stood on chairs and worktops to reach the high bits. We worked on a different wall each and moved round, so as not to drip paint all over each other. We still got speckled with blue. Blue fingers, blue splattered clothes, blue freckled faces, blue streaks in our hair.
Misti had stiff blue palms, cornflower-coloured face-paint and a solid blue fringe. We decided the blue footprints she’d made across the ratty old lino could stay.
When we’d finished we had bubble baths to soak off all the stains and streaks and blobs, then flopped down in the brown easy chairs and toasted our toes with the three-bar electric fire going full blast.
Misti and I fell asleep curled up, and when we woke Mum was painting the bathroom blue too. It was three in the morning. The fire was still blazing, the lights were still on and Mum’s favourite Oasis CD was playing quietly on my totsy CD player. It felt safe and warm, so I wriggled around a bit and went back to sleep.
We’ve been here five days now, and the flat is no longer brown and dark and cold.
The new carpet, not as scratchy as I thought, almost fits the room, and the floorboards that still show have been painted cornflower blue. The wet mattress is scrubbed and dry, and carefully disguised with a rumpled duvet and a scattering of soft toys.
The bookcase is rainbow-striped now, and loaded with paperbacks, board games and little baskets, boxes and bundles of pencils, brushes, scissors, beads, threads, wools and stacks of coloured card and paper. Misti has already produced a pasta/sequin/tinsel collage, pinned in pride of place above the leccy fire.
The doorless wardrobe is stuffed with freshly ironed clothes, the squeaky chest of drawers is scarily polka-dotted and packed with knickers, socks, tights, T-shirts.
Misti’s dolls are scattered across the carpet in a way they never were at Max’s, and it’s spaghetti for tea.
When the doorbell rings – thin and reedy and unfamiliar – we all jump. Then Mum laughs and says it’s only Jane, and I run to open the door.
Jane is Mum’s friend. They’ve known each other since we first moved here from Wales – she’s just about the only friend Max hasn’t stopped Mum from seeing. He tried, I think, but Jane is too sensible and determined to let herself be sidelined.
Jane works in an office and wears perfectly pressed suits in navy, grey or black with T-shirts or polo-neck sweaters in pale pastel shades. She wears high-heeled shoes that click when she walks and her hair is cut into a short, layered bob with expensive chestnut streaks among the mousy brown.
It’s just the turquoise and silver dangly earrings and bracelet and the small tattoo on her shoulder blade (only visible when swimming – Jane doesn’t do skimpy clothes) that betray the fact she’s not as sensible as she seems. Jane and Mum can talk for hours about dodgy music from the dim and distant past, about men, fate, reincarnation and whether feng shui, aromatherapy or meditation can save the world. Flaky. Seriously.
‘Wow,’ Jane says, stepping inside and looking around. ‘How long have you been in? Five days? What a difference!’
Mum rang Jane and told her we’d moved, the day of our mega shopping trip and the Pizza-land blowout. Jane was round an hour later with a bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine and a card that said ‘Good Luck in Your New Home’ above a picture of the roses-round-the-door cottage I’d dreamed about that last day at school, waiting for Mum and Misti.
The night after, she appeared with an Indian takeaway, a big box of jelly babies and a vast, faded pink and sky-blue carpet that she claimed she was throwing out. (We put it down in the bedroom Misti and I share.)
Now she’s coming to tea, for our official house-warming, and she’s brought chocolate cake, lemonade, more wine and a bin bag full of curtains in midnight-blue velvet that she swears were going cheap in a charity shop.
We scoff spaghetti and cake and drink too much
Misti had stiff blue palms, cornflower-coloured face-paint and a solid blue fringe. We decided the blue footprints she’d made across the ratty old lino could stay.
When we’d finished we had bubble baths to soak off all the stains and streaks and blobs, then flopped down in the brown easy chairs and toasted our toes with the three-bar electric fire going full blast.
Misti and I fell asleep curled up, and when we woke Mum was painting the bathroom blue too. It was three in the morning. The fire was still blazing, the lights were still on and Mum’s favourite Oasis CD was playing quietly on my totsy CD player. It felt safe and warm, so I wriggled around a bit and went back to sleep.
We’ve been here five days now, and the flat is no longer brown and dark and cold.
The new carpet, not as scratchy as I thought, almost fits the room, and the floorboards that still show have been painted cornflower blue. The wet mattress is scrubbed and dry, and carefully disguised with a rumpled duvet and a scattering of soft toys.
The bookcase is rainbow-striped now, and loaded with paperbacks, board games and little baskets, boxes and bundles of pencils, brushes, scissors, beads, threads, wools and stacks of coloured card and paper. Misti has already produced a pasta/sequin/tinsel collage, pinned in pride of place above the leccy fire.
The doorless wardrobe is stuffed with freshly ironed clothes, the squeaky chest of drawers is scarily polka-dotted and packed with knickers, socks, tights, T-shirts.
Misti’s dolls are scattered across the carpet in a way they never were at Max’s, and it’s spaghetti for tea.
When the doorbell rings – thin and reedy and unfamiliar – we all jump. Then Mum laughs and says it’s only Jane, and I run to open the door.
Jane is Mum’s friend. They’ve known each other since we first moved here from Wales – she’s just about the only friend Max hasn’t stopped Mum from seeing. He tried, I think, but Jane is too sensible and determined to let herself be sidelined.
Jane works in an office and wears perfectly pressed suits in navy, grey or black with T-shirts or polo-neck sweaters in pale pastel shades. She wears high-heeled shoes that click when she walks and her hair is cut into a short, layered bob with expensive chestnut streaks among the mousy brown.
It’s just the turquoise and silver dangly earrings and bracelet and the small tattoo on her shoulder blade (only visible when swimming – Jane doesn’t do skimpy clothes) that betray the fact she’s not as sensible as she seems. Jane and Mum can talk for hours about dodgy music from the dim and distant past, about men, fate, reincarnation and whether feng shui, aromatherapy or meditation can save the world. Flaky. Seriously.
‘Wow,’ Jane says, stepping inside and looking around. ‘How long have you been in? Five days? What a difference!’
Mum rang Jane and told her we’d moved, the day of our mega shopping trip and the Pizza-land blowout. Jane was round an hour later with a bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine and a card that said ‘Good Luck in Your New Home’ above a picture of the roses-round-the-door cottage I’d dreamed about that last day at school, waiting for Mum and Misti.
The night after, she appeared with an Indian takeaway, a big box of jelly babies and a vast, faded pink and sky-blue carpet that she claimed she was throwing out. (We put it down in the bedroom Misti and I share.)
Now she’s coming to tea, for our official house-warming, and she’s brought chocolate cake, lemonade, more wine and a bin bag full of curtains in midnight-blue velvet that she swears were going cheap in a charity shop.
We scoff spaghetti and cake and drink too much
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