Ice Lolly

“Don’t want to keep that,” says Holly. She tosses Middlemarch on to the bed. Mr Pooter, who is snoozing, opens an eye. “Ought to be chucked out.”

I think sadly of poor Middlemarch, thrown away with the rubbish. Mum was so happy the day we found it. She said, “Middlemarch! I did that for A level. It’s a wonderful book, Lol! You must read it when you’re older.”

I’m not chucking out a book that Mum wanted me to read. But for the moment I reluctantly agree that it can go up to the loft. It still makes me feel like I’m some kind of traitor. Like I’m committing cruelty to books. Mum’s books are like free range. They’re used to being out in the open, where books ought to be. Not shut away in the dark.

“Maybe they could go on the floor,” I say, hopefully. I have visions of them lined up all the way round the room. But Holly looks outraged. She says, “This is where Nan sleeps when she stays.”

I personally think it would be quite comforting, sleeping in a room full of books. When I have my own house I will have shelves of books going from floor to ceiling in every room. I try saying this to Holly, but she doesn’t respond. She’s pulled out Mum’s Shakespeare that used to belong to Gran. She looks at the title – Collected Works of William Shakespeare – and pulls another face. “Don’t want that.” Shakespeare is dumped on the bed next to Middlemarch. I can’t help wondering what Mum would say. But the Collected Works are so big and fat they’d take up almost a quarter of the shelf. It wouldn’t be fair on all the others.

Holly is tossing books like mad, thump thump thump, on to the bed. Mr Pooter curls up into a tight ball and tries to pretend it’s not happening. I try too.

Thump. There goes another one. “Honestly! Is reading all you ever did?” says Holly.

I say no, of course not. But I’m thinking to myself that it was one of the best things we ever did. I used to love curling up on the sofa, cuddling Mr Pooter, while Mum read to me.

“So what else did you do?” says Holly.

I say, “Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

Like listening to music. Watching television. Playing Scrabble. Talking. Me and Mum used to talk all the time. But that isn’t what Holly means. She means didn’t we get out, and go places, like normal people. She thinks that me and Mum were seriously weird. She throws another book on to the bed.

“Didn’t you have any friends, or anything?”

I hesitate. If I say no, she’ll think I’m weirder than ever. Not that I really care what she thinks.

“You must have had some.” She yanks out another book. “Who was your best friend?”

I mutter that I didn’t have a best friend.

“Well, who did you hang out with?”

I hesitate again, then say, “Girl over the road.”

“What was her name?”

“Temeeka.” We didn’t really hang out. We just used to play together when we were little.

“Was she an immigrant?” says Holly.

I frown and say, “Why?”

“It’s a funny name.”

“So what?”

Holly tosses another book on to the pile of rejects. “Mum says there’s lots of them where you were. She says it made her feel like a stranger in her own land.”

I point out that Auntie Ellen is Welsh, which means it’s not her land anyway. Not if you’re going to think like that. I don’t, and neither did Mum, but I know that Auntie Ellen does. Was it rude of me to say about her being Welsh? Well, it doesn’t matter; Holly doesn’t get it. She’s still going on about Temeeka and her funny name and whether she was an immigrant. She says, “Was she?”

I play for time, trying to make up my mind. I say, “Was she what?”

“Was she an immigrant!”

OK. I take a deep breath and say, “Yes, since you ask.” It’s a whopping great lie. I only said it to show that I wouldn’t have given a rap even if she was. Holly rubs me up the wrong way, same as Auntie Ellen used to rub Mum. She’s nodding now, looking smug and satisfied, like she’s scored some sort of point. She picks up yet more books and lobs them on to the bed. In this really condescending voice she says that it must have been hard to make friends “living where you lived.”

It wasn’t anything to do with where we lived; it was cos of Mum not being well. At the end of school each day I used to rush home fast as I could, cos of knowing Mum would be there waiting for me. I’d call her when I was on my way, to see if we needed anything, then I’d stop off at the shop on the corner. Weekends I stayed in so we could be together. Even if I was invited to parties, though that didn’t happen very often, I used to make excuses and say I couldn’t go. I didn’t tell Mum; I wouldn’t have wanted her thinking she was holding me back. Cos she wasn’t! It was my choice. I enjoyed being with Mum more than with anybody. If the weather was good we’d go up the park. I’d push Mum in her wheelchair and we’d go all the way round. Mum used to worry in case it was too much for me, but my arms are really strong. I could even push her uphill. There was that one time, though, when the chair tipped over going up a kerb and Mum nearly fell out. I was so ashamed! I feel ashamed even now, just thinking about it. How could I have let such a thing happen? To my own mum? Mum just giggled. She said, “You have to see the funny side of things!”

Mum always saw the funny side. It is what I try to do. It is just people like Holly and Auntie Ellen who make it so difficult.

Holly’s still throwing books on to the bed. “Don’t want that! Don’t want that! This one’s too big. Don’t want big ones! Don’t want—”

Quickly I say, “I want that one!”

“This one?” She looks at it, scornfully. “Winnie-the-Pooh? You can’t still be reading Winnie-the-Pooh! I grew out of that years ago.”

I tell her that you can’t grow out of Winnie-the-Pooh. Mum and me used to read it every Christmas. It was one of our traditions. “Anyway,” I say, “it was a present.”

“Who from?” She’s peering inside, to see what’s written there. “To Lollipop, from Mum.” Plus a row of kisses, but she doesn’t read that bit. “Was that what she called you?”

“When I was little.”

“Lollipop.” Holly giggles. “D’you know what I call you? The girl that laughed at the Queen!”

Mum and me apologised for that. And I wasn’t laughing at the Queen, I was laughing at Mum pretending to be the Queen.

“My husband and I…” The words come shooting out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“You’re doing it again!” Holly glares at me, accusingly. “You are such a rude person!”

I say that I’m sorry. I don’t quite see what’s rude about it, just standing here in the bedroom, but I’m sure Mum would say I shouldn’t have done it.

Holly slams Winnie-the-Pooh on to the shelf and dives back into the box. By the time she gets started on the last one I’ve managed to rescue thirty-five books, including Little Women, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, I Capture the Castle, Just William and all of Jane Austen, cos she was Mum’s favourite. Holly objects to David Copperfield on the grounds that he’s the wrong size and looks untidy.

“He’s too short and fat!”

For one wicked moment I’m almost tempted to say, “So are you!” But that would be really rude. And she isn’t exactly fat, just plumped up like a pillow cos of Auntie Ellen letting her eat junk food all the time. I suppose, actually, she’s quite pretty. She has this little round face with freckles, and her hair’s bright red and curly. She gets her hair from Auntie Ellen. And the freckles. Uncle Mark is fair, like me and Mum. I’d rather be fair than ginger, but it would be nice, I think, to be curly instead of dead straight and limp. I toss back my ponytail and wrench David Copperfield away from her.

“He’s staying!”

I put him on the shelf with the others. Holly, with an air of triumph, says that now I’ve only got room for one more. “You could have had two if you got rid of that fat one.”

I say yes, well, I don’t want two. I want David Copperfield.

“There’s not many left anyway,” says Holly. She burrows back into the box. “War and Peace…yuck! Poetry. Double yuck! Diary of a Nobody. Yuck yuck triple yuck! Pil—”

“Excuse me,” I say, “I want that one.”

“Which one?”

“Diary of a Nobody.”

“What for?” She looks at it, suspiciously, like it might be something dirty.

“It’s funny.”

“Doesn’t look funny.”

“Well,” I say, “it is.”

“Why? What’s it about?”

I tell her that it’s about a man called Mr Pooter and his wife Carrie. “They’ve just moved into a new house and Mr Pooter’s keeping a diary, all about the things that are happening to them.”

“Funny things.”

“Yes, and Mr Pooter keeps making these really bad jokes, like when he discovers his cuffs are frayed he says, I’m ’fraid, my love, my cuffs are rather frayed. And Carrie calls him a spooney old thing.”

“You think that’s funny?” says Holly.

I have to admit it doesn’t sound very funny. It did when Mum read it out, doing all the different voices. I try to think of a bit that doesn’t need voices.

“One time he’s doing some decorating and he’s got this red paint left over, so he paints the bath? Then later on when he’s lying there in the water the paint all comes off and he thinks he’s burst an artery!”

Holly doesn’t say anything; she just looks at me, like you are seriously weird. I know people think I’m weird. There was that girl at school, Alice Marshall, that I found crying in the girls’ toilets one day, and when I asked her what the matter was she said nobody liked her and she didn’t have any friends, so I said I’d be friends with her and she said what would be the point of that? “You’re just weird!”

I suppose I must be, if everyone thinks I am. I never used to mind, once upon a time; I was happy just being me. Now I’m not so sure. I begin to have this feeling that it might be easier if I could somehow learn to be a bit more like other people. I really would like to be! But I don’t seem to know how to do it.

I hold out my hand for the book. “Please,” I say. “I have to keep that one.”

Holly shrugs. “That’s it then. The rest’ll have to go. I’ll tell Michael.”

It’s Michael who’s going to take the boxes up to the loft. Into exile. Holly opens the door, then stops as something strikes her. “Is that why he’s called Mr Pooter?” she says.

Mr Pooter twitches an ear at the sound of his name. I say yes, Mum called him that because he has a long beard, like Mr Pooter in the book. Well, long for a cat; cats don’t usually have beards. But Mr Pooter is special. He has this lovely fringe of white fur all round his face.

“He’s odd-looking,” says Holly. “And he shouldn’t be on your bed! It’s not healthy, having cats in the bedroom. As for that—” She points an accusing finger at Mr Pooter’s litter box, tucked away in the corner. “That’s just disgusting!”

I tell her, indignantly, that it’s clean as can be. “I empty it all the time!”

“Cats ought to go in the garden,” says Holly.

“He can’t, he’s too old, and you haven’t got a cat flap. Anyway, it’s scary for him, a new place. He might get lost, or run over.”

Holly doesn’t actually say that she’d be glad if he did, but the truth is, nobody in this house likes cats. She grumbles that she doesn’t know what’s going to happen when her nan comes to stay.

“You’ll have to sleep in my room, and I’m not sleeping with cat poo! Not sleeping with a cat in the room, either. He’ll have to go outside then.”

I say in that case I’ll go outside with him. “We’ll both sleep in the kitchen.”

“Then we’ll have cat poo in the kitchen! That’s even more disgusting. We’ll all get poisoned!”

Stevie’s never got poisoned. I wish I could have stayed and lived with Stevie! I’m sure it’s what Mum would have wanted. But maybe Stevie wouldn’t have liked it. In spite of being so good to Mum, she really only loves her cats.

Holly flounces off and I hear her thudding off down the stairs. I don’t have the heart to begin cramming all the books back into their boxes. I throw myself on to the bed and rub my face in Mr Pooter’s fur.

“It’s all right,” I whisper. “I won’t let them put you out.”

Mr Pooter gives a chirrup and stretches out an arm. He crimps a paw, then yawns and tucks his arm back again. I sit, cross-legged, beside him. What goes on in a cat’s mind? Does Mr Pooter ever wonder where Mum has gone? Does he miss her? I’m sure he must, he was with her such a long time. Ever since he was a tiny kitten. But while he has me to look after him, he is safe. And he will always have me. That is a promise.

I’m still holding Diary of a Nobody. Mum and me were in the middle of reading it again; the bookmark’s still in it. We’d got about halfway through. We were always reading Diary of a Nobody. I can’t remember how old I was when Mum introduced me to it. I think I must have been about eight. Too young to properly enjoy it. Now I know it almost word for word. Mum did too. We both had our favourite bits that we waited for. One bit Mum specially loved was where Carrie and Mr Pooter send out for a bottle of Jackson Frères champagne whenever they feel like celebrating. It always got Mum giggling, so I used to giggle too, though I was never absolutely certain what I was giggling at. But whenever Mum and me wanted a treat, like at Christmas, for instance, or on Mum’s birthday, she’d say, “Let’s have some Jackson Frères!” Then after a while everything became Jackson Frères. A can of Coke, a glass of milk. Even just a glass of water. “Pass the Jackson Frères!” we’d go. It was like our private joke.

Michael has arrived. “Come to take the boxes up,” he says.

I haven’t even started packing them. I scramble guiltily off the bed.

“’s OK,” says Michael. “I’ll do it.” Mr Pooter watches, carefully, as he starts collecting books. Michael looks at him. “Is he some kind of special breed?” he says.

I say no, he’s just a common domestic short hair. That’s what Stevie said.

“He looks like he’s some kind of breed.” Michael pats Mr Pooter on the head as if he’s a dog. Mr Pooter lets him. He is such a good cat. “Pretty,” says Michael. “Like sort of…dappled.”

My heart swells with pride. Me and Mum always thought Mr Pooter was pretty.

“Like someone’s spilt a can of orange paint over him.”

“Or marmalade,” I say.

“Yeah. Maybe he’s a marmalade cat!”

Michael’s busy, now, packing books. I’m handing them to him, one by one, and he’s putting them in the boxes. He’s not just stuffing them in all anyhow, like Holly would have done. He’s stacking them neatly, in piles. Big ones at the bottom, small ones on top.

“This is a lot of books,” he says. “I guess Auntie Sue was really into reading.”

I tell him that Mum loved her books more than anything. “She always said books are what she’d rescue if the house ever caught fire. After Mr Pooter, of course. But once he was safe, she’d go back for her books.”

I can see that Michael thinks it’s strange, anyone rescuing books, but he’s too polite to say so. He’s like Uncle Mark, he’s really trying to be kind. He picks up a box and carries it to the door. It’s obviously heavier than he’d thought.

“Don’t reckon she’d have managed to rescue very many,” he says.

Regretfully I say that I haven’t, either. “There’s not room.”

“Maybe Dad could put up another shelf, only—” He stops. I know why he’s stopped. It’s because Auntie Ellen didn’t want a shelf put up in the first place. This is where Holly’s nan sleeps, and it’s a tiny little room like a cupboard. It’s why I wasn’t allowed to bring Mum’s bookcase. “Far too big,” said Auntie Ellen. “Wouldn’t fit in.” It would if the wardrobe was taken out. I wouldn’t care about not having a wardrobe. But Holly’s nan probably expects it.

In this cheering-up kind of voice Michael says, “It’s not like they’re being got rid of. They’re only up in the loft.” He adds that he can always go up there and get a book down for me if there’s one I specially want.

He is trying so hard. He really wants me to be happy. It ought to make things easier. Why does it make them worse?

“There’s no problem,” says Michael. “I’m up and down there all the time. Just let me know. OK?”

I seal up the chinks in my ice house wall.

“I will,” says Ice Lolly, in her icicle tones. “Thank you.”

Michael gives me this strange look. “By the way,” he says, “next week—” Next week is when I’m starting back at school. The same school Michael goes to. “I just heard, you’re going to be in my class.”

I can’t think what to say to this. I wonder if Michael wants me in his class, or whether I’ll be an embarrassment. The girl who laughed at the Queen. Really weird.

Ice Lolly takes over. “That will be nice,” she says.

Michael says, “Yeah…”

I feel almost sorry for him.

CHAPTER THREE

Today is Uncle Mark’s birthday and we’ve all come into town, to the PizzaExpress. Where me and Mum lived, you could just walk up the road. Here, you have to drive. Auntie Ellen says it’s healthier, being in the country, but it’s not really country. Just lots of roads with fields on either side, only not the sort of fields you can walk in. Mostly they are full of cows and sheep and growing stuff. Corn, or something. I don’t know much about it. Auntie Ellen says it’s the ignorance of the town child. Uncle Mark says that I will get used to it. He says, “We’ll always take you wherever you want to go.” But I don’t want to be taken! I want to go by myself. It’s very worrying that I can’t just walk to the library. What am I going to do about books? Maybe this new school will have some.

We’ve been shown to a table. I am sitting between Holly and Michael. Holly is studying the menu.

“Dad,” she says, in wheedling tones, “can I have a starter and a main course and a pudding? Cos it’s your birthday, Dad! And it’s the big one, isn’t it?” She cosies up to Uncle Mark. “It’s the big one, Dad, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” says Uncle Mark.

“Forty,” says Holly. And then she goes, “Is that older or younger than Auntie Sue?”

Auntie Ellen says “Holly!” and frowns at her, but she can’t ever take a hint. She has to keep on. “It’s older, isn’t it, Dad? Auntie Sue was your little sister.” She turns to me. “Don’t you ever wish you had a sister?”

Michael gives her a thump. “Better off without, if you ask me,” he says.

Holly screws up her face and sticks out her tongue. “Not if it means you’re an only child. Only children get spoilt.”

Did Mum spoil me? Auntie Ellen always says it was “unnatural”, the way I was brought up, but it didn’t feel unnatural to me. And I don’t think I was spoilt. I know Mum never yelled at me or told me off, but that was because we used to talk about things. Like if I did anything she didn’t like she’d make me sit down so we could discuss it. I don’t call that being spoilt. Holly’s more spoilt than I was. She only has to say she wants something and Auntie Ellen immediately buys it for her. She has twenty pairs of shoes in her wardrobe. She showed them to me. I only have two, and one of those is trainers.

Uncle Mark has decided he is going to order a bottle of wine, seeing as it’s his birthday. Before I can stop myself I cry, “Jackson Frères!”

Everyone looks at me, including the waiter. They seem puzzled. They have obviously never read Diary of a Nobody. I say, “Jackson Frères…a bottle of Jackson Frères!”

Uncle Mark shakes his head, like don’t ask me. “We’ll just have the house white,” he says.

“What’s with all this Jackson Frères?” says Michael.

Suddenly, I don’t want to talk about it. I wish I hadn’t said it. It was our private joke, between me and Mum.

“Frère’s French,” says Holly. “Like Frère Jacques.” She opens her mouth to start singing, but Uncle Michael cuts across her.

“What do you kids want? Coke?”

If Mum ever had wine, then I was always allowed a glass, too. But I know if I say so Auntie Ellen will only suck in her breath and that will be another black mark against Mum.

“Three Cokes,” says Uncle Mark. Then he smiles at me and says, “So, Laurel! All set up for tomorrow?”

Tomorrow is the day I’m starting at this new school. Bennington High. It has a black uniform. Auntie Ellen has dyed my old green skirt, but she had to take me into Asda to buy a black blazer and a black sweater. The only nice thing is the badge, which is red.

“Feeling OK about it?” says Uncle Mark.

I don’t say anything; I just nod.

“She’ll be all right,” says Auntie Ellen. “She has Michael to look out for her. and it’s a good school! Far better than where she was before.”

What does Auntie Ellen know about where I was before?

“It’s smaller, for a start,” she says, “and not so mixed.”

“Is mixed bad?” I say.

“It is if you’re in the minority. Some of these inner city schools…hardly hear a word of English one day to the next, all the babble going on.”

Earnestly I assure her that it only sounds like babble just at first. “You get used to it. You start learning other people’s languages. Like I can say hello in French and Polish—” I check them off on my fingers, “and Greek and Turkish and Gujarati and Russian and—”

“Yes, and you probably weren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas,” snaps Auntie Ellen.

“We did! We celebrated everything. Christmas, and Diwali, and Hanukkah, and—”

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