Today is Uncle Mark’s birthday and we’ve all come into town, to the PizzaExpress. Where me and Mum lived, you could just walk up the road. Here, you have to drive. Auntie Ellen says it’s healthier, being in the country, but it’s not really country. Just lots of roads with fields on either side, only not the sort of fields you can walk in. Mostly they are full of cows and sheep and growing stuff. Corn, or something. I don’t know much about it. Auntie Ellen says it’s the ignorance of the town child. Uncle Mark says that I will get used to it. He says, “We’ll always take you wherever you want to go.” But I don’t want to be taken! I want to go by myself. It’s very worrying that I can’t just walk to the library. What am I going to do about books? Maybe this new school will have some.
We’ve been shown to a table. I am sitting between Holly and Michael. Holly is studying the menu.
“Dad,” she says, in wheedling tones, “can I have a starter and a main course and a pudding? Cos it’s your birthday, Dad! And it’s the big one, isn’t it?” She cosies up to Uncle Mark. “It’s the big one, Dad, isn’t it?”
“It sure is,” says Uncle Mark.
“Forty,” says Holly. And then she goes, “Is that older or younger than Auntie Sue?”
Auntie Ellen says “Holly!” and frowns at her, but she can’t ever take a hint. She has to keep on. “It’s older, isn’t it, Dad? Auntie Sue was your little sister.” She turns to me. “Don’t you ever wish you had a sister?”
Michael gives her a thump. “Better off without, if you ask me,” he says.
Holly screws up her face and sticks out her tongue. “Not if it means you’re an only child. Only children get spoilt.”
Did Mum spoil me? Auntie Ellen always says it was “unnatural”, the way I was brought up, but it didn’t feel unnatural to me. And I don’t think I was spoilt. I know Mum never yelled at me or told me off, but that was because we used to talk about things. Like if I did anything she didn’t like she’d make me sit down so we could discuss it. I don’t call that being spoilt. Holly’s more spoilt than I was. She only has to say she wants something and Auntie Ellen immediately buys it for her. She has twenty pairs of shoes in her wardrobe. She showed them to me. I only have two, and one of those is trainers.
Uncle Mark has decided he is going to order a bottle of wine, seeing as it’s his birthday. Before I can stop myself I cry, “Jackson Frères!”
Everyone looks at me, including the waiter. They seem puzzled. They have obviously never read Diary of a Nobody. I say, “Jackson Frères…a bottle of Jackson Frères!”
Uncle Mark shakes his head, like don’t ask me. “We’ll just have the house white,” he says.
“What’s with all this Jackson Frères?” says Michael.
Suddenly, I don’t want to talk about it. I wish I hadn’t said it. It was our private joke, between me and Mum.
“Frère’s French,” says Holly. “Like Frère Jacques.” She opens her mouth to start singing, but Uncle Michael cuts across her.
“What do you kids want? Coke?”
If Mum ever had wine, then I was always allowed a glass, too. But I know if I say so Auntie Ellen will only suck in her breath and that will be another black mark against Mum.
“Three Cokes,” says Uncle Mark. Then he smiles at me and says, “So, Laurel! All set up for tomorrow?”
Tomorrow is the day I’m starting at this new school. Bennington High. It has a black uniform. Auntie Ellen has dyed my old green skirt, but she had to take me into Asda to buy a black blazer and a black sweater. The only nice thing is the badge, which is red.
“Feeling OK about it?” says Uncle Mark.
I don’t say anything; I just nod.
“She’ll be all right,” says Auntie Ellen. “She has Michael to look out for her. and it’s a good school! Far better than where she was before.”
What does Auntie Ellen know about where I was before?
“It’s smaller, for a start,” she says, “and not so mixed.”
“Is mixed bad?” I say.
“It is if you’re in the minority. Some of these inner city schools…hardly hear a word of English one day to the next, all the babble going on.”
Earnestly I assure her that it only sounds like babble just at first. “You get used to it. You start learning other people’s languages. Like I can say hello in French and Polish—” I check them off on my fingers, “and Greek and Turkish and Gujarati and Russian and—”
“Yes, and you probably weren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas,” snaps Auntie Ellen.
“We did! We celebrated everything. Christmas, and Diwali, and Hanukkah, and—”
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