After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby (5 page)

I miss her.

Mum and Dad were both away this weekend and even though the rain stopped it was still grey and Flora was in a bad mood so Zoran decided we should watch
War and Peace
to cheer her up. In Russian.

‘How could that possibly cheer me up?’ demanded Flora.

‘The ball-room scenes are beautiful,’ said Zoran. ‘And one of the battle scenes lasts forty-five minutes.’

‘God!’ cried Flora.

Twig screamed, ‘I’ve been shot!’ and lay convulsing on the floor until Zoran announced it was time for more sausages.

The Russian version of
War and Peace
has four parts and a combined running time of seven hours. What with meals and Flora’s rehearsal for the Christmas Extravaganza of Fairy Tales and the Babes’ karate class, it took us most of the weekend to get through it, by which time Jas was crying non-stop because so many people were dead, Twig had piled all his bedroom furniture in the middle of the room to build a fort, I had finished my homework for what felt like the rest of term and Flora had entered a trance.

‘I might learn Russian,’ she told Zoran as she went up to bed.

‘I knew you’d like it,’ he said.

‘I hated it,’ she assured him. ‘It was the worst experience of my life. But there were times when they were talking that I thought it actually sounded quite pretty, and I realised I rather loved it too.’

Zoran looked delighted.

‘She said she hated it,’ I reminded him.

‘Not all of it,’ he said.

He started watching the whole thing again once we had gone upstairs. I heard him because I was checking my emails in Dad’s study just above the den. Flora threw the WiFi router away after our last Skype session with Mum, when she told her that
visual telecommunication is no substitute for proper mothering
. There is an ADSL modem in the study so that is where we have to go for emails or the internet until one of our wandering parents or
Zoran
gets a new router installed. Which is unlikely to happen any time soon.

There was one email from Mum addressed to all of us, saying she wishes she was with us and complaining how noisy it is in New York, and there was the usual stuff you get just by having an email account from people trying to sell you things, and buried among those a weird one from Dad asking, had we seen the film
King Arthur – The Untold True Story
, and also had we seen
A Knight’s Tale
and what did we think of them both even though they are quite different.

‘Yes, we have seen
A Knight’s Tale
loads of times,’ I wrote to Dad. ‘It’s very funny. We haven’t seen
King Arthur
but I have just Googled it and it is full of battle scenes and quite frankly I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime.’

A chat box popped up in Gmail while I was writing to Dad, which was a shock because nobody ever chats with me, and it was from Joss, saying
good you’re there I’m coming over
. Not,
I’m bored and could I come over
, or
I’m sorry it’s ten o’clock at night and I know that’s kind of late and would it disturb you if I came over.
Just,
I’m coming over.

It took me a while to get the hang of the chat box thing and by the time I thought of something to say and typed
how do you know I’m here, I could be anywhere
Joss had sent me an email from his iPhone saying he was at my bedroom window.

‘This girl who pulled away your chair,’ he said when I got back to my room. ‘Tell me about her.’

At first we sat like we did the first time he came, with him on the roof and me just inside the window, but it got too uncomfortable once I started talking, because he had to lean forward with his head sticking into the room saying
what? What?
And I had to whisper really loudly, which hurt my throat. So then I climbed out, dragging my duvet with me, and we laid it out sideways and both lay on it, with the end wrapped up and over me because I was cold in my pyjamas, and I was able to whisper normally.

‘That’s better,’ said Joss. ‘Now start again from the beginning.’

I didn’t want to talk. I lay next to him and closed my eyes and listened to London rumble and a little part of me deep inside just marvelled at what I was doing.

‘Blue?’

‘It’s complicated.’

 I turned on my side to look at him and realised that he wasn’t going to give up, so I told him what I told Jake.

‘Cressida’s not really the problem,’ I said. ‘I mean she’s horrible, but she’s only trying to impress Dodi.’

‘Who is?’

‘Her best friend.’ I swallowed. ‘Who used to be mine.’

‘Ah,’ said Joss. ‘I see.’

‘No,’ I thought. ‘You don’t. You really, really don’t.’

Joss felt in his jeans pockets for a cigarette

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I swear the crumblies have got a radar for smoke and I’m gasping,’ and then he lit up before I could even answer.

‘So what happened?’ he asked, puffing away.

‘Nothing,’ I lied. ‘We just fell out.’ And then we were quiet again for a while.

‘You don’t have to take it, you know,’ he said. ‘You can stand up for yourself.’

‘I don’t think I know how to,’ I said.

‘We’ll think of something. I’ll help you. I’m very good at defending myself.

A picture came into my head of Graham Lewis sprawled on the canteen floor covered in chips.

‘I suppose you are,’ I said.

 Joss propped himself up on one elbow and smiled down at me.

‘I’m going to save you,’ he said. ‘Clearly, that’s why I’ve been sent to London.’

‘Why
were
you sent to London?’ I asked. ‘I mean, really?’

Joss rolled his eyes. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’

I rolled my eyes back. ‘What about standing up for yourself?’

‘Questions, questions . . .’ All of a sudden he was on his feet, with his beanie pulled back down,
shoving
his ciggies into his jeans pocket.

‘Time for bed,’ he said. ‘Night night, gorgeous.’ He blew me a kiss and then he was gone.

I am trying not to think about the fact that Joss Bateman blew me a kiss or that he called me
gorgeous
.

Gorgeous, used the way he used it, is just a word at the end of a sentence.

Joss is not as good at sorting things with school as he claims to be. This morning at break I had to go to the Headmaster (Call Me God)’s office to
explain
how I came to disappear from school halfway through Friday afternoon.

‘I didn’t feel well,’ I mumbled.

‘Your classmate Mr Lyall says he left you with the nurse. And yet the nurse says she never saw you.’

‘It’s not Jake’s fault,’ I said.

God gave me that look teachers give you when they know that short of using physical torture they’re not going to get any more out of you.

‘I am Very Disappointed in you, Bluebell Gadsby,’ he said (he always uses capital letters when he is giving a lecture). ‘I like to think of you as the Sensible One of your Family. I hope this is not the Beginning of a Slippery Slope.’

On the way out I bumped into Flora, waiting for her weekly argument with God about her appearance.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ she cried.

She was furious when I explained. Flora is not nearly as rebellious as she looks. She may like to shock people with her bright hair and her weird outfits, she may have a gazillion friends and always be right at the glittering centre of a very big crowd, but she could be as small and mousy and bespectacled as me for all the rules she actually breaks.

‘You can’t just bunk off school like that!’ she ranted at me. ‘What if Mum and Dad found out?’

‘Oh, get lost, Flora,’ I said at last and she just gaped at me because like everybody else she is not used to me answering back.

‘What?’

‘I said, get lost.’ I marched off, leaving her watching me with her mouth hanging open, even though God was shouting at her to come into his office.

I stood up for myself.

And it felt good.

Twig and Jas announced this morning that they wanted to walk to school on their own. Zoran said no, that one of his Express Duties was to take them to school and what would Mum say if something had happened to them?

‘At the rate she’s going,’ said Flora, ‘she will probably never know.’

Mum is in New York this week, and Flora’s hair now has scarlet streaks.

Zoran said, ‘That’s not fair, your mother loves you very much’ and then when Flora said, ‘Ha!’ he added that it didn’t suit her to sound so sour, and she said that was rich coming from him and then they started to argue about which of them had the most reason to be bitter about their parents. Which is Zoran, obviously, because even though we are practically orphans Mum told us that his parents actually
are
dead. While they were fighting, I watched Twig and Jas slip out of the house and head off towards school, way earlier than they normally would but I guess they just saw their chance and took it. Zoran was furious when he realised they had gone. Flora hasn’t laughed so hard in ages.

I hadn’t seen Joss all week until this evening, not to talk to I mean, but then he came round again tonight, climbing on to the roof as usual. It was cold and I thought of asking him in, but then I worried someone would hear so I climbed out instead.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘This Dodi cow. We have to take her down.’

‘Um,’ I said.

Joss laughed. ‘Just give me the dirt on her,’ he said, ‘and you will have sweet revenge.’

‘Dirt?’ I said.

‘There must be
something
,’ said Joss. ‘Some murky secret from her past. Something she’s scared of.’

‘Dodi, scared?’ Dodi might look like Barbie, all blonde hair and sparkly clothes, but underneath she’s tough. Last year when we went abseiling on our school trip, she was the first one to go over the edge, and then she stood at the bottom laughing at anyone who said they were scared of heights.

‘I think actually most people are a little afraid of
her
,’ I said.  

‘You’re not trying,’ Joss scolded.

He looked so earnest. The sky behind him was dark tonight, not orange. That happens sometimes, I’ve noticed. Zoran cut the lawn this afternoon – he says it will be the last time this year – and the air was sharp with the smell of grass. Joss was in shadows but I could see his profile, his turned-up nose and hair falling in his eyes. He was waiting for an
answer
.

I thought, maybe I should tell him why it’s complicated.

Instead, I told him what he needed to know.