Girls in Tears Read online

  'Russell, wait, will you!' I bellow in frustration. 'What are you doing here?'

  'I felt mean leaving you to do all this shopping. I thought the least I could do was come and find you and help you carry it. I had no idea why you suddenly had this urgent desire to act like the Wonder Woman of Waitrose.

  'What?' I blink at him.

  'Don't come the wide-eyed innocent with me, Ellie! I had no idea you had a thing going with that shelf-stacker guy in the silly hat.'

  I burst out laughing, which makes Russell even more furious. 'Oh, Russell, listen. I hardly know him.'

  'Oh yeah? The way he was looking at you made me feel sick. He obviously fancies you like mad.'

  'The one thing I do know about him is he's gay.'

  Now it's Russell's turn to stand with his mouth open. 'What?'

  'He's gay, Russell. And if he fancies anyone, it's you. He said he thought you looked very nice. He's obviously smitten.'

  Russell is going very pink. 'Right. Well. That's cool. Though I hope you made it plain you're my girlfriend.'

  'You were acting like you're really jealous,' I say.

  'Nah, of course I wasn't. I just thought you were making a monkey out of me.'

  'But I wasn't.'

  'That's right.'

  'So we're still friends?'

  'We're more than friends, silly,' says Russell, and he takes my hand and twists the ring lovingly on my finger.

  He helps me carry the shopping all the way home. Anna is very grateful to us both. Russell's having a cup of tea with us when Dad comes home, early for the first time in ages. He's carrying a huge box of Sainsbury's groceries.

  'Dad! I went to Waitrose,' I say.

  'Well, we won't run short of butter and tissues for a while now,' says Dad.

  'Thank you for getting all the stuff, anyway,' says Anna, fumbling in her handbag. 'How much did it come to? I'll pay you out of the housekeeping purse.'

  'For God's sake, I can buy a few groceries. I can still earn a bob or two. Not as much as you, perhaps, but enough,' Dad says sharply.

  It's hopeless. I thought they might just make it up now but they seem to be back to hating each other, though they have to be icily polite in front of Russell. I help Anna unpack the second lot of stuff, opening up Dad's box of tissues when I sneeze again. I do hope I'm not going down with Eggs' cold. He is over the sniffles and now coughs all over everywhere instead.

  Dad and Russell make slightly uneasy small talk – uneasier still when Russell starts on about Cynthia rushing out to buy an Anna Allard designer sweater. Dad's conversation dwindles to the odd grunt. Russell realizes he's on quicksand and hauls himself to safety by talking about the Art competition. He has the nerve to boast about his elephant cartoons.

  'My elephant,' I mutter.

  Russell sighs. 'I told you, Ellie, if I win I'll go fifty–fifty with you. Though it's not your elephant, it's my cartoon elephant.'

  'Still, Ellie's always drawn dinky elephants ever since she was a little girl,' says Dad, drinking the cup of tea that Anna's poured for him, though he doesn't actually acknowledge her. 'Why didn't you do your elephant yourself, Ellie?'

  'Oh, she was too late to enter the competition,' says Russell, as if I had simply been too idle to get it together in time.

  'No, I did have a go,' I say. 'I didn't draw elephants, though. I did a little blue mouse.'

  Dad looks up at me. 'Not Myrtle Mouse?'

  'Yes.'

  'Is this another of your special characters?' Russell asks. 'Can't I draw mice any more without you making a fuss? Maybe you'll tell the Walt Disney organization to watch out too!'

  I ignore Russell. I'm looking at Dad. I rather hope he keeps quiet. He doesn't.

  'Myrtle was invented by Ellie's mum,' says Dad.

  Russell looks at Anna.

  'No, her real mum.'

  Anna flinches. I don't think Dad means it nastily. His whole face has softened.

  'She made up Myrtle Mouse when Ellie was little. She wouldn't go to sleep until her mum made up a Myrtle Mouse story.'

  'We made her up together, Dad. And I always drew pictures of her. Well, I used to copy Mum's at first, but then I did my own.'

  'So you've copied your mum's drawings for the competition!' Russell shouts. 'You little hypocrite! All that fuss about my copying Ellie Elephant. And I didn't copy you anyway.'

  'I didn't copy my mum.'

  'You just admitted it in front of all of us!' Russell insists.

  'That was when I was little. I reinvented Myrtle. She's not a bit like the little mouse my mum made up, not now. She's mine,' I say defensively.

  'Rubbish! If you've used your mum's design that's really cheating,' says Dad.

  I want to kick him. Anna looks like she does too. 'Don't be so unfair! Ellie's just used a little child's character as a jumping-off point for her own artwork,' she says. 'Of course she's not cheating. What a thing to say to your own daughter! What's the matter with you?'

  'I'm jealous, aren't I? At least, that's what my precious daughter thinks.'

  'Dad! Anyway, I'm not even eligible for the stupid competition. I sent my entry in too late. They'll probably just chuck it in the bin.'

  Chapter Eleven

  Girls cry when

  their dreams

  come true!

  Eleven

  Girls cry when

  their dreams come true!

  I am dying. I'm hot all over and yet I'm shivering. My nose is all bunged up, my throat is raw, my head aches, my chest hurts. I know I'm really really ill. I'm sure I've got pneumonia. Double pneumonia. No, triple. Hang on, I've only got two lungs. It feels like they're both blown up like balloons, about to burst.

  Everyone thinks I've just got Eggs' cold. This isn't a cold. How could anyone feel so awful with a mere cold? Yet no one seems remotely sympathetic. Dad and Anna made me go into school yesterday, which was so unfair. And a waste of time. I couldn't concentrate on any of the lessons and could barely crawl across the hockey pitch. OK OK, I suppose I'm usually inattentive and appalling at Games, but I couldn't even paint properly in Art, my best subject.

  We are still stuck in the still-life slot. I like animated life a lot more, though I suppose Mr Windsor did his best to make it interesting for us. He showed us copies of these weirdly lovely seventeenth-century Spanish paintings of cabbages on string, and then he dangled a whole load of real cabbages in the air for us to copy. Magda had a little go at flicking one cabbage into another to see if they'd go dong dong dong backwards and forwards like those smart executive toys, but they just made a dull thwack and got their strings all tangled. Mr Windsor said if we didn't settle down sharpish he'd lop off our heads and string them up instead.

  So we settled, sort of, though Magda kept moaning that the smell of cabbages was making her feel sick. I couldn't smell anything at all but I felt sick anyway. I tried hard at first but my cabbages looked like giant green roses and I lost heart. I painted in a little cartoon bunny up on its back legs, mouth open and drooling, desperately trying to leap up and reach the dangling feast. Magda and Nadine were duly appreciative but Mr Windsor wasn't amused.

  'We all know you're an inventive cartoonist, Ellie, but it's getting a little bit predictable the way you fall back on cartoons whenever you're having trouble with a serious subject.'

  'Oooh!' Magda said mockingly.

  'That's enough, Magda! You three girls are starting to annoy me. I shall split the three of you up if you carry on like this.'

  'No one could ever split us up,' Magda muttered, but not quite loud enough for him to hear.

  'Now, come on, Ellie. Paint over the rabbit and look a little harder at your cabbages. You haven't got the texture of the leaves right at all. They look far too limp.'

  I felt limp all day long at school. I didn't really feel like going out with Russell. Nadine was going round to Magda's house and they were going to sort out all their stuff to see what to wear to Big Mac's party. Nadine isn't remotely interested in any o