Jenny Q, Stitched Up Read online

  A horrible thought dawns upon me and I manage a hoarse croak of despair. ‘She’s going to eat all of my favourite things for this pregnancy.’

  ‘Seems that way.’

  ‘That’s so totally serious.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  I have to know that there are good and steady supplies of top chocolate snacks and peanut butter in the house or I go into a decline. I don’t have to eat them; I just need to know that they are there … JUST IN CASE. Of course I do eat them ASAP too. Why can’t Mum want to eat chalk? Or firelighters? Those are proper pregnancy cravings.

  ‘She’ll be stealing for two,’ Dixie says.

  It’s a tremendously good point, and v v worrying. That’s Dixie for you: she can just cut to the crux of a problem. It’s not always a comfort but it is the Way of Things. We’re poring over this (devastating) revelation when there’s a timid knock on the door.

  ‘Uggs, I know that’s you, but you’d better not have that mutt with you,’ I shout. ‘If she is, I really cannot be held responsible for my actions.’

  I hear a kerfuffle and some stifled barks, so I know Gypsy is, indeed, with him.

  ‘She wants to apologize,’ he says through the door.

  ‘She’s incapable of remorse,’ I point out, stressing the ‘incapable’ for good measure.

  I happen to know, for an actual fact, that Gypsy lies to get her own way. OK, it’s doggy lying, but lying all the same and therefore despicable. Gypsy is the same age as Uggs and me, which makes her ancient in dog years, like nearly a hundred or something.* This is probably why she is unreasonable on every point and impossible to deal with.

  She’s seriously messed up too and has weirdo habits. Example: Uggs says when the postman drops the mail through their letterbox she only eats the electricity bills, then goes around like a doggy zombie with a stupid grin on her mutty visog. Dixie’s theory is that the glue on the envelope is made from some intensely delicious ingredient that Gypsy just cannot resist, like cats with catnip, and that’s why she goes for those. It’s Gyp Nip to her. Well, it’s a theory, even if it’s not a great one. Gypsy did nibble on a padded envelope once, but her teeth popped the bubble wrap and she got the fright of her hairy life and left well enough alone after that. I thought it was a total hoot to see her furry face trying to figure out what had just happened.

  Uggs risks his life and opens the door. He’s holding That Dog in his arms so that she can’t dart in (and do something awful). I start a bit of pointing and raise my voice and just as I reach a very high, shrieky shriek I notice Dermot is tramping upstairs with his mates, no doubt heading to his room to listen to loud electric-guitar music.† And, sure enough, they all stop a moment to see and hear me. I just know they have a vision of my huge, faded knickers and I’m now making the sound of a demented owl to go with it. (Yes, I am screeching.) Last up is Stevie Lee Bolton.

  I am struck dumb then and stand with my mouth opening and closing like a stunned goldfish. My face is heating up alarmingly. At least I don’t blush, ever, so that’s something.

  He sort of holds his head to one side and says, ‘You’re funny,’ but I don’t know if that’s funny GOOD or funny BAD.

  I manage to gurgle, ‘Oh, you know!’ with a shrug of my shoulders, as if it’s all part of some brilliant plan I have to amuse people with my utter goofiness. Then he only goes and pats bloomin’ Gypsy on the head and I’m not sure if he was talking to the ruddy dog all along and not me. Why has the ground not opened up and swallowed me by now? I watch his back as he disappears into Dermot’s room.

  ‘Dix?’ I squeak, like a Gyp-yip.

  ‘Again, dunno if that was good or bad for you,’ she says. ‘He’s nearly impossible to read.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be the sensitive one,’ I point out. ‘You’re the self-confessed EXPERT on human beings.’

  ‘It was good for the dog,’ she says. ‘Pretty sure of that.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so comforting.’ My voice is dripping scorn (I hope).

  ‘You overdo it with the word “so”.’

  ‘SO?’

  She can’t figure out if I am being brilliantly smart or plain sarcastic like Miss Holding,‡ our English teacher. I’m not sure myself but I won’t be drawn on it.

  ‘You went SO red,’ Dixie says.

  I know a) that she is using SO in a manner which is meant to be ironic and clever re our last exchange, and b) that SO cannot be true! I never, but never, blush. It SO wouldn’t go with my hair for starters (which, as I’ve mentioned, is strawberry blonde, NOT ginger).

  I don’t dignify any of it with a spoken word but prance back to the bed and fling myself on to it like I wanted to earlier. So does Gyp. I haven’t the energy to swat her off.

  Uggs is standing on the spot, probably trying to make himself invisible. ‘Sorry,’ he mutters.

  ‘Sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it,’ I assure him and add ‘Eugene’ for good measure. He knows that if I’m using his full and formal title he’s in dire trouble.

  He mutters again, ‘I think you’re funny, Jen. Good funny.’

  I pull a pillow over my head and fantasize that if I went to sleep now everything would be back to normal when I woke up. Yes, maybe I am actually asleep and this is all a dodgy dream? PLEASE …

  Location, Location, Location!

  When I open my eyes I am entirely and duly disappointed to see that my surroundings are the same. And Uggs still looks v sheepish, which means that my fantasy has not come true and I have definitely been humiliated on multiple levels today. He is lucky that we have been neighbours for our whole lives, or he would truly feel the wrath* of Jenny Q.

  For thirteen years we have lived in Oakdale, though guess what, yep, there are no oaks any more (if there ever were to begin with) and precious little dale, whatever one of those is when it’s at home. The estate is basically a grid of semi-detached houses and the size of the houses is getting smaller all the time if you listen to my parents and other boring neighbour oldies. They’re all obsessed with property. It’s a nightmare to have to sit and listen to them when they gather over dinner and discuss:

  a) what we’ve done with our house;

  b) what they’ve done to theirs;

  c) what they’d like to do to theirs;

  d) and what mine would like to see them do to theirs.

  And then vice versa on the last two items but about what mine would and should do to this house.

  Of course, now that Ireland is in a recession, all anyone over twenty years of age can obsess about is houses and land and how they shouldn’t have bought any when they did because nothing is worth what it used to be any more. Dermot loves teasing Mum and Dad about it all.

  DERMOT: We’re the ones who’re gonna have to pay for it, ultimately. Isn’t that right, Jen?

  ME (sad and resigned, disappointed because they should be ashamed of themselves): Yes, Dermot, that’s true. They should be ashamed of themselves.

  It usually turns into what Dermot will dub a Classic Sporting Moment, and about the only time we come out on top in a family argument.

  Sweet.

  Uggs’s parents moved into Forest Drive at the same time as mine, when we were both bumps inside of our mums.† Uggs’s house is the mirror image of ours, so everything is the same but facing the opposite way. It’s our house back-to-front. And his mum loves bright colours in a way that’s scary more than uplifting sometimes. She really believes in yellow above all others. It’s best to wear sunglasses visiting the Nightingales’.

  Dixie lives in the next street along, Forest Walk. All the streets have leafy names and I think the builders are beginning to run out of ideas. Last year the latest phase of building was Glade Vale, which just sounds like a make of air freshener to me, or a rubbish deodorant, such as the one Dermot uses.

  My dad works in advertising and he has to think up new names for things all the time. He’s forever trying out stuff on us at home. Mum says we should beware of reducing life to bite-sized chun
ks of words because it’s way too important and huge for that. She says you can’t get by on clichés and Dad usually says that clichés are simply things that are TOO TRUE. And he’s not above thieving an idea either if he thinks it’s good. Like, you know that campaign that went ‘Poverty? Make it matter.’ That was mine. Stolen. His reasoning was that I didn’t need it, but he did and so did the world. He claims he was just releasing it into the community. Yeah, right. OK, I know this all makes me sound sour and cynical, but really my family are the END … and about to expand.

  An Unforgivable Crime

  I probably should take an interest in this pregnancy – it’s not like I’ll be able to avoid it. I’d get a book from the library on such matters, but that would probably start tongues wagging with all sorts of mad gossip. EEK, people might think I’m the one who’s pregnant! This situation is a minefield.

  Brian Cox took out a medical book about embarrassing diseases once, for a laugh, and everyone thought he had something awful. You can imagine the teasing he got. Obviously he has the same name as the seriously hot (though ancient) physics professor from the television, so everyone now calls our Brian ‘Professor’, which is meant entirely ironically but he doesn’t get that (as he is a dork) and he’s well pleased with the title. Mr Ford, our science teacher, reckons physics is now way cool because of the real Professor Brian Cox being on television* and he keeps torturing us with it as a result.

  Anyway, the point is that people jump to conclusions and once a whiff of a rumour is out there it grows every time someone passes it on and then we get the old ‘no smoke without fire’ scenario and suddenly you find yourself living in a cliché because everyone thinks it’s TOO TRUE, as my dad is so fond of telling us.

  ‘You’re humming,’ Dixie says, pulling me out of my daydream.

  I hadn’t noticed, which means I am, like, totally stressed. I’ve hummed quite a bit for singing lessons and being in the choir and so on, but when I do it and don’t realize I’m doing it – that’s a sign that Jenny Q is under siege.

  ‘This is so totally when you should reach for your knitting needles,’ Dixie says. ‘It’s a well-known soother of stress.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can be trusted with a sharp stick just now,’ I say.

  ‘Or two,’ Uggs points out nervously.

  ‘If you ran up a tension square, you might feel better, though?’ Dixie says.

  Dixie may be about to go philosophical on me, using knitting as a metaphor for life, which might be fine another time but right now we have An Urgent Situation, so I call to order an impromptu meeting of the Gang, as I am clearly (and quickly) going out of my mind. I’m so far gone now I’m even willing to ignore the fact that Gypsy seems to be settling down on my pillow for her afternoon kip.

  ‘How did we miss this?’ I ask, for openers.

  ‘WE?’ Dixie raises an eyebrow. ‘You’ll forgive us if watching out for signs of your parents getting jiggy with each other was not top of the agenda.’

  ‘Dixie! Show a bit of support,’ I say.

  I must look and sound fearsome – or deranged – because she relents. ‘What has your mum done recently that’s been strange?’

  ‘Stranger than usual, you mean.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ she says. ‘It’s a given that parents are strange, so I’m looking for odder than what we loosely call normal … normally.’

  I trawl through my memories of the last few months. All I can come up with is that Mum’s been sleeping a lot and that she seemed to be going to the loo more than usual. Also, she was looking a bit like she’d had too many roast dinners for a while, getting a bit chubby all round. I offer up these meagre gems.

  ‘Classic early symptoms,’ Uggs says.

  How does a thirteen-year-old BOY know that? Both Dixie and I look at him like the freak he is. Which reminds me, Dixie said a while back that she thought Uggs was getting cuter, which is wrong on so many levels, not least because a) it suggests that he might have been cute to begin with, and b) he so wasn’t, is not now nor ever will be. I honestly thought she’d been at the cooking sherry like her brother Kev, who is a delinquent.

  There’s a silence in the room – from the humans, that is; Gypsy is snoring on my pillow and probably dribbling on it too so it’ll be all wet and smelly and hairy when she’s done. YUCK!

  I can hear the music getting cranked up in Dermot’s room. He has snaffled Dad’s record and CD collection because, apparently, that’s brilliantly ‘retro’, and now he’s big into a guy called Eric Clapton, so his song ‘Layla’ is blaring out. There’s a guitar solo in there that all the lads will play air-guitar to – grossly embarrassing for all concerned, even if they don’t seem to see it that way. I signal to Dixie to put on something (ANYTHING) on my stereo. Before she gets to press a button at all, I hear my mum in the distance singing along with the Clapton track and without looking I know she’s bopping along to it too. She’s forty-three, pregnant, dancing and singing – can she not see what’s wrong with this picture? I live in a madhouse.

  We spend a while in silence and it has to be said we’re probably in shock. Gypsy is snoring and snuffling and chasing imaginary rabbits in her dreams.† Me, Dix and Uggs are staring into space, hoping a foxy plan will present itself to us.‡

  Then there’s a knock on the door and Mum is there holding a tray of lemonade and three two-finger Kit Kats – nothing for Gyp: she’s not allowed chocolate or fizzy drinks for messy reasons I’d prefer not to go into just now. We accept them graciously and, when she’s gone, Dixie and I let out a communal gasp.

  ‘They weren’t in the biscuit tin earlier,’ I say. ‘Believe me, I checked.’

  Uggs is the one to give words to the unspeakable: ‘She has a secret stash.’

  It is so. She does. This is close to a war crime in the world of Jenny Q. It is gobsmacking villainy.

  The only one with a secret stash around here is me. ME = Jennifer Alison Margaret Quinn. There’ll be hard times ahead …

  Quinn Family Quirks

  While Uggs and Dixie argue over which album should drown out the sounds of Eric Clapton, it seems the right time to take stock of the Quinn family fortunes, as clearly we are a law unto ourselves as far as normality goes. Sod’s Law says that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This could have been invented for us Quinns. For instance, with my dad working in advertising you’d think we’d be showered with all the latest buzzmost items, but no. By the time we get anything in our house it’s so last year. The last time he brought something new home it was a shampoo and conditioner range that we all became allergic to and we itched like we had nits for weeks. Dad still went on to write advertisements for it as if it was harmless. Here’s how it went when we quizzed him:

  ME (I’ll admit I was a bit on my high horse so you’ll have to imagine that voice, which is high and horsey): Dad, how can you tell people to buy this stuff when it’s going to bring them out in a rash?

  DAD (defensive): Not everyone. Don’t exaggerate, Jennifer.

  ME: Oooh, Jennifer.

  DERMOT: You lose points for being childish, Jen. (This makes me boil because he’s right.)

  MUM: She has a point, Doug.

  DAD: Look, folks,* if I were a lawyer, I’d believe everyone was entitled to the best representation money could buy. And so, following that along, in this case I am giving them every chance of proving themselves with this product.

  At least he wasn’t cynical enough (on that occasion) to suggest he was doing it for the good of mankind (like my stolen poverty slogan).

  ME (sarky): Well, anyone using this stuff will notice a difference, that’s for sure.

  DAD: Brilliant, Jen!

  And he only went and used that! ‘Try it – you’ll notice the difference!’ was the tag at the end of each advert. I was indignant and told him as much, in no uncertain terms. It went as follows:

  ME: Dad, I’m entirely indignant that you stole yet another slogan from me.

  DAD: Jen, Jen, Jen – chillax!†
You should be proud to be making a contribution to the household with the money we’ve earned from it. Believe me, I’d credit you for your work if only I could, but I’m fairly sure it’s illegal to have you ‘working’ at all because you’re underage.

  I give up, I really do.

  Anyhow, what I mean is the Quinns are proof positive that humans underestimate the occurrence of the unexpected so much, too much. I cite this pregnancy – no one saw it coming.‡ I can just HEAR everyone gossiping delightedly:

  ‘Vic Quinn is having a baby. Imagine.’ = ARGH!

  But what could I have done even if I had known or guessed it was about to happen? I might have raided the cookie jar and saved all worthwhile chocolate-based confectionery, but that would have been a short-term solution to a rather longer-term problem.

  I suppose I’m probably going to have to stop calling it a ‘problem’. Perhaps I should refer to it as the ‘surprise’ and people can take that any way they please.

  Photo Evidence

  I’m rubbish at planning ahead. And though I know we ought to be in control of ourselves, if we can’t control other people, and it seems we cannot, I wonder why we bother at all. I mean if other wretches* can’t be relied on to follow the basic ‘please don’t embarrass me, whatever about yourself’ rule, what’s a gal to do?

  And there is more. It appears that biological warfare in the Quinn family is no new thing.

  I looked up the word ‘anomaly’ in the dictionary a while back because I was fairly sure we had one in the family. The definition of an anomaly is ‘something that deviates from what is usual or expected’. Ours lives in a flat attached to our house. It’s my grandmother. She’s a ‘granomaly’.†

  The major problem with women in a family is when there are women in a family. It’s a similar problem for families with men. So that’s families in trouble, right there, from the off. Gran (a woman) lives in what should be our garage. No one else in the estate has such an arrangement. It marks us out even further as an oddball family. Put that into the problem pipe and smoke it, as someone might say if a) there was such an item to be had and b) smoking wasn’t THE most disgusting thing ever invented by humanity.‡