Invisible Girl. Kate Maryon

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СКАЧАТЬ out how you might even paint it. It has this woman standing in a big shell and all these other people swooping and swooshing around her.

      The marble sculpture of someone called David is the best. Grace would’ve laughed her socks off if she were watching because David’s naked. Imagine having a huge chunk of cool white marble in front of you, all the chisels and hammers you need. Imagine chipping away until you’re covered in white dust and your hands are sore and the person inside steps out and stops waiting forever for someone to find them.

      Later in bed, my duvet is tangled and I’m hot, sticky and sweaty with sleep, when I hear Amy in the kitchen. I hear the microwave ping. I hear her fork clink, clinking on the plate.

      “Chang’s rubbish at getting his orders right, but this crispy duck is gorgeous, Dave,” she says. “Totally gorgeous!”

      I snuggle into Blue Bunny and stroke the soft silky label on his ear, the bit where Beckett wrote his name in red biro before he left.

      I hate my room. It’s so tidy because of Amy. She does this inspection thing every day, checking round the flat, making sure no germs are lurking like swamp monsters in the shadows. I wish they were. I wish armies of them would creep out of their hiding place and eat her. I wish they’d pull her down to their dark red cauldrons and mix her up to make poison. There are so many words on my lips for Amy. Bad words that would scorch your ears and make the lady in the sweet shop shoo the big boys out. But I’m not stupid enough to say them, so my tummy makes a big fist around them and holds them safe inside. When Amy’s done her inspection I close my bedroom door and mess things up again.

      She’s mean to my dad too. I feel sorry for him. Last week while I was on the green drinking creamy hot chocolate with Grace and the Play Rangers I caught him staring out of the window with this pale face, looking so lost and sad.

      After, I made him a coffee and we sat quietly together listening to the football results on the telly. And I loved him smiling when Arsenal won. I loved that we did a high five and I felt the warmth of his hand for the first time in ages. But then Amy came in and threw us off the sofa so she could plump up the cushions and put them neatly in pairs.

      Before Amy, we only ever vacuumed the floor on special occasions. Now she makes Dad push the vacuum cleaner around every day and do all these stupid exercises at the same time. He looks stupid in the pink rubber gloves and plastic muscleman pinafore she got him for when he does the washing-up.

      “Dave!” she says, inspecting the sink. “You haven’t even bleached it yet, have you? We’ll all get salmonella at this rate.”

      And then she sprays the whole world with Spring Breeze air freshener that stings our eyes and chokes our throats.

      When Amy’s out at Zumba class I get the chance to sit close to Dad and watch the telly and feel like it’s just him and me again. And I want to tell him everything. I want to say it all out loud, all the words twisting through me, getting tangled up inside. But I don’t know where to start. I’m too scared of making him cross or upsetting him.

      “Do you like Amy, Dad?” I whisper. “Like, really like her?”

      Dad sighs and stares at Top Gear. He snaps open his next can of lager and I watch the foamy bubbles fizz up through the opening and dribble down the sides.

      “I mean, we don’t really need her,” I say. “Do we? I think we were much better without her. And I’m worried about money. The landlord said if you miss the rent again he’ll evict us, remember, Dad?”

      Dad flicks the TV from channel to channel. He sips and sips and sips.

      “Don’t you start on at me as well,” he says, without looking at me. “It might be hard for you to understand, but I don’t just like Amy, Gabriella, I love her. I’m a man possessed by a beautiful woman. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but I can’t help myself.”

      His words fly at me like a football in the park, punching me with a cold hard thud in the tummy. I think I might be sick. He’s never said he loves me. He’s never said anything that nice about me, ever. I rub my face. I bend over to re-tie my laces.

      Dad pats his wobbly tummy and peers at me from under his fringe. He sip, sip, sips his lager. “I reckon…” he says.

      Then he stops talking. The air between us pulls tight and makes me hold my breath. Suddenly it feels just like the day he said Mum and Beckett were leaving.

      “I reckon,” he says, “if I can shed a few pounds, Amy might even marry me. What d’you think of that, eh? And I promise you Amy’ll let you be a bridesmaid if you keep your room tidy and start doing the stuff she asks. The pair of you could dress up all posh and lovely. Don’t worry about the rent, Gabriella. I’ve got it all under control. You just have to learn to trust your old dad.”

      He rummages in his pocket then pulls out a small square box and opens it up. “And when she sees this little baby,” he chuckles, holding a diamond ring between his fat finger and thumb so it glitters in the light, “she might not even care about my tummy!”

      I fly into my room, slam the door and bite back the sour tears that are rising in my throat. I can’t let myself think about what Dad’s just said, so I pull out my box of art scraps and scatter them across the floor.

      I cut and rip shiny sweet wrappers and bits of paper, making them into tiny bricks. I draw the outline of a house on a fresh clean page and glue the shiny bricks on one by one. I make little red roof tiles out of material I found at a car boot sale and a trail of grey smoke coming from the chimney out of a pair of Dad’s old pants. I colour in a bright blue front door and put loads of sunflowers in the garden like in the Italy programme. I cut a girl’s face from a magazine and stick her on the picture so she’s looking out of the window at the flowers.

      I pick up my little photo of Beckett that lives on my bedside table with the special book I won in the school art competition about famous artists. I stare at his face and wish he would leap out and talk to me.

      “I wish you were here, Beckett,” I whisper. “Where are you?”

      In the photo he was twelve, same as I am now, which means he’ll be nineteen now. Nineteen is so old! I flick through my magazine and I find a picture of a man with brown hair just like Beckett’s. I cut him out, glue him in the garden and bend his arm so he’s waving up at me. Then I hear the door slam and Amy’s voice screeching like a parrot in a cage.

      “Are you ready, Dave, or what?”

      I hear Dad shuffling into the hallway.

      “What?” he says. “Ready for what?”

      “That’s typical,” she spits. “You men are all the same. Total let-downs!”

      “Babe,” he says. “Come ’ere, darling. Wassup?”

      “Wassup?” she screeches. “I’ll tell you ‘wassup’, Dave. You promised to take me out. You promised me a romantic night, you stupid fat bum. Just the two of us, without Miss Untidy Ungrateful Flappy Ears butting in, remember?”

      I put my headphones on and fill my brain with tunes. I make some lovely grass with scraps СКАЧАТЬ