Is something good about to happen?

The pier on Friday night. Everything was just as usual. I walked over to the bench with my head down and offered Dean Murphy one of Mum’s Marlboros if he’d move up.

He was going on about Emma Hunt’s arse getting fatter and his little brother Mickey, who wasn’t even at St Bernard’s yet, was agreeing with him in between spits. They were making a pool of gob, and it frothed on the floor between them, growing every minute.

“Her tits are getting bigger too,” Mickey said matter of factly and Dean nodded. Everyone said Emma Hunt was the prettiest girl in year 10 but she just had the biggest boobs.

All the girls were standing around the lamppost like it would keep them warm. I heard Rosie straight away. She was wearing a new scarf. Tiny strands of green wool kept getting caught on her bottom lip and she pulled them off as she talked.

She looked perfectly comfortable standing there, her yellow hair bright in the lamp light and her cheeks flushed pink from the cold, surrounded by faces that looked just like hers, that smiled and laughed in just the same way. It seemed obvious, seeing her then, that she would end up standing in the middle of that group, with or without Emma Hunt’s grooming.

Emma Hunt leaned into the circle to say something and Rosie threw her head down as if the joke was so funny it had broken her back.

I took a drag of my Marlboro and thought how I preferred her when she was shy. Dean and Mickey kept talking about the girls as if I wasn’t there and I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended.

A loud burst of Celine Dion made us all look over to The Cow to see who’d stumbled out the double doors this time.
“It’s Porn Starling!” Dean bellowed, standing up and wolf-whistling.

Rosie glanced over at me and I looked quickly at my trainers, rubbed at an imaginary mark.
“That’s Sam’s sister, Dean,” she said quietly, as if he didn’t know.

I turned my head so I was looking as far away from Dawn’s general direction as possible. I stared straight down the length of the pier towards Flushing, willing her not to come over even as her clumsy heels clattered nearer.
“Oh Sammy! You’ve gotten all dressed up! That hair! And those shoes!”

Post natal flesh spilled out of black polyester but Dawn didn’t care. She was the kind of girl that took the nickname Porn as a compliment.

Seeing amusement in the faces smirking around her she carried on talking, unaware that the joke was on her too. Her swollen red face contorted excitedly as she told the group I only had one pair of trainers and I never washed my hair.
“Look how long and greasy it is!” she exclaimed like she was delivering the punch line to the most hilarious joke of all time. “She just doesn’t know what to do with it!”

I kept my head down, took a drag of my Marlboro.

“Look at the hard man, smoking! You don’t quite know what you are. Do you Sammy? Why don’t you just get your hair cut and be done with it? Settle in as a boy properly…”

I hunched my shoulders over so my head wasn’t higher than anyone else’s and looked at the floor, letting my long hair hang down on either side of my face like a curtain. I leaned forward so it closed me in, trying to ignore Dawn’s wet-sounding voice.

I thought of top and tailing with Rosie in her top bunk instead, when we both still wore crop tops and filling a bra seemed impossible.
And when I got up off the bench, no one asked me to stay.

Mum was watching telly on the settee and started talking as soon as I came in. I ignored her and opened the fridge out of habit. I don’t know why because there was never anything in there.
“Sit down with me Sammy.”

Smoke drifted around the living room and Mum peered out at me from the haze. The TV guide sat on her lap shouting Friday night with bright colours.
“There’s nothing on,” she told me, “this is just one of those quiz shows. Isn’t the girl pretty though?”

I looked at the screen where a shiny faced girl wandered aimlessly around a studio, talking nonsense. She clasped her hands together as if she was excited, but it wasn’t very convincing. Despite the layers of make up you could see she was embarrassed, that she was dreaming of Hollyoaks.

Mum kept looking at her, then reached over and touched my hair with a cold hand. I winced because I knew what was coming next.

“I used to take such good care of myself before you lot came along, you know. I was thin as a stork and so pretty…”
The long ash-end of her cigarette fell onto her dressing gown, unnoticed.
“It’s in your blood Sammy. Dawn had a lovely shape before she had Jo Jo. You could be so pretty with a bit of work…” Her enthusiasm ran out as she recognised my blank face. “I just want you to be happy…”

I tried to smile, picking the ash off her baggy, dressing gowned chest. It crumbled between my fingers.

“Like your cousin Arthur. He’s happy, and he’s so looking forward to seeing you, you know.”
I looked at her confused.

“He so grateful for your room, he says he’s just staying for a little while, such a nice, polite boy…”
“What? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you put him in Dawn’s room? She doesn’t even live here anymore!”
“Please don’t be difficult Sammy, you know what your sister’s like.”

And I was quiet then, because I did know what my sister was like. In the end I just tutted and settled down on the settee as usual, brushing the ash off Mum’s dressing gown from time to time.

We watched a documentary on National Geographic about meerkat hierarchies, Mum's head on my shoulder until it was time to put her to bed.

That night, sleeping on the settee downstairs, I dreamed about Rosie. We were living in a meerkat colony on the school playing fields and she was the dominant female, having loads of babies and making me fight her all the time. It wasn’t the same Rosie I used to top and tail with, but it was nice to spend time with her none the less.

The next morning was when things began to change. My cousin Arthur had grown into the kind of person that claimed to like foreign films. He was very conscious about the signals he gave out. When he finally came out of the bathroom in the morning he was wearing skinny black jeans and bright white plimsolls that looked like they’d never even seen outside.

His dark, glossy hair hung across one eye and he looked at me with the other as if he was trying to work me out. It made me uncomfortable until I saw him doing the same thing to Mum. She was sitting on the settee in her dressing gown with a cup of tea, like she always did, counting out her tablets, careful as a child.

Arthur smiled a lot and looked me in the eye with an ease that made me feel shifty.
“Thanks for letting me have your bed,” he said in his soft voice, glancing out at me from under that shiny, brown hair. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Not really,” I said, then smiled so he knew I wasn’t angry with him.
“I’m just here until Monday. Heather’s holding a poetry weekend at the house...”
“Heather?”
“She asked us to call her that. She says ‘Mum’ makes her feel like a prisoner.”

He spoke like he was amused at people in general. Like it didn’t even matter that it was his Mum he was talking about. I could tell by looking at him that he just wanted to have fun, that he was going to do his best to make me laugh, whatever happened. It was a nice feeling, looking at his face. It was like waiting for something good to happen.

“But only fat people hate shopping. Fat people and freaks.” Arthur said, later on, when we lay on my bed. He turned to lean on an elbow and stared at my face, grinning. “Does shopping make you feel freakish?”

I rolled onto my back, thinking about getting offended, but he had this way of asking questions, like he had no idea someone might want to keep anything private. Like nothing was off limits and you were an idiot for keeping things to yourself.
“You’re making me feel freakish.”

“Show me your wardrobe. I can feel a bit of gay coming on.”
He started rifling through my chest of drawers, pulling out crumpled white t shirts and combat trousers as he talked. My uniform. He held up the blue summer dress I kept buried at the bottom and raised his eyebrows.
“I keep meaning to throw that away.”

“You should. Heather was really happy when I told her I was gay. Really happy, like she’d been waiting for it. She used to give me dolls to play with when I was little. Molly got Meccano. She actually used to swap our presents over at Xmas, she loved it!”
He shook his head and laughed then, like his childhood was a joke. Not sarcastic, or resentful or anything, just amused.

“You’ll have to try mine on.” He said, unbuttoning his skinny jeans and wriggling out of them, pulling his t-shirt over his head. He went to put some music on in just his pants, moving exactly like he was still wearing clothes. Completely unfazed, even though he had a pot belly and a big gristly belly button that stuck out.

“This is my band,” he told me, as casually as if he was fully dressed, “we can’t really play yet, but we look amazing.” He handed me a cardboard sleeve. A pale, thin girl with a shaved head stood at the front cuddling an overweight rabbit. She was wearing middle-aged clothing and closing her eyes, like the rabbit really meant something to her. Behind her, two boys looked confused, sitting on the floor and touching fingertips. One of them was Arthur in a silver tux.

“I shaved Star’s head. She had these long blonde dreadlocks before, but they didn’t suit our sound, so we took them off. It’s all just costume anyway, isn’t it?” He was grinning now, so I could tell this was a subject he liked to go over.

As if to make a point, he started tugging my old dress over his head. There was a tearing noise as he strained his arms through. He pulled it over his pot belly, laughing, then put his arms up in the air like a toddler.
“Do me up!”

I yanked at the zip but there was no way it was going anywhere.
He laughed at his reflection in the mirror and started doing a little dance, holding the blue cotton skirt and swinging it flirtatiously.

I told him to turn around before I started taking my clothes off.
He asked me what I’d got that was so ridiculous, but he turned round.

“Look how long and thin you are, you could wear anything,” he said enviously, facing me. He pulled at his t shirt so it hung differently across my flat chest and tucked the pockets of his jeans in so the denim lay flat.
“I’m thinking of being a costume designer when I grow up.” He told me with a serious face. “Or a paedophile.”

He reached up and lifted my hair off my back, held it up so that I could see my ears.
“Look at that long neck. I bet you could pull off a skinhead.”
I shook my head as he made the noise of an electric razor.

“Do you even wash your hair?”
He laughed then, wiping his hands down the sides of my jeans as if he was disgusted. When he stepped back, I noticed Dawn standing in the doorway.

“What the fuck!” she said, breathless with laughter. “Look at the state of you!” She moved over and I saw that my brother was with her.
“You look fucking ridiculous!” he gasped.

“Why thank you, Lee, you don’t look bad yourself,” Arthur smiled, holding out the pale blue skirt of my summer dress daintily, the zip still sticking out at the back. I sat on the bed, looking down at my bony legs in skin tight denim and fiddling with an imaginary piece of fluff.

“Look at our glamorous little sister! And who’s this beside her?”
“Don’t tell me she’s finally found a girlfriend!”
The two of them were doing their usual routine. Overacting like a pantomime duo, directing their comments at each other with a slightly Cockney twang.

“Don’t you remember me, Lee?” Arthur asked, playing along. “I’m your bloody cousin!”
Lee’s sneer moved up his face into a frown and he pulled at his thick bottom in pretend bafflement.

“Is it…? No! Of course I remember you Arf!” He grabbed at Arthur’s pale hand, pumping it up and down and grinning into his face. “Not much of a handshake though, could do with being a bit firmer!”

Arthur laughed at this and put his hand out to shake Lee’s again, grimacing as he shook it over-vigorously and putting on a deep voice.
“Hello, old chap, nice to see you. It’s been a while.”
Arthur’s dress rustled from the power of his handshake and Lee’s grin dropped slightly. He pulled his hand away like it was charged and took a step towards the door, looking like he literally couldn’t understand why Arthur wasn’t cowering.

“I hear you’re a mum again Dawn, congratulations.” Arthur said turning to my sister. He kissed her cheek affectionately.
She smiled sweetly then glanced at Lee, unsure how to act. Neither of them knew how to take such decorum from a teenage boy in a little girl’s dress.

“Are you staying for tea?” I asked, just as politely and they nodded their heads, just slightly.
“Well, we’ll see you later then,” Arthur said, showing them to the door, his gristly belly button still straining to get out of the blue cotton dress.
He pushed it shut after them with a swift motion of his foot and turned the music up.
“Fuck them,” he said simply, and I remember thinking that was a revelation.

I imagined myself acting in the same way. Cordial and amused. Politely superior. I could slam the door and say fuck them to myself every time they told me I was a freak. Stick an imaginary pot belly out and dance about in little dresses unaffected when Rosie ignored me in Maths. Maybe even get my hair cut off.

“Quick, give me my clothes back,” Arthur said. “I’m losing my personality.”

I laughed and started to undress. And I didn’t care if he turned round.