Secrets Read online

  She sniffed resentfully. Then she smiled again. Mum has this really irritating, dazzling smile showing off all her cosmetic dentistry – but her eyes don’t light up. It’s as if her face is a mask and her eyes are the only real bit.

  ‘Still, I suppose we’d better try to be understanding. Dad’s having a hard time at work.’ Mum sighed. ‘Aren’t we all?’ The smile was still there but it was as if she was silently adding, ‘But some of us cope without making all this fuss.’

  Anne Frank loved her dad but frequently couldn’t bear her mother. I feel Anne and I are soul sisters. I love to write too. I write my diary, I write stories and poems, I even wrote the nativity play at school. I tried so hard, rewriting it three whole times, trying to be original, so it was mostly from the animals’ point of view, with the ox and the ass and the littlest lamb as the major characters.

  Mrs Gibbs said in class that it was ‘a lovely idea, don’t you think so, girls?’ Everyone smiled and said it was super. But out in the playground they all groaned and made faces and said it was the most stupid idea ever and who wanted to act as a cow, for God’s sake? Did I think they were all babies?

  I should have said they were all acting like babies right that minute. I didn’t. I just blushed and stammered and said I was sorry, yes it was a mad idea, in fact it absolutely sucked. So then they despised me for being wet as well as babyish and a teacher’s pet. Sometimes I think I despise myself.

  I have bright ginger hair. Most people think this means I have a fearful temper. I do get angry inside but I can’t stick up for myself. I only get furious when I think things aren’t fair for other people.

  Maria waited until the others had all run off and then she put her arm round me and said she thought my play sounded very imaginative. It was maybe more suited to little children. She thought it would work a treat with them.

  Maria was probably just being kind though. She’s kind to everyone.

  I wish Maria was my friend but she’s Alice’s best friend. Everyone in my class has got a best friend – or else they go round in little gangs like Lucy and Imogen and Sarah and Claudia. It’s so awful not having a gang, not having a best friend.

  I used to. I used to have Miranda. We knew each other right from when we were babies because we shared the same nanny while our mums ran this designer scarf company. Miranda and I were almost like sisters. We went to the same kindergarten and then the same school. We always had each other.

  Miranda could be just a bit boring sometimes because she never had any ideas of her own – but I always had heaps of ideas so I suppose it didn’t matter too much. Miranda wasn’t much use at playing pretend games but at least she didn’t laugh at me. When we were little we had two favourites: we played Monkeys, swinging about and being silly and scratching ourselves, or we played the Flying Game, pretending the sleeves of our coats were wings and swooping around all over the place. I know, it sounds so daft now, but we were very little.

  As we got a bit older the two games merged. Flying Monkeys was the best game of all. We pretended we could whizz through open windows and throw peanuts at people. We could ride the weathercock on the church steeple, prance on the roof of the tallest multi-storey and nest in the tops of the poplars on the playing fields. We Flying Monkeys fiercely defended our territory against our enemies, Flying Elephants flapping their vast ears.

  Mum saw us battling it out one day. She didn’t understand this was Flying Animal Warfare. She clapped her hands and said, ‘That looks great fun, girls’ but when she got me on my own she hissed, ‘I wish you wouldn’t shriek so, India. And do you really have to galumph around like that?’

  I said sulkily that I was being an elephant so I was supposed to galumph.

  Mum said, ‘Oh, I see, my little Indian elephant.’

  If Dad had said it he would have been making a funny joke. But Mum was getting at me. She can’t stand it because I’m fat. She’s never actually said it. The nearest we come to it is ‘large’, as in, ‘My daughter’s a little on the large side.’ She whispers the word as if it’s obscene. She thinks it is.

  My mum is so skinny her arms and legs look like you could snap them in half. When she wears a low-cut top you can see all her bones. OK, she’s got a fabulous flat tummy but she’s flat everywhere. She isn’t naturally thin. She is on a permanent diet. She doesn’t say she’s dieting. She says she eats perfectly normally. It isn’t normal to eat fruit and salad and raw vegetables all the time. I know she loves cakes and chocolate like everyone else but she never weakens. Dad once bought us a special big cake from a Viennese patisserie. Mum smiled and said, ‘How gorgeous!’ And then had ONE bite of her slice. It was a little bite too. She’s the same with chocolates. I’ve seen her lick one white Belgian cream chocolate and then throw it in the bin. She is amazing. I could never do that. I am the exact opposite. I could eat an entire great gateau and a giant box of chocolates all by myself, easy-peasy.

  Mum and I have this constant battle. I am supposed to be on a diet but I don’t stick to it. I eat my slither of chicken and my cherry tomatoes and my carrot sticks and my apple and my orange – and then I sneak upstairs and munch two Mars Bars and crunch a whole pack of Pringles.

  Mum went bananas when she found all the empty wrappings under my bed. She shouted all sorts of stuff and I cried and that made her worse because she hates me being a cry-baby. She was furious with Wanda for letting me buy them. Wanda cried too.

  Wanda is even more of a cry-baby than I am. Wanda is our latest au pair. We’ve had lots since I stopped needing a nanny. They never stay long. Mum never likes them. Dad likes the pretty ones so Mum gets rid of them sharpish. Mum and Dad had a big fight over Brigitte. And Selke. And Mai. So Mum decided to try an Australian girl.

  ‘Someone sunny-natured and strong,’ said Mum.

  ‘And bronzed and bouncy and blonde!’ Dad whispered to me, and we both giggled.

  But the laugh was on us, because Wanda isn’t at all the way we wanted her to be. She’s certainly not sunny. She looks vague and misty most of the time, so the kindest way of describing her would be cloudy. When she cries she’s downright dismal. She isn’t strong. She can’t manage more than one bag of shopping and she’s always yawning and flopping down on the sofa and falling asleep. She’s not bronzed and bouncy and blonde. She’s papery-white and droopy, with long, dark, witchy hair. She washes it once a day, sometimes even twice, and walks around with it dripping wet.

  Wanda takes me to school and fetches me in the afternoon and fixes me a few snacks. We’ve done a little deal. We chuck the cottage cheese and celery and carrots straight in the bin and buy secret supplies of sweets and stuff. It’s not fair. Wanda eats as much chocolate and crisps as I do and yet she’s ever so thin, even thinner than Mum.

  Mum hoped she might use Wanda as a cheap personal assistant, taking phone calls and collecting material samples and contacting models, but Wanda wisely made such a mess of things Mum’s banned her from having anything to do with the business.

  My mum is Moya Upton, the children’s clothes designer. She swapped from scarves five years ago, when she couldn’t find any clothes she liked for me. So now she makes ultra-cool designer clothes for kids. There are three Moya Upton shops in London – in Notting Hill, South Kensington and Hampstead – one in Leeds, one in Glasgow, and there’s a special Moya Upton section in Harrods’ Junior Collection department. There was a five-page feature in Vogue last year, and heaps of stuff in the papers. All the girls in my school are mad about Moya Upton clothes.

  The only girl in the entire country who hates Moya Upton clothes is me. They are little and I am big. They are tight and I need loose. They are bright and I like dark. They are sparkly and I like stark. My mum always says she started designing clothes to suit her daughter. I don’t know which daughter that is. It certainly isn’t me.

  Three

  Treasure

  THE FIRST FEW days I got scared every time there was a knock on the door in case it was Mum ready to take me back. I g