The Illustrated Mum Read online

  ‘Hey, you’re watering my flower!’ said Marigold. ‘Come here, baby.’

  She took the tea towel between two doughy fingers and dabbed at my face.

  ‘Don’t cry, little Dol. What’s the matter, eh?’

  ‘What do you think is the matter with her?’ said Star, standing in the kitchen door. ‘She was scared silly because you stayed out all night.’

  ‘Still, Marigold’s back now,’ I said quickly, silently begging Star not to spoil it.

  Star was staring at Marigold, eyes narrowed.

  ‘Where did all that cooking stuff come from?’ she said, pointing at the baking trays and mixing bowls and rolling pins. The whole kitchen was covered with bags of flour and icing sugar and lots of little glinting bottles, ruby red colouring, silver balls, rainbow sprinkles, chocolate dots, like some magical cake factory.

  ‘I just wanted to make you girls cookies,’ said Marigold, kneading again. ‘There, I think that’s absolutely right now. The first lot went lumpy so I chucked them out. And the second batch were a teeny bit burnt. They’ve got to be perfect. N-o-w, here comes the best bit.’

  ‘Are you making chocolate chip cookies, Marigold?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Better better better. I’m making you both angel cookies,’ said Marigold, rolling out the dough and sculpting it into shape. Her fingers were long and deft, working so quickly it was as if she were conjuring the angel out of thin air.

  ‘Angel cookies,’ I said happily. ‘Two. Is that their wings? Can mine have long hair?’

  ‘Sure she can,’ said Marigold. ‘And if chocolate chip’s your favourite your angel can have little chocolate moles all over her!’

  We both giggled. Marigold looked up at Star, still hovering in the doorway.

  ‘How would you like your angel to look, Star?’

  ‘I’m not a little kid. How can you do this? You go off, you stay out all night, you don’t even make it home for breakfast, you crucify Dol all day long at school, and then you bob up again without even an apology, let alone a word of explanation. And you act like you’re Mega-Mother of the Year making lousy cookies. Well, count me out. You can have my cookie. And I hope it chokes you.’

  Star stomped off to our bedroom and slammed the door. The kitchen was suddenly silent. I knew Star was right. I knew I should go after her. I knew by the gleam in Marigold’s eye and the frenzy of her fingers and the kitchen clutter that Marigold wasn’t really all right at all. This was the start of one of her phases – but I couldn’t spoil it.

  ‘Star wants a cookie really,’ I said.

  ‘Of course she does,’ said Marigold. ‘We’ll make her a lovely angel, just like yours. And seeing as she’s so mad at me we’ll make my cookie. A fallen angel. A little devil. With horns and a tail. Do you think that’ll make her laugh?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘You weren’t really worried, were you, Dol? Maybe I should have phoned. Why didn’t I phone?’

  ‘You couldn’t phone. It’s been cut off because we didn’t pay the bill, remember?’ I said, nibbling raw cookie dough.

  ‘Right! So I couldn’t have phoned, could I?’ said Marigold.

  ‘Where were you?’ I whispered, so softly that she could pretend she hadn’t heard if she wanted.

  ‘Well – I popped out – and then I thought I’d meet up with some of the gang – and then there was a party.’ Marigold giggled. ‘You know how I like a party.’ She was doing the fallen angel now, her fingers skilled even though they were shaking. ‘And then it got so late and I didn’t come back to my girls and I was very bad,’ said Marigold, and she pointed one finger and smacked the dough devil hard. ‘Very very bad.’

  I giggled too but Marigold picked up on my uncertainty.

  ‘Do you think I’m bad, Dol?’ she asked, staring at me with her big emerald eyes.

  ‘I think you’re the most magic mother in the whole world,’ I said, dodging the question.

  The cookies went into the oven as real works of art – but when we took them out they had sprawled all over the baking tray, their elaborate hairstyles matting, their long-limbed bodies coarsening, their feathery wings fat fans of dough.

  ‘Oh!’ said Marigold, outraged. ‘Look what that stupid oven’s done to my angels!’

  ‘But they still taste delicious,’ I said, biting mine quickly and burning my tongue.

  ‘We’ll try another batch,’ said Marigold.

  ‘No, don’t. These are fine, really.’

  ‘OK, we’ll start the cakes now.’

  ‘Cakes?’

  ‘Yes, I want to make all sort of cakes. Angel cake and Devil cake. And cheesecake and eclairs and carrot cake and doughnuts and every other cake you can think of.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You like cakes, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I love cakes, it’s just—’

  ‘We’ll make cakes,’ said Marigold, and she got a new mixing bowl and started.

  I helped her for a while and then took the bowl into the bedroom. Star was sitting on the end of her bed doing homework.

  ‘Do you want to lick out the bowl? I’ve had heaps already,’ I said, offering it.

  ‘I thought she’d baked cookies.’

  ‘This is cake. The cookies went a bit funny.’

  ‘Surprise surprise. She’s spent a fortune on that kitchen stuff.’

  ‘Yes, I know. She shouldn’t have. But it was for us.’

  ‘You’re really a fully paid-up member of the Marigold fan club, aren’t you?’ Star said spitefully.

  I blinked at her in surprise. Until recently it had always been Marigold and Star – and then me, trotting along behind, trying to keep up. They were like two lovebirds, bright and beautiful, billing and cooing, while I was a boring old budgie on a perch by myself.

  ‘I don’t suppose she’s thought to buy any normal food?’ said Star, running her finger round and round the bowl.

  She’d been biting her nails so badly they were just little slithers surrounded by raw pink flesh.

  ‘Who wants normal food? This is much more fun. Hey, remember that time last summer when it was so hot and Marigold told us to open the fridge and there it was simply stuffed with ice cream. Wasn’t it wonderful?’

  We ate Cornettos and Mars and Soleros and Magnums, one after another after another, and then when they all started to melt Star mixed them all up in the washing-up bowl and said it was ice cream soup.

  ‘We lived on stale bread and carrots all the rest of that week because she’d spent all the Giro,’ said Star.

  ‘Yes, but it didn’t matter because we’d had the ice cream and that was so lovely. And anyway, you made it a joke with the bread, remember? We broke each slice into little bits and played the duck game? And Marigold carved the carrots too. Remember the totem pole, that was brilliant. And the rude one!’

  ‘And she was so hyped up and crazy she carved her thumb too and wouldn’t go to Casualty like any normal person, though I suppose they could easily have committed her. And it got all infected and she got really ill, remember, remember?’ Star hissed.

  I put my hands over my ears but her voice wriggled through my fingers into my head.

  ‘Shut up, Star!’

  We never ever used words like crazy, even when Marigold was at her worst.

  ‘Maybe we should have told at school today,’ Star said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s starting to get really manic, you know she is. Totally out of it. I don’t know what she’s going to do next. Neither does she. She might clear off again tonight and not come back for a fortnight.’

  ‘No, she won’t. She’s OK now, she’s being lovely.’

  ‘Well, make the most of it. You know what she’ll get like later on.’

  ‘She can’t help it, Star.’

  Star had impressed this upon me over and over again. It was like a Holy Text. You never questioned it. Marigold was sometimes a little bit mad (only you never ever used such a blunt term) but we must never let a