What They Do in the Dark by Amanda Coe

Bright hovers at the edges of skipping and two-ball, tempting me into a bout of skeletons. Her hair is now a horrible greenish-white that reminds me of fresh snot, with a stripe of black at the roots. The teachers were shocked when she turned up like this and tried to send her home, but she claimed that her mum had mixed the bleach bottle up with the shampoo, that it had all been an accident. She came back the next day with her hair in a ratty snot-and-black ponytail (rubber band, which I’m not allowed; I’m only allowed proper bobbles, because uncovered elastic breaks your hair) and told them that her mam had said there was nothing she could do until it had all grown out.
    Whenever Pauline opens her mouth, the ragged angle of her front tooth gnaws into my conscience. Some days I succumb, and play skeletons. It’s the sort of game I gave up playing when I was at least eight, and I feel slightly ashamed of myself, as well as wary of Christina’s contempt. Fortunately she does violin and choir two dinnertimes a week. And the game with Pauline doesn’t make us friends, however much we play it.
    My mind is on other things. Mum takes me into work, as she’d suggested during her interruption of my perfect Saturday night. She pretends it’s because my fringe needs cutting, but usually she whips the scissors out at home and gives me a deft,brutal trim. This time though, she gets one of the juniors (spotty Trish) to wash my hair at the basin like a customer, and puts rollers in after the trim, and sits me under one of the driers which makes me feel, not entirely enjoyably, like an astronaut. By the time she combs out my hair, saying how much better I look, even using a bit of spray, everyone else has left. And then Ian the accountant turns up; Mr Haskell. He’s sweating in the heat even though his shirt has short sleeves. I have never, in fact, seen so much sweat on a person’s face. Something to do with his fatness, I conclude.
    ‘Hot enough for you?’ he asks us both, accepting my mum’s wordless greeting of a lilac salon towel and drying off his face with it. He hands the towel back to her, also without speaking, then beams at me.
    ‘Who’s this dollybird?’ he asks. ‘A famous model?’ I blush happily, and oblige when Mum wonders if I’m going to give Mr Haskell a kiss. I blush again when I remember the jam rags. But he seems unconcerned.
    We return to the Copper Kettle, where Ian once more orders my dream pancake combination. ‘Your usual, madam,’ he says. I’m perfecting a method of eating it, where I swirl each disc of banana in a pool of butterscotch, before using it as a template to cut out a corresponding disc of pancake with the blade of my knife, skewering the resulting forkful and eating it. The concentration demanded by this process obliterates the surrounding adult conversation, although I noticed when I sat down that Mum was unequipped with a biro this time, and that while Ian has a pile of papers with him, they remain on the seat beside him. I’m chasing the last drops of sauce with the final absorbent morsel of pancake when Mum asks me a question.
    ‘So, Gems, what do you think about us having a holiday?’
    I swallow the last of the pancake, nodding. We always have a holiday, usually abroad. I’ve been to Spain more times than anyonein my former class (I don’t know anyone well enough in my current one to ask them about holidays). I’d most like to go to Butlin’s, like Christina; she’s told me there are lots of competitions there which I’m hopeful of winning, talent contests that I think might lead to meeting Lallie and being in her show. But I know better than to say so, because I know that going to Spain is better, and that being better is what Mum’s best at. We always have new clothes for our holidays. Only Dad wears shirts from his non-holiday life, but even he puts on hats and aftershave.
    ‘Just you and me,’ Mum elaborates.
    ‘Is Dad busy?’ I ask, eyeing my plate and