After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby (16 page)

So Zoran’s fears have been confirmed, and Alina has accepted Peter’s proposal.

‘Did you tell her he is just in it for the money?’ I asked.

‘What?’ cried Mum. ‘Blue! What do you know about this?’

‘I went to visit one day when I didn’t go to school.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ grumbled Dad, ‘is why you think
we
will not like this news?’

Zoran explained that Alina is getting married tomorrow and that she has decided to go to Paris on her honeymoon. Paris is where she went on her first honeymoon, he said, and she has very fond memories of it. Only because this time she and her fiancé are so old, she wants Zoran to go with them. Just in case something goes wrong, she says. I could tell Dad was dying to ask
what sort of thing
but Mum shook her head and he didn’t.

 ‘My sister will also be in Paris.’ Zoran looked at me when he said that. ‘She is coming from Sarajevo with her family.’

‘But when will you be back?’ cried Mum.

‘I don’t know,’ said Zoran, and we all had to lean forward to hear him. He wasn’t looking at any of us now, but straight out of the window. ‘I haven’t seen her for a very long time.’

‘You’re leaving?’ Jas’s eyes were huge and her lower lip began to wobble.

‘But you can’t!’ Mum was almost crying too. ‘I’m due in New York tomorrow!’

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look so sad and so determined at the same time. Zoran said that he was very sorry and Alina had only just remembered to tell him. He said that she was ninety-five years old and very forgetful and the whole thing was decided in rather a hurry.

‘But
why
such a rush?’ cried Dad.

‘She is ninety-five years old,’ repeated Zoran.

‘He means, she might drop dead at any minute,’ explained Flora.

‘Quite,’ said Zoran.

‘Oh,’ said Dad.

‘I don’t suppose you could work from home this week, David?’ asked Mum.

‘Alina would like you to film the wedding,’ Zoran told me. ‘It will be in Richmond, at the local church.’

 ‘Absolutely not!’ said Dad.

Zoran looked confused.

‘Tell me, David,’ said Mum. ‘Exactly what
is
keeping you in Warwick now that term has ended?’

‘I can’t concentrate anywhere else,’ said Dad. ‘I have reached a critical stage of my new project. You will simply have to tell Bütylicious that you can’t go to New York.’

There was no getting any sense out of either of them after that. We all slunk down to the kitchen where Zoran made us fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.

‘Perhaps your grandmother can come and stay,’ he said, but none of us answered. In the end Flora just said ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving us’, and he said ‘I’m sorry’ and then nobody spoke for a while and Zoran said he had to go and pack.

‘Do you think,’ Twig asked when he had gone, ‘we are actually going to have Christmas this year?’

Jas slipped across the room and put her hand in mine. ‘What about Christmas Eve?’ she whispered.

The parents’ voices floated down the stairs. ‘Point of information, David!’ we heard Mum shout. ‘Being a father does entail
some
responsibilities!’

‘Look who’s talking!’ Dad bellowed. ‘Look who’s swanning off to b****y New York again!’

‘I am not swanning!’ screamed Mum. ‘And I don’t have a choice!’

‘Well neither do I!’ hollered Dad.

Flora said we should definitely prepare ourselves for the worst. She said more couples split up at Christmas than at any other time of year.

Upstairs, Mum started to cry. 

The parents’ argument on Sunday lasted well into the night. Dad went back to Warwick yesterday, Zoran went to Paris with Alina, and Grandma came up from Devon. Mum left for New York this morning.

We watched her go from Flora’s bedroom window. She didn’t want to wake us, she said last night when she kissed us all goodbye, but the amount of noise she made with the shower and hauling her case downstairs, she would have woken a hibernating sloth (if sloths hibernated, which Twig says they don’t). The Babes went into Flora’s room first, dragging their duvets, and after a while I pulled my own duvet off the bed and scurried across the landing to join them. I wasn’t sure if Flora would let me into her room, but she didn’t say anything.

It is almost midwinter and it was still pitch dark outside. The taxi driver waited for Mum in the street and you could see his breath coming out in little puffs of steam which turned orange in the glow of the street lamp. She kept checking her bag and looking back at the house and adjusting her coat and gloves. Jas said, ‘Do you think maybe she won’t go?’ but then Mum squared her shoulders and did that head-shake thing she does when she’s made her mind up about something, and the next thing she was in the taxi and driving down the street and we were all feeling slightly sick from getting up so early.

The first person I saw at school this morning was Jake.

‘I went to an old people wedding,’ I told him when he asked where I was yesterday, and then I said, ‘I think it was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’ because it’s true. I can’t stop thinking about Alina and how peaceful she looked, sitting with her head on Peter’s shoulder, and how proud he looked to have her there. Even Zoran relented when he was bringing me home after the wedding, and said that Peter’s intentions towards Alina probably are honourable after all. He says it helps that Alina has made it very clear to Peter that when she dies all her wordly goods will go to Zoran and his sister.

‘Why was it so sweet?’ asked Jake.

‘Because they were so happy,’ I said. ‘It makes a nice change in my life, believe me.’

Jake put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me. It felt nice. I thought about Alina and put my head on his shoulder, just to see what it was like. It hurt my neck a bit, but I liked it.

And then Joss walked past.

All he did was wave. Well, wave, then raise his eyebrows and look from me to Jake and back again, and grin like he was saying
really? You two?
We both saw it. Jake dropped his arm and I jumped away. I felt myself go bright red. We started to walk towards the science block and Jake said, ‘You really like him, don’t you?’

‘No way,’ I said.

Jake looked unconvinced.

‘He’s Flora’s boyfriend!’ I said.

Jake shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ I said at last. Jake smiled at that, and punched me lightly on the arm.

‘You can’t help who you like,’ he said. He walked off ahead of me to join the others, then turned to see if I was following and smiled again. I thought, he looks exactly the same as he did when he tried to kiss me behind the toilets in Year 4. He has the same light brown eyes, the same messy chestnut hair, the same skinny body, except somehow despite being the same he is also different. I thought, I wish you could help who you like.

I managed to speak to Mum on the phone this evening. She was in a taxi, she said, on her way to her first meeting. I could hear the sound of traffic and car horns in the background.

‘Is it possible,’ I asked her, ‘to love and hate someone at the same time?’

‘Are you talking about your father?’ she asked.

‘Do you love and hate Daddy?’

‘I love him,’ said Mum, ‘but he drives me crazy. Who are you talking about?’

‘It doesn’t matter. So you do think it’s possible?’

Mum said that she thinks love and hate are similar emotions. She said that both could be passionate and obsessive, and that each could turn into the other very easily. She said that she thought you
could
love and hate at the same time, but that surely it was better to love, didn’t I think?

‘Hmm,’ I said.

Mum said she had to go because she had arrived at her meeting.

‘What are we going to do for Christmas?’ I asked.

‘Oh, sweetie!’ she said. ‘Something nice, I promise. Something special.’

And with that, she was gone again.

Joss had a half-day yesterday and I know he went to Guildford to see Kiera. I know because his mates couldn’t wait to start posting about it. They don’t like Flora because she was so cross after the YouTube thing, and they say that they never see Joss any more because of her. He’s deleted their comments now, but I know Flora also knows because she looks terrible. Her eyes are red and she isn’t wearing any make-up and she is wandering around in leggings and an old grey cardigan of Dad’s, which is not a good look for someone with multi-
coloured
hair.

Flora knows that I know about Kiera because she caught me looking at Joss’s Facebook page. She said that she supposes I am pleased. ‘I suppose you consider this some sort of victory,’ is what she actually said, and when I didn’t answer she went ‘oh stop pretending, we all know you’re green with envy and hate my guts.’

‘You’re so not worth it,’ I mumbled.

‘Joss loves me,’ she said, like she was trying to convince herself. ‘This Kiera girl is nothing. He’s told me. He just went to see her because he feels sorry for her. He loves
me.
’

‘I can’t think why!’ I yelled as she crossed the landing from my room back to hers. ‘When you’re such a cow!’

We never used to be so horrible to each other.

 I realise now that I will never be as important to Joss as he is to me. To him, I am his girlfriend’s funny little sister, whom he once helped out for a laugh and maybe also to impress Flora.  I know he isn’t as lovely as I thought he was. The way he looked at me and Jake, like somehow he had a right to comment, as if he was
entitled
– I didn’t like that. And yet, I can’t help it.  Yesterday when I saw him my heart thumped and it felt like it dropped right into my boots and bounced straight back up again.

Being with Grandma in London is quite different from being with Grandma in Devon. I’m not sure she knows how to manage us here.

Flora came home in a rage today. Rumour has finally caught up with the teaching staff at Clarendon Free School, and today Anthea Foundry told Flora that she must feel absolutely free to confide in her
about anything
. She said she knew a
lot
of girls who had had babies
very
young, and that she was
completely non-
judgemental
.

‘It was the most embarrassing experience of my entire life!’ Flora screamed at me. ‘And I’ve had a
lot
of humiliating experiences recently!’

And then Grandma tried not to look shocked when Flora said I told everyone she was having a baby, and Flora had to explain it wasn’t true and Grandma got very confused and asked, if it wasn’t true, why did I tell everyone? And I had to explain about eavesdropping and getting muddled, and by the time I finished I was almost crying and Jas came in and said she was sorry to disturb us but could we go and buy a Christmas tree? ‘And can we also,’ said Jas, because Grandma didn’t answer, ‘can we also make gingerbread cookies and ice them to make decorations? And make our own Christmas cards? Can we go ice-skating, and can we get a puppy?’

Jas has started speaking in this baby voice and it is really, really annoying.

‘Of course, darling.’ Grandma got her voice back, and Jas looked up like she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Except the puppy,’ said Grandma quickly. ‘I’m not sure your parents could cope with a puppy.’

Twig came in from the garden with Betsy or Petal and said, do you think she’s getting fat, and Grandma became a bit more Grandma-like and yelled NO RATS IN THE KITCHEN so loudly he dropped Petal or Betsy and we spent ages trying to catch her again, except Flora who was at Joss’s because she is determined to spend as much time as possible showing him how much nicer she is than Kiera.

‘Just in case,’ I heard her tell Tamsin on the phone.

It is almost half-past ten. Grandma keeps trying to make the Babes go to bed, but she burned the first batch of cookies because the thermostat on the oven is broken, and Jas says she won’t go to sleep until they’ve finished all the icing.

Dad didn’t come home this weekend. Grandma shouted at him. Mum called to say she is in Boston. Joss has gone home to Guildford for the holidays. Flora is moping.

Twig spent the morning searching all the wardrobes and drawers and cupboards in the house, and announced that this is not how Christmas is supposed to be.

‘At Christmas,’ he said , ‘there should be presents hidden all over the place.’

‘Mummy should be here,’ said Jas. ‘Getting stressed about the cooking.’

I didn’t say anything. I have my own views about Christmas.

Grandma is trying to recreate Devon, in terms of busyness I mean. On Sunday she sent us ice-skating at Somerset House, and told us to get the bus up Regent Street and Oxford Street to look at the Christmas lights.

‘I WANT PHOTOGRAPHS,’ she said. ‘TO PROVE YOU’VE DONE IT.’

Flora grumbled that it was the sort of thing only people who don’t live in London do, but Grandma was adamant.  

Yesterday she made us go to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, which Flora said was even more touristy than the lights. Flora took us up the Power Tower, which is like a giant lift you sit on which hoists you up to the top of a sixty-six-metre tower before dropping you down to the ground again. Jas threw up and Flora lost her wallet so we had to walk home through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in the dark. It was so cold my nostrils were sticking together.

Today we finally bought our tree. It is so big it doesn’t actually fit in the living room. We have put it in the hall, and we ran up and down the stairs all afternoon to decorate it. Flora prowled around the landing barking orders at us and behaving almost like her normal bossy self.

Zoran emailed us today. He sent photographs of Peter and Alina enjoying their honeymoon in Paris. Mainly they seemed to be in restaurants, but there was one of the two of them sitting on a park bench in front of the Eiffel Tower, all wrapped up in coats and hats and shawls. She has her head on his shoulder and his eyes are closed but his smile couldn’t be any wider.

‘Aren’t they sweet?’ wrote Zoran. ‘Don’t they look happy?’

He wrote that Alina is knitting Peter a new cardigan for Christmas. She started knitting it before the wedding, which she says in the old days would have been plenty of time but now is a cause for concern, seeing as she has arthritis in all her fingers and her eyes are so bad. The cardigan is a strange shape and also a very odd mix of colours, but Peter says it doesn’t matter, he can just wrap it round his neck when it gets draughty.

There was another photograph, of a man and two boys and a woman who looks so much like Zoran she could only be his sister.

‘We have decided to spend Christmas in Paris,’ wrote Zoran. ‘Lena wanted us all to go back to Sarajevo with her, but Alina can’t travel that far. Lena says, and she is right, that the important thing at Christmas is to be with people you love.’

‘Surely,’ Flora frowned, ‘he loves us too?’

Jas said how nice it was that Alina and Peter were so in love, and that she hopes when Mum and Dad are old they will be just like that, and Flora said ‘As if that’s ever going to happen’ and then Jas cried, and Grandma got really cross and asked Flora why she has to say things like that when she knows how sensitive Jas is, and Flora burst into tears too.

Flora ditched Joss today, in response to comments on his wall that Joss Bateman thinks there’s no place like home and Spudz always knew that Guildford girls do it better even though that girl with the mad hair does have a lovely bottom.

Flora waited about five minutes for Joss to leap to her defence (I know, because I was watching the conversation) and then she jumped in and wrote: You are all a bunch of immature idiots and that includes you, Joss Bateman.

CJ wrote: Woohoo!

Flora  wrote: Butt out, CJ, this is none of your business.

Sharky wrote: Butt out! BUTT!! Get it??? BUTT!!! BUTT!!!!

Flora wrote: Oh, grow up.

Spudz wrote: She’s got a nice arse but zero sense of humour.

Then the phone rang and it was Joss, and I don’t know what he said to her but it was impossible not to hear what Flora said to him, which was basically WAS HE SEEING KIERA AGAIN and HOW COULD SHE KNOW HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH and HIS FRIENDS HAD NO RESPECT FOR HER and SHE WAS NOT HYSTERICAL. And then she yelled that she hated him and didn’t want to see him again, ever, and burst into tears.

Flora cried all day. She tried to call Mum, but her phone was switched off, which made her cry even more, and it didn’t help when Grandma reminded her that it was only six o’clock in the morning in New York.

‘I’m going to call Dad,’ said Flora, still crying. ‘At least one of my parents has to answer.’

But Dad’s phone just rang and rang, and Flora cried even harder.

It’s snowing in Scotland. Every time we switch on the radio, we hear about how people in the Highlands are only surviving by keeping shovels with them at all times to dig themselves out of snowdrifts.

‘I wish it would snow here,’ said Jas.

Grandma made soup with cheese on toast and mince pies for pudding. We watched
It’s a Wonderful Life
like we do every Christmas. Flora came down with her duvet and a very red nose. We all pretended everything was fine, but just now Twig came into my room and sat cross-legged on the floor, watching me while I write.

‘This is going to be a rubbish Christmas,’ he said.

‘Yup,’ I said.

‘Do you miss her?’ he asked.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Don’t pretend,’ he said.