‘We don’t know if she’ll have any more birthdays.’ His voice breaks here and I just cave in. It is true. He is right. I don’t want to be unfair about this.
‘Look, we can work something out. Perhaps you can come down and spend the Saturday with us down there then? She specifically asked to be in Summer Bay for her birthday. And she wanted some time alone with me. But if you could make it down for the Saturday, that would be a lovely surprise. We could throw her a party—organise something that she’d never even suspect. You can bring Daniel and Nikolai too. And Stella, of course.’
‘It’ll be a long drive,’ Bill grumbles, but he is caving, I can tell. ‘Just for the one day.’
‘Stay for the long weekend then. Make it worth your while.’
‘Maybe,’ Bill concedes. ‘I’d have to discuss this more with Stella.’
‘Do it then. I know Shelley would love to see you on her birthday.’
‘Don’t make any plans,’ he warns me, ‘not just yet. There’s a lot we’ve got to think about here. I’ll get back to you about it within the next couple of weeks.’
The next couple of weeks, I know, will be too late. I have a letter, still on the kitchen table, that I received this morning from Maggie at the bed and breakfast; we have to confirm straight away or the last two spaces will be taken.
‘We’ll talk about this again,’ he tells me.
‘Sure,’ I say, and I remember all over again just what he is like. I know I am never going to get anywhere with him. Bill isn’t the reasonable sort. ‘We’ll talk about it soon.’
Deceit, I think now. This isn’t like me at all. This is another one of Pandora’s vices. Oh well. Looks as though they’re thrumming through the air at a rate of knots at the moment, just waiting to home in on us at any opportunity.
‘Who are you ringing now?’ Solly watches me curiously as I punch the next number into the phone. ‘All sorted, is it?’
‘All sorted,’ I tell him. ‘I’m booking Maggie’s place for Shelley and me for the last week in May, just like she wanted.’
Mum’s gone out, thank god. I thought she never would. I’ve had this paper with Kieran’s telephone number on it in my hand since breakfast time when Surinda phoned me. It’s gone all crumpled and hot because I’ve had to wait so long. I probably won’t even be able to read my own handwriting now.
To be honest, I’ve waited so long I’ve gone off the boil with the whole idea. He would probably be horrified if I tried to ring him anyway. In fact, I’m sure he would.
I’m not going to do it.
I’m going to read a bit more of Mum’s diary instead. That’s another thing that I can’t do when she’s around. I shouldn’t be peeking in Mum’s old diary, I know. It might all be ancient history now but it’s still private and she has a right to privacy, but I…I just want to know what it used to be like for her.
Her writing was a bit smaller in those days. It was a lot neater too. Her diary has a pale pink plastic cover and she’s drawn lots of hearts and loopy-petalled flowers in biro all the way around some of the entries. I can’t believe she did that. Ohmigod, it’s just what I do when I’m daydreaming. I wonder if that kind of stuff can be inherited? That’s just weird, man.
It’s real funny, thinking about her being a girl my age, having so much stuff to say and the only one she has to say it to is her diary. Just like Anne Frank, when you think about it. God, how sad is that? We all just email each other these days but they had to make do with diaries, I guess. I wonder if people read each other’s diaries after they’d written them? What would be the point of it otherwise?
20 October 1978
We have to be careful. I’ve told Gordon that my dad won’t let us have boyfriends and he accepts that. So we take whatever snatched time we can get. It helps that Legrange Studios are having a big refit at the moment. It means everything’s a bit chaotic so a lot of the time people are coming and going from all sorts of places where they wouldn’t normally be.
Mr Legrange nearly caught me out today. I took a short-cut coming in from the courtyard after seeing Gordon. I ran across the new stage area where none of us are allowed to go, yet. It was the quickest route but Mr Legrange caught me and it was the nearest I’ve come to being rumbled so far. It reminds me that I mustn’t get careless. He gave me that look adults give kids when they catch them doing what they’re not supposed to. Luckily, I’ve got a good reputation. I could see him waiting for an explanation so I told him one of the planks on stage was loose and I’d come back in especially to tell him that. He said which plank, and I pointed to one, and he went and jumped up and down on it a few times. He said he’d have it checked out and he let me go, thank god.
Lily is getting suspicious, too. She’s wondering why I keep finding excuses to go back inside the studio once we’ve already come out. By the time I got through Mr Legrange, I found her waiting, arms folded and looking fed up, by the toilets. I told her I had to use the ones usually reserved for the adults but I don’t think she believed me. God, why can’t she just leave me in peace for once?
God, they were all at it in those days, weren’t they? Sneaking round behind each other’s backs like there was no tomorrow.
Why shouldn’t I ring Kieran, come to think of it? So what if Mum won’t like it? She’s had her moments, ‘snatching whatever time she can get’, hasn’t she? Hell, I’m just doing it. I’m ringing him now before she gets back and that’s an end of it.
I mean, Krok might not even be there. Kieran. I must remember to ask for Kieran. He doesn’t work there every day. I hope he’s there. I’m not actually sure if I’ve rung the right number. It’s been ringing a while. Maybe they’re busy. Maybe I’ll ring back later. Maybe I just won’t bother…
‘Hello?’ It’s a woman. She sounds middle-aged. ‘David’s DVDs. Can I help you?’
‘Yeah. Er…is…er, is Krok, I mean Kieran, there?’
‘Who’s speaking please?’
‘Tell him it’s Shelley.’
She half-covers the mouthpiece with her hand but I can hear her calling out, ‘Kie-ran. Someone on the pho-one for you.’ She sounds vaguely amused.
‘Hey, man.’ Kieran’s voice is curt, abrupt; it gives me a shock and I want to put the phone down and just run away. He’ll think I’m a complete nerd.
‘It’s Shelley,’ I say stupidly. ‘You know—ShelleyPixie.’
‘Oh my god.’ He seems to gasp a bit; I can’t quite make out why. There’s this silence. It stretches on forever. ‘Hey, Shelley,’ he says at last. His voice is soft now, I can make out the echo of an Irish lilt. ‘How come you’re ringing me? Nothing’s wrong, is it?’
‘No.’ I’m staring at the symbols I etched into my desk with the sharp end of my school compass: ‘K4S’. I did that the other night when I was on the phone to Surinda and she was waxing lyrical about Jallal. Now I’m feeling embarrassed about it, to be honest, so I’ve covered it up with my mouse mat. ‘I just wanted to say hi.’ I feel like a complete fool. A complete and utter fool. Just thank god that he can’t see me because my face must look like a beetroot. I clear my throat. ‘You haven’t been online lately. I wondered if everything was okay? I…I…’ I was going to say ‘I missed you’. But that’s so much easier to type on a screen than it is to say over the phone. He’s