Wonderland Read online

  Mum was beautiful. Not just like every kid thinks their mum is beautiful. I mean she was like Marilyn and Marlene and Madonna rolled into one. That wild blond hair, eyes an obscure shade of green. Like candied angelica or lime Starburst. Unique. My shooting star, Dad called her. And she was. Lighting up the village for nine years, then burning out. I am like a low-energy lightbulb, I think. I laugh at the image in my head. And what is Stella? A Catherine wheel? Maybe a disco ball.

  Mum and Dad met in a pub in London. She kept the matchbook in her jewelery box. I have looked at the street on maps. Googled it a hundred times. This once-in-a-lifetime meeting place. The start of it all.

  He was at art school in Chelsea, his great escape from Churchtown. She was doing modeling jobs for a hundred pounds and living on her mother’s inheritance, her father three years dead. She was in a pop video once. They still show it on MTV, Mum dancing in the background behind some cheesy eighties band with striped T-shirts and blow-dried glam hair.

  She said it was love at first sight. Dad would get embarrassed, but I think it was the same for him. When she got pregnant, they thought they would move to France. Live in some stone farmhouse in the South. In lavender fields. Where all artists go, following the light. Him painting, her reading me Keats, teaching me “Frère Jacques.”

  But then Dad’s father died. And Dad had to come back tothe farm he’d fought so hard to leave. Gran forbade Mum to follow him. Maybe that’s why she did. To spite her. And I was born on the farm in May. A Gemini. Same as her.

  Dad says she was like nothing Churchtown had ever seen. She’d walk into the village in Gaultier skirts and stilettos, with me on one hip. She’d send me to school in mismatched wellies or a party dress because she’d lost my shoes or used my skirt to mop up spilled soup. I would get sent home, mortified. But Mum just laughed and let me watch cartoons and made cupcakes.

  Those were the good days. On the bad days, I’d come home and she’d still be in bed. Or lying on the sofa in one of Dad’s shirts. Eating cornflakes from the box, then lying defiantly in the crumbs. Saying she was too tired to clean. Mrs. Hickman hoovering around her and muttering under her breath.

  Highly strung, Gran called it. But I know what she really thought. What everyone thought. And I think of Mental Nigel, sitting outside the launderette, counting red cars and eating candy. And for one brief moment, I’m glad I’m nothing like her.

  Mick Jagger has faded into the low electricity hum of the speakers. The back door slams and I hear Alfie’s voice singing through the house. Then Gran’s restrained, clipped vowels. So different from me and Alfie.

  Then Dad.

  “Jude!”

  “Yeah.”

  I down the last few mouthfuls of warm, flat Coke and look again at my reflection. Wishing someone else were staring back. But it’s still me.

  “Jude, darling.”

  “Hi, Gran.”

  She kisses me on both cheeks, like the French girl I am not, her lips never once coming into contact with my skin. I can smell soap and coffee and Nina Ricci. Dressed in cream linen, she is immaculate. Out of place in our cramped, mismatched living room.

  She isn’t staying with us. Now she has the excuse that there’s no room. But even before we moved, she’d find some reason to book a hotel. Said the farm gave her hay fever. “They’re cows, not crops,” Dad said. But Mum just laughed and said, “Let her waste her money.”

  “So, you’ve been helping Edward and his mother.”

  I feel Dad’s eyes on me. Don’t-you-daring me. I smile at Gran. “Yes. Sorry I missed you earlier.”

  “Oh, never mind. We’ve had a splendid time, haven’t we, Alfie?”

  “We got ice cream dipped in chocolate, and Gran says I can go to the hotel later and swim in the pool.”

  “Does she, now?” says Dad.

  Gran raises a plucked, arched eyebrow at him that says, And?

  But Alfie doesn’t see it. “It’s made of salt water. Did you know that salt actually makes you float? In the Dead Sea you actually float on top of the water because it’s, like, so salty.”

  “I didn’t know that, Alfie,” says Dad. Lying again. Twice in one morning. Alfie looks pleased. So does Gran. One point for her.

  “You must come too, Jude. We can have tea on the lawn.”

  I hear Stella laugh in my head and force a smile. “Thanks. Maybe.” Maybe not.

  “So, how were the exams, darling?” Gran perches on the edge of the sofa, tensing in case some neglected spill seeps through her trouser suit. “Have you thought about university yet? Your father tells me Edward is going to King’s.”

  “Give her a chance.” Dad glances over at me. “She’s only just done her GCSEs.”

  But Gran ignores that fact. “It pays to think ahead, Tom. You know they have summer programs at Cambridge for less fortunate pupils. To give them a taste. She —”

  “She goes to a bloody three-thousand-pounds-a-term girls’ school. I’d say she’s more than fortunate.”

  Gran stiffens.

  “Dad swore. Dad, you swore.” Alfie is delirious with forbidden things.

  “Sorry, Alfie . . . Margaret.” He nods at Gran.

  “I’m only thinking of Jude.” Gran holds up her hands.

  “I know.”

  “She has such potential. . . .”

  “She is in this room,” I point out.

  But Gran doesn’t hear me. Or chooses not to. “And then there’s her acting.”

  “That’s a hobby. Not a career.”

  “That’s not what Charlotte thought . . .”

  Dad flinches. Mum’s name hanging solid between them. Like a swearword. And I think, She’ll stop now; she has to.

  But she doesn’t.

  “. . . not what you used to think. She could have been someone, you know. If —”

  “She was someone,” Dad says deliberately, his face reddening with anger.

  “Dad,” I plead softly. Desperately. “Stop it.” I don’t want to hear this. Not now. I’m too tired. But he ignores me.

  He and Gran blur into one noise. “Don’t understand . . . never accepted . . . blame me . . .”

  I can’t listen anymore. Have to make the noise disappear. “I’m leaving, anyway,” I blurt out.

  The voices cut out abruptly.

  “What?” Dad looks at me, confused.

  “I’ve got an audition. At the Lab. It’s a drama school.” I pause. “In London.”

  “Oh, Jude, that’s wonderful —” Gran is glowing again. Victorious.

  But she hasn’t won. Dad plays his trump card. “No,” he says.

  “What?” It’s my turn now.

  “You’re not going.”

  “Why?”

  “How are you going to pay for it?” he says. “They don’t give out grants anymore. How much do you think it costs to go to stage school?”

  About three thousand pounds a term, I think. But I don’t say it. I don’t need to. We all know where the money will come from.

  Gran smiles. “You can’t keep her here forever, Tom.”

  Dad drops his head. Then looks up at her. “I’m not trying to. Do you think I want her to end up like me? But she’s a kid, Margaret. She’s too young. She’s too”— he looks over at me, searching for a word —“fragile.”

  “No, I’m not.” I retort. I’m strong. I’m invincible. Like Stella. Aren’t I?

  But Dad’s still going on at Gran. “She needs stability. Normal things. A normal life.” He pauses, searching for the words. “Look at what it did to her,” he says finally. And he doesn’t mean me now. “Those people. Every time she went up to London . . . the state she was in when she got back.”

  “Because she saw what she was missing,” Gran says.

  Dad shakes his head. “Because they got her drunk. Gave her —” He stops.

  I can feel the tears prick my eyes again and I choke back a sob. But Gran waves her hand. Dismissing it as lies.

  Dad turns to me. “I’m sorry, Jude. You�
��re too young.”

  “I’m sixteen,” I cry.

  “Exactly. Sixteen. How can you even know what you want to do at this age? Who you want to be?”

  I know exactly who I want to be. So does he. And that’s what he’s scared of. But I don’t say that. I use another weapon.

  “You did,” I spit. “You wanted to be Turner or Whistler or . . . or Monet. What happened to that?”

  “Life happened,” he says. “And, anyway, I wasn’t good enough.”

  “What if I am, though?”

  Dad says nothing. Alfie is crying. Dad tries to pick him up, but he fights and wriggles out of his grip and holds on to my legs. “Don’t go.” Snot is running down his nose and sticking to my leg. A snail trail.

  “It’s all right, Alfie,” I say, wiping his face. “It’s all right.” But it isn’t.

  Lunch is ham and potatoes, pushed around plates. Only Alfie is really eating. And talking. Back to his endless chattering now. “Did you know that potatoes were the first food grown in space?” Dad clears the table and gets everyone ice cream from the shop freezer. Ice cream. Mum’s answer to bad dreams and scraped knees and bee stings. And rows.

  I don’t go to the hotel with Alfie and Gran. I go back to my room. Back to my bed and the Rolling Stones. Ed calls, but I don’t come to the phone. Because it’s not him I need now. It’s Stella.

  But Stella has other plans.

  IT’S MONDAY. Two days since that night at the Point. Two days since I saw Stella. Gran has gone, Alfie’s at school, and Dad and I are working in the shop. Me putting out cans of tuna, boxes of cereal. Him behind the counter, doling out stamps and pensions and explaining passport forms to Mrs. Saunders, who is going to Germany to see her son. “He’s got four medals, you know.” And no brain, I think, joining the army.

  Mrs. Hickman comes in at noon to do the afternoon shift. “You two not talking?” she huffs.

  We are talking. But about nothing. About me spilling tea on the stack of Daily Mails. About whether he should move the tinned peas up a shelf to make more room for olives and stuff for the tourists. The audition doesn’t come up. But I know he’s thinking about it. We both are.

  At lunchtime I walk down to the beach, hoping I’ll see her there. Lying in the sun. Blondie on her iPod and a cigarette burning down to her fingers. “Hey, Jude,” she’ll say. Like nothing’s happened. But it has.

  I stand on the dunes and scan the shore below me. The beach is busier now. Families from Birmingham, Manchester, Milton Keynes, with kids too young for school. Staying at the holiday park. Or the farm, maybe. Paying cheap prices before the season starts. Surfers with no jobs to go to. No ties. Living in their vans. Just driving from beach to beach, following the tides.

  She’s not there. But Emily and the Plastics are. In white bikinis. Tiny triangles stretched over their breasts. Legs tanned to perfection. Brazilian waxes making sure nothing shows below the high-cut Lycra. Magazines fighting for towel space with cans of Diet Coke, sun cream, and cigarette packets. An iPod churns out tinny music. Blair is here, somewhere. Out on his board, probably. Emily’s head is on his sweatshirt. Staking her claim.

  I am in a tank top. One of Stella’s. Pink. Tight across my chest. My jeans cut off to the tops of my thighs. Flip-flops that kick sprays of sand up my legs when I walk. Dawce sees me. Says something I can’t hear. Emily and the Hollys look up. Eyes hidden behind oversize glasses. I turn quickly to walk away, back to the village, home, but Emily calls my name.

  I don’t move. It’s a trick. Got to be.

  “Come here,” she shouts.

  So I do. Slowly. Picking my way past beach tents and coolers, fat glossy paperbacks, and the colored plastic of buckets and spades and elaborate tennis sets. Then I’m there, in front of them. Not sure why.

  “Hi,” I say. Like it’s a question.

  Emily leans back, the sun turning her glasses into mirrors. I can see myself reflected in them. Hands in pockets, uneasy.

  She pushes the glasses up. Her eyes are narrow. “So, what was Saturday about?”

  Does she mean the drinking? I try to sound casual. “Just overdid it a bit.” I try a laugh but it sounds fake. She knows it.

  “He’s not interested, you know.”

  And I must look as dumb as I feel. Because she has to spell it out.

  “Blair.”

  I still don’t get it. “Interested in what?”

  “God, are you stupid?” she snorts. “Anyone. Except me.”

  “I know,” I say. And I mean it.

  “So act it.”

  “But . . .” I’m trying to think. Maybe I did something, said something when I was drunk. But it was Stella he was looking at, not me. Stella who was staring back at him. Wasn’t it?

  “As if, anyway.” Emily pulls back the ring on a Diet Coke. It hisses, and caramel bubbles down the silver and red of the can. She licks it off.

  “Is that it?” I wait to be dismissed. Like I’ve been bad. Told off.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  The Plastics smile identical smiles at me. Alligator smiles. Not real.

  I drop my head and walk away. Not sure where I’m going. Feel their eyes on my back. Hear the laughter, not even stifled. Then I see him. Blair. Wet suit slick with water. Board under his arm. He slows down. His mouth creases up. Like it did at Stella on the Point. “All right, Jude.”

  I ignore him and keep walking, knowing that Emily is watching.

  He laughs. “See you around.”

  He watches me walk away. I feel his eyes on me. He wants something. That’s how people like him choose who to talk to. Sizing up what you can offer. What they can get out of you. Stella, probably. That’s what I am. His way to get her.

  But I don’t know where she is. And I look up at the expanse of sky and pray that my fairy godmother is watching.

  I’M IN the bathroom, watching Alfie’s goldfish floating on its back, eyes glassed over. Dead. Again. Not this one, obviously. But the latest in a long line. All called Harry.

  I scoop the fish out of the bowl. It lies stiff in my hand, mouth gaping. Not a real thing anymore. Just scales and fins, its beauty lost forever. I lower my head and breathe in. It smells of old water.

  “Flush it.”

  I swing around and she is standing there. Leaning against the door frame, chewing. Hands fiddling with a hair elastic, pulling it taut, then releasing it. Stella.

  “Here.” She snaps the elastic and puts it in her pocket. Takes the fish and drops it into the toilet. Pulls the chain. It swirls around the bowl. A flash of orange against the white. Then it is gone.

  I stare at her. Incredulous. Angry. “Where have you been?”

  “You sound like your dad.”

  I do. And I soften. Because she’s here now. That’s what matters.

  “Just . . . I wish you wouldn’t do that. Appear out of nowhere.”

  “Door was open,” she says. “You want to be more careful. Anyone could just wander in.” She is going through the medicine cabinet, looking for something. “Or maybe you want someone to come in?”

  Whatever pill she is searching for, she doesn’t find it. She shuts the cabinet and sits on the edge of the bath.

  “Like Blair Henderson, for instance.” She looks at me, waiting for a reaction.

  “What?”

  “He likes you. I heard Dawce telling Holly H.”

  “That’s not true. It’s you he likes.”

  Stella shrugs. “Whatever.”

  So I drop it. Try another tack. “Anyway, what happened the other night? Where did you go?”

  “Nothing and nowhere. You got wasted. Which was actually more boring than I thought it would be. So I went home. Just been at the farm since then. Modeling for Dad. I’m meant to be Ophelia. You know, beautiful, but mad.”

  I smile. “Good casting.”

  “So, does Tom know yet? About the audition, I mean. Not your colossal incapacity for cheap lager. I assume you threw it back up in here. No way that would get past him.�
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  “At Ed’s actually.” I grimace.

  “Ed’s?”

  “I slept at his house. . . . On the floor,” I add.

  But she doesn’t ask for details. “So, does your dad know about the Lab?”

  “Yeah.” I pull at my lip with my teeth. Sigh. “He’s not happy.”

  She shrugs. “None of his business.”

  “Well . . .” She’s right. But it doesn’t feel like it.

  “He’ll come around. Once you’re earning top dollar in the West End. Or on TV.”

  I laugh. Stella fingers the looped cotton of the mat hung over the side of the bath. Pulls a loop out. Then another. Smoker’s habit. Always fiddling. Mum did it.

  She looks at me, head on one side. “I saw that guy down at the beach last night.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Drama bloke.”

  “Mr. Hughes?”

  “Hughsie. That’s him.”

  I see his face in my head. The curl of hair over his collar. Then I see Stella’s smile, and I know what’s coming.

  “Totally tried it on with me.”

  “Bullshit.” But my voice is hesitant. Because I know it isn’t.

  “Bull true,” she confirms. “Anyway, I let him.”

  Suddenly I am there. On the beach. I hear the cries of the seagulls above the crashing of the waves. Smell the salt on the wind. See Stella reaching out for him, pulling him toward her. Feel his hand hot against her breast. See the desire and fear in his eyes. And the contempt in Stella’s as he backs away. Then it’s gone. I feel a wave of nausea wash over me. Like it is my shame. My sin.

  “Why did you do that?” My voice is slow, stilted.

  “Why do you think?” She smiles.

  And I realize I know. Have known all along. “Because you can.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  The back door slams. Alfie, back from school.

  “That’s my cue.” Stella stands up.

  “Where are you going?” I’m Dad again. Checking up on her. Scared of losing her.