Phosphorescence by Raffaella Barker

Director of Studies
likes
the way it’s written, so never mind Mr Lascalles. He is so yesterday with his views.’ I stumble over the words to get them out in time to mollify Mum. It works.
    â€˜Well, I’m glad you have a strong voice already,’ she says.
    Mum looks completely different now we have left Dad. She has had a haircut, and they gave her a fringe, which secretly I think was a mistake, but also I do think that she looks quite young, which is good,I suppose. She has also started wearing a lot more make-up, which actually makes her look a little older. The combination of the young hair and the old cosmetics leave her about where she was before, but groomed and polished instead of careworn and miserable. Her clothes are better too, and she wears skirts all the time.
    â€˜I never want to see an oilskin garment again,’ she said when we were packing to move. And it is as though she has completely turned her back on the life we had in Norfolk. Mum never even looks out of the window, never mind goes outside. She just floats around wearing glossy tights and heels and silky skirts with little tops. I feel galumphing and huge next to her, because she seems so small and slight. It’s as if the shabby outer casing of her when she wore big jumpers and had manky-looking hair has been shaved off, and inside is a shiny new little jewel-like mum.
    â€˜So, is it being read out for its literary merit or because it’s a good project?’ she asks.
    Sighing, I zap the TV silent and continue to stare at the screen.
    â€˜Not sure.’
    A man with purple sunglasses opens and closes his mouth like a goldfish. Losing the sound has always been the best way to watch bad music acts.
    â€˜Actually, Mum, I’m not so keen on the geography project being read out at all.’ I prefer not to look Mum in the eye when I am disagreeing with her, even if the disagreement is only tiny, like now. ‘It will make me feel a bit of an idiot to hear what I wrote,and I hate the idea of everyone else knowing it. It’s like being naked or exposing myself or something.’
    Mum laughs, another new form of expression for her, and I zap the sound back up because the bad song has finished and the next band on are quite good. Mum doesn’t seem very bothered by anything I do. She hardly ever tells me off, and she’s more likely to laugh if I do something wrong. It’s weird. Come to think of it, she doesn’t often ask me about my day, or what I had for lunch, but I tell her anyway, because after all the years of her asking me, ‘How was school?’ it is automatic to give her an edited version of my life.
    I almost did it when I got back from the weekend with Dad, but I saw a barrier go down behind her eyes, so I stopped myself and said, ‘Oh, well, you know, it was just like it always is there. Nothing happening to no one.’
    Mum smiled, gratefully I think. She said, ‘I’m glad Jack’s recovering.’ But actually she didn’t sound any more glad than she would have been if someone on
EastEnders
was getting better from an illness. Now she lets the subject of my project drop and goes back to tapping information into her Palm Pilot. She reminds me of a nine-year-old kid on a PlayStation.
    Nell and I discuss her, late at night when I am in bed with the duvet over my head and the phone sneaked from its cradle in the sitting room while Mum is having a bath. She has now had enough of my extended conversations and is beginning to be a real pain about the phone bill.
    â€˜I didn’t ask to move to London away from mylife and my friends,’ I pointed out to her, when she started psyching out just because she couldn’t get through trying to ring me from work for a measly half-hour. That shut her up for a while, but tonight I want to keep things simple, so Nell and I talk quietly, and I absolutely won’t be on the phone for hours.
    â€˜You know what,