it seems to groan at the weight. She lights her cigarette, inhaling and releasing smoke with a satisfied smile. I fill the white kettle with water and stick it on. If she’s having a smoke, she’ll want tea.
Waving her cigarette in my direction, she tells me, ‘There’s no Prince Charming in my life, Belle. Love doesn’t happen to the likes of me.’
‘Why not?’ I refuse to believe her. ‘You know, Tess, Prince Charming could be just around the corner, waiting to bump into you.’
She snorts with laughter at this and her belly jiggles up and down, like a bowl of jelly. I giggle as I hand her a cup of strong tea and watch her as she stirs in three heaped teaspoons of sugar.
‘That’s too much,’ I admonish. We’ve been learning about healthy eating in school and all that sugar isn’t on the list of recommended foods in the pyramid.
She ignores me, by stirring the cup and then taking a big slurp. ‘I’ve met a fair few princes in my time alright. I even married one. His name was Prince Liar Liar.’ Her pale-green eyes fill and she dabs her tea towel over her face. I can’t tell if it is tears or sweat that she is wiping away. She sweats a lot. Jim says it’s because her body is weeping at the weight of heaving around what must be at least twenty-odd stone.
I’m a bit worried about her weight. And she smokes too much. I decide that I’m going to hide the biscuits. I push the fruit bowl towards her, pointedly. I want Tess to have her own Prince Charming. She’s lovely and everyone should have their own special someone, like I have my Jim.
I just have to make her believe.
I pick up my book and flick to the last page. Cinderella is iridescent in a flowing white wedding dress, with flowers entwined through her golden hair. She looks up adoringly at her Prince, his head tilted towards hers, as if they are about to kiss.
Yuk. Something just occurred to me. Kissing. That could be a problem. I mean I want to marry Jim. Everyone knows that. But I don’t want to kiss him. That would be gross.
I’ll have the white wedding dress and the flowers and the castle to live in, alright, but I’m not ever, no way, kissing him. I better make sure he knows that, just in case he’s under any illusions of my lips ever touching his.
I trace the words ‘and they lived happily ever after’ written in fancy script on the last page. And bam, I realise something humongous.
‘The happy ever after only happens on the last page.’ I say to her, pointing to the words. ‘You’ve just not got to your last page yet, Tess.’
Ha. I am triumphant and for a moment my words seem to make an impact. The look of disdain that normally lives on her face when talking about love is replaced with something that could be described as hopeful. But it doesn’t last long, it’s just a fleeting moment and disappears in a haze of cigarette smoke.
She rasps, ‘Go away out of that’ and snaps her tea towel at me. She pushes herself up from her chair, muttering to herself about silly girls as she walks out of the room.
I look out of the window at Jim, who is trying to dribble his football in and out of a row of flower pots he’s lined up. It doesn’t matter what Tess thinks, because as long as I believe, I can help make it all happen. And I’ve read enough books to know that me believing is the crucial part in this whole ‘living happily ever after’ malarkey. It all goes pear-shaped the moment you stop believing.
I’m not delusional. I do know that things are not picture-perfect for me. Like, for example, Jim and I didn’t do so well in the whole parents’ lottery. But I also know that it could be a whole lot worse.
It has been a lot worse. I rub the backs of my legs, as if doing so I can erase the stinging memories of my early childhood at home.
I’m not thinking about that now. I’m going to focus on here and now, because since I got to Tess’s, life has been great. She’s right at the top of my cool list, aside from her chain-smoking. I need to do something about that, I vow again. Hiding cigarettes doesn’t work; she just gets another packet.
She keeps telling me that she has few comforts in life. How can I remove one of them? Especially when she’s so good to us two.
A few months ago, Tess let us both pick new wallpaper for our bedrooms. Anything we wanted, she said. It was the first time in my whole life that I got to have a say about how to decorate my bedroom. We all went to Woodies and spent ages looking at all of the papers and paints. Jim, of course, has no imagination and has footballs all over his walls, his bed, his floor. It gives me a headache just sitting in that room.
I looked at every colour chart and pondered for ages. But jumbled up in my head were all the rooms I’ve ever slept in, a hodge podge of every colour in the spectrum. And then it came to me. I knew exactly how I wanted my room to look.
White. Every single part of it. Pure white.
Tess said I was mad, it would be a nightmare to keep clean. But I really wanted it to be that colour. So she made it happen. Even painting my wardrobe and pine bedside lockers white. She replaced the bookshelves with a new set, in white of course.
The bed linen is broiderie anglaise and so pretty. I love it so much in there. And even Tess has to agree that I’m really good at keeping it clean.
Actually, I think I’ll go up there now to finish my book. I’m halfway through The Lord of the Rings. Dinner won’t be for ages anyhow. I’m still stuffed from lunch. It was one of Tess’s specials: deep-fried everything, with a side of fries.
Jim catches me watching him from the window. He starts to show off then, his skinny legs moving quickly as they weave the ball in and out. His wavy red hair flops over his forehead and he brushes it back before taking aim at the back fence again.
‘He shoots, he scores, back of the net.’ He shouts at his imaginary fans and then he turns to me. ‘And the crowd goes wild …’ He pulls his sweatshirt up over his head and runs around the garden.
‘You big eejit.’ I shout, laughing, and he takes a bow.
I know I’m lucky. Up until Tess and Jim came along, I’d never known proper love. But Jim’s arrival seemed to have a knock-on effect all around me. When he came here, a ripple of fun, love and joy spread into all areas of my life. Sometimes I can’t remember how bad things were before. And I don’t want to. I’ve nearly managed to block out what it felt like back then. Nearly.
Every now and then I remember the fear, that feeling of being so scared all the time that I wanted to curl up into a ball and hide in a corner.
But there’s something else that I remember even more than the fear.
The loneliness. What if she forgets all about me and leaves me here, locked up in my room? What if she never comes home?
I pick up a biscuit and nibble on it, looking at my best friend through the window. All I ever really wanted was someone to play with me. And being really greedy, I wanted that person to love me and me to love them too.
Jim Looney. My best friend.
I’ll read later. Frodo and Samwise will have to wait.
Shouting to him as I run out the door, ‘Get ready to cry, ’cos I’m going to take you down, all the way to Chinatown,’ and I catch him off guard, grab the football from him and take aim at the back fence, our makeshift goalpost.
‘That’s how you do it.’ I laugh and we both run towards the ball.
And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.
Libba Bray
December 1990
I can’t listen to him for one more minute. He’s driving me mad