It's A Good Day So Far: Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven: Cornflour

I have found out Miss Court’s first name. It’s Victoria. We can’t name our baby after Miss Court, after all. It’s very disappointing. See, I know our baby would be called Victoria Bell and not Victoria Court, which is bad enough, but at least it’s got a ring to it, (excuse the pun.) But I’ve gone off calling our baby Victoria because I want to name it after Miss Court for the sophistication factor, but can you imagine being called Victoria Court? It sounds like a block of council flats. I have to like the entire name together, even though we’d only be using the first bit. Our baby’s name will not sound like something that should be on the top of a ship and Miss Court can keep both of her council flat names because it all sounds much unsophisticated. It’s going to be very hard finding just the right name for our baby.
It was horrible yesterday morning. Mum was really sick. My room is next door to the bathroom and I was woken up by this horrible barfing noise. She was in there for ages and I couldn’t get in to get my shower. It made me feel sick, too. When I did get into the bathroom, it smelled really, really bad. What with Mel being drunk the night before and Mum yesterday morning, I’ve had it with people throwing up all over the place. I had to shower quicker than I’ve ever done in my life before, the smell was awful, but apart from that, I didn’t want to be stuck in there, naked, and trapped, if Mum needed to puke again.
All the girls in my class, except Natalie Reed and a couple of others, who don’t have many friends, get up at six thirty to get ready for school. We all do twenty sit ups and twenty press ups and three salute to the sun, yoga sequences, then we have our showers and then we straighten our hair and put on as much makeup as our parents, and the teachers, will let us get away with. Sometimes I cheat on the exercises, in fact, most times I do. It’s hard to bend yourself into downward facing dog when your upwards facing you, hasn’t woken up yet. I was really late this morning and didn’t have time to straighten my hair at all. For like all of the third year, we’ve always straightened our hair in the mornings and I forgot how wavy and nice it looks when it’s not straightened. I put a tiny purple bulldog bow into each side, just to lift it away from my face, and I felt really feminine. It made me feel good, even if it wasn’t totally in fashion.
When I got downstairs, Mum hadn’t made any breakfast. She was lying down on the sofa and she looked terrible.
‘Kate, darling, can you get yourself some breakfast, love. I’m not feeling very well this morning. I’m so sorry.’
She had a long pause between her words; like she was trying not to vomit and she really did look poorly. I asked her if I could make her a cup of tea or something to eat, but she just pulled a face and looked even worse. Then she jumped up quick and ran out of the room with her hand over her mouth. I made myself two slices of toast and got a glass of milk. I wanted to go straight out to school but I’m not allowed to walk to the bus stop eating my toast. Mum says I have to sit at the table and have a decent breakfast, because that gives me a proper start to the day. Then she always says, ‘I don’t care what Sally Murray does.’
I got into school and I went to see Mel, with Sal. I didn’t expect her to be in school, but she was. She looked terrible and said that she didn’t feel good, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d been expecting. Dad said that drinking all that water and orange juice would make her feel better and help with the hangover. Fancy having a hangover when you’re thirteen. That’s scandalous.
We wanted to know what had happened to her. She said that she met Adam and the others and they had fags and cider. So she smoked and had some of the booze. Then Adam had put his arm around her. She said it made her go all tingly. A couple of minutes later he kissed her. She said that they proper had their mouths open and they moved them round and round like they were chewing gum, and everything. Mel said it was fantastic, but then he put his tongue in her mouth and she said that she didn’t like that much because he put it right in and it was a big tongue. She told him to stop but he wouldn’t and he made her drink more cider. Every time she’d told him to stop, he told her to drink more and that’s how she got drunk. Then she said he touched her boob, just on the top, not on the underneath or inside. Mel grabbed his wrist and told him to stop. Adam said she was frigid and said that she was dumped, and they all laughed at her and ran off. She said that everything was getting woozy, and then she got really drunk, really fast, and that’s when she rang me.
I asked her if she’d got done off her Dad, but she said that they were watching telly when she got in, so she managed to say goodnight and go straight to bed. She was lucky in lots of ways last night.
Danny Peterson called me Curly all day today. He is so annoying. Then at break time he pretended that he was in a waterfall washing his hair, like on the advert. He is quite funny sometimes.
Mum was sick again this morning. That’s two days on the trot; I hope she isn’t going to be like this all the time until Baby’s born because that will be horrible for her. Do you think the baby feels sick, as well? Poor little mite, I hope not. This morning she had taken a bucket to bed with her. She said that it wasn’t fair messing my routine up in the mornings. I told her that it didn’t matter, that her being comfortable was all that mattered, but if I was really telling the truth, it does make it really hard to get ready for school.
I waited until she’d finished and then knocked on the door. She told me that she felt too poorly to get up with me and asked if I would be all right getting myself ready for school. Well of course I’m all right, I’m thirteen, but I don’t like it. I won’t say anything because that would be selfish, but it’s not the same. Dad has already gone to work when I get up and its horrible going down and having breakfast on my own and not having mum to talk to. I hope she isn’t sick every morning.
At dinner time, Ryan Browning, that’s one of Dan Cotter’s gang, went to the Co op. That’s where my mum works, you know? When he came back, I was standing with Sal and Jenny talking about The Valley of The kings, ‘Cause Jenny’s going there when she goes on her holiday to Egypt. Ryan was with Dan and his mates and he came over, they were all laughing and Dan nudged Ryan to talk. ‘Hey, Kate, is your mother deaf, or what?’
‘No, why?’ I’ve never noticed it before, but he’s got this really pathetic high pitched laugh.
‘Cause I was just in the Co op getting a pasty and this bloke asked for some cornflour.’ He had to stop talking to laugh some more. Your old lady went to get him some and when she came back, she’d got a box of cornflakes.’
Sal could see that I was getting upset, because they were having a go at my mum, and she stuck up for me. ‘Well that’s an easy thing to mis-hear isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, but when the bloke said that he’d asked for cornflour, she just stood there as though he was speaking a foreign language. The woman on the other till had to go and find it. It was as funny as…’ and then he swore.
‘Oh, get lost Ryan Browning,’ Sal said, ‘Kate’s mum’s dead nice.’
I’m not going to straighten my hair for school anymore, it was stupid getting up at half six to do it, just because everybody else does. Lots of people said it looked nice and Shannon Grainger said that she’s not going to straighten hers tomorrow, either. Wouldn’t it be funny if all the slutty girls in my class stopped straightening their hair, just because I did?