Keith looked at her.
She wasn’t joking.
‘It’ll be time for Tracy to have it done in a couple of years,’ she said.
Keith gaped.
Tracy?
He had another vision.
A wax Aunty Bev standing between the Whale Knife Killer and the Fish Shop Mincer holding a blood-stained vacuum cleaner.
On the way home, after Dad and Aunty Bev had said goodbye and gone off to the pictures, Keith told himself to calm down.
Aunty Bev wouldn’t let Tracy have her fat vacuumed unless she really needed it.
Course she wouldn’t.
Aunty Bev’s a trained professional.
Look at the great job she’s done with Mum.
‘Keith,’ called Mum’s voice as he closed the front door, ‘is that you?’
A pit opened up in Keith’s stomach.
He recognised the tone in her voice.
It was the tone she’d used when she told him she and Dad were going to split up.
Oh no, thought Keith. Her weekend’s been a disaster.
But how could it have been?
She’d looked wonderful.
Men would have been flocking to Bognor just for a look.
‘Yes,’ said Keith, ‘it’s me.’
What could have gone wrong?
Then Dazzle ran out of the kitchen and Keith realised what must have happened.
Mum must have come home, found Dazzle, plus a big puddle on the carpet, and now Mum was going to tell him that Dazzle had to go.
‘Please let me keep him,’ pleaded Keith as Mum came out of the kitchen. ‘He’s been under a lot of emotional stress but he’ll start controlling his bladder soon, I promise, please.’
‘Keith,’ said Mum, ‘it’s OK. Tracy’s explained about Dazzle. I don’t mind you having him as long as you take responsibility for him and keep him off the beds.’
Keith’s insides soared.
Then dropped again.
He stared at Mum.
Her hair was flat.
Her face was pale.
She was wearing her old baggy shorts.
Keith could see her leg veins even though the lighting was low.
He felt like giving her a shake.
‘Mum,’ he felt like yelling, ‘how can you expect to meet people and fall in love and be happy if you won’t leave your makeup and your lilac tracksuit on?’
He didn’t, because while he was thinking about it a man followed Mum out of the kitchen.
‘This is Donald,’ said Mum.
The man took Mum’s hand.
‘Hello Keith,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard lots about you.
Keith opened his mouth but it felt like it was made of wax.
‘Donald and me work together,’ said Mum quietly. ‘And we’re going out together as well.’
Keith saw she didn’t just mean tonight.
Suddenly his mouth was working.
‘Did you meet this weekend?’ he asked.
Mum and Donald exchanged a look.
‘No,’ said Mum in a small voice. ‘We’ve been going out for about six weeks.’
Keith’s whole head felt like it was made of wax.
Six weeks.
‘Just at lunchtimes and after work,’ said Mum. ‘I didn’t want to tell you until I knew it was serious. I’m sorry love, I know this must be a shock for you.’
Keith lowered his eyes.
Just above Mum’s ankle, he saw, was a leg vein in the shape of a mouth laughing at him.
13
Keith gazed at half of London spread out shimmering below him and felt the sun on his cheeks and the breeze in his hair and tried not to think about how many people down there were having their fat vacuumed.
Think positive.
It’s a knockout summer day, he told himself, and I’m having a picnic with my best friend and the view’s brilliant and I’ve got a really nice dog and Mum’s had the incredible good fortune to find the one man in London who doesn’t mind road-map legs and Dad’s pulling himself together very nicely thank-you and will almost certainly be swept off his feet by crowds of women just as soon as his hair grows a bit.
Keith felt his guts relax.
It was working.
He was feeling happy.
Now all he had to do was cheer Tracy up.
He took a big breath.
‘Mmmm,’ he said to Tracy, ‘the air’s so fresh up here. Hardly any pong from the chemical works. It’s giving me an appetite.’
Tracy didn’t reply.
‘I love picnics out of tins,’ said Keith, ‘don’t you?’
Tracy didn’t reply.
Keith spooned cold Irish stew into his mouth and poured the rest into Dazzle’s bowl and watched the cars far below glinting in the sunlight.
‘Great view, eh?’ he said to Tracy. ‘I bet even people from Nepal would be impressed by this view.
Tracy didn’t reply.
Keith saw she’d flopped down on Mum’s tablecloth among the tins and was staring at the sky.
She still hadn’t eaten anything.
Not the apricot halves or the spaghetti or the peas or the Irish stew or the fruit salad in heavy syrup.
Keith sighed.
She looked so miserable.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘they probably don’t have thirty-eight-storey blocks of flats in Nepal, not ones with flat roofs that are good for picnics. But the mountains sound great. I bet the views from them are brilliant.’
Tracy didn’t reply.
Dazzle finished the Irish stew and went over and licked her cheek.
She didn’t even seem to notice that.
Keith sighed again.
It wasn’t working.
Him being happy wasn’t making her feel better.
He took another deep breath and tried to think what else he could do.
‘1 know,’ he said, ‘let’s go tenpin bowling.’
Tracy looked at him and shook her head.
Keith was shocked. It was the first time he’d ever seen her refuse an invitation to play a sport, including rugby league.
This is hopeless, he thought.
Before he could get back to thinking positive, a cry rang out.
‘There you are!’
Aunty Bev emerged from the stairwell and came across the roof towards them.
Keith groaned inside and Tracy groaned out loud.
‘Your dad reckoned you’d probably be up here,’ called Aunty Bev. ‘Jeez, this view’s even better than the one from the silo at Uncle Leo’s.’
‘Keith,’ pleaded Tracy, ‘make her go away.’
‘Aunty Bev,’ said Keith, ‘Tracy’s not feeling so hot at the moment so I was going to let her have a bit of a snooze up here on her own. Do you like tenpin bowling?’
Aunty Bev didn’t reply.
She was crouched down examining the empty tin of Irish stew.
‘Sometimes Tracy,’ she said wearily, ‘I think you want to be a lardbucket.’
Keith was about to point out that many top athletes had large appetites, not to mention some of the world’s best racehorses, when Tracy leapt to her feet.
‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed at Aunty Bev. ‘Rack off and leave me alone!’
Keith watched horrified as Tracy ran across the roof and down into the stairwell.
He could feel Dazzle cowering behind his legs.
He turned to Aunty Bev.
‘It wasn’t Tracy,’ he said. ‘Me and Dazzle had it.’
Aunty Bev patted his arm.
‘S’OK mate,’ she said, ‘I’m not crook at you. In fact I’ve been meaning to thank you for giving me the idea of coming over here with Tracy. Get her away from those parents of hers. They haven’t got a clue what they’ve got with that kid. She could be a top international model one day if she wasn’t such a guts.’
Keith stared at her.
Tracy, a model?
The girl who could haul herself onto a steep tin roof at ni
ght in a downpour and catch cane toads with a torch and a bucket and no bait?
What a waste.
Keith was about to tell Aunty Bev that she’d got Tracy all wrong, that she was trying to turn Tracy into a person Tracy wasn’t, when something distracted him.
In each of the mirrored lenses in Aunty Bev’s sunglasses Keith could see his own face staring back at him.
Tracy was huddled in a corner on the thirty-sixth floor landing.
Keith had never seen anyone crying so hard.
He went over, feeling in his pockets for a hanky.
He couldn’t find one, so he put his arms round her.
‘I can’t stand much more of this,’ sobbed Tracy. ‘If she doesn’t stop this I’m gunna end up like Dawn Rickson.’
‘Who’s Dawn Rickson?’ asked Keith.
‘Kid in my school,’ said Tracy between ragged breaths. ‘Thought she was fat. Stuck her fingers down her throat every day after lunch and made herself chuck. Even after they took her to hospital. Poor bugger.’
Dazzle poked his head out of Keith’s jacket and licked the tears on Tracy’s cheeks.
‘You won’t have to do that,’ said Keith quietly.
‘Aunty Bev is going to stop because we’re going to make her.’
Tracy didn’t say anything.
Keith kept his arms round her.
After a while they heard Aunty Bev go down in the lift.
Quite a bit later Tracy gave a wobbly sigh.
‘Hope you’re right,’ she whispered.
14
Keith found Aunty Bev at Dad’s place, curled up on the settee reading a glossy magazine with a woman on the front even thinner than she was.
He cleared his throat until she looked up.
‘I think what you’re doing to Tracy is wrong,’ he said, ‘and I think you should stop.’
Aunty Bev looked at him for what seemed like months.
Keith’s stomach felt like it was being jabbed from the inside by a whole lot of chocolate fingers.
A muscle in his left buttock was quivering.
He wondered if his stomach was sagging and his bottom was wobbling.
Don’t care if they are, he thought.
Then Aunty Bev smiled.
‘You’re a good mate to Tracy,’ she said. ‘Tracy’s lucky to have you. But you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes I do,’ said Keith softly.
Aunty Bev closed her magazine.
‘Keith,’ she said, ‘I’m a beautician. I’m trained to know what’s best for people.’
‘Only on the outside,’ said Keith.
Keith noticed that even though Aunty Bev’s head was completely still, her plastic parrot earrings were trembling.
This is it, he thought. This is where she either agrees with me or attacks me with a vacuum cleaner.
Aunty Bev suddenly stood up.
Keith flinched, then remembered Dad’s Hoover was broken.
‘You probably think Tracy’s just got a bit of puppy fat, right?’ said Aunty Bev. ‘You probably think all kids put on a bit of weight at your age and it’s perfectly OK.’
Keith nodded.
He was in the middle of wondering whether he should remind her it was called growing when she suddenly scowled.
‘Puppy fat,’ she said, ‘is not OK.’
She put her face close to Keith’s.
Keith swallowed.
He noticed that one of her eyelashes was crooked.
Hope it’s false, he thought.
‘Do you know why puppy fat is not OK?’ she asked.
Keith shook his head.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘puppy fat doesn’t always go away. Puppy fat can stay with you for the rest of your life.’
Keith thought about this.
‘So what?’ he asked.
‘So what?’ shouted Aunty Bev. ‘So what?’
Keith’s left buttock felt like it was going to run out the door on its own.
The chocolate fingers grabbed his guts and twisted.
But he found himself thinking of all the happy people he knew who weren’t thin. Mr Gambaso in the Orchid Cove milkbar and the bloke who’d sold him the sugar cane and Ronnie Barker and the woman in the twenty-seven million quid painting.
‘Yes,’ shouted Keith. ‘So what?’
‘Keith!’ boomed Dad’s angry voice from the kitchen. ‘Don’t you ever talk to Bev like that again!’
Keith sighed.
He braced himself for the combined sight of Dad’s angry red face and his spiky short haircut.
He heard Dad striding out of the kitchen and turned and started to explain that he hadn’t meant to be rude but you have to be firm when you’re arguing with a fanatic.
He didn’t finish.
Dad’s face wasn’t red, it was shiny white.
His whole face was covered with white slime.
Stuck to the slime, beneath each eye, was a slice of cucumber.
Keith stared.
Then he saw that Dad was holding a large pot of yoghurt.
Dad went over to Aunty Bev and put a protective arm round her shoulders.
‘Did you hear what I said, Keith?’ boomed Dad.
Keith managed to nod.
‘Leave the cucumber over your eyes, Vin,’ said Aunty Bev, slipping her arm round Dad’s waist, ‘or it won’t absorb the muck from your eye sockets. It’s OK, me and Keith were just having a bit of a debate, weren’t we love?’
Keith tried to nod again but his neck had stopped working.
All he could do was stare in horror as Dad and Aunty Bev stood there with their arms round each other and Aunty Bev didn’t even mind the yoghurt getting on her tracksuit.
‘Thanks for trying,’ said Tracy.
‘That’s OK,’ said Keith.
They toyed listlessly with their bacon, egg, sausage, onion and baked bean sandwiches.
‘Do you think they’ll get married?’ asked Tracy.
‘Dunno,’ said Keith numbly.
He didn’t even want to think about it.
Aunty Bev as a stepmother.
Bursting into his room checking he wasn’t eating the tinned apricots.
Not that I’d have any appetite with her in the family, he thought gloomily.
‘Perhaps,’ said Tracy, ‘falling in love will make her more relaxed about things.’
Keith looked at Tracy.
He could see she was just trying to cheer them both up, but it felt good all the same.
‘Perhaps,’ he said quietly.
Then the kitchen door flew open and Aunty Bev stood there looking at them both.
‘G’day,’ she said. ‘Thought I’d find you in here.’
Tracy looked away.
Dazzle growled.
Keith gaped.
Underneath the tight fabric of Aunty Bev’s pink tracksuit her stomach bulged out even further than Dad’s.
No, he thought, it’s not possible. She and Dad can’t be having a baby already, not when she’s only been in the country nine days.
‘It’s a cushion,’ said Tracy wearily. ‘It’s to remind me that if I eat too much I’ll get fat.’
‘Good girl,’ smiled Aunty Bev. ‘You’re getting the message.’ She turned to Keith. ‘And I hope you are too, young man. Short people have to be extra careful about their weight.’
Once they were alone again, Keith gave Tracy’s arm a sympathetic squeeze.
‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘at least you’ve got Nepal to look forward to.’
Tracy shook her head.
‘I’m not going,’ she said quietly. ‘Not even the highest mountains in the world are worth another week of this. Anyway, Aunty Bev reckons she’s gunna stay on here with your dad for a bit and I’ve got to fly home by myself.’
Keith watched miserably as Tracy dabbed her tears with her sandwich.
He had a vision of his life in London with Aunty Bev ruining most meals by nagging and Dad ruining the rest by wearing yoghurt to th
e table.
He had a vision of Tracy’s life in Australia, self-confidence shattered, hiding away by herself, pining for Nepal and watching telly and eating chocolate fingers and probably dying a lonely death tragically young.
It’s all my fault, he thought.
Everything.
Then he knew what he had to do.
While he rummaged through Aunty Bev’s suitcase he sent her a message.
Sorry to be going through your things but Tracy needs someone to go with her to Nepal and then perk her up back in Australia and as you’re staying here now I’m going to use your ticket.
That’s if I can find it, he thought.
He put the bras and tracksuits back into the suitcase and knelt down and opened the zip-up bag.
Shoes and a camera but no plane ticket.
There was only the make-up bag to go.
Keith sent an urgent message to the ticket.
Please be in there.
I need you.
The bedroom door creaked and slowly started to open.
Keith froze.
Aunty Bev and Tracy couldn’t be back from the newsagent already. It was a good ten minutes each way and that didn’t include actually buying Tracy’s diet book.
The door swung open and Dazzle trotted in.
He put his paws on Keith’s chest and licked his face.
Keith started breathing again and gave Dazzle a hug.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘you’re coming with me and Tracy.’
He opened the make-up bag.
A jolt of excitement ran through him.
Lying on top of the bottles and jars was a plastic travel wallet.
He picked it up, hands shaking.
Inside was a passport and some Australian money and some duty free vouchers.
And a plane ticket.
Keith pulled the ticket out of the wallet.
His shoulders slumped.
Aunty Bev’s name was in computer print.
That’s it, thought Keith, sick with disappointment. Forget it.
You can change handwriting, but not computer print.
He was about to put the ticket back when he noticed something had fallen out of the wallet.
A photo.
A faded, tattered photo of a girl about Tracy’s age in a swimming costume with plump arms and stocky legs and a round body and a chubby face.
Aunty Bev’s face.
15
‘It’s definitely her,’ said Tracy. ‘See that badge on her swimmers? That’s the school she went to.’