My Sister Jodie (3 page)

‘I think you should all say sorry to
me
, trying to force me off to this stupid snobby school. I'm not going. I'm not changing my mind, not in a million years,' Jodie shouted, and she slammed out of the door.

But that night when I started crying again in bed, she sighed and slid under the duvet beside me.

‘Stop all that blubbing, silly. Do you really really really want to go to Melchester College, Pearl?'

‘Yes. But not without you,' I sobbed.

‘You're going to have to stand on your own two feet
some
time,' said Jodie. ‘But all right – I'll come too. Just so as I can look after you. OK?'

‘You'll really come to Melchester College?' I said, putting my arms round her neck and hugging her tight.

‘Yes. I'll hate it. But I'll come, just for you,' said Jodie. ‘Now quit strangling me and snuggle up and go to sleep.'

I WONDER HOW
many times we said the words
Melchester College
over the next few weeks. Mum tried out special traditional school-dinner recipes every day: shepherd's pie, toad-in-the-hole, meat loaf. They were all pretty horrible but she did real puddings too, jam roly-poly and treacle pudding and sherry trifle, and they were absolutely wonderful. Dad kissed his fingertips and said each dish was truly scrumptious. He even sang the ‘Truly Scrumptious' song from
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
to Mum, and she giggled and did a little dance, swishing her skirts and twirling around. They were fooling about like teenagers all of a sudden, not acting like Mum and Dad at all.

Mum didn't nag Jodie so much, although she got really really mad when Jodie went out with Marie, Siobhan and Shanice on Thursday night, supposedly to a church youth club. Jodie promised she'd be in around half ten. She didn't get home
until way past midnight, wobbling in her high red heels.

‘Drunk!' Mum exploded, and she slapped Jodie's face.

I was sitting at the top of the stairs, shivering in my nightie, anxiously gnawing at a hangnail on my thumb. The slap was such a shock I ripped the hangnail halfway down my thumb, making it bleed. It was so sore that tears sprang to my eyes. Jodie didn't cry, though when she came up to our bedroom, one side of her face was still bright scarlet from the slap.

‘Oh, Jodie! Are you
really
drunk?' I asked, wondering whether she was going to start reeling round and falling over like comic drunks on the telly.

‘Not really
really
drunk,' said Jodie, peering at herself in the mirror. ‘I did feel a bit weird when we came out of the club, but then I puked into the gutter and I felt better.'

‘Did they have real drinks at Shanice's youth club then?' I said.

‘As if!' said Jodie. ‘We weren't
at
her youth club. We went proper clubbing – the under-eighteens night at the Rendezvous.'

‘You never!'

‘You
didn't
, dear – you've got to remember to speak nicely now you're going to Melchester College,' said Jodie, imitating Mum's voice.

‘Ssh, Mum will hear!' I said, giggling. ‘So what was it
like
, clubbing? Was it scary? Did you dance with any boys?'

‘I danced with heaps of boys,' said Jodie. ‘More than Shanice and them, and they got a bit narked
and went off without me. Marie said I was a slag because I let this boy snog my face off.'

‘You
never
! Didn't. Whatever.
Which
boy?'

‘I don't know. He told me his name but I couldn't hear it properly because it was so noisy. Marty or Barty. Maybe it was Farty?'

‘Jodie!'

‘He wouldn't leave me alone and I let him slobber all over me just to annoy Marie because she'd said she fancied him. She was welcome to him actually. To all of them. Just as well I couldn't hear them talk. It was just rubbish anyway. I don't like the way boys just want to dance and snog and touch you up. They don't want to be
mates
.'

‘I don't like boys either,' I said. ‘Some of the girls in my class have got boyfriends. They say I'm a baby.'

‘Well, I'm a baby too, because
I
haven't got a boyfriend, and I don't want one either,' said Jodie, rubbing her lips fiercely with the back of her hand.

She flopped down on her bed and pulled the duvet up to her chin even though she was fully dressed, with her high heels still on.

‘Night-night, Pearly Girly,' she said, closing her eyes.

‘Hey, you've still got your shoes on!'

I knelt on her bed and wiggled her shoes off her feet. She had a hole in her tights, her big toe sticking through comically. I waggled it and Jodie giggled sleepily.

‘Give over. Come to bed, Pearl,' she said, reaching out and pulling me in beside her. ‘You're freezing, like a little snowman!' she said, cuddling me close.

‘We don't ever have to have boyfriends, do we,
Jodie? We can still have our own place together, can't we?'

‘Mansion Towers,' Jodie mumbled.

‘I can't believe we're going to live in Melchester College,' I said.

I closed my eyes, nestling against Jodie in her warm bed. I saw us wandering the grounds of the college together, having picnics on the lawn, paddling in the lake, picking raspberries and strawberries in the kitchen garden . . .

We didn't have any kind of garden at home, because Dad's workshop took up all of our back yard. He pottered out there most evenings, but I don't think he ever did much
work
. He watched his little portable telly, brewed himself a cup of tea and enjoyed a bit of peace and quiet. Mum was forever on to him to make her new kitchen units but he never seemed to get round to it, just managing the odd cupboard or shelf.

I'd begged him to make me a doll's house. I'd hoped for a miniature Mansion Towers, but he made me a small square four-roomed house with a wobbly chimney stuck on top. He'd tried so hard, sticking special red-checked paper on the outside to look like bricks. I gave him a big hug and kiss, but privately I thought the house was hideous. I furnished it with a plastic bed and chair and tables and tried to play games with a family of pink plastic people, but it wouldn't become real. I had much more fun playing house in a cardboard shoebox with a paper family.

Jodie had never wanted a doll's house. When she was little, she'd asked Dad to make her a rocket, which was a challenge for him. He struggled hard,
because he could never say no to Jodie. He handed over his rocket proudly. It was hollow, with a little hinged door, pointy at one end, touched up with shiny grey paint. It looked like a big wooden fish. Jodie held it in her hand, looking puzzled.

‘What
is
it, Dad?'

‘It's your rocket, sweetheart,' said Dad.

Jodie wasn't good at hiding her feelings. Her face crumpled up. ‘But it's much too small. I can't get in it!' she wailed. ‘I want to go up to the moon!'

‘Daddy can't make you a real rocket, you noodle!' said Mum.

Jodie howled. Mum laughed at her. Even Dad found it funny, I wasn't there – I wasn't even born yet – but the story had become family history, passed down like a folk tale.

We found the rocket at the bottom of Jodie's wardrobe when we were sorting through all our things for the big move.

‘My rocket!' said Jodie, dusting it with an old sock. She made it swoop in and out of her clothes, and then she stood back and chucked it into the air so that its pointy wooden nose hit the ceiling with a satisfying
thuck
. It made a little dent in the ceiling plaster and then hurtled back to earth. Jodie caught it one-handed.

‘We have lift-off, brief landing on ceiling and perfect re-entry,' she said.

‘What was that noise?' said Mum, bursting into the room, a pile of our old clothes in her arms.

‘Nothing, Mum,' we chorused.

‘Well come on, girls, get a move on. Get all those old toys sorted into cardboard boxes, then Dad will take them to the hospice shop in the car.'

Mum glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Where did that mark come from?' she said, frowning.

‘What mark?' we said in unison.

‘You two!' said Mum, but she was in too cheery a mood to get really angry. We heard her humming ‘Truly Scrumptious' as she went back into her own room.

‘I don't know what to keep and what to chuck,' I said, stirring all my toys. ‘I never play with my Barbies now, or my cut-out paper dolls, or my giant set of wax crayons – they're just for babies, but I don't really want to throw them
out
.'

It was easier for Jodie. Most of her old toys were broken. Her old Barbies had skinhead haircuts and tattoos and assorted amputations; her teddy had led such an adventurous life that his head was hanging off his shoulders by a thread. Her crayons were stumps and her paints a sludgy mess.

‘Junk, junk, junketty junk,' she chanted as she threw them rhythmically into a black plastic rubbish bag.

She grew wilder, throwing in her cream clutch bag and cream pumps, her pink crocheted poncho, her white fluffy towelling dressing gown, her floral toothmug and flannel and washbag, her pink alarm clock in the shape of a heart.

‘Jodie! You'll hurt Mum's feelings,' I said.

‘She never minds hurting mine,' said Jodie.

‘They were presents from her.'

‘Yeah, but they're all stuff
she
likes, not me.'

‘I quite like them too,' I said. ‘Can I have your dressing gown if you don't want it?'

‘Sure,' said Jodie, wrapping it round me. She
laughed. ‘You look like a polar bear. Here, bear, want a fishy?'

She pretended to feed me the wooden rocket, and then chucked it carelessly into the black plastic bag – but that night I heard her scrabbling in the bag, searching for something. I kept quiet. The next morning I saw she'd wedged the rocket beside her red shoes in her small suitcase of treasured possessions.

We lived with cases and cardboard boxes all around us for days, never quite sure where anything was, suddenly needing something that was packed right away. Dad was out all day and half the night, trying to complete all the bookshelves and bathroom cabinets on his order book. He had a farewell do with his mates at work and came home all tearful, saying they were a cracking bunch of lads, like brothers to him.

We had a farewell Sunday lunch with Dad's real brother, Uncle Jack, and Aunty Pauline and our two little cousins, Ashleigh and Aimee, and Dad's mum came too. They all wished us the best, and Gran kept saying how much she'd miss us, though whenever we went round to her house she was always telling us off, especially Jodie.

Mum didn't say goodbye to any of her family. She didn't keep in touch. She always sniffed when she spoke about them. Jodie and I would have loved to meet this other gran who always ‘went down the boozer', and the granddad who'd been on benefit all his life, and we especially wanted to meet the uncle who'd been ‘in and out of the nick', but Mum had left home at seventeen and never gone back. She did her last shift at Jenny's Teashop, coming home with a carved wooden spoon and a new apron with
SUPERCOOK
embroidered in white across the chest – gifts from her regular customers.

Jodie missed school altogether for the last couple of weeks. Marie and Siobhan and Shanice had turned against her and it was simpler and safer to keep out of their way. Jodie said she mooched around the town in the mornings, ate the packed lunch Mum made for her down by the river, and then mostly hung around the park until it was time to come home. She liked the children's playground. She always loved little kids. She'd had plenty of practice looking after me. They all ran at her as soon as they spotted her, hanging on her arms, begging her to pick them up, to whirl them about, to give them a push on the swings or help them up and down the little slide. The mums made a fuss of her too because they could sit on the bench and chat amongst themselves while Jodie leaped about like Mary Poppins on skates.

‘Maybe I'll be a nursery nurse when I'm older,' Jodie said happily. ‘I seem to have the knack for it. Or I could be a nanny. Or maybe I'll just have heaps of kids of my own.'

‘I thought you said you didn't want to get married,' I said.

‘I don't! You don't have to have a husband to have lots of children,' said Jodie, winking at me.

‘Mum would go spare if she heard you saying that,' I said.

‘Mum goes spare at
everything
I say,' said Jodie.

‘What if she finds out you're bunking off from school?'

‘She won't. I'm leaving anyway, so what does it matter?' Jodie said carelessly.

She didn't bother to go back to say goodbye to anyone. I didn't actually say goodbye to many people at my school either. I didn't really have any proper friends. I did say a proper goodbye to my teacher, Mrs Lambert, because she was always kind to me.