‘Shut up!’ came the muffled reply from her brother, Philip, whose room was along the hallway. ‘No one cares!’
‘You shut up!’ she hollered in reply, with the express intent of irritating him. ‘And actually, you’re wrong – I care!’
Nothing, not even his foul mood, could dampen her spirits. She walked to the mirror above the chest of drawers in the corner of the room, where an irritating sticky splodge of glue from some long-discarded sticker sat in the corner. She studied her face, figuring she looked pretty much as she had done last night when she’d gone to bed, which was both a disappointment and a relief. Her boobs, she noted, were still no more than small buds, which she cursed, and there was sadly no visible improvement on the crop of spots fighting for space on her chin. She pulled a pouty face, very much liking the way her hair bouffed up when she first woke and disappointed at the prospect of it falling flat over the coming hours. The long-layered lengths with a hint of blonde, courtesy of a generous squirt of Sun-In, gave her a bit of a Bonnie Tyler vibe, although her brother, whose comments she largely ignored, said she looked more like Bon Jovi – but what did he know? She pulled it back into a scrunchie. Her eyebrows were freshly plucked into thin, high arches over her hazel eyes. She ran her finger over the little red dot of crusted blood where she had nicked the skin with a misplaced tweeze. Hours could be spent this way, staring at her face, prodding it, and comparing it to the pretty faces of the girls at school.
It was going to be a fantastic day, and anything could happen! She was sixteen. Sixteen! The kind of age where adults took you a bit more seriously, realising that you were properly emerging from the chrysalis of teenage years and were within snatching distance of adulthood. An age where all sorts of delights were now available, and not only those of a carnal nature, because at sixteen she could, if she so chose, leave school, join the army, get married, work full-time and drive a moped . . . The possibilities felt endless. Not that she intended to join the army or indeed drive a moped – her sights were set on the skies. There was something about the TV adverts for big jumbo jets with their coiffed and lipsticked attendants that fuelled her imagination and spoke to her. They offered the glamour and escape she was looking for. She wanted to fly around the world as an air hostess. She wanted that fitted red uniform and a little suitcase on wheels that she dragged along behind her. A life of freedom and exploration called, and just like her alarm clock, it felt well within her reach.
‘You up, Bessie?’ her mum called up the stairs excitedly.
‘Yep! Coming!’
About to leave the room, Bessie went back to the mirror for one quick check on her teeth, running her tongue over her straight pearly whites, which she considered to be one of her best features.
‘Bessie, for the love of God! Are you coming down or what?’ her mum called again, but with more of an edge this time.
She took the narrow stairs two by two, leaping into the little square hallway by the front door. The summer morning light filtered through the dappled glass of the door and pooled on the green carpet, which, where the sun touched it, had gone a paler shade than the edges. When they had visitors, her mum always moved the rag rug from the bathroom and put it over the lighter spot.
‘Here she is!’ she heard her mum whisper, and knew exactly what to expect next, by long tradition. Bessie paused for a beat, swinging around the corner with her hand on the top of the newel post. And then there it was: the sound of her dad’s harmonica, playing his own version of ‘Happy Birthday’.
Her parents, Jeannie and Eddie, stood side by side in their pyjamas, her mum looking simultaneously happy and emotional and her dad with the cord of his red and black tartan dressing gown tied tight across his burgeoning tum, the harmonica raised to his lips in readiness. The instrument had been a gift to him from his own dad, who had apparently fought in World War II with his trusty instrument secreted in a pocket, whipped out as and when required to lift the spirits of his comrades. Bessie hoped her Grandad Arty had been better at playing than her dad or it might have had quite the opposite effect on his poor comrades in dire need of a boost.
Bessie conducted with her index finger, trying not to let her grin slip into laughter as her dad did his best to get the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’ right and her mum, bless her, sang along in an earnest attempt to keep up with whatever he was now playing. As if this wasn’t bad enough, her brother decided to bang his disapproval on his bedroom floor, the thuds coming through the ceiling. After an excruciating thirty seconds, it was over.
‘Happy birthday, Bessie.’
‘Yaaaaaaaay! Happy birthday to me!’ she roared in return.
Her mum took a step forward and wrapped her in her usual brief awkward hug – a throwback, her dad had explained, from her own childhood, where hugs were in very short supply. Bessie loved that she tried and gripped her tightly in return, whereupon her mum did what she always did and patted her on the head and tousled her hair. Her dad pulled her into a close hold and kissed her on the forehead while her mum scurried off to grab four plates from the shelf in the kitchen cupboard, Bessie and her dad following on behind.
‘Sixteen, baby girl. It doesn’t seem possible,’ her mum said.
‘Do you feel sixteen?’ her dad asked, as he always did.
Bessie touched her head with both hands and then her chest and finally her forearms. ‘Do you know, I do!’ She and her dad laughed.
‘Mind you, it wasn’t exactly the happiest day for me,’ her mum interjected. ‘I mean, of course it was – I got you!’ she corrected, giggling, as she went to the fridge to grab the milk and eggs for pancakes, the only breakfast available on birthdays in this house. Every other day Bessie ate cereal and watched with a look of disgust as her parents tucked into toast and marmalade with chunks of orange peel in it. What was it about old people that made them like the bit of the fruit that in every other orangey scenario was thrown away! She shuddered at the very thought.
‘I was smitten the very moment I saw you, but my goodness, it wasn’t what you might call an easy birth,’ her mum said, wincing at the memory, as she cracked eggs into the Pyrex bowl that had belonged to Bessie’s nanna. ‘I wasn’t ever the same again, not down below.’
‘For the love of God, Jeannie! She doesn’t want to hear about the state of your lady bits on the day you gave birth, do you, Bessie? Not today!’ Her dad took a seat at the kitchen table and popped the harmonica back in his dressing-gown pocket.
‘Actually, Dad, I don’t want to hear about my mother’s lady bits on any day.’
‘Yes, good point!’
‘Can you please tell Philip that I’m making the pancakes and he should come down so Bessie can open her pressies.’ Her mum smiled at her, letting the excitement build.
Her dad rocked back in his chair until he was balancing on the rear two legs and then leant his head away from the table before shouting, ‘Philip, your mum’s making pancakes and you need to come down so your sister can open her pressies!’
Her mum shook her head with a look that was so well practised her dad took little notice.
‘I give up, I really do! Go and get her presents, Eddie!’ her mum said, nodding her head towards the lounge.
Bessie sat down and patted the tabletop in front of her as it filled with gifts wrapped in a wide assortment of paper, carefully harvested after each birthday, smoothed and returned to the drawer. Philip came loping down the stairs in his underwear.