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  ‘Would Dad come with us?’

  ‘I haven’t discussed it with him yet. I wanted to talk to you first.’

  I shrug. ‘Sounds OK,’ I say. ‘If Dad comes with us.’

  She smashes her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘We don’t need him, sweetheart,’ she says, quietly. ‘Not any more.’

  When she’s gone, I suck on the King Size Snickers that Dad gave me earlier. He slipped it in my schoolbag when she wasn’t looking. I lick the chocolate off all the peanuts and crunch them slowly, one by one. I don’t reckon we’ll go to Birmingham. Mum’s always full of mad schemes. Last year it was a holiday in the Caribbean. Dad even booked the tickets and everything. Then, suddenly, two weeks before, she got scared she was going to get a blood clot on the plane. She ripped up her passport and left it in bits in the kitchen.

  When I’ve finished the Snickers, I post the wrapper down the gap between my headboard and the mattress. That’s the trouble with snacking, it makes you sneaky.

  Moira tells Mum that it’s just a social visit. She brings some home-made shortbread, wrapped up in greaseproof paper, and Adrian, still in his sludgy-green school uniform.

  Mum tries to look delighted, but I can tell from the shadow that passes across her eyes that she is terrified.

  She keeps Moira on the doorstep. ‘Oh, you’ll have to excuse me, the house is a complete tip. I was just cleaning up.’

  Moira is the kind of woman who sweeps into a room; who wears velvet wraps, long, expensive skirts, woollen winter coats; who doesn’t take no for an answer. She sells loads of computers, especially to the kinds of women who want to seem as modern and ‘on the button’ as Moira is herself. Dad calls her his secret weapon.

  ‘I just wanted to see how you were getting along. Brian said you were much better.’ She smiles understandingly, taking a step closer towards the door. ‘It must have been so difficult for you.’

  Adrian stands behind her, drawing circles in the gravel with his trainers. He’s got throbbing yellow zits on his forehead. I hide behind Mum and make faces at him.

  Mum holds firm, even though Moira seems to tower over her. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she says, ‘I’m in the middle of cleaning.’ And she starts to shut the door.

  When Moira has gone, Mum gets upset. She says it’s just another tactic of Dad’s, that he’s spying on her. She throws the shortbread away without unwrapping it.

  ‘I know I’m not confident like them,’ she says, screwing up her face. ‘I know that I’m a fraud.’

  ‘I’m back on form,’ she gasps, running into the house and bouncing a little on her feet. ‘I’m back on top.’

  It’s early summer and school is just about to break up. The Power Diet!™ is working. Mum says she’s never felt so powerful in her life.

  She’s sweating, her face flushed. She drinks a glass of water and takes a few deep breaths. ‘Oh, that hill,’ she says. ‘It’s a killer.’ She smiles at me. ‘You should come with me, do you good. Get a few pounds off you.’

  She puts Danny Rampling on the stereo and gets her cleaning things out. All the products she buys look like medicines, they all say With Bleach or Antibacterial. ‘Come on, Carmen,’ she says, shifting me off my seat. ‘Go and get changed and put your uniform in the wash. I want to clean this place up. It’s unhygienic.’

  I sit in the lounge, do a few laps on Wipeout, get bored with it and switch to Colin McRae Rally instead. House music tsk-tsks under the drone of the Hoover.

  ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’ Her voice, too close, makes me jump. She switches off the PlayStation with her foot. ‘I found all this,’ she holds up a Morrison’s bag, ‘under your bed.’

  She tips up the bag; wrappers skitter across the floor in a cascade of shimmering colours. Foil from KitKats, scrunched up Mars Bar wrappers, Snickers wrappers, empty Chocolate Button packets, Quality Street papers from Christmas, crisp packets folded into knob helmets like the boys at school make to flick at people, the purple Dairy Milk foil, the gold from Galaxy, a whole handful of greaseproof wrappers from penny chews, Crunchie, Twix Ice Cream, Toffee Crisp, Flake, M&M’s, Fudge, even a Mars Easter-egg box that I folded up so it would go through the gap.

  I don’t know where to look. ‘Dad gave me them,’ I say.

  ‘Your bloody father.’ She blows air between her teeth, making a hissing noise. ‘Just because he gives them to you doesn’t mean you have to eat them. No wonder you aren’t losing anything. Dear God, girl, do you want to be fat and unhappy?’

  ‘I’m not unhappy.’

  ‘Put your shoulders back then.’

  ‘But my room is private.’ My voice is starting to wobble. It comes out all pathetic and high-pitched; I stare into the snowstorm on the TV screen.

  ‘Not until you pay your own rent it’s not.’ She throws the plastic bag at me. ‘Pick them up,’ she says. ‘It’s disgusting.’ She stalks out of the room. I gather the wrappers and stuff them back in the plastic bag. Some of them are really dusty. I can feel tears welling up behind my eyes, but I bite my lip. Don’t cry, I think, don’t cry.

  2

  I was only two and a half when Mum moved away from Birmingham to be with Brian. Sometimes I think I can remember what it was like. If I close my eyes and think really hard, I see a yellow kitchen on a sunny day, powder-puff clouds in the sky, blue-checked curtains furling like flags in the breeze.

  Mum has pictures that she keeps under the bed, of me in fat nappies, crawling around the garden in a place called Hall Green. She showed me Birmingham on the map once, a knot of buildings and roads, bang in the middle of the country.

  She never usually talks about it. She doesn’t even keep any photographs of the family round the house, and we never go there to visit. These last few weeks she’s been full of it.

  ‘Things have really changed in the last ten years, everyone says so.’

  She shows me some glossy brochure advertising all the new redevelopment. ‘The city’s going really upmarket,’ she says, ‘like they did to Leeds.’

  She says she’s going to take me there in the summer holidays for a trial period. Dad’s not coming with us because Mum says he’s too busy, ‘and anyway, he’s not invited. This is about me, sweetheart. For once in my life I’m going to put myself first. You’ll love it,’ she says, ‘I know you will. More stuff to do than round here. And there’s all the family. Your nana and grandad. It’ll be exciting for you. Whole new world.’ She does a little shimmy when she says this, clapping her hands above her head and clicking her fingers like she’s in a pop video or something.

  Although Mum doesn’t talk about her, she’s also got an older sister in Birmingham – Lisa. She’s a beautician. Every Christmas she sends us a gift set of Body Shop bubble baths.

  ‘Cheap gestures,’ my mother said when she opened this year’s pink-themed basket. ‘A few smellies doesn’t make up for much.’

  My mother and Lisa don’t really talk any more. ‘You haven’t got a sister, so you wouldn’t understand,’ she said when I asked why. ‘Always the poseur my sister. Fancied herself as a bit of a pop star, she did. Thought she was going to get into the big time but after all her posing around she ended up doing nails. There’s a lesson for you, Carmen. Don’t get ideas above your station, you’ll just end up doing nails when you’re forty.’ She laughed when she said this, the noise catching in her throat, making her sound like she was choking.

  ‘Look,’ she says, putting her arms around my shoulders, ‘I know I haven’t been around for you as much as I should recently, but all that’s going to change, promise you. How about we try again?’

  She looks me in the face. I can see where her makeup is bleeding into the lines under her eyes. ‘Yeah?’

  I nod and she presses her lips against my forehead. They are dry and scratchy.

  ‘I thought maybe this one.’ She points at her magazine. Liz Taylor’s Classic Diet Tips.

  ‘But she’s dying,’ I say.

  ‘We’re all doing that, darling. But sh
e looked good in the fifties, didn’t she?’ Mum says, pointing at a picture of a pouting Liz Taylor. She sighs. ‘It’s a diet for the fuller figure, you know, a little at a time, so’s you don’t get cravings.’

  My bedroom smells of Pledge and Odour Eaters; she’s even folded all my sweatshirts into neat piles in the wardrobe. I sit with my back to the door and peel open a Chocolate Orange bar, sucking on the segment-shaped pieces. I don’t like all this talk of Birmingham. There’s something funny going on. Something they’re not telling me.

  When Dad comes back I go downstairs to talk to him, chewing sugarfree gum in case Mum smells the chocolate.

  But they’re already arguing. Dad says that if she goes to Birmingham, ‘It’s the end of the road for us, Maria.’

  I hover in the corridor, not wanting to go in.

  Mum changes the subject, mutters something rude about Moira.

  ‘This isn’t about her. You’re obsessed,’ Dad says. ‘She’s done nothing wrong. Poor woman’s terrified of you.’

  ‘Well, is she going to America with you?’

  ‘Yes. She owns half the company, Maria. There’s nothing funny going on. It’s you,’ he says, ‘and your bloody diets. That’s the only funny thing going on around here. Thing is, it’s not funny, it’s tragic.’

  ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with food, Brian. I want my life back. I want prospects. I’m not spending the rest of my life up here while you swan around with Moira. And anyway, if you had any loyalty I would have her job.’

  ‘You were sick, Maria.’

  ‘I’m not now though, am I? I could sell computers if I wanted to.’

  Dad laughs at this. ‘You don’t even know how to switch one on, Maria.’

  ‘See what I mean? You don’t think I can do anything, do you? Well screw you.’ She screams this last bit at him. ‘Screw you.’

  Janice’s new boyfriend is off sick so she’s hanging out with me again.

  ‘Give us a chip.’

  It’s lunchtime and she’s watching me eat a plateful of sausage and chips.

  ‘You done it yet then?’ I say, though I don’t really have to ask. I can tell from the way she walks that she has learned something, a secret that she can’t share with anyone.

  She won’t meet my eye. ‘Sort of,’ she says. ‘I never let him put it in. I don’t want to get pregnant.’ She pauses. ‘At least, not until after I’ve finished school.’

  ‘Don’t you want to go to college?’

  She turns up her nose. ‘And pay all that money? My brother’s doing that, and he’ll be loads in debt when he’s finished. Anyway, Karl says he’ll support me.’ She steals another handful of chips off my plate. ‘We’re gonna get a flat together.’

  She shows me the mobile phone that he bought her. I feel a stab of jealousy. ‘I’m going to go to college first, before I move in with anybody,’ I say defiantly. I know this will piss her off because she’s pretty crap at school. She always gets the worst marks unless she copies from me.

  She changes the subject. ‘What you doing over the holidays?’

  ‘Going to Birmingham,’ I say, dipping my last chip in a puddle of sauce.

  She laughs, ‘Bummer. That’s so, like, unfair. Bring us back a stick of rock.’

  The woman is looking at herself in the shop mirror. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says, ‘at my age you have to worry about necklines.’

  Mum fusses in the background, tweaking imaginary bits of fluff from the shoulders of the dress.

  ‘And see-through, I don’t want it to be see-through.’

  ‘Oh, but we have a very good alterations service, Mrs Feathers. We can so easily sew in a flesh undergarment.’

  Mum smiles at Mrs Feathers as if she is the most beautiful creature she has ever seen. This is a tactic Mum says works every time.

  Oh, go on then,’ Mrs Feathers says, her cheeks gently blushing. ‘I really shouldn’t but Henry did tell me to treat myself.’

  I am sitting behind the counter, crunching cola cubes. Mum gives me a funny look. ‘Who gave you money for sweets? Don’t make such a noise. It puts people off.’

  We’re supposed to be going to Morrison’s to get the shopping in, but we’re late because Mum has been helping Mrs Feathers with her dress. Mum is dedicated to her customers. Something which has made her popular with Mrs Walton.

  ‘I know how to tell people the things they want to hear,’ she says afterwards, standing outside the shop smoking a cigarette. ‘I know how easy it is to be deluded.’

  We wheel our trolley through the sliding glass doors. Mum picks up a special-offer leaflet and looks at it. Two chickens for the price of one. ‘That ought to sort your father out.’

  I jump up on the trolley with one foot and ride it like a scooter, aiming for the banks of bananas.

  ‘Carmen! Stop messing.’ Mum runs after me, grabbing the handle of the trolley.

  We spend ages in Produce, fingering the fruit and veg. Mum isn’t happy until she’s pinched and poked and prodded and squeezed most of the things on display.

  She picks up an orange and shows it to me. ‘See the skin?’ she says, ‘that’s what will happen to your thighs when you get old and fat. Think of that next time you eat a cake.’ She picks up an avocado and puts it in her trolley, then a few seconds later retraces her steps and puts it back. ‘It’s too hard,’ she pronounces. ‘Feel it, Carmen, it’s like a stone. You can’t eat that. Besides d’you know how many calories there are in those things? Millions. Might as well be eating blobs of lard.’

  After Produce is the Bakery: long stainless-steel racks of hot bread, still steaming inside their cellophane. The buttery smell seems to seep into the whole of the shop. Mum picks up a big pillow of a loaf and holds it to my face, the plastic scratching my nose, ‘Smell it,’ she says, ‘it’s like drugs.’

  She’s quiet for a moment, and then she sighs and puts the bread back on the shelf.

  After that, she’s quicker. Grabbing boxes of Ryvita, pots of no-fat cottage cheese, tubs of lite yogurt, a selection of Weight Watchers frozen dinners. She lingers over the peanut butter in the Condiments aisle. For one joyful moment I think she might be about to put it in the trolley, but she reads the back and tuts.

  ‘Devil’s own food,’ she says, putting it back on the shelf.

  When we get to Poultry, Mum bends over the chiller cabinet and prods the chickens.

  ‘Two for the price of one, Carmen, can’t afford to pass that up,’ she says, as if she is trying to explain herself to me. ‘That’ll stop your dad from moaning that I never buy any food. If it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t even be here.’

  I wander up the aisle a bit and look at the ducks; the thick, yellowy fat and dark meat, strange next to the pallor of the chickens.

  She follows me, pushing the trolley so it nudges into my thigh. ‘What you looking at? Urgh,’ she pokes a nail into the duck, ‘it’s all yellow.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be,’ I say pointing at the label. ‘It’s free-range.’

  At the checkout she gives me a pile of things to take back. A pack of iced buns, some frozen chips and a tub of double chocolate ice cream. I try to find interesting places to put them, deciding in the end that the ice cream should go on the shelf with the KitKats, the iced buns in the freezer next to the arctic rolls and the chips in among the bags of potatoes by the door.

  ‘What you looking so pleased with yourself for?’ Mum says when I come back to help her pack the bags.

  Mum doesn’t really like touching meat too much before it’s cooked. A quick dash of salt, a crunch of pepper and a brush of Crisp & Dry before she bangs the door shut and spends ten minutes at the sink scrubbing her hands clean with antibacterial soap.

  ‘You never know what’s been growing on dead meat, you should always wash your hands after cooking, Carmen.’

  I grunt at her from the kitchen table. I’m reading my magazine, trying not to think about how the chicken will come out, dry and stringy, the fat burned to a shell so it will
lift off more easily.

  When she’s finished scrubbing, she sits down next to me and holds my hand. Her skin is rough and peeling. Her fingers are thin and light, like polystyrene.

  ‘What’s in the magazine? Is there a quiz? Let’s do the quiz.’

  I flick through it. ‘Are You a Good Mate?’

  ‘Go on then, ask me.’

  ‘You’re wearing a gorgeous new outfit. But when you get to the party you realize you mate is wearing the exact same thing. Do you: A. Go home and get changed? B. Laugh about it, and pretend to be sisters all night? C. Tell her to go and get changed, because, let’s face it, you look better in it than she does?’

  I look at her. She’s looking away into space, the smoke from her cigarette curling around her head.

  ‘Mum. A, B or C?’

  ‘Read me the question again.’

  I sigh, and read her the question again.

  She laughs this time. ‘Oh C, definitely. Next.’

  ‘You both fancy the same bit of boy totty, he comes over to talk to you. Do you: A. Call your mate over to talk to him, too? B. Tell him about her? C. Grab your chance while it’s yours?’

  ‘Too personal. Next.’

  ‘Mu-um, you’ve got to answer all of them, or it won’t work.’

  ‘All right then, C again. What does it say if you’re all Cs? I know I’m going to be all Cs. Does that mean I’m a bitch?’

  She tries to snatch the magazine away from me.

  ‘Mum.’ I move away from her so she can’t get it. ‘Your mate has made a big fashion mistake and her outfit is a mess. Do you: A. Tell her before you go out and let her borrow an outfit from you? B. Tell her when you’re out? C. Laugh about it behind her back?’

  ‘C again. Told you. Just read me what it says about C.’

  ‘You are a wicked mate. When it comes to scams and double crosses, you rule. You like to put yourself first and you don’t care who knows it. But it might be a good idea to turn your evil powers to good use helping your mates. You have been warned.’

  Mum laughs. ‘There. Told you so. A bitch.’