Secrets Read online

  ‘For goodness sake, India, do you have to be so clumsy?’ she said, leaping about with paper towels and kitchen cloths. ‘And what exactly are you eating?’

  ‘Just a sandwich.’

  ‘It looks more like an entire loaf of bread to me,’ said Mum, mopping. ‘You don’t seem to be taking your diet very seriously, India.’

  She pointedly put two lemons into the blender. Mum’s breakfast.

  She always goes on and on and on about my diet as if my size is the only significant thing about me. The blender rattled away. Mum looked at me. Maybe she was wondering if she could stuff me in along with the lemons and squeeze me right down to the pulp. I doubt I’d fit into a Moya Upton outfit even then.

  I took a large defiant bite of my sandwich, smacking my lips. Mum sighed and switched off the blender. She poured her juice and drank it up. Her cheeks sucked in a little at the sourness but she’d rather die than add a little sugar.

  ‘I think you’re anorexic, Mum,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I just care about my body. It’s time you took a little care of yourself too, India, now you’re growing up.’

  She said the words growing up with extreme emphasis, as if I was shooting straight up to the ceiling and spreading till I could touch all the walls at once. Roll up, roll up, to see the Incredible Growing Girl, twenty metres high, 1000 kilos and rapidly increasing. It’s pretty humiliating when your own mother treats you like a circus freak.

  ‘You’ll turn me anorexic if you carry on nagging me about my weight,’ I said, bolting the last of my sandwich.

  Mum gave this horrible false tinkly laugh. ‘That’ll be the day!’

  She said it spitefully, as sour as her lemon juice. I turned my back on her, opening the fridge up, pretending to be searching for more food. I didn’t want her to see the tears in my eyes.

  ‘India?’

  ‘What?’ I said, as rudely as I dared, my head still in the fridge. I wondered if my tears would turn into tiny stalactites if I stayed there long enough.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,’ she said softly. Well, as soft as she gets.

  She didn’t mean to hurt my feelings? She expects it to feel like fun when your own mother implies you are GROSS?

  I felt like I was growing a frosty mask inside the fridge. She was sorry for me now. Well, I could tell her straight, ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Mum, feel sorry for yourself. Everyone hates you. Even Dad prefers Wanda to you.’

  I wouldn’t say it. But thinking it made me feel better. I straightened up and smiled calmly at my mother.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum, really.’

  ‘What are your plans for today, darling?’ she said, sitting on a kitchen stool and crossing one long, elegant, tanned hairless leg over the other. She wears matching silk nighties and negligées in subtle strange colours, inky-blue with pink lace, forest green with turquoise lace, coffee with tangerine lace. I used to love her nighties. I liked sneaking into Mum’s bedroom and dressing up in their silky softness, playing at being a princess.

  I couldn’t stick wearing anything of Mum’s now. Well. They wouldn’t fit anyway.

  Mum always wants me to have plans. She can’t ever let me drift through the day doing just what I feel like. She has the engagement diary approach to life. She’d like every half hour of my day filled in.

  I shrugged and mumbled something about homework.

  ‘Oh darling, you and your homework!’ she said, as if it’s my personal eccentricity.

  She is the only mother in my class who really doesn’t care about her daughter’s marks. She seems to find it vaguely embarrassing when I come top.

  ‘And I’m going to read this new book about Anne Frank.’

  ‘I know Anne Frank’s story is very moving, India, but don’t you think it’s a little morbid being so obsessed by her?’

  ‘No, I think it’s perfectly normal. She’s my hero, my inspiration.’

  Mum gave a little snort. She was laughing at me. I tried to think of the frost in the fridge but I couldn’t stop my face turning beetroot red.

  ‘Well, I’m going to get into my running things,’ said Mum, swallowing the last of her lemon. She put her head on one side. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?’

  I bared my teeth in a grin to make it plain I knew she was joking.

  ‘Maybe we can go shopping together when I get back?’ said Mum.

  I think she must have read some article about high-powered career mums spending ‘quality time’ with their daughters. But I hate, hate, hate shopping with Mum. I like shopping, so long as it’s my way. Wanda and I go to Woolworths or Wilkinsons, where everything is bright and cheap, and we play this game seeing how many things we can buy for a fiver. I like choosing girly notebooks with pink checks and puppies and gel pens and peachy sweet scent and little floppy toy animals and lots and lots and lots of pick’n’mix sweets. Then we go to McDonald’s and I have a McFlurry and if it goes down too quickly I’ll have another. And maybe even another if Wanda is in a truly good mood. Sadly she hasn’t been in a good mood for ages.

  I wonder if I should try talking to her? Try to comfort her, maybe – because this thing with Dad seems to be making her so unhappy.

  It makes me feel unhappy thinking about her and Dad. If I didn’t love him I think maybe I’d hate him – the way I hate Mum.

  I don’t really hate her.

  Yes I do.

  I certainly hate her when we go shopping together. We nearly always have to go to the places that stock Moya Upton clothes. She has a sneaky check on the stock. The salesgirls generally twig who she is and go into a twitter. There’s often a rich mother with some horrible, pretty, skinny daughter trying on the latest little Moya Upton number and they go all squeaky when they’re introduced to Mum. Sometimes they get her to do the dumbest stuff like sign her own label. All the time they’re admiring Mum their eyes keep swivelling round to me as if they can’t believe that I can possibly be her daughter.

  I sometimes long to be an orphan.

  Mum came back into the kitchen in her tiny grey jogging suit. She waggled her manicured nails at me and then darted off out the back door. She looked like a sleek slim rat, whiskers well shaved, eyes bright and beady. This does not sound flattering, I know. But if I were squeezed into her grey jogging suit another obvious animal springs – no, lumbers – into my mind’s eye. It is gross to compare your mother to a rodent. It is even grosser to know that she thinks of you as an elephant. Not just your mother. Lots and lots and lots of people make pachyderm remarks when I’m around.

  Maybe it’s not so bad. Elephants are intelligent animals. They are meant to have superb memories. It sounds like boasting, but my own memory is phenomenal. I can quote long passages of Anne’s diary by heart now.

  I shall lend it to Treasure because I just know she’ll love it too. I re-read a few favourite parts while I ate another little breakfast. (I’d discovered Wanda’s pop-tarts tucked at the back of the larder. She seems to have lost her appetite recently but mine is ever-present.) Then I wrote more of my own diary. Wanda was up by this time, yawning and sighing.

  ‘What’s up, Wanda?’

  She looked at me, shrugged and flicked her long wet hair out of her face, making a tiny rainstorm over her shoulders.

  ‘Is it Dad?’

  She jumped as if I’d shot at her. ‘No! What do you mean? Are those my pop-tarts you’re eating? Stop it, you greedy girl! Your dad! Why should I be upset about your dad?’

  It’s definitely my dad.

  She drifted off, saying she was going to dry her hair. I heard her going mutter-mutter upstairs with Dad.

  Then five minutes later Dad bounded into the kitchen, all wired up. Clicking his fingers and tutting his tongue against his teeth. He came out with all this guff about poor Wanda being homesick. Do they think I’m mad? I know what’s going on. I think they’re mad. Dad liked Wanda’s friend Suzi a lot more than Wanda herself. Everyone could see that