It was nearing four o' clock by the time I reached the front door - which, by no stroke of coincidence, was the same time I usually arrived home from school. My mother would never know I'd cut the whole day and spent it elsewhere; I felt like a master of artifice. When I reached to push the front door open, however, it swung towards me.
I jumped back with a yelp and felt the entirety of my wellbeing deflate at the sight of Edith Vespin. A faint look of disgust passed over her face at the sight of me, one that probably echoed my own.
"Oh, Sapphire," she said, and forced a smile that looked entirely unnatural beneath those pointed, waspy eyes. "What are you doing here?"
Edith Vespin. This woman had brought into the world the one person that I could truly confess to hating. The one person in town that I wanted bad things to happen to. And the worst part was that Carmen looked exactly like her. They'd crawled out of the same rotten hive. They were the same, right down to the toxic stripes and the barbed stingers.
"I live here," I said. I made no move to conceal the bluntness from my voice.
Edith passed a tongue over her teeth, as though testing their sharpness. "How funny," she said. "Tell me, how was school today?"
My blood turned to ice in my veins. She knew. Somehow - although the mystery was doubtlessly alleviated by the existence of her daughter -the head magpie had got her talons on the one scrap of information that I wanted to keep away from my mother.
As though she'd heard her name spoken in my thoughts, Vivian appeared in the background, a full two heads shorter than Edith. Her face was bright with fury that, when Edith glanced at her, turned into a well-composed - albeit violently purple - smile.
"Vivian, I'll see you at the next meeting," she said. "I hope you're taking notes on Austen's Jane Eyre."
"That's Charlotte Bronte," I blurted out.
Edith blinked at me. "Pardon?"
"Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, not Jane Austen, ma'am." I'd never used the term 'ma'am' before, but decorum seemed an appropriate way to chide her.
I could see the contempt bubbling up behind Edith's countenance like lava. "Oh, yes, how careless of me. Well, after all the profound insights you brought up last week, Vivian, we're expecting nothing short of brilliance at the next meeting. Chow for now!"
And with a gloved wave of her hand, she brushed passed me and vanished. I looked back at my mother. "Chow for now? Who says 'chow for now'?"
I forced a meek laugh, which was immediately obliterated by the return of my mother's rage. Her head looked like the swollen glazed cherry on top of the cake.
"Who says 'chow for now'? I'll tell you who says 'chow for now'!" Vivian boomed, grabbing me by the arm and yanking me inside with a single last glance at the street outside. "You. You will be saying chow to your social life when I ban you from leaving your bedroom until Christmas!"
She shoved me on the shoulder, and I landed with thud on the sofa. The pillows released a puff of air, as though Vivian had spent the whole afternoon fluffing them up with a balloon-pump. "You know, your idea of punishment sounds like my idea of heaven."
"Well then I'll make you join a club or something! A drama club, or a debate team or something else that requires copious amount of human interaction!" Vivian's voice reached a piercing crescendo, and I instinctively narrowed my eyes as though that would somehow lessen the blow to my ears. "Skipping a whole day of school, Sapphire? What's gotten into you? Where have you been all day?"
"Just... just..." My mind grabbed at empty thoughts, and eventually snatched the most juvenile alibi my brain could provide. "Just around! It's not like it's any of your business!"
"None of my business?" Vivian echoed, her eyes threatening to pop right out of her head. "Everything you do is my business; you're my daughter. You wait until your father hears about this! And to hear it from Edith, of all people!"
"I can't believe you're listening to her before you'll even hear me out!" I spat back at her. I knew I sounded like a whiny teenager - and, to a certain degree, I was - but she was choosing to fraternise with the enemy. And she was my mother. It simply wasn't acceptable.
My mother sat down on the seat opposite me and crossed both her legs and her arms. Her face was still the colour of cranberries. "Go on, then."
I stared at her blankly. "What?"
"Explain yourself. Tell me what happened before I hear it from somebody else. Enlighten me as to why my only daughter has surrendered to a life of rebellion and reckless abandon. What's next? A criminal record?"
"Mum, just shut up!" I cried. Vivian fell silent and winced at me, before curtly pulling a pair of pinched fingers across her lips as though she were drawing a zip. Then she pointed at me.
Talk, her expression said.
"Thank you, geez," I said, and then a vast expanse of silence opened up before me. Now that she'd passed me the microphone, what could I possibly tell her? The truth? That Carmen was waging a hate-campaign against me and my ghost-friend had convinced me to skip school, hole up in an abandoned theatre and plot my revenge?
Vivian sighed, cleared her throat and tapped her watch.
"Alright, alright!" I snapped. "God. The reason I skipped school was because... because... you know what, it's actually quite a long, complicated story-"
"Saffy," my mother said, sternly.
"Fine! I skipped today because Carmen Vespin is a bitch and she's been humiliating me in front of the whole school because I'm fat. I just couldn't face it. Not today. Alright? Is that explanation satisfactory?"
Vivian looked as though I'd slapped her across the face with a trout. "Oh, Saffy..."
I over-exaggeratedly puffed out my lips, as though that would somehow combat the awkwardness that opened up before us like a fissure in the living-room floor. "Yep."
A few minutes of stillness passed by. At some point, my mother vaulted across the canyon that had sliced across our living room and came to land next to me with her arm around my shoulder and her lips pressed into my hair. I didn't realise I was crying until I brought my hand up to my eyes and it came away wet.
"Saffy, you look at me." Vivian clasped my chin between her fingers and turned my head to look up at her. Her expression was one of earnest, of heartfelt compassion. "Listen. Don't you listen to that Carmen girl, alright? She's a bad egg," she said, and then she paused for a second before adding, "laid by a particularly nasty bird. Do you know what she said to me after our last book club meeting?"
I shook my head miserably. "Who?"
"Edith! She said that my lemon polenta cake was too exotic to accompany the studies of our national literature. But did she still go back for a second slice? Yes, she did. Absolutely ridiculous-" Vivian paused, flicked an indignant eye my way, and then cleared her throat. "But yes, anyway, back to you. Don't you dare listen to that Carmen girl, alright? Underneath all that make-up and hair dye she's a terrible, ugly person. And you are beautiful. You're just like me; you carry a little added weight, but there's nothing wrong with that. We're perfectly healthy. Healthier than those twigs, I dare say."
"I guess," I mused, and then I tilted my head. "Come to think of it, I wonder what she really does look like. For all we know, she's got a third nipple or something on her face."
Vivian laughed and ran her hands through my hair. "I'm not sure even the most advanced cosmetics in the world could cover that up, Saffy. But yes, you've got the gist of it."
"Mum, aren't you still mad that I skipped school?"
Vivian's face turned serious, as though she'd quite forgotten that she was meant to be reprimanding me. "Of course. You did something very out of character today, Saffy. But I'm willing to overlook it just this once if you promise not to take more of this Carmen's crap, alright? Stop running away and stand up for yourself."
My poor mother, I thought. She was terrible at giving advice. "Maybe I'll take up hockey."
"What?"
"Nothing, just something Bev said at work," I said, and I shook my head briskly. "But wait. This is hardly fair."
Vivian frowned. "What isn't fair? I just let you off the hook for something that would usually warrant me depriving you of dessert for the rest of-"
"Not that! I mean, it's hardly fair that I have to stand up to my enemies when you never stand up to yours."
"I still don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do," I objected. "Stop pretending that you and Edith are best friends. She's horrible to you. She uses you because you're the most likely to bend over and-"
"Saffy," my mother warned.
"Whatever, I'm sorry!" I shook my head impatiently. "But you know what I mean! You let her walk all over you. She uses you for your house and your bad-ass baking skills. You know it's true."
Vivian looked down at her hands, her lips pulled inwards and her cheeks puffed out so that she looked like a timid little bird. "I know she's horrible to me. Do you know, she came over here earlier to tell me that she'd received a text from her daughter that said you'd bolted out of school as though I'd be pleased about it. She was actually grinning when she said it, like it was the best news she'd heard all week."
"Oh, mum." Vivian was staring into space, her expression contorted as though she were possessed by a demonic rage.
"I bet she's with Mavis Peabody right now, telling her the good news over marble cake," Vivian said, and then she pinned me with a dagger-like gaze. "And do you want to know something?"
"Sure."
"You mustn't say anything."
"Cross my heart."
Vivian leaned in close, her voice lowered to barely a whisper. "Mavis's cakes are shop-bought. She doesn't even make them herself."
I fought back the urge to laugh and instead conjured up the most astonished expression I could manage. "You're kidding me."
"I spotted the packaging last week," she continued, looking infinitely pleased. "Poking out of her bin. She was serving up red velvet cake that she claimed was baked freshly that morning, but lo and behold, there was a wrapper for red velvet cake in the bin. Explain that one, Mavis Peabody!"
This time I did laugh; I couldn't help it. I reached around, pulled my mother close and wrapped my arms around her waist. She was soft and sweet-smelling, as though she'd spritzed her wrists with vanilla extract. "Mum, I love you."
Vivian looked confused. "I love you, too. Now hurry up and get upstairs. Your dad will be home soon and I need to make it look like you're being punished. When he pops in to tell you off, try and look miserable, ok?"
"That shouldn't be hard," I snorted. There was nothing that could turn this day around, not even the politics of my mother's convoluted, cake-ruled world. When was the first episode of The Real Housewives of Magpie's Nest going to be on air, I wondered?
I bounded towards the stairs, school bag slung over my shoulder, and halted halfway up when my mother called me back. I turned. "What?"
Vivian smiled up at me. "Will you please help me with Jane Eyre for this week's Book Club meeting? I just don't get this Mr Rochester guy, seems like a nutter to me."
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