Straight Talking by Jane Green Page B

morning her mother used to plait her hair with different colored ribbons. She was so popular, and I was so grateful she was my best friend.
    “I was never hers you understand, she used to split her time between various people, and she used to tell me I was lucky she was my friend, because I wasn’t that pretty, but she liked me anyway, she liked my craziness when the adults weren’t watching.
    “I think even at eleven I was mature, aware that I was slightly different, the cat that walks by herself. I wasn’t happy, but there was no real reason for it, until that summer’s day when I knew something was wrong.
    “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I had been playing rounders, and I came into the kitchen to find my father sitting at the table with my mother standing at the other end of the room, glaring at him. I don’t think they heard me, I don’t think they knew I was there, and I crept back on tiptoes, thinking that my father looked guilty, although I’m not even sure I knew what it was then. I just knew he looked the way I looked when my mother was accusing me of eating a cake, and I had done it, but I was telling her I hadn’t.
    “I crept back and stood just beside the door frame, just out of sight, and I stood and listened to their conversation while my heart was pounding because I knew this was a grown-ups conversation, this wasn’t meant for my ears.
    “‘How could you?’ my mother was shouting, a rhetorical question, but of course I didn’t understand the meaning of the word then. ‘What about me, what about Tasha? Didn’t you think about us?’
    “My father didn’t reply, so I peeked around the door frame and saw that his elbows were on the table and his head was in his hands. I suddenly became very frightened, when didn’t he think of me, what was he doing?
    “‘You really want to throw away your marriage for a lousy affair with some cheap tart? This isn’t real. You selfish bastard. I don’t even want to talk to you, I want you to leave. I want you out of here tonight.’
    “I ran upstairs with my hands covering my ears. I didn’t want to hear any more. I’d heard too much already. I threw myself on my bed and instantly started crying, big baby heaving sobs. My parents were going to divorce. Friends at school had divorced parents. It meant they got extra presents on their birthdays and at Christmas. It meant that when they saw their fathers on the weekends they did extra special things like go to the zoo, or amusement parks, or picnics in the park.
    “But I didn’t want that. I loved my father and I wanted my parents to stay together. My parents getting divorced was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, and they must be getting divorced. Why else would my mother tell my father to leave?
    “He didn’t leave that night. I came downstairs a bit later on, terrified at what I would find, which turned out to be a frosty silence, an atmosphere you could have cut with the smooth round ankle of my Barbie doll.
    “My father couldn’t look at me, and my mother tried to pretend that everything was normal, but I, of course, knew that it wasn’t. Knew that perhaps things would never be normal again.
    “I cried again later that night, and this time my mother happened to be passing my bedroom door. She came in and sat on the bed, putting her arms around me and stroking my hair. I think she started crying too, but after a while she said, ‘Did you hear Daddy and me having a fight?’
    “I nodded sadly while hiccuping, and looked up at her with tear-stained cheeks. ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ she said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
    “‘But you told him to leave.’ She looked shocked, she didn’t think I’d heard that bit.
    “‘He’s not going to leave, darling. It’s nothing important, just a little fight. Grown-ups sometimes argue about things but they get better, it will all be fine. Sometimes you get angry with Helen, don’t you?’
    “I nodded. ‘And sometimes