The funny thing about being utterly terrified and scared and miserable is that it isn’t consistent. I’m not saying that any of us feel better about what’s going on with Mum, but the awfulness of the first twenty-four hours just couldn’t carry on all day, every day. Mum has actually been up and out of bed this week, and while I wouldn’t say that things are back to normal, we’re kind of finding a new ‘normal’. The first night after she told us, I couldn’t sleep at all – every time I closed my eyes it felt like a nightmare and in the end, I got up and opened her diary.
18 April 1987
It’s Easter Day tomorrow! I’m hoping for loads of Easter eggs. I still miss Smokey and I haven’t got a boyfriend. Nobody likes me. All the boys think I’m a big mouth. I really like Michael who sits behind me in maths but all he does is hit me. Mum says that’s how twelve-year-old boys show they like you but I think she doesn’t know WHAT she’s talking about. Seriously – every time he sees me he just whacks me with his pencil case, says something rude about how I look and runs off with his mates, and I REALLY like him – it’s SO embarrassing!
Must go – time to watch telly.
Rachel
Xxx
That could be me writing that! That’s exactly what Ben has started doing – I’ve actually got a bruise on my arm from where he threw a football at me. Can’t believe it means he likes me, though. I’m with Mum – Granny must have been a bit bonkers when she said that.
29 April 1987
I’m SO excited! I’m going to France on the school trip on Monday – it’s the first time I’ve ever been abroad! I can’t wait. But I am a bit worried about leaving Mum and Leah on their own. I always check that the back door is locked and the electricity is turned off at all the sockets before I go to bed – hope Mum remembers to do it when I’m not here.
The next entry is for a month later. There’s nothing about how her school trip went. She’s not very good at writing regularly. I wonder what made her think that the things she did write about were so important?
27 May 1987
Stop the clocks! Hold the phones! Today is a momentous day that will go down in history. Patrick told Beth that Jason told him that Michael said that he fancies me! Hurray! I am no longer the unlovable Rachel, only girl in the universe who nobody finds attractive. It is so excellent!
I’ve actually decided that I don’t like Michael any more. But that’s not the point, is it? SO happy today – I will NEVER forget this day as long as I live …!
I am actually in love with four and a half boys. I really like Matt but he’s a bit of a goody-goody. Gary is a creep but I like him too, and actually I’d just settle for him liking me. Simon is quite nice but would never notice someone like me. Michael is a laugh but too short. Chris is the substitute. It’s not funny really – how would you like it if you couldn’t even look at a boy without falling in love with him?
Yesterday was school fund-raising day for our local hospital. Beth and I raised £33.42 by going around all day with our legs tied together. And I mean ALL DAY! Even when we went to the loo! It was hilarious.
Reading this made me laugh, but then I remembered about Mum and that everything is not OK, and I felt really bad for laughing. I ended up creeping into Mum and Dad’s room later that night. Dad was asleep, but Mum was awake so I lay down next to her and we whispered for hours. I told her about what I’d read in her diary and she laughed and said that, when she was my age, she thought she’d never get a boyfriend. She said that Granny always used to tell her that her time would come and that right now, she was so clever and beautiful that she intimidated boys – but that one day they’d get brave and it’d all change.
That made me smile because she’s always saying that to me too.
Then Mum put her arm round me and told me to close my eyes and she sang me a lullaby – the tune I’d heard her humming the other day, which seems like a lifetime ago now – and I remembered how she always used to sing it to me if I was having trouble sleeping.
‘Lay thee down now and rest,
May thy slumber be blessed.’
Mum sang quietly, and as I drifted off to sleep I thought about the words and thought that it was the most beautiful song that I had ever heard.
Now, though, with Mum making our lunches and being there when we come home from school, it feels as if all that was a nasty dream that we can start to move on from.
Dad has been introducing some new rules to the house. The first one is that we can eat our meals when everyone who intends to eat is sitting down. It’s clever, what he’s done there. It’s virtually the same rule as before, but by changing it just a bit, mealtimes can be more flexible yet Isaac still feels that he is keeping the rule.
Tonight, I am sitting on the stairs waiting for the timer to buzz so that I can get into the bathroom. If left to his own devices, Isaac will sit in the bath for hours. The water will be cold and the rest of the family will be hopping up and down outside, but he won’t come out. Isaac loves water. (This has given Mum and Dad quite a few scares over the years. They taught him to swim pretty quickly when they realized that if they were anywhere within three miles of water Isaac would end up wet before too long.) So Isaac has a rule that he can stay in the bath until his thirty-minute timer buzzes. He sticks to this rule rigidly and won’t get out of the water one minute early – even if you’re hammering on the door with your legs crossed and begging him to let you in.
I’m finding it hard to believe that Mum is really all that ill. She’s been so energetic this week. On Thursday I came home from school and she was outside the front of our house, frantically weeding the flower beds. She said that they needed tidying and Dad’s been saying he’ll get round to it forever, so she was taking matters into her own hands. She certainly didn’t seem ill to me.
I am getting really bored waiting for Isaac when Mum comes upstairs and sees me sitting there.
‘Have you got time for a new rule?’ she asks me.
‘Oh, Mum!’ I groan. ‘What now? Because Dad’s already told Isaac that trying to make scrambled eggs at 4 a.m. is definitely a no-no.’ Honestly, sometimes I find it amazing that my brother hasn’t burnt our house to the ground with his night-time adventures.
‘This isn’t a rule for Isaac – it’s for you!’ says Mum, beckoning me to follow her and heading into her room. She’s made me curious now so I follow her, but I’ll be really annoyed if this is some lame attempt to get me to do a chore.
Mum is standing by her dressing table and has put out all of her make-up. She has some really nice stuff (mostly given to her by Leah, I must add) and is highly possessive about it. I’ve given up trying to convince her to let me use it – all I’ve got is a strawberry lipgloss and some fairy-dust body glitter. I mean, seriously, how old does she think I am?
Mum pulls out the stool in front of her table and guides me into it. She stands behind me and talks to me in the mirror.
‘It’s time you learnt the rules for how to make the most of your beautiful looks,’ she informs me. ‘Not that I’m agreeing to you wearing make-up before you’re sixteen,’ she adds quickly as I start to grin. ‘It’s just something that you need to learn. Granny taught me and I’m teaching you. Besides, you’re twelve next week and that’s a really great age to start looking after your skin.’
I look at all the stuff that she’s laid out in front of me. Lotions and potions in loads of different-shaped bottles – and a lot of cotton wool.
‘The first and most important thing to remember is that beautiful skin is healthy skin,’ she says, and picks up a bottle marked cleanser. I groan inside. I thought this would be fun, like putting make-up on that freaky, disembodied plastic head that Granny brought out of the attic and said that Mum spent so much time playing with when she was a girl. Instead, Mum’s making it sound like a lot of work.
‘It does require a bit of effort,’ says Mum, as if reading my mind. ‘But the most expensive, luxurious make-up in the world cannot cover up a spotty, greasy face.’
I have to agree with her there. Moronic Louise wears make-up all the time at weekends and if you’re ever unfortunate enough to bump into her in town, it can be very hard not to stare at the sight of her bright red lips fighting with her bright red pimples for attention. Not a good look.
Mum has squirted some of the cleanser on to cotton wool and is gently but firmly wiping my face with it. It’s quite relaxing actually.
‘Do you ever wash your face, Liv?’ asks Mum.
How rude!
‘Of course I do,’ I reply, feeling slightly less relaxed.
‘Do you wash it properly? Get rid of all the dirt?’ questions Mum.
I’m insulted now. I thought this was meant to be a nice experience.
‘Yes, Mum,’ I snap. ‘I am one hundred per cent confident that my face is free from any dirt. I think I’d see it, don’t you? I’m not like Isaac, you know – I can actually eat without spreading half of my meal across my face!’
‘OK, OK,’ says Mum, holding her hands up in mock-surrender, ‘if you’re absolutely sure. Just take a little look at this cotton wool, though.’
She holds out the cotton wool that she’s been cleaning my face with and my jaw hits the floor (or should that be my dirty, manky, filthy jaw hits the floor?). The cotton wool is black – well, maybe browny-grey, but disgusting-looking, all the same.
Mum bursts out laughing at my expression and throws the offending item in the bin before bending down to hug me.
‘Have I got your attention now, sweetheart?’ she grins, but I am too shocked to answer her and am busy scrutinizing my face in the mirror to see what else I have failed to notice.
‘Don’t worry, Liv – you’re gorgeous,’ says Mum, straightening up and squirting something else on to yet more cotton wool. ‘You’ve got lovely skin – you can thank your dad for that – but it’s always a good rule to look after what you’ve got. Don’t take anything for granted.’
Our eyes meet in the mirror and for a moment I think I might start crying, but Mum smiles at me and starts showing me the next step in my new beauty regime.
We spend the next thirty minutes cleansing, toning and moisturizing, and then, much to my delight, Mum shows me how to apply eyeliner and eyeshadow and mascara. She even lets me put some lipstick on, but draws the line at foundation and blusher because she says it’ll ruin all the good work we’ve done on cleaning my skin. Then, the best bit – she lets me practise on her! I try really hard to do a good job, but it’s very difficult to keep your hand steady and I end up drawing a jerky line under her eyes that she says makes her look about twenty years older than she is.
When I’m finished, she looks in the mirror and says that I could have a great future ahead of me as a special-effects artist and then we start laughing, and we laugh so much that tears roll down our faces and then the make-up starts running and that makes us laugh even more. I’m laughing so much that my stomach hurts – in fact I can’t remember laughing this hard in ages. Then, just as I’m gasping in a deep breath and feeling like I might collapse with laughter, I glance over at Mum. She’s still laughing but I can see that her face, beneath my awful makeover, is scrunched up as if she’s in actual, real pain and not just laughter aches.
I forgot. For one moment I actually forgot about what is happening to Mum and I laughed as if there was nothing wrong. I feel like I’ve just walked into a brick wall and all I can do is stand there and look at her, my head racing with thoughts that I don’t want to be having.
Mum sees that I’ve stopped laughing and sits down on her bed, pulling me next to her. We sit for a while, cuddled up together, and when I start to get fidgety and move away, I see that some of my make-up has rubbed off on her white shirt.
‘OK, Liv?’ asks Mum, and I nod at her. ‘It’s OK to have some fun, you know,’ she tells me quietly. ‘It’s good to make happy memories.’
I want to tell her that I don’t want memories – I want her. But I don’t say a word. I think that maybe the happy memories aren’t just for me – perhaps she thinks she can take them with her. And I make a silent promise to give Mum as many happy memories as I can. We sit for a little while longer and then Mum calls Dad to take a photo of us. We stand next to the door with our arms round each other and pull the most hideous faces possible – I’ve got my tongue out and Mum is rolling her eyes and puffing out her cheeks – and she says that when the photo is printed it should be labelled ‘Beauty and the Beast’!
After that I can finally get in the bathroom cos Isaac’s buzzer has gone and he’s back in his room. I wash off the make-up and wish that days like today could last forever or be put in a bottle like the ones on Mum’s dressing table, so I could take it out whenever I wanted.
I’ve been reading Mum’s diaries quite a lot this week. Some of it’s a bit boring (quite amazing actually, what she thought was worth writing about), but some of her entries have really made me laugh. It’s kind of cool in a way, like I’m getting to meet my mum when she was young. I think we might’ve been friends if we were born at the same time. One thing’s for sure – she is so totally different now she’s grown-up. I’ve got as far as 1987, so she was nearly thirteen when she was writing this stuff, although she doesn’t sound any older than me, to be honest – and I’m not even twelve until next week, which I totally don’t even want to think about. The very idea of celebrating a birthday seems absolutely wrong. She’s still going on about boys but at least she seems to have forgotten about the guinea pig.
After having such a great time with Mum and the make-up lesson, I’m not in the mood to go straight to bed so I decide to keep on reading from where I left off. The last thing I read was yet another list of her Christmas presents and her telling the diary her views on nudist camps – apparently they’re OK if the nudists are religious. Must remember to ask her about that.
19 August 1987
At Grandma’s. She’s got a headache so not expecting today to be much fun. Wondering what the next year will be like at school. I really like Michael again but we’re such good friends now – d’you think it would make everything weird if we went out with each other? And what if we broke up? Oh – I don’t know …
10 November 1987
Had big argument with Mum this morning when she saw me trying to sneak out to school wearing eyeliner (well, she says ‘sneak’, I say ‘walk’). Honestly, she has no idea about what it’s like being a teenager today – and I’m an ideal teenager – loads of kids I know give their parents a much harder time than I do. Told her that but she refused to change her mind. So unfair.
Hmm. Think I might need to wave this particular diary entry in front of Mum tomorrow – remind her how she felt when her unreasonable mother wouldn’t let her do stuff that everyone else is doing! I read a few more entries where she is mostly going on about a war somewhere far away – it’s all pretty boring so I close the diaries, get into bed and turn off my lamp.
Mum was certainly a bit of a worrier when she was a teenager, although that’s not surprising because she worries about everything now too. She’s good in an emergency, though – she always manages to say something that makes you realize it’s not as bad as you first thought it was.
I start to think about who will help me and Isaac when we get into trouble. Dad’s great, but he isn’t really into talking about how you feel. Mum’s always the one who sits down with me and talks about stuff for ages and ages.
There suddenly seem much bigger things to worry about than make-up.