I close the diary and just stare at it in my lap. I don’t want it to be over. But, whether she knows it or not, in fluid, cursive strokes Margot has joined up the girl in the book and the woman in the kitchen.
As gross as it is to think about Margot getting her sexy on in five-star hotels, I’m glad she found love, real love, again. Even if it was with a married dude. I was worried the Rick saga had finished her off. Maybe there’s hope for me post-Thom.
I shove the diary into my satchel and go to listen at my bedroom door. The TV is still on, but I think Mum’s in bed. I creep downstairs, not sure if I’m feeling brave enough to ask the question that’s now stuck to my brain like matted chewing gum. Stalling for time, I carry on past the lounge and into the kitchen. I put the kettle on and rummage at the back of the cupboard for the jar of mint Options.
‘Tea?’ Margot says, materialising behind me. I bump my head on the cupboard shelf.
‘Ow! No, I was looking for the hot chocolate.’
Margot purses her lips. ‘Oh, you don’t want that instant muck. Let me make you some proper hot chocolate.’
Out of habit and principle I can feel an argument about to launch off my tongue but hold it back. ‘OK. Thanks.’
‘Pass me that saucepan.’ I do as I’m told and she fetches milk. The only light is coming from the lounge, so when she opens the fridge she’s illuminated and, just for a second, she looks exactly the same as the girl sitting on the fence in 1941. She sets the milk on a low heat and retrieves a tin of cocoa powder. She pops the lid off with a teaspoon. ‘What is it you want to say, Felicity?’ she asks, stirring the milk. ‘I can tell there’s something.’
There is. ‘I finished the diary.’
‘I assumed as much.’
I bite my lip, thinking about how to word it. ‘It’s about Grandad. He didn’t die of cancer, did he?’
Margot takes her time. She pours the milk into mugs and stirs in cocoa and sugar until all the lumps are gone. She carries the mismatched mugs to the table and sits opposite me. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she says. ‘How did you work it out?’
‘New York in the seventies.’
‘Ah yes.’ Margot’s face loses its steel and goes slacker than I’ve seen it. She looks so sad. ‘Oh, Felicity, it was the most awful time. He didn’t want Julia to know. He … we … come from a different time. A prouder, more private time, perhaps. It wasn’t like it is now with gay chaps all over the television, and he kept that part of himself a secret, even from his own daughter. Especially from her.’
‘But he died of AIDS. I mean … how did you hide that?’
She blows steam off the top of her mug. ‘That was the year your mum was making that documentary in Cape Town. By the time you both got back, he was almost gone. It happened so quickly. One day he found a strange black spot in his armpit and within months …
‘He made sure she saw him only at home, never on that infernal ward.’ For a moment she says nothing, just staring down into her mug. ‘In the beginning we bought the best private care money could buy, until I realised a lot of the prim, ignorant, idiot nurses were refusing to treat him. We moved to the AIDS ward at St Mary’s, where they at least knew what they were doing.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I try the hot chocolate and it’s at least six million times nicer than the ‘instant muck’. Damn. I hate it when she’s right.
‘I truly hope you never have to witness a plague like that, Felicity.’ She rubs her mouth with her hand. Her eyes unmistakably glaze over. ‘To see those men, those tall, tanned, Adonises, wither away and shrink until they looked like living corpses. God, that ward. It was like being back at the old asylum during the war. A great long room of dying men all lined up like dominoes waiting to fall. Partners side by side in adjoining beds. So many of them couldn’t tell their families. Some of them didn’t have a single visitor. I always made sure I brought extra magazines and the like when I visited Andrew.’
I think of Grandad when I was little – some of my earliest memories are us together in the garden in Hampstead. He was such fun, so healthy, so full of life. I wonder if he was already infected, counting down like a silent time bomb.
‘Dear Lord, it was cruel, and people were so cruel. All I could do was sit at his side as he faded away, day by day. I remember holding his hand, covered in sarcomas. He looked a hundred years old. Those poor, poor men.’
I can’t speak because I’ll cry.
‘I have never, ever in my life felt so useless. So utterly, utterly powerless.’
I shake my head and swallow the giant cube in my throat. ‘You weren’t useless,’ I say. ‘You were there for him. For them.’
Margot nods, saying nothing for a moment. ‘Felicity, I can’t tell you what to do – you have a mind of your own, as you’ve demonstrated on more than one occasion – but I am asking you not to tell your mother any of this. I know you’ll hardly remember him, but think about what your grandfather wanted and think about how ill your mum is. Whether she really needs this information.’
‘I won’t,’ I say, my voice cracking. I quickly swipe the tear off my cheek. ‘I won’t say anything. I’m … I’m so glad I met him before he … and I’m glad I remember him too.’
‘Thank you,’ says Margot, and takes a sip of her hot chocolate. She says no more, but neither can she look me in the eye.
Bronwyn reads the last chapter of the diary on one of the library beanbags. ‘Oh wow,’ she says. ‘It looks like a truce to me.’
I haven’t told them the full truth about Grandad and AIDS. I’m not going to tell anyone, even them. ‘I know. I feel really bad for being so horrible about her now.’
‘Don’t,’ says Danny. ‘She was pretty vile too. She tried to kill your piglet!’
‘Valid. The diary kind of makes sense of everything though, don’t you think?’
Bronwyn nods. ‘It certainly explains why she’s a double-hard mofo.’
‘Right. I’ve been thinking about this,’ I say. ‘It’s like after everything she went through, the only way she could survive it all was to shut down or build these fortress walls or whatever. I can’t say I blame her. After all that, I’d be a dribbling wreck.’ I’m quietly impressed at my amateur psychoanalysis.
‘It looks like she’s trying to let you in now.’ Bronwyn hands me back the diary and I slide it in my bag.
‘Trying is the operative word. She’s still pretty frosty.’
‘Frostier than a penguin’s asshole,’ Danny offers.
‘Ach-a-fi, Dan!’ Bronwyn makes a distasteful face.
The bell clangs, signalling the end of break. ‘See you here at lunch, yeah?’ Danny asks.
‘Sure.’ I have RE now, which I dread because Mr Ramsey is old and a bit odd and everyone makes fun of the weird white stuff on his teeth. Gross, but I do feel sorry for him.
I make my way to the classroom and it’s even rowdier than usual. ‘What’s going on?’ I ask Dewi, who’s waiting in the corridor.
He takes a breath. ‘Mr Ramsey is off sick or something, like.’
‘Just go in and sit down quietly,’ future Mrs Thom Deacon, Miss Crabtree, says over the ruckus. ‘I’ll find out where the supply teacher is.’ She shuffles off in her FLAT SHOES and I briefly imagine pushing her down the stairs.
It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself Thom doesn’t like me like that, I haven’t quite got rid of the pins and needles in my heart when I think about him. I shake it off. I’ve got much bigger things to worry about. A crush is the least of my worries.
We file into the classroom and, without a responsible adult present, it’s all a bit Lord of the Flies. God, people are immature. Case in point: I’m hardly over the threshold when someone slams into my right shoulder, hurrying to get past me. ‘Ow!’
‘Oops!’ shrieks a loud voice as my satchel slips off my shoulder. I recognise the tone at once. Megan. ‘Sorry, love, didn’t see you there.’ I suspect she did because she then kicks my bag across the floor and the contents spill out.
‘Megan, don’t be a bitch, yeah?’ From the flash of anger in her eyes, I’d say now is not the time for Dewi to step in and be chivalrous.
In my haste to scoop up exposed Tampax before boys learn the secrets of womanhood, I totally forget about the diary. ‘Ooh, what’s this?’ Megan crows. ‘Is it your diary?’ She snatches it up.
Oh, shitballs. I can’t show that I’m bothered or she’ll know how precious it is. I play it cool. ‘Megan, give it back, please. It’s not mine.’
‘Oh my God! What does it say?’ Rhiannon cackles.
‘The Secret Diary of Lady Felicity Fanny-Fart,’ Megan says in a ludicrously posh accent. ‘Dear diary, today I did a fanny fart.’
Some of my classmates laugh. I suppose ‘fanny fart’ is pretty funny in an alliterative sort of way. Megan starts to flick through the pages and I grit my teeth. it won’t take much for the whole thing to fall to pieces. ‘Megan, please.’ I reach for the book, but she snatches it away.
‘Megan,’ Dewi tries again. ‘Give it back, yeah?’
‘God, if you love her so much, why don’t you come and get it?’ Megan strides across the classroom and I try my very hardest to keep cool. I have no choice but to trail after her. Megan pulls herself onto the teacher’s desk and starts to read at random in the same fake accent. ‘Tuesday 21st January, 1941. I intended to write yesterday, but I was simply too exhausted. What’s this bollocks then? You writing a little story?’
What else can I do? ‘It’s my grandma’s diary. Please, Megan, give it back. It’s really old.’
Wrong thing to say. Knowing how valuable it is, her eyes light up. She’s finally found the chink in my armour and, boy, is she gonna slide the knife right in. ‘Oh, I better be really careful with it then, hadn’t I, like?’ She holds it upside down and gives it a shake. The photos and Dear John letter from Rick fall to the floor.
‘Megan, stop,’ I say forcefully. ‘Look, I don’t know what I’ve done to piss you off, but can you not take it out on my grandma?’
‘Oh no, is Princess Felicity gonna be in trouble? Better not rip it, had I?’ She tears a page out and lets it drift to the classroom floor.
‘Megan!’ I cry, my voice shrill and whiny. ‘Stop it!’ I feel so feeble. ‘Please! God, what do you want me to say and I’ll say it.’ Sorry I saw you hooking up in a cave? Sorry for sounding a bit posh? Sorry that Dewi ever spoke to me? Sorry I don’t have a sketchy alcoholic mum?
She suggests I perform an intimate act on Dewi. I roll my eyes, but Dewi jumps in again. ‘Megan, don’t be disgusting.’
‘Oh, as if you wouldn’t,’ she scoffs.
‘Clearly that’s not going to happen.’ I hold out my hand again. ‘Please can I have it back?’
‘Rhiannon, you remember in history when we had to make our letters look all old?’
‘Yeah,’ Rhiannon says. ‘We had to burn the edges.’
‘Good idea!’ Megan slips a cheap pink cigarette lighter from out of her coat pocket, the sort you buy five-for-a-pound at the market.
‘Megan, don’t …’ I say. She will not burn that diary.
Dewi goes to snatch it back, but Megan sparks the lighter, holding the book hostage. ‘Come any closer and it goes up in flames …’
‘Please, Megan, you have no idea how much that means to my grandma.’
‘Aw, poor little Fliss. Are you going to cry?’
I make one last snatch for it. With a determination in her eyes that suggests she’s not just mean, she’s a freaking sociopath, Megan starts to burn the bottom corner of the pages.
What I do next is all a bit out-of-body experience. The nearest thing I can lay my hands on is a WORLD’S BEST TEACHER mug with dried coffee stuck to the bottom. The rage is so blinding I hardly see as I pick it up and smash the thing into her fucking face.