Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,89
from a couple of speakers on the stage. Standing with the other social rejects in the darkest corner we could find, I’d made myself queasy on fizzy drinks and salted peanuts while I watched the other girls dance in ritualistic circles, all moving in the same rhythm, making the same gestures, following one another’s steps. I’d hated those girls, but I’d hated myself more for longing so hard for inclusion in their tight, satisfied little groups. But now, though I still anticipated the Reatton disco with trepidation, the sea change in my social standing meant that I didn’t have to await it with utter dread. Besides, after Tracey told me that she and her family were leaving the next day to spend the entire Christmas holidays with her grandparents, who lived in Cleethorpes, I realized that the disco would be the last time I’d be able to see Amanda for a while.
In preparation for this pivotal event, I’d managed to talk my father into buying me a pair of orange bell-bottoms and a yellow-and-beige shirt that I ordered from the Littlewoods catalog that Mabel had left with us during her last visit. On the model in the catalog, of course, the vivid colors and lustrously smooth polyester had looked stunning, and I’d imagined transforming myself into a similarly bold and stylish girl who didn’t mind standing out in a crowd. When the clothes arrived, however, the effect was a little less impressive and I couldn’t help feeling that their oversized buttons, billowing lines, and glaring brightness only declared my desperation to fit in. Nevertheless, the evening of the disco, I put on my new outfit and my least hideous pair of shoes and readied myself to leave.
When I walked into our newly decorated living room to announce my departure, I was surprised to see my mother sitting in her dressing gown in one of the armchairs, her legs draped over the side of the chair, slippers dangling from her toes. There was a powdery ring of icing sugar around her mouth, evidence that she had joined my father in finishing off the plate of leftover mince pies he’d brought home that evening from the Christmas party at his job. It had been quite a while since I’d seen her under the living room’s bright lights, and for the first time I noticed how astonishingly thin and pale she’d become. Her skin had a grayish tinge and seemed pressed tight over her bones, so that her eyes, nose, and chin seemed bigger, more prominent, while her legs, sticking out from under her dressing gown, appeared impossibly white and etched in pale blue veins.
“We got a Christmas card from your grandma today,” she said, waving a card at me. It held a picture of a group of beaming children building a snowman. I wondered if my father had used news of this correspondence from Australia to coax my mother out of bed.
“That’s nice,” I said.
“Yes, well, it’s also signed by that bloody Australian gigolo of hers. Look at this,” my mother said, opening the card and flapping it at me again. “‘All our love,’ it says, ‘Mam and Bill.’ Like he thinks he’s part of the bloody family now.” She let go of the card and it fluttered to the floor. “I mean, who the heck does he think he is?”
“It’s only a card, Mum. He’s only trying to—”
“And where do you think you’re going, madam?” she interrupted, giving my new outfit a once-over and again making me doubt the wisdom of my purchase.
“I’m going to a disco,” I said calmly, not wanting to aggravate her. If she felt like it, she could easily decide to make me stay at home.
“You’re going to a disco?” she repeated, her tone so appalled anyone would have thought I’d just announced that I was planning to attend a get-together of the local Hells Angels. It infuriated me that she could spend literally weeks hidden away in her bedroom with no clue about my daily whereabouts and now, barely out of bed and still in her nightclothes, she was playing the part of a conscientious parent concerned about my moral welfare. “Does your father know?” she asked, implying that if he did he’d put a stop to this outrageous plan.
My father didn’t seem to hear her. He was chewing on a mince pie and watching Look North, the local news program that always followed the BBC News.
“Yes,” I said. “He’s picking me up after.” Tracey and