Born Free Read online

  I have a moment’s inspiration.

  ‘How d’you and your pals fancy getting two five-a-side teams together with me?’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, trials for Dunfermline and all that? You do more training than Alan Shearer on that bloody computer. You should get out – fresh air, sunshine, real life, you know?’

  ‘You’re mental,’ he suggests, pushing past me with his sandwich.

  ‘How about fishing? You used to like that. Or ferreting? That’s much go rier than Resident Evil 2, I bet.’

  It’s too late. He has vanished into his room with the aforementioned game.

  In need of another voice, I reluctantly put on the television. I generally wait for Channel 4 News. The other two channels seem specifically designed for patriotic royalists with an attention span of five seconds. I watch Trevor McDonald drooling on about who has and hasn’t been to see the Queen Mum in hospital (this is the headline!) and I think, how could you let down your brothers so badly, man?

  Then she comes in, wearing what looks like a hula skirt of Somerfield bags. Women love carrying lots of shopping. I’m not being sexist but, you know, it seems to fulfil some basic, we’re-not-the-weaker-sex, look-how-much-we-can-carry sort of need within them.

  ‘The manager gave me a lift. I went out at lunchtime.’

  ‘Oh.’

  What am I supposed to say? Is she trying to make me jealous about another man taking her shopping? He can take her shopping every day if he likes. I hate waiting on her while she reads the ingredients of every single item in the supermarket, then goes round again collecting loyalty points. She’s huffing and puffing round me now, putting things away, making it seem like she’s a martyr simultaneously – quite a talent. She puts a bag of Maris Pipers on the bunker in front of me and hands me the tattie knife. I peel as she chops.

  ‘If this manager guy fancies taking you shopping every day, like, I could start going to the football again. I’d do that for you, dearest.’

  ‘If you want to spend £18 watching men with sad haircuts chase a ball about for 90 minutes, then go ahead, Vic. It’s your money too. I don’t stop you going to the football.’

  ‘But what women say and what they mean are two completely different things. You mean the opposite of what you say, so when you say, “Go ahead, go to the football,” what you in fact mean is, “You are the most selfish man on God’s earth.” Admit it.’

  ‘Actually, I think I’m going out after work on Friday, so if you want to have your wee bit freedom as well, I really don’t mind. Stop reading things into everything I say.’

  ‘Who with? This manager bloke?’

  ‘He’s not a bloke, he’s just a young laddie. It’s nothing funny. I think he sees me as a sort of mother-figure.’

  ‘That’s OK, cool.’

  I honestly do mean that this is cool. I don’t imagine for a second that anything might happen between them. All this means is that on my night off, Friday, I can drink a few beers on my own and get my old singles out. Or get Ronnie round, maybe get a five-a-side organised. I’ve yet to break in the Newcastle top I got for my birthday last August.

  Once I’ve helped her with the tea, I go through and watch the news. My eyes go fuzzy when words come up on the screen, though. What now? What’s wrong with my bloody eyes? I had a headache the other week as well. I never get headaches. The doctor’s checked me over several times, you know, the full works, and says there’s nothing wrong, just keep taking the happy pills. But there is. There definitely is.

  She and I eat tea on our own, as Jake is too engrossed in Resident Evil as predicted, and Joni is incapacitated with a mysterious, possibly drink-related, illness. They will both no doubt heat theirs up in the microwave, much later on, when I’m starting to get a bit peckish again, then take great pleasure in not offering me any.

  We eat off our laps, on the settee, watching Channel 4 News. It is, strangely enough, one of my favourite times of the day. She keeps asking me, as she always does, if I like the dinner. No matter how much I enthuse, she just keeps on asking.

  ‘Is it OK?’

  ‘Yes, lovely.’

  ‘Do you like the lime with it?’

  ‘Yes, really unusual. Nice taste, eh?’

  ‘Is the chicken tender enough?’

  ‘Gorgeous, melts in the mouth, mmm.’

  ‘Do you think it needs some salt?’

  ‘No, it’s just perfect. It doesn’t need salt.’

  ‘Are the potatoes a bit lumpy.’

  ‘No, perfect. Just right.’

  You maybe think this is a bit mundane, but you know, it’s good to talk, sort of…

  Chapter Three

  JAKE

  I SPEND ABOUT an hour trying to run Jason’s Resident Evil 2 on my computer. I’ve been dying to play it since he said I could borrow it last week but the bastard thing just keeps crashing.

  About half-seven, Mum comes through and hassles me to have some tea. I get ten minutes’ solid grief about the effort she makes, how knackered she is, how she’s not a slave and how lucky I am to have a mother like her. Does she really think that boring me stupid will improve my appetite? Why is she always trying to ram food down our throats? As usual, I have to play the homework card before she finally gets the message and fucks off.

  The homework card justifies just about anything you can think of – not eating my disgusting tea, getting to watch a film that has nudie scenes in it, going round to my pal’s to study when I’m supposed to be grounded, getting up in the middle of the night to watch an important Open University programme for history the next day (i.e., the Grand Prix). It beats me why kids complain about homework. It’s the best weapon you have at my age.

  I give Resident Evil another go, hoping that the wee rest it had when Mum was nagging me might have helped. Did it fuck. In desperation I open my rucksack and get out my English jotter. I did want to relax for a while before I did my poetry assignment for Miss Barnes, but if the computer crashes again I’ll end up trashing it.

  Miss Barnes is the relief English teacher from Liverpool. Ever since she said nice things about one of my poems, I’ve gone really daft for her. She looks like Louise that used to be in Eternal, you know, that hazy-faced, dreamy way you get with really good-looking folk, like there’s a glow around them. The last poem we did was to be on our philosophy on life. I did a fucking stotter on putting your real, deep thoughts on the Internet so complete strangers could get to know you after you were dead, sort of like being immortal. She wrote at the bottom, ‘Why not tell me about the real you, in the meantime.’ Bit of a suspect thing to write on a 14-year-old laddie’s homework. Perhaps she wants to initiate me in the ways of love.

  I’m really shite at talking to lassies though. If they’re ugly it’s not so bad, just like talking to guys, but if anyone remotely tidy speaks to me, I shrivel into myself like a tortoise. That’s what I don’t really understand about sex. How do you ever get off with anyone if you end up going funny like that every time a lassie comes near you?

  When I’m happy with the new poem – after several cuts, big words looked up in the thesaurus and a few bits borrowed from other places, I print it out in Germanic font. You can hardly make out what it says, but it looks dead cool. I look through it again and again, trying to imagine Miss Barnes’s reaction when she reads it, wondering if she’ll realise it’s about her. I’ve thought about sending her an anonymous love poem, but she’d know it was from me right away. I’m way the best poet in the school.

  After all the excess thought and exertion, I’m dying for a fag. Shouting through to the living-room that I’m taking Jan for a walk, I jangle her lead till she’s hysterical. Jan, what a stupid name for a dog. Dad was engaged to a lassie called Jan, before he met Mum. He was only allowed to get a dog on the condition he got a bitch and called her that, because in Mum’s opinion, well, you know? I don’t know why he bothered. I’m not saying I’m the only one that walks her, but when any of the rest of t
hem do, everyone starts asking why and wondering what they’re up to.

  Before the stair door’s even had time to shut, Jan lets go this stinking, huge meringue of shite that must have been fighting to keep up her arse all day. Lighting my fag, I watch it ooze out and hope that mum or Joni stands in it, or that Mrs Anderson, the moany old Catholic wifie opposite, who phones the police when I play football on the back green, slips in it and dies. ‘Good dog, good girl,’ I compliment her on a jobbie well done, before pressing the old bitch’s buzzer and nashing round the block. With a little luck they’ll be zipping up her body bag by the time we get back.

  We sprint the full length of the street, the cold air clear and nippy on my face. I’d probably be brilliant at running, you know, the 500 metres and that, but the guys in the school athletics team are all such wankers.

  Squeezing into the phone box opposite MacDonald’s, with Jan round my feet, I fumble for change. Jason and me have a pact at the moment. At every possible opportunity, out of school hours, we have to phone our PE teacher, Mr Russell, let it ring three times, then hang up. If you push the next call button, you can do it a few times and still get your money back. Mr Russell’s a poof, see? He really ogles the guys’ arses during gym and he wears these revolting tight trousers that make his balls look like a ballet dancer’s. And see when you’re in the changing room? He makes any excuse to come in for a neb, slimy cunt. If we reported him, though, they’d just send him to do it in some other school. So we’ve taken it into our own hands to drive him out, like they do on the news.

  We were posting him scary notes at one point, you know, with cut-out letters. We made out like they were from guys he’d shagged in bogs, but we had to stop. The polis can get your fingerprints off stuff like that. Now our campaign is limited to phoning, doorbell ringing, graffiti about the school, that sort of thing. He must expect it. Why else would he have his number in the phone book when all the other teachers are ex-directory? I’ve checked.

  I do my bit for the cause, but the desperate bastard answers after just two rings and I lose my money. Fucking queer. I can’t afford a tin of Irn Bru now.

  Jan does another three healthy shites on the way back home. An old dear passes as she’s on her third and mutters something, but I just give her the finger. Old wifies are such nosy, whingeing cunts. They should put women down at 18. They just go weird after that.

  Skipping along the pavement, I ring buzzers, kick a few bin bags onto the road and gob everywhere. Nobody says a word. The adults round here are shit-scared of kids so we can basically get away with anything.

  Mum’s on my back to eat something again as soon as I get home. She’s sitting watching some crappy Bruce Willis film with a face-pack on. It’s an improvement,’ cause it covers the blotches and burst veins but, to be honest, I don’t know why she bothers. Bad skin’s the least of her problems.

  To shut her up, I put some disgusting-looking brown stuff on a plate, shove it in the microwave, taste a bit, nearly throw up and put the rest in the bin. I bang around, making plate scraping noises so it seems genuine, and ask her for a few of her magazines for a project we’re doing at Art. She tries to fob me off with Hellos but I tell her there’s not enough adverts, so she gives me two Cosmopolitans and a Marie Claire. Hey, hey, this is more like it.

  ‘D’you want a hand? I was good at Art. What sort of ads are you looking for?’

  ‘Nah, Mum, it’s OK. I’m supposed to do it myself. I dinnae want to cheat.’

  She ruffles my hair. They all ruffle my hair in this house. Ignore me for months then ruffle my hair and think that makes it all right.

  ‘It’s better to be honest, right enough.’

  Oh shut up. What’s she getting all George Washington about? It’s even harder than usual to take her seriously with the Halloween face on. I get a glass of Ribena from the kitchen. When I go back through, she tries to kiss me goodnight. It’s repulsive. Her periods make her go funny sometimes.

  Locking myself in my room, I strip down to my pants, lie on the bed and flick through the sexily plastic-smelling pages. It doesn’t take much looking. Just past the index of Cosmopolitan is a black and white photo of Kate Moss in her undies. Her simmet is so flimsy, you can see where her nipples go darker. You can even make out the dent in her pants where her fanny goes in. I wish I could see the whole thing. Liam showed us some magazines once that his dad said he’d found beside someone’s bucket on his way to the early shift. He told Liam he only took them in case children found them. Aye, sure, Mr Smith. In these, the women’s fannies were all opened out, like flowers made of meat. It looked pretty revolting, but they must feel brilliant or men wouldn’t be so obsessed with shagging them.

  Suddenly inspired, I get a black felt tip from my pencil case. I draw a slit on top of Kate’s pants, then some meaty bits at the side and a hole in the middle with a few pubic hairs. For the finishing touch, I draw a willie and balls going into her mouth, the willie with a wee birthmark, just like mine. Putting down the pen, I pull my pants to my knees. I’m so excited by this time, that I do it all over Kate almost right away. It seems to go on for ages and ages. Afterwards, I stare at the thick globules on her face and vest, then crumple her into the bin.

  As I thumb the rest of the magazine, looking for my next victim, I’m careful not to touch my face. I’m sure it’s that stuff that’s giving me the spots. It’s amazing. There’s loads of suitable nipply photos advertising everything from cars to fanny pads. My favourite is for a hair-removing cream in which you can actually see the woman’s pubes. Not so good if you actually want to remove hair, but perfect for me. She’s got these big, sooky artificial lips as well, like Julia Roberts. Fuck Resident Evil 2.

  Chapter Four

  ANGIE

  IT’S MY DAY off. I’ve been wide awake for the past hour, but can’t bring myself to get up without the incentive of seeing Raymond, my boss at the bookie’s. I hear the familiar sound of Joni creating in the next room, followed by a flurry of door-slamming. Vic barges in looking distraught.

  ‘She’s phoning bloody Childline on me now. I only pulled the duvet off her ’cause she wouldn’t get up.’

  Sitting up in bed, I watch him pace the room, flustered, muttering to himself.

  ‘… something must have happened to make her like that. Maybe she should be seeing someone.’

  Sitting on the bed, he snuggles up to me. I’m in no mood to humour him.

  ‘I keep telling you, you’re too soft. See if you just belted her, she’d get such a fucking fright.’

  He stands up again and squeezes his shoulder, his useless hippie sensibilities offended. Yanking the duvet out the way, I stamp across the carpet for my robe.

  ‘… I’ll fucking get her up. Jesus, one lie-in a week. Is it really too much to ask?’

  Vic straddles the door.

  ‘Nah, it’s OK now. She’s locked herself in the bathroom.’

  Is he real?

  ‘So what’s the fucking problem, then?’

  ‘My daughter accuses me of abusing her and I’m supposed to feel pleased? Jesus, I’m scared to even look at her these days,’ he wails, manhandling his clean work-jacket out of our sardine-packed wardrobe.

  ‘Just ignore it. How many times do I have to say? All lassies go a bit Exorcist at that age. You take everything so fucking personally.’

  Determined to keep beating himself up about it, though, he ignores me, puts on his jacket and disappears into the hall. The toilet door goes and I hear him pleading.

  ‘Jo, pal, tell me what’s wrong. Is there anything I can do to help?’

  Another slam, the front door this time. Despite already being late for work, thanks to Jo’s carry-on, Vic gives her a ten-minute start before leaving, for fear of being branded a stalker. How did I ever come to marry such a big girl’s blouse?

  With the flat finally empty (Jake’s usually away before the rest of us even wake up. God knows who he gets that off), I shower, then have a coffee with the bar of Bournevill
e I had hidden in the All-Bran packet.

  With the brood out the way, my mind’s soon back on Raymond and my unrealistic expectations about Friday night. He let me put money in when my till was under the other day. I said I’d take him out as a thank-you. I’ve not had a drink since we moved here three years ago, but if I take it easy, I’m sure I’ll be OK. It’s not like I won’t be able to stop again. I just get so much grief off the family, it’s easier to avoid it. I’ll drink Diet Coke when it’s my round so I don’t get too pissed. Digging out the Marks vouchers Vic gave me for Christmas, I decide the occasion merits buying a new frock. I’m having a farewell lunch with my pal, Joyce, at one. She’s moving down to Hull because of her husband’s job. I’ll pop in and get something on the way along.

  God, I’d forgotten why I hate clothes-shopping so much. I’m crammed into a tiny changing-room that stinks of cheap, talc-tinged, sweaty bodies and old ladies’ pants. Stripping down to my underwear, I survey the awful spectacle in the full-length mirror and feel like crying. I’m like bloody Buddha – all blotchy, boily-backed and cellulite. How can I kid myself someone might fancy that?

  I struggle into the first of the dresses – a blue velvet one. On the hanger I envisioned an Isabella Rossellini look but I’m more like a post-ice-cream-addiction Marlon Brando. My whole body shimmers with perspiration as I peel it back off, bursting the zip in the process. Even the mirror’s starting to steam up.

  I’d picked out a green velvet dress as well but, assuming it’ll be as savage on my spare tyres as the last one, don’t bother trying it on. I could hardly wear a velvet dress to the bookie’s anyway. I’d look like something out of Oliver. The third one, a Berkertex, Laura Ashley print, is better. If I don’t tie the belt at the back, it hangs loosely over the rolls of fat. It’s a bit nippy round my beefy upper arms but it makes my tits look massive. Spinning around in front of the mirror, sweating profusely, I feel a bit better about myself. God, I’d almost forgotten I was a woman.