Free Red Ink by Julie Mayhew Page A

they’re cute and beautiful but really they’re vicious.
    On the top of the hi-fi in the corner there is a picture of Mum. When Paul moved in, he framed several photos of her and put one in every room. You can’t go anywhere in the house and not be reminded. Except my room and the bathroom. But even there, you can’t forget. She is everywhere. I get up and bring the photo over to the dining room table. It’s sealed in a heavy block of see-through plastic. I like the frame. It’s something I’d never have imagined Paul choosing. I put the picture next to my notebook on the table and sit down.
    In this picture, Mum is laughing. Her hair is falling forwards. One of her bony hands (a market-stall ring on every finger) is pulling back a handful of curls on one side of her face. Her mouth is open, you can see two fillings. Mum’s other hand is pushed into her lap, which makes her look shy. Something she definitely wasn’t. On that hand, her left hand, there is a diamond ring. I don’t remember that ring from when she was alive. The background is leafy. She could be in the depths of a forest somewhere, but more likely she’s in a London park. The overflowing bin and the kids with the crack pipe are probably just out of shot.
    I don’t know where this picture was taken. I don’t know where most of the other pictures around the house were taken either. I don’t like that, Paul knowing this whole other person that I’ve never met.
    I wonder where I was when Paul took this picture. It looks sunny. Maybe I spent that weekend sunbathing in Chick’s back garden. Maybe Mum had told me that she had a daytrip planned with Paul and I paid no attention. Maybe I just left the house before she had the chance to say, writing ‘Gone to Chick’s’ on the noteblock in the kitchen before I went. Maybe she told me about it afterwards, what a good time they’d had, but I didn’t listen. I never listened.
    A blank page.
    I throw the pen across the room. It hits the wall, leaving a red scratch of ink. It drops behind the dusty fern plant on the cabinet. Through the dining room window, I can see a mum trying to get her two kids to go up the path of one of the houses behind ours. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know any of our neighbours. If Mum was here she’d tell you her name straightaway, know where she works, what she eats for breakfast, everything. I used to be close to Pamela, our old next-door neighbour, but she moved to Canada last year.
    The mum-I-don’t-know can’t get the youngest of her kids, a little girl, a toddler, to go into the house. The girl wants to crouch down in the gutter and pull something out of the edges of the drain. The mother goes back and yanks her up by one of her pink-anoraked arms. The girl squeals, and keeps squealing the whole way up the path. The mum opens the front door, they go inside. The door shuts behind them and I can’t hear the girl crying any more.
    I didn’t listen. I never listened.
    A blank page.
    I have a heading.
    Yes. I have a heading.
    A heading isn’t much but it’s something.
    I find a blue biro in my pencil case, pull off the lid with my teeth. I am going to break the curse of the empty page. I write:
    THE STORY
    I get out my ruler and underline it, neatly, twice. Yes, this is what I have to write. I did listen. I know every word.

THE DAY
    I am keeping a list in the back of my
Great Expectations
study guide – every possible way that my name can be twisted into something else.
    M ELON-CHOLY
    M ELON-OMA
    S MELLY M ELON
    Some are names that I’ve had used on me before; some are bound to get used sooner or later.
    M ELON BELL-END
    M ELON THE FELON
    B IG M ELONS
    Writing them down helps. If I get to know them, if I can guess what’s coming, then the names won’t bother me so much.
    M ELON HEAD
    M ELON TITS
    M ELON ARSE
    They’ll be like advertising slogans that people repeat over and over. They won’t mean anything in the real world.
    The trouble is, when I look at