doing instead?” she asked.
“I have to see my dad this weekend.”
“Cancel!” she said. A wave of nausea swept through me and I sense The Beast of Anxiety watching me from the doorway. Just skulking and waiting for an opportunity to attack me.
“Oh go on. Come with me M! Cancel. I’ve got some vouchers for Coffee Star too. We can sit by the fountain. You like the fountain, don’t you?” It’s true I quite like the fountain and the rushing water. A little bit of nature amongst all the concrete and neon lights.
My mouth goes dry and I feel a ton of pressure weigh down on me.
“Sorry, I just can’t.” Her voice got louder and my body tightened. Anxiety, snarling, edges closer to me.
“You could come over to mine after?” She pauses. “My aunt won’t be there.”
“I can’t Shaznia.” (How many times do I have to tell her?)
“Oh that’s a shame. Are you sure? Could you go to your dad’s on Sunday?” she suggested. I tapped my face.
SHAME AND LIES
SHAME AND LIES
“But she’s planned to go to her dad’s on Saturday.”
Shaznia ignores Joe and continued,
“Jake told Dawn, in Year 9, who gets the bus with me on Monday, that he was going to Sports Rite on Saturday morning, so that means Lynx and Jake will be in town, because they are always together and I can wear that pink checked skirt and we could do our nails. You could do my nails with that sunset gel varnish.”
Bus. Sports Rite. Town. LYNX. Sunset nail gel varnish. I want it all. My heart sank. Low. But it’s just not possible.
“I can’t Shaznia.”
She tuts and says,
“I’ll ask someone else then.”
And she sat on Nev’s desk and asked if she wanted to go instead.
“Oh how quick we are replaced!” says Joe.
Is she really replacing me? Will she still be my friend? I place my hands on the desk and take a deep breath because she’s just thrown town at me and all its noises and smells and lights and I’m just not prepared. I’m not.
Anxiety hangs about the class room… Its cruel, heavy eyes watching my every move. Judging. Sneering. Intimidating me.
And I’ve told a lie. A nasty lie that is sitting in my guts and eating away at me. The LIE which is sitting in my stomach like a coiled tape worm. I’ve seen pictures of them in science, all coiled up in jars, removed from Victorian women’s stomachs, who used to eat them to lose weight.
“I didn’t think you were going to visit your dad’s again,” says Joe. And he’s right, and now he knows I am a liar too.
OVAL OVAL OVAL
The Oval is a hole I’ve fallen into many, many times. It’s Nan’s home. My dad’s mum and now Dad lives there too. He grew up there but left when he met Mum. But when they separated he moved back to The Oval and took all his guitars and records with him.
Days before our twice-monthly visit I would be teetering on the edge of the Oval hole. Wobbling until finally I would be thrown into the Oval abyss and by my parents. Thrown in by the people who are meant to look after me! Protect me from danger.
Visits to The Oval were a grey overload with sharp, concrete edges with 48 cold, grey steps and at the top of the 48 grey steps is my nan’s flat. Damp and stinking of overcooked cabbage, whiskey and cigarettes and The Oval has orange slices too. Orange wallpaper and orange curtains, and two particularly harsh, lime green scratchy cushions and nicotine net curtains that hang at her super, shiny, clean windows.
My nerves ripped and I’d cry and scream and Nan wouldn’t say, “What’s wrong with her?” She’d suck on her cigarette and say,
“You’ve got problems lined up with that little one.”
One visit I was lining up the switches and knobs on her cooker and one came off in my little hand and she immediately smacked me across the back of my little chubby legs.
“You naughty, naughty little girl,” she yelled in my face, and it was an accident but I couldn’t tell her that, and then she spoke as if I wasn’t in the room.
“Amanda, you’ve got big trouble ahead with her unless you stick in a bit of good old-fashioned discipline.” Mum rushed over to me and rubbed my leg and that made it worse! Her touching and rubbing their stains into my skin. “I don’t care what anyone says, there is nothing wrong with raising your hand to a naughty child.” And I had never been smacked before, and the shock and the pain rushed into me and I shook with fear and Nan kept talking. “Some kids need a smack. Children need to know who is in charge, Amanda, who is the boss.” And Mum said,
“Don’t ever touch my daughter again.”
And Nan replied,
“Get her to behave and respect my property and I won’t have to.”
And on every visit to The Oval I would scream the whole way and struggle and contort myself to escape from my car seat. Mum and Dad would argue the whole way and Toby had his head phones on, looking out the window. Detached from all the stress and the family. My anxiety and screams would rise as we got nearer and nearer The Oval.
Dartford.
Bexley.
Isle of Dogs.
Sidcup – and at Sidcup they always started the same argument.
“It’s just twice a month,” Dad would say. “We see your bloody mother all the time.”
“M can’t cope. Look at her.” And she’d turn and rub my shaking legs and she’d say,
“It’s OK, baby, it’s OK.”
But it wasn’t OK. That was the problem. I may have only been a very little girl but I knew we were heading towards The Oval and Nan’s flat at the top of the grey stairwell.
“The problem is, you’re a snob,” he’d say to my mum.
“What’s that got to do with anything? I am not a snob.”
“You don’t like going to my mother’s because she lives in a council flat and now that’s rubbing off on our daughter and that’s why she kicks up this fuss every time.”
FUSS FUSS FUSS
Fuss is a word that gets used a lot towards me. I seem to have spent a life time causing a FUSS.
I’ve since looked fuss up in the dictionary and this is what it says:
Fuss
[noun]
1. An
