense of it. It had been weird. People had wanted to talk to me. At Hitchworth Girls’ it had seemed like everyone always wanted to chat to Kelly, and they just accepted me because I was with her.
Mum nearly went into the back of a jeep.
‘What are you doing, you silly cow?’ she shouted out of the window. ‘Bloody Jewish housewives. They can’t drive, yet their husbands still buy them those bloody big things.’
I sighed.
‘Don’t tell me, I’m racist. Well, it’s bloody true.’
I could have said Mum was racist. I also could have mentioned that it took her seven attempts to pass her driving test. And that she’d had three accidents in the last eighteen months. And that one of those times she got arrested for verbally abusing another driver. And that her Toyota Yaris was quarter of the size of those jeeps. But it wasn’t worth the hassle.
‘Did you make any friends?’ she asked, skidding round a corner.
‘I think so. They’re not like my friends in Hitchworth, though.’
‘Well they wouldn’t be, round here. I probably know their parents,’ Mum laughed. ‘What are their surnames?’
‘I don’t know. Apart from one boy. Kevin O’Reilly.’
‘Oh bloody hell.’ Mum’s eyes widened. ‘I wonder if he’s one of The O’Reillys’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Everyone used to know the O’Reillys. They were a massive family round here. No one messed with them. I even had a bit of a thing with one of them when I was a teenager. Mick O’Reilly. What a tosser he was.’
Mum hummed along to Britney Spears on the radio. I wondered what would happen if I went out with Kevin and Mick O’Reilly turned out to be his dad. Then I imagined it at school. Me with Kevin, up the top of the playground. Kevin would have his arm round me. Everyone would know who I was and say hello, and I would be chatting and laughing with them all.
We came to the sign that said: Welcome to Stanhill Town Centre. Underneath someone had written: twinned with Beirut.
We stopped at Tesco and Mum bought some Weightwatchers microwave meals for dinner.
When we got home, Mum got the biscuit jar out and watched some cooking programme while she waited for all her soaps to start: Neighbours first, then over to Channel Five for Home and Away and Family Affairs, then ITV for Emmerdale and Coronation Street, then back to BBC One for Eastenders. It was similar every night, except sometimes Coronation Street or Eastenders might not be on, but Holby City or The Bill was. Whatever, Mum would sit for the same three hours, only getting up to put something in the microwave, make a cuppa or get the biscuits.
I took a couple of shortbread biscuits and went on the computer to see if Kelly was online. She wasn’t. I Googled for a music website I’d heard someone mention at school. I downloaded one of the songs they’d played in Art today, even though that wasn’t the type of music I normally listened to. It took ages as we hadn’t got broadband installed in the new house yet. We were using dial-up and Mum kept moaning at me not to stay online too long.
Our new house was looking quite nice now we’d got all our stuff unpacked properly. We just needed to get some throws for the living room sofa, which had horrible peach flowers all over it. Mum said the house was ex-council. You wouldn’t think so, though. It had a cosy cottage sort of feel to it; lots of wood everywhere.
The only bad thing was that Mum had put a photo of me on the mantelpiece from when I was younger. I had goofy teeth and was so skinny my knees were twice as wide as the rest of my legs. People at junior school called me Bugs Bunny. They also bullied me because my parents had split up, and because Mum and John didn’t speak as posh as the other parents in Hitchworth. And any other reason they could think of. Mum didn’t find out about it all until near the end of year six when I came home covered in blood after Lisa Jackson banged my head against the school wall.
I asked Mum to take the photo down. She said no. Then I told her it brought back bad memories, so she agreed to move it to her bedroom.
There was an African family living next door. I’d heard one of them singing O Come All Ye Faithful really loudly the other morning. On the other side was an old lady with a walking stick who took about fifteen minutes to get to the pavement from her front door. She always stared at me and smiled.
‘Nat,’ said Mum as the Home and Away music started. ‘Do you fancy going up the road to get us burger and chips? I’m sick of Weightwatchers meals.’
‘Mum, it’s cold.’
I was sick of Weightwatchers too. And I was thinking of going to the shops, anyway. But I knew to moan in this kind of situation. This was about my Mum and food. Moaning could bring rewards.
‘Oh go on, Nat. I’ll give you a fiver.’
‘Okaaaay,’ I sighed. I could have probably got a tenner if I’d carried on, but I’d have felt guilty doing that. Mum didn’t have much money without John.
She got her purse out. It looked empty because she’d cut loads of her cards up the other day. Mum had been the queen of store cards.
‘You’re looking a bit skinny, Nat,’ she said.
‘Good job we’re getting burgers.’
Two weeks ago she asked if I’d put on weight. I couldn’t win with her. I’d once read something in a magazine problem page about a mum who was always going on about her daughter’s weight. The agony aunt said the mum was ‘projecting her anxieties about her own appearance’ onto the daughter. My mum definitely did that sometimes, but today it was just an excuse for breaking her diet.
Mum didn’t diet in October usually. She would eat what she wanted all winter, until Christmas was over. Then in January she’d start some new health kick. I reckoned she was only on a diet because she wanted to find a man. She was wearing more make up too. And she’d bought this anti-cellulite massager thing.
I went upstairs to get my trainers on. I went into Mum’s room to check what I looked like in the full-length mirror. I remembered Fatma saying I was quite pretty, and that she thought Kevin fancied me. I pouted at the mirror, sucking my cheeks and my stomach in. Behind me, I could see that old goofy teeth photo on mum’s windowsill. I went over and picked it up. Skinny ugly bitch. I wished I could throw it against the wall and smash it. I was never going to go back to that, ever.
And then I had an idea. I knew what I was going to spend my fiver on.

There were two blokes on the bench outside the library. They had cans of Special Brew. One said, ‘Alright, love,’ as I passed. I ignored them.
While the kebab shop men cooked our burgers, I walked up the road to a little off-licence. Costcutter was next door to the kebab shop, but I didn’t want to go in there because it was always packed. I looked at the graffiti on shop shutters and wondered if any of it was Kevin’s.
Ignoring the banging in my chest, I walked up to the off-licence counter and stood very straight.
‘Ten Bensons please.’
The Asian man behind the till got them down from the shelf. He hardly looked at me. Thank God. By the counter there were bags of what looked a bit like crisps, but they were called plantain chips. On the bags it said: ‘I ain’t no banana but we is tight’. I laughed out loud and put a bag on the counter.
‘Oh, and some matches please.’
I gave him the fiver and put the fags and matches in my jean pocket. My bomber jacket covered the bulge they made.
When I got in Mum had put plates (new ones — a bargain from Stanhill Saturday market), cutlery, salt, vinegar and Weightwatchers ketchup out on the coffee table. We didn’t have a dining table in this house. There wasn’t enough room.
‘Mmmm, that smells lovely,’ she said.
I went straight upstairs and put the fags under my pillow.
We ate with our plates on our laps. I put a cushion under my plate, but Mum moaned at me because the cushion was new, so I put her Company magazine underneath instead. We watched Emmerdale and Mum kept nicking my chips — even though she had her own.
John had been alright, but I preferred it without him. Even if we did have less money.
The night went slowly. I sat with Mum and watched all her crap telly. At half-nine she went to watch more crap telly in bed. I took the cigarettes into the bathroom, which was downstairs. I didn’t want to go outside because Mum would hear the front door go.
I locked myself in and opened the window. There was a rattly old extractor fan which came on automatically with the light. The bathroom tiles were covered in pictures of blue fish. I lit the cigarette with the match, trying to inhale at the same time — the way I’d seen people do it — and then blew the smoke straight out again. I tried out different smoking poses and settled for my left arm folded with my right elbow resting on it. My right forearm was raised, my hand tilted outwards with the cigarette. I moved it toward my lips, looking at myself in the mirror. It kind of tasted how it smelled — disgusting. I opened my lungs and took it down. The dryness of the smoke shocked me; it almost stung. I coughed it out, clapping my hands over my mouth. The smoke came out in streams between my fingers. Idiot, I mouthed at my reflection. I did it again. This time I tried to pout and look cool as I blew the smoke out, but I looked more like I was straining for a poo. I felt a bit light-headed. I took it down three more times. The light-headedness got worse, so I stubbed the fag out in the plughole and then poked the butt so it went right down. I ran cold water over it and brushed my teeth.
I didn’t want to start smoking properly. Granddad Healy — my mum’s dad — died of lung cancer. I was only four at the time, but I remembered seeing him for the last time in hospital. He was in one of those gowns with a plastic thing round his wrist. His head was all bald and his was face all bloated and he didn’t look like Granddad Healy any more. I wasn’t allowed to go to his funeral, but I got loads of his tapes and CDs. He was obsessed with music. He used to spend hours in record shops in Soho, and bought Q Magazine every month. I loved some of his stuff, especially a band called Nirvana, but I used to keep his old CDs out of sight in a drawer. Kelly saw one of my Nirvana albums once and called it ‘headbanger crap’. I thought some of their songs were beautiful. Kelly wouldn’t have understood.
Mum said Granddad Healy smoked forty a day for thirty years. Even he used to tell me never to smoke when I was older. I wasn’t going to. I just wanted to try it for when I was hanging round behind those trees every break time. Then when people at school asked me if I had smoked, I wouldn’t feel like such a dickhead.