Skinny Melon And Me

Chapter 1

Monday

Skinny Melon and me have decided: we are going to keep diaries.

Skinny is going to start hers on Saturday when she has bought a special book to do it in. She says it is no use doing it in an ordinary pocket diary with spaces for each day as there will be times when we feel like writing a great deal and other times when we may not want to write anything at all, except perhaps what we had to eat for dinner. I agree with her but feel inspired to start immediately and so cannot wait to buy a special book but am using an old writing block with wide lines (I can’t stand narrow ones).

I think when a person is writing a diary they ought to introduce themselves in case it is unearthed in a hundred years’ time and nobody would know who has written it, so I will say straight away that this is the diary of me, Cherry Louise Waterton, aged eleven years and two months, and I am writing for posterity, in other words the future.

To begin with I suppose I must put down some facts, such as, for instance, that I am medium tall and neither fat nor thin but somewhere in between, have short brown hair and a fringe, and a face which is chubbyish (I think I have to be honest) and also round.

I know that it is round because I saw these charts in a magazine at the dentist showing all different shapes of faces, including heart-shaped, egg-shaped, diamond-shaped, turnip-shaped, square-shaped and round.

Mine is definitely round. Unfortunately. Round-faced people tend to have blobby noses, which is what I have got.

The school I go to is Ruskin Manor. It is not the school I would have chosen if I had had any choice. If I had had any choice I would have chosen a boarding school because I think a boarding school would be fun and also it would take me away from Slimey. Anything that took me away from Slimey would have to be a good thing. I did ask Mum if I could go to one but she just said, “Over my dead body”. She was really pleased when I got to Ruskin because it’s the one she wanted for me. She says all the others are rough.

Ruskin is OK, I suppose, though we have simply stacks of homework, which Mum needless to say approves of. On the other hand, I have only been there for three weeks so there is no telling how I might feel by the end of term. Anything could happen. Our class teacher, Mr Sherwood, who at the moment seems quite nice, could for instance suddenly grow fangs, or the Head Teacher turn out to be a werewolf.

I mean, you just never know. (The Head Teacher is called Mrs Hoad. What kind of name is Hoad? It sounds rather sinister to me.)

My best friend Melanie also goes to Ruskin. Her surname is Skinner and she is very tall and thin so I call her Skinny Melon, or Skinbag, or sometimes just Skin. John Lloyd, who is a boy in our class, said last week that we were the Long and the Short of it, but that is only because Skinny Melon is so tall, not because I am short.

Skin’s face shape wasn’t shown in the magazine. It’s long and thin, the same as the rest of her. Sausage-shaped, I suppose you would call it. Like a Frankfurter.

Me and Skin have been best friends since Year 5 and we are going to go on being best friends “through thick and thin and come what may”. We have made a pledge and signed it and buried it in a polythene food bag under an apple tree in my back garden. If ever we decide to stop being best friends we will have to dig up the pledge and solemnly burn it. This is what we have agreed on.

Where I live is 141 Arethusa Road, London W5. W5 is Ealing and it is right at the end of the red and green lines on the Underground.

Skin and I once decided to go and see what Epping was like as we had heard there was some forest there, but we got on the wrong train and went to a place called Fairlop instead.

Ealing doesn’t have any forests, just a bit of scrubby common which you can walk to from Arethusa Road. There is also a park where Skinny Melon and me take her dog Lulu to meet other dogs. I wish more than anything I could have a dog! Well almost more than anything.

What I would wish more than anything is alas impossible as it would mean turning the clock back, which is something you cannot do unless you happen to be living in a science fiction novel where people travel into the past and change things. I would like to travel into the past and change things. That is what I would like more than anything else. But after that the next thing that I would like is a dog.

Any sort of dog would do. Big dog, small dog, I wouldn’t mind.

Why I am suddenly starting to write this diary is that Mrs James, who is our English teacher, said that it would be a good thing to do. She said there are several reasons for keeping a diary. These are some that I can remember:

1 It is good practice for when it comes to writing essays etc. for school.

2 It is a record of one’s life and will be interesting to look back on when one is old.

3 It is a social document (for historical purposes, etc.).

4 It can help to clear out the cupboard.

When Mrs James said about clearing out the cupboard, we did not immediately understand what she meant and some people started giggling and pretending to open cupboard doors and take out cans of fruit and stuff and chuck it away, but Mrs James said the cupboard she was talking about was “the cupboard in your head”. She said that sometimes the cupboard in your head gets all clogged up with bits and pieces that worry you or upset you or make you angry, and that writing them down in a diary helps to get rid of them. She said, “We’ve all got a lot of clutter that needs clearing out.” She told us to go home and think about it – to look into our cupboards and see what was there.

Amanda Miles told me next day that she’d looked into her cupboard and as far as she could see it was pretty well empty, except for the grudge she still had against Mr Good at Juniors who made her go and stand in the front hall for throwing paint water at Andy Innes when it wasn’t her. She said she didn’t think that was enough to start writing a diary about.

“I mean, are you going to?” she said.

To which I just made mumbling noises, since there are some things you can’t talk about to other people, and certainly not to Amanda Miles. The thing in my cupboard is one of them.

Slimey Roland is the thing in my cupboard.

I’d do anything to get rid of him. I wish he’d go and walk under a bus. I expect Mum would be sad for a bit, but she’d get over it. She can’t really love him. Nobody could. He’s a total and utter dweeb.

I nearly had a heart attack when Mum said she was going to marry him. I mean, I really just couldn’t believe it. I thought she’d got better taste. I told her so and she slapped me and then burst into tears and said she was sorry but why did I have to be so selfish and unpleasant all the time?

I’m not selfish and unpleasant. I don’t think I am. But it’s enough to make you, when your mum goes and marries a total dweeb. And I had to go to their rotten grotty old wedding, which wasn’t even a proper wedding, not the actual marrying part. Just Mum and Slime, and me and the Skinbag, who came to keep me company, and Aunt Jilly, who is Mum’s sister, and this man who was doing it. Marrying them, I mean.

When he’d finished he said that now they could kiss each other and they did and I looked at Skin and pulled this being-sick face (at which I am rather good) and Skin told me afterwards that I was horrid to do such a thing at my mum’s wedding. It’s all right for her. I know she hasn’t got a dad, but who’d want Slimey?

One of the worst things about him is his name … Roland Butter. Can you imagine? I thought at first it was just one of his stupid jokes (he’s always making stupid jokes, like: Where do pigs leave their cars? At porking meters. Ha ha ha, I don’t think). Mum, however, said no, he really was called Roland Butter. He’s an artist, sort of. He draws these yucky pictures of elves and teddy bears and stuff for little kids’ books and he has this headed paper with a drawing of a roll and butter on it. Mum thinks it’s brilliant but that’s because she’s besotted. If you ask me, it’s utterly pathetic and I am certainly not going to change my name to Butter, which is what Mum would like me to do. Cherry Butter! I ask you! How could you get anywhere with a name like that?

Mum’s name is Pat, and guess what? He calls her Butterpat. It’s just so embarrassing.

Dad used to call her Patty. She was Patty and he was Gregg, unless they were having one of their rows and then they didn’t call each other anything at all except names which I am not going to write in this diary in case it is ever published. It is true that Mum and Dad did have rows quite often, but what I can’t understand is why they couldn’t just kiss and make up like Skinny and I do?

We had this really awful row once, me and Skin, about a book I’d lent her which she’d gone and lost by leaving it on a bus and then refused to buy a new one because she said I’d never paid her back the money she’d lent me ages ago when we’d gone swimming and I’d left my purse behind, which definitely and positively was not true. We had this absolutely mega row and swore never to speak to each other again, but life wasn’t the same without Skinny, and Skinny said it wasn’t the same without me, and so after a bit, like about a week, we made it up and we’ve been best friends ever since. Why couldn’t Mum and Dad do that?

Dad’s living in Southampton now. It’s near the New Forest and is really nice, but it takes forever to get there. I can’t go out with him every weekend like I used to when he and Mum first split up and he was still living in London. Then, he’d come and pick me up and we’d do all sorts of things together – McDonald’s, museums, the waxworks. It was really fun. After he got this job and moved to Southampton it meant I could only properly see him in school holidays.

I could have gone with him if I’d wanted. If I’d really wanted. I bet I could. I only stayed with Mum because I thought she’d be lonely. But then she went and met Slimey Roland at some stupid party and they went and got married and now she’s totally loopy about him and I’m the one that’s lonely, not Mum. So I could have gone with Dad.

Except that Dad’s got a new wife called Rosemary, and he’s totally loopy about her, so maybe he wouldn’t want me either. Maybe nobody wants me. Mum says she does but how could she go and marry this creep if that was the case? He’s really slimy. Look at him!

Ha! He’s not the only one that can draw. There’s nothing to it. That is exactly how he looks. Straggly hair and a beard and this long, droopy face like a damp dishcloth. And he’s all freckled and gingery with white skin like a mushroom. Ugh! Whatever does Mum see in him?

She says that if I love her I’ll try and love Slimey, for her sake. I’ve tried. But how can you love someone who has freckles and makes these awful jokes all the time? Another thing he does, he shoves these cards under the bedroom door while I’m asleep. It’s really creepy. I find them lying there waiting for me when I wake up. They’re all covered in these soppy drawings which I think are supposed to be messages. I don’t bother to read them. I just chuck them straight into the waste-paper basket.

I know why he’s doing it. He’s so transparent it’s pathetic. He’s trying to impress me. Well, some hopes! I just think he’s a total nerd.

Mum’s best friend Carol that she was at school with and who is my godmother, but who has now gone to live in Austin, Texas, alas (though she has promised to send me a real American baseball bat for my Christmas present), told me that Mum and Dad had become very unhappy together on account of “developing in different directions”, which meant they didn’t really have anything in common any more – apart from me, that is, but it seems children don’t count.

Carol said that it’s lovely for Mum to be with Slimey because they are both in the same business, with Slimey being an illustrator of children’s books and Mum being something called a copy editor, which means going through books that other people have written and making sure they’ve got their facts right and have put all the commas and fullstops in the right places and haven’t called their heroine Anne Smith on one page and Anne Jones on another.

All I can say is that it may be lovely for Mum, but it isn’t very lovely for me. And if writing a diary means clearing Slimey Roland out of the cupboard then I am ALL FOR IT.

Tuesday

He made another of his awful jokes this morning. He said, “What’s a cannibal’s favourite game?” To humour him and keep Mum happy I said, “What is a cannibal’s favourite game?” though in fact I already knew the answer because it was a joke that was going round when I was in Year 5, for goodness’ sake. So he beams into his beard, all jolly ho ho, and says, “Swallow my leader!” and Mum groans and rolls her eyes, but in a way that means she thinks it’s really quite funny, and I just give this tight little smile and get on with my breakfast. It is extremely irritating when grown-ups behave in this infantile fashion. Doesn’t he realise he’s making a complete idiot of himself?

I have decided to record occasionally what I eat for dinner, because this school’s canteen must I think be the secret weapon of someone who has a hate thing against children. Skinny asked Mr Sherwood the other day why he didn’t eat there. She said, “Is it because you don’t want to be poisoned?” Mr Sherwood said that at his age being poisoned was a distinct possibility. He said, “My digestive system is no longer geared to the hazards of a school canteen.”

If that isn’t an admission, what is???

I told Mum what Mr Sherwood said. I actually put it to her: “If you don’t want to lose me, then maybe I ought to take sandwiches?” All she said was, “Oh, Cherry, don’t be silly! What do you want sandwiches for? You’re spoilt for choice, you people! In my day it was wet mash and soggy greens and that was that, like it or lump it. Now it’s more like a five-star hotel.”

I can only conclude that Mum has never been to a five-star hotel. I asked her to name one and she said, “Oh, the Ritz! The Savoy!” I bet the Ritz and the Savoy don’t dish up plates of disgusting white worms in congealed blood and call it spaghetti. That’s what I had today, white worms in blood. Utterly foul.

Wednesday

Brown worms today. Brown worms in something-I-won’t-put-a-name-to as it makes me feel sick. And anyway, I don’t know how to spell it. Yeeeeeurgh!!!!!

Thursday

There are times when I hate Mum for the way she treats me. Skinny Melon couldn’t walk home with me after school today because, guess what? Her mum was taking her to buy a bra! Skinny Melon who is as thin as a piece of thread! Not a bump to be seen. Not even the beginnings of a bump. I am practically a double-D cup compared to her. I mean, she doesn’t even get on the chart! But her mum is so nice. It’s like she went out and bought her brother a razor for his birthday even though he hadn’t got anything to shave, hardly. So the Melon hasn’t got anything to put in a bra, but still her mum takes her seriously.

She even takes the Blob seriously, for heaven’s sake! The Blob is Skin’s sister and rather immature, as one tends to be at only eight years old. She is still at the stage of asking these dippy questions such as “Where do babies come from?” Skinny’s mum never fobs her off with yucky stories about storks or gooseberry bushes but treats her like a real person and tells her the truth. That’s how grown-ups ought to behave. It is very patronising and hurtful when they laugh at you behind your back, which is what Mum and Slimey do. I’m not saying they do it all the time but it is what they did tonight.

When I got back from school, Slimey was up in his studio (the back bedroom, which ought by rights to have been mine) and I took the opportunity to suggest to Mum in strictest confidence that maybe it was time I, too, started to wear a bra. I said, “If the Melon does and I don’t, I shall get the most terrific inferiority complex … It could stunt the whole of my future sexlife.” Mum said, “Oh, my goodness, we can’t have that! But really why you all want to grow up so quickly I can’t imagine.”

I said, “Why? Isn’t it any fun being grown-up?” and she said, “Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.” So, as I said to her, where’s the difference? She needn’t think it’s all fun being a child, because I can assure her it most definitely is not. Not when the parents go and split up and the child is just left like an old bit of baggage. “Who is going to take it? You or me?” And then they both go and get married again and probably wish there wasn’t any child because really it is such a nuisance, always being so selfish and unpleasant. “Why did we ever have it in the first place?”

If Mum thinks that’s fun, she must have a very strange sense of humour, that’s all I can say.

Anyway, she agreed we could go in on Saturday maybe and buy me a bra, so that was all right. In fact I felt quite warm towards her and thought that in spite of divorcing Dad and marrying the Slime she was every bit as nice a Mum as Skinny’s. I thought of what Carol had said about her and Dad growing apart and I thought that perhaps it was just one of those things that happened and that it wasn’t really her fault. I even half made up my mind that in future I would try to be nicer to her and forgive her for what she’d done.

And THEN she had to go and blow it all. She went and betrayed me with him.

What happened, I’d gone upstairs to wash and she was in the back bedroom with Slimey and she’d left the door a bit open. I wasn’t eavesdropping, but even if I had been, so what? I think one has a right to know what people are saying about one behind one’s back. What I heard Mum say was, “Hasn’t got anything there!” and then go off into these idiotic peals of laughter. I hate her for that. I shall never trust her again. I bet old Slimey thought it was really funny.

And anyway, I’ve got more than Skinny has!

Friday

There is a girl at school called Avril Roper whose dog has just had puppies. She said if anyone wants one they can have one free because the puppies were a mistake and her mum is only interested in them going to people who will love them, not in making money. I tore home like the wind and burst into the kitchen and yelled, “Mum, Mum, can we have a puppy? They’re going free! And they’re small ones, Mum!” I said this because last time I found some puppies, which was before she married Slimey, they were in a pet shop and cost £50 each and were some sort of mixture that was going to grow as tall as the kitchen table and eat us out of house and home. So naturally I thought as these were free, and were tiny, she’d say yes right away, no problem.

Instead she just laughed, sort of nervously, and said, “Puppies are always small, to my knowledge.”

I said, “Yes, but these are going to stay small. Their mum is a Jack Russell and their dad was a Yorkshire terrier.”

You can’t get much smaller than a Yorkshire terrier. And anyway, she promised. As good as. After Dad left and Mum and me were on our own she said, “We’ll get a dog to keep us company.” But she never did. Now here was I offering her one free, so why didn’t she jump at it?

Because of Slimey Roland, that’s why. I said, “You promised!” and this shifty look came into her eyes and she didn’t want to meet my gaze, which is a sure sign of guilt. She said, “I don’t think I actually promised.” I said, “You did! You promised!” Mum said, “I may have mentioned it as a possibility. That’s all.” I said, “Well, now it is a possibility! They’re going for free!”

And then Mum sighed and said, “Cherry, I’d love a dog as much as you would, but how can we? You know Roly’s allergic.” I said, “Allergic to dogs?” How can anyone be allergic to dogs? I said, “I know he has hay fever.” But hay fever is pollen. Mum said, “I’m afraid it’s not just hay fever. The poor man’s allergic to all kinds of things – dust, pollution, house mites …”

And dogs. He just would be, wouldn’t he? He’s that sort of person. All wimpy and sniffly and red-eyed. So Mum has to break her promise just because of him!

Saturday

That creep shoved another note under my door. Something about a tortoise. I don’t want a rotten tortoise! I want a dog. Mum promised me.

This morning we went into the shops and I got a couple of bras, one white and one pink. I suppose they’re all right, but it’s all gone a bit sour now that I know she and Slime have been sniggering about it. I keep picturing them lying in bed together having this good laugh.

I chucked his note into the waste-paper basket along with all the others. If he doesn’t stop doing it, it’ll soon be full to overflowing. Mum said today that we are going to have a new regime. She said, “I looked into your bedroom yesterday and it’s like a pigsty,” to which I instantly retorted that as a matter of fact pigs left to themselves are extremely clean and intelligent animals. It’s only horrible farmers that make them dirty by not allowing them to lead natural lives. To which Mum said, thinking herself very clever, “Well in future I am going to leave you to yourself and we shall see how clean and intelligent you are. From here on in -” (that is a phrase she has picked up from Carol my godmother, who has picked it up in Austin, Texas) “- from here on in I wash my hands of your bedroom. You can take sole responsibility for it. Right?”

I just humped a shoulder, feeling generally disgruntled on account of Mum breaking her promise about the dog. Mum said again, “Right?” and I muttered “Right,” and Slimey Roland did his best to catch my eye across the table and wink, but I refused to take any notice.