Kai
I like the station waiting room. When I’m in it I think of that TV program that I used to watch when I was little about Mr. Benn. Mr. Benn was so lucky. He could just go into a changing room—okay, so admittedly a magic one—and then come out a totally different person, ready for an adventure, just because he changed his clothes. I think that must be really good, although impossible, and Dad says hoping for things that are impossible is pointless and stupid. “You don’t want to be pointless or stupid, do you?” he asks. I shake my head. He asks those sorts of questions using a particular voice. I’ve thought about the voice a lot. It’s kind of fake cheerful. A mix between something like the voice girls at school use when daring you to do something and a telling-off that a teacher might fling out. It’s not nice.
Still, I find I do. Hope for impossible things.
I still wish really hard that this station waiting room is like Mr. Benn’s changing room for me. Even though wishes, even those you make on birthdays, never come true. I have to be a different person when I end my train journey from the one I was when I began it. The waiting room has two doors and I always make sure I go in one and out the other. I don’t have to, it’s nothing to do with which platform the train pulls in at, or anything logical, it’s just a thing I keep doing. To see if things change. To see if I am different. To see if everyone is. I haven’t told anyone about my waiting room habit, Dad would be very angry about it. Dad likes me to think rationally. “Like a boy, not a hormonal or superstitious woman. You don’t want to be a hormonal, superstitious woman, do you?” I knew to say no, even before I had to look up both words. Neither is a compliment. Compliments are words like beautiful, reasonable, intelligent. He was not clear about which woman he thinks is “hormonal or superstitious.” I don’t think he means his new wife, Ellie. Most likely he means Mum, although he doesn’t directly talk about Mum to me. Not ever.
He once told me that Ellie “doesn’t make a fuss,” which I could tell he thought was a really good thing because he said it in his kind, content voice. I guess this must be true because she had my baby brother, Freddie, before she even married my dad and she did it so quietly no one knew anything about it, except presumably Dad. I guess he must have known. He just didn’t tell me.
Freddie is very cute, although a bit annoying at times when he doesn’t know I’m bored of a particular game and he just wants to keep playing, “again, gen, gen” is like his war cry. The games he plays aren’t proper games, obviously, as he’s only two. He likes being swung around in circles, which kills my arms after a bit. He likes kicking a ball backward and forward, not exactly between us, because his aim is terrible. And when he’s in the bath he likes me pouring a cup of water over his head. He thinks that is hysterical. But once he laughed so hard and kicked his chubby little legs so much, he slipped and then banged his head on the tap and Dad went mad with me. He was really angry. He made a big fuss, but I think it’s different with men. If they make a fuss it is not hormonal, it’s because they are cross with their stupid wives or stupid daughters. True, Ellie did not make a fuss, but she didn’t really speak to me properly for days and kept giving me bad looks. Like the girls at school sometimes do if you wear the wrong jeans.
Ellie must be hormonal though because she is actually pregnant again (gen, gen? how many babies are they planning on having?! I wonder). Mrs. Roberts, my science teacher, said pregnant women have a lot of “hormonal changes.” This information was given during the lessons on reproduction education. I wish that had not been taught this year. It is really embarrassing that Dad and Ellie keep having babies because everyone in my class knows they must be having sex when other parents are obviously not. I wish I had parents that just did the same as everyone else’s parents. Like telling them off about their untidy rooms, getting a takeaway from the Chinese on Saturdays and complaining about the cost of school trips. To be fair, my dad does do all these things, but he also has sex with his new wife. He has a new wife.
Ellie’s belly is so weird. I can’t keep my eyes off it. She is really skinny everywhere else but now has this mound to carry around in front of her. She doesn’t like me staring, though. She says I am “unnerving.” I looked that up too. Also, not a compliment. She says I’m weird. Me?! I’m not the one with a Space Hopper up my jumper. I try not to get caught staring, though, because it makes Dad cross if I upset Ellie. “She’s very good to you,” he says all the time. As though saying it all the time makes it more true.
There is a kiosk in the waiting room that sells teas and coffees and breakfast to people rushing to work in the city. There are no tables, though—the place is too small. People have to eat their breakfasts standing up or take them onto the train and hope to get a seat. My favorite breakfast is a bacon buttie. I love the smell of warm fat sizzling and white bread frying; it reminds me of my granddad cooking breakfast for me when I was little. It’s usually a woman who serves behind the counter, but sometimes it’s a man. They are from Taiwan. I know because I heard the man tell a customer once. I didn’t know where Taiwan was, and it took ages to find it on Dad’s globe. Most of one Sunday afternoon, but I didn’t mind really, because it was something to do.
The Taiwanese couple tune their small radio in to a classical music channel which seems to be surprising to the passengers, who always look astonished as they soak up the pianos and violins along with the smell of coffee and fried bread. It is certainly a change because in most shops and cafés only pop songs are played. I like the classical music because that also reminds me of my granddad who had old records of composers that have been dead for ages. I remember him telling me their names—Beethoven, Bach and Chopin—but I don’t really know which was which. My granddad died when I was eight, which is so sad. If he was still alive, I think I would know which composer was responsible for which bit of music and maybe I wouldn’t even be sitting in this waiting room. I’d be sitting with him, most likely. In his lovely warm front room that had too much furniture for its small size but always smelled of sunshine and polish. Which was nice.
Obviously, Mum was more sad than I was about him dying because while he was my granddad, he was her dad and dads trump granddads. My dad said the way my mum grieved was indulgent and that it was disrespectful to the memory of my granddad, who liked people to be happy and would not want us crying. I don’t know but I did try not to cry in front of either of them because it upset them both in different ways. Because my mum cried so much, my dad made friends with Ellie. He’s explained it wasn’t his fault.
I think I must take after my granddad because I like people to be happy too. I think I am a person who is happiest when everyone else is happy. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Waiting rooms are not peaceful; people always have a sort of jumpiness about them. I suppose they are worried they are going to miss their train. I know I worry, not if it is late but what if it was canceled? What would I do then? Where would I go? But I like the place anyway. It feels safe, not one place or the other, just where I get to be me. Today it is rainy, so there are puddles of water on the tiled floor which are always tricky for the ladies in high heels, and umbrellas are inconveniently shaken, scattering rain over me. Even so, I think this is where I am happiest because there’s no one to make happy here but me.
The journey starts well. The train is on time. I get a seat with no one next to me, and no one talks to me or so much as smiles in my direction. It is best if they don’t because I’m not allowed to talk to strangers, but some strangers are women who look like grandmas; they don’t know the rules about talking to children, I don’t think. Then it’s embarrassing because my choice is to a) look rude by ignoring them or b) talk to them, which is against the rules. The journey starts to go wrong when there is no one to meet me off the train. There isn’t always. Sometimes I have to get the bus, but I thought today that Dad was going to pick me up. That’s what he’d said. So now I have to think do I a) get the bus but what if he is on his way and he arrives, and I am already gone. That will make him cross or b) wait for him here at the station but it is getting dark and it’s the last bus—if he doesn’t come and I miss the last bus I’ll be in real trouble.
I get the bus.
It’s a ten-minute walk from the bus stop to Dad’s. “Nothing at all,” he says, although I have never seen him catch a bus ever. He drives a BMW car. It’s raining hard now so I walk as quickly as possible, sometimes running, although it is hard to run carrying a suitcase. I do it in seven and a half minutes. I time myself.
I quietly let myself in with my own key. I saw a report on the news about latchkey kids. It made me feel a bit sad. Until then, I thought having my own key was grown-up, now I lie to my friends about it, so they don’t think I’m weird. I pretend there is someone waiting for me with milk and biscuits too.
I take off my shoes and coat at the doorway, because I definitely don’t want to drip rain on the shiny tiled floor. I carry them and my suitcase straight upstairs because I don’t want to leave anything lying around for other people to trip over, because that’s just selfish and asking for trouble. Upstairs I can hear sounds coming from Dad and Ellie’s bedroom. I know I have to sneak past their room without them noticing me because I’m not stupid and I know what sort of sounds they are. Making sex sounds is even worse than rowing sounds. Their bedroom door is open. This is bad for two reasons a) because there is a greater risk of them seeing me b) because I might catch a glimpse of them, which would be gross!! I try to keep my eyes on the floor. I really do. Why would I want to see that but somehow my eyes don’t listen to my brain and I find myself just quickly flicking a glance that way. I don’t even know why I couldn’t stop myself. It’s utterly awful. Worse than I could have imagined. I can see my dad’s hairy bottom thrusting forward and backward into Ellie, who is not lying on her back, like in the picture of women making sex in the textbook we were shown at school—Ellie is on her knees, bent over. They’ve got it all wrong. The sounds they are making—grunting, screaming, breathing fast like they’ve been running forever—prove that it’s wrong! He’s hurting her.
And something else is more wrong. The woman who Dad is thrusting at is not Ellie. She’s a totally different shape. She’s not pregnant for a start, she has huge boobs and my dad is reaching forward and grabbing at them, with the same enthusiasm as he grabs a handful of caramelized peanuts when Ellie puts them in a bowl as a treat.
“Oh,” I say. I don’t mean to. The oh must come out quite loud. Maybe I shouted it or screamed it. I must have, to have been heard above their groans. The woman turns my way, she sees me at the door and starts scrabbling away from Dad, reaching for the sheet, pulling it around her. Dad doesn’t notice me at first, he lunges after her, laughing, “Come here, you little tease!” he says.
I run into my bedroom, slam the door behind me.
When Dad comes to see me a bit later, I am not sitting on my bed. I feel funny about beds now. I am sitting on the floor with my back against the radiator. The warmth is comforting.
“How’s school?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say as usual.
“Good, good.” I’m expecting him to tell me to wash my hands, come downstairs to set the table.
“Who is she?” I ask quickly, before I can decide not to. I think I deserve to know. I am not like Ellie’s best friend or anything, but if I am going to have a new stepmum, I want some warning.
“She’s no one. She’s nothing,” says Dad. He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the wall above my head.
“Nothing?” I repeat, unsure. Confused.
“There are women you marry and there are women you do that with.”
“Make sex, you mean?” I want him to know I am not a baby. I understand.
“Have sex with, yes,” he corrects and I’m embarrassed that I’ve shown I’m not really sure about any of this after all. “The women you marry are something. The others are nothing. Remember that. I don’t want a daughter of mine not understanding that.”
I squirm. I feel I’ve done something wrong, but I don’t know what. Surely he’s the one who has done the wrong thing. “Now wash your hands and come downstairs to set the table. And, darling, obviously as that woman was nothing, we don’t need to mention this to Ellie. It’s between us.”
He doesn’t often call me “darling” and I can’t help but be happy about it.