What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,16
herself sometimes, since Nan never counted them. They made you feel better, although they gave you a headache the next day, and if you took more than one, which she had only tried the once, your legs didn’t work properly.
‘I’ll find them for you,’ Pauline offered, and escaped the kitchen.
‘Never lifts a bloody finger when you’re not around,’ she heard Nan say.
‘Thinks I don’t know what the little bugger’s like,’ Joanne retorted fondly.
Pauline found the tablets down by Nan’s rank special chair, which had a perfect imprint of the back of Nan’s head and Nan’s bum worn into it. Gary was in the room watching cartoons with Pauline’s little brother, Craig, as well as Uncle Dave, Uncle Alan, Uncle Dave’s current girlfriend, Sharon, Sharon’s baby, Christopher, and Sharon’s brother, Keith. Craig tried to start a fight for the pill bottle when she picked it up off the floor, just because she wanted it, but he let go after Pauline kicked him in the face.
Pauline was furtively relieved to find that Joanne had disappeared when she returned to the kitchen, sneaking a couple of tablets into her jumper pocket for herself before she handed them to Nan. Joanne had run out of Coke for her rum and gone for fresh supplies. That was just one of the many remarkable things about her: she always went to the shops herself, instead of sending the kids out like the rest of the family did. When Joanne got back, she’d bought a lot more than the Coke: cans of beer for the uncles and Keith, dandelion and burdock and Tizer for the kids, bags of crisps, a Swiss roll, fags, milk, a bottle of lime shampoo and another plastic bottle which she flourished at Pauline.
‘Get us a towel, gyppo!’ she shouted excitedly. Pauline found one on the floor in Uncle Dave’s room, frayed and stiff with stains. If she ever needed to dry herself she used the candlewick spread that was the only covering on her own bed, shared with Cheryl. But since the taps in the bathroom basin had stopped delivering water, there hadn’t been much need for this.
Back in the kitchen, Joanne made her sit on a chair and draped the towel round her shoulders, wrinkling her nose at the smell.
‘I’m off to the launderette tomorrow,’ she told Nan. It was the only time anything got washed, when Joanne came home. She held up the bottle she’d got from the shops.
‘Stay still,’ she commanded. Pauline tried, but when Joanne opened the bottle and poured the stuff on to her hair, the smell made her eyes water and her throat burn. Joanne told her not to be such a baby, and used the comb to spread the liquid through her hair. It made the skin on her scalp burn and then sting like the worst nettle patch in the world, but she had to wait half an hour until Joanne bent her over the kitchen sink and rubbed shampoo into her hair, careless of whether it went into her eyes. Pauline finally couldn’t help crying at the varieties of pain she was suffering, which Joanne found hilarious.
‘Great big bloody baby,’ she laughed, and poured another mug full of scalding water over Pauline’s head. Pauline pushed her tongue against her teeth to stop herself shouting out, knowing that Joanne’s amusement could quickly turn to impatience, which led to other sorts of pain. Finally, Joanne stopped rinsing, and attacked Pauline’s head with the towel, scrubbing her hair dry. The friction was agony on her sensitized scalp, but by now all the different pains had blended into one prevailing hurt, so universal that it almost didn’t matter.
‘How d’you think I get looking the way I do, eh?’ asked Joanne, as Pauline snivelled in misery.
Joanne’s hair was deep orange, with a white streak at the front. Her skin glowed against it, very pale. Pauline found her mam almost unbearably beautiful. Her eyes were huge, and so dark that they looked as black as her eyelashes, spiked with mascara. Joanne had got rid of her own eyebrows and pencilled brown arcs high on her forehead. The lipstick on her thin mouth was pearly pale, as though she’d been kept in a freezer. She looked very different without her make-up, Pauline knew, lost and unemphatic. But she rarely took it off, preferring to apply each day’s brows and eyes and lips over the smudged version from the previous day.