Don't Even Think About It (8 page)

OK, I have to say that Christmas Day in Marjorie Maloney's house went a lot better than I'd been expecting.

The day started off well. Dad and I made smoothies for breakfast, with bananas and honey and yoghurt. I added a teaspoon of Nutella to mine, which made it a weird muddy colour, but it tasted pretty good. Then after breakfast I gave Dad his aftershave and he gave me the new mobile phone I'd been begging him for forever. He said he only got it so he'd have a bit of peace. I said he'll have plenty of peace as long as he keeps me in credit, and he groaned and asked how many more years before I could leave school and get a job.

He's good fun sometimes.

I tried not to think too much about Mam not being there, and he probably did too. When she was around
we always had omelettes for breakfast on Christmas morning.

I think that's why we did smoothies this time instead.

Mam phoned around two, earlier than usual, because I'd told her that Dad and I were going out for Christmas dinner. She probably thought I meant to a restaurant, and I didn't mention Marjorie. It's got nothing to do with Mam who Dad and I celebrate Christmas with any more. I listened to her wishing me Happy Christmas and telling me how much she missed me, and after a while, I told her that Dad was waiting, and hung up.

I told her about my new mobile, and she took the number. Big deal.

At about half two, Dad and I went across the road to Marjorie's, and I must say the dinner was excellent. This was the menu:

***

For dessert, which I barely had room for, we didn't have plum pudding, which was a big relief because it's my least favourite dessert ever. We had a kind of
rolled-up
chocolate cake, which Marjorie said is called a roulade, filled with whipped cream and topped with some kind of roasted nuts. I'm not sure, but I think it might just be the best dessert I ever tasted.

One thing about Marjorie Maloney, she sure can cook. No wonder her bum is quite big.

Her brother Kevin was great fun, organising loads of games and stuff. And her dad was a bit drunk, I think, because he kept falling asleep in an armchair, and even during dinner he nodded off for a few minutes. Nobody noticed until all the talking stopped for a second, and then we heard him snoring. I don't know how he didn't fall off his chair – I'm sure I would have.

I must practise sleeping in a chair and not falling off. You never know when it might come in handy.

The two kids were OK too, a five-year-old girl called Sarah and a three-year-old boy called Luke. I painted Sarah's nails and dressed her up in an old evening dress and high heels that Marjorie gave us, and then Luke began to cry because he wanted to be dressed up too, so I put his grandad's hat on him, and an old green raincoat I found in Marjorie's utility room.

Their mother said I'd make a good big sister, and for some reason Marjorie went scarlet.

I found out a lot about Marjorie over dinner, actually. It turns out she was an au pair in France for two years, and now she works from home as a translator. She speaks Spanish too, but she likes French better. I almost told her that French is one of my worst subjects in school, next to history, but I stopped myself just in time. She might have offered to give me a grind, which of course Dad would have jumped at.

But even though she's a lot nicer than I thought, I still don't want Dad to get too friendly with her. We don't need anyone getting too close – we're managing fine on
our own, Dad and me.

Anyway, we stayed until about nine o'clock, when Luke and Sarah were put to bed in Marjorie's smallest bedroom. Then Dad and I walked back across the road, and when we got inside, Dad said, ‘Will we sit in the garden for a little while?'

We used to do that all the time when I was small, me and Mam and Dad, just wrap ourselves up in rugs or blankets and sit outside at night, after the dinner stuff was cleared away. I'd be tucked in between them, leaning against Dad's shoulder or pressed up to Mam's arm, sniffing her almondy smell.

They'd usually do most of the talking, grown-up stuff that would float away into the dark, and sometimes one of them would laugh, and I'd tilt my head up and try to count the stars, and it would feel so safe and cosy.

I can't remember when we stopped doing that.

The weather was nice last night – cold, but very starry and still. So we took two blankets out of the airing cupboard and we went to sit out on the garden seat to look at the stars, which were all out by then.

We could see our breath in front of us. It looked like we were smoking. I thought about saying that to Dad, but then decided not to. (And just in case you're wondering, I only had a few puffs once, and it made me feel like throwing up – yeuk. Smoking's for idiots.)

So there the two of us were, wrapped in our blankets looking up at the zillions of stars, and remembering when it used to be three of us. At least, I was remembering, and Dad probably was too.

And because it was dark all around, I asked Dad if he
missed Mam at all. I didn't look at his face, just up at the sky. And I had time to count seven stars before he said yes, sometimes.

And then, maybe because it was dark all around, Dad asked me if I was OK about it being just the two of us now, and it took me a lot longer than seven stars before I said that sometimes I was still lonely, but mostly I was OK.

It was sad, on the garden seat. I told him about Bumble and Catherine, and he teased me about always wanting to be the one to open the door when Henry the pizza delivery boy came, and I said that we must try and make Marjorie's chestnut stuffing some time, and we found the Plough and the North Star in the sky.

But it was still sad.

After a while we went in, and I said goodnight to Dad. And as I was undressing, my new phone started to beep, and I opened my very first text message, which was from San Francisco and which said:

Happy Christmas my darling girl xxx.

I didn't answer it.

Now it's the day after Christmas, and I've just got back from Chloe's house. Her Dad made the curry, and they had all the proper Indian stuff like poppadums and naan and everything. Her little brother was a bit of a nuisance, though. He's seven, and a real baby. He kept banging on Chloe's bedroom door when we were trying to listen to her new Norah Jones CD after dinner.

Maybe it's just as well I don't have a little brother or sister.

I did a terrible thing today.

You remember Ruth Wallace, my neighbour in the wheelchair? You know how nasty she is to me, and how I try to ignore her when she says or does all those mean things?

Well, today I failed. Today I finally lost my temper with her, and I think I may be in very big trouble now, even bigger than the shoplifting.

Here’s what happened. When I got up this morning, I discovered we were out of milk, so I shouted up to Dad that I was going to the shop, which is just two blocks away. As soon as I came out I saw her, just sitting by her gate, all muffled up because it was pretty cold, with a furry black hat on her head and a brown and orange check blanket over her legs.

When she saw me coming she actually smiled, and I automatically smiled back – well, half-smiled. I didn’t
feel like giving her a proper smile.

As I walked past, she stuck out her hand and grabbed my wrist, and boy, were her fingers freezing – like ice. I opened my mouth to tell her to let me go, but before I had a chance, she said, kind of softly, ‘I’m just wondering what it feels like.’

I thought she meant my hand. I tried to pull away, but she held on tight. And do you know what she said then?

She said, ‘What does it feel like when your mother leaves you?’

And the awful thing is that she was smiling all the time, this horrible fake smile, and she had a bit of a Cornflake or something caught between her teeth, and I pulled my arm away and walked as quickly as I could down the road, and I could hear her laughing, and then these tears just came out of nowhere, and I had to keep wiping them away, because I couldn’t see where I was going.

And all the way to the shop, I could feel the tingle that I always feel when my temper is just about ready to be lost. I kept hearing her laughing, sitting there in her horrible wheelchair and laughing at me. I bought the milk, in one of those plastic litre containers with a handle, and a pack of tissues so I could dry my face up. No way was I going to let her see that she’d made me cry.

She was still there when I got back, still sitting there, grinning away. I walked towards her, trying to ignore her, trying to keep my temper under control. And if she’d said nothing, I don’t think I would have done
anything, I really don’t – except maybe given her a filthy look.

If only she’d kept quiet.

But she didn’t. She watched me as I walked towards her, and then she said, in this horrible pretending-
to-care
voice, ‘Hey Liz, have you been crying?’

And that did it. Something came racing up inside me like a tidal wave. I lifted the plastic container of milk and I rammed it down onto her legs as hard as I could, and then I turned and ran. I bolted in our gate and up the path and around to the back of the house, right down to the bottom of the garden.

My heart was thumping really loudly, and my hands were shaking – I had to wrap them right around the milk to keep from dropping it. It was a cold morning, I could see my breath coming out in fast little puffs, but I didn’t dare go into the house. I was afraid Ruth Wallace’s parents would come banging at the door, looking for me.

After a while I had to move, I was so cold. I walked up the garden on legs I could hardly feel and opened the back door, sure that Mrs Wallace would be inside, waiting for me. But there was nobody there except Dad, wondering why I’d taken so long. No sign of the Wallaces at all.

All through breakfast, which I had to force myself to eat, I kept waiting to hear the doorbell. When it finally rang, I almost fell out of my chair, but it was just the boy who delivered our paper, looking for his money. While Dad was talking to him, I crept into the sitting room and peeped through the window.

Nobody in next door’s garden, no sign of anyone. No shouts of anger coming from the house. Nobody storming out and turning in our gate with a face like thunder. I couldn’t understand it.

And now it’s almost bedtime, and I haven’t dared to put my nose outside the door all day. Chloe came around after lunch and we watched a film with Colin Farrell in it, and I haven’t a clue what it was about, because all I could see was my arm lifting up the milk and bringing it down with a thump on Ruth Wallace’s useless legs.

I wish I could start today all over again. I wish I could rub it out and begin again.

I wish Mam was here now. I know I was mad at her for not coming home, but it’s only because I miss her so much. Sometimes it feels like a real pain, right in the middle of me, where I think my heart must be. Other times it’s like I’m empty, as if someone came along and held me upside down for a while and let everything fall out.

That’s how it feels when your mother leaves, Ruth Wallace.

I wish this was all a crazy kind of dream, and I could wake up and Mam would be there with my breakfast on a tray, like she used to do some weekend mornings, with a soft boiled egg and brown toast soldiers, or a bowl of lump-free porridge topped with a blob of blackcurrant jam. I wish I had magical powers like Harry Potter, and I could wave my wand and change everything back to how it used to be.

I wrote this text to Mam a while ago:

Hit Ruth Wallace on legs with milk. Please help.

– but then I got scared, and deleted it. I can’t tell Mam what I did. I can’t tell anyone.

I hope to God Ruth Wallace is OK.

This is weird. It’s been four days since I attacked Ruth Wallace, and absolutely nothing has happened. What is going on? Why has nobody come around to demand an explanation?

And why haven’t I seen any sign of Ruth in the last four days? Where is she?

I can only think of two possible explanations. One is that she’s dead, or at least so badly injured that she can’t tell anyone who did it. I try not to think about that one.

The other is that she’s OK, and she just didn’t tell anyone what I did – but that doesn’t make sense. Surely Ruth Wallace would be delighted to have an excuse to get me into trouble – and surely I gave her the perfect excuse, didn’t I? I assaulted her. I attacked a helpless invalid with a full litre of milk.

Like I said, it’s weird.

Maybe she’s doing this on purpose – staying out of the way just to scare me. Well if she is, her plan is working brilliantly. I can’t sleep at night, thinking about what might be happening next door.

And I can hardly eat – well, just bits of things. Yesterday I had half a Weetabix, two mandarin oranges, three fish fingers, a few spoonfuls of Ben & Jerry’s and a bowl of popcorn. (Well, I was starving by bedtime, so I had to come up with something quick, and it was the popcorn you do in the microwave.)

Dad keeps asking me if I’m OK. Imagine what he’d say if I told him what I’d done.

Mam spent Christmas with Enda and George in a log cabin that George’s family owns in some mountains. She says it was raining most of the time, but they went walking a lot. She’s back at work now. So is Dad, so I have the house to myself every day until next Monday, when I go back to school.

Chloe is in Kerry till the weekend.

I haven’t seen Bumble since the lunch in Nosh. I wonder how his big romance is getting on. I wish we were still best friends, and I could tell him about Ruth. He’s probably the only person in the world who wouldn’t be shocked and horrified.

So what else is new? I’ve been sending a few texts, trying to get used to it, but I’m still really slow. I think you’re supposed to leave out most of the vowels, so I sent this one to Dad a few days ago:

Jst prctsng

And he texted me back with this:

Next time try English.

Yesterday I sent Mam this one:

Hpy Nw Yr frm Lz.

I suppose it did look a bit like Chinese, but Mam understood it. This was her answer:

Same 2 u xxx

It’s no use – I can’t think about anything else except Ruth Wallace. Hang on – Dad just called upstairs that I’m wanted on the phone. It can’t be Mam – it’s too early for her.

You won’t believe who it was – Chris Thompson.

He wants to meet me. I’m in shock. He got my number from Bumble. Did you get that? He asked Bumble for my number.

My hands are shaking. I can hardly write. My heart is hammering. I hope my voice didn’t wobble when I was talking to him. I can hardly remember what we talked about.

We’re going to the cinema, on Friday night – God, that’s only three days away. He told me what’s on, but I can’t remember. I won’t be able to concentrate on a minute of it anyway, with him sitting beside me.

Oh my God – what if he puts his arm around me? What if anyone sees us? Am I supposed to slap his face if he tries anything, or what?

OK Liz, get a grip. It’s only a date.

Oh my God – a DATE. My first ever date – and with a really cute guy too. Did I mention his gorgeous dimple? And how amazing he was in
Grease
?

I feel faint. Maybe I’d better eat something.

I couldn’t eat more than two bites of Dad’s macaroni cheese. He felt my forehead and asked me if I was OK. I told him it was my time of month, which shut him right up.

Between Ruth Wallace and Chris Thompson, I’m probably going to fade away from starvation, or collapse from lack of sleep.

God, I’ve just thought of something else. Do I pay for myself at the cinema, or does he? Or do I sort of pretend to want to pay, and is he supposed to jump in and insist on doing it? How does anyone know what to do in these situations? Who makes up the rules, and where can I read them?

I want Mam. She phoned while Dad and I were washing up, but I couldn’t tell her – I just couldn’t say it on the phone. I wanted to sit beside her and look at her face, and ask her a million questions. And of course I couldn’t tell her about attacking Ruth Wallace either – another thing I had to keep from her.

And I can’t call Chloe to ask about Chris, because I don’t know the number in Kerry, and Chloe is the only other person in Ireland without a mobile phone. Bugger. Not that Chloe would be any help really though – she’s never had a date either – but at least I could talk to her about it.

Catherine Eggleston would be able to give me loads of tips, but I’d rather eat maggots on toast than ask her.

And oh God, what do I do if Chris tries to kiss me? I have no idea how to kiss anyone, apart from my parents and Granny Daly, and something tells me this
is going to be very different. Now I really feel sick. Maybe I’ll ring him and tell him I have an infectious disease and I’ve been forbidden to go outside for at least three years.

But then I’d just have to go through all this again the next time somebody asked me out – that’s if anyone else ever does – so maybe I should just get it over with now.

I haven’t told Dad yet. Obviously he knows about Chris calling, because he answered the phone. Although he didn’t ask me who it was afterwards, which I thought was very nice of him – he was probably dying to know. Or maybe he just assumed it was Bumble.

I’ll tell him I’m meeting a school friend at the cinema, which is true, sort of. He might be going out himself on Friday night with Marjorie – oh God, what if they go to the cinema too? Imagine if we all met up in the foyer. I think I’d die.

It’s past midnight. I’d better go to bed, although I know I won’t sleep. My head is bursting with worry and excitement.

Can you believe I actually forgot about Ruth Wallace for a while there? I’ve just remembered her again now.

I don’t know what’s more terrifying, being arrested for murdering your neighbour or going on your first date.