2. Cuckoo
CHAPTER TWO
CUCKOO
Much longer like this and I really will turn cuckoo.
It’s boiling in our flat, and the windows only open a fraction for “safety regulations.” There is no fancy garden to lounge and do yoga in.
Trying to do yoga in here would mean whacking into a million different things and sending them flying.
We don’t have a kitchen for baking bread or whatever daft cooking trend celebrities and the middle class are pretending to enjoy now they have to actually be at home instead of in their fancy offices or on holiday.
We have a stove with only one working hob, and just enough counter space for the microwave and toaster.
I don’t think anyone would sing a pathetically twee inspirational song about living here.
And it’s an empty gesture, we all know it, because the government won’t really do anything for them, but we clap for carers and the NHS workers on Thursday nights like everybody else, especially as there are plenty on our council estate.
Mum would have done a fundraiser, or a virtual one, I guess, raising real money. She was good at stuff like that.
Dad’s trying, he is, to keep quiet while I read, but the television volume is creeping up and every now and then he sighs or yawns loudly and my concentration is shot.
“I don’t know why you’re bothering,” he says eventually, giving up the pretense and turning around to face me.
The pleather sofa whines as he shifts his weight, the cracks straining further.
When I was younger, I used to pick the bits of fake leather off that were already starting to come away.
It drove Mum mad. After she died, I stopped doing it, as if angering her from beyond the grave would mean she wasn’t able to find peace.
I’m so distracted by the half-ruined patches I almost miss the rest of what Dad says.
“Exams are canceled. You won’t be needing that. ”
It wouldn’t occur to him that I actually enjoy reading.
Dad hasn’t read a book in his life, a fact he is always proud to tell anyone, and he moans about how expensive books are, even though all of my copies are either from school or bought from charity shops.
But then he doesn’t have any hobbies, unless watching Four in a Bed on repeat counts.
He used to go cycling, but that was with Mum, so their two bikes are collecting dust in the corner of the living room, taking up space we don’t have. Not that we’d ever get rid of them.
“Wish exams were canceled in my day,” he continues, warming up to his routine. “Wouldn’t have had to go to the bother of failing them all.”
Another proud statement: I failed all my exams, did things the hard way, and look how I ended up.
Doesn’t work as well now when he lost his previous job after Mum died and has to work nights somewhere he despises.
“I don’t think they’re really canceled,” I say. “They wouldn’t do that. When everything is fine in a few weeks, they’ll put them back on.”
He rises to his feet, crosses the short distance between us, and ruffles my hair. “I know you were keen on them, poppet, but this way you can start looking for a job earlier. Carly needs new shoes, and I still owe Dean a present for his birthday.”
Dad’s been desperate for me to get a job, and putting him off until after exams has been my only bargaining chip.
How the hell was I meant to know exams would be canceled for the first time in history?
I know Carly is a different shoe size to me, with her great big elephant feet, and she can’t have mine, but I had to make do with too-tight pumps for two years so why can’t she?
And Dean doesn’t need a birthday present.
He’s eight, he can play with the world of imagination.
Alright. I’m being mean. And I know Dad is using Carly and Dean as an excuse. The water bill is overdue, and he hasn’t had new clothes in ages. I’ll be the first to turn eighteen, the eldest child, and I have responsibilities. It’s what Mum would want, so I’ll step up.
Just give me my summer. One more season of being Cuckoo before the reality of being an adult settles in.
“I won’t pester you about it now,” Dad says. “Proud of you, darling. Mum is too.”
I watch him settle back down, make the effort to turn the subtitles on to not disturb me further. He is proud of me. And supportive.
But his ambitions and dreams died when Mum did.
I wish the others could understand more why I can’t have all the same crazy expectations they do.
They were all friends since primary school.
I arrived fashionably late, at the beginning of Year Eight, wearing the uniform of my previous school, an immediate outcast. I watched people from the sidelines, having pretend conversations in my head where I’d make them howl with laughter.
I should have called myself Magpie because I learned behaviors from other people, taking the best of their personalities like shiny trinkets for collection.
And then I began to shine myself. I started the following year with the right uniform, the right attitude, and the right jokes.
I became the funny one, the one everyone liked.
I saw Crow and Starling and Goldie and Wren and wanted a close-knit group like theirs.
The nicknames fascinated me, like they were in a world of their own. It didn’t matter to them that some people teased them behind their backs, flapping their arms to mimic wings or make cawing sounds, or that others thought they were plain weird.
Wren, as timid and small as her namesake, was easiest to speak to first. She seemed positively afraid of me when I asked for help with an essay, but didn’t say no.
She quietly read my work, brow furrowed in concentration, and gave me criticism that was kinder than most compliments.
But she was fiercely protective of the others, refusing to tell me anything about them, which impressed me.
Quiet and shy she might be, but a pushover she is not, not when her friends are in question.
In the end, it was Goldie who brought me into the fold, Goldie with her no-nonsense ways, who told me I made her laugh so hard she cried.
Starling, affable and overly interested in everyone, accepted me right away.
Crow was trickier. Even now, she takes everything far more seriously than anyone else.
She truly is crow-like: dark, brooding, earnest. She wears her intelligence like a badge of honor and is determined to always be the cleverest, the most ambitious, the one destined for greatness.
But she liked me soon enough, and as much as I can’t resist irritating her at every opportunity, the group would be unbalanced without her.
Unbalanced without any one of us, really. It’s like I was always meant to slot in, the fifth friend they didn’t know was missing.
The book I was trying to read is abandoned on the table.
Carly is in our room on the phone to her friends and Dean is in his and Dad’s room, playing far too quietly.
Any second now he’ll scream or push back through the door and demand his lunch, and I haven’t got the energy.
I tell Dad I’m off on my allotted walk for the day.
(Honestly, what has happened to the world that we’re allowed one walk?
It’s alright for those that have bloody gardens, but for a two-bedroom council flat on the top floor of a tower block, it’s hardly fair.)
“Pick up some milk, would you?” Dad calls. “I’m gasping for a tea.”
“Okay.” The dish by the front door normally has an emergency fiver on it, but it’s down to two pound coins and a twenty pence piece. I grab the lot and shove it in my pocket and head out before Carly and Dean get wind I’m going and beg to come along.
Jen is at the counter in the corner shop when I arrive.
Her family owns the place, and I remember when I was a kid and she was twenty and I thought she was so glamorous, all curly blonde hair and big hoop earrings and heavy makeup, kind of like an older Goldie.
She’s much more subdued now, hair straightened, tiny studs, and just a coat of mascara.
She has her eyes on her phone, and I can see the red banner of a BBC News article on the screen.
Everyone is obsessed with the news nowadays.
“Hiya, love,” she says, but she doesn’t look up. “Your dad doing well?”
Everyone on the estate asks, even though it’s been almost two years. Mum was popular. Friends with everyone, babysat kids, taught dance for free at the community center.
“He’s good.” The lie is automatic; no one ever really answers genuinely, do they? I bring four pints of semi-skimmed to the counter. “How about your lot?”
She sets her phone aside, gives me a shrug. “You know. All this lockdown stuff—it’s scary. Typical, ain’t it, that the weather is so gorgeous too. In March!”
“Typical,” I echo.
This is what my life is going to be. Stuck in that flat and popping to the corner shop and telling Jen that yes, Dad is fine, I’m fine, we’re all fucking fine except maybe we’re not and it doesn’t matter because nothing will change and my friends are all going to leave me.
Milk in hand, I take the long way home. It’s barely two o’clock in the afternoon. I spot one person with shopping bags, and a couple of cats enjoying the quiet roads. No one knows I’m here. I can break into song, do a hundred dances, and it won’t matter.
I dig my phone out of my pocket, head straight for the group chat we’ve named Shakespeare’s Bitches, and type out a message.
Anyone else bored out of their mind???
Goldie’s response is immediate:
Literally kill me now.
Goldie, out of all of them, knows what it’s like to be me. She’s stuck living with her aunt because her dad died of cancer when she was young and her mum did a runner.
Wren:
Is anyone else watching Tiger King?
Crow:
OMG Wren you can’t be serious
Starling:
Can confirm am bored here too. Mum and Dad are already trying to get me to make banana bread with them
Crow:
It’s so unfair we can’t even see each other.
Goldie:
Summer canceled RIP
It isn’t right. We should be in school, in one of our study periods that has to be spent in the “learning resource center,” a glorified Portakabin with two bookshelves and three ancient computers with all the F, U, C, and K keys missing.
Tonight we should be getting ready for an amazing evening together, enjoying the weather.
We should be chatting about our English exams. We should be complaining about our other A levels, about how much we can’t wait for the long, extended summer when we can do what we want.
Well. I can change at least one part of that.
I called myself Cuckoo for a reason. Time to be crazy.
I have an idea. We should sneak out.