the time he’d found out that his suspicions were right – our school’d just put in the new computer program for spotting bunkers – it was too late to take us back to school, so he bundled us into his van (Loretta actually demanded to see his ID!) and took us home. When she got out of the van first, she gave me one of her funny looks and at the last moment, do you know what she did, she dumped her school bag on my lap and said, “Can you take this to your place? I’ll come round and revise with you after I have my piano lesson.” Piano lesson my bum – she just didn’t want to risk being caught with the loot.
She nearly landed me in it as well, because the truant-cop soon spotted that I lived too far away for her to “come round” easily. He made some suspicious remark, gave me a funny look and then he looked at the school bag. I thought he was going to reach for it and I was terrified, but something distracted him and next thing I remember we were climbing the stone steps to Mum’s and my flat.
“You don’t have to come up with me,” I muttered, but he came anyway of course. He would. He hadn’t gone to Loretta’s door, only mine. Story of my life with Loretta. She did all the villainy and I was the one who copped it.
“I need to have a word with your mum,” he said.
Well, I wasn’t too worried because I thought she’d probably be at work. She often does the afternoon shift at Safeways. I got my key out, but before I could open the door it was flung open from inside and there she was. She looked as if someone had given her an E or something, her eyes were bulging and her voice was all shrill.
“You’ll never guess who’s here!” she said loudly. “Not in a million years!” She was making her eye signals. When Mum gets going with her eye signals you’d think she was going to have a fit.
Then she saw the truant-cop behind me and stopped dead.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m the truant officer, madam,” he said. “We found your daughter outside the market when she should have been at school. I don’t know if this is the first time she’s truanted, but I’m sure you understand that if she does it too often you may be held responsible.”
Mum looked gobsmacked. She pulled me in through the door by the arm.
“She won’t do it again,” she said. “I’ll see to that.” But she said it very faintly, almost whispering. “Thank you.” And she closed the door on him.
“You don’t have to thank him, Mum,” I said. “Big buttin! We only took the afternoon off.”
She put her finger to her lips – shhhh. Then I remembered what she’d said, before.
“What did you mean about someone being here?”
“I don’t want you playing truant, Stace,” she said in that same whisper. “Did you know mothers can go to prison if they let their kids bunk off?”
“Not the first time, Mum, only if you never make me go to school. So who’s here?”
She was still whispering, her eyes rolling like some loony. “Someone I don’t want you to shame me in front of,” she said. “Your other nan.”
I gawped at her. “What you mean, other nan?” I said like an idiot.
“Your other grandma.”
My other grandma? Well, nobody has more than two. The nan I knew about was my mum’s mum, so this one must be—
But that was impossible.
Now Mum was squeezing my arm tight and kind of wheeling me up to the mirror that hangs in our little lobby where we hang our coats. She was eye-signalling more madly than ever. I tried to read the signals. I’m quite good at it – I should be, after fourteen years’ practice. It was something like, I hadn’t a clue she was coming… she’s in the living room… I nearly died… the place is such a tip… so are you… for God’s sake do something about it before you go in there!
No, I’m not pretending to be that good. Her hands were signalling, too. They were fussing about all over me. Trying to pull my top down to cover my middle. Unrolling my skirt and pulling it up (and down). Reaching into her handbag, fetching out a grotty little comb and thrusting it at me, talking in that loud voice all the time.
“Think of it, Stacey, all the way from Australia! Of course she wrote to warn us but she forgot to put enough stamps on it – it must still be on a boat somewhere! Never MIND, it’s just so great to see her, aren’t you excited that she’s come to see us, I am!” I know, I know – it’s terrible – but PLEASE remember your manners! signalled her eyes. They were now crossing and rolling so much I was afraid they’d fall out.
I scraped the comb over my hair, just to shut her up (I’d done my hair that morning with Just Out Of Bed: Keep That Messed-up Look All Day wax) and went into the living room. I admit I was curious. Who wouldn’t be? Because this was my dad’s mum. Why would she come to see us from Australia, when Dad never did from Greville Drive, two miles away? Didn’t she know he’d scarpered?
In the doorway, I stopped dead. A kind of vision was sitting there on our sofa.
She had short curly hair, very blue-rinsed and just-been-done, and a two-piece suit with a short skirt and high-heeled shoes to match. Underneath her jacket she wore a fancy spotted blouse with ruffles and a bow at the neck. All of it was in shades of mauve and purple. And lots and lots of make-up. The eye make-up was purple, too. And she was smiling a big smile with bright white (false?) teeth.
“Blossom, come to Grandma!” she said in an Aussie accent that’d put Neighbours to shame, and reached for me.
Mum gave me a push from behind. I sort of fell forward into this stranger’s arms. She smelt as if she’d emptied a bottle of Eau de Pong over herself. That, and spearmint, from the gum she was chewing. The gum-chewing didn’t go with any other thing about her.
After she’d hugged and kissed me she pulled me down on the sofa beside her.
“You ravishing little angel!” she cried. “Aren’t you pretty, you little wavy blondie, you! With those blue eyes! You get those from me!” She batted her mascaraed eyelashes. She had blue eyes, just like my dad. “And I love your nails! If only mine were long, I’d have ’em done just like yours! Oh, why did I wait this long to meet you? You and me are just going to be the pals of the millennium!” She had one arm round my neck and she was holding my head on her shoulder. I thought my head would come off, but I managed to straighten up before it did.
“You two have just the cosiest little nest here!” the vision was saying, looking round our hovel. I saw her glancing at some of the photos. There were still ones of Dad and of him and Mum together on their wedding day, and of the three of us, all of which I’d have chucked in the bin the day he bombed off. In fact I did, but Mum fished them out, and she was crying so much I hadn’t the heart to chuck them again. “Little nest” was about right. With three of us in the living room, it felt like three cuckoos were squashed into a sparrow’s nest.
Mum looks a bit like a sparrow. I read that sparrows, which used to be the British birds we had the most of, are dying out for some reason, pollution maybe, and no wonder – you can hardly breathe where we live. Now Mum looked as if she might be the last of them. She has these
