Secrets by Nick Sharratt

rudely as I dared, my head still in the fridge. I wondered if my tears would turn into tiny stalactites if I stayed there long enough.
    â€˜I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,’ she said softly. Well, as soft as she gets.
    She didn’t mean to hurt my feelings? She expects it to feel like fun when your own mother implies you are GROSS?
    I felt like I was growing a frosty mask inside the fridge. She was sorry for me now. Well, I
could
tell her straight, ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Mum, feel sorry for yourself. Everyone hates you. Even Dad prefers Wanda to you.’
    I wouldn’t say it. But thinking it made me feel better. I straightened up and smiled calmly at my mother.
    â€˜I’m fine, Mum, really.’
    â€˜What are your plans for today, darling?’ she said, sitting on a kitchen stool and crossing one long, elegant, tanned hairless leg over the other. She wears matching silk nighties and negligées in subtle strange colours, inky-blue with pink lace, forest green with turquoise lace, coffee with tangerine lace. I used to love her nighties. I liked sneaking into Mum’s bedroom and dressing up in their silky softness, playing at being a princess.
    I couldn’t stick wearing anything of Mum’s now. Well. They wouldn’t fit anyway.
    Mum always wants me to have
plans
. She can’t ever let me drift through the day doing just what I feel like. She has the engagement diary approach to life. She’d like every half hour of my day filled in.
    I shrugged and mumbled something about homework.
    â€˜Oh darling, you and your homework!’ she said, as if it’s my personal eccentricity.
    She is the only mother in my class who really doesn’t care about her daughter’s marks. She seems to find it vaguely embarrassing when I come top.
    â€˜And I’m going to read this new book about Anne Frank.’
    â€˜I know Anne Frank’s story is very moving, India, but don’t you think it’s a little morbid being
so
obsessed by her?’
    â€˜No, I think it’s perfectly normal. She’s my hero, my inspiration.’
    Mum gave a little snort. She was laughing at me. I tried to think of the frost in the fridge but I couldn’t stop my face turning beetroot red.
    â€˜Well, I’m going to get into my running things,’ said Mum, swallowing the last of her lemon. She put her head on one side. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?’
    I bared my teeth in a grin to make it plain I knew she was joking.
    â€˜Maybe we can go shopping together when I get back?’ said Mum.
    I think she must have read some article about high-powered career mums spending ‘quality time’ with their daughters. But I hate, hate, hate shopping with Mum. I like
shopping
, so long as it’s
my
way. Wanda and I go to Woolworths or Wilkinsons, where everything is bright and cheap, and we play this game seeing how many things we can buy for a fiver. I like choosing girly notebooks with pink checks and puppies and gel pens and peachy sweet scent and little floppy toy animals and lots and lots and lots of pick’n’mix sweets. Then we go to McDonald’s and I have a McFlurry and if it goes down too quickly I’ll have another. And maybe even another if Wanda is in a truly good mood. Sadly she hasn’t been in a good mood for ages.
    I wonder if I should try talking to her? Try to comfort her, maybe – because this thing with Dad seems to be making her so unhappy.
    It makes
me
feel unhappy thinking about her and Dad. If I didn’t love him I think maybe I’d hate him – the way I hate Mum.
    I don’t really hate her.
    Yes I do.
    I
certainly
hate her when we go shopping together. We nearly always have to go to the places that stock Moya Upton clothes. She has a sneaky check on the stock. The salesgirls generally twig who she is and go into a twitter. There’s often a rich mother