Diamond Girls Read online

  ‘Oh lord, Dixie, don’t be so daft. I’m not that great an actress,’ said Mum, running her hands through her hair. I saw the beads of sweat on her forehead. She screwed up her eyes against the pain and started whoo-whoo-whooing again.

  ‘Mum?’ I said, getting really scared.

  She clutched me tight, struggling to keep upright. ‘Oh, Dixie. It hurts so. It’s too quick. Everything’s going wrong. It is going to be all right, isn’t it? My boy’s going to be all right?’ She sounded just as scared as me.

  I took a deep breath and put my arm round her. ‘Don’t you worry, Mum, everything’s going to be fine,’ I said. ‘You know it is. It says so in the stars.’

  7

  ‘ALL RIGHT, ALL right, the van’s ready,’ said Bruce, wiping his forehead and looking at Mum anxiously.

  ‘Any minute now!’ said Mum.

  Bruce gave a little moan.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep my legs crossed,’ said Mum.

  ‘You’ll have to have one of the girls with you just in case the baby starts coming when I’m driving,’ said Bruce.

  ‘I was joking,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Bruce.

  ‘I’ll come, Mum,’ I said, holding her hand.

  ‘Don’t be so silly, sweetheart. They wouldn’t let you in,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’ll come,’ said Jude, but she looked a bit queasy.

  ‘You wouldn’t even know which end it came out of,’ said Mum, laughing, even though she was doubled up in pain. ‘I know babies aren’t your thing, Jude, don’t worry.’

  ‘They’re not my thing either!’ Rochelle said hastily.

  ‘No, no, you three must stay at home.’ Mum looked at Martine, pleadingly.

  ‘OK,’ said Martine, sighing. She took Mum’s arm and helped her into the van.

  ‘Now, darlings, you behave yourselves, right? You’ll be OK, won’t you? Jude, here’s two tenners, you nip out to the nearest chippy for your tea. Then I want you to lock yourselves in until Martine gets back. No more chatting up the local lads, Rochelle. No fighting, Jude. No treks over the garden wall, Dixie chick. And no more quarrelling, do you hear me? Rochelle, I’m talking to you!’

  ‘She hit me. Mum!’

  ‘Yeah, and who did this? said Jude, tapping her cheek. But then she nodded. ‘I promise we won’t fight, Mum.’

  Rochelle pulled a face, but muttered ‘Promise’ too.

  ‘You promise you’ll be all right, Mum?’ I said, trying not to cry.

  I couldn’t stand seeing her with her face all crumpled up with pain. I’d never been in a hospital but I’d seen Casualty and ER. I imagined Mum on a trolley, her vast belly under one of those flimsy white gowns like a giant bib, while scary masked people cut her open.

  ‘Will they cut you, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no, not if I can help it! I still want to wear a bikini when I get my figure back. Don’t look so worried, Dixie, I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll probably be back here this time tomorrow with your little brother all tucked up in my arms, OK?’

  ‘So who’s going to look after the girls while you’re in hospital?’ said Bruce.

  Mum looked at him as if he was simple. ‘You are, Bruce, babe.’

  ‘Oh no. No, look, I made it clear right from the start. I’ve got to get back. I should have been back at the shop hours and hours ago. I can’t hang around babysitting your girls.’

  ‘We’re not babies,’ said Jude. ‘You push off. We don’t need you.’

  ‘Yes, they do need you,’ said Mum. She doubled up again. ‘I haven’t got time to argue. You take me to the hospital, Bruce. I haven’t got a clue where it is but you’ll have to get me there sharpish, mate.’

  She started her whoo-whoo-whooing, so loudly she sounded like a steam train. Rochelle sniggered. I dug my elbow in her and she punched me hard.

  ‘Cut it out,’ Mum gasped, and then she lay back in the van. ‘Oh God, I think it’s coming.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Bruce said grimly, slamming the van door shut behind Martine and starting up the engine.

  We could hear Mum moaning inside as the van hurtled away. Jude and Rochelle and I stood on the pavement, staring after her. An old lady in a headscarf and matted fleece and bedroom slippers came out of a house three doors away. She looked us up and down like we were monkeys at the zoo.

  ‘Did they kick you out your old place then?’ she said.

  ‘No they didn’t!’ said Rochelle, flouncing.

  ‘Don’t kid me. I’ve never seen the like. Fighting and brawling in the street the minute you get here! You girls acting like alley cats and your mum practically giving birth in the gutter!’

  ‘You mind your own business, you old bag,’ said Jude.

  ‘I’m complaining about you to the council. This used to be a decent estate. When me and my late husband moved in we were proud to live here. Now look at this dump. And it’s used as a dumping bin too, for all you problem families.’

  ‘We’re not a problem family!’ I said.

  ‘Come indoors, Dixie, Rochelle,’ said Jude, grabbing us and pulling.

  When we’d shut the front door I looked at Jude. ‘We’re not a problem family, are we?’ I said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘That’s what they called us at school,’ I said.

  ‘It was a crap school.’

  ‘I liked it,’ said Rochelle. ‘I liked Bletchworth High too. It’s not fair. I really liked it. Mr Mitchell was my best ever teacher and he said if I really put my mind to it I could pass all my exams and go to university, but with my looks maybe modelling school could be an option.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Mr Mitchell was just a pervy old creep,’ said Jude. ‘You are so thick, Rochelle. You act like you know it all and yet you haven’t a clue. Why do you think those boys were chatting you up, eh?’

  ‘They liked me. And if you hadn’t poked your nose in I’d have copped off with that dark guy with the earring,’ said Rochelle, poking Jude.

  ‘Don’t you poke me with those poxy pointy nails! Look at my face! That old bag was right, you’re just like an alley cat.’

  ‘Don’t you call me a cat, you cow!’

  ‘Stop it!’ I shouted. ‘Please please please don’t start fighting again.’

  Jude and Rochelle stared at me. I don’t usually go in for shouting.

  ‘Who pulled your chain?’ Rochelle said rudely, but she stopped poking Jude and let her arms dangle limply.

  ‘Are you feeling left out, Dixie?’ said Jude. ‘You can join in the fight too.’ She punched me very lightly in the chest.

  I knew she was joking. I acted out staggering and sank down onto the dirty carpet, pretending she’d floored me. Jude waved her fists in the air in mock victory. Rochelle sniffed at us. Then I stood up and we all stood staring at each other, wondering what to do next.

  ‘Mum’ll be all right, won’t she?’ I said.

  ‘Of course she will. She’s used to having babies. She’s had enough practice, after all,’ said Jude.

  ‘But she said it was coming too quickly.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ said Rochelle. She started sniggering again. ‘Imagine if it comes before she gets to hospital! How will old Bruce cope?’

  ‘I hope she doesn’t hook up with him, he’s such a creep,’ said Jude.

  ‘I like him,’ I said.

  ‘He looks like a frog,’ said Rochelle. She pulled a stupid froggy face that was nothing like my Uncle Bruce. ‘He talks like a frog too, all croaky.’

  ‘And he puffs up like a toad when he’s trying to boss us about,’ said Jude.

  ‘No he doesn’t! Look, he protected you from those horrible boys.’

  ‘They weren’t horrible,’ Rochelle huffed.

  ‘Don’t start again,’ I begged her. I looked up and down the dark hall. I tried the light switch. I clicked it up and I clicked it down. It didn’t work.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘The light bulb isn’t working.’

  Jude edged her wa
y into the living room, where most of our furniture had been dumped in everyone’s haste to empty the van. She switched on the living-room light switch. It wasn’t working either.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ she said.

  ‘There’s no light,’ said Rochelle. ‘What are we going to do? We can’t stay in the dark. Jude?’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? Turn into a torch?’ said Jude, biting the skin of her thumb.

  ‘Maybe the light works upstairs?’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s not working anywhere, stupid,’ said Rochelle, but she still went clattering upstairs to check.

  ‘We can’t go to bed in the dark,’ she said, running back downstairs.

  ‘We haven’t got the beds up there yet,’ said Jude. ‘Maybe we’d better all stay downstairs tonight. She put her arm round me, seeing I was shivering. ‘It’s OK, Dixie, it’ll be like camping. Look, you two start hunting around for all the duvets and start sorting them out and I’ll go out for some fish and chips. Put the kettle on, Rochelle.’ She paused. She bit her thumb again.

  Rochelle was having the same thought. She ran into the kitchen and tried fiddling with the switches on the filthy cooker. ‘Oh God, nothing electric will work! We can’t even have a cup of tea. Or a hot bath. Or watch the telly.’

  ‘Maybe Uncle Bruce will fix the electrics when he comes back?’ I said.

  ‘Not if it’s all switched off. Anyway, I don’t think he’s going to come back. I bet you he’ll just dump Mum and Martine at the hospital and then do a runner,’ said Rochelle.

  ‘Well, good riddance. We’ll find someone else to fix it. The council,’ said Jude. ‘If only Martine had left us her mobile I could ring them now. Tell you what, I’ll find a phone box and give them a bell while I’m out for the fish and chips.’

  ‘You don’t know the number,’ said Rochelle. ‘Oh God, what are we going to do?’

  ‘Stop panicking, Rochelle, you’re frightening Dixie,’ said Jude.

  ‘Oh, poor little poppet,’ Rochelle mocked. ‘Why do we all treat her like a blooming baby? She’s nearly as old as me. She just looks so stupidly immature.’

  ‘And you act so stupidly immature,’ I said.

  ‘That’s great, coming from a girl with a stuffed toy birdy friend perched on her finger,’ said Rochelle, flicking at Bluebell.

  ‘Cut it out,’ said Jude. ‘Now get cracking with the bed stuff, both of you.’

  ‘I want to come with you, Jude,’ I said.

  ‘No, you’re better off here. Especially if those lads Rochelle’s so crazy on are lurking close by.’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I want to come too,’ I said.

  ‘Oh bless! You’re going to protect me, Dixie?’ said Jude. ‘I’ll be back soon. Don’t look so worried.’

  She waved at us jauntily, but her face was pinched and she took a very deep breath as she went out the door, like she was about to dive off a cliff.

  Rochelle and I looked at each other when she’d gone.

  ‘So now there are just the two of us,’ I said. ‘It’s like one of those creepy detective stories where people keep disappearing.’

  ‘Horror story, more like. How could Mum dump us here? She’s so stupid,’ said Rochelle. She squeezed in and out the furniture, kicking it with her spoiled suede shoes. ‘I can’t stand her sometimes.’

  ‘Shut up, Rochelle. She’s in the middle of having a baby and it looks like it’s going all wrong.’

  ‘What is she doing having another baby when she’s got all of us? Serves her right if she has a bad time. It might make her more careful,’ said Rochelle, fumbling her way through cardboard boxes.

  ‘Don’t! Look, all sorts of stuff could be happening to her,’ I said. I remembered all the childbirth scenes I’d seen on the television. I saw Mum panting, purple in the face, screaming out. I saw a hospital bed and blankets spattered with bright-red blood. I saw Mum lying very white and still, and then the sheets being pulled over her head.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said Rochelle. ‘Look, help me, birdbrain! Shove that silly budgie up your jumper and get searching for the duvets. They must have got jumbled up with the clothes.’

  ‘What if she dies?’ I sniffed, mopping my eyes on someone’s T-shirt.

  ‘Stop it, that’s my T-shirt. Don’t wipe your snotty face with it. And stop that silly boohooing, she’s not going to die. She’s not ill, she’s just having a baby.’

  ‘Some women do die having babies.’

  ‘Trust you to be so morbid. You obviously take after your stupid dad. Aha!’ Rochelle found one of the duvets at the bottom of a box, under Mum’s clothes. She pulled it out, but got distracted by Mum’s silky black kimono. ‘She went without her night things,’ said Rochelle, stroking the soft black material. She bent her head and sniffed Mum’s scent. ‘I didn’t mean that about hoping Mum has a bad time,’ She whispered. ‘I was just saying that because I was mad at her.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  I wiped my eyes with my own cardie sleeve. Bluebell gave me a little nudge with her beak as I did so. I clambered over the beds. They were mostly in bits so they could fit easily in the van. ‘Shall we just fix Mum’s bed and then we could share it tonight, you, me and Jude?’ I said.

  ‘Yuck, I don’t want to sleep with you two,’ said Rochelle, but she helped me fiddle with Mum’s bed all the same. We couldn’t get the headboard to stay slotted in properly and the mattress was too heavy for us to lift onto the base without Jude.

  ‘We could just use the mattress tonight,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want to be down on the floor. Something might crawl over me. This place is so filthy. There could be cockroaches. Or rats.’

  I wished Rochelle hadn’t said that. She seemed to be regretting it too.

  ‘What will we do if there are rats?’ she said, standing up on Mum’s armchair.

  ‘We could … hit them with your high heels?’ I suggested.

  ‘I’m not having my best shoes made all manky with bits of dead rat!’ said Rochelle, stepping down again gingerly.

  ‘OK, OK. Well. We’ll have to get all your cats – you know, the white ones: Snowdrop and Sugar Lump and Ice Cream, and they’ll see the rats and they’ll go, “Ooh, yum yum, tasty rat nuggets for our tea,” and gobble them all up.’

  Rochelle giggled. ‘You’re so weird, Dixie. I never know if you’re funny or just plain bonkers.’

  ‘Definitely bonkers,’ I said, and pulled mad faces, miming being a crazy person as we wrapped a sheet round Mum’s mattress and smoothed out the duvet and puffed up all the pillows.

  Rochelle needed to go to the loo and made me come up the stairs with her and wait outside the door. We’d been running all over the house earlier on but now it was much more scary by ourselves.

  I used the loo myself. While I was sitting on it there was a sudden thump at the door.

  ‘Dixie! Quick, come to the door with me,’ Rochelle hissed.

  ‘I can’t, I’m still going! You answer it. It’ll just be Jude, with our chips.’

  ‘What if it isn’t? What if it’s those boys? Dixie, do you really think they’d hurt me? The really good-looking guy with the earring? Don’t you think Jude was just jealous?’

  ‘Jude isn’t the least bit jealous of you, you know that,’ I said, bouncing up off the loo.

  There was another thump at the door.

  ‘Dixie, please, come with me.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ I rushed out of the loo, pulling my knickers up. ‘Listen, we won’t open the door, we’ll shout first to see who it is. Only don’t get too near the letter box or they could reach through and grab you.’

  ‘Oh help help help, I hate this. Why can’t we have an ordinary mum who looks after us and a proper dad and a nice house?’ said Rochelle.

  ‘I’d sooner be us Diamonds,’ I said.

  Rochelle and I edged towards the front door. We found we were holding hands.

  There was another thump-thump-thump, loud and angry.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Rochelle. ‘I
t is those boys. They’ve come to get me.’

  ‘You boys can just bog off or my Uncle Bruce is going to get you,’ I yelled.

  The letter box opened. ‘It’s me, Jude! Why won’t you open the door?’

  We struggled to open it, our hands slippery with sweat.

  ‘You two bananas,’ said Jude, scoffing at us.

  ‘It’s not our fault. Why did you knock like that? Why couldn’t you just let yourself in like a normal person? You just wanted to frighten us,’ Rochelle sniffed.

  ‘I couldn’t let myself in, idiot, I don’t have a key. Mum’s got them all,’ said Jude.

  We stood still, thinking. We didn’t even know where she was. Perhaps this town didn’t even have a hospital. Maybe Bruce was driving round and round with Mum screaming in the back of his van …

  ‘What if she doesn’t come back tomorrow?’ I said.

  ‘Shut up, both of you,’ said Jude. ‘Let’s eat. I got Coke too. And look, matches!’ She held them up proudly.

  ‘Have you got cigarettes then?’ said Rochelle.

  ‘No, you dumbo, it’s so we can see when it gets dark.’

  ‘Quit calling me names. You’re the dumbo, you’ll set the whole house on fire if you start playing around with matches. Why didn’t you get a torch?’

  ‘They don’t sell bogging torches down the chip shop or the off-licence. I’m sure we’ve got candles somewhere in the kitchen box.’

  We looked for them, without any luck.

  ‘Maybe we can go and ask a neighbour for some?’ Jude suggested.

  ‘Oh yeah, like that old lady,’ said Rochelle.

  ‘Anyway, let’s eat, for God’s sake. The fish and chips are getting stone cold,’ said Jude.

  We ate them straight out of the paper because we didn’t know where the plates were. We took turns swigging Coke out of the bottle. We used the rolled-up carpet as a table and chair.

  ‘These chips aren’t anywhere near as nice as the ones from our chippy at home,’ Rochelle complained.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Lady Muck. I should have trudged sixty miles all the way home to get chips more to your taste,’ said Jude. ‘Give us yours, then, I’m still starving.’

  Jude finished up eating most of mine too. ‘Doesn’t Bluebell want any chips?’ she asked.