Sundae Girl Page 4

  The CD switches to ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and Dad twirls Victoria round the room a couple of times before wiggling off to the kitchen to fetch more party food.

  I stand in front of the mirror to unwind the big rollers from my hair, then brush it through. It’s very big, very sixties, very scary. I am wearing a black minidress with big white polka dots, white lacy tights and flat black boots.

  ‘Perfect,’ says Dad, shimmying past with trifle and chocolate cake.

  ‘Hideous,’ I correct him.

  Victoria places a finger against my white-painted lips. ‘Shhh,’ she whispers. ‘No grumbles. It’s New Year’s Eve. We’re going to have fun. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  The doorbell rings and the first crowd of partygoers arrives, middle-aged neighbours and friends of Dad and Victoria, all wearing short dresses with flicky, bouffant hair like Priscilla Presley (Mrs Elvis, to you) or stick-on sideburns and chest wigs, like the man himself. Dad has left a basket of Elvis wigs and dark glasses by the door for the uninspired, but most people have made an effort. Guests keep coming – Hawaiian Elvis, GI Elvis, Fat Elvis, even Dead Elvis, complete with halo, harp and white fluffy wings.

  It’s not my sort of party, obviously, but I fix a cheesy smile on my face and offer round the crisps and nuts, making small talk with catsuit-clad strangers and people I meet once a year who tell me how I’ve grown. I’m the one who remembers the baked potatoes are still in the oven, and rescues them before they get burned to a crisp. I’m the one who grates cheese for the spuds, refills the ice-cube tray with water and runs down to the corner shop for more plastic cups when the first lot run out.

  ‘OK there, Jude?’ Victoria asks me as we pass in a squash of people in the hall. ‘Want to come and dance?’

  ‘Later,’ I tell her. It’s eleven o’clock, and a posse of large, beehived women have taken over the living room, dancing round their handbags in pointy stilettos. If one stood on you by mistake, it’d break every bone in your foot.

  I give up on trying to be a party animal and make myself a hot chocolate and a round of toast and jam. Getting it upstairs is tough. I have to climb over white-quiffed Elvis and blue-rinsed Priscilla squashed in together on the stairs, snogging the face off each other. I have to convince people I’m definitely not in the queue for the loo.

  My room has been invaded by mounds of coats and jackets. I lift them carefully and ditch them in Dad and Victoria’s room, where Hawaiian Elvis lies snoring, spreadeagled across the duvet. Nice.

  Finally, I shut the door behind me and take a deep breath. I am not a party girl. My face is aching from hours of smiling, making small talk with respectable middle-aged people dressed up in rhinestone flares. Enough is enough.

  ‘Will you be OK?’ Dad asked me earlier, before the guests started coming. ‘I thought you’d ask some friends along, someone your own age. That nice Nuala girl, maybe?’

  ‘Nuala’s busy,’ I lied. ‘I’ll be fine, Dad. Don’t worry about me!’

  The truth is, I don’t want my friends at this party, not even Nuala. They’d think it was crazy, weird, bizarre. They’d laugh. And I’d feel like they were laughing at me.

  Better to do it alone.

  I want to be here, for Dad, for Victoria. I want to see their friends and smile and laugh and offer round the cheese straws. I’ll definitely go downstairs again before midnight, because I love the bit where everyone sings ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and I want to be the first to hug Dad and Victoria and wish them a Happy New Year. Until midnight, though, I’m hiding out, eating toast and sipping hot chocolate in a tiny box room in the dark.

  It’s the last day of the old year, the eve of the new one. There’s a sheet of blue notepaper on the bed, my New Year’s Resolutions. Although it’s dark in here, I can see what I’ve written in the light from the lamp post outside.

  Be the best-ever bridesmaid for Dad and Victoria (if they ask me).

  Give Gran more hugs.

  Use the curling tongs Mum gave me at least once a week so she thinks I like them. Hide her Wizard of Oz DVD.

  Learn to cook so there are no more turkey disasters.

  Pass my Grade Four piano exam (with Merit).

  The problem with writing resolutions is that it’s hard to know where to stop. There are so many things I’d like to change about my life it would be a full-time job fixing them all. Actually, it’s other people’s lives I’d like to change, and that’s even harder. One thing I’ve learned about other people is that they rarely do what you want them to. They have ideas of their own.

  There is a loud crash from the street outside, and I go to the window to look down at the frosty street. A crowd of wheelie bins have fallen over, and a couple of wisps of balled-up Christmas wrap are blowing around the pavement. A lanky figure in a black beanie hat grapples with one of the bins, struggling to haul it back up again.

  My heart is thumping. This boy is haunting me. What is he doing in the street outside my dad’s house at 11.30 on New Year’s Eve? If I could control other people, I’d make Kevin Carter back off and leave me alone. Or get him to give up Rollerblading before he breaks his neck. Or both.

  I hide behind the curtain, although it’s dark in here and there’s no way he could see me if he looked up. I am safe. He looks up, and I jump back from the window like I’ve been stung.

  It’s not that Kevin Carter is awful. He is not a geek, he is not a loser. He’s almost good looking, in a lazy, floppy, blonde kind of way. It’s just that I’m not ready for this, for long-legged boys skating around on the pavement outside my dad’s house, upsetting the bins, the neighbours and the whole balance of life as I know it.

  I don’t want it. Do I?

  If he comes inside, he’ll meet my dad and any last hopes that I can pass myself off as normal, ordinary and unremarkable will fizzle and die. He’ll meet Victoria, the sanest, safest person in my so-called life, and he’ll see a plump, giggling woman in a furry black wig, and he’ll skate right out of here as fast as he can. I can’t risk it.

  Carter has sorted the wheelie bins, and begins clunking up the path towards the house. I pinch myself, wishing I could wake up and say it was all a nightmare. It is, but sadly I’m not waking up any time soon.

  I creep out on to the landing and lean over the banisters. Kevin Carter is in my dad’s hall, telling a woman in a silver minidress that he’s a very good friend of Jude Reilly.

  ‘That’s nice,’ says the woman, who has clearly never heard of me. ‘Who have you come as, anyway? Blonde, pre-teen Elvis on Rollerblades?’

  She offers him the basket of wigs and sunglasses, and obediently he removes his beanie hat and pulls on a black-quiffed wig and shades. He edges past the silver-mini woman and on into the house. I can’t bear it. I want to scream, shout and drag him out of there by his black nylon wig. What do I do? Barricade myself in my room and hide under the bed until he’s gone, or march downstairs and chuck him out as the gatecrasher he most certainly is?

  I see a blue tinsel wig lying discarded on the landing, and the glimmer of an idea starts to form. I drag it on, glancing in the landing mirror. I look like a pale-faced Martian with blue tinsel hair. My own dad wouldn’t know me.

  I stomp downstairs and grab Kevin Carter by the sleeve of his hoodie.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I demand. ‘This is a private party!’

  ‘I was just looking for you,’ he grins.

  ‘But you don’t know me,’ I glower. ‘You’ve never met me before.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’ Carter asks, looking baffled.

  ‘No. I am a complete, total stranger.’

  ‘Right,’ says Carter. ‘You’re definitely not Jude Reilly, then?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  He grins, shrugs and offers me a carton of full-fat milk and a crumpled selection box. ‘I guess I’m a gatecrasher, then,’ he admits. ‘But I brought these for you. To say Happy New Year.’

  I put the milk down on the kitchen counter and frown at the selection box. Th
e box has been opened at one end, and when I look more closely it’s clear that half the chocolate bars are missing.

  ‘My little brother got to it before me,’ Carter says, sadly.

  ‘You have to go,’ I tell him.

  ‘I only just got here!’

  ‘And now it’s time to go.’

  I turn him round and propel him along the hallway, which takes longer than you’d think because of the Rollerblades and the crowds of party people clogging the place up. As he clumps out over the doorstep, a gang of non-Elvis guests burst into the hall, laughing. Posh, Becks, Jordan, Marilyn Monroe and an assortment of Santas –friends of Dad’s from the Lookalike Agency, obviously.

  ‘Things are just hotting up,’ Carter protests.

  ‘So let’s cool them down,’ I say firmly. ‘I don’t know you. You don’t know me. You can’t just barge into other people’s parties. OK?’

  Carter pauses by the gate.

  ‘Do I get a New Year’s kiss?’ he pleads.

  ‘No way! Just push off!’

  ‘Jude,’ he says, tugging at the blue tinsel wig. ‘I know it’s you.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Jude,’ I tell him.

  ‘OΚ. Whatever. I just wanted to see you, and say Happy New Year.’ He takes off the Elvis wig and the shades, and gives them to me. I bite my lip as the lamplight shines on his floppy blonde hair and hazel eyes, and before I see it coming he leans forward and plants a tiny kiss on the tip of my nose. Then he pulls on his beanie hat and skates away, and I’m left standing at the gate alone in a polka-dot dress and a blue tinsel wig.

  Behind me, the door bursts open and a sea of people surge out into the street, squealing and laughing and counting down the bells.

  ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six …’

  ‘Five, four, three, two, one …’

  ‘HΑΡΡΥ NEW YEAR!’

  There’s an orgy of snogs and hugs and Dad and Victoria scoop me up in a big cuddle, and everyone is laughing and dancing and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. I join hands with Marilyn Monroe and GI Elvis and my wig slips off and I let myself be pushed about in a big crowd of loud, warm, happy revellers. I think of Gran and Grandad, tucked up in bed at home, and Mum, who’ll be out on the razz with Giovanni or Sue.

  I wish for a good year, a happy year, for all of us.

  As the crowd breaks up and heads back into the house, I look over my shoulder and I’m almost certain I can see a lanky figure standing in the shadows further along the road. I wave into the darkness, and the figure waves back, then turns and skates away.

  My mum is behaving very strangely OK, that’s nothing new – she has always been a little odd, but this is different. It’s the kind of strange that makes me feel edgy and nervous, like something’s wrong, something I don’t even want to think about.

  She’s happy, at least. She has dyed her hair auburn and bought herself a clutch of skimpy frocks in the January sales, and she’s out just about every night. Sometimes it’s Sue or Giovanni, but mostly it’s others, people I don’t know so well. She comes in late, then sits up watching The Wizard of Oz or playing sad Irish songs on the piano before sneaking up to bed at four or five in the morning. Twice, now, she’s been late for work, even though she doesn’t start till lunchtime. I don’t like it.

  I know what’s happening, you see, because it’s happened before, and the pattern is the same each time. Mum goes out a lot, but not with Sue or Giovanni. She stays out late, then sits up all night and sleeps all day. She stops going to work. Finally her party mood seems to crash, and she starts staying in, alone, depressed and miserable.

  ‘The doctor says it’s a virus,’ she says now, talking to Sue on the phone. ‘Could be that Asian flu. Every bode id by body aches.’ Her voice is a hoarse whisper, and she’s holding her nose as she speaks, to produce a muffled, bunged-up effect.

  ‘Baybe toborrow?’ she says into the mouthpiece. ‘Or the day after, to be od the safe side. Dote wat to pass it od to the customers. I’b sorry, Sue. Yes, of course I’ll take care. A couple of days id bed and I’ll be fightig fit again.’

  She puts the phone down, grinning.

  ‘I hardly ever throw a sickie, do I?’ she says to me, without the fake snuffly voice. ‘I just need a couple of days’ rest.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I say, my voice cold.

  ‘I am feeling a bit under the weather,’ she appeals. ‘It might be flu, for all I know …’

  Or it might be a hangover.

  I know I should tell Grandad what I’m thinking, but I look at his familiar, white-bearded face and I can’t, I just can’t. He has enough to worry about, looking after Gran. Instead, I make pasta shells with cheese sauce for tea, and chop a bit of tinned ham into the sauce. Everyone tucks in, except for Mum, who picks at hers listlessly.

  ‘Not hungry, Rose?’ Grandad asks, chirpily.

  ‘Not if this is the best you can do,’ she snaps. ‘Tastes like rubber.’

  My face flames. I look down at my plate. The pasta is like rubber, the cheese sauce is lumpy, the bits of ham are cold and stringy. It is the best I can do, but Mum’s right, it’s not good enough.

  ‘Rose!’ Grandad snaps. ‘What’s got into you? Jude made the dinner, and very good it is too!’

  ‘Well, good for Jude,’ Mum says, scraping her chair back from the table. ‘I’ll see you later. I’m going out.’

  She grabs a jacket and slams out of the house.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Grandad says, frowning. ‘Take no notice, Jude. She’s not been eating properly. It’s bound to make her snippy. Watching her weight again, I suppose.’

  Mum, who is sparrow-skinny at the best of times, does not need to diet, but when she’s drinking she loses interest in food. Grandad knows this as well as I do, but he is choosing not to mention it. Like me, he wants another month or so of pretending everything’s fine. We are kidding ourselves. We are experts at it.

  ‘Lovely dinner,’ Gran says kindly as we wash up together at the sink. ‘Was it chicken?’

  ‘Pasta with cheese and ham,’ I sigh. ‘Not one of my best efforts.’

  ‘It was very nice,’ Gran repeats. ‘You can’t go wrong with chicken.’

  ‘Mum’s drinking again,’ I say to her, and although my voice is no more than a whisper, I think I see Gran’s blue eyes flicker with pain. Sometimes, she knows what’s happening. Sometimes, her mind is clear as ice. It’s just that it doesn’t stay that way The fog crowds back in, hiding reality, confusing things.

  More than anything, I’d like to turn the clock back to when Gran was well, when she could make anything better just by putting her arms round me and stroking my hair. I want to be looked after, but I’m the one who does the looking after, these days.

  Gran dries a plate and tries to put it away in the cutlery drawer.

  ‘I love you,’ I tell her.

  She just smiles, and says, ‘I know.’

  One evening towards the end of January, I’m hunting through the washing basket in the bathroom, trying to find my blue pyjama top. Instead, I find a small plastic bottle of ginger beer, hidden away among the old socks and cardies, and a shiver slides down my spine. I sink down on to the edge of the bath, cradling the bottle in my hands.

  Mum walks into the bathroom, whistling ‘Over the Rainbow’, getting ready to go out. She peers into the mirror above the sink, dabbing on foundation, stroking on wings of smoky-grey shadow above her eyes.

  ‘OK, Jude?’ she asks. ‘Which lippy, pet? The red or the pink?’

  I ignore her question. ‘What’s this?’ I ask, holding out the plastic bottle. ‘I found it in the washing basket.’

  Mum swivels round. She looks dismayed, but masks it quickly with a grin and a shrug.

  ‘Just ginger beer,’ she says lightly. ‘Must have left it in here by accident.’ Her perfectly manicured hand reaches out to take the bottle from me, but I unscrew the lid quickly It smells like ginger beer, mostly But not quite.

  ‘Jude, don’t!’ Mum shrieks.

&n
bsp; ‘Why not, if it’s just ginger beer?’ I argue. But I know why. When the ginger liquid touches my lips, I jump like I’ve been scalded. There’s whisky in there, along with the ginger. I drop the bottle into the bath, watch the brown liquid seep away.

  Mum sits down beside me, snaking an arm around my shoulder.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ she pleads. ‘Really it’s not. OK, so I’ve had a few drinks lately, I admit it. I’ve been feeling a bit low, I suppose.’

  ‘Drink’s not the answer to that!’

  ‘I know, Jude,’ she whispers. ‘I know, and I’m going to stop, honestly I am. There’s no need to tell your grandad, is there? He has enough to worry about as it is.’

  That’s true enough. Like me, Grandad knows there’s something going on, but he’s chosen to ignore it. I can’t blame him. I want to ignore it too, keep it secret, like I did when I was little and Mum used to make me promise, hand on heart, not to tell.

  ‘It’s just my little treat,’ she’d whisper, picking a bottle of cheap whisky off the shelf in the supermarket. ‘We all need a treat now and then, don’t we, Jude? What would you like, love?’ And she’d let me choose a cream cake or a sherbet dip or a comic, and in return I kept my mouth shut about the whisky.

  I’m not so easy to bribe, these days. I know that whisky is not a treat, it’s a poison. It makes my mum so ill that every time she goes into hospital the doctors tell her that maybe this time will be the last time.

  ‘I have to tell,’ I say now, sadly. ‘You know I do, Mum. You can’t handle this on your own – look what happened last time.’

  Mum slumps forward, burying her face in her hands. ‘Jude, please!’ she appeals. ‘I can’t let everybody see I’ve messed up – failed – again. Have you any idea what that feels like?’

  I bite my lip. I don’t know what it feels like to be Mum, but I know exactly how it feels to be me.