Following Flora - Hardcover

Being a combination of conventional diary entries, attempts at film scripts and transcripts of short films shot by the author with the camera she was given for her thirteenth birthday.

INTERIOR. EVENING.

The Gadsby family kitchen in the basement of the big house in Chatsworth Square is a mess. Bubbling pans crowd the stove. A collapsed chocolate cake balances on top of a fruit bowl. The sink is piled high with dirty dishes. Water drips, steady and unnoticed, onto the floor. FATHER sets the table, looking grumpy. FLORA sits at one end of the sofa under the window. She wears leopard-print leggings, an emerald-green sweater, and the fedora she has refused to take off since she had her hair cropped and dyed peroxide blond last week on her seventeenth birthday. She is reading a play. At the other end of the sofa, nine-year-old JASMINE is her complete opposite—tiny, with tangled black hair falling down to her waist, a long black tunic over black jeans, and silver high-tops. She is reading a poem called The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

MOTHER, covered in flour and melted chocolate, stands by the cooking range. She is flustered. She tastes the contents of a pan (tonight she is making goulash), burns her tongue, and throws the spoon in the sink.

NOTE 1: For the past year, Sunday night dinner has been prepared by ZORAN, the Gadsby family’s au pair, who started out being able to cook nothing but sausages, but by the time he moved out a month ago he became a seriously good cook. He is coming for dinner tonight for the first time since he left to become a full-time music teacher, and Mother is determined to make an impression.

FATHER

I should be writing my book. I should not be setting tables. Remind me again why we are doing this?

FLORA

(smirks, still reading her play)

Mum wants to show us she cooks just as well as Zoran.

MOTHER

I am simply throwing together a meal for an old friend.

FATHER

It doesn’t look simple to me, it looks . . .

MOTHER

What?

FATHER

Excessive.

Mother glares at Father. For a moment, it looks like she is going to throw the goulash at his head, but then a football sails in through the garden door (left open despite the cold night air because it is so hot in the kitchen), followed by TWIG.

The football crashes into the set table and breaks several glasses.

NOTE 2: Since Twig turned eleven last summer, the family joke is that his legs have grown so fast he doesn’t know what to do with them. And sure enough, no sooner does Twig burst into the room after the ball than he trips over his legs, and ends up sprawled on the floor, leaving a trail of mud and wet leaves.

TWIG

(somewhat awestruck by the damage he has done)

I swear I didn’t do that on purpose.

Telephone rings. Mother answers, looking increasingly dejected as she murmurs phrases like “of course I understand” and “please let us know if there is anything we can do to help.”

MOTHER

(hangs up the phone, looking like she wants to cry)

That was Zoran. Someone has had a heart attack. He’s not coming.

FATHER

(surveying the ruined table)

After all that?

MOTHER

David, someone has had a heart attack.

She notices CAMERAMAN for the first time.

MOTHER

Blue, what are you doing with that camera?

CAMERAMAN (BLUEBELL)

I’m starting up my diary again.

MOTHER

Turn it off, now.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3

I have noticed that people only write in diaries when there’s something wrong, write properly I mean. Over the past few months I’ve only used up about half a notebook, and most of those entries are all “I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last wrote” or “oh dear I feel guilty because the holidays are over and I haven’t once opened this notebook,” but today I have got right back into it because Mum and Dad are fighting again. Last year, when Zoran came to live with us as our au pair, we were falling apart because my twin sister, Iris, had died three years before and we still missed her so much, but things started to get better after he arrived. In fact, they improved so much that when he tried to resign last Christmas, we wouldn’t let him go. Even after Mum and Dad decided to leave their old jobs so they could be at home more (Dad is a full-time writer and Mum works for a smaller makeup company that doesn’t make her travel), he stayed with us right up until the summer, when he finally completed his PhD in Medieval History and told us it was time for him to move on.

“I cannot be a nanny forever,” he explained when we asked him why. He has been giving music lessons all year, and now he wants to be a full-time music teacher.

At first, after Mum and Dad resigned, they made a real effort, not just with us but with each other. They stopped fighting and started to slope off for romantic weekends in the country instead. Apparently they had a lot of catching up to do, and it just wasn’t possible to be romantic with four children in the house. Flora said it was a scandal. She said that at seventeen she was the one who was supposed to be skulking off to canoodle in secret, and that they were making a complete spectacle of themselves, but they were happy, so we didn’t mind. And then, around about when Zoran left, Mum and Dad’s canoodling stopped. This morning they had a huge fight, and they have barely spoken to each other all day. Flora says we should Resign Ourselves to the Inevitable. We were all quite ready for the parents to divorce last Christmas, and apparently the intervening months have been no more than a Temporary Reprieve.

I don’t know if Zoran leaving and Mum and Dad quarreling are related. I just know that, even though he wasn’t always very good at looking after us, things were better at home when he was still around.

The reason Zoran didn’t come for dinner is that the grandfather of one of his students has had a stroke. The difference between a heart attack and a stroke, Dad says, is that a heart attack is what happens when blood stops flowing to the heart, and a stroke is what happens when blood stops flowing to the brain.

“So it’s a brain attack,” Twig said, and Dad said yes, he supposed it was.

“But why does that mean Zoran couldn’t come for dinner?” Jas frowned.

“Because he was at the boy’s house giving a music lesson when it happened. The boy lives with his grandfather and has no other family. Zoran offered to look after him.” Mum stared at the goulash, the green beans, the potato gratin, the red cabbage with apples and raisins, the chocolate cake, and the custard and sighed.

“Those poor people,” she said.

“Is the grandfather going to die?” Jas is fascinated by death. “Will the boy be an orphan?”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Mum said. “Please stop asking questions.”

“I still don’t get why they couldn’t come for dinner,” Twig said.

Flora said, “Oh, what, Zoran should have been like, I know your only relative just nearly died but why don’t you come and have dinner with a group of total strangers?”

“We’re not strangers,” Twig said.

“I can’t imagine only having one relative,” I said. “That’s so sad.”

As usual, nobody listened to me except for Mum, who gave me a little smile. Zoran says every family has a child who is less loud than the others, and sometimes I feel like I’m invisible. Maybe it’s because unlike Flora and Jas, I don’t have statement hair and clothes. My hair is brown and normal, my clothes never seem to go together, and at fourteen I’m still wearing the little round glasses I got when I was twelve, but I don’t really care about any of that. I just wish once in a while someone would pay attention when I finally get a word in edgewise.

“But why is Zoran looking after him?” Jas ploughed on. “I thought he didn’t want to be a nanny anymore. If he was still living with us, would that mean the boy with the grandfather would come and live here too? Couldn’t they come and live here anyway?”

“STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!” said Dad.

“She’s only asking because she’s wants to know,” said Mum.

“You just told her exactly the same thing.”

“That was different.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Yes it was.”

“Sometimes,” Jas said, “I wish I were an orphan.”

“That is a terrible thing to say,” Flora scolded, but then she added that sometimes she did too, and everybody sulked for the rest of the evening.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4 (THE FIRST DAY OF HALF TERM)

Jake has asked me to go out with him. He left for Australia today, to go to his auntie’s wedding. The holidays are only a week long, but because Australia is so far away and it is A Genuine Family Reason as well as a Highly Educational Trip, God (aka Mr. Kelly the headmaster) has given Special Dispensation for him to stay away for a month. On Friday Tom, who along with Colin is still Jake’s best friend for reasons I sometimes find hard to understand, was all, “WHAHAY, DUDE, NO SCHOOL FOR A MONTH AND THINK OF ALL THOSE HOT SURFER CHICKS,” but Jake went all serious, and then this morning he said could I meet him at the Home Sweet Home café before he went to the airport, and he asked me.

Clearly, I am not invisible to Jake.

“The thought of a whole month without you,” he said, “made me realize how much I like you.” He asked if I would wait for him and I nearly choked over my cappuccino because, even though I’ve known Jake since primary school, I have never thought about him in that way, and it was the last thing I expected him to say. He taught me to skateboard last year when I was still so unhappy about Iris, and he’s been one of my best friends ever since, but being best friends with someone is not the same as going out with them. I was trying to find a way of telling him that, but then he said, “Blue, are you okay?” and he looked so worried and nervous that instead I said yes, going out with him would be very nice.

As soon I got home I climbed onto the flat roof outside my bedroom window to call Dodi (it’s the only place in our house where you can be really private). Dodi is about as different from me as a best friend can get. She’s blond and girly, she loves fashion, and even though she’s never actually had a boyfriend, she’s very interested in boys.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Dodi said.

“He said, would I wait for him, and then he kissed me on the cheek and held my hand for a bit and made me promise to e-mail him every day.”

Dodi sighed and said that made us practically married.

“It wasn’t very passionate,” I said.

Dodi says that’s because we are such good friends. She says it’s hard to be passionate when you know someone so well, but after a month apart, the flames of our passion will be incandescent.

Seriously. Incandescent. Dodi is the sort of person who has an opinion on everything. I can’t imagine how it would feel to be like her, always so sure that you are right.

“So you think I should go out with him?” I asked.

“You’ve already said yes, haven’t you?” She sounded really excited. I tried to explain about friends not being the same as boyfriends and everything, but as well as always having opinions, Dodi also often doesn’t listen to me.

“You two are going to make the cutest couple,” she said, but then our conversation was interrupted by my family starting to scream at each other in the garden.

“What’s going on now?” Dodi’s parents are very quiet, and she doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. She is endlessly fascinated by us.

I crept to the edge of the roof. Beneath me, Dad stood by Twig and Jas’s pet rats’ cage, surrounded by the rest of my family, who were all yelling.

“I’ll call you back,” I told Dodi.

What happened was, Dad let the rats escape this morning. Normally Jas feeds them, but she was staying with her friend Lola last night, so Dad said he would do it, but then he forgot to close the cage and they ran away. Jas found the cage wide open when she came home.

Dad tried to defend himself saying the rats were probably happier living free as God intended. Jas cried, “But they are not used to the wild.” Dad said Chatsworth Square was not exactly the wild, and Jas started to sob that her heart was broken forever, which is when Mum jumped in saying, “Really, David, murdering the children’s pets is the last straw.”

“I did not murder them!” cried Dad. “It was an accident! And they are rats! They can live anywhere!”

All seven of the rats have escaped. Twig, who had promised to sell Betsy’s babies to his friends, informed Dad he had ruined his career. Jas cried even harder because she hadn’t even realized Betsy was pregnant, but nobody was listening to her because Dad was yelling “Freedom! Freedom!” like some deranged rat revolutionary. Mum said he couldn’t use political idealism as an excuse, especially applied to rats, and then he started waving his arms around crying how no one understands how difficult it is for him to be locked in his study all day trying to write a novel and knowing that the responsibility for his ENTIRE FAMILY’S WELL-BEING rested on his shoulders, and we all tiptoed away because it was clear our father had finally lost his mind.

I e-mailed Jake before writing this, to tell him all about it. Now that I have agreed to go out with him, I feel that I should tell him everything, even though it’s not always easy to find the words. Nobody wants people to think their father is a lunatic. Then I called Zoran to see if he could help, but he says there is nothing he can do. Rats, once they are gone, are gone forever, in Zoran’s opinion.

His student’s grandfather from last night, who is called Mr. Rudowski, hasn’t woken up from his stroke yet. His student, who is called Zach, is still staying with him because even though Zoran has tried to call the boy’s mother, she hasn’t replied.

“Zach says she lives abroad,” he said.

“How come he lives with his grandfather?” I asked. Zoran said it was complicated.

“Why hasn’t she replied?”

“I don’t know, Blue. Believe me, I wish she would.”

I wish Zoran would come home and live with us, but unlike Jas, I have no desire to be an orphan. I’d rather have two parents yelling at each other than no parents at all.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7

Jas came to find me in my room this afternoon, and I knew something was up because she didn’t comment on my wall, which I have spent the whole day painting from floor to ceiling with metallic silver radiator paint. This is the sort of thing you do when your grandmother, who you would normally spend half term with, decides to defy the passing of the years by going on a three-month riding holiday in Arizona. I was just working on the final coat when she slunk in (Jas, not Grandma) and said, “You have to help me.”

“If I stop now,” I told her, “I will forget where I got to, and the paint will be uneven. Go and ask Flora.”

“Flora is at a play audition. I’m not supposed to know.”

None of us ar...