‘Not my orange tights. It took me years to find a pair in the right shade of orange and I got these in a shop in Stockholm and they were the last pair.’ Jeane clenched her fists and I really thought she was going to cry. Or punch me. ‘You shouldn’t go round tipping people off their bikes. You’re head of the student council; you’re meant to set an example.’
‘I know, I said I was sorry and I am sorry about your tights but they are only tights.’ I looked at them again and wondered why Jeane wasn’t more concerned about her cuts and grazes and then my eyes wandered down to her left ankle and stayed there. ‘Oh my God.’
‘I’m glad you appreciate the severity of the situation,’ Jeane snapped. Unbelievably she was reaching for her phone again. ‘I’m going to try and find an inferior pair of orange tights on eBay and you’re paying for them.’
‘Jeane!’
‘Now what?’
I pointed a shaky finger at her ankle, which didn’t even look like an ankle any more. It was the size of a football. ‘How can that not hurt?’
‘What?’ She looked down and then her eyes rolled so I could only see the whites and she lurched backwards so I had to rush to her side to stop her bashing her head on the concrete. She opened her mouth to say something but all that came out was a weak little whimper.
‘Does it really not hurt, Jeane?’
She clutched on to my arm. Her nails were painted with wonky candy stripes. ‘Now I come to think of it, it hurts like a bitch,’ she gritted. ‘I think I might vom.’
I patted her hand, which was icy cold, as if she was in shock. I took off my leather jacket and placed it around her shoulders. ‘Look, I’m going to take you to hospital so you can have it X-rayed.’
Jeane shook her head resolutely. ‘No! I hate hospitals. I think I can feel my toes. Would I be able to feel my toes if it was broken? Shall I ask Twitter?’
‘I have no idea.’ I forced myself to look at her ankle again. It was bulging over the top of her sneaker. ‘And rather than wasting time tweeting maybe we should take off your shoe before it cuts off your circulation?’
‘No! It will hurt too much!’ Jeane lay back down on the ground. ‘I’ll have to stay here for ever and I have so much stuff to do tonight.’
Now that Jeane had reverted back to type, I felt easier. She was even more of a drama queen than Alice, but at least Alice had the excuse of being only five. Still didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with her though. ‘You can’t stay there for ever and you can’t walk and your bike’s all mashed up so I’m going to give you a lift. To hospital.’
‘I’m not going to hospital,’ she protested. ‘One whiff of industrial floor cleaner or seeing an elderly person with yellow skin and varicose veins on a drip and I’ll throw up all over you.’
‘Don’t be such a baby,’ I said sternly. Then I had an idea. ‘My dad’s a doctor. Will you deign to see him?’
Jeane’s face twisted with indecision. ‘What kind of doctor?’
‘A GP. Head of his own practice. Twenty years’ experience and if you’re really well behaved he’ll give you a sugar-free lollipop.’
‘What’s the point of a sugar-free lollipop?’ she groused. ‘Well, I suppose I could see your dad, as long as he promises not to hurt me.’
I chained her bike up while she insisted on taking a picture of her mangled leg and tweeting it to her followers, and then with much wincing and flinching I helped Jeane to her feet, or rather her right foot because she couldn’t put any weight on her left foot. Then, clutching on to my arm, she tried to hop to my car. Every time she made contact with the ground, her breath caught, like the impact was jarring her ankle.
‘I could carry you?’ I offered half-heartedly. ‘You can’t weigh that much.’
Her eyes narrowed to piggy little slits. ‘You even try to carry me then you can forget about ever having children,’ she hissed. ‘I can manage.’
In the end I drove my car as close to the bike shed as I could and soon we were on the way to my house, without me giving much thought or consideration to whether I wanted Jeane anywhere near my house.
Jeane had been glued to her iPhone for the entire five minute journey but as I pulled into our drive and parallel parked next to my dad’s Volvo, she looked up and gave a long, low whistle. ‘Swankerama,’ she said with a slight sneer to her voice like it wasn’t cool to live in a big house.
But we didn’t live in a mansion set in fifty acres with a duckpond, an ornamental lake and a croquet lawn. It was just a big, rambling Victorian house with a roof that leaked and sash windows that rattled in their frames. And the basement and most of the ground floor were taken up with the doctor’s surgery but Jeane still looked disapproving.
My dad always finished early on Thursdays and as I ushered a hobbling Jeane through the side door, he was just coming out of the surgery.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been in the wars.’
I expected Jeane to launch into a detailed account of how I’d crippled her, but she just leaned against the doorframe so she could hold out her hand. ‘I’m Jeane, do you accept walk-ins?’
‘I think I can make an exception,’ Dad said calmly, like he wasn’t at all phased by a seventeen-year-old girl with iron-grey hair who was dressed like a freak. ‘Michael, will you tell Agatha that she can go home then make sure that Melly and Alice don’t put CBeebies on?’
Jeane waggled her fingers at me as I headed up the stairs to relieve our au pair. ‘So, do you think my foxtrotting days are over?’ she asked Dad. ‘And do you mind if I live-tweet my medical examination?’
Half an hour later, I had Melly and Alice sitting at the kitchen table doing their homework but mostly arguing about who was the queen of Disneyland Paris and I was making a start on dinner. Thursday night was always stir-fry night, which involved chopping up a huge amount of vegetables.
I’d just started on the peppers when I heard a heavy thump and drag on the stairs and the sound of voices. I looked up in time to see Jeane enter the kitchen on …
‘Crutches!’ she exclaimed happily, as Alice and Melly both stopped arguing in favour of staring at Jeane with wide, confused eyes. ‘I’m so guaranteed to get a seat on public transport.’
‘It’s not broken?’ I asked nervously. Dad had followed Jeane into the kitchen and he didn’t have the look of a man who was going to ground me and give me a looooonnngggg lecture on good manners and not tipping people much smaller than me off their bikes. But no: he was smiling indulgently at Jeane, who was clutching a bouquet of sugar-free lollipops in one hand.
‘It’s just a bad sprain,’ he said, as he opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of frozen peas, which were only used in a vegetable emergency. He gestured at one of the kitchen chairs and Jeane sat down and propped her pasty white leg (now devoid of torn orange tights) up on the chair next to her. ‘Now keep this iced for a little while and then I’ll bandage it.’
Alice nodded. ‘RICE,’ she noted. ‘Rest, ice, compression, elevation. If symptoms persist, please consult your doctor. Who are you?’
‘I’m Jeane, who are you?’ Jeane stared right back at Alice, who couldn’t take the pressure and hid her face in her hands.
‘She’s Alice,’ Melly said. ‘I wouldn’t pay her any attention, she’s only five. I’m nearly eight.’
‘You’re not nearly eight,’ Dad reminded her. ‘You only turned seven two months ago.’
‘Yes, but I’ll never turn seven again,’ Melly insisted. She gave Jeane an appraising glance.‘Are you one of Michael’s girlfriends?’
‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘Jeane goes to my school and don’t ask personal questions.’
‘Is Melly asking personal questions again?’ Mum wanted to know as she came through the door. She dumped handbag, briefcase and laptop bag on the table, took off her coat, slung it over the back of a chair, kissed Dad, then caught sight of Jeane who was eyeing her with interest. ‘Hello, who are you?’
Introductions were made. It was like
watching two dogs circle each other warily. I’d never seen Jeane look less sure of herself. ‘Well, I’ve rested and I’ve iced,’ she said, staring at her foot. ‘Is it time for compression yet?’
‘Why don’t you stay for dinner?’ Mum suggested. Mum’s suggestions always sounded like a direct order.
‘Well, I do have rather a lot to do this evening,’ Jeane said, staring at the worktop where Dad was making a marinade. ‘What are you having?’
‘Turkey and tofu stir-fry,’ Alice said. She shuddered. ‘I never eat the tofu; it’s yuck.’
‘Why don’t you phone your parents and let them know where you are?’
I looked at my mother in horror. She knew me. I was her eldest child. Her only son. She’d raised me and nagged and chivvied me to do my coursework on time and not eat between meals and we even watched subtitled Danish detective TV shows together so she had to know that Jeane was not someone who was my friend and certainly not someone who I wanted to stay for dinner.
At least Jeane and I were in complete agreement for once because she was looking equally horrified, especially when she saw Dad cutting up huge chunks of tofu.
‘No, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to call my parents. I’d love to stay for dinner.’
Jesus wept.
There were so many reasons why I shouldn’t have been having dinner at Michael Lee’s house but his dad had been really nice as he picked bits of grit out of my bloodied flesh with a pair of tweezers and he’d given me lollipops, even if they were sugar-free. Besides, it had been ages since I had a homecooked meal, probably not since Bethan had gone to the States. But the best reason for staying for dinner was the look of utter panic on Michael Lee’s face, like his entire reality was about to come crashing down.
It was payback for my sprained ankle and my ruined orange tights and it was another lesson for him on how life felt when it wasn’t going your way.
And to start off with it was fun. I totally bonded with Melly and Alice and while the stir-fry was being stirred and fried they took me up to their room, which was rammed full of pink princess paraphernalia but also a metric arseload of Lego and Beyblades so I didn’t have to lecture them on the evils of gender stereotyping. Not that it would have done any good.
Alice and Melly were sweet and made it clear that they much preferred me to Scarlett and that my approval rating was very high with the under-tens. Melly even offered to lend me her favourite pair of stripy tights but they were too small, which was a pity because Melly’s favourite pair of stripy tights were pink and green and completely awesome.
I could have stayed on Alice’s bunk bed for the rest of the evening being entertained with tales from the primary school frontline but, all too soon, it was time to sit down to eat the infamous turkey and tofu stir-fry, which was actually delicious. I mean, even the tofu was delicious and there were soba noodles, which I absolutely love, and it would all have been great if Michael’s mum had let me just shovel the food into my face in peace.
His mum (she said I could call her Kathy but made it sound like she’d stab me if I tried) is a lawyer and she cross-examined me like I was in the dock on ten counts of assault with a deadly weapon. She wanted to know why I’d thrown off the shackles of parental responsibility at such a young age and what I was doing for A-levels and whether I had a part-time job and why my hair was grey.
I could tell that she didn’t like me. People’s mothers never do and it wasn’t like I cared whether she liked me or not – I was never going to see her again – but when someone gives me attitude, I can’t help but see their attitude and raise it.
So, instead of being polite and simply answering her questions with monosyllabic replies like any normal seventeenyear-old would, I got really, really defensive. When I wasn’t being all TMI.
‘My mum’s in Peru being touchy-feely with women prisoners. She’s trying to teach them how to meditate,’ I said. ‘And my dad’s moved to Spain to run a bar and get drunk every night for free. Believe me, I’m better off without them and their mid-life crises.’
I didn’t just stop there. Not when I could say, ‘Anyway, friends are the new family and Gustav and Harry who live in the flat next door come round once a month to force me to tidy up and eat some vegetables.’
‘I can’t really see the point of going to university,’ I also said. ‘I’m already my own lifestyle brand and I can just hire a business manager to take care of the number crunching. Anyway, what’s the point of getting a degree and tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of debt? Waste of time.’
I was being so objectionable and obnoxious and obstreperous and many other unflattering words that didn’t begin with an o that I wanted to put down my chopsticks and slap myself around the face. From the frigid expression on Michael’s mum’s (sorry, Kathy’s) face, I think she did too.
It wasn’t until we were having pudding – a very disappointing fruit salad with Greek yoghurt – that I finally stopped talking, but Kathy wasn’t done. ‘So, how did you sprain your ankle?’ she asked.
‘Well, I had an argument with my bike and the ground,’ I said quickly, but I wasn’t quick enough to get in there before Michael.
‘It was my fault,’ he said right over me. ‘I kinda threw Jeane off her bike.’
‘Michael! Why would you do something like that?’ Kathy demanded. ‘That’s not how you were raised.’
I shot Michael a reproachful look, because I didn’t like the guy but he had to know there was a code that clearly stated that you didn’t grass your peers up to their parents.
‘It was an accident,’ I insisted. ‘Just a stupid accident. We were having an argument and—’
‘An argument?’ Kathy sounded like Lady Bracknell banging on about her handbag. She also seemed more aghast that her darling boy would get into an argument than push a defenceless girl off her bike. Though after five seconds in my company she’d probably realised that I was far from defenceless. I was entirely defence-y. ‘That doesn’t sound like you.’
‘I do have arguments with people,’ Michael said as he flushed with embarrassment. It was very entertaining to see him trying to pretend that he was controversial.
Despite the fact he had eyes that were the colour of black coffee and shaped like almonds (note to self: now that’s a cake waiting to be baked), he was the Lees’ blue-eyed boy. When Kathy hadn’t been grilling me about my life choices, her and Mr Lee (who’d told me to call him Shen) had asked Michael all about his classes and his homework and if he’d read an article in the Guardian about last year’s A-level results. He’d been reticent at first and kept shooting me these wary glances, but soon he realised that he had the advantage of being on his home ground and talked at length about current events like he was taking part in one of the school’s deathly dull debating society assemblies. Snoozeville, but Michael’s parents actually listened to what he had to say, eyes fixed on his face as they smiled and nodded encouragingly.
Even Melly and Alice gazed at Michael adoringly and pestered him with requests to play Dance Revolution and for big brotherly help on a school project about dinosaurs.
Michael Lee was the sun, moon and stars, maybe even the whole bloody solar system, as far as his family were concerned. No wonder he was so arrogant.
Still, I couldn’t remember the last time the Smiths had sat down as a family to eat dinner, or even the last time I’d voiced an opinion that Pat and Roy had wanted to hear. But you couldn’t yearn for what you were never going to get – you had to have your own dreams and inspirations, not live through other people, so I didn’t envy Michael Lee because it seemed to me that if his parents had asked him to jump then he’d not only jump but promise to jump higher next time.
But right there and then they weren’t asking him to jump but to pay for the damage that he’d done to my bike. ‘Really, Michael, it’s the very least you can do. I hope you’ve apologised to Jeane.’
‘He has, countless times, and he’s already offered to pay to get Mary repaired,??
? I said calmly, because it wasn’t the awful calamity that Kathy seemed to think it was, even if it was very inconvenient. ‘And I call my bike Mary after a famous woman explorer,’ I added as she opened her mouth to bombard me with yet more questions. ‘It’s all sorted.’
‘You’ll also give Jeane a lift to and from school,’ Mr Lee said mildly, but with an undertone to his voice that was far more intimidating than his wife’s constant carping. ‘That seems fair, doesn’t it?’
‘Of course I will,’ Michael said, but I could see the panic in his eyes again and I certainly didn’t want to spend quality time with him twice a day.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ I assured him. ‘I live right by a bus stop, which drops me off almost outside school and didn’t you hear what I said before? With my crutches, I’m so getting a seat on the bus.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Kathy snapped at me. ‘We’re very big on actions having consequences in this house.’
‘But it was an accident and I was being beyond annoying. Your son doesn’t usually inflict bodily harm on people. It was just a one-off.’
It was like trying to argue with a steel girder. Nothing I said could sway Kathy and Shen Lee and, half an hour later, Michael was driving me home with my crutches bashing him in the face every time he moved his head.
Now that the Barney and Scarlett business was settled, we had nothing to talk about.
‘I’m sorry about my mum,’ Michael finally said, as he turned into my street. ‘It’s very hard to say no to your own mother, isn’t it?’
‘Not really. I find it very easy to say no to mine.’ I pointed at the other side of the street. ‘Just squeeze in behind that white van.’
‘So, what time do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?’ Michael asked me in a resigned voice, as I unclipped my seatbelt.
‘I don’t,’ I said shortly, as I tried to drag the crutches from the back seat. ‘I can manage by myself perfectly well.’
‘But I promised I would.’ Michael got out of the car and walked round to open my door, like I’d lost the use of my arms as well as one leg. Though I wasn’t the kind of feminist who started quoting from the SCUM Manifesto every time a boy held a door open for me, it bugged me. Like, he only did it to be a stand-up guy, not because he wanted to show me any common courtesy.