Bad Little Girl(85)

‘Not a good idea, Lo!’ Marianne chuckled. ‘She’ll make you have another one.’

‘I wasn’t making anyone have anything. I just made them as a treat, that’s all.’ Claire’s voice was small, tired.

‘Oh. My. God. I’m having a bath,’ huffed Lorna and ran up the stairs.

‘Scrub those ears, Lola-Lee!’ Marianne called and Claire stiffened, waiting for Lorna’s sharp retort, but instead a faint, cheerful ‘Will do!’ drifted down from the bathroom instead.

Claire made a big deal of wrapping up the tarts with cling film while Marianne yawned theatrically and drummed her nails on the kitchen table. They didn’t speak until Lorna came back from her bath, and padded over to Marianne, warm and scented, to get her hair brushed.

‘There’s special hair-growth shampoo you can get now. I think we should get some, don’t you?’ asked Marianne.

‘Yes! I want really, really long hair!’

‘And then we can do something with it. Think what you’d look like with an elegant top knot or something.’

‘Does it take ages for hair to grow? I mean, it’s already past my ears.’ Lorna spoke like a much younger child, gazing at Marianne.

‘Well, I think you have very quick growing hair, which is great. But I still think we should get some magic formula.’

‘Is it really magic?’ Her voice was all syrupy wonder.

‘Of course it’s not, Lauren, you know that.’ Claire was sharper than she intended to be.

‘Well, science is a kind of magic, isn’t it?’ said Marianne. ‘I don’t know why you had it cut so short anyway.’

‘Mum made me,’ said Lorna, and Marianne paused, embarrassed.

‘Lauren, you wanted your hair short, like George from the Famous Five.’ Claire heard her voice, nagging and peevish, and thought, oh God, this is the wrong tack to take with her! But she couldn’t seem to get off the tram tracks. ‘It was all your idea!’

‘It wasn’t. I just said it as a joke? And then you took it seriously.’

‘You know that’s not true!’

‘Well,’ Marianne said briskly. ‘A person can change their mind, can’t they? In the meantime, we’ll bob your hair, like a little flapper! And I’ll get something from the chemist’s tomorrow to grow the hair more. And maybe there’s some kind of scalp massage that would help too. I’ll do some research. Some people have hair kind of woven into their own hair so it looks longer. Lots of celebrities do that.’

‘We can do that, then!’

‘Lauren, you’re not going to wear a wig!’ Claire almost shouted.

‘Claire, it’s not a wig. It’s a weave. I think they even use real human hair, hair from Indian women I think, so it’s nice and strong and thick,’ Marianne explained.

‘I want that!’ Lorna gazed at Marianne with her eyes unfocused.

‘Well, let’s do that, then. That is – I mean – if your mum wouldn’t mind?’ They both stared at Claire who was poking holes in the cling film over the jam tarts, trying not to look upset. ‘I mean it’s perfectly healthy.’

‘It’s not suitable,’ Claire murmured at her hands.

‘Oh Lord, we’ll have to buy your old mum some fashion magazines, won’t we Lola? Get her dragged into this century!’

Lorna snorted and they all lapsed into awkward silence. After a while Marianne and the girl decamped to the living room to watch TV. Claire shoved the jam tarts in the fridge and then, hesitatingly, wandered into the living room after them. Marianne and Lorna stiffened. They exchanged glances and their easy chat became forced. After a while, Claire went upstairs for an early night.

Later she heard Lorna shuffling about outside her room, and opened the door to find a mug of cocoa and a note saying Drink me!! in a glitter heart. Claire smiled, relaxed, and after drinking, slept immediately.





30





Over the next few weeks, Claire began sleeping even later, sometimes until early afternoon, and when she woke, it was fitfully, with rising panic, as if she was clawing her way out of a grave. Checking the time, realising that, once again, the morning was over, she’d heave on the shawl of guilt. If she was going to sleep late, she ought to do more about the place. Lorna and Marianne had nearly always gone out by the time she emerged, and there was always the chaos of the kitchen to be tackled, blobs of jam on the carpet, tea stains on the sofa. The strengthening spring light was refracted through hundreds of greasy fingermarks on the windowpanes. Every day there were more and more things to do; the detritus from Lorna’s room was taking over, spreading down the stairs in an uneasy flood: cherry red lipsticks and dolls with their hair partially cut off; flakes of peeled-off nail polish; books with the covers ripped; stained pants and torn dresses. Marianne’s possessions, too, had multiplied: self-help books foraged from charity shops, synthetic silk scarves, ugly prints in ghastly frames, that she always said had ‘something’ but were still left in forgotten piles at the bottom of the stairs. The encroaching tide stopped at Claire’s door, but she knew with a deadly certainty that it would start to spill over soon; only yesterday, Marianne had talked vaguely about putting Lorna’s chest of drawers in there while she painted up a new one that she’d picked up from a lovely flea market in town . . .