The More You Ignore Me by Jo Brand Page A

seemed to have turned her in on herself; the
once sparky little girl was now a somewhat sullen and unrewarding miniature
adult.
    ‘Should
I see someone about her, do you think?’ Keith asked worriedly ‘I mean, how
likely is it she’ll get what Gina’s got?’
    ‘Oh,
Keith,’ said Marie, her stomach doing uncontrolled fluttering, ‘it’s so hard to
say at this point. Shall I talk to her and let you know what I think?’
    ‘Would
you, please?’ said Keith. ‘I’d be so grateful and perhaps it would put my mind
at rest. Just informal like, if you can. I don’t want to bring her here — she
wouldn’t want to come anyway.
    All
right then,’ said Marie. ‘I’ll try and catch her around and about and see what
I can do.’
    ‘Thanks.’
Keith squeezed Marie’s hand and the fluttering dropped lower.
     
    Alice, Mark and Karen were
all draped over the broad oak tree at the end of the school lane one evening
some days later. They had been talking about building a den which none of the
adults could find, to which they could escape whenever high emotion boiled over
in any of their households. Alice was at her most happy and verbose with Mark
and Karen, both refugees from the seemingly traditional happy nuclear family
that populated the Bisto adverts and for which both of them yearned with an
intensity that would have shocked their parents.
    ‘I
could ask my uncles to help,’ said Alice, who had very little understanding of
the pure unadulterated terror even the mention of their names had on most of
the village.
    ‘Nah,
we should do it, then it’s ours.’ Mark tried to say it as nonchalantly as
possible to disguise the squeak in his voice that always appeared when he was
scared.
    ‘Yes,’
agreed Karen. ‘It’s got to be only ours and if anyone comes near it we’ll kill
them.’
    ‘Yes,’
said Alice, ‘and we’ll cut off their heads and put them on big sticks to scare
everyone.’
    ‘Brilliant,’
said Mark, thinking of Matthew Stephens, who had called him a homo in the
playground that day because he wouldn’t play hitting girls’ legs with a stick.
    ‘Oh
look, here comes the doctor,’ said Karen.
    Marie
Henty was trying to look as if she was strolling up the lane for no other
reason than pure enjoyment. She was thirty years old and not bad looking, but
little did she know that Mark had put her age at about fifty recently and the
others had concurred.
    ‘Hello,
you three,’ she said.
    ‘Hello,’
they said.
    ‘Alice,‘
said Marie, ‘I was wondering if we could have a chat.’
    Alice
began to batten down the social hatches.
    ‘Why?’
she said suspiciously.
    ‘Oh,
just wanted to see if things are OK.’ said Marie as airily as she could.
    ‘I’m
playing with my friends,’ said Alice stubbornly.
    ‘Just
ten minutes,’ said Marie.
    ‘All
right.’ said Alice. She climbed down from the tree.
    ‘Let’s
walk for a bit,’ said Marie.
    They
headed up the hill towards the crop of oaks that stood at the top, flushed with
mistletoe.
    ‘How’s
your mum?’ said Marie.
    ‘All
right,’ said Alice.
    ‘And
your dad?’
    ‘He’s
all right too,’ said Alice.
    ‘And
what about you?’
    ‘I’m
all right,’ said Alice.
    ‘School
OK?’
    ‘Yes.’
    This
monosyllabic torture continued for ten minutes until Marie, exhausted by
Alice’s responses, said brightly, ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. Shall we go back
and find your friends?’
    Alice
looked enormously relieved. ‘Yes please,’ she said, and they headed back down
the hill to where Mark and Karen were still hanging in the branches of the big
tree.
    Whoops
and cheers greeted them and Marie said her goodbyes, thinking to herself that
she had no more ability to talk to ten-year-olds than she had to the pigeons
that flocked to her bird table and stole the food intended for the smaller
birds.
    That
night, heart slightly aflutter, she phoned Keith.
    ‘I
couldn’t really get anything out of her, I’m sorry,’ she