Love Lessons Read online

  Grace barely looked at each painting, trudging with bent head, her feet dragging on the floor. She murmured obediently whenever Dad seemed to demand a response, but that was all.

  I didn’t say much either. I was flying through this new magical world of religious Renaissance painting, so pink and blue and glittery gold. It was as if I’d sprouted my own beautiful set of angels’ wings. I’d always painted wings plain white, but now I saw they could be shaded from the palest pearl through deep rose and purple to the darkest midnight-blue tips. Some of the angels’ wings were carefully co-ordinated with their gowns like matching accessories. Others had unusual, eccentric colour combinations like red and gold and black, with a white gown. One particular fashionista angel was strolling along the sandy path with a golden-haired boy about my age, holding a fish.

  When we were little Dad used to read aloud to us every day from a large and unwieldy Victorian Bible. Dad had been very religious until he had a row with our vicar. He’d gently suggested to Dad that home-schooling was all very well, but Grace and I needed more of a social life so we could make some friends. Dad blew his top and had no time for the vicar, his church, or the entire Christian faith after that.

  He put the Bible back on the shelves as stock. I was sorry when it sold, because I loved looking at the wonderful Doré illustrations. I remembered a lot of the Bible stories, so I knew that the boy with the fish and the angel friend was Tobias. He was dressed in colourful medieval garb, with dashing bright-red tights. I tried to imagine a modern teenage boy prancing about in scarlet stockings. Still, some boys wore their jeans skin-tight. The Tobias in the painting obligingly put on blue jeans and a white T-shirt and smiled at me.

  He came home with me that day as my new imaginary friend. Poor Jane got elbowed into the background. Tobias and I read together, painted together, walked together, whispered together. He spoke softly right into my ear, his cheek very nearly brushing mine.

  Now I imagined him kissing me, touching me, like the girls and their boyfriends in the magazines. But then I imagined real boys, with their foul mouths and grabbing hands, and I shuddered.

  ‘I don’t like boys,’ I said.

  ‘Boys like you, Prue,’ said Grace. She sighed. ‘It’s not fair. I wish I was pretty like you so boys would turn round and stare at me.’

  ‘I bet they only stare because I look such a freak,’ I said.

  Mum made most of our clothes from remnants from the Monday market stall. I’m fourteen years old and yet I have to wear demure little-girly dresses with short sleeves and swirly skirts. I have a red-and-white check, a baby blue with a little white flower motif, and a canary yellow piped with white. They are all embarrassingly awful.

  Mum used to make appalling matching knickers when we were little, threaded with very unreliable elastic. Our baggy shop-bought white pants are only one degree better. Still, I have proper underwear now. I used my maths tuition money to buy a wonderful black bra with pink lace and a little pink rose, and two matching knickers, wispy little things a tenth of the size of my plain girls’ pants.

  I locked the bathroom and tried them on, standing precariously on the edge of the bath so I could peek at myself in the bathroom cabinet mirror. I loved the way they looked, the way they make me look.

  I hadn’t dared wear them yet under my awful dresses because Grace could so easily blab. I’d have to wash them out secretly myself rather than risk putting them in the laundry basket.

  ‘Do we look like freaks?’ Grace asked worriedly.

  ‘Of course we do. Look at our clothes!’

  Grace considered. ‘I like my dresses, especially my pink one with the little panda pattern – it’s so cute,’ she said. ‘Would you have liked that material for your dress, Prue?’

  ‘No! I can’t stick little pandas or teddies or bunny rabbits. For God’s sake, I’m fourteen.’

  ‘Do you think I’m too old to wear my panda dress?’ Grace asked anxiously.

  There was only one answer but I didn’t want to upset her. ‘I suppose your pink panda dress does still look quite sweet on you,’ I lied valiantly.

  ‘It’s getting a bit small for me now anyway,’ Grace sighed. ‘All my dresses are tight on me. I wish I wasn’t getting so large and lumpy.’

  ‘It’s just a stage you go through. Puppy fat.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ she sighed again. ‘Dad keeps going on about me getting fat. He says I shouldn’t eat so much. He says I’m greedy. Do you think I should go on a diet, Prue?’

  ‘No! Take no notice of him. He just likes to nag, you know that. Anyway, you can’t diet just yet. I’ve got you a surprise.’

  I’d felt so mean spending all my tuition money on myself, though I knew Grace would never manage to keep any present I bought her properly hidden. The only way I could buy her a treat was to get her something edible, to be quickly consumed.

  ‘A surprise!’ said Grace, clapping her hands.

  ‘Ssh! I was keeping it a secret, to cheer you up the next time Dad goes off on one of his rants, but you might as well have it now.’

  I climbed out of bed and went to scrabble in my knicker drawer. My hands found the flimsy satin and lace of my new underwear. I secretly stroked them in the dark, and then searched again until my fingers slid over the crackly cellophane of Grace’s surprise.

  ‘OK! Here we are!’ I slipped back into bed and thrust my present into her hands.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, unable to see properly in the dark.

  I flicked the torch on to show her.

  ‘Oh wow!’

  ‘Shut up! Do you want Dad to hear?’ I said, nudging her.

  ‘Sorry. But, oh Prue, it’s so sweet!’

  There’s a special chocolate boutique in the shopping centre. It’s Grace’s all-time favourite shop even though she’s never even set foot inside it. Mum buys chocolate off a market stall. It’s always a funny make and past its sell-by date, but it’s cheap, and that’s all Mum cares about.

  I was going to buy Grace a pound of posh chocolates in a fancy box, but then I saw this big white chocolate bunny in the window, clutching an orange marzipan carrot. I knew she’d love it.

  ‘What shall I call him? Peter Rabbit? Benjamin Bunny?’

  ‘Can’t you ever make up your own names, Grace?’

  ‘You know I can’t. You think up a lovely name for him.’

  ‘There’s not much point. You’ll be chomping away at him in two seconds. Knowing you, there won’t even be a little chocolate paw left by midnight.’

  ‘I’m not going to eat him. He’s far too wonderful. I’m going to keep him for ever,’ said Grace, but her fat little fingers had already undone his ribbon and peeled off his cellophane. She sniffed his creamy ears ecstatically. ‘Oh, he smells heavenly!’

  ‘So eat him, silly. That’s what he’s for.’

  ‘I can’t! Well, perhaps I could eat his carrot? I don’t want to spoil him. Still, maybe I could just lick one of his ears, to see what he tastes like?’

  ‘Go for it, girl!’

  Grace stuck out her tongue and licked. And licked again and again and again. And then all by themselves her teeth started chomping and the chocolate bunny was left disturbingly hard of hearing.

  ‘Oooh!’ Grace murmured blissfully. Then she shone the torch on him. She saw what she’d done. ‘Oooh!’ she wailed, her tone changing.

  ‘It’s OK, just eat his head up quickly. It’s what he’s for.’

  ‘But it’s spoiling him. Why am I such a greedy guts? Look, he’s got a horrible gap in his head now.’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘No he’s not. I want him to be whole again,’ Grace said, looking as if she might burst into tears.

  ‘Well, his ears are in your tummy. If you gobble up the rest of him quickly then his body can join up with them, and they can squidge themselves together like plasticine. Then he’ll be whole in your tummy and it will be his own private burrow.’

  Grace giggled uncertainly, but started chomping o
n his chocolate head. She offered me one arm because she felt he could manage on three paws. I’d imagined him so vividly I felt a little worried myself. It was like feasting on a real pet rabbit.

  ‘You eat your rabbit all up yourself, Gracie,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the loveliest treat ever,’ she said indistinctly, mouth crammed with chocolate. ‘But when did you buy it?’ She paused. The obvious hit her. ‘Where did you get the money?’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’

  ‘I’m whispering.’

  Then we heard the bedroom door open along the landing. We held our breath. I snapped the torch off and Grace leaped into her own bed. We heard footsteps: the pad and slap of old slippers.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s only Mum,’ I whispered.

  We heard her padding right along the landing, past our bedroom, down the stairs to the first floor, above the shop. Each stair creaked as she stepped. Our mother is a heavy woman.

  We heard her in the kitchen, opening the fridge door.

  ‘She’s having a midnight feast too,’ I muttered.

  ‘Not a patch on mine,’ Grace whispered, daring to take another bite.

  Mum came trudging up the stairs again, slower now, breathing heavily.

  ‘Should I save a little piece of rabbit for Mum?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No!’

  ‘But she loves chocolate.’

  ‘Ssh!’

  ‘Not now. In the morning,’ Grace persisted.

  ‘Shut up or she’ll hear us.’

  It was too late. The footsteps stopped outside our door.

  ‘Girls? Are you awake?’ Mum whispered.

  ‘No!’ Grace said, idiotically.

  Mum opened our door and came shuffling into the room. ‘You should have gone to sleep ages ago,’ she said. She came over to Grace’s bed and bent over her. ‘Are you all right, lovie?’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ said Grace.

  ‘What about you, Prudence?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I mumbled, giving a little yawn to make her think I was on the brink of sleep.

  ‘Are you hungry, Mum?’ Grace asked. ‘We heard you go down to the kitchen.’

  ‘I was just getting a glass of milk for your dad. He’s not feeling too clever. He keeps getting these funny turns.’ Mum sounded very anxious.

  ‘He should go to the doctor,’ I said.

  ‘You know what your dad’s like,’ said Mum. ‘Prudence, why don’t you try talking to him? When he’s in a good mood? He might just listen to you.’

  I pulled a face in the dark. I hated being Dad’s favourite. It didn’t really mean much anyway. I couldn’t get him to do anything he didn’t want to do. No one could.

  ‘I’ll try mentioning the doctor,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think it will work.’

  ‘You’re a good girl,’ said Mum. ‘Well, night-night, then.’

  She kissed Grace, patted my shoulder awkwardly and then waddled out of our bedroom, her hand held stiffly in front of her so she wouldn’t spill the milk.

  ‘You are a moron, Grace,’ I hissed.

  ‘Sorry!’ she said. She took another big bite of chocolate bunny. ‘Oh yum yum, happy turn!’ She fell asleep in mid-munch, and started snoring softly.

  I lay awake for a while, talking to Tobias.

  I woke early and had another quick read of the teenage magazines before smoothing them out and hiding them under my mattress. I rescued the crackly cellophane from the bed and hid that too. It would be stupid to risk chucking it in the bin. In his maddest moments Dad would rootle right through the rubbish, mostly to berate Mum for buying the wrong things.

  I went and got washed and then dressed in the red-and-white-check girly number. I plaited a strand of hair with scarlet thread and fastened it with three red beads. I wished I had red lipstick, but Dad wouldn’t let us use make-up. It was a chilly morning so I stuck on my red cardigan too, an odd hand-knitted garment with a pixie hood.

  Grace was still sound asleep, her lips crusted with white chocolate. I hoped she’d have a good wash before she came downstairs for breakfast.

  I heard snoring from Mum and Dad’s bedroom so I thought I’d have the kitchen to myself. I made myself a cup of tea and then settled down at the kitchen table with my sketchpad and new watercolours, trying to reproduce the Tobias and the Angel painting from memory.

  The back door suddenly opened, making me jump violently. My paintbrush blotched red paint, so that poor Tobias grew a massive muscly thigh.

  ‘Good morning, Little Red Riding Hood,’ said Dad, tweaking the limp woolly hood on my back.

  I struggled into Winsome Daughter mode.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ I said brightly, mopping at my painting with a hunched-up Kleenex. I was terrified that Dad would see my paintbox was new, bought with my stolen maths tuition money.

  ‘Made a mistake?’ said Dad, putting the kettle on to boil again.

  ‘Well, you startled me a bit. I thought you were still asleep.’ I closed the paintbox quickly, so that he wouldn’t notice the paint palettes were pristine.

  ‘I was just having a breath of fresh air in the garden.’ Dad breathed in and out ostentatiously. ‘Clearing the cobwebs.’

  He swung his arms and beat his chest to indicate fitness. In actual fact he looked awful, very pale and drawn, his face so tense I could see the muscles jumping in his eyelid and temple. He was wearing his old sleeveless padded jerkin. It had once been green but now it was a strange sludge colour. His shirtsleeves were rolled up very neatly in his usual painstaking way. His exposed arms were so thin that his long ropy veins looked about to burst through the skin.

  ‘Are you all right, Dad?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I am!’ He glared at me indignantly. ‘I’m in the pink.’

  There was nothing remotely pink about his grey skin.

  ‘What about these funny turns?’ I said, chancing it.

  It was a mistake.

  ‘What’s your mother been saying? There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with me. Just because I had one little dizzy spell. She makes such a fuss.’ Dad’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘I suppose she’s recruited you in her get-me-to-the-doctor campaign?’

  ‘What?’ I said, feigning ignorance. I tried hard to change the subject. ‘What do you want for breakfast, Dad? Toast? A poached egg?’

  ‘Not if you’re poaching it, Prudence. It’ll either be raw and runny or hard as a bullet,’ said Dad, putting the poaching saucepan on the stove himself. ‘You want to take some lessons from your mother.’

  Dad had been a confirmed bachelor until Mum won him over with her Yorkshire puddings and treacle tarts. I knew she was an excellent cook but I didn’t like that kind of old-fashioned British food, all the pies and pastries and sauces and custards constructed from scratch. I hankered after convenience food and takeaways.

  Grace and I knew every meal choice on the menu of the Kam Tong Chinese restaurant and the Ruby Curry House on our parade of shops but we’d never been allowed to eat there. We’d never even been able to order from Pete’s Pizza takeaway round the corner, although Grace and I had spent ages choosing the perfect combination of toppings from the leaflet that came through the door. The only takeaway food we ever had was fish and chips once a month, and we’d even missed out on that recently because Dad had a bilious attack and blamed it on ‘that greasy muck’.

  I watched Dad fussing around with the poacher. He held an egg in either hand. ‘You’ll have one too, Prue?’

  ‘No thanks, Dad.’

  He tutted. ‘You could do with the protein. You don’t eat enough – unlike your tubby little sister.’

  ‘Don’t tell Grace she’s tubby, Dad, she hates it,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you tell me how to talk to my own daughter, Miss Saucebox,’ said Dad, poking me in the back. Then he patted my shoulder to show he was only joking. He leaned over, peering at my picture. ‘That’s not bad, girl,’ he said.

  ‘Not bad’ is high praise from Dad. I couldn’t help glowing.

  ‘Our lit
tle trip to the National Gallery obviously inspired you,’ Dad said proudly.

  ‘It was wonderful. So, do you really think I’m good at art, Dad?’

  ‘You know you are,’ he said. ‘In fact we might just collaborate when you’re a wee bit older. You could design the dust wrapper for my Magnum Opus.’

  Dad has been writing this so-called book ever since I was born. There are odd pages and half chapters all round the flat, typed on Dad’s ancient Remington portable and scribbled over again and again with his cramped copperplate corrections. I’ve read pieces here and there and can’t make sense of any of it. It’s supposed to be a history of the world, but Dad seems mostly concerned with Kingtown, where we live, and how it’s changed for the worse over the last thirty years.

  Mum always arranges the discarded pages reverently, as if they’re Ten Commandment tablets straight from God. She calls it Dad’s Magnum Opus too, without a hint of irony. When Grace was a bit younger she thought Dad was writing about ice creams and showed a passing interest until I explained that Magnum Opus is Latin for ‘great work’. Now we have a private running joke that Dad is writing an encyclopaedia of ice creams and we invent new extracts covering exotic flavours.

  I decided I’d tell her Dad’s idea and design a private dust wrapper for her amusement. Dad would be sitting in our bookshop with a Magnum in one hand, a Cornetto in the other, with Grace and me on either side of him carrying trays of ice-cream tubs for him to sample.

  Dad saw me smiling and misunderstood. ‘I’m not joking, Prudence. I really think you’d be good enough one day.’

  I took a deep breath. Golden opportunity time!

  ‘Maybe I’d need a little training, Dad,’ I said casually, as if I didn’t really care.

  Dad raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘I’m not sending you to blooming art school,’ he said. ‘How many times do I have to get it into your thick head? Now don’t go all droopy-drawers on me. You can paint as much as you like in your spare time. Anyway, they don’t paint at art school now, they just faff around with blocks of concrete and dead animals and pretend all that crap is creative.’

  I didn’t bother replying. I stared at my painting of Tobias and the Angel. They smiled at me sympathetically with their rose-madder lips.