Free The More You Ignore Me by Jo Brand Page A

she had to toil quite hard against the wind
going up the hill. As she entered the village, she saw Mark.
    ‘Hi,
Alice,’ he called. ‘Where are you off to?’
    Alice
was no good at lying on the spot, even though she didn’t really want Mark or
anybody to know she was writing to a pop singer she had seen on television.
    ‘I’m
going to post a letter,’ she said.
    ‘Oh.
Who to?’ said Mark.
    Alice
reddened.
    ‘Not
your boyfriend?’ Mark said.
    ‘Fuck
off,’ said Alice.
    ‘Oh,
come on,’ said Mark. ‘I’m only teasing, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t
want.’
    For the
first time almost, Alice decided to trust Mark. Looking down at the front wheel
of her bike, she mumbled, ‘It’s a letter to Morrissey from the Smiths.’
    Mark
was astonished. Alice had never seemed to be the type of person who would get
weird about a pop singer. She rumbled about in her permanent semi-angry way
with her thick mane of hair constantly out of control, falling out of a
ponytail or escaping from a plait, with a frown on her face that was already
starting to produce two lines in her forehead at the top of her nose.
    ‘Do you
think he will write back?’
    ‘I
really hope so,’ said Alice with a determined look on her face. ‘It’s very
important to me.’
    Mark
was slightly perturbed by the strength of feeling in her voice and steered
things away.
    ‘My mum
and dad are going to the theatre in Birmingham tonight,’ he said. ‘Do you want
to come over? I’ll get a bottle of Woodpecker in the shop.’
    ‘I’ll
ask Dad,’ said Alice, although she knew Keith would say yes because he seemed
so desperate for her to have friends that the spectre of drink, drugs or
underage sex never even occurred to him in his eagerness to normalise his withdrawn
and unhappy daughter.
    Alice
cycled up to Mark’s at about seven o’clock. It was cold and wet and had been
dark for some time. But she didn’t mind. This was her favourite sort of weather
and she felt the darkness and rain hid her from the prying gaze of the locals,
who she knew called her ‘the madwoman’s daughter’. Stephen Matthews had been
only too happy to inform her of this, another weapon in his depleted armoury of
taunts and village gossip.
    An owl
sat in the middle of the lane, eyeing her nonchalantly, and only flew away with
a huge flap of its impressive wings as she nearly ran it over. Despite talk in
the village of a large cat that roamed the local countryside at night, she felt
at her happiest. Mark had told her that his dad had discussed this local beast
with fellow drinkers in the tiny pub in the village. He’d not been impressed
when Andrew Overy, a local farmer prone to exaggeration, had said he’d found a
savaged sheep on his land, the throat torn out.
    ‘Could
have been anything,’ said Mark’s dad scornfully.
    ‘Yeah,
but not halfway up a fucking oak tree,’, Andrew Overy had replied triumphantly
‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it.’
    Mark
answered the big front door and led the way into the rather dilapidated
interior, a shameful sight to Mark’s mum who spent hours poring over Homes
and Gardens in the hairdresser, dreaming of the day when her husband would
let her tackle this rural jumble of styles.
    They
sat in the front room and Mark produced the bottle of Woodpecker which they
drank from Manchester United mugs, a nod to the fact that Mark’s dad still
half-heartedly followed the romantic team of his youth.
    Alice
very rarely had any alcohol and to her it was a bit like taking medicine. The
sweet sickly taste had to be ignored, Mark had assured her, to eventually feel
the benefits of a warmth that couldn’t be achieved in any other way After a
couple of mugs, she began to understand what he meant.
    Their
conversation, initially strangely stilted as if they hardly knew each other,
became more relaxed and giggly.
    Mark
said, ‘Can I ask you something about your mum?’
    Alice
never discussed Gina with anyone because she simply could