Summer Secrets (3 page)

Chapter 4

BANG!
BANG! BANG!

I nearly jump out of my skin. It’s Saturday morning and someone is practically breaking the loo door down. I scramble around, throwing the metal teaspoon and plastic Winnie-the-Pooh egg cup into the medicine cabinet over the sink.

“Amy, what are you doing in there?” Mum screeches through the door. “Are you on drugs?”

“Get real – this isn’t a
CSI: Miami
set, Mother. Can’t I have some privacy?”

“No! We should have left for Cork two hours ago and I still haven’t packed the babies’ wash things. You need to let me in there.”

“I’ll be out in a second, OK?”

“I hope you haven’t ponged the place out. Dave’s always—”

“Jeez, Mum. I really don’t want to know. I’m just peeing, is that all right? Am I allowed pee in my own house?” I can feel my voice tightening. “Just give me one more minute and the bathroom’s all yours. I’ll even strap the babies into their car seats for you.”

“Thanks, Amy. That would be a great help.”

I hear her walk away. Strapping the babies in is no joke – Alex hates his car seat and screams and fights like a grizzly bear – but it’s worth it to get rid of her. The lock on the door is wonky and if Mum had forced her way in and found out what I’m really up to, I’d never have lived it down.

The truth is I’ve been conducting scientific tests on sanitary towels and tampons. Hence the teaspoon and egg cup. I’ve discovered that the average mini-tampon can easily take a teaspoon of liquid – in this case, water coloured with green food dye from the kitchen. The dye is way out of date (like most things in the baking cupboard), but I wanted my experiments to look authentic and I couldn’t find any red.

It was Clover who inspired me. Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I read the latest
Goss
magazine, including Clover’s agony-aunt pages. One of them hit a nerve.

To:
[email protected]

Friday

Dear Clover,

I have a question. I’m thirteen and I haven’t started my periods yet. Is there something wrong with me? I’m starting to get seriously worried. Maybe all the blood is stuck inside me. Will I get an infection? What if it comes out when I’m swimming?

All the other girls in my class talk about their period pains and stuff and I feel like such a reject. Can you help me?

Cathy in Malahide

Underneath, Clover had responded:

Dear Cathy,

Thanks for your letter. Please try not to worry. A lot of thirteen-year-olds and even older girls won’t have got their periods yet. It’s perfectly normal. Before you start, your breasts may start growing and you may get hair under your arms and between your legs.

If these things have happened and you still haven’t started your periods by the time you are fourteen or fifteen, mention it to your mum and she might bring you to your GP for a check-up.

I know you like swimming and are worried that you might start bleeding when you are in the water, but you will probably get some warning. Most people get only a light bleed in the first few months, just enough to stain their knickers – maybe as little as a teaspoonful of blood during the day. It might be brown or red; everyone’s different.

Your periods will also probably be irregular at first, so don’t worry if you skip a month in the early days. And pay no attention to the girls in your class, it doesn’t make them any more grown up or any cooler just because they have their periods. Everyone’s body is different.

Carry some sanitary pads or tampons with you in a little make-up bag so you don’t worry about being caught out. And you never know, your little kit might help a friend who’s just started too.

Being a girl can be a funny old business, so it’s always good to be prepared and to talk to your friends or your mum about your feelings. And remember, I’m always here if you have any more questions.

Take care,

Clover XXX

Anyway, I feel a bit better about being practically the last girl in the class to start her periods after reading Clover’s reply. Plus my quick experiment has proved that tampons and pads can take quite a bit of liquid, which is also reassuring. But now there’s a pale green ring round the sink, from wringing everything out. I’d better clean it up before Mum starts to wonder. And what on earth am I going to do with the soggy evidence?

I look around the bathroom. Aha, nappy bags. I roll the tampons up tightly in the wet sani pads before wrapping everything in a clean, dry nappy and putting the whole lot in an apricot-coloured nappy bag.

Slipping out of the bathroom, I run into my bedroom and immediately zip the nappy bag up in my school rucksack. I’ll sneak it outside to the bin later. Too risky right now.

Mum appears on the landing. She’s like the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police) sometimes: creeping around, waiting to catch me out.

“Amy? Can you find Alex for me? He’s hiding in the garden. Evie’s in the car with Dave.” She pushes wisps of hair back off her face. “Ten minutes till departure.”

Mum always does this departure countdown thing, like the astronauts at NASA but more vocal. By the time she gets to “TWO MINUTES” and “ONE MINUTE AND COUNTING”, the whole road can hear her.

We pass on the stairs and yes, she looks completely frazzled. And she’s still in her stripy blue and white pyjamas. Oops!

“Yes, and I’ll put him in the car like I said,” I promise, and she smiles at me gratefully. Or it could be a wince. Probably a wince.

Alex is filthy. I find him sitting behind the shed in a pile of old potato peelings, tea bags and worms. He’s managed to drag the lid off Mum’s wormery and is sifting through the rotting vegetables, using his hands as spades. He’s eating what looks like a browning spiral of apple peel. At least it’s not a worm.

“Alex!” I say sharply.

He drops the apple peel and gives me a toothy grin, then scrambles around and picks up a worm. “Ta, ta,” he says, handing it to me.

“Yuck, Alex.” I grab his chubby wrist and jiggle the worm out of his fingers. Then I pick him up under his arms so he’s facing away from me and give him a good shake. It’s like Billy shaking himself after a swim, except with Alex it’s rotting food that flies off him, not water. “You are such a gross little troll.” I put him down and start to brush the worst of the gunk off his jeans.

There’s a worm crawling along the top of his shoe; I flick it off with my finger and resolve to scrub my hands with Dettol a.s.a.p., before its worm slime poisons my epidermis. (That’s the top layer of your skin. As I might like to be a writer or a journalist, I’m trying to stretch my vocab. Clover’s idea.)

I plonk Alex in the swing, pull the safety strap across his waist and fasten it. He’s not amused and kicks and wails, but I just ignore him. I try to tidy the wormery up with one of Mum’s gardening trowels: I scoop up most of her precious Tiger worms and plop them back inside, then put the lid back on.

It’s not perfect – there are still bits of rotting carrot and apple cores littered around the garden – but it’ll do. If I tell Mum she’ll probably fall to her knees and start crying – she’s in enough of a state as it is.

“TWO MINUTES TILL DEPARTURE!” Mum has stuck her head out of her bedroom window and is staring at me. “What’s he doing in the swing, Amy? There’s no time for playing with him. And what’s that in his hair?”

I look over. A plump Tiger worm is wriggling down his forehead. “Just a leaf,” I say, pulling it off and pitching it into the flower bed.

I lift Alex out of the swing and wash his hands in the kitchen sink, using loads of blue Dettol soap from the squirty dispenser. I then hold him in place by wrapping both my legs round his waist in a kind of wrestler’s tummy lock while I scrub my own hands. And then, finally, I carry him out through the front door under one arm, his legs kicking like a rodeo pony.

I thrust him at Dave, who’s reading the paper in the front seat. “He’s all yours. I’ve just pulled him out of the wormery. Don’t tell Mum.”

Dave folds up his paper, sighing. “He stinks, Amy. Get him another pair of trousers, will you?”

“I don’t think it’s his trousers,” I say ominously.

After Alex has been changed into a fresh nappy and a new pair of trousers, we finally pull out of Sycamore Park, two hours and fifteen minutes late. I’m already exhausted. Some holiday this is turning out to be.

Chapter 5

At
Abbeyleix, halfway between Dublin and Cork, the car starts to feel a little funny, lopsided, like a funfair ride.

Dave swears under his breath, indicates and pulls over.

Twenty minutes later, I’m still standing on the side of the road, holding Alex’s fishing rod, surrounded by bags and his large red beach bucket. Mum’s walking Evie in her pram and Alex is in his car seat, gurgling away to himself and flinging popcorn around. There’s so much popcorn in the air, it looks as if it’s snowing. The car has a flat tyre, and guess where the spare lives? You’ve got it – in the boot … underneath all the bags.

Dave’s levering the car up with a jack. Beads of sweat are popping out on his forehead and he doesn’t look happy. “Bloody car,” he keeps muttering. It’s an old racing-green Volvo estate which his sister, Prue, passed on when she got her BMW jeep. The colour is the only racy thing about it.

Before the babies, Dave owned a small white MG sports car. He’s never liked the Volvo. He told Mum he’s buying a new sports car as soon as he sells a song. Mum said she wasn’t holding her breath – which was a bit mean. Dave’s rock songs for toddlers are getting better, but he does need to work on his lyrics. “I’m a big green dinosaur, hear me roar” isn’t exactly Bob Dylan.

I hear a beep and look over. A metallic-blue Subaru Impreza flies past, its windows open, loud dance music blaring out, and its elephant’s trunk of an exhaust roaring. As it pulls alongside, one of the boy racers inside leans out of the front passenger window and says, “You won’t catch anything there. Try the River Shannon.” He hoots with laughter and high-fives the boy in the back, who looks about eighteen and has a bleached mullet and orange-tinted sunglasses. Then I’m hit in the face by a shower of greasy crisps. Smelly cheese-and-onion ones too. Disgusting!

They beep and wave at me before powering away in a stink of toxic exhaust fumes.

I shake off the crisps, furious and mortified. I have nowhere to hide; I’m stuck, hemmed in by the sea of bags, forced to stand there like an idiot, my cheeks flaming. A second later I hear another beep. What now?

A red Mini Cooper pulls up behind our car and out steps Clover. She’s wearing tiny white shorts, a white vest over a turquoise bikini top and a white velour Juicy hoody. As always, she looks fab. “Hey, Beanie – what’s up?”

“Flat tyre,” I say miserably.

“Bummer. Hey, girlfriend,” she adds in a Texan drawl, “wanna ride with me?” She blows a big pink bubble with her chewing-gum and pops it, then peels the thin layer of gum off her cheeks with her fingers.

I grin at her. My day has just started to look a whole heap better.

Chapter 6

Soon
we’re flying down the N8 in Clover’s Mini Cooper, next stop Cork city.

“Can we the take the top down?” I ask eagerly.

“Later,” Clover assures me. “First you promised you’d help me perfect my interview technique and you won’t be able to hear my killer questions if the roof’s off. You’re Efa Valentine, OK, Beanie? And if you don’t know the answer, just make something up.”

“We’re hardly twins,” I point out. I look in the mirror of the lowered sun visor and stretch the skin beside my eyes with my fingers, so I look like a cat.

Efa is tall and willowy, with a little elf-like face, wispy blonde hair and these amazing chocolate-brown, almond-shaped eyes. I think her mum’s Polish or Russian or something, which would account for her exotic looks.