Size Matters (19 page)

‘Bad dream or a good dream?' Greg was waking up properly now. In the morning he'd be impossible to shift, sleeping late and feeling groggy and out of sync. Not good on a Monday, she recognized, it could throw his whole week out. He'd drink too much coffee then wonder why he got stomach cramps.

‘Bad dream. I killed Delphine with her own Carmens.'

‘Eh?'

‘Heated hair curlers. I managed to electrocute her or something. Not that you can, only in dreamworld. She was a fat dolly in Delphine's dance shoes.'

Greg sighed and put his hands over his eyes. ‘You've lost me now.'

‘Well you did ask. You should never ask people to tell you their dreams, you know that. They're always either incredibly boring or completely barking mad.' Was it mad? Or bad? Only a jury could decide. Herself, Jay would plump for mad – she wouldn't really wish this fate on a dolly, let alone a real human.

She was feeling cross. It wasn't Greg's fault, he'd only been trying to sympathize, but she wasn't up to more explaining. She even felt annoyed with herself for being so contrary. But the thing with bad dreams was that you needed a bit of silent, thinking-through time to get rid of the demons they left behind. You needed time to reassure yourself that you hadn't done the dreadful thing you'd dreamed, not really. It was only pretend, nobody's fault.

Jay climbed out of bed and wrapped her comforting old cotton waffle dressing gown round her body, then slipped out of the room and down the stairs. Daffodil (still in disgrace after the rook) pattered along in front of her, swishing her brown tail out of the way of Jay's feet. On the middle landing she could hear Rory muttering in his sleep and hoped his dreams were less disturbing than hers.

It was years and years since she'd had a Killing Delphine dream. Certainly before Delphine went to Australia, so at least ten years. At their peak they'd turned up every fortnight or so, and for a time her cousin must have been the most serially slaughtered dream object on the planet. There'd been the Riding Accident (cruel to poor Cobweb, having him hurl himself into a canyon, but something had to be the weapon), the one with the crumbling cliff edge, the drowning (such a short but impossibly paralysed hand-stretch from the riverbank). The previous worst had been the one with the silver cake-slice that Win kept in a display cabinet alongside Delphine's under-fourteens Home Counties (South) Latin American Formation cup. When she'd settled from the sweating horrors of that nightmare, Jay had calmed herself by deciding it would have been impossible anyway, you really couldn't put a cake-sized cross-section of a person onto a small plate. You'd need a whopping great serving platter, and
even then the flesh wouldn't stay in its neat wedge shape. It would flop.

Jay pulled a chair up to the dishwasher which was still warm from its late evening cycle. She felt shivery and slightly sick and peculiarly foolish. Dreaming about killing your cousin out of sheer spite was just so juvenile. Daffodil miaowed softly and jumped onto her lap, settling quickly and purring, pushing her head against Jay's hand, demanding fuss and forgiveness. This had been a real throwback dream. They'd been quite a feature of her teen years, starting, she was pretty sure, on the night of Delphine's eleven-plus results. Jay had passed hers easily the year before and was settling happily enough into the local girls' grammar school, hating some aspects (her too-big uniform, algebra, the sadistic Bingham twins) and loving others (English Lit, Thursday's semolina, hanging upside down from the gym wallbars). On the day Delphine failed her eleven-plus she cycled round to visit Jay on a brand new five-geared bicycle, all lights and bells and sparkly pink reflectors.

‘Oh you passed then!' Audrey hadn't been able to keep the surprise out of her voice. Delphine was, school-wise, what even her fond mother could only describe as a ‘doer, not a thinker'. Win frequently scolded Jay, April and Matt for always having their noses in a book, unable to understand why they wouldn't prefer to perfect the quickstep, as Delphine had, or turn themselves into a dab hand with floral arrangements.

‘
I'm
going to St Miriam's!' Delphine had announced grandly, naming a small, private establishment where girls were not troubled with excess academic exertion.

‘So why d'you get a bike then? It's ages till your birthday,' Jay had asked, understanding that Delphine had
not
passed the eleven-plus. Nobody in the area
went to a private school unless they'd failed to get into the grammar and had parents who went pale and faint at the thought of their darlings attending Broom Lane Secondary. Even years on, when both schools became comprehensive, it was still the ex-grammar that was oversubscribed.

‘I
got
it for being
me
,' Delphine had smirked, stroking a speck of dust off her gleaming dynamo light.

‘It's silly to be jealous, you know,' Audrey had said later when Jay had spent the afternoon sulking on her bed with a book and refusing to fetch her own bike (second-hand, a bit undersized, slightly rusty) and go to the park with Delphine. ‘And it's rather nasty as well. Delphine isn't as clever as you and she can't help that. I'm sure Win only wanted to make sure she felt as good as the girls who
can
pass exams, and show her that you didn't just get presents for being bright.'

But that was the thing, Jay had been given a congratulatory hug when she passed her exams. There was no big fuss, no celebration, just as it had been for her sister and brother before her. ‘I'm not doing big presents, it's not as if you needed to be bribed to pass,' Audrey had said.

But looking at Delphine's triumphant consolation prize, even though Jay knew she was being shallow and greedy, right then she'd rather have sold her soul to have failed and got a bike. That night she'd woken up trembling with guilt from a dream about a tangle of flesh and metal. Even now she could still picture the black of the tarmac, the yellow of Delphine's cascading, spun-gold princess hair and the sparkle of sunlight on new chrome.

Ellie and Rory walked slowly and silently through the school gates together and trudged up the long driveway, heads down against the wind. Usually they
arrived separately but today, Rory's first day back after his operation, it was as if each could do with the support of the other. Both felt nervy and each had the same reason. Tasha.

‘She's mad you know, lost it big time,' Rory said for about the hundredth time since the previous afternoon when she'd crept up to the house and left the cage containing the white rat on the doorstep, then simply sneaked away again. ‘I mean, what is she
on
?'

‘I dunno. In the note she said it was a present.'

‘But who to? You or me?' Then together they both said ‘You' and laughed.

‘Got to be you, she's your friend,' Rory said.

‘No, it's you she wants. She's only being nice to me to get to you.'

They'd had versions of this conversation at least twice, starting the day before when Charles was leaving after lunch and Audrey had discovered the box with the cross rat squeaking away in it and gnawing holes. She hadn't completely freaked (all credit to her. They'd have expected an Old Person to jump onto the nearest chair and scream) but she hadn't looked delighted to see it. Nobody had except Charles, who had picked up the cage and quite recklessly put his face close to the bars to coo at the occupant.

‘Oh a fancy rat!' He had been pretty much amazed (well who wasn't?) but not spooked or anything, opening the cage door carefully to stroke the creature. Even though he made sure his fingers didn't get in the way of its teeth, Ellie had thought he was mad, especially after Daffodil's rook had already pecked him. Suppose it was true that things like that ran in threes? Didn't pilots need their fingers to be in tip-top condition, Ellie had wondered at the time, would he get banned from flying if he had stitches and a fat bandage on the finger he used to operate some essential in-flight computer?

The note had said, ‘He's for you. Be nice to him, Love from T.' Wildly, Ellie had thought, oh that could mean it's for anyone, but getting real, well it was hardly going to be a present for her parents.

April and Freddie had thought it was hysterical. Gran and Auntie Win had gone all pursed lips and suggested they set it free in next door's hedge, Greg had had the not-brilliant idea of letting Daffodil have a go at it, which made Mum give him a look.

It wasn't that funny though. How did Tasha know where they lived, for one thing? This worried Ellie a lot. It would be all over their year now that they lived in a big house with a Mercedes (her dad's), a Golf (her mum's and Moggie's) and a silver Porsche (the visiting Charles) all parked outside like some kind of executive fleet. Where was the Dishing the Dirt van when you needed it? Round at Anya's, ready for Monday morning and Mrs Ryan's Regular, that's where.

‘We could pretend we don't know anything about it,' She suggested to Rory. ‘Then she might think she'd got the wrong place.'

‘That won't work. She'll have made sure she got it right. Our address was on the hospital notes at the end of the bed when I was in there. She must have got it then.'

‘Or followed one of us.'

‘Or asked your Amanda friend or almost anyone in your class. Anyway that's not the bit that matters. What are we going to do with the rat? Give it back to her?'

‘She'll take offence. You don't know what Tash is like when she's upset. She goes all wild. She does things.'

‘Tell her you love it then, tell her it's just what you've always wanted.' She'd have to. Ellie didn't want to get on the wrong side of Tasha. She might come round with a different sort of present, something much
spookier. She might bung a lighted firework through the letterbox, or dog poo.

They were on the school steps now. Ellie felt small whooshes as groups of people bigger than her hurtled past, eager to get inside to the fuggy warmth of the cloakrooms. She felt very tiny, even more than usual, as if she didn't take up enough space to count as a human, because she could hardly be seen. Perhaps she couldn't be. How brilliant would it be to be invisible? Or if you were only invisible to other people, but not to yourself, how would you know you were?

‘If we say we like it, she might go and give us another one. Have you thought of that? I'll think of something, tell her it's really nice and thanks and all that but we can't keep it, make something up, whatever.'

‘Tell her Mum won't let you. She can't argue with that.' Ellie gave him a look. What kind of a saddo would she be if she said something like that? Tashatype girls didn't have mums who laid down rules about what and when. They had mums who shared their fags and shouted the place down for wearing each other's clothes and not washing them. If she said ‘Mum won't let me' she'd never hear the last of it.

Ellie went into the girls' cloakroom and left her coat on her usual peg. She hoped it would still be there at going-home time. Sometimes coats and jackets weren't. She'd been lucky so far – hers was a bit small to fit most of the hulky great girls who did the thieving, but then they might have younger sisters who'd be happy to have her stuff.

‘Good weekend?' Amanda was sitting on the radiator, picking at a small hole in her tights. She looked eager, pent up, something she was dying to say.

‘Not bad,' Ellie told her, adding, ‘nothing much happened.' You never knew, she might be in on the rat-present thing with Tasha. Maybe she'd got one as
well. Unlikely, but best to make sure it came across as no big deal.

‘Nothing?' Amanda's voice emerged as an excited squeak. ‘What do you mean nothing? Who
was
he?'

Ellie took a quick look at herself in the mirror. Her hair was looking a bit lank. The phrase
rats' tails
came into her head. Her mum used to say that about hers when it needed washing. She didn't want to think about the rat. What were they going to do with it? Sell it on e-bay? Take it to the petshop and hope they'd make an exception to their new ‘no live animals' policy?

‘Who was who?' she asked Amanda at last.

‘That boy you were with on Friday! The one you
kissed
? Duh?'

‘
Him
? He was no-one, just my cousin Freddie.'

‘God, Ellie, he was gorgeous! I thought he was like,
with
you? Disappointing or what.' The registration bell rang and the two girls picked up their bags and joined the noisy throng in the corridor. ‘I was a bit pissed off, to tell the truth. I was going to text you and tell you but I've run out of free time. I thought you could have told me if you were going out with someone.'

‘Oh I would, I would,' Ellie reassured her. She felt as if there was something going on here that she couldn't keep up with. All around her there seemed to be people who were fancying each other. Tasha was chasing Rory; Amanda thought Freddie was gorgeous. There was a girl in their year who'd had an abortion the term before. At lunchtimes there were couples under the trees by the railway, standing a bit apart from their groups of friends, sharing cigarettes, kissing sometimes, touching – not much, just enough to be claiming each other as their own. She didn't feel like doing any of those things. Maybe it was something to do with
being a late starter, hormone-wise. Whatever it was, the idea of getting into a bed with a smelly boy rather than a good book did not at all appeal. She sometimes wondered if it ever would.

You couldn't miss the sign: a big ‘Welcome to Weight Watchers' notice was propped up outside the pub like an oversized party invitation. A posse of teenagers lurked by the wall outside and Jay crossed her fingers that they wouldn't shout rude remarks at her as she went in. She could do without being greeted by, ‘Oy, lard-arse!'

Temptation beckoned on the far side of the Red Lion's frosted glass door. You could turn right for the pints of lager and prawn-cocktail crisps option, or you could choose the path of virtue and go up the stairs to the function room. Here you would learn that the lager and crisps still
were
an option – albeit a risky one if you were keen to stay on that vital weight-loss curve – but only if you counted them into your daily total (possibly under ‘treats': one pint of lager = 2 points, crisps = 6 points) and didn't even think of having that bag of chips (9 points, but no penalties for vinegar and salt) on the way home.