Secrets Read online

  Wanda blinked at me.

  ‘I don’t need to look for you. You’re here!’ she said, taking another bite of Mars bar.

  ‘Where did you get that Mars bar?’ I said. ‘Hey, you didn’t nick it from under my pillow, did you?’

  ‘You’re not allowed to eat Mars bars, your mother says,’ said Wanda, munching.

  ‘You pig!’ I tried to snatch the Mars bar stub from her but she shoved it in her mouth sharpish. I felt tears stinging my eyes.

  ‘Don’t cry, silly. I’ll buy you another tomorrow,’ said Wanda.

  I flounced off. They were tears of frustration and despair, but Wanda would never understand.

  I went downstairs. Mum was pacing up and down the hall, jabbering into the phone.

  ‘Look, this is serious. I don’t care what time it is! You jolly well listen to me!’ she declared. ‘God, I’m going out of my mind!’

  But she wasn’t going out of her mind because I’d gone missing. It was just some crisis about her stupid clothes.

  ‘That last batch of T-shirts is entirely the wrong shade of purple. I wanted deep purple, practically blackberry, and these are almost lilac, too twee for words—’ She put her hand over the phone and cocked her head on one side enquiringly.

  ‘Yes, darling?’ she mouthed.

  She obviously hadn’t noticed I was missing. I could probably disappear for months and remain low on her list of priorities, way below lilac T-shirts that should be blackberry.

  Dad hadn’t noticed either. He was slumped in front of the television watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He didn’t even look up when I went into the room.

  I don’t think I love him any more.

  I don’t love anyone.

  Oh, dear Kitty, dear Kitty, I wish you were real.

  Five

  Treasure

  I DO LOVE it at my nan’s. I’m really, truly staying for ever. I’ve even started school here!

  I did wonder if it was just a holiday visit in spite of Nan’s reassurances. She asked me on New Year’s Day if I was missing my mum. I said, ‘No, not at all.’ It isn’t exactly true. I dream about her every night. Terry’s in the dream too and he’s hitting her and I can’t stop him and then he’s hitting me. Sometimes I’m screaming when I wake up.

  I think about Mum during the day too, especially when I make Nan a cup of tea. I settle her down while she’s sipping, slip her high heels off and give her a foot massage. That’s what I always did to give Mum a little treat. I am the bee’s knees at foot massage. I know how to pull the tights gently at the end so the toes can wriggle around. I stroke each toe individually and then spend ages on the instep because that’s the bit where it really aches. Nan makes exactly the same little purring sounds that Mum does.

  I think about Mum in the evenings too. Terry’s always out at the pub then, so why doesn’t she phone me? I got so scared he’d really gone for her, maybe put her in hospital. I waited until Nan was out giving a dancing lesson and then I phoned home.

  My fingers were so dithery I could hardly tap out the number. I heard the phone ringing and ringing. I closed my eyes tight, the blood beating in my eyelids. Then Mum suddenly said, ‘Hello?’ right in my ear. She sounded bright and bouncy, like she didn’t have a care in the world. She didn’t sound like she was missing me one bit.

  I swallowed, trying to get my mouth wet enough to speak. I heard Bethany in the background say, ‘Who is it, Mum?’ It was like a punch in the stomach. I’m sure Bethany never called her ‘Mum’ before. I slammed the phone down quick without saying a word.

  I waited. She didn’t dial 1471. She didn’t ring back.

  I’m not going to ring her again. There’s no point now I know she’s all right. She’s got Bethany and Kyle to watch out for her. Terry won’t turn on them because he’s their dad. So it’s all worked out wonderfully well. It has. It has. It has.

  When Nan came home all hot and happy from her dancing I put my arms tight round her neck.

  ‘Promise I can stay here for ever, Nan?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes, I promise! How many more times, my little Treasure?’

  She picked me up and I wound my legs tight round her waist as if I was baby Britney. Nan whirled me round and round the living room, going, ‘My little Treasure, my gold rings, my silver bangles, my flashy diamond, my sparkly sapphire, my red ruby.’

  Patsy capered by her side, doing a little Irish jig, her skirt flying up to show her frilly knickers.

  I can fit into Patsy’s school uniform – just. Nan’s going to buy me my own skirt and blouse soon, and some out-of-school clothes too, new trousers and tops and a winter coat because I’ve only got my old brown fleece and it’s so rubbed I look like a jumble-sale teddy. But I’ll have to wait a bit because she’s already had to fork out for my wonderful new designer glasses so she’s a bit strapped for cash at the moment.

  I felt strange when Nan took me to the school. Patsy’s blouse is very tight under my armpits and her pleated skirt shows a lot of my skinny legs. Patsy’s only got one school jumper so I wore one of Willie’s even though it’s way too big. I spent ages puffing out my fringe so that the Terry scar didn’t show. The stitches are out now but it still looks a horrible zig-zag mess. Nan watched me combing and looked like she might be going to cry.

  ‘I’ve a good mind to shop that pig to the police after all,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t, Nan! He’ll only take it out on Mum.’

  ‘Not if he’s put behind bars where he belongs.’ Nan shook her head. ‘It’s so swearword swearword ironic!’

  She closed her eyes tight for a moment to keep the tears in. I patted her gently on her shoulder. Nan’s boyfriend Pete – Patsy’s dad – is behind bars. He’s a really lovely, kind man. Even Willie and Loretta think the world of him. Nan’s nuts about him. He’s crazy about her too. That’s how he got into trouble. He got involved in this fight in a bar, getting stuck in to protect my nan because some drunk guy started chatting her up. Pete was holding his glass in his hand and the drunk guy got cut really badly. So badly that he died, so Pete’s doing time for manslaughter. Nan goes to visit him every month. She’s got half a gold heart locket that she wears round her neck. Pete wears the other half. It’s dead romantic. Nan misses him very, very badly but she keeps it all inside most of the time.

  I told her she should have a good weep if she wanted as it would do her good to let her emotions out. Nan roared with laughter instead and said I was a scream. At least it cheered her up a bit.

  We went off to school, Nan and Patsy and me. Willie goes to the comprehensive and Loretta doesn’t go to school at all now she’s got Britney. I felt a bit shy when we went into the playground, especially as all Patsy’s friends were crowding round and everyone was wondering who I was. The weird kid with the wrong-size clothes.

  ‘This is my Treasure,’ said Nan, like she was really proud of me.

  That made me feel great, even though some of the kids sniggered at my name. Nan led me inside the school. Patsy gave me a quick kiss for good luck. Then I was taken to the headteacher, Mrs Parker.

  ‘This is my granddaughter, Treasure. She’s living with me now,’ said Nan, giving my shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’ve come to enrol her at Latimer.’

  I thought I might have to do a test, English and Maths maybe, but Mrs Parker put my name on the register right away and I was given a class. They all stared at me when I walked in. I stared right back, my eyes swivelling round and round. I always look out for someone to be my special friend but I haven’t found her yet. The kids at the top of the class with shiny hair and tidy uniform always edge away, like they’ll be nibbled by nits if they get near me. The scruffy kids with stains all over their sweatshirts can’t stick me either because I’m swotty and they act like they’re stupid.

  Sometimes the teachers like me. Sometimes they don’t. They called me Miss-Know-It-All at my last school. I heard them discussing me in the staffroom. This new teacher Miss Strand is a bit dubious. She thinks I’m thic
k. She tells me stuff very s-l-o-w-l-y and she keeps saying I mustn’t worry if I can’t do the work. It’s a wonder she hasn’t stuck me at the back with a colouring book like the kids with learning difficulties.

  She had problems with my name too, her lip curling every time she said it, like she was trying not to laugh. The kids are a pain about it too. I have a new nickname, not in the least original. Buried.

  ‘You think you’ve got problems with your name, Treasure,’ said Willie when we were having tea. ‘What kind of a nut calls their son “Willie”?’

  ‘A hard nut, so less of the cheek,’ said Nan, pretending to bop him one. ‘Did those kids really give you a rough time, Treasure?’

  ‘No, no worries, Nan, I’m used to it. It’s always like this when I start at a new school,’ I said, wolfing down my egg and bacon and sausage and tomatoes and mushrooms and chips. I can’t get over how wonderful the food is at Nan’s. She cooks it all herself – no running down to the chippie for her. She’s teaching me to cook too. I was the sausage girl tonight and Nan said they were perfect, well done but not the slightest bit burnt.

  ‘How many schools have you been to, Treasure?’ Nan asked.

  ‘Oh goodness, I don’t know, Nan. Heaps,’ I said.

  Mum’s lived all over the place with all different blokes. Each time she gets a new guy there’s a new home and a new school. It’s awful always being the new girl and never remembering all the names of everyone in my new class. I get to know the girls who start picking on me first. It’s never the boys, they leave me alone, but there’s nearly always a little group of girls who corner me in the cloakrooms, shove me in the corridors, trip me in the playground.

  It’s OK. I can cope. I might be puny but I’m POWERFUL. I’m not too great at punching but I can give a hard whack if necessary. I mostly just say stuff. I give them a verbal version of the Terry Tortures and they reel backwards. Sometimes they cry, even the really mean tough ones. Then they leave me alone. But that’s OK too. It is. I like my own company.

  School doesn’t matter that much anyway. It’s home that counts. I get up really, really early sometimes, when everyone else is still asleep, even little Britney. I pad softly round the house in my bare feet, so happy that it’s my home and I live here. I stroke the smooth leather sofa in the living room, I rub my cheek on the gold velvet cushions, I curl up my toes in the black and white furry rug, and I run my finger up and down the big yellow lava lamp. I love that lamp and the slow, sure, steady way the oil wafts up and down.

  I peep in at everyone while they’re asleep. My family. Patsy always curls up in a neat little ball with a blue rabbit on one side and a squat koala on the other. I like it that she’s got her cuddly toys. She doesn’t really play with them though. She hasn’t even given them proper names – they are just Bunny and Bear. It’s a wonder Patsy doesn’t call me ‘Girl’.

  Willie doesn’t sleep curled up and he certainly doesn’t have any cuddly toys. He lies flat on his back with his arms flung out and his feet sticking out of the duvet. There’s always a fug of old sock in his room so I don’t linger long. He’d go berserk if he knew I’d been peeping at him. One time he’d kicked his duvet right off and I saw him in his underpants!

  Loretta sometimes sleeps in her underwear too, but she’s got pretty slinky petticoats so she looks fine, though she’s always got black circles from her eye make-up which spoils the effect a bit. Britney sleeps in a cot at the end of her bed. She wears dear little yellow towelling suits with a yellow dummy to match. She makes little sucking sounds every now and then. She’s so sweet.

  I often tiptoe into the kitchen and make up her bottle for when she wakes, around six. Then I make a cup of tea and take it into Nan. She looks so lovely when she’s in bed. Her long blond hair spreads out all over the pillow and she wears fancy black lacy nighties so she looks just like a film star, even though her face has got a few wrinkles.

  ‘My laughter lines,’ says Nan. It’s true, she’s always laughing. It makes you feel so good, so safe, so happy. When I wake her she never yells at me or pushes me away. She smiles like she’s really pleased to see me.

  ‘Hello, my little Treasure,’ she says.

  She props herself up on her pink pillow to sip her tea. I slip in beside her and cuddle up close. I can’t understand my mum. Why did she ever want to leave home? Why did she go off with all the horrible boyfriends? She didn’t even know my dad properly, so I can’t get to know him myself. Not that I care. I haven’t liked any of my step-dads so I expect my real dad is just as bad. And Terry is the WORST ever.

  I wish I could stop dreaming that he’s coming to get me.

  Six

  India

  DEAR KITTY

  I hate school. I hate all the teachers. I hate all the girls. I particularly hate Maria and Alice.

  They raise their eyebrows and then sputter with laughter whenever I go near them. The other girls have started doing it too. And everyone groans whenever I answer in class. I can’t help knowing lots. What’s so bad about being clever?

  I wish I didn’t have to go to school. Maybe I’ll bunk off and creep back home and hide in the attic all day like a real Anne Frank.

  I got into trouble because of my darling Anne today. I was so excited because we’re doing Diaries in English and Mrs Gibbs started talking about Anne Frank. She read out an excerpt from the diary. I felt my face flushing as if she were reading out my diary. I couldn’t stand it that some of the girls were just messing around and not paying attention when they were being introduced to the most important book of the twentieth century. It is so insulting to Anne. I couldn’t bear it.

  Mrs Gibbs read on, her voice solemn and portentous, sooooo wrong for lively, passionate Anne. Some of the girls started giggling while I fidgeted miserably to try to distract myself from the Gibbs rendition. I ended up slumped right down in my desk, my hands over my ears.

  ‘India?’

  I jumped. I’d filtered out her voice a little too effectively.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you even listening?’ Mrs Gibbs gave me a wounded look. ‘I would have thought you of all people would be interested in Anne Frank.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then please sit up properly and concentrate.’

  Mrs Gibbs trudged on through Anne’s delicate prose, selecting the passage which means most to me, the one where Anne desperately longs for a real friend. I listened in agony. Alice whispered some crass remark and Maria spluttered infuriatingly.

  ‘Really, girls!’ said Mrs Gibbs, closing Anne’s diary with a snap. ‘Can’t you be a little more mature? Maria, it’s not funny.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gibbs,’ said Maria, struggling. ‘So what happened to Anne Frank? Did she stay hidden in her secret annexe till the war ended?’

  Mrs Gibbs adjusted her glasses, rubbing the lenses with the bottom of her cardigan. Her eyes looked horribly pink and naked without them.

  ‘I’m afraid Anne’s story has a sad ending. Her family were caught and sent away to a concentration camp.’

  ‘This is like a concentration camp,’ Alice hissed.

  Maria giggled.

  I stood up, cheeks flaming. ‘How can you be so stupid?’ I shouted.

  ‘India!’ said Mrs Gibbs.

  They were all staring at me. I was living up to my red hair at last. I felt as if I was on fire.

  ‘The concentration camps were the most terrible places ever. Haven’t you heard of the gas chambers? Nearly everyone died there. You were sent in cattle trucks, stuck in the dark for days. People often died on the journey. When you got there they divided up all the families. Anne wasn’t allowed to stay with her father. And you were stripped naked and—’

  ‘That’s enough, India,’ said Mrs Gibbs.

  ‘And your head was shaved and then you were kept in terrible, squalid, freezing old huts with hardly any food at all, just rotten scraps, and so everyone got terrible illnesses. Anne’s mother died and then her sister Margot died and so
poor Anne was all on her own. And she got typhoid too and then she died, in agony—’

  ‘India!’ Mrs Gibbs got hold of me by the shoulders and pushed me down in my seat. ‘Will you be quiet!’

  ‘But it’s true!’

  ‘I know it is. But I don’t think we should dwell on things in quite such a ghoulish way. You’re upsetting the other girls.’

  ‘But we should feel upset. Anne died. Six million Jews died.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It was terrible. But it was a long time ago. It’s silly to cry about it now.’

  I wiped my eyes fiercely with the back of my hand. I stuck my chin out to show I wasn’t one little bit ashamed of crying. Mrs Gibbs sighed and then carried on with the lesson. She stopped talking about Anne. She moved hastily on to Samuel Pepys.

  When the bell went for hometime she called me back to have a word with her.

  ‘I’m sorry you got so upset in class, India,’ she said. ‘I’m very impressed that you know so much about Anne Frank. You’ve obviously been very moved by her story. But I can’t have you shouting like that in the classroom.’

  ‘But the others were being so stupid. They were laughing and messing about.’

  ‘I know, India. It’s very annoying. But you mustn’t mind so much. You feel things so intensely, dear. It’s a little unnerving.’

  I don’t think I feel too much. I think other people don’t feel enough. But I know this is the reason most people don’t like me. It’s not just Maria and Alice. All the other girls think I’m odd. Even Miranda, who really did use to be my best friend, frequently declared I was seriously weird. Mum is always sighing and telling me not to be such a drama queen. Wanda tells me to lighten up. Dad used to pick me up and shake me until I squealed – it was a game to shake all my worries away. We haven’t played that for ages. Maybe it’s because I’ve got too big. Or maybe even Dad doesn’t like me any more.

  I started crying again in front of Mrs Gibbs. I was remembering another game Dad used to play. He would curl his fingers into a spanner shape and gently touch my eyelids, making little wrenching sounds. ‘We’d better fix the washer on this funny little tear tap,’ he’d say and it would make me stop crying and laugh instead.