Diamond Girls Read online

  ‘Dixie! Close your mouth! Stop that daydreaming, you look gormless,’ Mum snapped.

  ‘I was just trying to think of all the planets, Mum.’

  ‘We’re going to live in Mercury. Then there’s Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune and Saturn.’

  ‘They’ve left out Pluto and Uranus,’ said Rochelle.

  ‘Yeah, well, who’d want to live in Mickey Mouse’s dog or something that sounds very rude,’ I said. I was still counting. ‘So what’s the last planet?’

  ‘Earth, stupid. Where we live. Though you’re generally on a different planet altogether, Dixie. Planet Loony.’ Rochelle stuck out her tongue and made for the door.

  ‘Hang on, Rochelle, take Dixie with you.’

  ‘Oh Mum. I haven’t got time to do a blooming school run. I’m late,’ Rochelle said, on her way to the bathroom.

  ‘I don’t want to go to school today, Mum. Like Jude said, there’s no point, not if we really are moving to this Planet place.’

  ‘You’ll get me into trouble,’ said Mum, but she reached out for me and cuddled me into her. I leaned against her, though I was careful not to touch her tummy.

  ‘OK, OK, little Dix, you can stay off school today.’

  ‘Hurray!’

  ‘Why don’t you like school, eh?’

  I shrugged. There was no point getting started.

  ‘Who’s your teacher? Is she giving you a hard time? You tell her it’s not your fault you’re a bit of a dilly-dream, it’s just the way you were born.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, playing with Mum’s hair.

  It wasn’t the teacher, it was the other kids. This girl had spotted me whispering into my cardie cuff and she’d pounced on Bluebell. She told all the others and they all did budgie squawks and screwed their fingers into their foreheads and called me Birdbrain.

  ‘Well, you’ll be at a new school soon when we’re living in Mercury. It’s the smallest planet, always associated with children – and here I’ll be, having my baby boy in Mercury. Come to that, I’ve always liked Freddie Mercury too,’ said Mum, chuckling. She sighed when I looked blank. ‘You know, the singer with all the teeth in Queen. Freddie … How about that for the baby’s name? Or what about Mercury?’

  ‘If you call the poor kid Mercury he’ll be teased rotten,’ Jude called.

  ‘Call him Justin,’ said Rochelle, coming out the bathroom. ‘Or Craig. Or Robbie.’

  ‘I want something really special. Unusual,’ said Mum.

  ‘What other singers do I like?’ said Rochelle. ‘I know, Baby Busted!’ She cackled with laughter and rushed off to school.

  I relaxed and started plaiting Mum’s long black hair.

  ‘Help me think up a good name, Dixie. I tried hard with you girls. You’re all so lucky – dead individual. There aren’t any other Martines or Judes or Rochelles or Dixies round here. I’m stuck with stupid old Sue. There are heaps of Sues.’

  ‘There’s only one of you, though, Mum,’ I said. I finished one plait and tied it with a piece of string from the kitchen drawer, adding a few paperclips too as silver decoration.

  ‘What are you doing? Turning me into whatshername – Pocahontas?’ Mum said.

  ‘Hey, you could spell your name differently. S-i-o-u-x, like the native American tribe. That’s individual,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well, I’ll give it a thought. Hey, leave off now, it’s making me go all itchy. What about cowboy names for the baby?’ Mum thought. ‘Butch Cassidy?’

  ‘Yeah, but what if he’s a bit little and wimpy, Mum? You can’t call him Butch.’

  ‘The Sundance Kid? Hey, Sundance, that’s a glorious name! And the sun is a perfect symbol of male energy, right? Little baby, are you Sundance?’

  Mum put her hands on her tummy, peering at it intently, as if she could see the baby inside dancing in the sun.

  2

  I GOT PACKED in a jiffy. I crammed my clothes into one big carrier bag. They got a bit squashed but I didn’t care. I don’t like my clothes much. They’ve mostly been Rochelle’s before me and she likes pink and glitter, tight skimpy stuff that shows off her figure. I haven’t got a figure. I’m so small that even miniskirts come way past my knees, I’m so skinny that everything looks baggy on me, and I’m so pale that pink makes me look sickly white. I got born too early. I was smaller than a bag of sugar and I had to stay in hospital for weeks and weeks. I never really caught up with everyone else my age. Rochelle says I’m the runt of the litter.

  The only garment I really like is my blue cardigan. It’s magic because it stretches every time it’s washed so it’s grown with me the last two years.

  My dad bought it for me. He took me out for the day, just him and me, and he saw I had goose pimples up and down my arms so he bought me my big blue cardie. I’ve worn it every day ever since. I’ve even worn it to school, though we’re supposed to wear navy sweatshirts or jumpers. I got told off, but I insisted that blue’s just like pale navy, so what was the problem? The teachers didn’t bother to send a note home. They’d had enough arguments with my mum in the past when Martine and Jude and Rochelle were at our school.

  I packed all my possessions into one of the cardboard boxes Jude had brought home from Tesco. There was my big book of fairy tales at the bottom. I didn’t bother with the words, I just looked at lovely pictures of princesses with hair waving down to their knees, and made up my own stories. Then there were my notepads and fibre-tip colouring pens and my red gel pen that smelled of strawberries and my yellow gel pen that smelled of bananas. I had a Miss Kitty writing set too but I didn’t really have anyone to write to. I had Martine’s old one-eyed panda and Jude’s monkey with the missing paw and Rochelle’s old Barbies. I didn’t play with them any more but I’d have felt mean if I’d chucked them out.

  Rochelle had done heaps of chucking, but she still had two suitcases and three cardboard boxes brimming over with her bits.

  Jude had even less clothes than me, and just one box containing her baseball bat and her biker boots and her videos and all her fantasy novels.

  Martine was still refusing to pack. She wasn’t speaking to Mum. She wasn’t speaking to any of us, because we were all getting excited at the idea of a house with a garden now. Martine spent almost every second next door with Tony and his family. Mum got so mad at her she went and banged on Tony’s mum’s front door and they had an argy-bargy right on the landing, Martine joining in too.

  ‘Slagging off her own mother in front of everyone!’ Mum wept afterwards. ‘And me in my condition too.’

  Jude and Rochelle and I had to do most of Mum’s packing but we divided it up easily enough. Jude got all the heavy house stuff organized, Rochelle did Mum’s clothes and make-up, and I did Mum’s mystic paintings and her crystal ball and her tarot cards and astrology charts and Every Woman’s Easy Guide to Fortune Telling.

  I had to pack for little Sundance too. Mum had started buying enough little blue dungarees and sleeping suits and weeny fleeces for an entire nursery of baby boys. All brand new. Someone from the social had given her a black plastic rubbish bag full of old baby clothes but Mum wasn’t grateful.

  ‘It’s a blooming insult, giving me this washed-out rubbish,’ she said, tipping them out all over the carpet and stirring them disdainfully with her long pointed fingernails. ‘For God’s sake, look – sick stains!’ she declared, stabbing at a faint white shadow on a little jacket. ‘Right, this is all going in the bin where it belongs.’

  She still hadn’t decided on Sundance’s nursery furniture. She’d gone off the Mothercare selection, and now wanted something more special.

  ‘What, like Harrods?’ said Jude.

  She was being sarcastic but Mum took her seriously. ‘I could check out their nursery stuff, certainly, but I think it might be a bit too traditional, you know? It would be great to get something specially designed, but that might be a bit too pricey.’

  ‘Just a bit,’ said Jude. She paused. ‘Don’t forget you’ve got to pay for the removal van.’