“Tell me everything,” gasps Kim.
Mrs. Saddler’s pushing off the bus in front of me so I say, “I’ll ring you later,” and click off.
Back home Mum starts the minute I get in. “Alexandra?” she yells from her usual position in front of the telly and she’s using the name.
“It’s Alix with an i,” I yell back. But she never listens. I’m named after Grandma so she refuses to shorten it.
“The supermarket delivery came,” Mum goes on. “I expected you hours ago.”
She sounds really grumpy; she’s probably been sitting watching the clock all afternoon.
I’m actually thirty-four minutes early but there’s no point arguing.
Mum’s been ordering the shopping online since she can’t drive with her broken leg. It happened when she got out of bed. She was just getting up and somehow she tripped and bam! By the time the ambulance came, I thought she might die just from screaming. It’s quite a bad break and she’s no good on crutches. She might even lose her office job, which is only temporary anyway.
I took on a newspaper route, even though I’ve got loads of course work. Well, we’ve got to eat, haven’t we? And Dad’s not doing anything to help.
I put my head around the living room door and nearly faint from the heat. The log-effect gas fire is roaring and the room smells from dirty plates and apple cores on the coffee table. Mum’s lounging around as usual with her leg up on the footstool.
Mum still sleeps in the living room, which is quite handy now she’s broken her leg. Our cottage only has two bedrooms. I have the little one at the back, overlooking the sea. Mum has a bed, which turns into a sofa in the day, and she keeps all her clothes in my wardrobe. Of course she could move into the big front bedroom now that Grandpa has died, but she doesn’t want to.
“When I’m ready,” she keeps saying, and now of course that’ll be months.
She could try a bit harder with the crutches, though, couldn’t she, I think now as I glare at her from the doorway. She’s wearing her baggiest jeans that she’s ripped up the left side because of the plaster, but she’s put safety pins all along the rip.
Mum was a punk when she was younger. She had the only Mohawk on Hayling Island. Green and pink. Tragic. But when she met Dad he made her shave it off. She still wears sort of punk fashion, with safety pins in her jeans and thick black boots, even though she’s forty-one and beginning to go gray at the sides. “Joe Strummer’s older than me,” she always says when I point out a gray hair.
He’s in the seventies punk band, The Clash, and actually, the music’s pretty cool.
She’s into spoken-word poetry and stuff like that. Before Dad left and Grandpa died she went out every Wednesday night reading out her poetry in pubs. I went to see her once. Dad refused, said he wanted to watch something on the telly, but now I think he went out with the Gremlin. Mum looked really good, with blond highlights in her hair, which is darker than mine, and kohl around her eyes and her arty nail polish. They all clapped and cheered when she finished. I felt quite proud and she let me have a sip of her beer when the bartender wasn’t looking.
But she seems to have forgotten all about that since she broke her leg.
“Everyone calls me Alix, even Grandpa did,” I grumble to her now.
But Mum ignores it. “Just sort out the shopping,” she snaps, “we’ll have rolls and cheese for supper. My leg’s been killing me all morning.”
Another boring sandwich, I think, but she hears me. I forgot to flip the silent switch.
“Sor-ry,” she shrieks. “I can’t help not being a superstar TV chef!”
Kim’s dad is a chef at a big hotel in Portsmouth. He makes the best steak and chips in the universe. And he makes sticky toffee pudding.
Mum grapples for the remote control and switches channels. As I go back to the kitchen I can hear the raucous laughter of some quiz show pouring through the cottage. I hate those programs.
Trudy’s looking up at me with her gorgeous spaniel eyes, puzzled at the loud voices, and I whisper to her, “I have to do everything around here, it’s so not fair.” I bury my face in her soft coat and wonder how things got so bad. I never used to think about stuff like I do now.
Trudy starts to lick my face and it calms me like always. I give myself a proper doggy shake and then start sorting out the shopping. I’m putting the cans in the cupboard wondering where all this food comes from and I find myself thinking about Samir again. He can’t have been born here, can he? Because his brother doesn’t speak good English.
Then I pick up a packet of coffee and look at the label. I’ve never even thought about this before but did you know that coffee comes from Kenya? And the sugar’s from Malawi. It’s Fair Trade, which I think is meant to be good. There’s a useful fact on the packet: Elephants run at 25 mph.
My top speed is 6 mph and I’ve only seen elephants in the zoo. Must be amazing seeing them out your bedroom window if you live in Africa. Maybe Samir used to ride elephants in his country, although he’s not black, so is he from India?
I wander back into the living room holding the sugar packet and say to Mum, “Do they have elephants in India as well as Africa?”
But you know how with adults if you choose the wrong moment? Her face wrinkles with rage and she huffs, “I missed that answer! Can’t you get on by yourself for one minute?!”
I feel like my blood is about to boil over. It’s been a totally worthless day and now Mum hits the roof because I ask her a question about elephants!
So I yell back, “Didn’t you know slavery was abolished two hundred years ago?!” Grabbing Trudy’s leash I rip my coat off the peg and I’m down the path in a nanosecond, the front door slamming so hard it practically takes the windows out.
“I’m fed up!” I yell. Trudy looks at me but I don’t care who else is listening. Some of the neighbors are out in their gardens in the houses opposite, nattering over the fences, but they don’t hear. They think I’m just a stupid kid anyway.
Better face up to it, Alix, I moan to myself as we tear down the yacht club road to the beach, you’re on your own now. Mum’s gone into free fall, hanging on to me like her parachute just failed; Grandpa’s dead—God, I hate that word—and I’ve got to give up my silly baby fantasies that Dad’s going to turn up bored with the Gremlin, begging us to take him back. He never even rings. Who’s going to look after me? I can’t even relight the boiler when it blows out in an east wind. “It’s coming straight from Siberia,” Grandpa used to say. He was a sailor and knew about winds. He also knew how to look after us.
We head past the Lifeboat Station and down onto the beach. When the tide goes out you can run for miles on the sand and I know everyone is supposed to worship the sun but summer just makes me hot and sweaty. I prefer winter. On gray days like today you can hardly see where the beach stops and the sea begins.
There’s only about fifteen minutes of daylight left but there are still a few boats out on the sea. Their lights coming on like lonely fireflies make me feel even more miserable. I can’t be bothered to run with Trudy anymore, so I just wander down to the old concrete pillbox. Sometimes teenagers hang around here, drinking beer and lighting fires on the beach when it gets dark. I’ve seen Lindy Bellows here with her brother and his gang, smoking joints probably. I keep well away.
But today it just stinks of wee.
Then my phone goes. I wrench it from my jacket pocket. It’s Kim.
“Suicide bomber?” she squeals down the phone and for a second I can’t think what she means.
Then I remember and start to tell her about Samir being bullied by the hoodies and my suspicions about Naazim and I must admit they sound really silly when I say them out loud.
“But did you actually see anything, like sticks of dynamite?” Kim says, beginning to laugh.
“Well no,” I say.
“Or videos of Osama Bin Laden hidden down the back of the sofa?”
She’s really warming up now and, of course, she’s my best friend so she knows me really well.
“Honest, Ali, you’re such a drama queen, Samir’s just some nobody in our year and Naazim is his boring brother.”
Kim always tries to keep my feet on the ground. She’s usually the one who stops me when I go into a real fury.
“Samir’s all right. He’s got nice eyes,” I say without thinking. There’s a pause and I’m wondering if the signal’s gone. Then Kim says, “Well, if you like that sort of thing.”
If you like that sort of thing? What does she mean?