The Illustrated Mum Read online

  ‘He’s OK,’ I said, shrugging.

  Oliver was more than OK. He’d had an unsettling weekend too. He was supposed to be going to Legoland with his dad and his ladyfriend but his mum had had a migraine so he didn’t go.

  ‘I really badly wanted to go too, because it’s meant to be pretty fantastic and I’ve always been nuts on Lego since I was a little kid. I designed my own Lego robots once and they had a war using these Lego laser guns and they kept zapping each other and collapsing and I’d be the robot repair man doing all this dramatic double-quick surgery to get them fit for battle again.’

  Some kid at the other end of the library sniggered. Oliver blinked behind his glasses.

  ‘Of course that was when I was a very little kid,’ he said quickly.

  ‘I play games like that sometimes, pretendy ones,’ I said. ‘So, will you get to go to Legoland next week?’

  ‘I don’t know. My dad was pretty narked with me. He said my mum was just putting it on and I should take no notice.’

  ‘Was she putting it on?’

  Oliver fidgeted, twitching his nose so his glasses shot up and down.

  ‘She does get lots of these migraines. She had to have a lie down on the settee. I have to keep the television turned right down so as not to disturb her.’

  ‘Well, at least you’ve got a television. Ours got taken away.’

  ‘She went to sleep. I could easily have gone to Legoland. Dolphin, does your mum get these migraines?’

  ‘Not really. Well. She has a splitting headache if she’s drunk too much the night before.’

  ‘Does your mum drink?’ said Owly, his glasses going up and down like crazy. ‘What, lager and beer and stuff?’

  ‘It’s mostly vodka. It’s only when she’s . . . She gets these weird spells, see.’ I felt bad as soon as I’d said it. I put my hand to my mouth as if the words were blistering my lips. ‘Don’t tell, Owly, will you?’

  ‘Oliver. No, of course I won’t.’ Oliver sighed. ‘Your mum sounds ever so exciting. Can I come to tea soon?’

  ‘Well.’ I thought about it. Marigold was being so careful. But next week, if Star really went . . . I shook my head, trying to stop myself thinking about next week. It was far too scary.

  Oliver mistook my head-shaking.

  ‘Sorry. It’s rude to keep on asking you.’

  ‘No, OK. Come tomorrow if you like. After school.’

  ‘Oh wow! Great! And I’ll be able to see all her tattoos?’

  ‘Not all of them, unless you creep up on her in her bath.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Oliver giggled, going pink. ‘And will she be drunk and fall over?’

  ‘No! And she doesn’t fall over anyway. Not even in her high heels.’

  ‘She wears wonderful clothes, your mum. It’s like she’s a rock star.’

  ‘You should see Star’s dad then. He really looks like a rock star.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t have a dad?’

  ‘He’s not mine. He’s Star’s. He and Marigold bumped into each other at an Emerald City concert.’

  ‘Go on!’ Owly listened with his mouth open, as if I was telling him the latest plot in his favourite soap.

  ‘Star thinks he’s wonderful. She goes on and on about him. But I don’t like him much. She keeps saying I’m jealous but I’m not. I don’t want a dad.’

  ‘I don’t want a dad either, not when he gets all huffy and cross,’ said Oliver. ‘But I did want to go to Legoland. It was my all-time Second Favourite Destination.’

  ‘So OK, what’s your First Favourite?’

  ‘Tea at your house, of course!’

  I nudged him, making sure not to dig him too hard with my pointy elbow. He nudged me back, and then he got out his pencil case and unzipped his secret supply of mini Milky Bars.

  ‘One for me and one for you,’ he said.

  We slurped chocolate companionably.

  ‘Hey hey hey, this is a library, not a canteen,’ said Mr Harrison, bustling past. ‘At least have the decency to offer me a chunk, Arion and Dolphin, I have a secret passion for white chocolate.’

  ‘My name’s Oliver, not Arion,’ said Oliver, giving Mr Harrison his own bar.

  ‘Golly gosh, a whole bar for me! You generous lad. I know perfectly well you’re called Oliver. I was just making a posh literary allusion to amuse myself. There’s this old legend where a guy called Arion plays sweet music on his harp and attracts this dolphin. Are you musical, Oliver?’

  ‘I can nearly play “Glad that I live am I” on the recorder.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, that’s a start,’ said Mr Harrison. He licked his lips. ‘Oh, yummy yummy. Please keep coming to my library, you two.’

  We didn’t need any further encouragement. I was starting to look forward to my library lunchtimes with Oliver. The rest of the time at school still sucked, of course. I did try to swop seats in class so I could be next to Oliver. 1 talked this boy Brian into taking my place. Well, I had to bribe him a little, inking a Death by Harley skull and bike tattoo on his forearm. It’s the tiredest tattoo in the book – millions of guys all over the world flash identical biceps – but Brian thought it dead original and seriously cool. Some of the other kids started clamouring for me to tattoo them too. I had quite a cluster round me when Miss Hill came into the classroom. I sat in Brian’s seat and he ambled over to my old place next to Ronnie Churley. Everything seemed sorted. Ha. Miss Hill wasn’t having it. She took the register, and then gave a double take.

  ‘Go back to your original places at once, Brian and Dolphin.’

  ‘Oh, but Miss!’

  ‘I am Miss Hill, Dolphin,’ she said, breathing out as she said it, like she was blowing out birthday candles. ‘Now, I’m not having you playing Musical Chairs in my classroom whenever you feel like it. Sit back in your proper place, if you please.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Miss Hill yelled.

  Whenever she wanted silence she screamed. And then when it was silent she was the one who made the noise.

  ‘Brian Barley! What is that black all over your arm?’

  She didn’t appreciate Brian’s skin art. She sent him off to the cloakrooms to have a good scrub with soap.

  ‘And I’m warning anyone else stupid enough to ink silly pictures all over themselves, I’m quite prepared to bring a bar of carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush to school and I’ll scrub it off myself.’

  ‘Miss Hill would have a hard time scrubbing down old Bottle Nose! Look at her neck. It’s almost as black as that stupid raggedy old dress she wears.’

  I felt my neck burning. I didn’t know if they were just winding me up or if my neck really was black. It wasn’t a place I ever saw. I tried to remember when I’d last washed it. And my dress wasn’t raggedy, not now I’d pinned the hem. It wasn’t stupid. It was powerful. It was my witch dress.

  I summoned up all my occult powers. I turned my head ever so casually and with just one wink of my witch’s eyes I whisked Kayleigh and Yvonne right along the corridor and into the girls’ toilets where I stuck them down a loo each, head first, telling them to wash their own dirty necks.

  Then I gazed at Miss Hill. I inked her all over, a full tattoo job: body, sleeve, every single wobbly little bit of her. I threw in a few piercings for good measure – studs along those arched eyebrows and a ring right through her snooty nose.

  ‘Why are you staring at me, Dolphin?’ she said, highly irritated. ‘Get on with your work at once. You of all people need to practise your writing skills.’

  I tried to write. I could make up all sorts of stories, but the torrent of words in my head wouldn’t slow down so I could copy them out on the page. The few that ended up on paper wiggled their letters around so that half of them were back to front.

  Miss Hill ended up putting a big red line right across my page and told me to do it all over again. Oliver offered to help me at lunchtime in the library.

  ‘You could tell me what you want to say. Then I could write i