I think it’s his manner that grates on people. Overconfident, pushy, cocky, loud, and – my favourite, this one – ‘bumptious’. That was Mr Parker’s word, and he’s very good with words.
You know what, though? I think it’s just because he’s from London. Honestly. People took against him from day one because he started slagging off Newcastle United (he’s an Arsenal fan, or so he claims). Round here, unless you’ve got a very good excuse, you follow Newcastle. Possibly Sunderland or Middlesbrough. But definitely not a London football team – not even, it turns out, if you’re actually from London.
Boyd came into our class on the first day of Year Eight. No one knew him, so you’d think he would have kept his head down a bit, but no. I think he thought it was funny, what he did on his first day – you know, bold and a bit cheeky, but it didn’t come across like that.
As well as taking us for Physics, Mr Parker’s our form teacher who does the register and stuff. He clapped his hands and cleared his throat.
‘Welcome back, you lucky people, to the north-east’s finest edifice of erudition. I trust you all had a restful break? Splendid.’
He talks like that a lot, does Mr Parker. He used to be an actor and wears a cravat, which – incredibly – looks quite cool on him.
‘We have a new addition to our class! All the way from sunny London … Thank you, Mr Knight, booing is for boors … Please give it up for Mr Elliot Boyd!’
Now, at this point, the class – who had done this routine a couple of times before with new kids – would usually applaud on Mr Parker’s cue, and the new kid would look all shy and smile a bit and go red and that would be that.
Elliot Boyd, though, immediately stood up and raised both hands in the air in a triumphal gesture and said loudly, ‘Ar-sen-al! Ar-sen-al!’, which killed the applause dead. To make matters worse, he added, in his best London accent, ‘Wot? You lot ain’t never ’eard of a propah footbaw team?’
Wow, I thought at the time, way to become instantly unpopular, Elliot Boyd!
From that moment, at least half the class decided that they hated him.
Yet it didn’t seem to put him off, or make him any less pushy. Elliot Boyd was like one of those large, shaggy dogs that lollop up to other, smaller dogs in the park and freak them out.
Worse, he then started to hang around my locker after school, as if – just because we shared part of the route home – we should automatically be friends.
Fat. Chance.
I would have carried on ignoring him, except he was about to become part of what happened, and how I ended up turning invisible.
THINGS I HAVE TRIED FOR ACNE
1 Good Old Soap And Water. This was Gram’s first suggestion. ‘It worked for me,’ she said. And I had to stop myself from saying, ‘Yeah, but that was back in the Dark Ages of the twentieth century.’ Besides, the Good Old Soap And Water treatment comes from the idea that people get spots because they don’t clean their faces, and that’s not true.
2 Cleansers And Wipes. They just mean that my spots are shining out like beacons from a really clean face. I sometimes wonder if it actually makes them worse.
3 Cutting Out Fats. That was a horrible month. This theory is based on the fact that my skin is sometimes quite oily (and there’s an understatement to frame and hang on your wall). So if I didn’t eat butter, or cheese, or milk, or fried stuff, or salad dressings, or – as it turned out – anything delicious at all, then my face wouldn’t be greasy. Didn’t work. And I was hungry.
4 Garlic And Honey. Every morning, chop up three cloves of garlic and mix with a large spoonful of runny honey. Gross. And ineffective.
5 Spot Cream. This involved rubbing a cream into my face at night. Oddly, it’s quite an oily cream, which you’d think would make it worse, but it didn’t. Nor did it make it any better.
6 Good Old Fresh Air. Another one of Gram’s. Goes with Good Old Soap And Water. The only one to benefit from this was Lady, who for about a month got extra walks, until I noticed that my face was no different. Sorry, Lady.
7 Homeopathy. There are about five homeopathic medicines in Holland & Barrett that say they work for acne. None of them worked for me.
8 Nettle Tea. Tastes as bad as it sounds. Worse, actually.
9 Vitamin B5. All over the internet as the ‘miracle cure’. Next.
10 Antibiotics. This was what Dr Kemp finally recommended on my second visit, after showing him the list above. One Septrin tablet daily for a grand result of … no difference at all.
11 The Latest One: Dr Chang His Skin So Clear. An internet purchase. Gram said it looked dodgy and refused to buy it for me so I had to resort to subterfuge. Dr Chang, like Elliot Boyd, plays a big role in how I came to turn invisible.
Gram tells me that Mum had acne when she was my age yet she grew up to be ‘such a beautiful young lady’.
She was. In the picture in my room she has shortish, reddy-blonde hair and these massive, slightly sad eyes. It sometimes makes me think that she knew she would die young, but then I look at other pictures where she’s laughing and I think she wasn’t really sad at all. Just – I don’t know – a bit … manic?
I hardly remember her, in case you’re wondering if I’m upset about it. She died when I was three. Cancer.
My dad had already left by then. Gone, disappeared. ‘And jolly good riddance too’ was Gram’s verdict. She can hardly bear to say his name (which is Richard, though to me he looks more like a Rick) and the only picture I have of him is a grainy snap taken shortly after I was born, with Mum holding me, and Dad next to her, smiling. He’s skinny, with a beard, hair longer than Mum’s, and dark glasses on, like some sort of rock star.
‘He turned up at the hospital drunk,’ said Gram during one of our (very) occasional conversations about it. ‘It was his usual state.’
Mum and Dad were not married when I was born, but got married later. I took Mum’s last name, Leatherhead, which is Gram’s too. It’s there on my birth certificate:
Birthday: 29 July
Birthplace: St Mary’s Hospital, London
Mother’s name: Lisa Anne Leatherhead
Occupation: teacher
Father’s name: Richard Michael Malcolm
Occupation: student
And so on.
I’ll give you the brief version. It’s pretty much all I have ever had anyway. Gram is not keen to talk about it because I think it upsets her too much.
Gram moved to London when she was little, and she grew up there. She and Grampa split up some time in the 1980s. He now lives in Scotland with his second wife (Morag? Can’t remember). Mum was twenty-three when she had me. She and Dad weren’t planning a family, Gram says – I just kind of happened.
My dad disappeared when I was little. It wasn’t a disappearance that involved the police or anything. There was no mystery. He just ‘left the scene’ and was most recently heard of in Australia, according to Gram.
The last time we talked about him was a few weeks ago.