Читать книгу Alice By Accident - Lynne Banks Reid - Страница 6

I was born in Brighton and on April 8th I will be ten. I don’t think I’m pretty but I have strait teeth and big eyes and my hair is nice but I wish Mum would let me have it cut (and have my ears perced) but she says I can’t till I’m SIXTEEN!! My mum is a solicitor. I have no brothers or sisters. I have two grandmas and one grandad. I may have another grandad too. I have some aunts and an uncle and cousins but I don’t see them exept once I met my Auntie Carla and my cousin James who’s a baby and sweet but boring when they came to visit us from Liverpool. I used to have a pair of minicher hamsters and a goldfish called Jason because he was golden like the golden fleece. The hamsters were called Itchy and Scratchy after the cat and mouse in The Simpsons. They all died. I cried most about Jason, and I haven’t had a pet since then. I had a Tamagochi cyberpet but that was yonks ago. I want another pet. I’d like a dog but I know it would be too hard to look after it and they cost too much to feed. But something small like another hamster or maybe a white rat. Rats are very soshable and like to stay in your pocket.

In Brighton we lived in a flat on a main road. I never went outside by myself because it was dangerous. Gene my grandma said I was a battery child, that’s like chickens who are always kept indoors, but in London I’m a bit more free-range. We live in a house my grandma lent us. It’s bigger than the flat and it’s got a garden and it’s in a quiet street so I can ride my bike and play outside, and there are other kids, but not the ones I go to school with. But I still think of our flat in Brighton as home. That’s where my proper room is with most of my things in it including my bed and my hammock and my fairy doll and my big armchair where my stuffed animals live. All exept Benny my blue bear, I brought him with me of course. I wish we could go back there but we can’t because Mum works in London and it’s too far to commute. English is my second favourite subject after Art. I always get As in Art.

That’s my life.

B+. It’s good, Alice, and would have got an A if your punctuation had been better. I know, you get carried away, but presentation matters – try harder! And why are you doing this strange joined-up writing? Please PRINT. Spelling (not so bad this time) – copy 5 times each: pierced, miniature, sociable.

My life? Well all I can think of that isn’t private. Talk about boring, but it’s what she asked for. I wrote it all in my grandma’s kind of writing, joined up and with loops for the b’s, h’s, g’s, j’s, k’s, q’s, y’s and l’s. Little f’s have two loops, top and bottom, they’re a tail-letter and a tall-letter. I can’t do the capital letters in Gene’s kind of writing exept the F’s and G’s. I practised F’s when she first showed me because they’re fun to write, it’s like drawing a fancy design, like this . Capital G’s are fun too, you can do two kinds or . I like best of course but it’s not very G-ish.

I’ve been sent up to bed. Mum got fed up with me because I keep talking about the row she had with Gene so she said “Go to bed and read, I want to watch TV.” She watches TV alot. She used to read me bedtime stories but she stopped. She said because now I can read for myself but I think it’s because I complained because she got sleepy in the middle and her voice sort of went away and I had to keep nudging her. She got really hurt feelings and wouldn’t read to me any more even when she wasn’t sleepy.

Gene used to read to me. She read really well because she’s an actress, she did different voices for all the caracters in the stories. She used to sing songs to me too when I went to stay with her in the country. She knows millions of songs with all the words. I’m really upset with Gene but Mum says even if you get angry with people you should try to remember the good things about them. Mum said that for when I’m angry with her, but I’m using it for Gene. Only it doesn’t work all the time cos the anger is too strong. Well it’s not all being angry, it’s mostly being sad because I miss her. Still who wouldn’t be angry with a grandma who has a row with your mum and then doesn’t see you any more.

When I wrote that last bit I started crying so I stopped. I cry alot when I think about Gene so I think I’ll stop thinking about her.

I was quite pleased with getting a B+, and I copied the spellings, which I don’t always. Only three, it’s a miracle, I usually get a dozen, maybe the Brandy medsin is working. She is SO STRICT AND PICKY banging on about presentation. Putting in quote marks and paragraphs is just so fiddly I can’t be bothered. After the lesson she kept me back and said “I want you to stop this silly show-off writing.”

I said it’s called cursive. She said I know what it’s called but we don’t do cursive writing in British schools any more it’s too hard to learn. Gene told me she’d probably say that and what she means is it’s too hard to teach. Gene said that for hundreds of years kids learnt to do cursive and do good penmanship and they still do it in America but here now they just do joined-up print which is babyish and a cop-out.

I said to Miss Brand “but I like writing cursive and Brandy said quite crossly “Well you can’t, unless you can do it properly it looks like a spider that got drunk on ink. Everyone larfed and I felt a bit hurt. It didn’t put me off though. I’m going to practise the capitals secretly. You can’t join-up Brandy’s kind of capitals. Gene said if you have to keep lifting your pen between letters you write much slower and that makes sense. I want to write fast because I’m going to write alot.

At least Brandy didn’t make me copy my life story all out again. Nicola and Alexandra had to cos they got Cs. You have to if you get anything under a C+. But she said “Basicly it was good. You see you could write your life story.” My life story will be ten years long in April. Till now it’s only nine and a half years long. (It’s true I don’t remember the first three and only bits after that until I was about eight.)

I’ve decided I’m going to write my ortobiography in here in cursive in my special notebook. First I’ll practise some cursive capitals. I’ve got them all written by Gene on a piece of paper with extra lines on it so the spider doesn’t look so drunk. F and G first and then I’ll do the others that aren’t so fancy but they’re still fancier than Miss Brand’s boring print ones.

The only one you can’t join to the next letter is a P because it ends too high up.

I’m going to draw pictures in here too, I’ve just thought of it, it will be an ilustrated ortobiography. I’ll start with a picture of Peony. She’s my child minder’s little girl so I see her every day after school. She’s only eight but she’s completely mad. She wears crazy clothes and hats with things stuck in them like the bottoms of old shoes and paper flowers and choclate rappers. She makes her mum buy her crazy clothes in jumble sales and she actully wears them outside like she cut two pairs of trowsers up and pinned the wrong legs together and she wears different shoes on each foot. Once she went to school in a mad outfit (she changed on the way behind a hedge in someone’s front garden!!) and they sent her home only she couldn’t go because they haven’t got a phone so her mum couldn’t come and get her so she wore all this funny gear all day, the other kids kept falling off their chairs larfing and the teacher was going bananas.

There. That’s Peony in her odd legs and crazy hat and that silky blouse down to her knees. It’s good.

I don’t want to write about when I was very small because I did babyish things, maybe I will later. So I’ll write about something interesting that I still think about and that’s Pierre-Luc.

He was Mum’s boyfriend and he was French. He was very nice and I liked him and Mum liked him. He came around alot and he used to take us for meals to Pinocchio’s which was my favourite restaurant and it still is. We don’t eat out much in London. Now Mum’s working she’s often too tired to go out or cook and besides she is still saving money so we eat mainly beans on toast and salads and sometimes we phone a number and they bring you pizzas to the door. But they’re never as good as the ones we used to get in Pinocchio’s. My favourites are margeritas. That’s tomato and cheese. I’m not allowed to eat red meat because you can get mad cow disease. Every time I do something a bit silly Mum thinks I’ve got mad cow disease!! We’re practically vegetarians exept for chicken (sometimes) and fish but I hate fish. (Exept tuna.)

Once when Pierre-Luc started coming around I asked Mum if he was my dad. She said NO and don’t say that to him. That was the first time I remember asking her why my dad didn’t live with us. She said “because he doesn’t love me.” I said why not, I love you, and she said you can’t order love. He just didn’t and he couldn’t help it. I said so why is he my dad, and she said, “You’ll understand better when you’re older.

I was only about six then. I don’t know if I understand better now. Gene said people shouldn’t have babies if they aren’t a couple. If they don’t love each other and want to be together. When I told Mum that Gene said that, she didn’t say anything but I could tell she was furious. When I asked her why she was upset she said, “That means she thinks I shouldn’t of had you.” Next time I saw Gene I asked her if that was true, and she wouldn’t say so I nagged her to answer and she finally said I love you so I can’t unwish you, but still it’s not a good way to have a baby, you ought to be married first or at least have a partner.”

I think about that alot. Especially since the Big Row. It’s part of why I’m on Mum’s side and against Gene. How can you like a person who thinks you shouldn’t of been born (even if she is your grandma, I mean especially?)

Anyway back to Pierre-Luc. They used to kiss alot but they used to fratch alot too. Fratch is Mum’s and my word for small quarrelling. I liked Pierre-Luc but I loved Mum much more so I was always on her side but I could see she was making him annoyed. I said don’t pick on Pierre-Luc or he won’t come around any more or do grown-up cuddling with you. Him being in the flat made me feel very safe.

Because once when he wasn’t there we had a prowler. Mum went to draw the curtains on our french windows into the back garden and she saw him out there in the dark. He’d climed over the wall from the side street and he was just standing there looking in. Mum was so scared she screamed really loud and I got a bad fright and started to cry and ran and hid in my hammock. He jumped over the wall and ran away and Mum called the police but they never caught him and I didn’t feel safe after that unless Pierre-Luc was staying the night. I always made Mum close the curtains even in the daytime in case the prowler came to watch us, and we just put on the lights. When Gene visited she always put on a funny deep voice and said “Ah! Stijian gloom!” Or “Darkness at noon.” (I never found out what stijian means, Gene said she didn’t know either but it sounds really gloomy.) Then she used to pull back the curtains which Mum thought was cheeky because it wasn’t her flat, but I wasn’t scared when Gene was there. After I was about eight I stopped being so scared but by then it was a habit with Mum and we only had the curtains open when Gene came so we had stijian gloom all day.

By that time Pierre-Luc had left for good. He never said goodbye. They had one last fratch and he said “You are always creeteesize me! Eef you feel like zat I weel leave and not come back.” When he did leave and didn’t come back I was angry with Mum and told her off. I said he was nice and he took us out and you made him go away. She said men have to respect me and I said he did respect you and she said no he didn’t, not enough. I said why not and she said that’s just how men are.

I suppose my dad didn’t respect her enough as well as not love her. I have fights with my mum but I don’t understand how anyone could not love and respect her.

I’ll write a list of why she should be respected.

First she’s a woman and women are better than men. They aren’t so vilent and by far the most criminles are men. Women live longer and they have babies which you need to be strong for and it’s nearly always the man who runs off when they’ve had them and the women stay.

Second she’s done everything she’s done by herself. She hasn’t got a family to help her. My other grandma married a man who

No, I’m going to tell that part properly, like a story.

My mum grew up in Liverpool. She had a big sister called Dawn and a big brother called Robert and a younger sister Carla. She’s the aunt I met, the one with baby James (he hasn’t got a dad either). Mum’s father was OK to the others but he used to pick on Mum and hit her all the time. I just can’t imagine what my mum would do if some man tried to hit me, I think she’d kill him. She nearly killed a babysitter we had once who slapped me. But her mother just sat there. She let Big Pig get away with it and sometimes she even joined in. (Big Pig’s what Mum calls him.)

Then one day when my mum was sixteen she was out shopping and she saw a man. He was walking down the street towards her. She looked at him and she couldn’t believe it because he looked like her. He looked so like her she suddenly knew something. She knew the man who had picked on her and hit her all her life and that she thought was her dad wasn’t her dad at all. The man in the street was her dad. Only by the time she knew this he’d gone past into the crowds.

She ran home as fast as lightning and burst in and there was her mum and she shouted at her, “Your Big Pig husband isn’t my dad and why did you let me think he was?” and her mum was shattered. She said “How do you know?” and Mum said because I’ve just seen my real dad. And her mum burst out crying and locked herself in her bedroom.

Then the Big Pig came home and Mum had a good look. She saw him with new eyes. She’d sometimes wondered why she looked so different from him, when her brother and sisters were like him. (AND she was cleverer than all of them. She didn’t tell me that but I know it’s true because of what she did later.)

So anyway B.P. started shouting and swaring at her and putting her down and she said you can’t talk to me like that any more because you’re not my father.” And he went mad and said I’ve always looked after you you ungreatful little something really rude, and she said all you’ve done was made me out to be a nothing and then he tried to hit her and she went mad and picked up a big kitchen knife and said if you touch me I’ll use this and he swore at her more but he was really scared and her mum came running in acting crazy and tried to get the knife off her. They were all acting crazy.

In the end Mum’s big sister Dawn who was really her half-sister came home and she got the knife away from Mum and calmed things down, but that night Mum packed some things and went out of their house where she’d always lived and she went to a friend’s house from school and stayed there. After that she never went back home exept once to get her things. She got an after school and Saturdays job and paid her friend’s parents for the room and later she got her A-levels and got into university which no one else in her whole family ever had. And that’s one good reason why you have to respect my mum because most people of sixteen would of crawled home and just put up with it because they’d of been so scared of everything being different and being on their own.

My grandma Gene told my mum off when she found out she’d told me all this about her stepfather hitting her with his belt and about the knife and everything when I was only about five. I heard her when I was ment to be asleep. She said “How could you wish all that on to a little girl. But Mum said “Alice had to know about it to understand why we don’t see my mother and why I would never ever go back to Liverpool.” I’m glad now that she told me when I was young before I could imagine it properly. I kind of got used to it but when I think about it like now, I just want to go and do something really bad to Big Pig for hurting my mum and spoiling her child time and not respecting her. It makes me wish she’d stuck the knife right into him and made him scream like he did her when he hit her bare legs with his belt when she was only little just because she wasn’t his little girl.

I’m writing this over days and days, not all at once. My cursive’s getting better. I can write much faster now.

Today I drew a picture of my old room in Brighton in Art and got another A. It was fun drawing the hammock and I put Benny in it even though he’s with me.

Now the number three reason why my mum deserves to be respected.

In my old school there were other girls in my class with single mothers and not one of them’s mother was a professional exept one and she had her profession before she got divorced. They mostly either lived on benefit or had part-time jobs or low-paid jobs. My mum had me right after she finished university but just before I was born she passed her exams and got her degree but she was pregnant and living with the medical students so it was only a desmond.

That’s a joke Mum told me. There’s this famous black priest called Desmond Tutu in South Africa. And when you say you got a desmond at university it means you got a 2–2 degree. 2–2 like Tutu. A First is the best, then there’s a 2–1, then there’s a desmond which is third-best but for Mum it was brilliant because she was pregnant and didn’t have anyone to help her.

She was living with five other students and they were all men medical students exept her. They drank loads of beer and they never ever washed up and the table that was for all of them was always covered with dirty dishes and jars of jam and beer tins and stuff so if you made room for a mug at one end, something fell off at the other end (Mum told me this like a big joke but I tried it once, I put every single dish and pot we had on our table in Brighton and then tried to push a mug on, and a glass fell off the other end!! Lucky it was a thick one so it didn’t break.) and the place kept getting filthy and she was the only one who cared so she was the only one who cleaned up.

They often got drunk and noisy so she could hardly study or even sleep and they teased her rotten and they made sexist remarks. They even teased her if she stood up for herself. They wouldn’t let her watch her favourite programmes on TV either, they only wanted to watch sport and other stupid stuff and if she argued they said this flat is a democracy and it’s five votes to one. She says she still doesn’t know the end of a really good old film called “The Letter” that starts with Betty Davis shooting someone because they just turned it off in the middle to watch stupid football.

When they found out she was pregnant though, they got a bit nicer and didn’t let her lift things and didn’t tease her and one of them used to bring her mugs of tea in bed in the mornings to stop her being sick. But they still got drunk and made a noise and a mess and it was really hard for her to study so that’s why she got a desmond instead of a First which she could of I bet if things had been different, like she’d had a proper family to help her and a proper home.

But getting a degree doesn’t mean you’re a professional. You have to go on studying, and when I was about three Mum started studying to be a solicitor. It takes about four years only it took Mum five because she had to look after me. She was on benefit then because she didn’t want to leave me and she couldn’t afford proper child care. But she studied at home mostly after I was asleep.

Sometimes she had to go to classes and take exams and then she had to leave me with a neighbour. Mrs Blewitt. I still remember her really well. She was old and fat and her flat smelled. Mum said it was her dog but I think it was her. She was always creepy-crawly in front of Mum and said things like “Alice and I are going to wonderland today aren’t we dearie? but when Mum went away she changed and got really cross and crabby. She used to stick me on her mouldy old sofa covered with dog-hairs and say “don’t you move miss or Lady will bite you. Lady was the dog. She never bit me but I always thought she would and I was dead scared of dogs for years until Gene and Copper cured me. Copper was Gene’s dog, a water spaniel, much bigger than Lady and when I first went to Gene’s and Grandad’s cottage I was scared to death of her but I’m not scared of her any more even when she jumps up on me. I wonder how she is I haven’t seen her for ages and when I saw her last which was last summer she was going to have puppies. Last summer was really good but I don’t want to write about it because it gives me that pain. I wish I wish I wish Gene and Mum hadn’t quarrelled. A real quarrel not a fratch.

Mrs Blewitt brought me my lunch that was always jam sandwiches on a plate to the sofa but she didn’t talk to me exept to tell me don’t move. She would shuffle around and dust all her dinky little ornaments and go into her bedroom for a lay-down. She didn’t have a TV. She played the radio all day, but it was all talk radio and I didn’t understand it much. I was so bored I slept most of the time.

She always told Mum in her creepy-crawly voice that we’d been for a nice walk but we never went out exept once she had to take Lady to the vet. She didn’t hold my hand crossing the road like Mum always did because she was holding Lady and saying goo-goo things to her like poor little girlikins got a pain in her wickle toofipeg. (Yuck.) She had to leave Lady there. When we got back she made me go to the sofa, but when she was having her lay-down I got off the sofa and walked about the room and took some of her little china animals and played with them on the floor. I felt quite safe because Lady couldn’t bite me from the vet’s, but she came out and caught me. Mrs Blewitt did, not Lady. Mrs B was so mad she trod on a china elefant on the floor and then she said “Look what you made me do, I ought to beat you black and blue!!!”

She picked me up and threw me back on the sofa, really threw me, like a doll or something. It didn’t hurt much but it scared me so badly I threw up, and then she shouted and screamed at me and made me clean it up. After that the sofa stank of my sick.

I was going to tell Mum that time, but in the end I didn’t. I never told how Mrs Blewitt changed or about the sofa and Lady. I even made things up that we’d done. Of course I know now it was stupid but I was only five and I thought Mrs Blewitt would know I’d told and would tell Lady to bite me next time I was there. So I stayed on the sofa all day exept when I had to pee and then I called Mrs Blewitt to take me to the loo and make Lady stay in her basket.

Around that time I got different. I just sulked and got angry with Mum alot and had tantrums. I threw things and shouted at her and wouldn’t go to bed. That’s when I started really fussing about what I ate. I started peeing my bed and even peed on the floor in our flat. I didn’t know why I was doing it. Mum got very worried about me. She asked if there was ever a man at Mrs Blewitt’s but there wasn’t.

Then she took me to Brenda. Brenda was my therapist. I used to go there once a week to play and I loved it there. There was a sandpit and dolls and things to draw with. I had toys at home but it was nice to have different ones at Brenda’s and Brenda sort of played with me. She would ask me to pretend that one of the dolls was me and one was Mummy and there was a man doll that Brenda said was daddy. He made me giggle because he had a willy under his trowsers. I said I don’t have a daddy but she said, everyone does, pretend this doll is your daddy. Would you like to talk to him? I said no. She said try, and I said hello daddy, and the doll just lay there with his willy and I couldn’t think of anything for him to say back.

But I knew how to make up plays with dolls because I used to do it all the time with Gene. So I made the man doll be Pierre-Luc (he was still around then). I made them fratch and then I was going to make them kiss and make up like they really did but I stopped because even when I was only five I knew that grown-up cuddling is private.

One time I pretended that the woman doll was Mrs Blewitt and I told her I thought she was the meanest person in the world and that she smelled and then I buried her in the sand. She said don’t don’t and I did her voice, like Gene did when we played to make it seem real, and dropped wooden bricks on her. I asked if there was a dog doll (to be Lady) and Brenda gave me a stuffed dog. I made Lady try to dig Mrs Blewitt up while I threw more sand on her with my other hand. In the end I made Lady growl and bite me and I dropped a big wooden brick on her and killed her.

But that went wrong because Brenda thought I’d killed Mummy!!! And I said of course not, that’s not Mummy. Then she said poor old dog, and I didn’t say anything. Then she said what dog is that? I said it’s just a dog. She said have you got a dog and I said NO THANKS I hate dogs. She said well you certainly seem to hate that one.

I think maybe she asked Mummy about the dog and Mummy caught on because I never had to go to Mrs Blewitts after that. When Mum had to go to classes she used to take me to the council playgroup. It was rough and noisy there but it was better than Mrs Blewitt and I stopped wetting my bed and only had a tantrum sometimes. I kept on fussing about food though.

Another time Brenda said I should draw pictures of my family and I drew me in bed with Mummy. It was a really good drawing, I did the whole living room with the futon unfolded and I put some of my pictures on the walls. Brenda said do you and Mummy sleep in the same bed and I said the same futon. She said don’t you have a bed of your own and I said yes but it’s wobbly and besides it’s upstairs and I like to sleep downstairs where Mummy is. I didn’t tell Brenda how I lay awake sometimes feeling scared of prowlers and wishing she’d stop studying and cuddle in with me. Sometimes I made myself cry so she’d come to bed early.

I was eight before Gene bought me a new bed. She said it was obseen to be sleeping with my mum at my age. Mum wanted Gene to give me the bed so she didn’t say anything but later she told me obseen means something dirty and that Gene had no right to say that even though she didn’t exactly mean it, Mum said actresses use exajerated language. She said “Gene always hints I’m not bringing you up properly and it’s none of her dam business. She should just stick to being a grandma.”

I haven’t written anything for three weeks. I wanted to write only about my life till now but my life keeps getting new things to write about. I wish it would stay still for a bit and let me catch up. The big news is, Gene wrote to us to say we have to leave this house because she’s given it to my father.

My father’s got married. It was in the letter and Mum cried and I snatched the letter and read it. Lucky I can read cursive. I asked Mum if she was crying because she loved my dad and was angry he married another person and she said “I don’t know. I suppose I always dreamed he might come back one day and make us a family but I knew deep down that he wouldn’t.”

I said but what does it mean if Gene’s given him the house, does it mean he’ll come and live here?” Mum said “No. Your dad married a Dutch woman and he’s gone to live in Holland.” I wondered how she knew but I suppose Gene told her. She and Gene used to be friends even though they fratched sometimes. Once Gene called Mum her daughter-out-law. Mum told me that means a woman who is NOT married to your son.

I said, “So why has Gene given my dad our house if he doesn’t want to live in it?” and Mum said houses are useful for earning money from rent. I said don’t we pay rent for this house, because we did at Brighton, Mum was always on about finding the rent, and Mum said no, Gene said we could stay in it for nothing. So I said well we could pay Dad rent, and Mum shouted through her crying, us pay him, I’d rather die than give him money. He should give us money. I said why and she said mentenance. I said what’s mentenance and she said, “it’s the money fathers are supposed to pay for their children even if they don’t live with them. That’s the law. Now please stop asking questions because this is bad news and I have to think it through.”

I said will we go back to Brighton and she said, we can’t, you’ve started school here and my work’s in London and we can’t commute, it’s impossible. Then she just shouted “God I hate that bloody woman she makes me just want to die or kill someone!” She used to like Gene, sort of, but she hates her now. I get very scared when my mum gets like that. I remember about the knife and Big Pig and think she might really get vilent.

Brandy always said you should give background in a story. So I am going to be calm (not like Mum) and give the background.

Mum told me that when I was about three and things were really hard before she was a professional, she decided I needed a grandma and she wrote to Gene and asked her if she would be my grandmother. Gene’d never even seen me then and she hadn’t seen my mum since before I was born.

Mum was really nervous after she sent the letter. She thought Gene might write back and say get lost or something worse but she didn’t. She rang Mum (in Brighton this was) and they had a row strait off because Mum had called me Williamson-Stone on my birth certificate. Stone is her name and Williamson is my father’s name and Gene’s too. Gene said I had no right to that name because Mum wasn’t married to my dad and she said Mum’d stolen it. Of course that’s stupid, you can’t steal a name and you can call your child anything you like, she could’ve called me Alice Pokémon or Alice Peanut Butter Sandwich if she’d liked but Gene didn’t see it like that so she said at first that she didn’t agree to be my grandmother.

But then one day she just turned up outside our door. I found out later that Gene had always been thinking about me since I was born and even before, when she’d come to see Mum at the digs with the medical students and told her off for being pregnant. She said it would spoil my dad’s life and she called my mum a little tart.

I think it’s weird that such a sweet name is really bad, it means a woman who has lots of boyfriends and that was really unfair because my mum’d only ever had one boyfriend then and that was my dad who was at university with her. She was afraid of men because of the Big Pig. My dad was very gentle and she trusted him. Now she says you can never trust men, even Pierre-Luc who was gentle too and really liked her but she got rid of him because of the respect. Since then she hasn’t had a boyfriend at all so it was really bad of Gene to call her a little tart, she’s NOT.

Anyway so she turned up in Brighton and Mum was in a state because the flat was a mess and I was in scruffy clothes and we hadn’t much to eat in the flat because Mum hadn’t been shopping and Gene asked for coffee and there wasn’t any. Mum sort of lost her head and thought giving Gene coffee was the main thing and she dashed out to the shop and left Gene with me.

I wasn’t used to strangers and I started crying (I don’t remember this but Gene told me afterwards) and Gene got nervous and said “I can’t stand this I’m afraid, I’m off and she went upstairs which is where the front door is and I heard a door shut and I thought she’d gone. I was never left alone when I was little and I was so scared that I just froze up. The minute I stopped crying Gene came back down. She walked back in and said that’s better, now that we can hear ourselves think let’s read a story. I stood looking at her and she said, Do you know who I am? I’m your grandmother, your father’s mother. My name’s Eugenie but you can call me Gene.” I said “I hate you.”

I was saying that alot just then, I didn’t really know what it ment but I knew it upset grown-ups. But she wasn’t upset she was quite cheerful. She said “Oh do you, well in that case I hate you right back.” Nobody had ever said that to me. Mostly grown-ups said something like oh dear, or no you don’t really. It gave me a shock when she said she hated me back. Then she said you’ve got some terrific books here. Which do you like best?” I picked up a book Mum had been reading to me (she read to me alot then). Grandma said, “Wow, Greek myths, those are my favourite too, which one shall we read?” And I said Jason and the golden fleece and she read it and then I said I’ve got a goldfish called Jason and she said “Show me” so we looked at Jason and she said “He needs his tank cleaning” and then she began talking to him and saying funny things for him to say back, like “Is anyone out there, I can’t see you through all this green stuff, and she made him cough and sneeze, and when Mum came back with the coffee we were larfing.

The first thing I said to Mum was “Jason says he needs his tank cleaning” and Mum looked embarased and went to make the coffee. I went into the kitchen and told Mum that Gene said she hated me. Mum staired at me as if she didn’t believe she’d heard right and Gene said from the other room well you don’t expect me to love someone who doesn’t love me but it’s too early to decide what we feel. I peeped at her and she winked at me and I thought she doesn’t really hate me. (I sort of remember that now, it’s funny how you remember things when you’re writing them, like photos.)

After she’d had coffee she said “I feel better now, let’s go out for dinner, where shall we go, and I shouted Pinocchio’s! And Mum said “sh Alice.” But we went. We walked there and on the way Gene took my hand. I said “I hate you” again because I just didn’t believe she’d say I hate you back in front of Mum, but she did, and snatched her hand away. Then I said “I love you.” I didn’t then but I was testing. And she said “I love you back” and took my hand again. We kept saying I hate you I love you all the way to Pinocchio’s and taking hands and untaking them and the last thing we said as we turned into Pinocchio’s was I love you. I never said I hate you to her again. Even since the row I don’t hate her, even now she wants to throw us out of our house. Well, it’s her house but we’re living in it. I don’t understand her and I feel angry and sad often but I don’t hate her. I think Mum does though.

Mum says if something hurts you inside you ought to look into it so I will. After the wonderful summer I had staying with Gene and Grandad and going to Spain and everything and Gene talking to me all the time like a grown-up and telling me how much she loved me I felt really close to her and I thought Grandad was beginning to love me a bit too, he didn’t tell me off so much as he usually did and gave me a really good hug when I left.

Gene drove me back to London and we were singing to the tape and we got stopped for speeding. The policeman was really snotty to her and after he’d gone she felt so bad she sat in the car and cried and I had to comfort her and tell her it was all right. She asked me not to tell Mum but Mum always says no secrets and I knew I would so in the end Gene told her. I’d never seen Gene ashamed before and it made me love her more because everyone makes mistakes and I stood there with my arms around her while she confessed to Mum and said she was sorry.

Mum said “You could have killed Alice, and Gene said, yes, it was terrible of me, we were rollicking along and I didn’t notice, and Mum said if I never let her go in the car with you again would you blame me, and Gene said no, you’d be well within your rights. And then I said “it was only once and if I can’t go in the car how can I go to stay in the country” and Mum and Gene looked at each other and I felt something. Something bad between them that I’d felt once or twice but only when Mum and I were talking about Gene, not when she was there. It was, like, Mum really needed Gene but she didn’t like her and she was glad to have something to put her down with. But in the end Mum just said well promise not to speed ever again.

She’d got this good job while I’d been in the country. It was with a private solicitors that had clients that were mainly criminles. I was frightened when she told me because I thought she’d be with horrible vilent people like lawyers on TV but she said she wouldn’t, she’d be working in the office and only have to go to court sometimes, she said criminles aren’t dangerous when they’re in court. She was so pleased to have found a good job, she took me out for an Indian meal to celebrate and I had chicken tikka masala.

But it took two hours to get to her office from Brighton and two hours back and I had to stay in school from 7.30 in the morning to 7.30 in the evening which was horribly boring and Mum was getting exorstid.

So that was when Gene said we could live in this house. It was hers and Grandad’s then. She said we could use it because she’d made alot of money from acting a big part in a film and bought another place in London, a flat. She said we could stay in this house for a bit and she cleaned it all up for us, she really worked hard and she made the garden nice too. She even bought Mum a big desk and a long mirror so Mum could make sure she looked nice for going to work.

Mum complained quite alot about the house which I didn’t understand. She said the bathroom wasn’t as nice as ours which it wasn’t. We had a very big one in Brighton. And there were some places where it needed decorating but no worse than ours. And she was cross when Gene asked her to keep the lawn mode. She said “I’m not a jobbing gardener.” I thought that was bad and I told her off later. I said why aren’t you more greatful to Gene for letting us live here?” and she said, Gene isn’t doing it just to be kind. She’s doing it because she wants me to keep this job. I said why, and she said, because she doesn’t want me to give your dad’s name to the DSS.