One More Little Problem Page 5

  Fran gives me a look of disbelief.

  ‘You’ve got me here just to read one email from one boy?’ she says. ‘Zelah. I can’t believe you rang me up just because of that.’

  I flush again and chew my lip.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘I maybe could have read the email on my own. But I don’t know how I’m going to react after reading it, do I?’

  Fran raises a pretty arched eyebrow at me until I sink down on to the edge of the bed.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘So I’m having a lonely holiday. I admit it. But I do really need your help with the email from this boy.’

  Fran tosses her shiny plaits back and takes off her smart denim jacket, hanging it over the back of a chair and sitting down at my desk. She clicks open a designer glasses-case and slides a pair of expensive-looking pink frames up her nose.

  ‘Fine, let me see it,’ she says.

  I flip open Heather’s laptop and click on to the first email from Alessandro. Fran reads it in silence and then screws her mouth up to one side.

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘The heavy metal bit is gross. Maybe he should hook up with your friend downstairs instead,’ and she tips her head in a dismissive way towards the open door.

  ‘But he doesn’t sound like a teen-killer, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  I wonder if Fran’s forgotten to read the very last bit of the email so I point at the screen (not actually touching it, of course, because smudges are Dirt Alert and then I’d have to go and get a clean white cloth to wipe it off).

  ‘Yeah, so?’ says Fran in a voice quite at odds with her neat pink girly appearance. ‘Loads of people have parents in prison. Welcome to the twenty-first century, Zelah. I mean – there’s like nothing remarkable about that, is there? You were locked up in Forest Hill with all those weirdos. You should know about strange people by now.’

  I take a deep calming breath. I know full well that Fran’s just approving of jailbait fathers because it’s the opposite of what I’m expecting her to do.

  Difficult. She’s a difficult ex-best friend.

  There’s still that new email from Alessandro so I click on it with my arm trembling.

  It only asks whether I got his first email.

  ‘So you think I should write back?’ I say. ‘S’pose I have been quite rude ignoring his mails.’

  Fran stands up to offer me the chair and then she looks over my shoulder and in a grudging, impatient sort of way, helps me to write a reply. This is what we come up with:

  Dear Alessandro.

  Thanks for your two emails. Yes my name really IS Zelah. I don’t think there’s anything weird about it but then again I’m used to it. I live with my demented father in West London and at the moment I’ve got a friend called Caro staying with me. She’s into Marilyn Manson in a big way and for some unknown reason my father thinks she’s the best thing since stale sliced white loaf. I haven’t got many hobbies ’cos I haven’t got time to do anything much other than try to get my father to job interviews and clean the house from top to bottom. But that’s another story. And by the way, sorry to hear that your father is in jail. Bummer. Anyway, write again soon. Zelah.

  I don’t put ‘love’ or anything crazy like that. Don’t want to give out false signals.

  Fran spellchecks the email and then I press the send button and my message to Alessandro whizzes off into cyberspace and my legs have gone all shaky and bloodless so I sit down hard on the end of my nice clean duvet and Fran goes off downstairs to make us some tea with sugar in.

  ‘I only use the white cup with the red flowers on!’ I shout downstairs after her.

  I know it’s a bit pathetic, but that’s my own special cup.

  Nobody else dares to drink from the Cup of Zelah.

  Fran spends the rest of the afternoon trying on all my earrings and experimenting with my make-up while she tells me how fantastic her life is and how shit mine must be.

  At five thirty she stands up, snaps her rosebud-framed glasses back into their silver designer case and pulls on her smart Gap denim jacket.

  I pass her the blue sparkly earrings in total silence and she tucks them into her beaded purse.

  Outside Mrs Benson is making a great play of revving her monstrous engine and ruining the environment while looking at her wrist-watch, tapping her fingernails on the side of the car and mouthing the word ‘pony’.

  ‘OK then,’ says Fran. ‘Let me know if he writes back or if he wants to meet you ’cos you like so need serious wardrobe advice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, in the same formal voice she’s just used.

  We shuffle down the dark poky hallway trying not to touch one another and I accompany her down the front path.

  Of course I can’t touch anybody anyway, because of my problem. But Fran doesn’t have that problem.

  She must hate me.

  ‘OK then, bye,’ she says, running towards her mother’s car with ill-disguised relief. Running away from the crazy household where the depressed father, the devil-worshipper and the axe-murdering psycho with the rituals live in disharmony.

  ‘Bye,’ I say in a small, sad voice.

  Then I walk back towards home. Ha. That’s a joke.

  My home is full of stress.

  I’ve forgotten how to do fun teenaged things.

  This is one of the worst summers. Ever.

  Chapter Ten

  Three days later and no reply from Alessandro.

  I’m sure I’ve put him off with my stupid email and the weird thing is that even though I didn’t really want to write to him I’m kind of annoyed that he hasn’t written back.

  But there’s a new email waiting for me on Heather’s laptop this morning.

  It’s from somebody called ‘Marky’ and just his name is enough to make me feel really edgy and unsettled.

  I don’t like names with extra letters on the end. They’re not neat and as you might have guessed by now, I like things to be neat and tidy.

  The email says that he’s sixteen, tall, fair-haired, loves sailing and playing tennis and in his spare time he invents computer games.

  I want to be a millionaire by the time I’m twenty, he puts at the very end of the message. And I’m the youngest ever contestant to go on Dragon’s Den.

  ‘Huh,’ I snort as I read this bit. I’m not impressed by money. Good job really as Dad never has any and I have to buy most of my clothes off eBay.

  Then I notice that Marky has added a photograph to his profile so I click on it in a not-really-bothered kind of way and this really handsome guy pops up grinning at me from a tanned face and with kind blue eyes and I think: Oh well, what the heck. Might as well reply, and before I know it I’ve written him a three-page epic all about my life and pressed the ‘send’ button before becoming a shaking wreck.

  I’ve scrubbed my face about fifty times this morning, which is twenty times more than usual.

  My skin is stinging and smarting so much that I take one of Dad’s painkillers to try and calm it down.

  I’m back in my bedroom reading a website called ‘Addicted to Disastrous Dating and how to get over it’ when Dad comes bounding upstairs and bursts in.

  ‘Zelah, emergency!’ he pants before running straight out again.

  I slam the lid of the laptop shut and leap up, alarmed.

  What now? Has Caro set fire to the house or invited Marilyn Manson around for a spot of group devil-worship?

  I rush downstairs into the kitchen where Dad is pacing back and forth with a piece of paper in his hand.

  There’s no sign of Caro.

  ‘What’s happened? Where’s Caro?’ I say.

  Dad gives me a puzzled look.

  ‘In bed. Where else?’ he says. ‘It’s only eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Dad,’ I say. ‘Just tell me what this emergency is.’

  Dad passes me the letter with a shaking hand.

  I take it by the tips of my fingernails and place it on the table.

  ‘Dear Mr Green
,’ it says. ‘We are delighted to offer you the position of English Teacher at Smithfield High School, Acton W3. Please report to the School Secretary’s office on Monday 12 August when you will be expected to complete a two-week induction course before the commencement of Autumn Term.

  Yours sincerely, Ms S. Smart, School Secretary.’

  Lots of things whizz through my bemused brain.

  The first is: how exactly is this an emergency?

  The second thought eclipses this one. Dad has got a job! He’s actually gone and got a job!

  The third thought is that if Dad has a job, I’m going to be spending a lot of time on my own.

  And the fourth thought is: when will Caro be going back to her foster parents? Because she’s left school already and if Dad is out all day, Caro will be living in our house on her own and I will have to come home from school Every Single Day and find her there, like some gross evil young stepmother or something . . .

  ‘Well?’ Dad is saying. ‘Can’t you say anything? Are you pleased for me, Princess?’

  I skip over and give Dad a virtual hug, without arms or anything.

  ‘Yay!’ I say. ‘You got a job! That’s fantastic.’

  Then I run back upstairs and check my emails for about the billionth time.

  Nothing.

  I have to grab the disinfectant and perform a major clean of the black laptop keyboard even though it doesn’t really need one.

  My little problem appears to be getting worse, what with Caro’s grumpy behaviour and the uncertainty of emailing strange boys on the computer.

  Here I go, heading off to jump on the stairs.

  Again.

  I get a tiny bit of homework done on Saturday morning in between clearing up breakfast and going shopping so that we have food. I write about ten words of an essay on ‘The Wife of Bath’ by Chaucer. Just the title of the book is enough to cheer me up. I have a great relationship with baths.

  Not keen on the brown scum-line left around the sides afterwards though. Dirt Alert.

  Spurred on by the bath connection I take one straight after doing my schoolwork.

  I lie in a mass of fragrant lime bubbles and enjoy some good ‘phoo, phoo,’ breaths with my hand on my soapy chest, trying to have a nice calming moment.

  As if.

  Caro’s hammering on the bathroom door.

  ‘OCD!’ she yells. ‘I need to get in. Pronto!’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ I yell back. ‘I’m having a calm bath. It’s part of my therapy. Stella has prescribed it.’

  This is a complete lie of course, but it’s the only way I can think of getting Caro to leave me in peace. Despite being a total nightmare about nearly everything, she gets the therapy thing.

  She should do – she’s had enough of it.

  ‘Oh, OK,’ she says. There’s a pause when I sense she’s still hovering outside the bathroom door and then her bedroom door bangs and the oh-so-familiar growl of Marilyn Manson rises up from the fiery abyss of Hell.

  I’m a bit worried that I know all the lyrics off by heart now.

  I’m even singing along underneath the bubbles.

  By the time I get out of my bath I’m all shrivelled and dried-up but I don’t care.

  I’m super-ultra clean and hygienic.

  ‘Hooray,’ I say to my scrubbed reflection in the mirror.

  I treat myself to a new pot of talc, twisting the dial on top and shaking the sweet clean powder all over my scrubbed bits.

  ‘Marvellous,’ I say.

  I turn the bathroom door handle and am about to skip to my bedroom and select some lovely clean clothes when something tells me to look down.

  There’s a big patch of something red on the carpet beneath my feet.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I say.

  She’s started to do it again.

  Chapter Eleven

  OK.

  This is a major Dirt Alert and Germ Alert moment.

  I am standing on a carpet right next to a big patch of blood and I have bare feet.

  Nightmare.

  I hop back into the safety of the bathroom.

  There are two white flannels sealed into plastic bags. Heather steals them from hotels for me because she knows I like them.

  I tie one flannel around each foot and then put the plastic bag over the top so I look like I’m wearing some weird space-age baby bootees but I’m past caring what I look like by now.

  Then I close my eyes and tiptoe around the blood in my strange padded feet, shuddering at each step.

  I knock on Caro’s door.

  ‘Caro?’

  No reply.

  ‘Can I come in, please?’ I say. My voice has a schoolteacher prissiness that I hate.

  There’s still no answer.

  Great.

  This is just what I need. Blood and maybe even potential death on a Saturday afternoon when I should be doing my homework.

  I sigh and push open the door with one fingernail.

  Caro’s lying on her back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling, hugging her own elbows.

  I can hear the drumbeat blaring from her iPod so I step forward and pull one earplug out of her ear.

  ‘Put that back,’ says Caro. She sounds faint and weary.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Not until you tell me what you’re playing at.’

  Caro swivels up into a sitting position and regards my feet.

  ‘OCD, what the hell are you wearing?’ she says.

  I ignore this.

  ‘Show me your arms,’ I say.

  For answer, Caro pulls down the long sleeves of her black top and hugs her arms closer. She looks like a daddy-long-legs after it’s been half-murdered by a playful cat – all angles and bent bits.

  ‘Caro,’ I say. ‘For God’s sake show me your arms and then I can help you.’

  Caro gives a bitter little laugh.

  ‘You, OCD?’ she says. ‘You’re not in a fit state to help anyone. I heard you doing about a million jumps last night.’

  ‘Yeah, and I wonder why that is?’ I say. ‘Maybe it’s because I have the psycho house guest from hell staying in my spare bedroom.’

  ‘She sounds fun!’ says Caro. ‘Do introduce us when she next visits.’

  I stand up in my rustling bootees and make an inelegant waddle for the door.

  Just as I get there Caro swings her legs off the bed and says, ‘OK, OK. Come back.’

  As this is about the nearest Caro ever gets to apologising, I come back in and sit on the bed.

  ‘Here,’ she says.

  She pulls back her long sleeves and reveals a new section of fresh criss-cross slashes across the soft white underneath of her arm.

  ‘Ooh, giddy,’ I say, putting my head between my knees.

  I’m terrible with blood.

  When I come up again I swear Caro’s almost smiling.

  ‘OCD, you freak me out, man,’ she says. ‘Only you could end up, like, twisting this all around so that now I’m worried about you.’

  What?

  ‘Since when have you ever worried about me?’ I say. This is a true surprise. Nothing Caro does or says ever shows any scrap of concern for my health.

  Unless you count verbal abuse and spitting and snarling as concern.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ says Caro in an enigmatic sort of way.

  Then she goes pale green and clammy and I realise I’m going to have to do something about the blood coming out of her arms so I untie my feet-flannels and wrap them around her wrists with a shudder. Then I lock the door. This would not be a good moment for Dad to come in and request lunch.

  I sit on the bed for about an hour until I’m sure the bleeding has stopped.

  We don’t talk much, but that’s because Caro decides to play me the new Marilyn Manson album and I have to pretend to love it.

  Just as I’m finally leaving the room with a pounding headache, she says: ‘It’s not really working out with my foster parents.’

  ‘I thought that your foster moth
er sounded all right on the phone,’ I say. Caro’s pale face is making me feel sorry for her, but my hair’s dried in damp rat-tails over my face and any moment now Dad will peel off his gardening gloves and head towards the kitchen for a limp cheese sandwich.

  Caro gives her sarcastic little laugh again.

  ‘Yeah, she’s nice,’ she says. ‘That’s the problem. Next to her I look, like, really really evil.’

  I decide not to point out that even next to the devil himself, Caro would still look, like, really really evil.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ I say. I’m shivering now.

  ‘Well, stay here as long as poss and then speak to Social Services, I suppose,’ says Caro. ‘See if I can get plonked with another couple of idiots who don’t understand me.’

  It sounds like a lost cause to me but I don’t say this. I’m desperate for the loo now and starving hungry as well as freezing cold. And I just don’t know what to say.

  I give Caro an apologetic smile.

  ‘I hope it works out,’ I say. ‘I really do. Oh – and I hope you don’t mind me asking. But could you dispose of those bloody flannels, please?’

  Then I bolt out of the door.

  The three of us manage to eat lunch together without having a big argument. I see Dad glance at Caro’s arms and he refrains from asking why she is wearing long sleeves in the middle of a heatwave, but she sees the look and gives him some old rubbish about having a sun allergy, which is kind of true. Like all devil-worshippers she prefers to be pale and interesting and encourage that ‘just dug up’ look rather than aspiring to be brown and wrinkled like the rest of us.

  We eat cheese sandwiches in companionable silence and I wash up afterwards while Caro and Dad roll up about sixty cigarettes and talk about old dead rock stars (again).

  After lunch I go upstairs and try not to check my email but I do. Still nothing from Alessandro but there’s a message from some boy called Daz who’s got a pit bull terrier which means that I have to totally ignore the email as dogs and cats are major Dirt Alert and Germ Alert. Oh, and there’s a short reply from Marky.

  I live in Shepherd’s Bush, he says. How about we meet up on Saturday? Bring a mate of course.