The Illustrated Mum Read online

  ‘She will.’

  ‘But what if something bad has happened to her?’

  ‘She’s the one who does bad things,’ said Star. She reached out and caught hold of me by the wrist. ‘Come on. She’ll be all right. She’s probably met some guy and she’s with him.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t stay out all night long,’ I said, scrabbling into her bed beside her.

  ‘Well, she has, hasn’t she? Hey, you’re freezing.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Never mind. Here.’ Star pressed her warm tummy against my back and made a lap for me with her legs. Her arms went round me tight and hugged me.

  ‘Oh Star,’ I said, crying.

  ‘Sh. Don’t get my pillow all wet and snotty.’

  ‘She is all right, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s all wrong wrong wrong. But she’ll be back any minute now, you’ll see. We’ll go back to sleep and then we’ll wake up and the first thing we’ll hear is Marigold singing one of her stupid songs, right?’

  ‘Yes. Right. I do like it when you’re being nice to me.’

  ‘Well. It’s no fun being nasty to you. It’s like kicking Bambi. Let’s try to sleep now.’

  ‘I love Bambi.’ I tried to think of all the best bits in Bambi. I thought of Bambi frolicking with Flower with all the birds twittering and Thumper singing away, tapping his paw. Then my brain flipped to fast forward.

  ‘What?’ said Star, feeling me stiffen.

  ‘Bambi’s mother gets killed.’

  ‘Oh, Dol. Shut up and go to sleep.’

  I couldn’t sleep. Star couldn’t either, though she pretended at first. We turned every ten minutes, fitting round each other like spoons. I tried counting to a hundred, telling myself that Marigold would be back by then. Two hundred. Three hundred.

  I wanted my silk scarf but I’d left it in my bed. I put the end of the sheet over my nose instead and fingered the raised edge of the hem. It started to get lighter. I shut my eyes but in the dark inside my head there was a little television showing me all the things that might have happened to Marigold. It was so scary I poked the corner of the sheet in my eye. It hurt a lot but the television set didn’t even flicker. I tried to hum so that I couldn’t hear it. I banged my head on the pillow to see if I could switch it off that way.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ said Star.

  ‘Just trying to get comfy.’

  ‘You’re going about it in a funny way.’

  ‘It’s to stop myself thinking stuff. It’s so scary.’

  ‘Look. Let’s tell each other really really scary stories. We’ll think about that, right? There was this video I saw at that sleepover I went to, and there were these girls in a house, and they played these real witchy tricks on another girl, so that when she got out of bed she stepped into this great squirmy mass of spiders and slugs and snakes, and she screamed and starting running, and all these other snakes dropped on her head and writhed round her neck and down inside her clothes—’

  ‘Shut up, shut up!’ I said, shrieking – and yet it helped. We were suddenly just us playing a scary game and it was almost fun.

  I hadn’t ever seen any horror videos but I was quite good at making them up. Star told me this story about a dead man who comes back to kill all these kids and his fingers are like long knives so he can rip people in half.

  ‘I’ve got a better ghost, a real one. Mr Rowling!’ I said triumphantly.

  Mr Rowling was the old man who lived upstairs. He had this illness when we first moved in here and he knew he was dying and he said he was going to leave his body to medical science. I’d had to ask Star what that meant and when she told me it had given me nightmares, thinking of medical students cutting up all these little bits of Mr Rowling.

  ‘Mr Rowling couldn’t be scary. He was quite a nice old man,’ said Star.

  ‘Yes, he might have been nice when he was alive, but he’s really really scary now, because those medical people cut out his eyes so he’s just got horrible bleeding sockets and they’ve sawn off great strips of his skin and torn out his liver and his kidneys and left a big mess of intestines sticking out all smelly and slimey, and all the rest of him is rotting away so that when he walks around little mouldery bits of him fall off like big dandruff. He wishes and wishes he hadn’t left his body to medical science because it hurts so badly so every night he rises up off the dissecting table and he trails messily back to this house where he liked living and he’s maybe upstairs right this minute. Yes, he is, and he’s thinking, I like that Star, she was always nice to me, I’m going to go and see how she is, and he’s coming, Star, he’s slithering along, dripping maggots, getting nearer and nearer . . .’

  Something creaked and we both screamed. Then we sat up, ears straining, wondering if it was Marigold back at last. But then we heard the whoosh of the boiler in the kitchen. It was just the hot water system switching itself on.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Star. ‘We could just go and have a bath in a minute.’

  ‘Let’s have one more look round the flat. She could have crept in while we were cuddled up. We could have gone to sleep without realizing it,’ I said.

  We both padded all over the flat though we knew there wasn’t a chance Marigold was there. So then we went and had a bath together, because the water wasn’t hot enough for two baths. It was like being little kids again. Star washed my hair for me and then I did hers. I’d always longed to look like Star but I especially envied her beautiful long fair hair. Mine was mouse and it was so fine it straggled once it grew down to my shoulders.

  I suppose Star looked like her father and I looked like mine. Neither of us looked like Marigold, though we both had a hint of her green eyes.

  ‘Witch’s eyes,’ Marigold always said.

  Star’s eyes were bluey-green, mine more grey-green. Marigold’s eyes were emerald, the deepest glittery green, the green of summer meadows and seaweed and secret pools. Sometimes Marigold’s eyes glittered so wildly it was as if they were spinning in her head like Catherine wheels, giving off sparks.

  ‘What if Marigold—’ I started.

  ‘Stop what-iffing,’ said Star. ‘Hey, I thought you fancied yourself as a hairdresser? I’ve still got heaps of soap in my hair.’ She tipped jugfuls of water over her head and then started towelling herself dry.

  I watched her.

  ‘Quit staring,’ Star snapped.

  I couldn’t help staring at her. It was so strange seeing her with a chest. I peered down at my own but it was still as flat as a boy’s.

  ‘Two pimples,’ said Star, sneering at me. ‘Turn round, let me do your back.’

  We got dressed in our school clothes. Well, our version of school clothes. I wore one of Marigold’s dresses she’d cut small for me, black with silver moon and star embroidery. I called it my witch dress and thought it beautiful. It still smelt very faintly of Marigold’s perfume. I sniffed it now.

  ‘Is it sweaty?’ said Star.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I don’t know why you keep wearing that old thing anyway. You just get teased.’

  ‘I get teased anyway,’ I said.

  Star used to wear much weirder outfits when she was at my school but nobody ever dared tease Star. She changed when she started at the High School. She wore the proper uniform. She wanted to. She got money off Marigold the minute she got it out the post office and went to the school’s special uniform sale and got herself a hideous grey skirt and blazer and white blouses and even a tie.

  She customized them when she went into Year Eight, shortening the skirt until it was way up above her knees, and she put pin badges all over the blazer lapels. It was the way all the wilder girls in her class altered their uniform. Star didn’t seem to want to do it her way any more.

  She checked herself in the mirror and then fiddled with my dress.

  ‘Sweaty or not, it needs a wash.’

  ‘No, it’ll spoil it.’

  ‘It’s spoilt already. And the hem’s coming down at the ba
ck. Here, I’ll find a pin.’

  She tucked the wavy hem neatly into place and then stood up.

  ‘Right,’ she said. She glanced at the kitchen table, the bowls and spoons set out Three Bears style.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I said.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Star. ‘Tell you what. Marigold’s got the purse, but I’ve got that pound I found down the park. We’ll buy chocolate on the way to school, right?’

  ‘Do we have to go to school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’ll be worse if we just stay here, waiting. We’ll both go to school like normal. Only you won’t tell anyone that she’s gone missing, will you?’

  ‘Has she really . . . gone missing?’

  ‘I don’t know. But if you start blabbing about it, or even go round all sad and snivelly so that some nosy teacher starts giving you the third degree then I’m telling you, Dol, they’ll get the social workers in and we’ll both end up in care.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Maybe not even together.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘So keep your mouth shut and act like you haven’t got a care in the world. Don’t look like that. Smile!’

  I tried. Star sighed, and put her arm round me. ‘She’ll probably be back right after we’ve left for school.’

  ‘We’d better leave her a note.’

  ‘What?’ Star glared at me.

  ‘In case she wonders if we’re OK.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Like she wondered if we were OK last night,’ said Star.

  ‘She can’t help the way she is.’

  ‘Yes she can,’ said Star, and she marched us both out of the flat.

  I made out I needed to go to the toilet when we were down on the main landing, so Star gave me the key. I charged back up the stairs and in at our door and then I tore out a page from my project book and scribbled:

  Then I ran back downstairs again. Mrs Luft came to the door in her dressing-gown, her hair pinned into little silver snails all over her head.

  ‘I’ve told you girls enough times! Stop charging up and down the stairs like that. My whole flat shakes. And the stairs won’t stand it. There’s the dry rot. I’ve spoken to the Trust a dozen times but they don’t do anything. You’ll put your foot right through if you don’t watch out.’

  I stood still, staring down at the old wooden stairs. I imagined them crumbling beneath me, my foot falling through, all of me tumbling down into the dark rotting world below. I edged downwards on tiptoe, holding my breath.

  ‘Come on, Dol, we’ll be late,’ said Star. When I got nearer she whispered, ‘She’s the one that’s talking rot.’

  I sniggered. Mrs Luft sniffed disapprovingly, folding her arms over her droopy old-lady chest.

  ‘How’s that mother of yours, then?’ she asked.

  I stood still again.

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Star.

  ‘No more funny turns?’ said Mrs Luft unpleasantly.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Star, and grabbed me. ‘Come on, Dol.’

  ‘Dol. Star,’ Mrs Luft muttered mockingly, shaking her head.

  ‘Old cow,’ Star said as we went out the house.

  ‘Yes. Old cow,’ I said, imagining Mrs Luft with horns springing out of her curlers and udders bunching up the front of her brushed nylon nightie.

  Star went into the paper shop and bought us both a Mars bar. I sunk my teeth into the firm stickiness, taking big bites so that my mouth was overwhelmed with the taste of chocolate.

  ‘I just love Mars bars,’ I said indistinctly.

  ‘Me too,’ says Star. ‘Good idea, eh? Right, you come and wait for me outside school this afternoon, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I said. I did my best to smile. As if I didn’t have a care in the world.

  ‘You can have the rest of my Mars if you like,’ said Star, thrusting the last little piece of hers in my hand.

  She ran off to join up with a whole gaggle of High School girls getting off the bus. I trudged on towards Holybrook Primary. Nearly everyone got taken by their mothers, even the kids in Year Six. Marigold hardly ever took me to school. Mostly she stayed in bed in the morning. I didn’t mind. It was easier that way. I didn’t like to think about the times when she had come to the school, when she’d gone right in and talked to the teachers.

  I ran to stop myself thinking, and touched the school gate seven times for luck.

  It didn’t work. We had to divide up into partners for letterwriting and no-one wanted to be my partner. I ended up with Ronnie Churley. He said, ‘Rats,’ and sat at the furthest edge of the seat, not looking at me. So I wrote a long letter to myself instead of doing the exercise properly and Miss Hill said I should learn to listen to instructions and gave me nought out of ten.

  Ronnie Churley was furious with me because he got nought too. He said it wasn’t fair, it was all my fault. He whispered he and his mates were going to get me at dinner time.

  I said, ‘Like I’m supposed to be scared?’ in a very fierce bold Star voice.

  Only I was scared of Ronnie Churley, and he had a lot of mates. I hid at dinner time, lurking in the cloakrooms. I stood on a bench and looked out of the window at the playground. Ronnie Churley and his gang were picking on Owly Morris instead of me. I felt a bit mean about poor Owly but I couldn’t help it. I wandered round the cloakroom looking at everybody’s boring jackets and coats and working out how Marigold would make them look pretty – a velvet trim here, a purple satin lining, little studs in a Celtic design, an embroidered green dragon breathing crimson fire – when Mrs Dunstan the deputy head walked past with some little kid who’d fallen over in the playground. I dropped the sleeve of someone’s coat like it was red hot.

  Mrs Dunstan asked what I was doing and didn’t I know children weren’t allowed in the cloakrooms at playtimes? I got pink in the face because I hate being told off. Mrs Dunstan frowned at me.

  ‘Why were you touching that coat, hmm?’

  My pink became peony.

  ‘You weren’t going through the pockets, were you?’

  I stood rooted to the spot, staring at her.

  ‘I’m not a thief!’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t say you were,’ said Mrs Dunstan. ‘Well, run along now, and don’t let me catch you here again.’

  I nearly ran right out of the school and all the way home. But it would be even worse there by myself. I had to wait to meet Star that afternoon.

  I remembered my promise. I put my head up high, stretched my lips, and sauntered off as if I didn’t have a care in the world. I could feel Mrs Dunstan’s gaze scorching my back.

  I got to the playground thirty seconds before the bell. Thirty seconds can seem a lifetime when Ronnie Churley and his mates are punching you in the stomach and giving you Chinese burns on each wrist.

  I couldn’t think straight during the afternoon. I just kept thinking about the flat and whether Marigold was in it. I inked a careful picture of her marigold tattoo with its full head and pointed leaves and swirly stem, chewing hard on the tip of my pen. I drew another Marigold and another. I bent my head and whispered her name over and over again. I started to convince myself it was the only way to make her safe.

  ‘Who’s she talking to?’

  ‘Talking to herself!’

  ‘She’s a nutter.’

  ‘Just like her mum.’

  I turned round to Kayleigh Richards and Yvonne Mason and spat at them. The spit landed on Kayleigh’s Maths book. My mouth was inky so it made a little blue pool on the page.

  She screamed.

  ‘Yuck! She spat on my book! It nearly landed on me. I could catch a terrible disease off of her. She’s disgusting.’

  Miss Hill told Kayleigh to calm down and stop being so melodramatic. She mopped up the spit herself with blotting paper and then stood over me.

  ‘What is the matter with you today?’

  I clenched my fists and put my chin up and smiled as if I didn’t have a care in the wor
ld.

  I was sent to stand outside the classroom for insolence. Then when the bell went Miss Hill gave me this long lecture, going on and on, and I had to get right over to the High School to meet Star. If I wasn’t there when she got out she’d maybe think I’d gone home already. Then she’d go off without me.

  ‘You’re not even listening to me!’ said Miss Hill. She looked at me closely. ‘You look so worried. What is it?’

  ‘I’m worried about being late home, Miss Hill.’

  She paused, her tongue feeling round her mouth like a goldfish swimming in a bowl.

  ‘Is everything all right at home?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes. Fine.’

  ‘Your mother . . . ?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ I said, my voice loud and cheery, practically bursting into song.

  Miss Hill didn’t seem convinced. But she made a little shooing gesture of her hand to show I was dismissed. I made a run for it before she could change her mind.

  I heard the High School bell go just as I got there. Star was one of the first, without all her friends. She looked at me.

  ‘You’ve told someone.’

  ‘No, I haven’t, I swear.’

  Star nodded. ‘OK. Sorry. I knew you wouldn’t really tell.’

  We walked home barely talking. When we turned into our road I grabbed Star’s hand. She didn’t pull away. Her own palm was as sweaty as mine.

  She was back. I smelt her as soon as we opened the front door. Marigold’s sweet strong musky scent. Even if she were wandering round the flat stark naked she’d still spray herself from head to toe with perfume. There was another smell too. The strangest homely mouth-watering smell was coming from the kitchen.

  I ran. Marigold was standing at the table, smiling all over her face, kneading dough. I was so happy to see her it didn’t even strike me as weird.

  ‘Oh Marigold,’ I said, and I flew at her.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, and she hugged me back, her thin arms strong, though she kept her hands stuck out away from me. They were wearing half the dough like gloves.

  ‘Oh Marigold,’ I said again, and I lay my head on her bare shoulder.

  The delicate marigold tattoo peeped out from the strap of her vest-top, elegantly outlined in black.